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Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Struggling with the Nemesis

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Traffic ConesThe fact that experienced readers of the New Testament come away with diametrically opposed interpretations of the same text is today perhaps one of the few universally recognized results of modern historical critical scholarship.

-Joel Willitts
“Chapter 23: The Bride of Messiah and the Israel-ness of the New Heavens and New Earth” (pg 245)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

Brother, you said a mouthful.

I was pretty frustrated when I went to bed last night (as I write this on Tuesday morning). I had a rather busy day on several of my blog posts with various comments, usually related to something I said about the Rudolph/Willitts book. But as I was reading the above referenced chapter in bed, a number of thoughts came to me that weren’t particularly connected to the material I was perusing. I kept going back to what I said a month ago about the problem with religious people. They always think they’re right, they always think their interpretation of the Bible is the only interpretation of the Bible, and they always think that everyone they talk to and disagree with should immediately see the devastating logic of their arguments and then completely roll over to their point of view.

And when you don’t, they get a little cranky.

So when I read the opening sentence in Willitts’ chapter, it was wonderfully confirming.

But there’s still a problem.

Furthermore, softening the logical link between 5:18a and 5:18b lessens the rhetorical force of the statement. What was likely intended to be a ringing affirmation of the Spirit’s ability to release one from being under law (cf. 5:16) comes out sounding, at least practically speaking, more like a piece of encouraging advice to dispense with the need for law observance. Yet this construal is necessary for the viability of the reading proposed by the majority of Galatians commentators, who must assume the mutual compatibility of the leading of the Spirit and existence “under law”; otherwise the point of Paul’s statement would be altogether lost. For this reading to succeed, then, one must downplay both the implicit logic and the rhetorical force of 5:18.

-Todd A. Wilson
“Chapter 22: The Supersession and Superfluity of the Law? Another Look at Galatians” (pg 239)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism

Ah Galatians, my old nemesis. How I have missed thee…not.

Pastor Randy has been away in Brazil for most of the month of April so naturally, we’ve had to suspend our Wednesday evening meetings until his return. He returned on Tuesday (today, as I write this) but didn’t want to “push it” by trying to return to our regular meetings the day after he got back. He’s got a lot of catch up work to do, so I’ll see him next week, and we’ll pick up where we left off with our discussions on D. Thomas Lancaster’s Galatians book.

I enjoy my conversations with Pastor Randy, but I sometimes anticipate them with some degree of “dread.” As I was trying to puzzle my way through Wilson’s brief analysis of that same epistle with an eye on the Messianic Jewish perspective, I became totally lost. I also became kind of skeptical as a result of being lost. If I can’t understand this and it doesn’t make sense to me, does it make sense at all? Is Wilson trying to push the text too far into a particular viewpoint or interpretive model? Is he pushing Paul into an area where Paul never intended to go? And how can I tell?

One thing Pastor Randy has said to me on numerous occasions is that when studying the Bible, the best place to start is with the literal meaning of the text in its original language and context. In reading Wilson and phrases such as “softening the logical link between 5:18a and 5:18b,” I started wondering what Paul would make of all this and how he would see Wilson’s treatment of his letter.

Galatians by D.T. LancasterOf course, you can’t take Galatians in isolation. You have to look at it within the larger context of Paul’s other writings and the events of the New Testament times in general (not to mention the rest of the Bible). You also have to look at the chronology of these writings, with Galatians being one of Paul’s earlier letters, written even before the events we’ve read in Acts 15.

Justin Hardin’s Chapter 21: Equality in the Church,” was easier to digest, but he took a much smaller portion of Galatians to examine (specifically Galatians 3:28) and was more successful at relating how Paul was not attempting to “support a collapse of ethnicity any more than [he] supports the collapse of the male and female genders.” (pp 224-5). On page 226, Hardin tries to explain that the tutor (pedagogue) function of the Law we find in Galatians 3:23-24 is indeed only one of a number of functions of the Torah for the Jewish people. Only that function went away when Messiah came to show us the perfect model of “Torah living,” but that didn’t eliminate the Jewish requirement to observe Torah for other reasons (national identity, covenant obedience, eschatological linkage to the Messianic age, and so forth).

But how am I supposed to gain an understanding of Galatians that comes anywhere near to Hardin’s or Wilson’s, or even Lancaster’s when I meet Pastor Randy again? I can’t keep these fellows in my pocket and bring them out to present their wares at a critical moment in our dialog, but since Galatians is obviously far more complex than meets the eye, how can I defend a position on this puzzling epistle that I don’t fully understand? (And by the way, like Lancaster, Hardin believes Paul wrote the Galatians letter only to the Gentile population of the churches in that region, not to their Jewish counterparts.)

Like most of the chapters in this book, Willitts’ essay and analysis of “the Bride” imagery (in the aforementioned Chapter 23) in Revelation 19 and 21 is dense with footnotes and scholarly references. In order to present a respectable argument regarding Galatians (or anything else from the Bible), I’d have to be far better read than I am and then somehow have the ability to recall all of that information at a moment’s notice at it is required for a certain topic brought up in my Pastor Randy Galatians discussions.

I need a bigger brain.

With the Scripture as a background, we can now clarify John’s use of the bride imagery in Revelation 19-22. First, since for John the Lamb is divine, it presents little problem for him to correlate Israel’s God with the Lamb — what was attributed to the God of Israel in Isaiah is now associated with the Lamb. Thus, what was once God’s bride is now the bride of Messiah.

The Lamb’s bride is the New Jerusalem, both the people of Israel and the place where God will dwell. Israel, who was unfaithful, now is not. At the end of the age, the Lamb will remarry his bride; he will fulfill his promise. The divine Messiah will redeem his people from captivity and clothe them with righteous deeds because they will be “taught by the Lord” (Isa. 54:13).

-Willitts, pp 252-3

That quote will no doubt shock most Christians and probably more than a few Jewish believers. In the church, I was always taught that “the church” was the bride of Christ, which usually means Gentile Christians. Here, Willitts completely reverses identities, saying that both Israel as a place and as a people/nation are the Divine Messiah’s bride. What I didn’t quote was how Willitts states that the nations (believing Gentile Christians) are the wedding guests! We’re not the bride at all but we are on hand to celebrate at the “wedding reception,” so to speak.

That’s going to ruffle a few feathers.

But…

filtered…but Willitts isn’t presenting the conclusions in his brief article as if they were absolute fact or as if they were the only possible interpretation of the text. He deliberately is framing his interpretation within a Messianic Jewish context in order to show an alternate point of view, a different perspective for his readers, probably to make us think and to help us question our assumptions. I can relate to that, since I often write from that perspective myself.

Now look at this comment made on one of my blog posts in response to my question about whether the commentor thinks Christians sin by not observing the Torah in the same manner as the Jews:

Some Jews may be accepting of Christian Torah observances that make them look Jewish, but in my experience, it can’t be that many. And have you told other Christians you associate with about them being obligated (rather than them having a choice) to Torah observance to a level that will make them look Jewish too?

