If you want something very, very badly, let it go free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.

–attributed to Jess Lair (1969)

I can identify with the sense of need for a coherent and authoritative model, especially in these times when so much controversy surrounds these issues. If I were in your shoes, I would be looking for a model, too. Or a congregation that is healthy and embodies the practices and values I believe in so strongly.(Good luck with that – I haven’t found one in my area, either.)

(BTW, over the years I”ve spoken to far to many Messianic Jews who feel disenfranchised in their own formerly Jewish congregations.So both Jew and Gentile are suffering.)

I don’t see any way around the truth that a Jewish community must be built and sustained by Jews.. (This is not an ideological statement: I’d say that same for any other type of community.space.) The catch-22 is that if that community welcomes Gentiles who are looking for Jewish space, it will end up experiencing the same loss of Jewish identity seen elsewhere in the Messianic movement.What do you have then? A community made up mostly of Gentiles who wanted to live in Jewish space.

I don’t see any bad people in this scenario, just some Jews and Gentiles who come face to face with demographic reality: most Jewish believers are in the Church and all it take is a minuscule percentage of Gentile believers to dramatically change the make-up of a Messianic Jewish congregation.

So at this point in time, I don’t see any viable way to build clearly Jewish Messianic communities (which I believe are essential to God’s purposes) that maintain an open door policy for all comers.

-Rabbi Dr. Carl Kinbar
from a blog comment on Morning Meditations

Especially given the dialogs happening on Part 1 and Part 2 of my review of J.K. McKee’s book One Law for All: From the Mosaic Texts to the Work of the Holy Spirit, Rabbi Kinbar’s comments re-opened a lot of old issues for me that I thought I’d settled.

I’ve gone on record advocating for the absolute necessity of Messianic Jewish community created by Jews and for Jews. But while such communities do exist in Israel, they are rare or even non-existent in the U.S. and other western nations. Even the most “Messianic Jewish” synagogue in the United States is still populated mostly by non-Jews.

I suspect that Dr. Mark Nanos would consider those Gentiles to be acting jewishly but not Jewish, however that is small consolation to people like R. Kinbar who greatly desires to daven in a minyan with other Jews like him in a setting that is both wholly Jewish and wholly Messianic.

Whenever I advocate for that position, someone usually “pushes back” and tells me that other streams of Judaism aren’t nearly so “threatened” by the presence of Gentiles, even self-professed “Messianics”. But in those other synagogues, no one ever questions whether or not it is a Jewish community. Identity issues are secure. For Messianic Jews, the long shadow of Jewish conversion to Christianity (voluntary and otherwise) and being ostracized from Jewish community and family life always looms like the spectre of death. The very presence of a majority (or perhaps even a minority) Gentile population in supposed Messianic Jewish space renders it, if not tumah, then at least much closer to Christian and that much farther away from anything truly Jewish.

I know a lot of (Gentile) people are going to complain because they see such a desire on the part of Messianic Jews as being “exclusive,” “cliquish,” and “exclusionary,” but then again, these critics are viewing the situation based on their own personal and corporate needs and wants rather than the needs of the Jews in community with Messiah.

I’ve always considered the song Me and Jesus to be kind of self-centered, but we Gentiles have been brought up in Christianity (at least in America) to think of our own needs first, rather than what we’d sacrifice for the sake of someone else, especially the needs of the Jewish people. It’s all about “me and Jesus.”

OK, that was pretty unkind, but try for a few minutes to look at things from Carl’s point of view.

All that said, I admit that the first thing I felt in reading Carl’s words was a sense of loss and even a tinge of rejection, though that certainly wasn’t his intent. What anchors me in my church attendance and participation is my ability to communicate with the other side of the aisle, so to speak, to be able to access and consume Jewish and Messianic Jewish resources including relationships with Messianic Jewish (and Gentile) people. But that becomes more difficult if one of your personal ideals is not to interfere with Messianic Jewish community.

My response to Carl was this:

Well, in my particular case, I’m attending a small Baptist church and even if there were an appropriate (Messianic) Jewish congregation in my area that welcomed non-Jews, I would choose not to attend for personal (marital) reasons. Given my current situation, if for some reason, my relationships at church should fall apart, rather than going through the grisly task of “church shopping” all over again, I’d probably just bag it and do my own thing. The religious blogosphere is enough of a minefield without having to experience “live fire” from face-to-face interactions as well. God was gracious in directing me to a church that at least tolerates my “oddness” but I always feel like I’m on the edge of falling out of favor, even though I restrict my personal opinions most of the time.

I guess that means I don’t know how to build Messianic Jewish communities except to stay out of the way.

But staying out of the way sounds particularly lonely and even pathetic.

It also sounds like this query supposedly directed at J.K. McKee and recorded at Frequently Asked Questions: 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 (link courtesy of Kineti L’Tziyon):

I am a non-Jewish Messianic Believer, and have been told that my calling as a “Messianic Gentile” is to go back to a church, and not become Torah observant. I am told that I must follow “Paul’s rule,” and that seeking to live more like Yeshua and His Apostles would violate both it and my distinct “calling,” and likely nullify God’s special calling on the Jewish people. I should instead simply help Christians in church, not too interested in their Hebrew Roots, be more favorable to Israel and Jewish issues. Can you please help me?

This is the lead-in for a twenty page paper authored by McKee analyzing the 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 passage in a manner that differs from how it is apparently used by other theologians.

