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Book Review: Mishnah and the Words of Jesus

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Midrash is the art of keeping an ancient text alive. The Rabbis were masters of drawing water from stone, of transforming the most mundane passages of Torah into luminous nuggets of spirituality.

-Ismar Schorsch
“Accountability,” pg 330, March 8, 2003
Commentary on Torah Portion Pekudei
from his book Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries

Probably anyone who has ever focused on the teachings of Jesus is aware that he was a product of the religious milieu that emerged in the 1st century of the present era.

-Roy B. Blizzard
“Chapter 3: A Good Eye”
Mishnah and the Words of Jesus (Kindle Edition)

I sometimes complain that certain teachers and scholars in the realm of Messianic Judaism periodically “flirt” with taking some of the various texts compiled in the Talmud and anachronistically applying them, some composed many centuries after the Apostolic Era, to the letters of Paul and the teachings of Jesus. If we were to assume that the author of, for example, the Zohar (which is not part of the Talmud) spoke in the same voice as Jesus and the apostles and applied no other methods of examining how this could be reasonably and rationally accomplished, then we would be making a terrible mistake. I don’t say this is done routinely, but in reading or listening to lessons such as D. Thomas Lancaster’s sermon series Holy Epistle to the Hebrews (which he has been conducting for well over a year and the series shows no signs of abating), we must be cautious to make sure that when we apply midrashic methods of studying the New Testament epistles, we are not projecting the later voices of the Rabbis backward in time, making the writer of Hebrews speak lessons that he (or she) would not have known or intended.

On the other hand, there is a way we can justify viewing Hebrews, or Paul’s epistles, or the Gospels, through a “midrashic lens,” or perhaps better said, a “mishnahic lens,” so to speak, and I think that’s the point of Dr. Blizzard’s book Mishnah and the Words of Jesus. Instead of starting in the future and working his way into the past, Blizzard begins with the scholars and sages contemporary to Jesus or appearing just before and after him historically, and then works his way forward. Blizzard suggests, and I agree with him, that the teachings of Jesus were understood as completely consistent with the way the various Rabbinic branches of the normative Judaisms of his day were teaching.

Continuing in Chapter 3, Dr. Blizzard writes:

In the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5 and following, Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Where did Jesus get that idea? Who are the meek? What does it mean to be meek? If we did not know that Jesus was a rabbi, speaking Hebrew, using rabbinic methods in his teaching, hinting back at something that has already been said or written, and that his listeners basically have all of this material memorized, we would not understand. (emph. mine)

And as I’ve said before I think most of us in the Church don’t understand. Instead of reading the teachings of the Master with an eye on these first century Jewish “rabbinic methods of teaching,” Christianity in all of its various flavors, imposes its own interpretive traditions on the text, forcing anachronistically, meanings onto and into the words of Jesus, Peter, Paul and the other New Testament teachers, that were formulated (at best) decades after the end of the Apostolic Era, but more than likely many, many centuries after, and these traditional interpretations are wholly detached from anything that would have occurred in the thoughts of Jesus and the apostles.

In Chapter 2: “Teaching, Tithing and Silence,” Blizzard states:

Perhaps we would all do well to heed Gamaliel’s injunction to provide ourselves with a teacher in he matter of tithing to relieve ourselves not just of doubt, but of the erroneous teaching that has been prevalent in the Church for over a thousand years. (emph. mine)

Hillel and ShammaiIn this instance, Dr. Blizzard is referencing associations between the teachings of Jesus as related to the Mishnah, specifically the sages Shammai, Hillel, and Gamaliel, as related to passages in Torah that speak of generosity and compassion toward the poor, which modern Judaism refers to as tzedakah or charity, but with the underlying meaning of justice and righteousness. However, I think Blizzard’s words can be applied to a much wider scope and indeed, to many of the common teachings of the Church about the meaning of the Bible, particularly in terms of the continuance of Torah in the lives of the Jewish people, the continuance of the Jewish people in God’s love and plans for the present and future, and the continuance of Judaism as a valid lifestyle by the Jewish people of devotion to and worship of the God of Israel.

If, on the other hand, the Church could see the strong parallels between the teachings of Jesus, his contemporaries, and those Rabbis who closely followed him in history, such as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who was present at the fall of Jerusalem and is considered single-handedly responsible for formulating “the direction that Judaism would take” after the destruction of Herod’s Temple and the great exile of the Jewish people into the diaspora, then perhaps we could initiate a desperately needed corrective action in the Christian Church and in Christian hearts.

Blizzard emphasizes this in the following quote from Chapter 4: “The Will of the Father.”

How important it is that we study rabbinical literature, the sayings of the rabbis. The way in which they teach, the word pictures they paint, the images upon which they draw, because it gives us an understanding of the words of Jesus, the ideas, the concepts upon which he is drawing. In many instances, without a knowledge of this background, because of the images, the idioms, the metaphors, etc., so widely used by the sages and rabbis, we are unable to understand the depth, the meaning, of the words of Jesus.

It’s not only ironic but profoundly sad that most churches reject the very lessons and teachings that would enable the clergy and laity to understand Jesus Christ the most. By rejecting the teachings of the Mishnah which sit at the very heart of the various ancient and modern streams of Judaism, Christianity rejects the very heart of the meaning of the teachings of her Savior.

Chapter 4 of Blizzard’s brief but powerful book is a tour de force of comparisons between the specific teachings of Jesus and quotes from the different rabbis recording in the Mishnah. There are too many of them for me to record here, but fortunately, Blizzard’s book is quite affordable (especially the Kindle version, which can be downloaded in seconds), so I heartily recommend you purchase a copy and read it for yourself.

Not only is the Mishnah very Pharisaic, it is also very Pauline which, of course, is to be expected in view of the fact that Paul refers to himself as “a Pharisee of Pharisees.”

Blizzard shifts his focus at this point, from comparing the teachings of Jesus to the Mishnaic rabbis to making comparisons between the Mishnah and the Pharisaic Apostle Paul. Blizzard further states:

I want to emphasize that the ideas reflected here in the Chapters of the Fathers can be found in the teachings of all the New Testament writers, which, again, is just what we should expect. Why? Because they are all Jews. They all came from the same background, the same religious and spiritual heritage.

