A Misunderstood Jew

2 Chronicles 36:22-23

In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up.”

Somewhere along the way I stopped being in love with "Christianity" and fell in love with Jesus.

I am not sure exactly when it happened --- but what I do know is that it was something that people began to notice in me.

And I too began to notice changes

          One of the big changes was how I approached the Biblical text

When I say "Christianity", I am putting that word in quotes, and I mean the institution that has grown, morphed, and became the dominate power structure starting in the beginning of the 4th century of the common era --- due primarily to Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313ce which decriminalized Christianity and transformed it into the dominate religion of the Roman Empire.

I am not "against" Christianity --- please don't hear that. 

But as I opened up my heart to Jesus, I began to see that “Christianity” and Jesus were not synonymous.

As I began to "fall in love with Jesus" I noticed that I made some, not so subtle changes in how I talked and approached the Bible.

·         One of the first changes I made was I stopped calling the scripture tradition of our Jewish brothers and sisters -- The Old Testament

          Instead, I began to refer to it as the Hebrew Bible

          Why?

Old is pejorative

          It implies that it is no longer important

It implies is outdated and has been replaced by something new

It suggests that it should be relegated to the antique bin or maybe even the dust bin

          But the Hebrew Scriptures are anything but unimportant

The Hebrew Bible is the Bible of Jesus

          Remember when the author of Timothy writes:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness

When the author of Timothy writes that he is not referring to the Gospels or the letters of Paul (they didn't exist as authoritative yet) instead he was referring to the Hebrew Bible -- the Bible of Jesus

For Jew's the Hebrew Bible is complete --- there is no need for a New Testament --- the Tanakh (as the Hebrew Bible is called) and all the interpretations which are also considered inspired already offer revelations of the divine.

That was a huge lesson for me to learn --- but also transformational as I learned a deeper appreciation for Jesus

·         Second, I began to wrestle with the value of context within scripture in a whole new way and understood that even the text as written was interpretive

Context takes many forms

          Culture

          What is happening around the story

          Why that particular story was remembered (and others forgotten)

But even the word "Christian" is loaded

          Jesus never gave that name to his followers

                   He said that they were followers of "the Way"

The word "Christian" is used only three times in the Bible, and never by the "Christians" referring to themselves by that name. 

In each instance, the word is used by outsiders in trying to define this sect of Judaism

Jesus was not a Christian!

          Jesus was a Jew

I am convinced that if we want to truly fall in love with Jesus (the Jesus of first century Palestine) --- not some construct of Jesus created over the last 2000 years --- If we really want to fall in love with Jesus --- we must understand him in the context of who he really was.

          A first-century Jew living in the Middle East

The challenge according to Amy-Jill Levine is that:

Today Jesus' words are too familiar, too domesticated, too stripped of their initial edginess and urgency. Only when heard through first-century Jewish ears can their original edginess and urgency be recovered.  Consequently, to understand the man from Nazareth, it is necessary to understand Judaism.  More, it is necessary to see Jesus as firmly within Judaism rather than standing apart from it, and it is essential that the picture of Judaism not be distorted through he filter of centuries of Christian stereotypes; a distorted picture of Judaism inevitably leads to a distorted picture of Jesus.

I have become convinced that she is right

In order to fully understand Jesus --- we must understand his Jewishness

So how do we re-capture this Jewish Jesus?

          How do we get to know --- and hopefully fall in love with Jesus?

