Tag Archives: Jesus

Behar-Bechukotai: Christians by Choice

May 3, 2013 James Pyles 2 Comments

But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

–Leviticus 26:14-20

But a convert did not have to become Jewish. No one forced him or her into it. If anything, those electing to join the Jewish faith are aware of something called Antisemitism. Do they need it in their lives? Are they suicidal, or just plain stupid? Why would anyone in their right mind go looking for tzorris?! Says the Midrash, one who does make that conscious, deliberate choice to embrace the G-d of Abraham despite the unique unpopularity of the Children of Abraham, is someone worthy of G-d’s special love. A Jew by choice is a Jew indeed.

-Rabbi Yossy Goldman
“Jews By Choice”
Commentary on Torah Portion Behar-Bechukotai
Chabad.org

I haven’t considered converting to Judaism for a long time and this isn’t me revisiting those thoughts at all. But Rabbi Goldman’s Torah commentary made me wonder about the pluses and minuses of being Jewish and converting to Judaism, and particularly about all those non-Jews who, while they didn’t convert to Judaism, did enter into a Jewish religious space as disciples of the Jewish Messiah way back in the days of James, Peter, and Paul.

Were they crazy? Hasn’t they heard that hanging out with Jews wasn’t exactly popular? “Why would anyone in their right mind go looking for tzorris?!”

OK, they weren’t actually converting to Judaism and wouldn’t be identified as Jews. They wouldn’t (and I know this opinion is controversial in certain circles) have to take on board a Jewish Torah observant lifestyle, and they could continue to be seen as Gentiles and not Jews.

“The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.

–Acts 15:23-31

This is the content of the letter sent out by James and the Council of Apostles in Jerusalem to the Gentile believers in the diaspora along with the response of those Gentiles to that letter. As you can see, it was good to the Jewish believers, good to the Gentile believers, and good to the Holy Spirit, for the Gentiles to not convert to Judaism, but instead to accept a modified set of “burdens” that was much less than the full yoke of the Torah commandments. Neither was circumcision required of the men among the Gentile believers.

Of course, this didn’t mean that the Gentile believers avoided all of the conflicts that confronted the Jews and eventually, they would be persecuted in their own right, but eventually, they would also overwhelm the Jewish Messianic movement, consume, and finally evict the Jewish believers.

But let’s not go there right now.

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

–Acts 11:19-21, 25-26

After Cornelius and his household (see Acts 10), these were the first Gentiles to come to faith in Jesus, probably Gentile God-fearers attending one or more of the synagogues in Syrian Antioch. Verse 21 says “a great number” came to believe, while verse 24 says “a great many people were added to the Lord.” But who were these “great number” of Gentiles who were “added to the Lord?”

As it is said, “And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”

You may consider applying the term “Christians” to the ancient congregation in Antioch rather anachronistic and not connected to the people we call “Christians” today. In church last Sunday, Pastor preached on Acts 11 and he said that the Greek word translated as “Christians” can be rendered “little Christs.” This gives the sense of followers of Christ or more appropriately, Messiah, so the Gentile believers were followers or disciples of the Jewish Messiah in the sense of being more or less little “copies” of their teacher. This doesn’t mean they became Jewish or took on a Jewish identity, but it does mean they exhibited a sense of extreme devotion to their Master, forsaking all other “gods” and religious practices for the sake of their new faith.

According to Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible for Acts 11:26:

The word χρηματισαι in our common text, which we translate were called, signifies in the New Testament, to appoint, warn, or nominate, by Divine direction. In this sense, the word is used, Matthew 2:12; Luke 2:26; and in the preceding chapter of this book, Acts 10:22. If, therefore, the name was given by Divine appointment, it as most likely that Saul and Barnabas were directed to give it; and that, therefore, the name Christian is from God…

Vincent’s Word Studies for the same text gives an even more pointed definition:

The disciples were called. They did not assume the name themselves. It occurs in only three passages in the New Testament: here; Acts 26:28; and 1 Peter 4:16; and only in the last-named passage is used by a Christian of a Christian. The name was evidently not given by the Jews of Antioch, to whom Christ was the interpretation of Messiah, and who wouldn’t have bestowed that name on those whom they despised as apostates. The Jews designated the Christians as Nazarenes (Acts 24:5), a term of contempt, because it was a proverb that nothing good could come out of Nazareth (John 1:47), The name was probably not assumed by the disciples themselves; for they were in the habit of styling each other believers, disciples, saints, brethren, those of the way. It, doubtless, was bestowed by the Gentiles. Some suppose that it was applied as a term of ridicule, and cite the witty and sarcastic character of the people of Antioch, and their notoriety for inventing names of derision; but this is doubtful. The name may have been given simply as a distinctive title, naturally chosen from the recognized and avowed devotion of the disciples to Christ as their leader.

I’m going to assume (yeah, I’m going out on a limb here) the object of the “title” was the body of new Gentile believers and thus does not render the Jewish and Gentile believers as a single, homogeneous unit or identity. It doesn’t look like all of the believers, Jewish and Gentile, were called “Christian,” since the title seems tied to the context of large numbers of Gentiles coming to the faith. I get the picture that, just as James and the Council would subsequently issue halachah that was specifically unique to the Gentile disciples, the Gentiles were also called by a specific identifier that differentiated them from the Jewish “Nazarenes.” Admittedly, I’m “stretching” the text out of shape, but the word “Christians” seems directly aimed at the Gentiles of Antioch.

The Way, as I see it, was the entire unit, the container, the Ekklesia for the Jewish and Gentile believers, but within that container, the “body of Messiah,” were two basic populations of human beings. I’ve talked about this a lot lately, so I probably don’t have to repeat myself at this point.

While Rabbi Goldman has a great deal of praise for the Gentile who chooses to become a Jew, we might also want to praise the Gentile who becomes a Christian. To become a Christian is to leave a life of self-indulgence and to turn toward a greater purpose, a purpose of serving God and other human beings. It is also accepting a special and even vital role that was assigned to us by God, a “Divine appointment,” as stated in Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible. However, that commentary probably doesn’t describe the “Divine appointment” I have in mind.

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.