The Rebbe and the ChildBlizzard introduced the first chapter of this book, “Tzedakah and Righteousness,” by saying he intended to compare the teachings of Jesus to “the words of the rabbis prior to, and contemporary with, and following Jesus, recorded for us in the Mishnah, Order Nezikin, Tractate Avot…” and then he said something that especially attracted my attention:

In the teachings of Jesus, there is one underlying and overriding theme, a theme on which Jesus constantly dwells, a theme that serves as the foundation upon which biblical faith is built. If one looks at the Bible as a whole, if one includes additionally all Jewish literature that is extant, the Oral Law, the Written Law, the commentaries, and search for one, single, overriding theme that is the foundational theme of biblical faith, one would have to conclude that that foundational theme is summed up in the Hebrew word tzedakah… (emph. mine)

Blizzard follows the thread of tzedakah, which as I said, in Judaism is associated with charity, righteousness, and justice, through the teachings of Jesus, the rabbis of the Mishnah, and across the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings to paint an overarching landscape of God’s message to human beings.

This is a concept I harp on with some regularity; that we must engage the Bible as a single document that is inexorably interconnected, rather than “cherry pick” various verses and passages of scripture willy-nilly as they seem to map to our preconceived theologies and doctrines, and then string them together to create the illusion that the entire theme of the Bible is represented by those few bits and pieces we’ve jumbled into our religious collage. I think by now, most Christians realize that you can prove just about anything if you connect the dots between carefully selected words and phrases in the Bible. But that doesn’t mean the Bible as a cohesive unit really says what you are making it say.

I know. I could be accused of the same thing. After all, I have a point to prove just like everyone else. But although I think there’s a lot of truth in Blizzard’s belief that the Bible’s central theme is tzedakah, I have been trying to make the argument in my various blog posts, that the central theme is actually about God’s desire and His plan to unite all of humanity under a single King, and for God to dwell among His people without requiring that His Jewish people stop being Jewish or stop practicing Judaism in order to bring honor and glory to the Jewish Messiah and the God of Israel.

What is the central theme of the Bible according to the various streams of normative Christianity? Here’s a rather harsh sounding rebuke from Dr. Blizzard in Chapter One:

Jesus has become an idol, if you will, our focus of attention, our focus of worship, and it seems that very few think of God anymore. Seldom do we hear anyone speak of the glory of God, his grandeur and mercy, the holiness of God, and the other many attributes and characteristics of God.

I should mention at this point, that a good friend of mine, once a Jewish believer, has rejected Jesus as the Messiah, in part, because of what Dr. Blizzard said in the above-quoted paragraph. My friend spares no effort in explaining on his blog what he sees are the errors in Christianity.

Now before my Christian readers get really mad at Blizzard, he went on to say…

Please understand that I am not trying to lessen the importance of Jesus. What I am trying to do is emphasize that, in all the teachings of Jesus recorded for us in the gospels, his focus is not upon himself, what he is, what he is doing, or what he is to become. Additionally, Jesus has very little to say about God and, in particular, the Worship of God.

My point is that, in the teachings of Jesus, there is not all that much emphasis upward.

Blizzard then maps the teachings of Jesus and the sayings of the rabbis in the Mishnah, back to what he sees as the central emphasis of Jesus and of Judaism which is the care and concern for other human beings as the primary means of living our faith and worshiping God.

tzedakah-to-lifeIn addition to the focus on Jesus as Savior, the Church tends to focus on the concept of preaching the gospel, which translates into God’s personal plan of salvation for the elect. And that’s where it stops for a lot of churches. Fortunately, Blizzard’s rebuke of Christianity doesn’t include each and every church. Many churches, such as the one I currently attend, focus heavily on studying the Bible as a means of knowing how to serve God and other human beings, primarily through acts of charity and support of missionary efforts to some of the more desperately needy people groups on our planet.

In fact, one of the things some churches do really well are acts of tzedakah as well as something called Gemilut hasadim, which can be translated as acts of loving-kindness. Christians get the idea of grace from this Hebrew term. The difference is that tzedakah or acts of charity can be performed only on the poor, while gemilut hasadiam, which involves giving money or a personal service, can be done for anyone.

However, Blizzard’s distinctly “Jewish” presentation of these concepts alongside the teachings of Jesus and the Mishnah, provide an exceptionally fresh look at an essential something that often goes stale in many churches or in many individual Christian hearts. By linking something that the church actually does with how vital those actions are in ancient and modern Judaism, Blizzard successfully creates a link between what else is vital in Judaism, especially the Judaism of the time period around the Apostolic Era, and what the Church isn’t doing and isn’t teaching because these are things the Church has ultimately dismissed as having been “nailed to the cross” with Jesus.

Roy Blizzard’s book Mishnah and the Words of Jesus is a perfect example of why I find it absolutely necessary to access my faith in Christ by way of studying Judaism and, in my case, particularly Messianic Judaism. I’m certainly not Jewish, but it is quite possible and even desirable to be a Christian and to study Messianic Judaism in order to understand and then practice what I learn from the Bible.

Roy Blizzard
Dr. Roy B. Blizzard

There were quite a number of other gems in Blizzard’s book, but I should limit my review, not only for the sake of length, but to permit readers such as you to allow “Mishnah and the Words of Jesus” to unfold itself in your own experience.

However, I do want to say something else in wrapping up this blog post. It may sound like I’m distinctly “anti-Church” and interestingly enough, “anti-Christian,” even though I identify myself as a Christian, a disciple of Christ or Messiah. This isn’t actually true. While I point to the warts and moles I see on the Church and which, for the most part, the Church choses to ignore, I also see the beauty that has been maintained among those whose highest goal is to wholeheartedly serve Jesus Christ by serving humankind.

I’ve written God Was In Church Today and In Defense of the Church recently as much to remind myself as to remind everyone else that the Church is good. But in the words of Boaz Michael of First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ), “the Church needs to change.” Hopefully, scholars such as Dr. Roy Blizzard, Messianic Jews such as Boaz Michael, and even ordinary, everyday people like you and me, can contribute to that change for the sake of Israel and in the service of God.

One final thing. At the top of this blog post, I quoted Ismar Schorsch briefly commenting on Midrash. It is true that Midrash and Mishnah are not the same thing but they do have something in common. They both represent a way of thinking about God and a way of communicating about God as we study the Bible. You can study the Bible apart from any acceptance and understanding of the rabbinic sages and still learn a lot, but I believe you will not only miss a great deal of important detail in your study, but you’ll perpetuate a system of misunderstanding the Bible’s panoramic message, especially about God, Israel, the Jewish people, Judaism, and the role we non-Jews play as the crowning jewels of the nations. For the sake of Israel, and for the sake of the return of the Messianic King, we owe it to ourselves, to the Church, to Israel, and to God to learn all we can learn by setting aside our “institutionalized Christian learning,” and stepping outside the box, so to speak. If you’re not sure how to begin, Dr. Roy Blizzard’s Mishnah and the Words of Jesus is a good place to start.

