Three Reformations, Stuart Dauermann

I am in L.A. (hence the somewhat late blog posting for a Monday) meeting with staff at MJTI (mjti.com). Last night was a nice dinner with some friends of MJTI and some faculty and staff.

It was a night of talking about our dreams and hopes for the future of Messianic Judaism. Several us made short presentations.

Rabbi Stuart Dauermann is one of the most inspiring people you will ever meet. And he was in rare form.

The word “reformation” was a part of his presentation because he launched his talk from a review of a new book, which I won’t exactly name, that is about the emergent church and the idea that we are due for a reformation. Rabbi Dauermann rather dramatically pointed out that you won’t find “Israel” in the index and the little the book says about Judaism is about history and not the future. In other words, the author has a vision for an emerging reformation and, as is all too common, ignores or overlooks the role of the Chosen People in unfolding events.

Rabbi Dauermann spoke to us about three reformations (the only criticism we had after was that he should have started earlier with Abraham, Mt. Sinai, and so on — but it was just a way for the good rabbi to make a point).

The first reformation is the life and work of Yeshua of Nazareth. His death in which we participate and resurrection which is the prototype of our resurrection is obviously a watershed moment in the progress of God’s unfolding plan of redemption.

The second reformation, he said, is something we often overlook or fail to properly emphasize: the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God. It took eight years after the ascension of Yeshua before Peter wound up in the home of Cornelius (Acts 10-11). Why the long delay when the disciples had an imperative from Yeshua? It was a long delay because this was a paradigm shift they were unprepared to make.

Gentiles, as far as Jewry was concerned at the time, were by nature idolaters. One well-known Jewish advocate on behalf of non-Jews and the kingdom said so even years after the fact: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

But the inclusion of Gentiles — as Gentiles and not as proselytes to Judaism (see Acts 15) — was a paradigm change of great proportions. The priestly calling of Israel was at last realized. And it is hard for us, this side of history, to appreciate how difficult it was for Yeshua’s followers to take the kingdom message to non-Jews. But what’s done is done, and now it is the third reformation that people cannot get their minds around.

The third reformation is the even bigger thing God is going to do with Israel in these last days. As Paul said, “If [Israel’s] transgression means riches for the Gentiles, how much more with their full inclusion mean!” (Rom. 11:12).

The redemption of the nations in Messiah Yeshua was huge, changing history in the largest sense imaginable. The final redemption of Israel will even overshadow that great historical revolution. History will be changed all the more when the renewal of Israel through Messiah at last arrives.

Yeshua’s inner circle of disciples had a hard time getting their minds around the second reformation. What will it take to get momentum behind the work of the third reformation? What is holding history back? Are we on the cusp of that third reformation?

Millennialism (Chiliasm)

I’m teaching Revelation 20 tomorrow morning at synagogue. This is the 28th week in a series I have been teaching (with breaks for holiday seasons and topics).

The following are just a few notes on the history of millennialism. I thought you might enjoy or want to comment on them. You can see the whole outline here if you want to read more. I go on to explain what I think millennialism is an important view to hold.

Millennialism or Chiliasm

There will be a thousand-year interim period before the final age. (Millennium equals a thousand years.)

This was the view of the church fathers prior to Augustine.

It is a minority view today in Christendom. In Orthodox Judaism, a two-stage view of the final redemption of the world is common.

Roots in Second Temple Judaism

The idea of two future ages in final redemption is rare, but does exist, in Second Temple Judaism.

4 Ezra 7:26-33, Messiah will rule for 400 years, then die, and after that there will be a resurrection of the dead.

2 Apocalypse of Baruch 29-30, Messiah will destroy evil, after a while return to heaven, and then the time of resurrection will come.

Roots in Church History

The early church fathers believed in a millennium prior to the New Earth.

Papias, Justin, Irenaus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus expressed faith in a millennium.

Origen, in keeping with his love of Platonic ideals and flirtation with gnosticism, rejected millennialism.

Augustine made amillennialism the dominant view.

Rabbinic Literature

In post-New Testament rabbinic writings, a two-stage final redemption is strongly held.

The Babylonian Talmud records rabbinic opinions about how long Messiah’s reign would last (Akiba said 40 years and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus said 1000 years). See Sanhedrin 99a and Tanchuma Eikev.

Israelite Prophets

The prophets of Israel describe a glorious future when Israel is perfect in love and the land is blessed beyond any time in history.

Yet there is still birth and death (see Isa. 65:20).

Therefore, the belief arose in a golden age that was not yet final redemption.

PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Yeshua, Pharisees, Revolution

Why were groups of Pharisees so interested in Yeshua? What power did Pharisees have to harm Yeshua? How do issues of power and Jewish beliefs help us recover the context of Yeshua’s life and message?

Yeshua was a revolutionary. The Pharisees had a major interest in revolution, political and religious reform. See how the clash was inevitable and yet that the Pharisees and Yeshua had much in common. In fact, after the resurrection, something changed between Pharisees and Yeshua.

LISTEN ONE OF TWO WAYS:

(1) If you have iTunes, search Yeshua in the iTunes store and subscribe.

(2) If you don’t use iTunes, go to this link at derekleman.com.

Jon or Judah: remind me again, what is the permanent link I can use to get people to me on iTunes?

Is Religion Bad?

No, I am not asking a question about the history of religion (like the New Atheists who ask if religion has been more harm than good historically).

I am asking a simpler question: is the word religion something we should avoid? Does it denote something bad?

I am no fan of the frequently offered and mindlessly repeated slogans found in many Christian writings, especially among the contemporary writers and leaders. I want to challenge what has become a new mantra with so many: we need to get away from religion. People don’t need religion. What people want is anti-religion. People need Jesus, not religion.

I will likely do a review soon of ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. The book has enough good about it for me to say it is worth reading. But it is disappointing in other ways. How many times do we need to hear, “Jesus is wild, not tame”? And we need to get past that to answering the question: what did Yeshua’s life and message look like and what would it look like in our context? The authors don’t do enough of the latter (in fact, the book is sadly lacking in examining the life and message of Jesus, surprisingly since it is called ReJesus).