-Craig Keener
“Chapter 17: Interdependence and Mutual Blessing in the Church” (pp 190-1)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations
ed. David Rudolph and Joel Willitts

Christianity and Judaism in their mainstream expressions today, do not anticipate this sort of interdependence and mutual blessing between Jewish and Gentile believers, especially after Gentile Christianity and Judaism have described divergent courses across the last nearly 2,000 years of human history. But accepting Keener’s understanding of our relationship for a moment, being a “Christian” is not only a great joy but a great responsibility, not for just each other and not just for the unsaved, but especially for the Jewish people and for Israel.

Rabbi Kalman Packouz at Aish.com says that “The second portion for this week, Bechukosai, begins with the multitude of blessings you will receive for keeping the commandments of the Torah. (Truly worth reading!)” It’s easy for many Gentile believers who have a special attraction to Judaism to see the blessings for the Jewish people and the beauty of the mitzvot, and feel somehow “dissatisfied” with being only a Christian.

Rabbi Packouz also says:

Also included in this portion: redeeming land which was sold, to strengthen your fellow Jew when his economic means are faltering, not to lend to your fellow Jew with interest, the laws of indentured servants. (emph. mine)

It seems your fellow Jew is really special, and when some of we Gentile Christians read those portions of the Bible, we can feel left out or believe we are somehow “second-hand citizens” in the Kingdom of God. It seems like the Jews get to play with all the “cool toys.”

So when Gentiles take on some of the more obvious mitzvot that typically, visibly, and behaviorally identify a person as Jewish, it can raise a few concerns among Jewish people, similar to how Rabbi Goldman describes why some people who are born Jewish are suspicious of Gentiles who convert to Judaism:

There remains a difficult passage in the Talmud (Yevamot 47b) that begs some elucidation. “Converts are as difficult for Israel as a blight!” Not a very flattering depiction. A simple explanation might be that when converts are insincere and they are not really committed to living a full Jewish life–perhaps they converted for ulterior motives, like to marry a Jew–then their failure to observe the commandments brings disrepute to Judaism and may have a negative ripple effect on other Jews.

Even if a Gentile does not convert to Judaism by going through a recognized Rabbinic authority, does a Gentile wearing a tallit gadol and laying tefillin during prayer indicate an “ulterior motive?” What about a Gentile Christian who prominently wears a kippah and lets his tzitzit from a tallit katan dangle visibly from under his shirt while he is out in public?

Rabbi Goldman says an alternative explanation for a convert being considered a “blight” is because…

Some understand the suggestion that converts are a blight upon Israel to mean that they give born Jews a bad name. Why? Because all too often converts are more zealous than any other Jews in their commitment to the faith. Have we not seen converts who are more observant and more passionate about Judaism than most born Jews? “A blight upon Israel” would then mean that their deeper commitment and zealousness puts us to shame.

This brings us back to Romans 11:11.

So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.

I know some Gentile believers who have adopted Jewish practices and even mannerisms believe they are “provoking the Jews to jealousy.” But it’s one thing to be converted to Judaism and thus have voluntarily adopted all of the obligations to the mitzvot and then being considered a “blight” by born Jews because of “deeper commitment and zealousness,” and another thing entirely to take on practices that obviously identify a person as a Jew and Shomer Shabbos without having made the complete commitment to Judaism via conversion.

In old-fashioned terms, it’s the difference between a man and woman co-habitating vs. actually making a life long marital commitment. Worse, in the co-habitating scenario, it could be seen as a man moving into a woman’s place and using her stuff, saying that they’re “sharing” and being “inclusive,” all against the woman’s will.

But converting to Judaism for a Gentile Christian is fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is that traditional Rabbinic authorities who oversee such conversions usually require the convert to surrender all other religious commitments (which typically means “Christianity” or any belief the Jesus is the Messiah). It’s like that part of old-fashioned wedding ceremonies that said, “…and forsaking all others…”

But we don’t have to do all that. God doesn’t require it. In fact, we have been “Divinely appointed” to a very special role of our own as Christians. Most Christians don’t realize this, but we are responsible for uplifting, supporting, and encouraging Jews to return to Torah, return to God, and to cherish King Messiah, longing for his return.

Ben Zoma would say: Who is rich? One who is satisfied with his lot. Who is honorable, one who honors his fellows.

-Pirkei Avot 4:1

We, who were first called Christians at Antioch, are rich when we realize the “lot” that God has given us and accept that it is more than abundant for our needs and desires. We are also honorable when we learn to honor our Jewish brothers and sisters, from whom we receive the rich blessings of salvation and relationship with the God of Israel.

Ben Zoma also said that a wise man is one who learns from every man, and we must sometimes learn what we don’t want to hear. And he also said that one is strong who overpowers his inclinations, and so we too much differentiate between the will of God and the desires of our heart, and when our desires conflict with God, we must “overpower” our contrary “inclinations.”

Rabbi Eleazar further stated: “What is meant by the text: ‘And in thee shall the families of the earth be blessed [Genesis 12:1]?’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Abraham, ‘I have two goodly shoots to engraft on you: Ruth the Moabitess and Naamah the Ammonitess.’ All the families of the earth, even the other families who live on the earth are blessed only for Israel’s sake. All the nations of the earth, even the ships that go from Gaul to Spain are blessed only for Israel’s sake.”

-b.Yevamot 63a

Good Shabbos.

145 days.

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The Sabbath Breaker: A Book Review

May 2, 2013 James Pyles 23 Comments

Once it happened that the Master and his disciples walked in the holy city of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day when they encountered a man blind from birth. Our Master spat on the ground, made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to the man’s eyes. Then he told the man, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” The man went and immersed, and miraculously, he could see.

To heal the man, Jesus spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle. Mixing two substances to form a third is a form of work that Jewish law prohibits on the Sabbath day. Jesus smeared the mud on the man’s eyes. Applying a salve or medicine by means of smearing is also considered a form of work prohibited on the Sabbath day. It is a violation of the Sabbath. He sent the man to immerse himself. At least by conventional definition in traditional, Jewish interpretation, immersions are not done on the Sabbath. This single healing incident from the Gospels potentially involves three Sabbath violations.

The Pharisees claimed, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). Vocal critics of the Master insisted, “He is a Sabbath breaker.”

Do we appreciate the gravity of this allegation?