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Does God Owe Us “Rights?”

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“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.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.”

-William Shakespeare
“Sonnet 57”

This is more of a question than a statement. Well, maybe it’s a statement and a question. I occasionally read commentaries on various blogs including several Hebrew Roots related blogs. One of the concepts that comes up repeatedly is the idea of “rights.” Specifically, whenever the topic of differentiation of identity between believing Jews and Gentiles within the Messianic Jewish or Hebrew Roots arenas comes up, and someone (like me) suggests that the Torah mitzvot are applied differently to Jewish people than to Gentile people, one of the classic responses from Hebrew Roots is “We have a right to observe the Torah in the same way as a Jewish person observes the mitzvot!”

It’s an odd thing to say that one has a “right” to be obligated. It’s like saying we have a “right” to be obligated to obey the speed limit while driving, or a “right” to be obligated to pay our taxes. Obligations and rights tend not to go hand in hand, even when we consider that obligation just and correct and even desirable. After all, when my children were young (they are all adults now), I had a legal obligation to provide a certain level of care for them, even though as a father who loves his children, I did so and more out of love, not legal obligation.

But the big question here is “does God grant us rights?”

According to the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But that’s the Declaration of Independence, which defines our rights as citizens of the United States of America, not the Bible which (among other things) defines our roles as human beings in relation to each other and in relation to God.

The Torah (in this case, I mean the Five Books of Moses) contains a large amount of law code that was to be applied to the ancient State of Israel, a state that existed as Earth’s only functioning Theocracy; the only nation ever to exist to be directly ruled by God as their King. Even after human Kings were anointed (first Saul, then David, and so on), the law code in the Torah was still valid.

the-divine-torahThe legal force and application of the various law codes and such have changed over the long centuries, in part because of the loss of the Temple, the Levitical priesthood, the Sanhedrin court system, the functional King, and the nation itself as Israel went into progressively longer exiles.

The modern State of Israel currently exists, but the vast majority of the Torah legal code is not applied to their laws, at least as originally intended in ancient days. They probably won’t be applied in that manner until the return of Messiah King, Son of David.

But be all that as it may, are any of the obligations to the citizenry of Israel considered “rights?” That is, does a Jewish person have a “right” to don tzitzit? Does a Jewish person have a “right” to daven with a minyan? Is it a “right” to recite the Modeh Ani upon awakening and the Bedtime Shema before retiring? Is it a “right” for a Jewish baby to have a bris on the eighth day of life?

I don’t see God so much as a “rights giver” but as a definer of identity and responsibility. According to the Master’s teaching:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

–Matthew 22:36-40 (NASB)

These don’t sound like rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but obligations to love God with the entire scope of our resources and our being and to love our neighbor just as we love ourselves. Where are the “rights” in all that, since it is a summation of all of the Torah and the Prophets?

It seems like the focus of God and what He’s trying to tell us in the Bible is that it’s not all about us, believe it or not. It’s all about God and it’s all about what we do for other people. It’s not about what we can get out of the deal.

I know the Christian interpretation of the Gospel of Christ can be summed up as “a plan of personal salvation.” That is, we just have to believe and we, I, me, are, am personally saved from hell and damnation and promised a life of pleasure and peace when I die and go to Heaven.

While that’s terrifically good news, it also seems kind of self-centered and even narcissistic. It says absolutely nothing about how Jesus presented the two greatest commandments. It says nothing about loving God, being in awe of God, deeply respecting God, being thankful to God, and out of all of that, responding to human beings around us with love, respect, generosity, compassion, and, employing a rather Jewish way of looking at it, being thankful to the poor, the needy, the orphaned, for giving us the opportunity to serve God by serving them.

rabbi-prayingNone of that sounds like “rights” and all of that sounds like “obligation,” but even though we know that obligation is right and true and valid and what we really need to be doing all of the time, it’s always directed outward, from who we are to other people and to God. We are, in response to God, directing everything that we are, all of our resources, even our very lives, to the service of God and the human beings He loves (and He loves all human beings, even the ones we don’t love).

I’m really not convinced that observant Jews have a “right” to wear tzitzit or even a “right” to feed the hungry. Those are obligations assigned to them by God because they are Jews and they were set apart at Sinai based on a set of laws and responsibilities they agreed to uphold in perpetuity. Whether the Jewish person wants those obligations or not, they’ve got ’em. Only converts ask to be Jewish. People who are born Jewish didn’t ask to be born into a covenant relationship. It just happened by God’s will.

So whatever obligations you may feel you have to the service of God and people around you, I don’t think you, or I have a lot of room to be talking about “rights.” That doesn’t strike a very respectful tone in relating to God. After all, do you really think God owes you something?

Particularly as non-Jewish people who are grafted in and who aren’t even original parts of the tree, so to speak, do we have a right to define our obligations to God and a right to respond to those obligations as we see fit as individuals or as religious groups? What do you think?

Or talk to Job. He knows the answer.

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What Galatians Means to Christians Today

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Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

–Acts 15:1 (NASB)

Also, in the eyes of most Jews, the statement of Acts 15:1 seemed incredibly obvious. One does not come to Hashem except through Judaism.

-from Book Review: The Irony of Galatians

Even after I publish a particular blog post, I tend to obsess over it a little bit, searching for typos, finding a sentence that could be improved, that sort of thing. I try to do all this editing beforehand, but sometimes things slip by.

That includes the above-quoted statement. Today, religious Judaism is adamant that of the three monotheistic faiths in existence, they do not require others to convert to their religion in order to merit a place in the world to come. You can be a righteous Gentile and in obedience to the Noahide laws, you can have a place in the coming Kingdom. No need to actually convert to Judaism at all.

I realized that even in the days of the Apostle Paul, this was also true in some sense. It’s been suggested that some version or variation of what we call the “Noahide laws” today existed back then and was the operational guide for God-fearing Gentiles who populated the diaspora synagogues alongside the Jews and proselytes.

But I can only imagine that being a first-century God-fearer and seeing the awesome beauty of the Torah, watching Jewish men davening in a minyan, experiencing the joy of just hearing the prayers in Hebrew, contemplating the amazing link that each Jewish person had to thousands of years of the history of God’s interaction with Israel all the way back to Moses must have been an incredible lure. How many God-fearing Gentiles in response to their time in the synagogue started down the road of the proselyte ritual that culminated in converting to Judaism, so that they could say “My Fathers” rather than “their Fathers?”