But I was especially disappointed to find these otherwise intelligent writers jumping on the anti-religion bandwagon on pages 68 and 69:

In order to get to the nub of the problem, let’s reverse the way of looking at the process of ReJesus: let us think what happens when you take Jesus out of the experience of Christianity. To see this consider the following equation:

Christianity minus Christ equals religion.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Some statements have an immediate ring of truth about them, and for many Christians this is one of them.

No, it does not have an immediate ring of truth about it.

There are plenty of good references to the word religion in the New Testament:
–Paul speaks of deeds of kindness as the true work of religion (1 Tim. 2:10).
–Paul says the mystery of our religion is great (1 Tim. 3:16).
–Paul warns of those who miss out on the power of religion (2 Tim. 3:5).
–James tells us the religion that is pure and undefiled helps widows and orphans (James 1:26).

People who say things like “we need less religion and more relationship” do have a point. But they make it badly and it leads them astray.

It is the same thing as the many statements in the prophets denouncing the sacrifices and the temple worship. It is so easy for ignorant Christians to jump on these many passages and say, “The Old Testament religion was temporary and sub-par.”

Well, the prophets say the same thing about prayer. Is prayer outdated? Isaiah says God is tired of the sounds of the Israelites prayers.

The naïve statements about throwing out religion for a liberating and non-institutional (and therefore mythical) kind of new experience with God are empty air. What these people could be saying is that going through the motions of religious life is nothing without the key ingredients of repentance, faith, obedience, love, and grace. They also could be saying that some traditions are confining and not conducive to the joy of knowing God.

But here is why statements attacking religion infuriate me:

(1) The Jesus that Frost and Hirsch are allegedly studying attended synagogue regularly and said his liturgical prayers (Shema, Kaddish, Amidah) and kept ceremonies like Passover, investing them with meaning. The gospels are clear about this.

(2) Being disorganized is not a virtue. Neither does it help people find God.

(3) People need to talk about renewal in their traditions of religion, which sometimes means restarting and getting rid of old structures. But attacking religion will not help anyone. People need habits, rituals, and ceremonies. God created quite a few of them himself and left it to us to create more. Try reading the Bible with a view for the rituals and ceremonies God ordained. You might be surprised. God is not on this worship-when-you-feel-like-it-in-your-pajamas bandwagon.

(4) Some people desire to create the least troublesome form of religion possible (a rock concert and a teaching is all the religion most people want from their big-box churches). This is not engagement with the depths of God’s truth. It is laziness. Those who settle for this as their sole engagement with God would be better off staying home and reading their Bible for an hour a week.

(5) The anti-religion statements give people the idea we don’t need theologians, scholars, rituals, ceremonies, organizations, and so on. I have news for anyone who thinks this way: if it had not been for the religious institutions you criticize, you would know nothing about the Bible and God because scholars and theologians have preserved information passed down to today which is indispensable. And without rituals and organizations, there would be no communities and without communities you wouldn’t likely know about God or Messiah.

Frost and Hirsch don’t even believe their own rhetoric. They go on later in the book examining what needs to be done to form institutions, keep them on track, and keep a prophetic, passionate center.

Note: While Frost and Hirsch do have a valuable contribution, another recent book denouncing religion supposedly in the name of Messiah is far worse: Naked Gospel by Andrew Farley. If your are interested, find my review on amazon.com

Sukkot Haggadah Coming

I have had a few inquiries about a Sukkot Haggadah I promised to produce for this year. It will be here, in time for Sukkot, but perhaps not a lot earlier than Sukkot. It will include some guided readings in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes). Stay tuned for more. For 2010, I plan to have a Rosh HaShanah Haggadah as well.

The Messiah Idea: Backwards or Forwards?

The Messiah idea in the Bible is not as simple as some think and not as complicated as others imagine.

There is a great interview on Trevin Wax’s blog with Michael Bird, the recent author of Are You the One Who is to Come?. I have burnt out a few hundred candles studying the Messiah idea in Second Temple Judaism and found Bird’s responses in the interview to be spot on. If you want a quick course on the Messiah idea, be sure to read the interview here.

What I would like to do, in short space, is use the idea of Messiah as an example of the principle of “read it forwards.” Sometime back I posted about reading the Bible as a forward-moving conversation. Too many people read it instead like a dictionary (a topic here, a topic there) and never actually learn the Bible. Sadly, many are confined to a basket-full of passages in Paul and a crumb or two from various other books in the Bible. They base their whole understanding of God on the holes in the swiss cheese and miss the substance. (Here is a link to the post on reading the Bible as a forward-moving conversation.)

The Messiah Idea Backwards
It is common for people to formulate the Messiah idea backwards, following an age-old formula (“the New is in the Old contained”) which, as I hope to persuade you, is not the right way to go about it.

Start with the New Testament. Yeshua is Messiah. Yeshua rose from the dead. Yeshua died for sins. Yeshua was the son of David. Therefore, the Messiah idea should be found in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) just like that. Let’s find prophecies about resurrection of a Messiah figure and a sacrificial death and so on.

At the same time, let’s find evidence that Jewish people in the first century were looking for a dying, resurrecting savior figure. Or, thinking that a little too naive, let’s at least look for a clear Jewish expectation of a Davidic king.

If you look for the Messiah idea this way, you won’t be completely wrong, but you will miss out on a lot of subtlety and insight.

The Messiah Idea Forwards
Here I am summarizing a ton of material in a few short paragraphs. The Messiah idea is part of a much larger idea in Jewish scripture: the election, exile, and restoration of Israel.

The many texts in the Hebrew Bible about how this will happen come at it from different angles. There is no one thread about Messiah or the age to come. There are scores of threads. And how they are woven together is not clear. Just as one looking at a finished rug cannot easily discern how the pattern was woven, so the reader viewing all these threads is left in awe, wondering what it will look like when it comes.