-D. Thomas Lancaster
from “Introduction: This Man Breaks the Sabbath” (pg 7)
The Sabbath Breaker: Jesus of Nazareth and The Gospels’ Sabbath Conflicts

This is Lancaster’s latest book published by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) and, like a number of Lancaster’s books, leverages material previously published in volumes of the Torah Club and issues of Messiah Journal. A great deal of valuable information on topics of intense interest to Christians both in the church and within the Messianic community, is “buried” within much larger documents. In order to make this information more readily accessible, FFOZ is taking material on specific subjects from these “tomes” and refactoring it into several smaller, self-contained books. Lancaster’s The Sabbath Breaker is one such book.

The focus of Lancaster’s book is rather narrow, so don’t imagine it will answer questions such as “Was Sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday,” “Should Gentile Christians keep the ‘Jewish’ Sabbath and if so, how,” or “Should Messianic Jews keep the Sabbath in the same way as non-Messianic Jews.” The book’s entire focus is to address whether or not Jesus broke the Sabbath and if he didn’t, then how can we explain why he was criticized by the Jewish religious authorities for healing on Shabbat, gleaning with his disciples on Shabbat, and telling other people who were not his disciples to carry and to immerse on Shabbat?

Christianity tends to believe that Jesus did break the Shabbat in order to show us that he had cancelled all of the Shabbat restrictions and Shabbat itself, as part of his “nailing the Law to the cross,” setting us free from the Law and putting us under the Law of Grace.

As you might imagine, Lancaster dismisses the traditional Christian interpretation out of hand and frankly, so do I. But then how can this be explained? Was Jesus “cancelling” the halachah of the Pharisees? Was it indeed permissible Biblically to glean on Shabbat, to heal on Shabbat, to carry on Shabbat, and to immerse on Shabbat? Were the Pharisees adding unreasonable man-made burdens and was Jesus correcting them and rebuking the Pharisees? Or was it more a matter that the Pharisees thought they were upholding the Biblical way to keep Shabbat (and after all, they wanted to kill Jesus for healing on Shabbat, so they were obviously sincere), and Jesus was just interpreting the Bible better?

How about none of the above:

For many Bible readers, this distinction may be too obscure, but if missed, the reader also misses the message of all the Sabbath stories in the Gospels. The essential message is not that Jesus has cancelled the Sabbath or that the rabbinic interpretation of Sabbath is illegitimate. The Sabbath-conflict stories instead communicate that acts of compassion and mercy performed to alleviate human suffering take precedence over the ritual taboo. The miraculous power by which Jesus performs the healings only serves to add God’s endorsement to Jesus’ halachic, legal rationale.

Did Jesus’ disciples break the Sabbath in the grain fields? Yes. But they were justified in doing so because their need took precedence over the Temple service, and the Temple service took precedence over the Sabbath. Therefore Jesus declared them guiltless and told the Pharisees, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7).

Did the Master break the Sabbath when he healed on the Sabbath day? Yes. Would fixing a car break the Sabbath? Of course it would, and by the same standard so does fixing a human body. Nevertheless, the Master justified doing so because compassion for his fellow man took precedence over the Sabbath.

-Lancaster, pg 61
“Chapter Seven: At Dinner with the Sages”

That’s a more or less “in a nutshell” explanation of how Jesus did break the Sabbath, but at the same time, each event of Sabbath breaking was justified because of a higher halachic standard.

That’s not the full description of course, and you’ll have to read Lancaster’s book to get all the answers. Not including the footnotes, the book is about 135 pages long, so you should be able to get through it pretty quickly.

The book is divided into three sections:

Sabbath Conflicts in the Synoptic Gospels
Sabbath Conflicts in the Gospel of John
The Thirty-Nine Prohibited Forms of Work

The first two sections focus on different explanations (or the lack thereof in the case of John’s Gospel) for Jesus’s apparent “Sabbath breaking” activities. The quote from Lancaster above is a nice summary of the first section. The second one presents some problems, which Lancaster readily admits, such as Jesus telling the man he healed in John 5 to “take up your bed and walk.” (John 5:8). While the content of the book up to this point (pg 65) confirms that Jesus did break the Sabbath by healing but that chesed (lovingkindness or compassion) takes precedence over Shabbat (it’s more involved than that, but you’ll have to read the book to get all the details), carrying is considered a form of Melachah, or a type of work that involves creation and mastery over our environment (a concept that has to be understood to grasp Lancaster’s major points in his book), and this is forbidden on Shabbat, at least in modern times in Orthodox Judaism.

That brings up the issue of whether or not the Thirty-Nine Prohibited Forms of Work can reasonably be applied to First-Century normative forms of Judaism, and that’s a big if. Lancaster addresses this question in his book and seems convinced that an earlier, less formalized version of this halachah was in existence in the day of Jesus’s ministry on earth. The reader will have to decide if this is credible from their own understanding, but capable arguments can be made either way.

Part two which reviews the healings of Jesus in the Gospel of John departs from the legal and even mechanical explanation of his Sabbath breaking activities and the fact that he told a man to do something that also breaks the Sabbath remains a mystery. It is interesting though that after initially criticizing the man for carrying on Shabbat, once they find out that a healing was done on Shabbat also, the Pharisees lose all interest in the man carrying and seek out the healer instead.

Part three is Lancaster’s description, in some detail, of the thirty-nine melachot or types of work that are forbidden on Shabbat. This may be the part of the book most readers will blow past as irrelevant, even if they are Messianic Jews or non-Jews who observe some form of Shabbat, but I think that would be a mistake.

Protestant Christianity does not consider Sabbath a concept worth consideration or if they do, they simply believe that going to church on Sunday fulfills the fourth commandment out of the ten. Grace makes all things permitted on the “Sabbath” so no one has to struggle to confine their behavior, separating the mundane from the sacred on one day of the week.

Christians who are Sabbatarians including those who are involved in the Hebrew Roots or Messianic Jewish movements, for the most part, tend to create their own “halachah” or methods of Shabbat observance, either as individuals or as individual congregations. I would be willing to wager that there are few if any standards for Sabbath observance that encompass large collections of congregations, unless those groups adhere to a set of halachot established by an umbrella group that has adopted Shabbat observance behaviors from another, normative form of Judaism.

We all want to believe that Jesus can be our guide to correct Shabbat observance (assuming we value Shabbat observance) and that God has an objective set of standards for how Shabbat is to be kept (and like Lancaster, I’m not going to get into who should keep Shabbat). However the Melachot were derived from Torah (Lancaster’s book provides those specifics as well) so they weren’t just dreamed up out of someone’s imagination. If you believe in an objectively established Sabbath and (again, assuming you believe you are either required to keep the Sabbath or voluntarily choose to do so out of personal conviction or for other reasons) that there are objective standards for keeping Sabbath, then the third part of Lancaster’s book, if you can believe it is reasonably connected back to the first two parts, may actually be your roadmap for how a Jesus-following Sabbath keeper should keep Sabbath.