But if you look at R. Kinbar’s comments, my own angst when I feel the loss of relationships with the congregation of Jews in Messiah (or that little portion with whom I’m acquainted), and the cry for help from the supposed questioner at the top of McKee’s paper, there is a common theme: community.

Actually the theme is more “the community I want and need.”

I can’t speak for Carl and I can’t speak for the person posing the question in McKee’s paper, but I can speak for me. I couldn’t sleep the other night and allowed myself to turn the whole issue of community this way and that, upside down and inside out, and for me, the answer is so simple. Worse, it’s an answer I already know, so why was I complaining?

“One who romanticizes over Judaism and loses focus of the kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a carpenter who is infatuated with the hammer, rather than the house it was meant to build.”

-Troy Mitchell

“Don’t seek Christianity and don’t seek Judaism. Seek an encounter with God.”

-Tom

I found Pastor Jeff Weddle’s blog through one of The Onesimus Files blog posts.

Pastor Weddle opened his blog post with:

If a Holy Spirit indwelt person were stranded on a desert island with nothing but the Bible for ten years, would he come off that island with sound doctrine?

I believe he would.

Church tradition, although a helpful thing at times, is not necessary for sound doctrine.

The gist of his message is all you need for sound doctrine and a relationship with God is the Holy Spirit and your Bible. I imagined myself on the stereotypical deserted tropical island you see in so many comic strips. It’s just a small piece of sand in the middle of a vast ocean. There’s only a single tree in the middle, but somehow I’ve got sufficient food and water and amazingly, a laptop and satellite link to the Internet.

Oh, I’ve also got the Holy Spirit and a Bible.

What would it be like to smash the laptop into a thousand pieces and to completely destroy the satellite link hardware, making it impossible for me to have contact with the rest of the world? It really would be me, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible.

That’s how I felt when Carl suggested effectively making sure Gentiles did not enter Messianic Jewish community space in order to preserve Messianic Jewish community space as Jewish. I felt cut off. I felt isolated. And in spite of what Rabbi Dr. Stuart Dauermann wrote recently, I really did feel “second class”.

It’s funny what your emotions can do to you in spite of your best efforts to maintain an internal balance.

If one of my highly esteemed ideals is to preserve Messianic Jewish community and my presence in said-community inhibits achieving that ideal, then logically my recourse is to remove myself from that community and have nothing to do with it. That doesn’t mean I can’t study on my own, and I suppose (hopefully) it doesn’t mean I can’t have Messianic Jewish friends (although I can understand when some Messianic Jews don’t want to have close association with me), but it does mean there are communities that I must not intrude upon for the sake of Hashem’s plan for His people Israel…

…even if that doesn’t make sense to you.

Some of us are so enamored with Judaism that we violate the principle spoken in the above quoted phrase uttered by Troy. And I’ve been guilty of violating Tom’s maxim:

“Don’t seek Christianity and don’t seek Judaism. Seek an encounter with God.”

What is my goal? To seek a type of faith community that serves my every need? Did God say this journey of faith was about serving my every need? Did He say it was about serving any of my needs at all?

Look at the life of the Apostle Paul. Did God first and foremost serve Paul’s needs and then Paul got around to serving God and his fellow human beings? Heck no! Paul almost died on numerous occasions and I don’t think anyone would characterize his life after becoming an emissary of Messiah as comfortable. If it were up to Paul, I imagine he’d have stayed in the synagogue studying with the other learned men, praying at the Temple with the other disciples, discussing matters of halachah with the sages, and living the life of an intelligent, contemplative Jew.

But God had other plans for Paul, none of which served Paul’s wants, needs, and desires.

So where do I come off whining that God isn’t serving my needs? God owes me nothing at all and my friends, He owes you nothing as well.

This isn’t to say that God is not gracious and compassionate. This isn’t to say that God does not meet our needs and even our wants. It is to say that He doesn’t have to, and even when He does, He doesn’t have to meet us on our own terms.

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

–Luke 14:8-11 (NASB)

It’s funny when people like me start complaining about our wants, our needs, and even our rights, we don’t quote from this passage of scripture. I wonder how Mr. McKee would analyze it in light of the person who was questioning him about where he should or wants to have community.

Where do we encounter God, only in places where we feel comfortable? Do we only encounter God when our needs are met? Does God only meet with us when we are allowed to worship whenever we want, wherever we want, and however we want? Does that sound even remotely Biblical or even sane?

Without a computer and an Internet connection on my mythical deserted island, I would still have food, water, my Bible, and God. Nothing prevents my encounter with God at all and in fact sometimes it’s the Internet that I let get in the way.

Because that’s the goal…to encounter God. He is our greatest need and He should be our greatest want, regardless of our circumstances. Sure, it’s good when we have community with others like us and people we can learn from, and I think community is important, but God places us where He wills. Even Jesus facing the hideous death on the cross in just a few hours, after begging God to take that cup from him said, “Not my will but by yours,” (Luke 22:42).

Who am I to fail to follow my Master’s voice? Not by my will, but yours be done, Father.

If you want something very, very badly, let it go free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.

Thanks Carl for reminding me of something I should already know so well. May God open His hand and satisfy your every desire as He does all living things.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

–Philippians 4:13 (NASB)

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

–Esther 4:14 (NASB)

Addendum: This commentary continues in What Brings Us Near to the Kingdom of God.