Israel’s heart will be circumcised. The Torah will be internalized. Stone hearts will become soft. A new spirit will enter Israel. Dead bones will live. The scepter of Judah will receive tribute. The star of Jacob will break Israel’s enemies. David will rule them. Israel will have one Shepherd. The refiner will come to purify his temple. The king will be lowly and on a donkey. The pierced one will be mourned. The son of man will receive an unending kingdom. The punishment of the servant will bring shalom.

Who can possibly understand it all before the fact? How can we read all these on their own merit, forgetting that by faith we think we understand because we know what happened to Yeshua? How can we place ourselves in the shoes of the hearers of Yeshua and be as surprised as they were by the way things turned out?

Was Messianic expectation as clear to them as we seem to think? Peter and the disciples didn’t understand at all. They gave up their faith and hid from the authorities. Even the women, typically more faithful than men, came with bandages and spices to lay Yeshua’s bod to rest for eternity. They had no faith he would rise.

Messianic movements and revolutions in first century Judaism (and in the second Jewish revolt) show us that expectation was real, but no one knew exactly what to expect. Multiple messiahs and ideas about Messiah existed.

And Yeshua came and surprised everyone. He surprised Israel so much, that most did not believe. He came and went and Israel has not been restored. Even now, seeing that Yeshua is Messiah is not easy. The naïve assurances of teachers that Yeshua is and must be Messiah overlook the many reasons this could be doubted. Faith is a surprising thing and powerful.

Other Themes and Forward-Reading
The Messiah idea looks very different when read forward instead of backwards. A lot of what is going on in the gospels won’t be understood at all from a backwards reading of Messiah.

You will completely misunderstand large portions of the Hebrew Bible if you read afterlife backwards instead of forwards.

Too many people read the covenants (especially the New Covenant) backwards and think the New Covenant equals the New Testament and that it is separate from the Torah.

Too many people read the idea of Israel’s calling and election backwards, failing to understand that Paul’s letters are written for the Gentile mission (see Acts) and concluding falsely that Israel’s relationship to Torah has changed.

Many fail to read the wisdom literature forwards and think the assurances for the righteous are the last word.

Too many people build their conception of atonement on the New Testament and fail to start in Exodus and Leviticus.

The divinity of Messiah is falsely read back into many passages so that the startling revelation of Yeshua’s divinity in the New Testament is muted and the controversy over it misunderstood.

Like the Messiah idea, all the theological themes of the Bible are best read forward. There is no short-cut. Answers worth having don’t come from five-minute investigations. Learning the Bible is a journey and it takes discipline.

If you miss the forward-moving complexity of the Messiah and ideas about the age to come, you will miss a lot of irony and insight in the actions and teachings of Yeshua. You will miss the way he subverted common expectations while remaining firmly within the tradition of Israel’s scriptures. You will take the wildness out of Yeshua and replace him with a tame Messiah. Reading backwards seems a shortcut, but will actually get you lost.

Why Are Jews Liberals?

A retired physician in our congregation just got me a subscription to Commentary, a Jewish magazine about conservative politics. I think he is worried that I am drinking the liberal Manischewitz of American Jewish life (it is true that I have softened in some areas).

I only recently came to understand that Commentary is a Jewish magazine. My friend gives me photocopied articles at times, but I thought the interest in Israel in the magazine came simply as a matter of course for conservative politics. In case anyone is unaware: the current liberal crowd is anti-Israel and would just as soon see Israel disappear and Israel’s greatest friends in the world are conservatives. This point is really a fact and not debatable, but I’ll be interested to see if anyone wishes to oppose me on that statement. Of course, it is possible to be liberal and pro-Israel, but I think those who try to hold that line should really ask why they feel so alone in their liberal circles.

I just received my first issue of Commentary and it is refreshing to hear Jewish voices speaking for conservative values I share: tolerance and respect for religion in the public sphere, opposing tyranny and dictatorships, opposing Islamic radicalism, opposing the legalization of abortion on demand, and supporting economic policies of the more Maimonidean sort (Maimonides believed that charity is helping people help themselves).

The founding editor of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, has a new book out, Why Are Jews Liberals?, and in the September issue of the magazine, six Jewish writers comment on the book. I read their ideas with great interest and I am saving the most surprising for last (and I promise, it has to do with Messianic Judaism specifically).

David Wolpe, Rabbi and Author of Why Faith Matters
I love David Wolpe. Of course, I don’t know him, but when Monique Brumbach recommended his book, I ordered it that day on amazon and I am glad I did.

I’m not sure of Wolpe’s political views, but of the six commentators, he sounds the least conservative politically. His answer: Jews are outsiders, marginalized, and identify with the marginalized. Since the marginalized communities vote Democratic, most American Jews have an instinct to follow suit. Wolpe admits that liberalism tends to be anti-Israel and anti-religion in the public sphere. He also, accurately in my view, admits that liberalism is “faith in the power of government.”

Still, his challenge to conservatism in this brief response to Podhoretz rings true:

I suspect that until conservatism convinces most Jews that they have a sympathy and a practical program for those who are real or putative outsiders, it will remain, among Jews at least, distinctly the minority movement.

Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis Professor and Author of American Judaism: A History
Sarna argues that the true Jewish heritage, as expressed by British Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz in a previous generation, is conservative. He says that Reform Judaism is largely the reason American Jews vote liberal. The political views of the shtetl and of Orthodox communities today is decidedly conservative, he says.

Sarna thinks that as liberal Jewish communities decline (low birthrate, high assimilation) and Orthodox communities increase (high birthrate, low assimilation), American Jews will increasingly become conservative politically.

William Kristol, Editor of the Weekly Standard
In a beautiful response, Kristol says:

I’m going to stop worrying about American Jews. They’re not worth the headache. Either they’ll come to their senses or they won’t, and there’s not much I (or anyone else, I suspect) can do about it.