I’ve been looking at Mark Nanos’ book The Irony of Galatians as it impacts my view of the actual epistle written by Paul and its intent toward the believing populations in the area of Galatia in that day. But what impact does it have on Gentile believers who worship among Jews today?

I’m specifically thinking of Messianic Jewish congregations, those few of which I’m aware that are “owned and operated” so to speak, by halakhic and observant Jewish people who are disciples of Yeshua as Messiah. What is it like to be a Gentile, a fully equal co-participant in Jewish worship and community life, and yet not to be Jewish?

For that matter, what is it like to be a Gentile believer in one of the variations of Hebrew Roots community life, be attracted to Jewish practice and the Torah, but find that the vast majority of people around you only have a so-so understanding of what that means and especially how to properly practice a Judaism (this isn’t absolutely true of all Hebrew Roots groups, but it is true of the majority of those I’ve personally experienced)?

A non-trivial percentage of those Gentiles have left either Messianic Judaism or Hebrew Roots and like some of the first century God-fearing Gentiles, proceeded with the proselyte ritual, usually within Orthodox Judaism, and converted to that identity and that faith.

They too have missed the warning that Paul was issuing to his Gentile addressees in his letter to the Galatians and allowed themselves to “desert Him who called them by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another gospel at all.”

In a Jewish or Jewish-like worship venue, especially with the involvement of traditional Jewish worship, study, and community practices, it can be easy for some folks to confuse Judaism for faith.

That was the point of Paul saying in Galatians 2:3 that Titus, a Greek who came to faith in Yeshua, specifically wasn’t compelled to be circumcised (convert to Judaism). It’s why Paul cited Genesis 15:6 as recorded in Galatians 3:6 that it was by Abraham’s faith God reckoned to him as righteousness before Abraham was circumcised.

PaulAccording to most New Testament scholars, Paul likely wrote his letter to the Galatians before the events recorded in Acts 15 so it could appear that Paul was very much “shooting from the hip,” because the formal halakhic ruling regarding the legal status of Gentile Yeshua-believers within the Jewish worship and community context of “the Way” had not yet been issued. But Paul’s authority and assignment as the emissary to the Gentiles came directly from Messiah in a vision as we have preserved for us in Acts 9. If we can depend upon anyone to understand who the Gentiles were to be as worshipers of Messiah among the Jews, it is Paul.

His letter was a response to the confusion and dissonance that was occurring between believing Gentiles and non-believing Jews (this is according to Nanos in his “Irony” book) in the Jewish communities in the region of Galatia. The synagogue was the only proper setting for the new Gentile believers to learn Torah and thus begin to understand the teachings of the Master, and this decision was eventually confirmed in the words of Acts 15:21. But while being a Gentile God-fearer was most likely a reasonably well-defined role, being a Gentile believer of the Jewish Messiah was not, especially to those Jews who did not share in that faith and quite possibly for some who did (see Acts 15:1).

Several of D. Thomas Lancaster’s sermons in the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews series address a very simple message of the writer of Hebrews to his Jewish audience in Jerusalem. The message says to pay attention to what we have learned and not to drift away from our faith in Messiah, lest we grow cold in faith and distant from the lover of our souls. That distance can make us mistake who really loves us and like the addressees of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we may think Judaism is our goal rather than Messiah, the living Word of God.

The traditional Christian interpretation of Galatians (I know I’m over-simplifying it) is that Paul was attempting to convince both believing Gentiles and believing Jews that the “Law was dead” and replaced for everybody by only faith in Christ Jesus, inventing a new identity in the Jewish Messiah for one and all, and eliminating Jewish identity for Jews entirely. That’s very much like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Looking at the letter as Nanos sees it, it’s a cautionary tale specifically to the Gentiles not to confuse Jewish Torah observance and community life for the practices that accompany a Gentile faith in Messiah. Yes, many of the blessings and observances are identical for Jewish and Gentile disciples of the Master, but the identities are not. This is a warning we can heed today, especially those of us who though not Jews are still attracted to Jewish studies, the Torah, the Talmud, and the wisdom of the sages.

The main reason Nanos wrote his book was to publicize an apprehension of Paul’s “voice” that did not give rise to anti-Jewish, anti-Judaism, and anti-Torah sentiments, that enhanced the relationship between Christians and Jews rather than divide them, and in honor of all the Jewish people across the long centuries who have suffered and died because (directly and indirectly) of the historical and traditional interpretation of Paul’s letters by the Church.

Even as Nanos attempts to penetrate Christian history and tradition through scholarly means in order to contribute to righting many terrible wrongs, Boaz Michael, President and Founder of the educational ministry First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) approaches the same goal through a more “grassroots” method as he writes in his book Tent of David. This sends people back into the church with the same message, that we have been misreading Paul for a very long time and the result has been disastrous on an epic scale.

leaving-the-churchWe can correct the course of history by the grace of God, but we need to be willing to change. We need to be willing to see Paul in a radically different way as compared to Church history and tradition. We need to grant ourselves the ability to set aside our long-held preconceptions about what the Bible is saying and we need to resist two things: the desire to stay “safe” by digging in our heels and not even considering that Christian interpretive traditions could be wrong and, for those Gentiles attracted to Judaism in some manner or fashion, to resist the desire to abandon the Church, Christianity, and even Christ and embrace a fully Jewish identity through conversion.

Neither option is correct. We cannot summon the Messianic future by holding on to an interpretive tradition that was born out of supersessionism and anti-Semitism, nor can we do so by exiting Christianity and the nations entirely and converting to Judaism as our only way of serving God.

I’ve referenced Rabbi David Rudolph in a number of blog posts including An Exercise in Wholeness, Twoness and Oneness: From Sermons by David Rudolph, and Oneness, Twoness and Three Converts to describe how observant Jews, particularly in the Messianic framework, and Christians, both within the Messianic community and in the local church need each other in order to fulfill prophesy and prepare the way for the return of the King.

In my opinion, no other avenue is going to work or is in accordance with the plan of God as we see, or as I see, in the Bible.

If you are a Gentile Christian in a church and you have an awareness of the Messianic plan as I often describe on this blog, you have an opportunity to help raise awareness among other Christians. It’s not easy as I can personally attest, and most of the time, people in the local church will not want to hear your/my message. Still, the effort must be made, for who can say that by starting the process, even if you don’t see its completion, that what you began was not effective?

If you are a Gentile believer in a Messianic Jewish or Hebrew Roots community, you do not have to apprehend Jewish identity in order to be an active and vital part of God’s plan. In fact, your Gentile identity is essential to bringing that plan to fruition. If the world was populated only with Jewish people (and that may seem attractive to many Jewish people), then the prophesies we have in our Bible about our role in bringing about the Messianic Age would be impossible to accomplish. Gentiles are absolutely needed, even as Jews are needed to be part of all that God said He would do.

jewish-prayer_daveningPaul didn’t go anywhere near what I’m saying in the Galatians letter, but as I continue to ponder this epistle and the book that Mark Nanos wrote about it, the implications are there. Paul was addressing Gentile believers existing and worshiping in a Jewish religious and community space. After a long absence, we are beginning to see that process and those relationships begin anew. The Apostolic Scriptures don’t paint a very plain portrait of how those relationships should work in an ideal manner. We only have examples of the struggle to find balance and harmony, which was probably never accomplished in Paul’s lifetime and which completely disintegrated in the decades and centuries after the Fall of Jerusalem.

Whether you are Jewish or Gentile, Messiah does not require that you give up who you are and become something you are not. Jewish believers make a mistake by “converting” to Christianity and assimilating into the Gentile mainstream because God never intended “the Church” to finish the job of eliminating the presence of Jews on our planet that Hitler’s Holocaust started (I know that sounds harsh, but that’s how some Jewish people see assimilation, especially into a normative Gentile Christian identity). Jewish believers serve God by retaining a lived Jewish identity, by observing the mitzvot, by davening with other Jews, by being who God made them to be.

Gentile believers make a mistake by thinking that being a member of the nations who are called by His Name means they/we aren’t good enough for God or somehow that status makes them/us insignificant in God’s plan. If you abandon your fellow Gentile believers and especially if you abandon Messiah and convert to Judaism, you defy one of the primary reasons for your existence. God has made all of the Jews He intends to make. For some few, conversion to Judaism may be valid, but for the majority of us, the only thing we’re trying to satisfy through conversion is our own desires or to smother feelings of inadequacy.

Only, as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches. Was any man called when he was already circumcised? He is not to become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called in uncircumcision? He is not to be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God. Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called.

Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it; but if you are able also to become free, rather do that. For he who was called in the Lord while a slave, is the Lord’s freedman; likewise he who was called while free, is Christ’s slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called.

–1 Corinthians 7:17-24 (NASB)

Whoever you are, don’t give up who you are, because God created you and the roles you fill for a reason, even if you can’t see what that reason is right now. Paul may have written his letter to a group of people who lived halfway around the world two-thousand years ago, but in this case, I can perceive very clearly how his “ironic rebuke” is addressed to us today. Perhaps you can hear this message, too.

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Book Review: The Irony of Galatians

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The Irony of GalatiansFinally, I want to acknowledge the victims of certain interpretations of Paul’s voice, especially those who have suffered the Shoah. Their suffering cannot be separated from the prejudices resulting from those interpretations any more than it can be wholly attributed to them. To them I dedicate the effort represented in this book.

-Mark D. Nanos
from the Acknowledgments, pg ix
The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context

I know I also began my blog post Prologue to the Irony of Galatians with this quote, but I think it’s important to remember a little bit about where Nanos is coming from in writing “Irony”. It’s not just another scholarly book addressing an interpretation of a New Testament letter, and it’s not even just presenting a new perspective on Paul. It’s aimed at correcting a nearly two-thousand year old injustice to the Jewish people by what eventually became the Christian Church, started by the so-called Church Fathers who reinvented the Bible to say that the Jewish people and Judaism became passé if not completely evil, perpetuated by the authors of the Reformation, and culminated in the most incredible evil of the twentieth century, an evil that still sends echos into this day and this hour: the Holocaust.

I know that some hard-core Evangelicals such as John MacArthur might say that the classic Christian interpretation of Galatians is the correct one and that the Church can hardly be blamed for how it’s been used against the Jewish people over the long centuries of exile, all the pogroms, all the torture, all the forced conversions, all the assimilation, all the deaths. He might say (I’m not saying he ever breathed a word of this, I’m just “supposing”) that most Jewish people have failed to “move on” and leave the Law behind, and that they should give up the past and embrace grace and Jesus Christ instead.

But what if that’s wrong? What if Paul never wrote something that he intended to be twisted into a declaration of condemnation against his own people, against the Torah, against the Temple, and even against himself? Christian apathy and the reluctance to overcome its own inertia (in most cases) has resulted in an almost total lack of desire, let alone any activity directed at reading Paul’s letters through fresh eyes, removing the “tradition” colored glasses and donning lenses more appropriate to how a first-century Jewish scholar would have seen the Messiah in context and how he intended his audience, in this case the Gentile believers in the various synagogues in the area of Galatia, to read his “ironic rebuke” of their apparent foolishness (I’m getting to all of that).

What if we’ve got Paul all wrong? What if that results in our having to re-examine and even to re-create what it is to be a non-Jewish worshiper of the God of Israel with the Son of God, the Moshiach, Yeshua of Nazareth as the doorway?

Nanos doesn’t go that far in his book, but it’s the logical consequence of his writing if we accept his conclusions.

Let’s dive in.

Before reading/hearing Paul’s polemical assault, the influencers appeared very differently to those he now addresses in Galatia, as trusted guides, likely even friends, who had their best interests in mind. Rather, I suggest that the influencers represented Jewish communities in Galatia that were concerned about the integration of these particular Gentiles, who were, through their involvement in the (still Jewish) Jesus subgroups, an integral part of the larger Jewish communities at this time. But their appeal to traditional norms maintained in the present age apart from Christ to modify the identity expectations of Paul’s children in Christ threatened the addressees’ interests in ways that neither the influencers nor the addressees perceived accurately–according to their parent, Paul. We have only his response.

This response implies that these Gentiles declared themselves to be identified with the Jewish communities in a new and disputable way, as righteous ones apart from proselyte conversion.

-Nanos, “Conclusion: The Irony of Galatians,” pg 317

The Mystery of RomansI probably should have started with the Conclusion and then worked through the body of the book. Like Nanos’ Romans book, “Irony” is densely packed with details as Nanos first attempts to refute the traditional Christian interpretations of Paul in general and the Galatians letter in specific, and then presents his own evidence for the premise he suggests, that this letter is not Paul’s major attempt to torpedo the Torah, Judaism, and the Jewish people, but rather what he calls an “ironic rebuke” written to his Gentile disciples who frankly he believes should have known better than to listen to the Jewish (quite possibly proselytes themselves) influencers who neither had faith in Yeshua as Messiah nor believed that Gentiles could ever fully integrate and participate in Jewish worship and community life without undergoing the proselyte rite and converting to Judaism.

While reading this book, on more than one occasion, I felt I had gotten lost in the forest, unable to see the grand landscape for the trees, and there are a lot of “trees” in this book. I took an amazing number of notes that still riddle the pages of “Irony,” and could possibly form a small book themselves if bound between their own covers. However, this book is the result of Nanos’ doctoral dissertation so you can expect it to be tough reading (for most of us, anyway).

Like “Romans”, “Irony” presupposes that the Gentile believers in Galatia were involved in the local synagogues as the only likely venue for them to practice worship of Israel’s God and to learn more about the teachings of Messiah which after all, were contained in the Torah and the Prophets. Where else does one learn Torah than among Jewish teachers and students in a synagogue?

But as Nanos presents the situation, some of the Jewish people, “agents of social control” in the Jewish community, had a problem. As I stated above, how could they understand, since Nanos states these Jewish influencers were not disciples of Yeshua/Jesus, that these righteous Gentiles could be fully equal co-participants in Jewish worship and community without undergoing the proselyte rite? Apparently, these Gentiles, in the absence of Paul or any other Jewish believer and teacher, were being successfully convinced that faith in Messiah was not enough and that they must too undergo circumcision and take on the full yoke of Torah, as it applies to the Jewish people, in order to complete their devotion to God as “Messianic” disciples.

But the ideas Nanos presents in “Irony” aren’t exactly radical.

The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, and were blaspheming.

–Acts 13:44-45 (NASB)

Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

–Acts 15:1 (NASB)

You may have to read all of Acts 13 for context, but as you may recall, on Paul’s first trip to the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, his message of the good news of Messiah for all of the people present, born Jews, proselytes, and God-fearing Gentiles, met with great success. The Jewish members of the synagogue followed Paul and his companions after they left Sabbath services for the day, urging them to return the following Shabbat and to teach more. It was only when large numbers of pagan Gentiles who had heard of this good news invaded the synagogue that the synagogue leaders, threatened by their presence and the implications involved, turned against Paul and drove him out.

ancient-rabbi-teachingAccording to Nanos, something similar may have been operating among the influencers since how could they be sure these “righteous Gentiles” who in no way were progressing on the path to becoming proselytes, weren’t also involved in community pagan rites? The only way to be sure, would be to confirm their commitment to Hashem and the Jewish people by having them convert to Judaism.

Also, in the eyes of most Jews, the statement of Acts 15:1 seemed incredibly obvious. One does not come to Hashem except through Judaism.

Paul knew the truth, but he wrote his letter to the Galatians most likely before the Acts 15 legal decision handed down by the Council of Apostles that dictated the formal status and identity of the Gentile disciples within the Jewish community as something like “strangers living among us (Israel)”. Paul’s “gospel” was a radical idea at the time (and still is for most Jewish people today), that by faith could the Gentiles be grafted in to the community of Israel, coming to the Father by way of the Son.

As I mentioned in my previous review, according to Nanos, Paul was not a happy camper at hearing his students were defecting from their faith in Messiah and joining the more traditional path toward becoming proselytes. But rather than crafting a logical, dispassionate, and scholarly theological paper, he wrote a hopping mad “ironic rebuke,” whereby he took his Gentile followers to task for acting like inconsistent teenagers following after the “cool kids” in school rather than what they knew to be the truth.

But without understanding that Paul was being ironic, and sarcastic, and “snarky,” we could completely misunderstand what he was saying and who he was saying it to. If we believed that he was talking to Gentile and Jewish believers, and if we believed he was condemning circumcision, the Torah, and the Temple to that entire population, then we might conclude that Paul was himself “Law-free” and advocating for all Yeshua-believers, including Jewish disciples, that they become “Law-free” as well. Sounds like the exact accusations leveled against Paul in Jerusalem by Jewish people from the diaspora we find in Acts 21 (specifically from verse 17 onward), accusations that Paul steadfastly denied throughout a number of legal proceedings for the remainder of the book of Acts.

Assuming Paul wasn’t lying, then believing that Paul was against the Law, against the Temple, and against the formal practice of Pharisaic Judaism for believing Jewish people as most Christians interpret the Galatians letter just doesn’t make sense.

If approached as a theological tractate or an oration in a court of law, for example, or as a polemical attack on Jewish identity and Law observance as Galatians has often been read, then an entirely different set of expectations shapes the interpretive process than those suggested herein. But if Galatians exemplifies a letter of ironic rebuke designed to address the source they had been running when confident that their understanding of the meaning of Christ was legitimate–rightly so according to Paul’s revealed good news–then the guardians of the majority or dominant communities, who are guided in their sensibilities and responsibilities by long-standing membership and reference group norms, will no doubt consider it their rightful duty to obstruct such a course.

-Nanos, pg 319

It’s not a matter of changing a single word of the Galatians letter, but rather, shifting your perspective on what Paul was intending when he wrote it. We only have this letter to tell us what was going on with his addressees in Galatia and to suggest (Paul doesn’t tell us outright) who the influencers were. The method of interpretation makes all of the difference and as I’ve said before, Protestant Christianity has a very definite tradition about how to interpret Galatians and the rest of the Bible. The real challenge is getting the Church, from the average person sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, to the Pastoral staff, to the governing bodies of the various denominations, to the New Testament scholars and students in seminaries and universities, to set aside those traditions long enough to read what Paul is saying as a devoted disciple of Moshiach who was zealous for the Torah and never taught against the Law of Moses or the Temple of God.

Not an easy task to be sure.

The Jewish PaulBut if we read not just Galatians, but the rest of the record of Jewish and Gentile interactions in the Apostolic era with an eye on the tremendous social difficulties involved in even attempting to integrate these two populations in the synagogue under the radical notion that Gentiles did not have to adopt Jewish identities in order to be fully equal co-participants in the worship of God through Messiah, then we come up with a very different picture of the lives of the first Gentile believers and even what our lives as Christians should be today, particularly relative to the Jewish people and Judaism.

Which brings us back to Nanos’ statement about Shoah in the introduction to “Irony”.

The vast majority of the text, while it seems quite logical to me, would really require someone well-studied in New Testament scholarship to critically analyze. What Nanos writes makes sense to me primarily because it fits my own overarching view of the message of the Bible, but without traveling a similar educational path to Nanos or others like him, I don’t doubt I could miss quite a lot. But while I don’t have the ability to intimately examine each and every bit of research and evidence “Irony” presents, I can see that the final conclusion, at least generally, fits the portrait in which I have come to see the Apostle to the Gentiles, a Jewish man who was given the extraordinary task of bringing the good news of the Messiah to the pagan nations of the world; a man who centuries after his death, has been (in my opinion) falsely accused both by Christians and Jews, of being a traitor to his own people, of abandoning the Torah, abandoning the practice of his forefathers in the worship of God, and twisting the teachings of a humble itinerant Rabbi in the Galilee into a brand-new religious form that has no resemblance to the way Jesus taught the Torah of Moses to the “lost sheep of Israel.”

I’m glad I read this book but it certainly wasn’t easy. I consider myself educated but not in this field of study. However, this is a necessary book to work through for Christians because we must be shaken up and startled out of our complacency and our interpretive traditions. Even if you’re not willing to accept a view of Paul and his letter to the Galatians that exactly matches Nanos’ description, the very attempt should help convince you as it continues to convince me, that historic and modern Christianity has made a terrible mistake in how we see Paul. There’s a lot more to learn or relearn about Paul. “The Irony of Galatians” by Mark Nanos is but one step on that journey.

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Reviewing the Meaning of Midrash, Part 1

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Torah, like any wisdom, has departments. That’s important to know. You can’t study literature the same way you study biology, and you can’t critique poetry as you would journalism. So too, you can’t study one department of Torah the same as you study another.

There’s more than one way of dividing up those departments. One way is to talk about approaches to the text.

Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Ari, constructs an acronym from these four departments, disciplines, or levels of peshat, remez, derush and sod: pardes, meaning “an orchard.” He taught that every soul must delve into all four layers of the Torah, and must continue to return to this world until having done so.

-Tzvi Freeman and Yehuda Shurpin
Is Midrash for Real?
Part 1 in a series on the truth behind Talmudic tales
Chabad.org

I have been promising to write a review on this series for a few weeks now, but as I read part one, I already feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I’m not Jewish and certainly not an Orthodox Jew, nor am I a mystic, which is what seems to be required to understand what Freeman and Shurpin are saying.

True, I’ve been critical of Christian devotion to Sola Scriptura more than once, but investigating Midrash on the road to Kabbalah could be a bit much for me.

I’m not throwing in the towel. I just want you to know how different this is.

First things first. How does this article define Midrash?

Finding deeper meaning and lessons in life is yet another department, which we call derush or midrash—and our basic commentators will again be found in these halls as well. Midrash often includes stories, called aggadah, some allegorical, some anecdotal, some reaching far beyond what we understand to be possible in our world. Midrash can be found strewn throughout the Talmud, and in many anthologies compiled contemporaneously with the Talmud or later. The largest, best-known collection is called Midrash Rabbah.

Many of the juiciest midrashim are collected in the classic commentary of Rashi. This despite Rashi’s repeated insistence that “I come only to explain the simple meaning of the text.” Because the text bubbles with meaning, frequently defying the steamroller of the strict literalist, demanding deeper interpretation at every turn.

What I’m taking from this is that Midrash isn’t necessarily intended to be literal fact. Certainly Christianity has its own rich tradition of religious allegory, so how can we criticize Judaism for employing the same tools. Midrash is in the “Derush” department, that which reveals the deeper meanings of the Torah.

AggadahBut are these “deeper meanings” actually encoded in the Torah or are they what various authorities including the esteemed Rashi have taken out of Torah and formed into morality tales, fables, or colorful metaphors to communicate principles that can be derived from scripture? How many Christian Pastors take a verse or two of scripture and develop a homily to be delivered from the pulpit on Sunday? I can accept Midrash at that level of understanding and meaning, even though in Orthodox Jewish thought, it may be intended to represent so much more.

But according to the article and the sages it cites, a steady diet of all four “departments” of Torah understanding is necessary for the “spiritual health” of every Jewish person.

The Ari’s message is not as esoteric as it may seem: Just as our bodies do not live by carbs alone, so our souls require a mixed diet. To be a complete Jew embracing a complete, wholesome Torah, you can’t satisfy your requirements studying in one department alone. You need a well-rounded curriculum at all four levels.

But the focus on this series as well as my review is of only one of the four “departments” or “food groups” in this diet.

And the midrashic tales and the secrets of the Torah are just as vital. Why? Because as much as Torah is about what you know and what you do, it’s also about how you think and what you feel. As magnificent a structure as you may have built for yourself, without light and warmth nobody is going to live there too long. That’s the way life goes: without the sparks firing, the engine just stops turning.

Midrash is your gateway to connect with the Author of the Torah. “If you want to know the One who formed the universe,” the Talmudic sages advise, “learn aggadah.” Aggadah, the midrashic tales scattered throughout Torah literature, are said to contain “most of the secrets of the Torah.”

That’s probably a lot farther than most Christians would be willing to go, and understandably so. Outside of Orthodox Judaism and especially the mystic context of the Chabad, it’s also much farther than many Jewish people would want to go. Let’s not kid ourselves. What I’m investigating is a relatively narrow perspective within the panoramic landscape of overarching Judaism. Nevertheless, for those of us who “intersect” with religious Judaism at some level, encountering Midrash is inevitable. So why fight it? Let’s have a look.

But the secrets are veiled, as Maimonides writes (we’ll get to that soon), so that only those who are fit to receive them will discover them there. The Zohar provides a parable to explain why the Torah must speak in parables…

I’m pausing here to remind everyone that Jesus spoke in parables. Christians tend to take the parables of Jesus for granted, largely because those parables have all been explained in the text of the Gospels, and even if we don’t always understand the explanations, we usually receive some satisfactory interpretation from our Pastors or some Christian book writer.

ffoz_tv18_aaron
Aaron Eby

Last fall I reviewed an episode of the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) television series called Speaking in Parables which sought to explain the purpose of the Master’s parables in terms of Messianic Judaism.

FFOZ Teachers and Toby Janicki and Aaron Eby are the hosts for these episodes and present each one as a “mystery” that requires three “clues” to solve. In these clues and their solutions, they use the Bible and Jewish literature to teach their audience that “Parables were a common teaching device used to simplify complex concepts.” The question then is whether or not Midrashim also take complex concepts and simplify them for their audience. Most Christians encountering a Midrash would probably say “no.” Sometimes a midrashic tale can make what we think of as the plain meaning of the text seem all too mysterious.

Apparently, the stories and mysterious words are more than packaging. After all, as the parable of the Zohar tells, from within the cloak of these parables the inner soul of the Torah speaks. Perhaps we should think of these stories as haute couture for G‑d’s wisdom. They are the fine clothing and jewelry that allow expression for Torah’s most inner wisdom, as a tasteful wardrobe betrays beauty that would otherwise elude the senses.

