The apostle Paul tells us we will all “stand before God’s judgment seat” (Rom 14:10). This is a concept all Jews understand well. During the Ten Days of Awe beginning with Rosh Hashana and ending with Yom Kippur, Jews rehearse for this final judgment, giving an account of ourselves to God.

The standard explanation for why this judgment is necessary is that God is holy, and we are not, and we need to be forgiven for our sins. While this is true, it seems aridly theological, failing to give us a sense of what sin is, and why it matters.

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, comes this year on the 20th of July. It is the second most mournful day in the Jewish calendar, next to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On Tisha B’Av we remember a litany of calamities that struck our people at this time throughout history. As Messianic Jews, we are no less smitten by these tragic events and their memory than are others of our people.

Among the event we remember are the following:

Two years ago, a great light went out. The light was David Noel Freedman, who died at 85 years of age, on April 8, 2008. He was a Jewish Presbyterian who long ago dreamed of the kind of Messianic Judaism we espouse. What for him was a dream is for us a reality. He taught at the University of Michigan, and also at San Diego State University. At the former school, MJTI President Mark Kinzer was one of his students. And Freedman was the Grand Old Man of Old Testamental scholarship.

He authored and edited over 300 scholarly books. In his final two decades, two of his books, The Unity of the Hebrew Bible (1991) and The Nine Commandments (2000), treated the same subject—his fascinating conjecture as to why the Hebrew Bible tells Jewish history the way it does.

Freedman identifies Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as Israel’s primary history. He suggests that these books were put in this order some time late in the Babylonian Captivity so as to answer the question the community struggled with: How did we end up here, in Babylon? After all, the Bible begins in Babylon, because that’s where Eden was, and of course the story of the Tower of Babel, which was where Abraham started out too. So how come the people of promise were evicted from the land of promise, finally back where it all started?

Shavuot is a special time of gratitude for the gift of Torah, for the harvest, for the gift of the Spirit, and for the building of community.  Gratitude is the foundation of happiness.  Shavuot is a time for the community to gather together in gratitude to God.

Dennis Prager speaks extensively about happiness in his popular book, Happiness is a Serious Problem.  He reminds us there that “we are morally obligated to be as happy as we can be .”¹ It is not selfish to want to be happy.  It’s our obligation to the people we love and live with to be as bearable as we can be. Happiness, Prager says, is altruistic!  He believes, furthermore, that goodness flows from personal happiness, and that happy people are far more likely to be good people.  And, just as he sees happiness to be the foundation of goodness, so he sees gratitude as the foundation of happiness.

There are only two ways to respond to the coming of Shavuot: with awareness, action, and gratitude or with inaction, ingratitude, and lack of awareness.

“…your old men shall dream dreams (chalomot), and your young men shall see visions.” Joel 2:28

The recent presidential election was the most interesting in my memory.  These are interesting times, economically and politically.  These are also spiritually interesting times of momentous transition.  We may well be seeing a Second Reformation, involving rediscovering and redefining the complementary roles of Israel and the Church in the purposes of God.

In the third chapter of Luke, Yochanan the Immerser, a.k.a. John the Baptist, confronts us with seven questions, as relevant to our times of transition as they were to his.

(Luke 3:1-2) The chapter begins by situating the events amidst the mundane politics of the day.  Are we prepared to believe it is even possible God is now up to something extraordinary in the midst of ordinary history, or is our default assumption that this is an ordinary time when nothing out of the ordinary will be required of us?

I advocate postmissionary Messianic Judaism. As I read Scripture and consider the destiny of the Jewish people and Messianic Judaism, I reach conclusions different from standard missionary practice. One area where I differ is in my understanding of what it means for Jews, including Messianic Jews, to repent.