Yes, I have, I argue for covenant obligation, are you in covenant with God, then you have an obligation

“Zion” is well-meaning and a decent human being, but we often come to loggerheads because he believes that Gentiles in Messiah are directly linked into the covenants rather than receiving them through Israel, and as such, we covenant members are “grafted in” to the full 613 Torah mitzvot and are required to observe them, not in the manner of modern “Rabbinic Jews,” but from a Biblical model (nevermind that we have no idea how to observe the Torah without Rabbinic interpretation).

I disagree and believe we Gentile disciples of the Messiah receive certain blessings from the covenants God made with Israel thanks to the linkage between Abraham’s faith and our faith in Messiah, but that doesn’t include turning us into “Israelites,” nor does it mean we have an identical Torah obligation with the Jewish people.

So we have a difference of opinion. That brings us back to the Willitts quote I inserted at the top of this blog post.

I don’t mind disagreements. I really don’t. I do mind being backed into a corner by folks who believe that it’s their way or the highway. My point of view is one point of view. There are aspects of the Bible I don’t understand. Galatians is a frustrating mystery to me. Even when someone tries to explain it, such as Wilson, the explanation is a frustrating mystery to me. There are days when I want to pack it in and give up on religion. I don’t fit. I don’t understand. I am really annoyed with the dissonance between different Bible interpretations, and I am really, really annoyed with people who think that they and only they (or their group) are the sole possessors of God’s truth about the Bible.

To me, being a believer and studying the Bible is like being an explorer. As a person of faith, I’m on a journey of discovery. Such journeys are rarely straightforward and often involve going in the wrong direction, backtracking, retracing steps, and sometimes using a machete to hack through thick underbrush, like an adventurer-archaeologist on his way to the next big find. But as Dr. Henry Jones Jr. once said, “seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library.” It requires painstaking, laborious study, not dramatic arguments by people who are all too sure of themselves. Archaeology is also a science of patience. At a dig, you must be slow and deliberate in attempting anything. It might be today, tomorrow, ten years from now, or never, before you uncover anything of even the remotest significance at all.

walking-side-by-sideJesus is like a companion on a long journey who helps to guide us but who will not override our decisions, even if we should take the wrong path. He’ll advise us, prod us, give us hints, and occasionally berate us as we find we’ve stepped into a pool of quicksand, but he won’t just lead us by the hand so we can passively follow where he has gone before us.

I’m nearly done reading the articles in Rudolph’s and Willitts’ book. I’m hoping to get through all of them and finish taking my notes before I have to return the book to the library. But once I have, I’ll move on to another book. While I’ve found Introduction to Messianic Judaism to be an excellent survey of the perspectives on different aspects of theology and doctrine from a Messianic Jewish perspective, it’s still only one book. To the degree that the twenty-six contributors reference countless other sources, then countless other sources are required to help understand the Bible and thus a life of faith.

I can’t stop now, though one day, I may completely withdraw from the public realm and conduct my search privately, but a life of encountering God requires a lifetime. I can’t simply accept one religious person’s statement that they’re “right” and blindly consume their declarations.

I’ve got to keep going. Will I ever arrive at a destination? Probably not this side of paradise.

153 days.

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Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Interdependence or Collapse

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communityPaul’s letter to the Romans offers us a vision and model for Jewish-Gentile reconciliation. This is because Paul deals with the division between Jesus-believing Jews and Gentiles in his own day. Though Gentile believers were probably a majority in the church in Rome, they were theologically marginalized. For most of history that situation has been reversed, yet part of Romans addresses in advance even that problem.

-Craig Keener
“Chapter 17: Interdependence and Mutual Blessing in the Church” (pg 187)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

In some ways, the problem briefly defined by Dr. Keener is one that hovers around the fringes of the Christian Hebrew Roots movement today. For the better part of two weeks, I’ve been writing a series of “mini-reviews” on the different chapters of Rudolph’s and Willitts’ book which address interrelated themes within larger Messianic Judaism. They have been received positively and even enthusiastically by most of my vocal readers but a few have perceived the information in a negative light. Accusations of inequality and even racism between Jews and Gentiles have been raised periodically, and I believe part of the underlying problem is a covert or even unconscious fear among these Gentile disciples of Jesus that Messianic Judaism seeks to “theologically marginalize” non-Jewish participants in the Messianic Jewish movement, which spills over into Hebrew Roots, since many of those who are involved also identify themselves as “Messianic Judaism.”

Is the Messianic Jewish movement seeking to marginalize and even to eliminate the Gentile Christian (Hebrew Roots) believers from their ranks and from coveted access to the Torah mitzvot? A casual observer (or one with a specific bias) might say “yes,” but let’s consider what we can learn from different analyses of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

In addition to Keener, Dr. William Campbell and Dr. Scott Hafemann also present their viewpoints on Romans to support the concept of interdependence between believing Jews and Gentiles. The ekklesia doesn’t function correctly and perhaps doesn’t even exist at all without the co-inhabitance and cooperation of both Jews and Gentiles in the body of Messiah. Perhaps that’s why, over the past two-thousand years or so, we haven’t been doing so well in certain areas, because Christianity historically has marginalized Jews theologically (and in just about every other way). It’s time to restore the balance.

Campbell, in “Chapter 18: The Relationship between Israel and the Church”, believes that Paul addressed his Roman letter only to the Gentiles and was speaking about Jews but not to Jews, which seems to be a minority opinion. Keener, on the other hand, presents the main focus of Paul’s letter as being on both Jews and Gentiles:

Although scholars have offered other reasonable proposals, the most widely accepted background for Paul’s letter to believers in Rome involves disagreement between Jesus-believing Jews and Gentiles regarding Jewish customs.

-Keener, pg 187

Apparently, when the Jewish population in the Messianic community in Rome began to dwindle, thanks to the emperor Claudius expelling some or most of the Jews (Acts 18:2), Gentiles began neglecting some or all of the Jewish religious customs they had been taught in relation to the worship of the God of Israel. This rather begs the question of just how much Torah did the Gentiles keep in those days, but does confirm that, for the most part, Gentiles weren’t very driven to Torah observance in the manner of their Jewish mentors (Acts 15:30-31).

For Keener, the primary message of Paul to the Jews and Gentiles in Rome was unity:

Unity was a frequent topic of exhortation in antiquity, and it is central to Paul’s plea for Jewish-Gentile reconciliation in Romans. This is clear and not least because he climaxes his larger argument by inviting unity (Romans 15:5-6) and inviting believers to welcome each other (Romans 15:7). He underscores this point by showing from Scripture that God’s plan includes faithful Gentiles (Romans 15:8-12). The letter’s final exhortation includes a warning against those who sow division (Romans 16:17).

-ibid, pg 188

PaulPaul issues warnings specifically to the Gentiles against fomenting division between them and the Jews and expresses his dismay that the Gentiles have neglected his warnings.

Relative to interdependence, Keener stresses that the Gentiles have a special role to play in relation to Israel to “provoke jealousy” because of the temporary state of Israel’s non-acceptance of the Gospels.

