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It implies is outdated and has been replaced by something new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.
