Two shibboleths of faith fall in one week--- Holy Week is here and I am on the subway coming back from court wondering where the sheet music for “The Palms” has been misplaced. All the tenor soloists who used to sing it have been driven off or died over the years, so now I have it all to myself. In the back of the train are three middle aged subway construction workers with hard hats holding silly little orange flags. They are in a loud conversation about truth coming out. My ears prick up, as I wonder if they are discussing the dark side of our national politics, when one of the other men says “But it wasn’t written down right away, they waited hundreds of years,” then another says “How do we know how old these books are?” Then they begin to talk about carbon dating. One of the men gets exasperated and says “Well they must have known about this before- what about the book of “Judas”?” I jump in and say “There is no book of Judas” and they all look at me. Incredibly these three men have been talking about the news article about the dead sea scrolls which say that Jesus had approached Judas and asked him to betray him. Jesus was manipulative! Good Friday was suicide by cross! Are things quite the same? Does Holy week have the same feel to it? Even soot covered track workers down in the depths are talking about it. Who is the martyr here, the man who died terribly and ascended into heaven for everlasting honor and worship? Or the man who did his bidding, committed suicide, and is reviled for all time? So there it is, something to turn over while sitting in a darkened church listening to the Passion. The other shibboleth that fell was found in an innocuous little booklet, found in a box of books from Swann we were clearing out for resale. The pamphlet was titled “The Jews and Their Lies” and was written by Dr. Martin Luther. Translated and published by a Methodist group in 1927, it had a dark picture of Dr. Luther on the inside title page. Looking at the picture and reading the preface, it slowly dawned upon me that the author was The Martin Luther, not someone named after him. That person in Germany we celebrate on reformation Sunday. The contents of this little booklet consist of some of the most crushing racist condemnations of the Jews I have ever read in English, worthy of the worst propaganda of the Third Reich. So, Judas is raised up and Luther struck down, all in one week.