In Romans 11, however, we learn another divine strategy in Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Gentiles received mercy through Israel’s failure to embrace the gospel; now Gentiles would become a divine vehicle of bringing Jewish people to Christ. What did this reversal involve? Scripture promised that God would restore and exalt his people in the time of their ultimate repentance (e.g., Amos 9:7-15; Hosea 14:4-7).

They (Gentiles) would in turn help the Jewish people by provoking repentance.

-ibid, pp 190-1

Keener also emphasizes what he is not saying:

I am also not urging all Gentile Christians to join Messianic Jewish congregations. First, they would numerically overwhelm those congregations and their cultural identity. Second, Paul is clear that while Gentile believers in Jesus are spiritual proselytes to Judaism, they are responsible only for the moral heart of the law and not for Israel-distinctive elements.

-ibid, pg 191

(It should be noted that, at least in the United States, all of the Messianic Jewish congregations of which I’m aware, do have a majority membership of Gentiles, but are still designed and administrated as a Jewish religious and community space)

There’s a sort of balancing act involved in Gentiles pursuing their (our) mission of provoking Jewish people to repentance and not overly involving ourselves in Jewish communities to the point of overwriting Jewish identity. Also, Keener says that by over-emphasizing Gentile presence within the Messianic Jewish community for the sake of Jewish repentance, we would likely inhibit part of the Messianic Jewish mission, which is to act as a bridge into the larger Jewish world community.

Messianic Jews, in Keener’s view, depend on their Gentile counterparts to provide resources for the support of the Messianic Jewish community. This isn’t always by sending donations, as Paul did by taking up a collection among the Gentiles to carry to Jerusalem (although it can be), but to, in a larger sense, continue to acknowledge our kinship to our Jewish brothers in Messiah, and even humble ourselves by remembering that salvation comes from the Jews (John 4:22) and that “the people whose heritage we share and from whom our faith springs (Romans 9:4-5), may help us surmount the past barriers of Gentile Christian anti-Semitism.” (idid, pg 193)

But while Keener addressed primarily how the Jews depend on the Gentile believers, Campbell, in Chapter 18, takes a different approach.

Their gentile arrogance is based on mistaken assumptions, and Paul gives no allowance to such misunderstandings of God’s purpose according to election (Romans 9:11). It is no accident that in Romans Paul stresses the order of priority, “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile” (Romans 2:10 KJV; cf. 1:16). This points to the identity of gentile Christ-followers not as an independent entity, but as interdependent on the call and identity of Israel, to whom as Ephesians 2:13 asserts they “have been brought near.” As Ian Rock asserts, “to affirm the lordship of Christ is to simultaneously recognize the preference of Israel. But to recognize the primacy of Israel is also to accept the importance of the Jews.

Campbell, pp 202-3

jewish-prayer_daveningThe flow of dependence is reversed. In addition to Jews depending on Gentiles to support their repentance and uphold their identity, it is the Gentiles who, without the Jews, are also without the promises, and thus have no independent connection to salvation or covenant with God. The covenants are through Israel and we Gentiles are able to enjoy the blessings only because of Israel.

They (Gentiles) could not really share if they had taken over Israel’s inheritance, as they would then be the sole inheritors. So Paul reminds the gentile Christ-followers, “Do not boast over the branches…remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18 RSV).

-ibid, pg 203

Campbell concludes his chapter with an illuminating chronological construction of Romans 15:9b-13 which seems to say it all.

Because David’s past vindication establishes God’s promise to David’s seed (v.9b), therefore the Gentiles should not give up hope, but learn from the experience of disobedient Israel to rejoice in God alone (in the midst of the false security that comes from the nations’ current reign in the world) (v. 10);

specifically, the Gentiles should not give up hope, but learn from the experience of the faithful remnant to praise God for his truthfulness and mercy (in the midst of the adversity that comes from being part of God’s elect in the world) (v. 11),

because the future vindication of David’s seed in fulfillment of God’s promise is the hope of the nations (v. 12).

-ibid, pg 212

In “Chapter 19: The Redemption of Israel for the Sake of the Gentiles,” Dr. Hafemann returns to the Gentile’s dependence on Jewish Israel.

As Paul argues in Romans 15:7-13, God’s commitment to Israel for the sake of the nations forms the bedrock of the Church’s hope. Viewed from this perspective, Messianic Judaism reminds us not only of God’s faithfulness, demonstrated in Israel’s history, and of his grace, now magnified in the Messiah, but also of his promises for the future of his people, to be fulfilled in the final redemption of Jews and Gentiles.

-Hafemann, pg 206

So we see that God has been historically faithful to Israel for her own sake, but also for the sake of the Gentiles who will be saved through His promises to Israel. Again, we see that without Israel, the Gentile believers have no leg to stand on, so to speak, and that any covenant connection we have with God through Messiah vanishes like a morning mist under the summer sun if we dispense with Israel and the Jewish people. Not only must Israel continue but it must continue as the head of the nations as a wholly Jewish nation, unique and distinct from the people of the nations, we Gentiles, who need them for our hope in salvation.

The linkage is through Abraham, as I’m sure you realize by now:

Since God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles, both the “circumcised” and the “uncircumcised” will be justified “through [the] same faith” (3:29-30), the faith of Abraham, for “he is the father of us all” (4:16).

-ibid

By Gentiles desiring to supersede the Jews in the promises or to fuse our identity with theirs, creating a single Israel and eliminating our identity as the people of the nations called by God’s Name, we are disconnecting ourselves from the very salvation that we desire to claim only for ourselves. There is a wonderful eschatological promise for the Christian church, but only if there is a wonderful eschatological promise for the future of Israel as well.

Hafemann continues:

Paul’s chain of Scripture will therefore focus on the purpose of Israel’s redemptive history with regard to the Gentiles, rather than referring merely in a general sense to the inclusion of Jews and Gentiles within the church. The Gentiles are to glorify God for what he has promised to do for Israel (Romans 15:9a) since the future redemption of the nations, including the resurrection from the dead and redemption of the world (cf. Romans 5:17; 8:19-22, 31-39), is tied to the rescue of Israel (Romans 5:18; cf. 11:15). The current experience of Jews and Gentiles as distinct but equal identities within the Church therefore takes on significance precisely because it is a foretaste of the consummation yet to come for both Israel and the nations.

-ibid, pp 207-8

destruction_of_the_templeThis is something that Boaz Michael of First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) was trying to say during last year’s Sukkot conference. I wrote about it in a series of blog posts, including Redeeming the Heart of Israel, Part 1 and Part 2, but I was never clear on how this interdependence was rooted in scripture until this time. I see now, more clearly than ever, that any form of supersessionism damages not only Israel, but the hope of the nations for salvation and redemption, since our hope only comes from the Jews.

When the Church tries to replace Israel in the covenant promises or mistakenly chooses to believe they (we) are Israel, it is like a man who decides to cut off his legs in order to stand taller and straighter. Instead, he only causes great pain and permanently cripples himself.