Kristol recommends we stop Jewish navel-gazing and encourage a different kind of conversation in Jewish communities: about the “glories of Judaism” and not demographics. He proposes that Jews support with their money and their time Jewish education and not Jewish communal affairs. There should be more focus on the well-being of Israel and an acknowledgement that Christians are Israel’s greatest friends and more likely to support israel than most Jews in America.

Jeff Jacoby, Op-Ed Columnist for the Boston Globe
Jacoby, interestingly, says that Jews have been making self-destructive political choices since the days of the appointment of Saul as king of Israel.

The primary motive, he thinks, in Jewish liberalism, is a desire to fit in with society. And while liberalism in the past served Jewish issues, such as FDR’s strong leadership in opposing Judaism’s greatest enemy on earth, the opposite is true now. Liberals want to help and legitimate Judaism’s enemies and Jewish conservatives (a la Lieberman) who support the good of Israel and the demise of Israel’s enemies find themselves scorned.

Jacoby’s assessment of the religious appeal to liberalism to a secular American Jewry is priceless:

It is reassuring for liberal Jews to believe that all people are fundamentally decent and reasonable . . . in a world in which nothing is ever solved by war . . . that America is a secular nation, that God and religion have no place in the public square, and that no debt of gratitude is owed to the Christians who created this extraordinary society in which American Jews have thrived . . . that crime is caused by guns . . . that humanity’s biggest problem is global warming . . . that big government can create prosperity . . . that the biblical prescription for tikkun olam–healing the world–is a synonym for the liberal agenda . . . that Jews are no different from anyone else, that they are not called to a unique role in human events, and that the best way to be a good Jew is to be a conscientious citizen of the world.

David Gelernter, Yale Professor and Author of Judaism: A Way of Being
Gelernter’s unique contribution to this discussion is to suggest looking at Europe as a way of seeing where liberalism is heading. His warnings are a terrifying call to put down the Manischewitz.

European liberalism has made people into mere animals, philosophically speaking. Sex is now akin to “an ATM transaction.” Marriage is for the “lower orders” and partnership, loose and open, is preferred. Attitudes about religion ironically have made liberals into the raving fundamentalist low-church preachers of the day. Europeans are watching their own death, with declining population realistically depleting them nearly out of existence in a few generations. The dead are disposed of with no ceremony much as people dispose of animals. Gelernter concludes:

. . . man should be as happy as an animal among animals, should aspire to nothing higher, and should be inspired to worship the earth and himself if he must worship anything.

There is hope, nonetheless, as Jewish religious genius is capable of rising up and changing the direction of history.

Michael Medved, Syndicated Radio Host and Author of The Five Big Lies About American Business
The most surprising I saved until last. Michael Medved says that the primary motive in Jewish liberalism in America is the drive to oppose Christianity because opposing Christianity is the only meaningful way most American Jews can feel Jewish. Having abandoned Israel (75% of American Jews have never visited!) and Jewish religious life (only 16% attend worship weekly), American Jews are insecure in their Jewishness. The only way to feel part of the tribe without joining a synagogue and becoming devote to Judaism is to vote and talk liberal.

Liberalism is the new bagels and lox.

Medved speaks of both Jews for Jesus and Messianic Jews in a positive light, which surprised the heck out of me. He notes that a liberal rabbi can have a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel speaker and will be applauded for it. But if the same rabbi were to bring in a Messianic Jewish or Jews for Jesus speaker, they would be looking for work immediately. Any opinion is preferable to the idea of Christianity or of Jews believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior (his words, not mine).

Medved’s solution would be for the American Jewish community to pursue Judaism instead of settling for being merely anti-Christian and for American Jews to embrace their Christian friends and find common ground. It’s a shocking proposal because it makes so much sense and yet seems so unlikely.

A Lesson for Us
Christians would do well not only to support Israel, but also to support Judaism. If more Jews read the Torah, let me suggest that more Jews would be open to Yeshua as Messiah. Rather than being anti-Judaism, I wish more of my Christian friends would follow the converse of Medved’s advice and pursue common ground with Judaism.

As Messianic Jews, I think a lesson for us is to embrace Christianity and Judaism. As intermarried couples are our mainstay, we have both Jews and Christians in our synagogues. We can serve both and we can be a bridge between both worlds and we don’t have to turn our backs on Jewish identity to do so.

We are the Jewish branch of the community of Yeshua and Christianity is the non-Jewish branch. We are one olive tree and that tree is Jewish.

With larger Judaism, our relation is different. We are part of Judaism, a part calling for reform within based on the teachings and redemptive actions of Messiah Yeshua. Our voice will not always be welcomed, far from it, but we can’t stop raising our voice from within.

Elul: Preparation, Reflection, Spiritual Discipline

Tomorrow is the first morning of Elul (the month starts tonight at sundown).

Elul is a month of preparation, self-reflection, and spiritual discipline leading up to Rosh HaShanah (sundown, Sept. 18, 2009).

The most noticeable custom of Elul is that a shofar is blown each morning after the morning prayers at the synagogue. The shofar is, of course, the primary custom of Rosh HaShanah. Hearing its sound is a spiritual lesson.

The shofar sound takes us back to Sinai, from which God spoke in thunder and in a trumpet blast:

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. . . . And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. -Exod. 19:16, 19.

It is the sound of freedom blown every fiftieth Yom Kippur:

Then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. -Lev 25:9-10.

It is the sound of renewal and regathering to be blown at the end of the age:

And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem. -Isa. 27:13.

It is mentioned several times in the New Testament in the context of Israel’s regathering and the resurrection of the faithful:

. . . he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. -Matt. 24:31.

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Messiah will rise. -1 Thess. 4:16.

Hearing the shofar every morning during Elul is a daily reminder, leading up to the High Holidays, that God calls to us with a covenant of life and will call to us with a fulfillment of life if we adhere to him as King.

Ascending Sinai Again
There is a tradition, not found in the Bible, that the day Moses went up Mount Sinai for a second time was on the first day of Elul. He was there for forty days and came down with the second set of tablets. The day he came down was Yom Kippur, since Yom Kippur is forty days after the first of Elul.