Wesleyan theologian R. Kendall Soulen highlights something the mission culture misses:

According to the biblical witness, God’s work as Consummator takes enduring shape in the history that unfolds between the Lord, Israel, and the nations. Accordingly, human sin is never merely the sin of the creature against the Creator-Consummator. Human sin is also always the sin of Jew and Gentile, of Israel and the nations.¹

God sees us not as generic individual human beings, but always as Israel and the nations, which Soulen terms part of the “theological grammar of the Bible.”² Jews and Gentiles have distinct covenant responsibilities and pathways of obedience. For example, Paul enjoined his Gentile converts not to submit to ritual circumcision, yet he circumcised his protégé Timothy.³ Timothy had a Jewish mother, and being circumcised was an appropriate path of obedience for him, but not for Gentiles. For this reason, Paul steadfastly refused to circumcise Titus, a Gentile.⁴

“…your old men shall dream dreams (chalomot), and your young men shall see visions.” Joel 2:28

I was once a guest at a meeting of missionaries to the Jews where one stood up and said, “Lots of people speak out about preserving the Jewish community.  That’s not our business.  God will preserve the Jewish community.  Our job is to preach the gospel.”  Many people would nod their heads agreeing with this statement.  Some might even nod piously.  But I protested the statement, and with the passing of years, have grown to protest it even more deeply.

The reason is all tied up with the Book of Esther, read at this time of year for the holiday of Purim.  The story of Esther concerns the machinations of Haman, the Grand Vizier of Persia at that time, who unsuccessfully sought to wipe out the Jews in the kingdom due to an offended ego.  At the crisis point in this great story, Mordecai the Jew comes to relay a message to his niece, Esther, who is part of the King’s harem and in a position to intervene on behalf of her people.

If the Church is going to work with God on his ultimate plan for Israel and the nations, she needs to hear anew God’s voice concerning Israel’s everlasting election.  This is not just acknowledging that God loves the Jewish people just like any other nation, or that God has a sentimental attachment to her for historical reasons. It will mean embracing Israel’s continuing status as God’s everlasting beloved.

Wesleyan theologian R. Kendall Soulen senses this need, and states it well:

God—by his election of the Jewish people—has entered into an economy of mutual blessing with the human family that also places the human family in an economy of mutual blessing with one another, as Jew and as Gentile.  The church does not replace the Jewish people, nor does it erase the distinction between Gentile and Jew.  Instead, it embodies a promissory way of being Jew and Gentile together that— according to Christian understanding— is a foretaste of the reign of God.

Does God have a game plan whereby he brings history to a consummation and brings Jews and Gentiles together?  I believe so.  I am convinced that God will bring Israel and the Church to distinct blessings through the same Messiah.

On the day he was raised, unrecognized for who he was, Yeshua joined two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, who were discouraged and confused about the events that had lately occurred—the one whom they thought was the Messiah had been turned over to the Romans to be executed, he had been crucified, and to top it all off, a group of women from their group had visited his tomb, and, finding it empty, claimed they had seen a vision of angels and that he was alive.

Notice especially their comment in Luke 24:21: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Anglican theologian, N. T. Wright, helps put their comment in context:

The worry about the afterlife, and the precise qualifications for it, which have so characterized Western Christianity, especially (it seems) since the Black Death, and which have shaped and formed Western readings of the New Testament, do not loom large in the literature of Paul’s contemporaries [including Jesus and the Apostles].

Cultural Anthropology’s discussion of worldview helps us understand that supersessionism (the conviction that the church is the new Israel, replacing the old in the purposes of God) must be abandoned. This will revolutionize the church’s mission at a rate of speed determined by the church’s level of awareness, willingness, and cooperation.

Worldview may be defined as “the central assumptions, concepts and premises which are shared by a particular group of people and upon which they base their activities.”¹ Because worldview assumptions are subconscious and therefore unquestioned, they are powerful, pervasive, and determinative of the behaviors, perceptions, evaluations, decisions, and actions of members of any given social group, culture or subculture.  Worldview assumptions are the “of courses” of a social group, culture, or subculture.  When someone questions or points out a worldview assumption to members of a given group, the members of the group will respond reflexively, “Of course!  That’s the way things are!  Anyone knows that!”