In The Sabbath Breaker, Lancaster takes a decidedly different approach to looking at Jesus and his “sabbath breaking” behaviors, acknowledging that he did break the Sabbath, not to cancel it, but to uphold it and to illustrate that there are circumstances wherein it is permissible to break the Sabbath for a higher purpose. Jesus himself, according to Lancaster, is not the higher purpose: human beings are. After all, “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

146 days.

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In the Midst of the Flaming God

May 1, 2013 James Pyles 8 Comments

Question: The writings of Kabbalah and Chassidism speak of four worlds—Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Where are these “worlds”? Why haven’t any of them been discovered yet?

Response: When I try to relate to these worlds, I picture each of them as another lens through which we can view reality. The higher the world, the sharper and clearer the lens—so that everything in that world is a harmonious expression of G‑d’s simple oneness. The lower the world, the more it feels otherness—as though it never had a creator to begin with. Things become fragmented, discordant, even downright ugly, as that sublime oneness is lost.

We live in the bottom-level, physical world of Asiyah—meaning “actuality”—a reality in which G‑dliness is completely hidden. Our lenses allow us to see nothing more than the end-product of all the processes that came before it. We see a table—not the divine energy that keeps it in existence. We marvel over a sunset—as though it were just another natural phenomenon, rather than a masterpiece of a Master Artist. We attribute financial success to smart business tactics—not to the blessings of G‑d. It’s no coincidence that the word for “world” in Hebrew, olam, shares the same root as he’elem, meaning “hidden.” Everything but the most outer façade is hidden from our view.

What keeps our prescription so low?

-Rabbi Yisroel Cotlar
“Where Are All the ‘Worlds’?”
Chabad.org

I know Kabbalah isn’t for everyone and mysticism gives most Christians the nervous “shakes,” but for me, it explores the answers to certain questions that we otherwise must avoid completely. It also allows me to put into perspective the things in this world (and the next) that drive me crazy.

We live in the bottom-level, physical world…in which G‑dliness is completely hidden.

Exactly. And yet often we behave as if our “bargain basement world” has all the answers we’ll ever need to understand God and who we are in Him. I’m not suggesting that we all start taking “mystic trips” into the upper regions of reality and attempt to experience God in His own realm, but we should consider that we don’t know as much as we think we know.

I don’t think that the Bible has all the answers, either. I do think, however, that it has sufficient answers for us. If it had all the answers, humanity (or at least Christianity and Judaism) wouldn’t have such a thing as a mystic tradition.

Some would say that the “worlds” Rabbi Cotlar is discussing have an objective reality on other planes of existence, and others, most others probably, believe that these “worlds” are just mental abstractions we use to discuss what otherwise couldn’t be discussed because we have no language and no conceptualization of what it is to exist beyond what our five senses can detect.

I know I’ll be criticized for even mentioning the “K” (Kabbalah) word, but think about it. If you are a religious Jew or Christian, by definition, you’ve taken on board certain beliefs about the spiritual and supernatural worlds. You believe in angels, and archangels, and (if you’re Christian) God being able to manifest Himself in human form (though that is not His totality according to Derek Leman).

We attribute financial success to smart business tactics—not to the blessings of G‑d.

I bet you never thought that was a “mystic” statement, did you? Most of us, even those of us who are “religious,” tend to pat ourselves on the back when we do well in business, get a raise, start and run a successful business, or pump up the number of “zeros” in our annual income. And yet, every morsel of food we consume, every breath we take, every beat of our heart, every day that dawns, would never occur apart from the will of our Father.

How can we not believe in other realms beyond our own?

But then again, it isn’t the belief in other mystic realms that’s the problem, but the thought that any human being should know anything about them, aside from what we read in the Bible. That’s typically what hangs most people up.

The basics of the teachings of the kabbalah – upon which all these texts expound and elaborate – were not invented by the human mind. They are teachings that were orally passed down through the generations, from teacher to disciple, dating back to Moses himself.

And Moses did go there and back. He spent months on Mount Sinai wandering through the various spiritual worlds and then communicated his findings back to us. That which he didn’t personally experience was revealed to him by the Creator of all these spiritual worlds—together with the rest of the Written and Oral Torah. Even after he descended the mountain, he continued to learn directly from G‑d for the next forty years.

-Rabbi Menachem Posner
“How can any human claim to know of ‘other worlds’?”
Chabad.org

That won’t be very convincing to most Christians not to mention a lot of Jews. But how about this?

Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

–Exodus 24:18

So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

–Exodus 34:28

That might not be convincing either if you just think Moses and God sat together for forty days and forty nights around a really big campfire on the top of a mountain. But did God come down or Moses go up…or something in between? Whatever it was, Moses entered into the presence of the living God, His Divine Presence, and was not consumed by fire and could live in God’s presence and not die, and could do without either food or water for well over a month.

If you believe that actually happened and isn’t just some metaphor or fable, then you believe in the spiritual, the supernatural, the mystic encounter of man with God.

In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

–Ezekiel 1:1

Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.

–Daniel 7:2-3

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

–2 Corinthians 12:2-4

I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet…Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me…and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

–Revelation 1:9-10, 12, 13-17

Each of these experiences stretches, pushes, pulls, and distorts the experience of “reality” of each of the human beings involved beyond what we would consider “normal.” Moses, Ezekiel, Paul, and John each had their own mystic encounters with the realm of Heaven in ways that could not be fully explained to the rest of us who have (presumably) not shared such experiences.

If such is recorded in the Bible we know (as well as we can know the Bible, that is), what mystic experiences have human beings encountered that have not been recorded or that have been recorded in what we consider less than reliable texts?

Who knows?

My point is not to sell you on mysticism. I’m hardly a mystic. I make no claim to otherworldly journeys. I’m only suggesting that no matter what you have learned, no matter how well you are educated, no matter how much you pat yourself on the back for your erudite understanding of the Scriptures, and no matter what sort of “Holy Spirit high” you believe you are on, you really don’t know as much as you think you do. I know I don’t.