The tradition has meaning, regardless of what we may think about its literal accuracy.

Elul is a preparation for repentance and asking for a new beginning with God. In this tradition, Elul is when Moses began ascending to obtain from God a second chance at the covenant with God for all Israel.

Elul is that time of year when we begin ascending Sinai again. Having lived too much of my life without following the cycles of Jewish life, I now find the annual season of repentance and renewal of these days to be necessary. I don’t know how I lived without them before.

So we ascend Sinai for forty days, praying each morning and hearing the shofar. If you cannot pray with a minyan, pray in your home. If you cannot hear the shofar in a minyan, hear one in your home. If you cannot blow a shofar, you may find a way to hear one (perhaps by searching for the sound online).

Elul and Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are a spiritual discipline. Like taking steps up a sharp incline into the cloud and fire, they are an effort with a definite reward at the end. Confess and repent and be glad. Life is waiting.

Bringing Back Messianism

I received a question from Scot McKnight about my series this week on the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. He said it seemed I was saying that the image of a marriage supper with God in the age to come resonated and was even instinctual in the religion of Yeshua’s time. How, he asked, can we bring that instinct back to life?

Note: I want you all to think that important theologians like Scot McKnight read my blog daily and ask me for questions about how to teach their theology classes. But I think it would be unfair not to mention that I periodically bug Professor McKnight and others with questions.

I do believe that images like feasting with God in the days of Messiah was a common element in first century Judaism. In my post “The Marriage Supper, Part 1,” I laid out a reference in the New Testament as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls supporting this idea. What can we do to bring back that sense of Messianism for ourselves, our families, and our communities?

Common Judaism and Messianic Banquets
To be sure, the Messianic ideas of first century Judaism were varied. There were ideas about priestly messiahs and prophet messiahs. The idea of the Son of David was at least confusing to some (as E.P. Sanders shows, but I believe he overstates the case and neglects to properly weigh New Testament evidence).

Still, we know how things are in the religious world. Many ideas are fuzzy and people will assent to them while not understanding all that they entail.

A large number of texts from the prophets of Israel were commonly known and provided hope. I wrote a post some time back with a list from my book, A New Look at the Old Testament of the strongest messianic texts of the Hebrew Bible (see it here).

Their generation placed a high value on the table, the idea of a feast, the ordinary and extraordinary occasions when families and friends dined together. This value was part of both the Greco-Roman and Jewish world. This value made its way into the early communities of Yeshua who broke bread together and in some places celebrated agape feasts.

A text like Isaiah 25:6-8 was bound to be popular and catch the imagination of Jews in the first century. Dining with God and/or Messiah brought together two ideas worth celebrating and since the banquet was to be held on the temple mount, make that three.

Why Are We Disconnected?
The person who asked what we can do to bring back the instinct for messianism was asking from a Christian point of view. But before I explore why Christians may have become less connected to messianic imagination, let me first say something about Judaism’s loss. Messianic hope is officially imprinted in the traditional prayers of Judaism, even in the grace after meals. Yet it is sadly lacking in the faith and practice of most in the Jewish community (based on my involvement as well as reading). What can I say but that the Holocaust and the whole tragic history of persecution in the name of the Christian Messiah has been a major factor in turning to other hopes?

I think in Christianity, on the other hand, and I believe I read a similar idea in Michael Wyschogrod, a primary culprit in muted messianism is a faulty satisfaction with present redemption that desires too little the final redemption of all things. What I mean is, being possessed here and now of eternal life, too many are content. Where is the urgency in the end of all injustice, the death of death, and the completion of paradise? When times aren’t so bad, it is easy to be satisfied. Why urge the return of Yeshua?

The remedy for this lack of enthusiasm is simple. We need to immerse ourselves in the texts that moved the generations of Yeshua, Paul, and John. We need to understand what a cheap substitute for the world to come we are too easily satisfied with. Words of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Jeremiah should come readily to our lips.

So many think they have enough Bible to understand what is going on. No doubt they fail to be encouraged when they read detailed speculations or seemingly endless expositions of prophecies and lists of Assyrian kings and so on. Prophecy can be boring. It doesn’t have to be.

Thinking we have enough Bible, we invest our time in other things. For some, this includes reading books on devotional topics or even theology when we don’t really understand enough about the source material, the Bible, to benefit from theological reading.

We have distractions, religious and non-religious, and we don’t value like we should the glimpses of a better world that God has passed down to us through prophets and apostles. Some left aside all such reading when they had a bad experience or two with “prophecy” in some earlier part of their life and development.

The thing is, and N.T. Wright’s recent Christian book Surprised by Hope is evidence of this, the prophecies don’t say what we think they say. A slew of Christians read Wright’s book (and Alcorn’s Heaven) and found a paradigm change.

The ancients who walked with the God of Israel listened to these texts and made them part of their world. We can easily do the same.

********************************
My book The World to Come (available on amazon here) would be one place to easily find and comprehend the messianic texts of the Bible.

The Marriage Supper, Part 2

As I have read through Revelation, I have found it to be the culmination of a long story. It is the most developed and mature theology of the entire canon.

John, the Jewish apostle, from his position in the communities of Asia Minor, where Greek and Roman life abound and not so much Jewish life, represents perfectly the theology of Revelation. John brings the nations together with Israel under one Messiah. It is a theme to which Revelation turns again and again by reapplying promises about Israel’s age to come to include all of the nations. Yet in doing so, Revelation does not, contrary to many oblivious commentators, write Israel out of the story. Revelation is the retelling of the story for the nations, with Israel’s role ever in the background.

There are many ways Israel’s story and the story of the nations are merged. Not least of these is in the image of the marriage supper. On Mt. Zion (Jerusalem) a banquet will be laid out and the nations were always to be included (Isa. 25:6-8). Only in Revelation do we begin to understand how.

Israel’s Marriage to Adonai
Some people see the marriage metaphors between Israel and God beginning in the Torah itself. God rests on Mt. Sinai in a cloud, an image much like the later custom of a Jewish wedding canopy or chuppa. The chuppa custom in Jewish weddings likely comes from Mt. Sinai and not the other way around, yet there was already some idea of God covering Israel intimately even in the beginning. In Isaiah 4:5, for example, God promises a canopy (chuppa) over Mt. Zion in the last days.

If Mt. Sinai is God spreading his covering over Israel, the commandments themselves are like a ketubah, a wedding contract. In a modern Jewish ketubah, the husband promises to provide love, nourishment, shelter, and children. A ketubah is a covenant and so is the Torah. God promises Israel protection and nourishment and love in return for faithfulness.

Israel, the Bride of Adonai
The prophets make Israel’s marriage to God explicit. Isaiah says, “Your maker is your husband” (54:5). In Hosea 2, a passage now used daily when the tefillin are wrapped on the hand as well as in the wedding ceremony, we read, “I will betroth you to me forever” (2:19).

The image of God’s marriage to Adonai becomes an explicit tale in Ezekiel 16. John Goldingay says it is like a late-night mini-series we are ashamed to admit watching afterwards. Orphan Israel, found abused and bleeding, is taken in by God. The Lord of heaven and earth spreads his skirts over Israel, redeeming her from shame and abuse and taking her as his wife.

The Church, the Bride of Messiah
Paul, the Jewish apostle to the non-Jewish nations, spells out the relationship of the church, the redeemed from the nations.

In one of the rare places in which Paul addresses the role of the nations and Israel together, he subsumes the church within Israel. The church is made up of wild branches on a Jewish olive tree (Rom. 11:13-24).

Yet in marital metaphors, Paul says something about the church that is nearly identical to what is said of Israel. The church is the bride of Messiah. “I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband,” Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:2. Ephesians 5 has an extended metaphor about marriage and the church as married to Messiah.

The Full Vision: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb
As Yeshua is about to return, the white rider riding down his enemies and making a kingdom of peace, the multitude sings in anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7). An angel tells John to write that all who are invited to the marriage supper are blessed (Rev. 19:9).

In Revelation, Israel and the church appear in various scenes. The Jewish apostle to the non-Jewish region of Asia Minor expands the well-known promises of Israel’s prophets to include the church. And here in Revelation the theme of marriage to God at last unites the forerunners of Jacob with the redeemed from every tribe and nation.

The Marriage Supper, Part 1

I’d imagine that some of the force of an ancient angelic invitation has been lost on modern generations. When an angelic herald told John on Patmos to “write this” and said, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb,” I’d suggest that John and his generation were far more ecstatic about this invitation than our generation.

For one thing, they understood the concept. A simple form of a divine feast was already a common element in the Judaism of their day. How can our generation recover a longing for a table prepared in the absence of all enemies?

I’d like to offer some thoughts on the marriage supper in two parts. The name naturally divides itself into marriage and supper, and it seems good to me to begin with the supper part.

I could mention the fact that supper, even in ordinary mortal terms, is a joyful concept already. The miracle of a table laden with food is more apparent when food is more work to come by, but we can surely appreciate even today the joy of a good meal made ready and enjoyed in the company of our closest loved ones.

But the real starting place to understand the marriage supper is Isaiah 25:6-8:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord Hashem will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah was read as a sort of Messianic handbook in John’s time. Every image of the age to come was well-known and passages like this one were well-known and loved.

The idea of a Messianic banquet was a part of common Judaism. It is a theme in Luke’s gospel (which features eight banquets in which Yeshua teaches a table-full of willing or unwilling students).

In the “Rule of the Congregation in the Final Days” (1Q28a [1QSa]) we read an interesting piece of eschatological etiquette in 2:11-22. When we are seated at the banquet table with Messiah, we should not eat an olive or even dip our finger in the hummus until Messiah has said ha-motzi (the prayer over bread). It’s a good thing to know and maybe knowing it will reform our table manners here and now.

There is still one other interesting vignette about the notion of a banquet in the age to come. It happened when Yeshua was seated at a table teaching a bunch of Pharisees. He was challenging them and you might think they would all resent him assuming the role of teacher with them when they were eminent men and teachers themselves. But at least one of these gathered Pharisees understood, perhaps even hinting that Yeshua might be the one most fit to teach at a banquet:

When one of those who sat at table with him heard this, he said to him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” -Luke 14:15

So, while the idea may sound strange to us, when John spoke of a marriage supper of the Lamb, his hearers were acquainted with the idea. A supper in the world to come, a supper presided over by Messiah himself (the Lamb), was a regular part of their future hope.

Educate Yourself 101

Education is changing. It is becoming more accessible to more people. At the same time, standards for what is good and bad education or information are going down. As there is more access to information, there is also, sadly, more access to bad sources of information.

What can you do to become better informed? What can busy people do to become educated thinkers and doers with a passion for God and Messiah?

The First and Most Important Step
A Bible reading plan . . . and one that is based on how the Bible is written.

Sometime back I did a post on “Reading the Bible as a Forward-Moving Conversation.” I still think that is the best way to read it. The simplest plan, if you want to get through the Bible in a year is so complicated, I call it the Leman method:

(1) Obtain a bookmark (any scrap of paper will do in a pinch).

(2) Start reading the Bible at the beginning.

(3) Read 3 or 4 chapters a day if you want to finish in a year (15-20 minutes a day).

(4) Read until you get to the end.

Why do I say this is first and most important? Well, most people aren’t used to reading the Bible as a story and a conversation that moves forward through time. Most people think of the Bible like a dictionary or encyclopedia. They look up a verse here or there about a topic. There is nothing that will keep you from understanding the Bible quite so much as reading it like a dictionary. Try reading a Harlan Coben mystery that way. You’ll never understand it.

Second Steps: Added Resources
Don’t think for a second you need just your Bible to understand your Bible. We live thousands of years after it was written. You can no more understand the Bible on your own than you can build a Lexus out of a giant mound of parts and raw materials.