We need to understand that Jesus of Nazareth

·         dressed like a Jew

·         prayed like a Jew

·         taught other Jews on how best to live according to the Jewish law given by God to Moses

·         he argued like a Jew with other Jews

·         and he died like thousands of other Jews on a Roman cross

But maybe most importantly we need to understand that:

The kingdom of heaven is not, for the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth, a piece of real estate for the single saved soul; it is a communal vision of what could be and what should be.  It is a vision of a time when all debts are forgiven, when we stop judging others, when we not only wear our traditions on our sleeve, but also hold them in our hearts and minds and enact them with all our strength.  It is the good news that the Torah can be discussed and debated, when the Sabbath is truly honored and kept holy, when love of enemies replaces the tendency of striking back.  The vision is Jewish, and it is worth keeping as frontlets before our eyes and teaching to our children. (Amy-Jill Levine)

As a conclusion to her book, The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine offers an alphabet of suggestions that can help us avoid the major pitfalls that seem too often to preclude church and synagogue from traveling together safely and smoothly.

Let me share a few

·         Don't stereotype

          believing that all Jews do such and such

·         Don't romanticize that Jews were ugly, misogynic, intolerant or hateful and that the Christians were not.  Both sets of scripture struggle with their respective contexts and the culture that was prevalent, when they were written.

·         Stop believing that Jesus was speaking AGAINST Judaism

          Jesus is speaking TO Jews within Judaism

·         Understand that Judaism is more than just the Hebrew Bible

Rabbinic teaching

Mishnah

Midrash

·         Recognize that history is messy business, and religious competition makes ir even messier

·         Don't assume that Christians and Jews use words in the same way

The "Bible" of the Church is not the "Bible" of the synagogue

"The Messiah" proclaimed by Christianity is not the messiah proclaimed by Judaism

Sabbath for Christians is Sunday -- for Jews it is Friday evening until Saturday evening

·         Beware of the heresy of Marcionism

It is the belief that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament

It often is expressed by claiming the God of the Old Testament is a "God of Wrath" and the God of the New Testament is a "God of love (or grace)"

·         We need to learn more about our own religious history before we attempt to have success understanding someone else's

·         We should find opportunities to read and study scripture in interfaith settings

·         We should become aware of anti-Judaism that is often found in liturgy, sermons, and hymns

·         Learn Greek and Hebrew and read the text in its original language

We should also read other material from the period

          The Dead Sea Scrolls

          The Apocrypha and Psuedopigrapha

          Josephus and Philo

          Early rabbinic literature

·         Be wary of what you find on the internet

·         Practice Holy Envy (I see a sermon on this coming up)

·         Finally, Amy-Jill says that when her children were little, "I used to bring them to my classes and sit them in front of my divinity students, and I’d say, “When you preach or teach, I want you to picture this little kid in the front pew. Don’t say anything that will hurt this child, and don’t say anything that will cause a member of your congregation to hurt this child.”

Some pretty good advice --- and she still had a dozen more suggestions.  But these are all a great place for us to start.

Is anybody curious as to why I chose this selection from 2nd Chronicles?

How does the Old Testament end?

          The last book in the Old Testament is Malachi and it ends with these verses

Look, I am sending Elijah the prophet to you,

        before the great and terrifying day of the Lord arrives.

Turn the hearts of the parents to the children

    and the hearts of the children to their parents.

            Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse.

But the Hebrew Scriptures ends not with Malachi but rather --- 2nd Chronicles

The last chapter introduces the edict of King Cyrus of Persia

          Do you remember anything unusual about King Cyrus?

                   Isaiah calls him "messiah"

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,

    whose right hand I have grasped

to subdue nations before him

    and strip kings of their robes,

to open doors before him—

    and the gates shall not be closed

The Hebrew Bible ends with Cyrus proclaiming:

“Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up.”

In other words, the Hebrew Bible ends with a goal for Israel to return --- to go up to Jerusalem

Amy-Jill Levine explains:

The Tanakh thus ends not with a promise to be fulfilled by something new but with an injunction to return to one's home, to one's roots.

Christianity and Judaism have a great deal to learn from each other.

May we never believe that Christianity super-succeeded Judaism, but understand that we have chosen a different path to the same goal --- relationship with God.

If you want to fall in love with Jesus --- and I assume that is why you are here --- then you need to understand him in the context in which he lived: A Jewish rabbi living in the first century in Judea.