It is said that in ancient days during Sukkot, Israel offered sacrifices at the Temple for the sake of the nations to atone for their (our) sins. When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, they also stopped those sacrifices and thus the atonement Israel provided for the nations of the world. Basically, the Romans cut off their own legs when they destroyed the Temple, ravaged Jerusalem, and scattered the vast majority of the Jewish people to the four corners of the earth.

As Christians, when we dismiss Israel from the covenants and in one way or another, try to take their place, we are doing exactly the same thing. As it takes two healthy legs to support the body of a man, so the ekklesia requires the one “leg” of Messianic Judaism and the other “leg” of Gentile Christians. If we cut off the Jewish leg or if we try to fuse the Gentile leg and the Jewish leg into a single mutilated limb, the best the body can do is to hop around impotently. More likely, the ekklesia will just fall down and break apart.

We depend on each other, but we can only support the body of Christ by being two limbs of the body standing side by side, walking together.

154 days.

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Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Fulfilling the Prophesy of Amos, Part 2

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Receiving the Spirit

When this group of Gentiles believed in Jesus, they immediately received the Holy Spirit in so evident a way that Peter could only conclude that God had extended salvation to them as Gentiles, not requiring that they first become Jews. He therefore baptised them, admitting them to the messianic people of God without expecting them to be circumcised or to observe any more of the Torah than they already did (as God-fearers who worshiped the God of Israel and lived by the moral principles of the Torah).
-Richard Bauckham
“Chapter 16: James and the Jerusalem Council Decision” (pg 178)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

This is Part 2 of a two-part blog post. If you haven’t done so already, read Part 1 before proceeding here.

Bauckham seems to be making a few assumptions about what Peter expected, but they are reasonable assumptions, since we have no record that Cornelius (or any other Gentile disciples of the Master) was ever circumcised or ever assumed a greater obligation or duty to Torah as time progressed, at least as an expection of or obligation to God. Bauckham states that “these Gentiles received the same blessing of eschatological salvation that Peter and other Jewish believers in Jesus had received at Pentecost.” The Jewish and Gentile believers were two bodies within a single ekklesia, sharing the hope of the resurrection and the promise of the life in the world to come as co-heirs of Messiah.

But so far, this is confined to Peter’s observation of Cornelius and his household. What about the other Gentiles? What about James and the Council of Apostles (who Peter had to give an accounting to in Acts 11)?

Peter’s testimony before the council (Acts 15:9) indicated that he understood that God made no distinction between Jew and Gentile, specifically in relation to “cleansing their hearts by faith.” Whatever “impurity” that the Jewish believers saw, even in the Gentile God-fearers, was set aside (which was the point of Peter’s vision in Acts 10) as a result of the Spirit being received even by the Gentiles “through the grace of Jesus Christ” (Acts 15:11). The “distinction” that was eliminated between Jewish Israel and the believing Gentiles was the distinction between the “holy” and the “profane” with the Gentiles also receiving access to holiness through faith in Messiah.

It became possible to envisage the messianic people of God as a community of both Jews and Gentiles, the former observing Torah, the latter not. Of course, neither Peter nor any of the Jerusalem leaders entertained the idea that Jewish believers in Jesus should give up observing Torah. But Torah observance no longer constituted a barrier between Jews and Gentiles, since their fellowship was not based on Torah, but on faith in Jesus the Messiah and experience of the transformative power of the Spirit.

-ibid pg 180

Bauckham doesn’t reference Ephesians 2, but his statement seems to evoke “abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” in this case, by making Torah a “non-issue” between Jewish and Gentile believers, since it is faith in Messiah that binds them, not Torah obedience.

Bauckham’s statement will be difficult to accept for almost anyone in Christianity, both in mainstream Protestantism and the numerous variant worship platforms. However it does line up with content written by FFOZ’s Lancaster and numerous other contributors and cited sources in the Rudolph/Willitts book. In the church, we have gotten so used to the idea that we have permanently altered if not replaced Jews, Judaism, and Jewish Torah observance, that it never occurs to us to ask why Judaism should have had to change in order to accomodate the entry of Gentile disciples. We were (and are) the ones who need to change, since Israel and her King were totally foreign to any one except Israel. Faith in Yeshua HaMashiach is a perfectly expected developmental progression in Israel’s history. The really dramatic event is that the nations, Gentile Christianity, were allowed entry into the Jewish religious branch “the Way.”

apostles_james_acts15In Acts 11:1-8, Peter already convinced the Council that the Gentiles could receive the Spirit as part of God’s plan for the nations, and they praised God for His graciousness to the Gentiles. In Acts 15, Peter reminds the Council of these events, and James, in deliberating the matter, offers Amos 9:11-12 (part of last week’s Haftarah portion) as the proof text supporting what Peter had observed and in support of Paul’s position to admit Gentiles without requiring they be circumcised. In using the words “all the nations over whom my name has been invoked”, according to Bauckham, James is stating that God has declared “ownership” over “all the nations” (Amos 9:12) just as He had declared ownership over Israel as His own people (e.g., Deut 28:10; 2 Chr 7:14; Jer 14:9; Dan 9:19).

It shows that in the messianic age, Gentiles, precisely as Gentiles, will no longer be “profane” but will join the Jews in belonging to God’s holy people…

-ibid, pg 182

Now I suppose you’re going to ask about the four prohibitions James laid upon the Gentiles, otherwise known at the “apostolic decree.”

The reason these four are selected from the commandments of the Torah as alone applicable to Gentile members of the messianic people of God is exegetical. They are specifically designed as obliging “the alien who sojourns in your/their midst” as well as Israelites. Applied to the situation of the messianic people of God, this phrase could be seen as referring to Gentiles included in the community along with Jews. But the point is made more precisely by the use of this same phrase in two of the prophecies about the conversion of the Gentiles in the messianic age: Jeremiah 12:16 (“they shall be built in the midst of my people”) and Zechariah 2:11 (LXX: “they shall dwell in your midst”). In light of these exegetical links, the Torah itself can be seen to make specific provision for these Gentile converts, who are not obligated, like Jews, by the commandments of Torah in general, but obligated by these specific commandments.

-ibid, pg 183

I can certainly see many of the points D. Thomas Lancaster made about Acts 15 in his Torah Club essays (which I recorded in my Return to Jerusalem series) may have had their origin in the research and documentation of Bauckham and other scholars. Boaz Michael, First Fruits of Zion’s (FFOZ’s) Founder and President, also made similar points in his book Tent of David: Healing the Vision of the Messianic Gentile.

We see in Bauckham’s analysis, that he not only answers the Protestant Christian question about whether the Jews should continue to observe the Torah, but also the Hebrew Roots Christian question about Gentile Torah obligation. I know that neither population of Gentile believers, for the most part, will accept this position, even though it’s based on good biblical research and scholarship, but we must begin to challenge our thinking and our traditions which lead both platforms of Gentile faith in Jesus to misunderstand the plan of God for the Jews and Gentiles within the ekklesia.

Although we know that not all Jewish believers in the days of James, Peter, and Paul could accept Gentile inclusion into Jewish religious worship of Messiah, especially by allowing the Gentiles to remain as Gentiles, the alternative was to deny the words of the Prophet and the plan of God, that not only the Jews but the Gentile nations would be called by His Name, and that the nations would also belong to Him.