To reduce God down to what we can read in the Bible, even if we believe that the Holy Spirit is giving us personal instruction and whispering little “secrets” of interpretation in our ears, is arrogant in the extreme.

It’s understandable that in feeling small before God and probably in the midst of other people, we should want to exalt ourselves. But this reductionist thinking also makes God small, like we are, and all but eliminates any sense of awe, wonder, and majesty at even the contemplation of the awesome, wonderful, infinite, exalted, measureless, Ein Sof, Radically One, creative God.

The Ancient of Days is above all things and beyond human sight and comprehension. But the One like a Son of Man shares his nature fully, being One with him. The Ancient of Days sends the Son of Man into created things to rule from within. The Ancient of Days is transcendent completely but the Son of Man is immanent and is with us. The unity of the Father and Son is absolute, so we cannot say the Son is “part of God,” for God has no parts.

-Derek Leman

Trying to discuss the Divinity of Jesus “is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse,” to quote a certain Scottish engineer from the twenty-third century. In other words, it’s at least extremely difficult if not darn near impossible.

And yet, how can we not try to talk about and even to comprehend that which surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us together with Him?

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

–Luke 9:28-36

What do you do, as a simple fisherman who is learning from a rural, itinerant teacher, when your teacher suddenly starts glowing bright white and mysteriously is joined by the two greatest Prophets in the history of your people (and you have no idea how you recognize these two men who lived many centuries before you were born…and there are no photos or paintings of them anywhere), and these two great men start speaking to your teacher in a close and intimate manner….and then a voice from Heaven tells you that your teacher is the Son of God and commands you to listen to him?

What do you do when your reality experiences a direct intersection with the mystic realm of God?

I don’t know. But one thing I do know. If you have any sort of sense at all, you realize just how small you are and that, in fact, you don’t know anything close to what you thought you did.

I don’t either.

When’s the last time you were sitting in the midst of the flaming God on a mountain?

147 days.

Uncategorized

Introduction to Messianic Judaism: The Last and Greatest King

April 29, 2013 James Pyles 21 Comments

The Messiah precedes creation, precedes the nations, precedes the election of Israel, precedes the historical reality of the Jewish people. Apart from the Messiah these other realities would not be. They are because the Messiah first is, and because the Father wills them to be through the Messiah. The Messiah who is himself the gospel is before all. When he is born in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, and is “apocalypsed” in Israel, he comes to “his own” people (John 1:11). Before he belongs to this people, they belong to him. Because the messianic gospel is prior to all, the apostle Paul can declare that this gospel was announced beforehand (proeuengelisato) to Abraham (Gal 3:8) and that its content — blessing to the nations and resurrection from the dead (Rom 4) — was the same in the time of Abraham as it is in the time after the Messiah’s historical arrival, for the Messiah himself is that content.

-Douglas Harink
“Chapter 26: Jewish Priority, Election, and the Gospel” (pp 273-4)
Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

Like yesterday’s morning meditation, I’m not sure I’m receiving this essay in the way the author intended. For much of the past week in the comments section of my blog posts, I’ve been trying to defend the primacy of the Messiah, of Jesus, above all things. If not for the coming of Jesus and his presence both in our world and in the Court of Heaven at the Father’s right hand, we non-Jewish believers would have no relationship with God at all, and certainly no avenue to salvation and the life of the world to come. We would still be “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace… (Ephesians 2:12-13)

In debating Messiah with my friends and associates in the Hebrew Roots movement, we have been debating the avenues by which Gentiles are brought near to God. In the ancient days of Moses, a Gentile could become a resident alien among Israel but not a tribal member. They were aliens and foreigners, with no more rights than the widow or orphan. Only by intermarrying with a tribal member and having offspring would the third generation of their union be considered “Israel.”

But then, the Gentile distinctiveness of their line would vanish, fully assimilated and absorbed into Israel.

If that was the fullness of God’s plan, then all Gentiles who desired to join in the blessings of the covenants God made with Israel would have to join with Israel in the way of the Ger and their family line as people from the nations would cease to exist. There would be no way for the people of the nations to come and worship God and remain as people from among the nations. Only Israel would have the privilege. The rest of the world would be shut out.

But that was not God’s plan.

…hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.

–1 Kings 8:43

…and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

–Micah 4:2

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Peoples shall yet come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’ Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”

–Zechariah 8:20-23

I know you’ve read all that before and quite recently, but it bears repeating, if only to drive the point home that God has always had a plan for the Gentile to bow to Him and worship Him without becoming a citizen of national Israel.

The problem is, in Hebrew Roots, the Torah tends to precede the dominance and Kingship of Messiah. For many in Hebrew Roots, the Torah has become so central, so important, so vital in their practice, particularly the ceremonial portions of Torah, (wearing tzitzit, laying tefillin, keeping kosher, observing Shabbos), that Messiah has become eclipsed and overshadowed.
Torah is the foundation of scripture to be sure, but is it greater than the living Word? In Jewish mysticism, the Torah was at creation and was required for creation, but we know, as Dr. Harink wrote, that Messiah preceded everything and is over everything including the Torah.

The priority of the gospel — that is, the priority of the Messiah — is also declared in the New Testament in respect to Israel’s Torah. In the Gospels Jesus displays an authority over the Torah that is noticed by all those who see his deeds and hear his words. That authority is nowhere more evident than in the familiar section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:21-48) where Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you…” The point here, as Jesus himself makes crystal clear, is not that his authority cancels (katalusai) the Torah and the Prophets; rather, Jesus by his own authority fulfills (plerosai) the Torah and Prophets (Matt 5:17). By his authority he authorizes their ongoing authority in Israel until “all is accomplished” (Matt 5:18), that is, until the messianic age arrives in fullness. But it is just as clear in the Gospels that the authority of the torah and the Prophets is subordinate to and dependent upon the authority of the Messiah as the Lord, and that their authority consists in their being read in the light of, and as witness to, the singular, normative messianity that is enacted by Jesus of Nazareth in his life, death, and resurrection.

-Harick, pg 274

When I was in the Hebrew Roots movement, I was taught that the Torah was the written Word while the Messiah was the living Word. They were interchangeable and basically equal to one another. The human life of Messiah was the personification of Torah in the flesh.

However, as we see from Harick, the Messiah must be in harmony with the Torah but ultimately, the Messiah must be King over all, including the Torah. We must worship Messiah, not Torah. We must bow to the King, not his scrolls.