So you need to add some other kinds of reading or learning to your Bible reading. In terms of your education about the Bible and theology, I may surprise you when I say: it might be best to avoid books about theology and practical living topics at first. Here is what I mean: you might want to get some Bible familiarity under your belt before you read a book about prayer, marriage, or life after death. Many of the poorly thought out ideas people have about God come from such books. But after you have spent some time and have a good feel for Biblical story and thought, then you will be able to read those kind of books more critically.

So what kind of reading is most helpful: how about reading books (recommended by a reliable teacher) that help you understand the history, people, culture and thought of Biblical times?

I will be making some recommendations from time to time. Readers, please comment and suggest some you have found helpful (I do reserve the right in the comments to challenge and critique any suggestions, though).

Third Steps: Making it a Life-Pursuit
You may want to take classes (if you are in Messianic Judaism, I highly recommend the online courses of MJTI at mjti.org, which are for undergraduate and graduate level students).

You may want to get a subscription to magazine like Biblical Archaeology Review.

You might subscribe to FFOZ’s Torah Club or find other regular disciplines to keep you growing and refresh your thinking about Biblical and theological topics often.

The thing is, though we are all busy, we all have at least some time for learning. It doesn’t have to cut into your family and entertainment time. Be creative.

Small investments every day over a long time pay off.

PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Puzzling Pharisee Statement

This episode is one of the more important ones for understanding Yeshua’s mission and message.

Yeshua from time to time said things that perplex most of his followers. He wasn’t a simple guy at all. Neither was his world a simple one to understand.

This reflection grew out of some reading I have been enjoying on the history, theology, and practice of the Pharisees. How could Yeshua make this particular statement about them? How does this statement call for many people to re-direct their thinking about who Yeshua was and what his mission and message are all about?

LISTEN ONE OF TWO WAYS:

(1) If you have iTunes, search Yeshua in the iTunes store and subscribe.

(2) If you don’t use iTunes, go to this link at derekleman.com.

Ezekiel: Prophet on Steroids, Part 2

There just isn’t a prophet quite like Ezekiel. Isaiah . . . wears Ezekiel pajamas. Ezekiel can kill two stones with one bird. He can order a Big Mac at Burger King . . . and get one.

Okay, well, maybe I’m confusing him with Chuck Norris. But he is sort of the Chuck Norris of prophets.

Last time I started a list of ways Ezekiel gives more of what other prophets do. Ezekiel seems to take the prophetic calling to its maximum intensity. The list is from John Goldingay’s commentary on Ezekiel found in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. Dunn and Rogerson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). I continue now with #’s 8-14:

#8 Recognizing Hashem
Other prophets look for people to recognize the glory and authority of Hashem in their daily lives. With Ezekiel it is a major theme. Goldingay says, “The phrases ‘they/you shall know that I am [Hashem]’ and similar expressions occur over seventy times.”

When God says repeatedly things like, “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord,” the idea is that we will recognize God when his words come to pass. There is something paradoxical about people reading the Lord’s words and being told they will know he is the Lord in some future realization. The idea is that there are levels of knowing. And God will bring us to higher levels of knowing in his time. We will know him like we never have before.

#9 The Disrespected Prophet
Other prophets know they speak to a rebellious people and will not be listened to. In Ezekiel the realization of Israel’s (and humanity’s) complete resistance to the authority of God is understood to the maximum. Ezekiel will speak to the rebellious house and none will listen. Yet he will speak anyway and his words will nonetheless go out and fulfill God’s purpose.

#10 The Pained Prophet
Other prophets pay a price for their tough stand and demands of righteousness directed to a selfish world. Ezekiel will pay more. His wife will die in the plague. He will be bound and mute. And his message will not be listened to in ways that are more extreme than any other prophet.

First, he will tell the exiles from the first deportation to Babylon that things will get worse. These people who have been transported away from their land, friends, and family will not believe it can get worse. Then, as word of the end of the most dear thing in the world, Jerusalem, comes to them, Ezekiel will do the opposite. He will describe a renewal of Israel, a resurrection, and a new Temple, greater than any that had ever been built, in a renewed Jerusalem, surpassing the old one in every way. No one will believe the grim news or the beautiful vision.

#11 The Preacher of Israel’s Prostitution
Other prophets declare indictment and judgment in the name of God’s holiness. Ezekiel not only will take judgment and indictment oracles to the extreme, but will be personally responsible like no prophet before him as a watchman.

Goldingay says that other prophets go on for four verses about judgment against Judah but Ezekiel goes non-stop for four chapters (chs. 8-11). Even more to the extreme, while other prophets will speak of Israel’s idolatry as adultery committed against God, Ezekiel:

. . . turns this betrayal into a late-night mini-series which respectable people hesitate to admit viewing, and after doing so go to bed with a bad taste in their mouth (see chs. 16; 23).

#12 The Foreteller of Future Beauty
In the other direction of extreme, no prophet is as vivid as Ezekiel about the greatness of God’s renewal of Israel and the earth. Goldingay says:

Some of Ezekiel’s most elaborate visions picture the wondrous restoration of Davidic shepherding, the miraculous resuscitation of the people, and especially the laying out of a new temple at the center of a newly allocated land. This last vision is the focus of his most sustained influence on early Christian writers: see Revelation.

#13 Preacher of Lord Hashem’s Authority
Other prophets believe in the sovereign rule of God. Ezekiel calls God over and over Lord Hashem (Adonai followed by God’s name, poorly translated as Lord God in English versions). He not only increases the verbal majesty of God’s name by preceding it with a title of honor, but he insists more than any other prophet that God is involved in all happenings.

Note: Goldingay implies that Ezekiel did not believe in free will. I think he goes too far. Yet it is worth noting, as he does, that Ezekiel implies God’s involvement in the apostasy of the righteous (3:20), the deception of false prophets (14:9), and the reading of deceptive Babylonian omens (21:22-23).