“In that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David,
And wall up its breaches;
I will also raise up its ruins
And rebuild it as in the days of old;
That they may possess the remnant of Edom
And all the nations who are called by My name,”
Declares the Lord who does this.

–Amos 9:11-12 (NASB)

We can hardly fulfill our role in prophesy if we believe we must convert to Judaism as a requirement of Messianic disicpleship or forcably take on the full Jewish obligation to Torah observance (becoming “pseudo-Jewish”) in direct defiance of the ruling of the Council of Apostles. If we believers from the nations, insist that we too are “Israel,” then all believing humanity is “Israel” and thus, the prophesy of Amos is either a lie or it will remain forever unfulfilled.

155 days.

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Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Fulfilling the Prophesy of Amos, Part 1

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conference2The most momentous decision the early Christian movement had to make was on the status of Gentiles who wished to join it. That Gentiles should join the movement was not in itself problematic, since there was a widespread Jewish expectation, based on biblical prophecies, that in the last days the restoration of God’s own people Israel would be accompanied by the conversion of the other nations to the worship of the God of Israel. Since the early Christians believed that the messianic restoration of Israel was now under way in the form of their own community, it would not have been difficult for them to recognize that the time for the conversion of the nations was also arriving. What was much less clear, however, was whether Gentiles who came to faith in Jesus the Messiah should become Jews, getting circumcised (in the case of men) and adopting the full yoke of Torah, or whether they could remain Gentiles while enjoying the same blessings of eschatological salvation that Jewish believers in Jesus did.

-Richard Bauckham
“Chapter 16: James and the Jerusalem Council Decision” (pg 178)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

This should be a familiar theme to those of you who regularly read my blog. I spent a considerable amount of time and effort reviewing Luke’s Acts, thanks largely to D. Thomas Lancaster’s Torah Club series Chronicles of the Apostles, published by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ). I was pleased to find that several of the articles in Rudolph’s and Willitts’ book addressed the same issues. But let’s back up a step.

Darrell Bock, in “Chapter 15: The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts” sets the stage for the drama of Gentile inclusion into a branch of normative Judaism by deconstructing the traditional Christian view of these books of scripture.

Burge argues for a landless and nationless theology in which the equality of Jew and Gentile in Christ is the key ecclesiological reality. In this view, Jesus as Temple or as forming a new universal Temple community becomes the locus for holy space. Israel is absorbed into the church and hope in the land is spiritualized to refer to a restored earth.

This chapter seeks to redress the balance. When I speak of Israel in this essay it is the Jewish people I have in mind as opposed to new Israel.

-Bock, pg 168

It is true that Luke-Acts is really all about the Gentiles. According to Bock…

Luke-Acts was written between CE 60 and 80 in part to legitimate the inclusion of Gentiles in an originally Jewish movement according to God’s plan. Theopolis (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1) is a Jesus-believing Gentile who needs assurance. Luke-Acts presents Jesus as God’s exalted and vindicated bearer of kingdom promise, forgiveness, and life for all who believe, Jew and Gentile. The bestowal of God’s Spirit marks the new era’s arrival…This message completes the promises made to Abraham and Israel centuries ago.

-ibid, pp 168-9

The Messiah movement was a wholly owned and operated franchise of Judaism (if you’ll forgive the slight levity here). It’s only natural to imagine that Gentiles hearing that they too could join might have been skeptical about the reality of this promise and the status that they would (or wouldn’t) be granted. Luke means to reassure them that they will be equal sharers in the blessings made to Israel, but make no mistake, there is another side to Luke’s narrative.

Luke argues that the church roots its message in ancient promises, a story in continuity with Israel’s promised hope found in God’s covenantal promises to her. The entire saga involves Israel’s restoration. For all that Gentile inclusion and equality in the new community brings, we never lose sight of the fact that it is Israel’s story and Israel’s hope that brings blessing to the world, just as Genesis 12:3 promised.

-ibid

Nothing Luke, let alone Bock, writes allows Gentile inclusion to delegitimize the Jewish people as God’s people and nation Israel. Messiah is depicted as “the light to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel” (pg 171). We among the nations receive blessings because of Israel, not because we become Israel. Bock also states:

Thus, redemption involves both political and spiritual elements, nationalistic themes (Luke 1:71, 74) and the offer of forgiveness (1:77-78).

-ibid, pg 171

Redemption for Israel is not just spiritual, it’s national and physical. If Israel is obedient to God, Messiah will place Israel at the head of the nations and take up his Throne in Jerusalem. However, there is a problem. Bock does not cast the Gentiles as the primary roadblock to God’s restoration of Israel, but instead declares:

The warning to the nation is that if she rejects God’s message, then blessing may not come to her but may go to the Gentiles. Israel’s story has an obstacle, her own rejecting heart. The question is whether that obstacle is permanent or not.

-ibid, pg 172, citing Luke 4:16-30

the-prophetTraditional Christian supersessionism would say that the obstacle was permanent and the blessings forever left Israel and were transferred to the (Gentile) church. However, since the blessings promised to Abraham only come to the nations by way of Israel, if Israel were permanently eliminated what would happen to us? By definition, any roadblock confronting Israel can only be temporary, just as the Old Testament (Tanakh) record presents how God only turned away from his people Israel “momentarily,” turning immediately back when they humbled their hearts and turned to their God.

Luke 21:24 pictures a turnaround in Israel’s fate. Near the end of the eschatological discourse, Luke describes Jerusalem being trodden down for a time and refers to this period as “the times of the Gentiles.” It refers to a period of Gentile domination, while alluding to a subsequent hope for Israel.

…this view of Israel’s judgment now but vindication later suggests what Paul also contents in Romans 11:25-26: Israel has a future, grafted back in when the fullness of the Gentiles leads her to respond. These chapters certainly have ethnic Israel in view, not any concept of a spiritual Israel. Romans 9-11 develops the temporary period of judgment noted in Luke 13:34-35.

-ibid, pg 173

I should say at this point that Bock extensively cites scripture to support his statements. To restrict the length of this blog post (and I’ve already had to split it into two parts), I am editing out most of his references, so I encourage you to read his chapter in full to get all of the corroborating details.

In covering Acts, Bock deliberately omits Acts 15 and presents several other key areas. Using Acts 1:4-7, Bock establishes the “promise of the Father” which leads the disciples of Jesus to anticipate that the kingdom of Heaven is at hand and that Messiah, prior to (or instead of) the ascension, will restore Israel nationally and spiritually. He does no such thing, but not because the desire is inappropriate. It simply isn’t time yet. However in Acts 3:18-21, Bock shows us that Peter is completely aware that the “times of refreshing” refer to future “refreshment”, which promises the messianic age of salvation as foretold by the Prophets.

But what’s important for we Gentiles to note, is his treatment of Acts 10-11:

In the two passages involving Cornelius in Acts 10-11, the Spirit’s coming shows that Gentiles are equal to Jews in blessing, so that circumcision is not required of Gentiles. The Spirit occupying uncircumcised Gentiles shows they are already cleansed and sacred. The new era’s sign comes to Gentiles as Gentiles. There is no need for them to become Jews. Israel’s story has finally come to bless the nations.

-ibid, pp 175-6

Notice that the nations (Gentiles) did not have to actually become Israel, either by replacing them or joining them as Jews (or pseudo-Jews). We are blessed within one ekklesia made up of Israel (Jews) and the nations (Gentile believers).

As I mentioned before, Bock omits the most critical part of Acts for Gentile inclusion. Bauckham picks that theme up in the following chapter, which you’ll read, along with how we Gentile Christians fulfill the words of the Prophet Amos, in Part 2 of this meditation.

156 days

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Introduction to Messianic Judaism: The Troubled Ekklesia

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jewish-repentanceJewish repentance is not the same as repentance for Gentiles. R. Kendall Soulen highlights a pivotal distinction intrinsic to the Bible but almost entirely ignored by the church:

Christians should recover the biblical habit of seeing the world as peopled, not by Christians and Jews, but by Jews and gentiles, by Israel and the nations…. The Bible, including the Apostolic Witness, presents the distinction as an enduring mark of the one human family, still visible in the church and even in the consummated reign of God.

Human sin is never merely the sin of the creature against the Creator-Consummator. Human sin is also always the sin of Jew and Gentile, of Israel and the nations.

This insight has profound implications for our understanding of Jewish repentance. If departure from Torah living is the measure of Jewish sin, should not a return to the paths of Torah be a sign of Jewish repentance?

-Stuart Dauermann
“Chapter 7: Messianic Jewish Outreach” (pg 95)
quoting R. Kendall Soulen, “The Grammar of the Christian Story” and “The God of Israel and Christian Theology”
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

I chose the paragraph’s quoted above from Dr. Dauermann’s chapter in Rudolph’s and Willitts’ book largely to highlight the struggle of understanding between the Messianic Jewish and Gentile Christian perspectives. Certainly Dauermann’s and Soulen’s descriptions of sin and repentance, and especially differentiating them between Jews and Gentiles, flies in the face of how Protestant Christianity defines those concepts. In normative Protestantism, sin is sin, regardless of the individual involved being Jew or Gentile. It’s personal, never national. But therein lies the rub.

I might as well tackle this rather difficult topic since lately, I’ve been pursuing unpopular causes. No, that’s too cynical, even for me. It’s just been a rough week, and I know how much people struggle with the interactions I’m trying to explore.

Whenever I try to describe (let alone understand) the relationship between Messianic Judaism and Christianity, I typically am criticized for my “lack of understanding” of Messianic Judaism. I’m generally told that my error is in defining Messianic Judaism as a “Judaism.” Although my critics aren’t Jewish, they do accurately describe the problem between Messianic Jews and the other Judaisms, both historically and in the modern sense.

Messianic Judaism and its antecedent movement, Hebrew Christianity, first emerged as attempts to reconfigure the relationship between the Christian Church and the Jewish people. The Hebrew Christians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were for the most part evangelical Protestants who saw the Church as an invisible and universal body of “true believers” that was expressed concretely but imperfectly in the local Christian congregation – a community constituted by the regenerated individuals who voluntarily joined it.

-Mark Kinzer
“Chapter 11: Messianic Jews and the Jewish World” (pg 126)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism

Although I doubt Dr. Kinzer intended this paragraph to be received in such a manner, when I read it, I could only be reminded of a long-standing argument between Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots perspectives. In the situation described by Dr. Kinzer, Jewish people accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, set aside all “Jewish” types of religious observance, self identified as Christians, and joined the larger body of the church, being absorbed into their ranks. The Hebrew Christians, except for a string of DNA and the self-awareness of being “Jewish,” were indistinguishable from their Gentile Christian counterparts. People “knew” they were “Jewish” but that knowledge was beside the point. They were first and foremost Christians and anything that distinguished their national and covenant identity as Jews was swept away.

By contrast, to accept (in general since there are a number of variations on this theme) the Hebrew Roots perspective of Gentile “obligation” to Torah observance and full covenant identity as “Israel” as wholly shared with Jewish believers effectively does the same thing to Messianic Jews. Jews and Gentiles in the Hebrew Roots movement look, act, and identify identically. Except for a string of DNA and the cognitive awareness that certain members are Jewish, both Gentile and Jewish participants are indistinguishable from one another. While Jewish covenant observances and behaviors are not “swept away” as such since the Jewish members remain Torah observant, the distinction becomes irrelevant, since everyone looks and acts “Jewish.”

kinzer-postmissionaryHebrew Christians within evangelical Protestantism become invisible and absorbed by the church as a whole. In Hebrew Roots, it is the same for Messianic Jews.

But this is so hard for most Christian Hebrew Roots practitioners to understand.

And why is it so important for Messianic Jews to maintain their distinctiveness from Gentile Christian populations?

The term “postmissionary” was chosen to make an ecclesiological rather than a missionological point – namely, that Messianic Jews are not called to be representatives of the Christian community operating within another religious community (i.e., the Jewish people) but to be fully part of the Jewish world in both religious and national terms. In fact, they are to represent the Jewish community in relation to the Church, rather than the reverse.

-Kinzer, pg 132

Dr. Kinzer is describing material from his book Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People, a work that is at once revolutionary, controversial, wildly applauded by many but not all Messianic Jews, and frequently criticized by various branches of Christianity.

But it, and Dr. Kinzer, describe the need for Messianic Jews to be disciples of the Messiah first and foremost as Jews. The Hebrew Christianity and Hebrew Roots solutions to Jewish Messianic discipleship both require the surrender of that unique covenant identity and role from the Jewish people, in both cases, isolating Messianic Jews from larger Judaism and larger Jewish practices (while Hebrew Roots Gentiles generally support Torah observance in one sense or another, they usually disdain and reject much or all of the historic Jewish traditions which have identified Jewish communities for the past twenty centuries). The Hebrew Roots solution, like Hebrew Christianity, “absorbs” the Jewish population of believers into the wider “ekklesia,” diluting their identity and eventually, causing them to “disappear” within the masses.

But as has been pointed out to me time and again, even the largest and most robust of Messianic Jewish synagogues still have a majority of Gentiles as its members. However, as I have learned time and again, those are Gentiles who have chosen to come alongside Messianic Judaism in order to dialog with and to support the Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah King in Torah observance, identification with national Israel, and forming the ekklesia made up of (Jewish) Israel and (the believers of) the nations that will once day herald the Messiah’s return.

Together the Messianic Jewish community and the Christian Church constitute the ekklesia, the one Body of Messiah, a community of Jews and Gentiles who in their ongoing distinction and mutual blessing anticipate the shalom of the world to come.

“Defining Messianic Judaism”
UMJC.org

In quoting the Hashivenu core values, Dr. Kinzer states:

The expanded core value continues by expressing appreciation for the religious life of the wider Jewish world: “When we say that Messianic Judaism is ‘a Judaism,’ we are also acknowledging the existence of other ‘Judaisms.’ We do not deny their existence, their legitimacy, or their value.”

Never before had a group of Messianic Jewish leaders sought to differentiate their movement so definitively from evangelicalism and to identify it so radically as a branch of Judaism.

-Kinzer, pg 131

women_praying_at_the_wallI suppose you have to be Jewish to really understand the perspective Dr. Kinzer is describing, but being married to a (non-believing) Jewish spouse, I think I have some idea why it’s intensely important for her to be, not just genetically or generically Jewish, but culturally, ethnically, religiously, traditionally, and right-down-to-the-bone Jewish.

Obviously, her requirement has not been the “swan song” for our marriage because I’m a Gentile Christian since we’re still together after over thirty years, but it comes with a few additional challenges. In terms of the wider Messianic Jewish-Christian interface, those challenges are magnified.

Messianic Jews regard Gentile Christians as their brothers and sisters in the Lord and at the same time experience significant tension with the Gentile Christian world.

-Daniel Juster
“Chapter 12: Messianic Jews and the Gentile World” (pg 136)

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. “You’re my brother and I love you, but you also drive me crazy.” That’s what family members do to each other, sometimes.

Oh, it gets even more “interesting:”

According to this statement, the Messianic Jewish community is united with the “Christian Church” in forming the ekklesia, the Body of Messiah. The term “Christian Church” is used here in a more delimited way to describe the “Gentile wing of the Church.” This is in keeping with the connotation of the word “Christian” in the wider Jewish world. For Jews, Christian = not Jewish, i.e., Gentile. This is why Messianic Jews do not self-identify as “Christians.” It would imply to fellow Jews that they are no longer Jews.

-Juster, pp 136-7

I can imagine that many Christians will take Juster’s words as an insult, but again, I think you have to be Jewish to understand the dissonance being experienced. For the vast majority of the last two-thousand years, Christianity has demanded that Jews surrender every last bit of their Jewish identity and practice in order to become disciples of the Jewish Messiah King. Go figure. For the vast majority of the last two-thousand years, the larger, normative Judaisms have considered any Jew who believes that Jesus is the Messiah is no longer Jewish but instead, a “Christian.”

But what if, like James, and Peter, and Paul, and all of the other first-century CE Jewish apostles and disciples (thousands upon thousands of them) you, as a Jew, wanted to be a disciple of the Moshiach and continue a fully lived and observant Jewish experience? Where’s the problem in that?

Old habits die hard. The church will need to learn to accept Jews who identify as “Messianic” as Jews, not just in terms of DNA and a cognitive awareness that the Jew in question had Jewish parents and other family members, but that the Messianic Jew is really, really Jewish in every observable, identifiable, and covenantal sense.

But what about those Gentiles who self-identify as “Messianic?” Not all of them are, as I previously described, Hebrew Roots Christians who aspire to the same identity as the Jews in the Messianic movement, thus claiming what is not their’s. I mentioned in my review of the First Fruits of Zion television series, that narrator and teacher Toby Janicki introduces himself as a Gentile who practices Messianic Judaism. Do Gentiles who come alongside Jews in Messianic Jewish synagogues practice Messianic Judaism (as distinctly different from Christianity)?

jewish-t-shirtI’ve laid out a case, based on chapters in the Rudolph-Willitts book, that describes why Messianic Jews need to identify separately from Christianity, even as Messianic Jews and Christians must be unified within the body of Messiah to form the Ekklesia, but where to “Messianic Gentiles” fit in, if at all?

I could make a case for Christian/Jewish intermarried couples to identify as “Messianic” and whose religious practice is within that context for what I hope are obvious reasons. What about the large number of non-Jews attracted to the Messianic movement who aren’t intermarried or otherwise connected to the Jewish community? I can’t really describe the attraction except I know it’s there. I have the same attraction, which is evidenced by what I write on this blog. Even if I weren’t intermarried at this point, the drive to see God, the Messiah, and the Bible through that particular lens would not go away. For some reason, it’s hardwired to my soul.

But that drive can’t be used to justify the diluting or elimination of Jewish identity and covenant distinctiveness from within the larger Ekklesia of Messiah. Juster, in describing the initiative Toward Jerusalem Council II, speaks of coming together to “heal historic wounds and repudiate ancient decisions by the Church against Messianic Jews.” I believe this should be applied to the overarching relationship of Messianic Jews and believing Gentiles, both within the Messianic Jewish worship framework and between Messianic Jews and all believing Gentile worship groups including the Church and other variant branches of Christianity (even if they choose not to self-identify as “Christianity”).

Juster’s conclusion of Chapter 12 is the hopeful note within the continual struggle between believing Jewish and Gentile communities.

This notwithstanding, the Messianic Jewish community views itself as united with the Gentile wing of the Church in a partnership that is intended by God to reflect interdependence and mutual blessing (emph. mine). Such interdependence and mutual blessing can come about only through close relationship. Therefore, Messianic Jews invest in Christian groups and organizations that welcome a Messianic Jewish presence, even as Paul wrote, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Messiah has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom 15:7 JNT).

Christian theology emphasizes that God is unfolding his great plan for the redemption and transformation of the cosmos through the work of the Church. As Messianic Jews, we have added a significant corollary to the traditional Christian narrative: the work of the Gentile Christian world cannot be accomplished without being in right relationship with Israel and the Messianic Jewish community in particular.

-ibid, pp 142-3

Most Gentile believers aren’t going to accept this message, at least at first. Some never will at all, for a variety of reasons, some of which I’ve already mentioned. But Christianity in all its forms has traditionally rejected the Jewish people from the worshipers of Messiah except on the condition that they give up being uniquely Jewish in any demonstrable and experiential sense. That is no longer a sustainable position for the church or any believing Gentile organization or individual.

When King Messiah returns in power and glory, the Church will be in no position to demand that he surrender his Jewish identity as a condition of ascending the Throne of Israel. That being the case, how can we dare to make such a demand of his Jewish subjects?

157 days.

Torah Portion

Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Why We Fail to Walk with God

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WalkingMy ordinances you shall do, and My statutes you shall observe, to walk with them, I am the Lord, Your G-d.

–Leviticus 18:4

What does the Torah mean “to walk with them?”

The Ksav Sofer, a famous Hungarian rabbi, commented that the words “to walk with them” mean that a person needs to walk from one level to the next level. That is, a person should constantly keep on growing and elevating himself.

It is not enough to keep on the same level that you were on the previous day. Rather, each day should be a climb higher than the day before. When difficult tests come your way, you might not always appreciate them. The only way to keep on elevating yourself is to keep passing more and more difficult life-tests. View every difficulty as a means of elevating yourself by applying the appropriate Torah principles. At the end of each day, ask yourself, “What did I do today to elevate myself a little higher?” If you cannot find an answer, ask yourself, “What can I plan to do tomorrow to elevate myself?”

-Rabbi Kalman Packouz
“Shabbat Shalom Weekly”
Commentary on Torah Portion Acharei Mot–Kedoshim
Aish.com

I’m getting a little tired of these “tests.” They don’t seem to be helping me. Worse, they don’t seem to be helping anyone else, either.

Let me explain.

In continuing to read Rudolph’s and Willitts’ book Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations, I arrived at “Chapter 6: Messianic Jewish Ethics,” written by Russ Resnik. It’s interesting that when we think of Jesus, we usually think of his mercy, his grace, or his compassion, but it’s a little unusual to consider his ethics. And yet, even Jews who are not believers, when they read the Gospels, find the ethics of Jesus are undeniably Jewish.

A generation later, the Orthodox Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide commented on the Sermon on the Mount, “In all this messianic urgency toward humanization God wills for all the children of Adam and toward the humanization of this earth, in the deathless power of hope that finds in reliance on ‘the above’ the courage to go ‘forward,’ Jesus of Nazareth was ‘the central Jew,’ as Martin Buber called him, the one who spurs us all to emulation.”

-Resnik, pg 82

Resnik states that “Yeshua fully embodies the image of God, which is placed upon humankind from the beginning: ‘God created mankind in his own image’ (Gen 1:27).” He also refers to the first man and woman as “divine image bearers” and further says:

…the divine image is obviously not a physical resemblance, but neither is it an abstract spiritual resemblance. Rather, it entails representing God through active engagement in creation. This understanding of the image of God gives rise to the Jewish idea that God does ethics before we do, that our ethical behavior is not just a matter of obedience, or even pleasing God, but of reflecting God and his nature, fulfilling the assignment to bear the divine image.

-Resnik, pg 84

In other words, even before the commandments to do good and to walk with God’s ordinances and statues were recorded in the Torah, they were humanity’s built-in imperative to do good because God does good and we are made in His image. When we do good, we are a reflection of the image of our Creator. Resnik provides a quote from the Talmud to cement his point.

What does it mean, “You shall walk after the Lord your God?” Is it possible for a person to walk and follow in God’s presence? Does not the Torah say “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire”? (Deut 4:24). But it means to walk after the attributes of the Holy One, Blessed be He. Just as He clothed the naked, so you too clothe the naked, as it says “And the Lord made the man and his wife leather coverings and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). The Holy One, Blessed be He, visits the ill, as it says, “And God visited him in Elonei Mamreh” (Gen 18:1), so you shall visit the ill. The Holy One, Blessed by He, comforts the bereaved, as it says, “And it was after Abraham died that God blessed his son Isaac…” (Gen 25:11), so too shall you comfort the bereaved. The Holy One, Blessed be He, buries the dead, as it says, “And He buried him in the valley” (Deut 34:6), so you too bury the dead.

-b. Sotah 14a
quoted by Resnik, ibid

Although Resnik didn’t cite this portion of the Gospels, the following seems to fit rather well as an illustration of “walking with God.”

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

–Matthew 25:34-40

boston_marathon_terror_explosionAs I write this (most of it, anyway), it is early Tuesday morning, and yesterday, several explosions occurred at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring and maiming many others. To walk with God and reflect His image is to do good under all circumstances, to visit the sick and injured, and to bury the dead, but I despair for humanity. Although we certainly can find some helpers involved in response to this terrible expression of violence, how many more people exist who are capable of committing similar acts of hostility or worse? It always seems like we struggle and struggle in this unending battle of good vs. evil, and to what gain?

Batman (played by Christian Bale): Then why do you want to kill me?

The Joker (played by Heath Ledger): [giggling] I don’t, I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You… you… complete me.

Batman: You’re garbage who kills for money.

The Joker: Don’t talk like one of them. You’re not! Even if you’d like to be. To them, you’re just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.

The Joker: We really should stop this fighting, otherwise we’ll miss the fireworks!

Batman: There won’t *be* any fireworks!

The Joker: And here… we… go!

[Silence. Nothing happens. Confused, Joker turns to look at the clock, which shows that it’s past midnight and neither ferry has blown the other up]

Batman: [triumphantly] What were you trying to prove? That deep down, everyone’s as ugly as you? You’re alone!

The Joker: [sighs] Can’t rely on anyone these days, you have to do everything yourself, don’t we!

-from the film The Dark Knight (2008)

In this scene, Batman and the Joker are debating the nature of humanity. Batman believes that human beings are basically good, while the Joker believes that “these civilized people, they’ll eat each other.” In the film, the situation that the Joker sets up to prove his point fails. The people involved don’t blow each other up, but risk their own lives in order to show compassion, even for people they don’t know, even for criminals.

But it’s just a movie, a work of fiction. People are good in the movie because they’re written that way.

What about people in reality?

According to Resnik, we are also “written” to do good because we are made in the image of God and should “naturally” reflect His goodness. However, the history of the human race seems to prove otherwise. We are not good, we have not been good, and in spite of what “progressives” may believe, we are not getting better. We simply shift around the types of “badness” we commit and just call it “good.”

aloneBut wait. I’ve already been down this path once before and I know where it leads. It leads to a dark, depressing dead end where no one will follow you and where no one wants to go. Do I really want to go there again? I probably will. Given the nature of my personality, I visit that place periodically. But do I want to stay this time?

When I complained previously that all the heroes were dead, I was reminded “All the more reason to be the “called out” ones and live counter to our culture.” It’s true. The fewer of us there are, the harder we’re supposed to work for what we know is good and right. It gets more lonely and more scary, but God didn’t ask us to serve Him in a world of truth and light. If everything were perfect, He wouldn’t need us to do Tikkun Olam. It’s in the face of terrorism, tragedy, and horror that we need to be especially faithful to the tasks that God has given us. No matter how discouraging things get sometimes, we still have to work and we still have to wait.

We’re all waiting for something to happen to save us. Christians and Jews are waiting for the Messiah. The inquisitions happened and the Messiah didn’t come. Pogroms beyond measure have happened and the Messiah didn’t come. Crusaders raped, pillaged, and murdered, with the blood of their victims running through the streets like water and the Messiah didn’t come. Wars have slaughtered millions and the Messiah didn’t come. The Nazis murdered six million Jews and countless other “undesirables” and the Messiah didn’t come. Someone blew up a bunch of people at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds and Messiah didn’t come.

What’s God waiting for? Is He waiting for us to “walk in His ordinances and His statutes?” Is He waiting for us to become the people He designed us to be? Is He waiting for us to follow Him in the footsteps of the Messiah? He’s been waiting a long time. He’s waiting for us to do what He sent us here to do. He’s waiting for us to live out His image. If the Messiah is the ultimate human image of God, we share that with him as his disciples. We must hold on. I must hold on. One little dip in the pool of despair, a couple of laps just for good measure, then out again, dry off, get dressed, and get going.

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

How ironic that I should hear the voice of Messiah from the mouth of Gandhi, but then I think Gandhi understood Jesus better than many of his followers, including me. This is why God created the Shabbat…to give our injured spirits a rest in Him. Someday the rest will be perfect. Until then, we must continue to carry the image of God to a suffering and disbelieving world. Without that, there is no hope.

Good Shabbos.

159 days.