This is not to say that the Torah becomes meaningless for Israel. Quite the contrary.

To observe Torah, then, is not primarily or essentially to “obey the rules”; it is, rather, to participate through concrete bodily practices in the very goodness and order and beauty of creation brought about by God through preexistent Wisdom and revealed to Israel in Torah.

-ibid, pg 275

We all observe Torah and participate in goodness, order, and beauty, Jew and Gentile believers alike, however, we do so in ways that illuminate and distinguish the Israel of God and the people of the nations who are called by God’s Name. Really, only a tiny fraction of the mitzvot are reserved to Israel alone. In most circumstances, Jewish and Gentile believers share equal responsibilities to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the widow, and to honor God in worship and prayer.

But above all the mitzvot is the one who is greater than the mitzvot, that is, King Messiah, Son of David. If he had not come and done a new thing in the world, we among the nations would be left out in the dark, locked out of the Kingdom, gnashing our teeth, shivering in the cold, and awaiting certain destruction.

We elevate Torah over the King at our own peril and we all should know that the Torah has never been greater than Messiah, for only faith in Messiah can save. Only the Messiah can reunify what has been separated, and only he can bring final peace in the world.

His messianic mission to the nations is for the sake of Israel; his solidarity with Israel is for the sake of the nations (Rom 11:11-12). The mystery of the gospel is messianic peace between Israel and the nations, a peace that is even now, in the single messianic “day” that reaches from the Messiah’s arrival in suffering to his arrival in glory…

…Jews and Gentiles together in the messianic theopolitical reality called the ekkesia — where Jews as Jews practice Torah, the telos of which is given in the Messiah, and Gentiles as Gentiles work out their own salvation in fear and trembling in the Messiah…

-ibid, pg 279

I suppose it’s only fitting that I end the last review at the end of the David Rudolph and Joel Willitts book with the conclusion written by Joel Willitts. We saw how David Rudolph began the book with is personal story and an exercise in wholeness, as I called it.

Willitts describes himself as an “outsider” to the Messianic Jewish movement while also maintaining close ties to this community, especially through his close friendship with David Rudolph, forged in their days as doctorate students at Cambridge.

It is because of our friendship and my continued interest in the Jewish context of the New Testament that the present book has emerged. It’s two parts neatly paralleled my relationship with David and his community on the one hand, and my passion for reading the New Testament and its message in more thoroughly Jewish ways on the other.

-Joel Willitts
“Conclusion” (pg 316)

Christians typically have no problem keeping Christ as the head of everything, the King above all Kings, and conversely subordinating the Torah way too far below where it needs to be and Israel along with it. In some ways, it’s Gentile Christians like Dr. Willitts who are the bridge between two worlds. As Messianic Judaism is the linkage between Messiah and the larger Jewish community, Gentile Christians with a passion for the “Jewish New Testament” connect that passion back into the church.

Mark is an intelligent guy without formal theological training. He is a mature Christian and intellectually curious. Mark asked me what I was writing and I mentioned this book. He had heard of Messianic Judaism before, but like most Gentile Christians he knew nothing about it. So I began to describe what the book was about. After giving Mark the big picture, he asked the million-dollar question, “So what is its significance to our church?” Mark’s “our church” is my church; it is a larger seeker-sensitive suburban Chicago upper-middle-class church full of Gentile Christians…What a great question.

-ibid, pg 317

It is a great question. It’s a terrific question.

As I imagined Willitts and his friend Mark talking about “Introduction to Messianic Judaism” at their church and discussing what it all means to their church, I thought back to my weekly conversations with Pastor Randy in his office and the significance of those talks to our church. I also thought back to Boaz Michael’s book Tent of David, and I saw that the latter part of the Rudolph/Willitts book (part 1, Chapters 1-12, was written largely by Jewish authors and Part 2, chapters 13 through the end, was written by mostly Christian scholars) and the focus of Michael’s TOD book were virtually the same.

“So what is its significance to our church?”

I don’t want to simply replicate all of the answers Willitts provides, but as you might imagine, the purpose of Introduction for Christians is to do what it has done for me. It informs its Christian audience of what Messianic Judaism looks like on the inside, letting us hear the voices of Messianic Jews tell their story and how they understand the Bible.

It also opens the doorway to a post-supersessionist church, a topic near and dear to my heart, whereby Christians can see and enter into a world of believing Jews and Gentiles who work together, worship together, and love God together, without either side having to surrender the specialness and unique calling God has provided for each branch within the ekklesia of Messiah.

Willitts also discusses the reimaging of church planting and missions using an Israel-centered interpretation of the New Testament, reminds Gentile Christians that we are the branch, not the root, and makes us aware of our responsibilities to the individual and communal requirements of the needy, the poor, the sick and injured among Messiah’s people Israel, and particularly among those who are disciples of Christ.

Willitts ends the book with his personal translation of Galatians 6:16:

Peace on them, and mercy also on the Israel of God.

I hope this series of reviews of David Rudolph’s and Joel Willitts’ book “Introduction to Messianic Judaism” has spoken to you on some level, whether you are Jewish or Gentile. I hope that you can see their intent was to build a bridge between our different worlds. For nearly two thousand years, the Jewish people and Gentile Christianity have traced divergent trajectories across the plane of human history, but God has always planned to bring all people to Him through Messiah Yeshua, Christ Jesus.

This can and will be done without requiring the Jewish people to surrender their Torah, their Talmud, their lifestyles and their shalom as Jews. This can and will be done without requiring all of the people from all of the other nations of the earth to acquire a lifestyle, a culture, a language that is Jewish, without converting to Judaism, and without being told that not being Jewish and not living the lifestyle and observing the mitzvot of the Jewish people somehow makes them…makes us second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God and in the world to come.

We can all be exactly who God created us to be and we can all be delighted that God made us the way He did. The Jewish person is no more loved by God than the Gentile Christian and the Gentile Christian is no more loved by God than the Jewish person. We are all one in Messiah, two unique streams of people within a single Messianic body, bringing infinite diversity in infinite combinations to the “feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 8:11) with the King of Israel as the King over all.

Deeper than the wisdom to create is the wisdom to repair. And so, G‑d built failure into His world, so that He could give Man His deepest wisdom: The wisdom to repair.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Repair”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Blessings.

149 days.

Uncategorized

Pop!