#14 The Chronological Prophet
No other prophet is so careful to document years and seasons as Ezekiel. Goldingay suggests this may be a function of Ezekiel’s training as a priest. It also may be to clarify for later audiences that all Ezekiel’s words came to a specific community at a specific time. The sense of realism in Ezekiel is hard to miss.

The Manly Prophetness of Ezekiel
Goldingay’s list of attributes of this neglected and dreaded book, with its forty-eight long chapters, is hopefully incentive to some other, besides myself, to read the prophet of the exile in Babylon.

Ultimately, I believe that Ezekiel’s prophetic resemblance to Yeshua is under-appreciated. Though by no means identical, I believe there are several areas in which he approached the man of sorrows like no other. As I spend the next half a decade or more researching this fascinating book, such a comparison will always be at the back of my mind. Ezekiel was a sign for Israel, suffering himself the pains of Israel’s exile. And we know the man of sorrows took Israel’s sorrows in a bigger way. May God fill us with a desire to understand.

Ezekiel: Prophet on Steroids, Part 1

When I was new to the study of Torah, there was something about Leviticus that drew me. It was famous as the book no one read. It was arcane, an understatement, and challenging for someone knew to Torah. I read it hungrily and made one of the best decisions of my academic life: to buy the three-volume commentary of Jacob Milgrim in the Anchor series. While I still have not endorsed the documentary hypothesis, I nonetheless learned more the Milgrim’s commentary about the theology of the Torah than ever before.

I knew that Leviticus could not be my area of study when I recently decided to prepare for doctoral work. Milgrom has done it all.

So, I thought about another juggernaut of the Bible, Ezekiel. And I am finding that there is more interest in Ezekiel than I would have imagined. No one is more surprised than I am, but my most popular posting of this year, even surpassing now all of my Passover posts, is one I wrote on June 1: “Ezekiel on My Mind” (read it here).

I have a long road ahead of me and I am not even yet a novice in Ezekiel studies. In November I will sit in the Ezekiel section at the Society for Biblical Literature Conference (SBL) in New Orleans. I have purchased a few commentaries.

This weekend I read something that knocked me over. In the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible edited by Dunn and Rogerson (2003), I found that the Ezekiel chapter was written by John Goldingay, a scholar whose work on the Psalms I have appreciated. In his introduction he lists fourteen points in which Ezekiel is “like the other prophets, only more so.”

Well, I’m new to Ezekiel studies. I can’t say as yet if I agree with all fourteen points or not. But in the sort of spirit of bragging that “my area of study is way cooler than your area of study,” here is part 1 of my retelling of Goldingay’s list and why Ezekiel studies make work in other prophetic literature seem like the labors of girlie-men (sorry, ladies, just an expression):

#1 Technicolor Visions
In Goldingay’s words: “Other prophets had visionary experiences; Ezekiel’s are technicolor, widescreen, virtual reality as he is again and again dazzled by awesome manifestations of [Hashem’s] splendor.”

Ezekiel’s visions are so Bluray that rabbinic law dictates a minimum age of 30, the same age as Ezekiel was when he had the first vision, as a requirement for studying the chariot visions. I should stop right here and install a program requiring your passport or birth certificate to prove your age before allowing you to read more. And, by the way, Ezekiel had no less than nineteen visions of Hashem’s glory.

#2 The Physical, Violent Hand of Hashem
In Goldingay’s words: “Other prophets felt God’s presence, and some were seized, shaken, gripped, and impelled by the powerful, heavy, irresistible hand of [Hashem]; this happens seven times to Ezekiel . . .”

No prophet was manhandled (God-handled?) quite like Ezekiel. He was not only transported in the Spirit, but he is yanked to his feet, lifted between earth and heaven, muted by the Spirit except when God wanted him to talk, bound to his house, bereft of his wife, and taken here and there wherever God wanted him to go.

#3 The Rushing Wind/Spirit of Hashem
Other prophets felt and claimed the empowerment of the ruach (wind, breath, spirit) of God. As Goldingay says, the Spirit is “dynamic, unpredictable, and irresistible.” For Ezekiel, Spirit or wind manifestations literally move him, not just figuratively.

In Ezekiel 8:3, a hand reaches down from heaven and grabs Ezekiel by the lock of his hair and the Spirit (wind?) of God lifts him up between earth and heaven. Is this Spirit or wind or the breath of God?

#4 The Messenger of Lord Hashem
Other prophets feel they receive messages from Hashem to deliver with the authority of messengers of Hashem. Ezekiel does this no less than fifty times and also is bolder in declaring Hashem’s authority, calling him more than any other prophet Lord Hashem (Adonai followed by God’s name, poorly translated as Lord God in English versions).

#5 Parables and Fables
In Goldingay’s words: “Other prophets used fables, folktales, and parables (e.g., 2 Samuel 12; Isaiah 5). Ezekiel turns a folktale motif into an allegory which occupies over four pages (ch. 16).” Goldingay also gives more examples of fables and parables in Ezekiel.

#6 Mimes and Acted Parables
Okay, Ezekiel was weird and very rugged to be able to do the things he did. Other prophets acted out mimes. Ezekiel was the mimer extraordinaire. Hey, he laid on his side for 390 days eating Ezekiel bread!

#7 The Recaster of Israel
Other prophets spoke of Israel and Judah, the divided kingdoms. Ezekiel spoke to the house of Israel, by which he meant the small community of deportees from Judah. This group was by no means the whole nation of Israel, but Ezekiel addressed them as such. They were the remnant, from whom God would rebuild Israel, not just Judah. Joined later by more exiles, they would reconstitute all of the tribes, as the visions of ch. 36 and 37 make clear.

More to Come . . .
There will be more examples of Ezekiel’s manly prophetness in part 2. Let me just say that Goldingay’s list of Ezekiel’s excesses makes me all the more thrilled to be working in this fantastic book. I hope it inspires some of you to read and reread it.

Not by any means least among the prophets, Ezekiel is one of those overlooked treasures (along with Leviticus) that needs a renaissance.