I invite you to read Part 1 in a series on the truth behind Talmudic tales (I also put the link at the top) for the full article, including the various parables it contains, to gain the full context of what I’m discussing. The sense I get from this text, and I’ve read similar material before, is that the Torah almost has a life of its own and is deeply encoded with meaning that extends well beyond what we can perceive, even if we could read the oldest available Torah documents in their original ancient Hebrew.

So fitting, so magnificent is this wardrobe that it carries the secrets of Torah even to the small child. In a way, it transmits to the simple child much more than to the sophisticated adult. To the adult, the clothing is distinct from the meaning it contains; the analogy and its analogue live in two different worlds. The child, when he grasps the clothing, grasps the warm body and soul breathing within. They are all one and the same. In his simple understanding of the tale, he touches G‑d.

To better understand how that is so, we’ll have to examine midrash a little deeper. We need to ask, are the stories of the Midrash truth or fiction? If they are truth, how is it that they so often conflict with one another? And how do we know when the Talmud is telling us a historical anecdote and when it is speaking in parables?

MidrashJust a reminder. There’s a difference between facts and truth. Or as Indiana Jones once said, “Archaeology is the search for fact… not truth. If it’s truth you’re looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.”

Midrash, like any metaphor or morality tale, can contain truth and still be fiction. We’ll see what more Freeman and Shurpin have to say in next week’s review.

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In Defense of the Church

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I know after today’s morning meditation, it probably seems like I’m becoming really “anti-Church,” but I want to correct that perception. I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon, February 16th after returning home from services. Actually, I started to mentally compose this blog post while in church, realizing that my last several missives were particularly critical of normative Christianity. After I’ve said all that, can I really be supportive of the Church?

I reminded myself earlier that, in spite of the Church’s imperfections, God is in church. I know He was there today (as I write this). Here’s one of the reasons I know:

Pastor Bill and his wife Joan: We visited Millie in her Life Care Center in Florida where she is receiving treatments for the neuropathy in her hands and feet brought on by the chemo/radiation cancer treatments — this condition is reversible, but it takes a long time — thanks for your prayers for Millie.

I can actually see Pastor Bill and Joan doing this. Pastor Bill is an older gentleman with a penchant for the old, traditional hymns. I can see him expressing compassion, warmth, and gentle humor as he was making this visit, offering care to the sick as Jesus has taught us.

I took the above quote from the Prayer Bulletin that’s included in the general Sunday bulletin handed out at the door when anyone enters for services. The bulletin contains all kinds of information. If you’ve ever visited a church on Sunday, you know what I’m talking about, but for me, the prayer bulletin is the most “Christ-like” piece of paper I anticipate. It tells me that the church cares, not just the entity of the local church, but the church that is made up of hundreds of individual believing human beings, each doing their best to walk with God and to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.

Yes, as I’ve said before, the theology and doctrine needs some work, perhaps a lot of work in my humble opinion, but if I’m in a church where the people pray for one another, and where Pastors, members, and attendees visit the sick, donate food to the hungry, and ask God to help the needy (and who among us doesn’t need God?), then they obviously correctly understand some of the most important lessons the Bible teaches us.

Today (as I write this) we had a guest speaker, a young missionary to the Congo which this church sent out four years ago, and who is now back on furlough to give his report. He’s a farmer from the small town of Notus, Idaho, and yet he’s also a dynamic speaker (a little too dynamic sometimes) who has a passion for his work with the Congolese people. He had to hold himself back to an hour since he’s used to preaching anywhere between three to eight hours during any given service in the Congo.

CongoA lot of what Sparky (yes, that was the young missionary’s name) had to say reminded me of the message Conrad Mbewe presented during John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference, how although about ninety percent of the people in the Congo are considered “Christian,” it’s a strange and bizarre form of Christianity that blends Christian beliefs with indigenous religion and superstition, combined with other Christian groups’ teachings of health and prosperity theology. It’s really mixed up stuff, driven by demonology and magic fetish objects.

Sparky’s message came from a number of Biblical sources and essentially said “Don’t be afraid.” The Congolese Christians are always afraid. They’re afraid of Satan, of demons, of magic, of curses, of all kinds of things. Sparky tries to counter that in his mission as he did in his message, by saying we are not given a spirit of fear but of love and courage when we become believers.

While Sparky was teaching, I thought of my own so-called “mission” into the Christian Church. Although I see the Church, and particularly people like Sparky as doing a tremendous amount of good, there’s still something missing that, when restored, will take the Church the final mile that leads to the return of the Messiah King. As I mentioned, that’s why I’m here, why I write, and why I strive to move forward and to not give up on the Church.

There’s a lot of good in the Church. It’s easy for me and those like me to just toss the Church aside because our theologies clash in the extreme in certain areas, but that’s not all the Church is. The Church is praying for people. The Church is visiting the sick. The Church is teaching courageous faith in God that never gives up and that is never defeated. The Church feeds the hungry. The Church shows compassion. The Church loves.

And even though the Church has flaws and labors under a lot of misunderstanding, God has not abandoned the Church and on any given Sunday, you will find God in Church.

From a Messianic Jewish or Hebrew Roots perspective, it’s easy to miss seeing God in Church, but that’s because we are looking at the Church’s imperfections and not her beauty. This is the same reason Christians often miss the fact that God (again, in my humble opinion) is also in the synagogue on any given Shabbat, any time a minyan is davening, whenever the Torah scroll is removed from the ark.

God hasn’t given up on the Jewish people either, even though, at this time, they resist or do not recognize the face of Messiah, he who has come and he who will come again in power and glory as King.

first-baptist-churchIt’s for the sake of both those worlds and the hope that when Messiah returns, he will find faith among people, that I must remind myself the Church, even as she exists today, still contains God within her walls. God is with His people, Jews and Gentiles. God is waiting. God is patient. God has a plan. He has a plan in the Congo with Sparky. He has a plan for Jewish people in Virginia. He has a plan for Baptists in Idaho. We each have a different role to play in that plan. We are all unique in that plan. The plan requires tremendous diversity of roles and people but all to an identical goal…the goal of bringing glory to God and the coming of King Messiah.

Once again, God reminded me that I’m only one small part of the plan, but that I do have my role to play.

It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work.

-Ethics of the Fathers 2:21

I don’t have to do everything. I don’t have to change everything. From my point of view, it may be that I don’t see me changing anything. But if I’m faithful to play out my role, God will do the changing.