April 28, 2013 James Pyles 12 Comments

Author’s note: I started writing this on very little sleep, which means that my internal filter, normally thinner than most bloggers, is approaching full transparency. I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow, things will look better, but right now, my “culture clash” with church life is experiencing a power surge.

Pop! That’s the sound of my balloon popping. I suppose I could have titled this “WHAM!” and said it was the sound of my crash dummy hitting a steel wall at 60 mph, but that might be a bit much. Let me explain.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

–Galatians 2:11-14

Pastor Randy (he’s back from Brazil…yay!) was preaching on Acts 11 today, specifically on verses 19-30, and saying what a great guy (v 24) Barnabas and outlining all of Barnabas’ good qualities and why he was a terrific choice to send to Antioch. Of course, as Pastor rightly says, no one is perfect. Pastor mentioned the above-quoted verses from Galatians 2 and said something like (I can’t quote him word for word, so this is an approximation):

Paul criticized Peter because Peter had slipped back into some practices of Judaism and pulled Barnabas down with him…

Like I said, it’s not an exact quote but it gets the point across. Galatians 2 is coming up on the list of things Pastor and I will be talking about during our upcoming Wednesday night discussions. You see, I don’t think Peter’s problem was that he “slipped back into Judaism.” I think he was intimidated by “certain men” sent from James who weren’t on board with Jewish/Gentile table fellowship and he made the mistake of backing off. Maybe he started listening to the old and mistaken halachah that said “Gentiles were unclean,” but it’s not like Peter “came out of” Judaism and then slipped back into it, as if Judaism and being a disciple of the Jewish Messiah are mutually exclusive terms.

I flashed back to last week’s hollow man experience, and even though I subsequently regained some balance, my experiences during today’s service and in Sunday school afterward reminded me of the gulf of culture between me and normative Protestant Christianity.

It’s the feeling I get when one of the Pastors leads the congregation in an “old-time” hymn that “everyone knows,” except I don’t know it. It’s the feeling I get when people in Sunday school start using “Christian-isms” in their speech, and even if I understand what they’re talking about, it still sounds like a foreign language. Ironically, the person I’m thinking of used the “Christian-ism” term “baby Christians” when describing how more mature members of the faith can erect barriers at a number of different levels that inhibit very new Christians. Without realizing it, she was exhibiting the very behavior she knew put off “baby Christians.”. While I suppose I’m not a new believer, I’m fairly new to normative Christian culture. This re-entry thing has lots of trapdoors.

Another way I felt pretty strange today was noticing how, in our discussion about the events of Acts 11, modern Christian missionary concepts were dropped with complete anachronistic abandon into the synagogue (“church”) at Syrian Antioch. I don’t think that the Jewish Hellenists who fled Jerusalem after Stephen’s death were witnessing to the Greek-speaking Gentile pagans on the street. In fact, I don’t think that full on idol worshiping Gentiles were even “witnessed to” by Jewish disciples until Paul’s encounter recorded in Acts 14:8-18. The world of religious Judaism would have been exceptionally difficult to describe to pagan Gentiles. It’s far more likely that God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogues were the first non-Jewish audience (outside of the Samaritans) of “Jewish evangelists.”

But I kept my mouth shut. As I’ve already said, I didn’t sleep well last night and got up at 4 a.m., so I was (and still am) pretty tired. It was wiser for me to be silent than to open my mouth and inject everything that was going through my head into the middle of the Sunday school class conversation. It’s not like anyone was saying anything wrong, but the perspective from which they were looking at the Acts 11 material was completely off to one side of how I see it. It’s not that I must have my way, but it just seemed like the story of the ancient Jewish and Gentile believers in Messiah had been stripped of its religious and cultural Jewish context and had been remade out of wholly Gentile Christian cloth…from the twenty-first century.

In presenting Acts 11:27-30 the study notes for today’s Sunday school lesson read:

How did this church respond, and what is there about Christians that gives them such joy in giving away what the world worships?

Paul and Barnabas were charged with taking a donation to the Jewish population in Judea when a famine is prophesied as relief for the suffering. The donations were given with abundance and joy but is this a “Christian” quality and one that had never been seen before in Israel?

And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

–Mark 12:41-44

I suppose I could have mentioned that tzedakah was Jewish value long before there were such people as “Christians,” but it didn’t seem worth it to drop a bomb in the middle of the room. I figured this was just another indicator of the cultural and perceptual rift between me and the rest of the class.

Then I thought of another one. As I listen to people talk, in the foyer before services, in the sanctuary before (sometimes during) and after services, in the hallways between services and Sunday school, during and after Sunday school, I realize that these people have known each other for quite a while. I can’t believe they’ve developed these relationship seeing each other just once or twice a week at church. They probably associate with each other outside of church, go to lunch, go to barbecues at each other’s homes, and that sort of thing.

I remember when my wife and I were invited to a Christian’s home a few years back. My wife said it was OK if I went but she wasn’t interested. She doesn’t invite her Jewish friends to our house. She sometimes is involved in social activities at the synagogues here in town, but she doesn’t feel comfortable in primarily “Christian” environments and she doesn’t feel comfortable taking me to primarily “Jewish” environments. I kind of doubt I’ll be inviting people from church over to our home for a Sunday dinner any time soon.

This is quite an interesting effect of a “bilateral” life. It doesn’t affect anything else in what you would consider normal, family life, but my family life, defined as it is, will never intersect with my religious life.

If I can separate my experience from my emotions for a minute, this could actually be a useful study of the impact of the propositions put forth in Boaz Michael’s book Tent of David. One thing I am hoping Boaz will do eventually is to collect the stories of people who have actually followed his pattern of returning to churches to find out the real results in people’s lives and in the church environment.

I’m atypical in that my wife and I are not only intermarried, but I’m a believer and she isn’t (in the Messianic world, there are many intermarried Jewish/Gentile Christian couples, but they share faith in Jesus as Messiah). I know I’m only one voice, but if Boaz can bring together enough voices, we can all see the outcome of returning to the church for those folks like me who think so differently about God, the Bible, Messiah, and everything.

My day at church wasn’t a complete loss, though. I usually don’t care much about the music at church. It’s more something I tolerate than enjoy, but occasionally a little gem will be sprinkled in among the usual fare.

Don’t seek Judaism and don’t seek Christianity. Seek hope in God.

149 days.

Uncategorized

Emor: Being Your Slave What Should I Do?

April 26, 2013 James Pyles 10 Comments

And G-d said to Moses: … [a Kohen] shall not contaminate himself [through contact with] the dead of his people. Except for his closest kin–his mother, father, son, daughter or brother. Or for his virgin sister… who has not married a man–for her, he should contaminate himself…

But the Kohen Gadol, the greater of his brethren… may not come in contact with any dead; [even] for his father or mother, he may not contaminate himself.

–Leviticus 21:1-11

A heretic once asked Rabbi Avahu: “Your G-d is a Kohen; so in what did He immerse Himself after He buried Moses?” Replied Rabbi Avahu: “He immersed in fire.”

-Talmud, Sanhedrin 39a

But one thing remains unresolved: surely G-d is no ordinary Kohen, but a Kohen Gadol, whose greater holiness proscribes any exposure to impurity, even for the sake of his closest relatives. How, then, could G-d “contaminate” Himself, even for His “children” or His “sister”?

Put another way: if, in His relationship with us, G-d assumes the role of an ordinary Kohen, whose lesser holiness allows him contact with impurity for the sake of “Israel, His kin,” G-d certainly transcends this role, possessing also the inviolable sanctity of the Kohen Gadol.

“A Pool of Fire”
-Adapted by Rabbi Yanki Tauber
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Commentary on Torah Portion Emor
Chabad.org

I couldn’t help but think, not only of the crucifixion and death of Jesus, but of his role as High Priest in the Court of Heaven. One role seems inconsistent with the other, because how can the High Priest cleanse himself when he has not only touched the dead, but has been the dead person? It’s a mystery I choose not to pursue because, in all likelihood, it cannot be pursued from the mortal realm, but then again, Rabbi Tauber also said this of God as the High Priest:

As “Kohen Gadol,” G-d effects all without being affected, pervading the lowliest tiers of His creation without being tainted by their deficiencies. Yet G-d chooses to also assume the more vulnerable holiness of the divine “ordinary Kohen” (which translates, on the human level, into the ordinary Kohen’s permission to contaminate himself in certain circumstances): to contaminate Himself by His burial of Moses, to suffer along with His people, to bloody Himself in the process of extracting them from exile. He wants us to know that He is not only there with us wherever we are, but that He also subjects Himself to everything that we are subject to.

At the same time, He is also there with us as “Kohen Gadol”: transcending it all, and empowering us to also attain something of His inviolable sanctity.

I know that I’m reading far more into this than Rabbi Tauber would ever have intended, but again, we see Jesus as both mortal man and Divine High Priest of Heaven. As “Kohen Gadol,” the Messiah transcends our world in inviolable sanctity, but as the teacher who walked among his people Israel, he pervaded “the lowliest tiers of His creation without being tainted by their deficiencies.”

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

–2 Corinthians 5:21

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

–Hebrews 4:15

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.

–1 Peter 2:22

Rabbi Tauber also says this, as was quoted above.

…transcending it all, and empowering us to also attain something of His inviolable sanctity.

Jesus lived among human flesh as human flesh and yet did not sin. And he died and was resurrected and in glory, sits at the right hand of the Father. And he is our High Priest in the Heavenly Sanctuary who never sinned and yet who can sympathize with our human weaknesses.

And if I can borrow from Rabbi Tauber, by Messiah’s holiness and his example to us, we can aspire to become better than who we are, as he has empowered us to “also attain something of His inviolable sanctity.” How like Paul’s comment from 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “we might become the righteousness of God” is the commentary from the Rabbi?

Although “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23), it is also said, “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy'” (1 Peter 1:15-16). Thus holiness is something to be acquired by man, not purely through our own efforts but through faith, and yet not only through faith, but through our efforts.

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

Jesus the man. Jesus the Messiah. Jesus the Priest. Jesus the Divine. It’s hard to know how to relate to him. Most Christians prefer to address Jesus as a close friend and companion, a “bosom buddy,” even a cuddly comforter. Yet in Revelation 1:17 when John, who had walked with Jesus in this world, saw him in the Heavenly realm, he ” fell at his feet as though dead.”

God is at once Almighty in the ultimate, cosmic, radically One sense, and also close to His people, acting tenderly toward us, as a Father, as a husband, as a brother:

It would therefore follow that G-d, who ascribes to Himself the Halachic status of a Kohen (see Talmud, Sanhedrin 39a) is precluded by Torah law from “contaminating” Himself through contact with the impurities of mortality. Yet the Torah tells us that G-d Himself buried Moses, and the Talmud discusses how He subsquently purified Himself in a “pool of fire.” Our sages explain: The people of Israel are “G-d’s children”; Moses is thus one of G-d’s “closest kin,” for whom a Kohen is permitted–indeed obligated–to become tameh.

-Tauber

Rabbi Tauber comments from a Talmudic and mystic sense, so we probably can’t directly apply his words to our discussion on Jesus, but his imagery is so wonderfully kind, gentle, and intimate, that it’s difficult to resist such an “inappropriate” application.

For we too have been dead in our sins and yet Jesus cared enough to bury us with him, so to speak, so that we could come alive in the resurrected Christ.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…

–Ephesians 2:1-6

Metaphorically then, as our Kohen, he “is permitted–indeed obligated–to become tameh” for the sake of his beloved ones.

I know that for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been commenting on the various articles in David Rudolph’s and Joel Willitts’ book Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations. Messianic Judaism stresses a significant distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers in the Ekklesia of Messiah, but for today’s commentary, I chose to focus on what we have in common. Although Israel was chosen and remains the “apple of God’s eye,” so to speak, I can’t believe that we Gentiles are the proverbial “left-handed, red-headed foster children” of God, and that He merely tolerates us and only truly loves Israel. For the promises of Messiah to be true, we have to be his beloved children as well, so that Jesus was willing, even obligated, to become “tameh” for us as well.

What would I do for the High Priest who considered me as a close member of his family, and who attended to my “body” while I was “dead in sin?” What wouldn’t I do?

I would be willing to take the lowest position in the Kingdom, the moral equivalent of the guy who cleans the toilets or takes the trash out to the dumpster while everyone else is seeking glory, seats at the head of the banquet table, and partying with the Prince in the palace, just so I could be the least of his servants.

Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.

-William Shakespeare
Sonnet 57

Good Shabbos.

152 days.

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman