Ecumenical

ec-u-men-i-cal -adjective

1. general; universal.
2. pertaining to the whole Christian church.
3. promoting or fostering Christian unity throughout the world.
4. of or pertaining to the movement (ecumenical movement), esp. among Protestant groups since the 1800s, aimed at achieving universal Christian unity and church union through international interdenominational organizations that cooperate on matters of mutual concern.
5. interreligious or interdenominational: an ecumenical marriage.

From Dictionary.com

I honestly didn't think I'd be writing on this blog today. I felt a "drive" to write something but no actual content seemed to come to me. Then I read this at Judah Himango's Kineti L'Tziyon:

The thing is, Kinzer is quite openly ecumenical towards Christians who keep various traditions, and to Messianic Jews of all shades of traditional observance.

If he's ecumenical within Judaism and Christianity, then it logically follows that he's ecumenical within the Messianic movement too - even to the One-Law crowd.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Mark Kinzer is also tolerant towards Torah-observant Gentiles, but his special emphasis and ministry towards Gentiles is combatting supercessionism - as James' blog posts are helping me to see.

Okay, one-law may not be his cup of tea, but he wouldn't break table fellowship over this issue surely.

-Joseph W.

Since I'm reading Mark Kinzer's Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People my ear perked up (metaphorically speaking) at the "sound" of his name. I also "coincidentally" (I believe in a created universe, there's no such thing as coincidence), I had coffee this morning with a fellow who knows Kinzer and speaks extremely well of him. Sometimes the blogosphere has a tendency to misrepresent a person's intent, even without meaning to. Ecumenism; the desire and movement to attempt and achieve greater unity in the community of the believers in Jesus/Yeshua continues to come to the forefront of my thoughts.

It's been almost a month since I started this blog and my personal journey of faith by writing Fractured Fellowship, in which I sought to address the apparent lack of connection or unity between Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic/One Law/Torah Observant movement. I realize the labels are somewhat problematic, but there's an umbrella under which we operate that doesn't quite include either traditional Christianity or rabbinic Judaism and this umbrella contains a set of disagreements and issues we have with each other. Ironically, we all state that, in our own ways, we want or should want to reach out to the Christians and Jews that live and operate outside of our umbrella. So, how can we do this when we don't even have unity with each other?

I think Judah was speaking to the same point on Kineti L'Tziyon today, but it was Joseph who crystalized it for me. I've been trying to bring some internal order from chaos post-my coffee discussion this morning, trying to fit the bits and pieces of what was said into my overall puzzle. I believe this is also the overall puzzle of Gentiles who have entered this movement based on a set of assumptions. We are now finding that those assumptions and paradigms, presented with good motives and accepted with open arms if not quite open eyes, aren't what we thought they were.

Along with the Kinzer book, I've also been reading Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography and there seems to be a few points where Chilton and Kinzer actually meet (which I'll go over in more detail when I write the review of Kinzer's book). One of the points Chilton makes is that there seemed to be a difference of approach and conceptualization on how to incorporate pagan Gentiles into the Messianic Jewish movement (Gentiles who had previously been God-fearers weren't quite such an issue) in the first century. One assumption I had previously maintained, was that there at one time, must have been a unity of thought about how to bring Gentiles into a Jewish worship of Yeshua by the Messianic Jewish leadership. From what I'm reading in Chilton, that unity may never have existed.

Think about it and ask, what if there never was unity within the Messianic Jewish movement, lead by James, the brother of the Master, as to how to approach, bring in, and integrate Gentiles; former polytheistic pagans, into Messianic worship? I had always believed that there was an original template for the early "church" that would describe "Jews and Gentiles who gather together in peace to worship the Almighty and His Son, our Messiah, Yeshua", as I describe on the main page of my congregation's website. If I'm wrong and there is no template, then there is no model for how that's supposed to work today. If I'm wrong and there was no unity as to how Gentiles were supposed to be grafted in, even in the very earliest days of Jewish evangelizing to the Gentiles, then on what do we base our ecumenical efforts today?

Pre-Yeshua and Pre-Jewish evangelism to the Gentiles, the boundaries that defined Jews and Gentile God-fearers in the synagogue must have been abundantly clear. They must have been as clear as it is when the occasional Gentile visits and worships at a traditional rabbinic Jewish synagogue today. No Gentile in his or her right mind would walk into an Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform synagogue thinking they were really Jewish. If the Gentile were at all rational, he or she would enter into the synagogue assuming a "one-down" position and being more than willing to defer to the Jewish authority and Jewish congregational membership around them. There'd be no question about whether or not they should wear a tallit (though all males, Jewish or otherwise, are requested to cover their head with a kippah). Unless they came in with Jewish friends or Jewish family (usually through marriage), they'd do what anyone does where they enter a place where they have no role or standing; they'd find a seat in the back where they could stay out of the way and they'd keep quiet.

The "problem" comes when Gentiles, "though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root" (Romans 11:17), find ourselves glued into the same "olive root" as the "natural (Jewish) branches". Gentiles had never been grafted into the Jewish root before. This wasn't like being a God-fearer when you knew your relationship to the Jewish people and to God was dicey at best. Now, as "grafted in", there was a suggestion and promise of some sort of fellowship, bonding, and even equality with "natural Israel". What did the Jews and Gentiles do next?

I don't have an exhaustive recall of every bit of the New Testament writings in my head, but as far as I'm beginning to suspect, nobody knew. Yes, I'm aware of Acts 15 and Acts 21, but that only touches on a tiny slice of the pie about how Jews and Gentiles with a common Messiah and a common God felt about each other, saw each other, and interacted with each other. God-fearers, such as Cornelius (Acts 10) had gained an understanding of Jewish choseness, culture, and identity from his position as an outsider who learned to love, not only the Jewish God, but the Jewish people. Receiving a visit from an angel, having the Apostle Peter, who had walked beside the Messiah himself, enter his home, and being allowed to receive the Holy Spirit of God, along with other righteous Gentiles, must have gone beyond his wildest dreams. At the same time, the behavioral interaction patterns Cornelius and people like him probably wouldn't have changed, so the God-fearers who became "Messianic" really didn't make waves. Peter's challenges may not have been as difficult as he originally thought.

By comparison, Paul may have had the tougher row to hoe. He had to approach Gentiles who had absolutely no experience or knowledge of the Jewish God ("you mean there's only one?") and the Jewish Messiah. With no previous behavioral context in which to access and apply to Messianic worship, there may have been a lot more friction and struggle in the integration process right from the start.

Certainly Paul's letter to the Galatians seems to indicate there was confusion about who to listen to and how to approach Messianic worship as a Gentile convert. What if these hurtles were never successfully crossed? What if what started out as a mess stayed a mess and never got better?

This certainly would then set the stage for the beginning of the Jewish-Gentile schism in the Messianic movement in the early second century and have fueled the widening of the gap as time progressed. Without the synagogue to act as a stabilizing rudder to Gentile Messianic worship, the fledgling Christian church spun out of control and reorganized in a form (probably multiple forms) that was all but devoid of any Jewish background or practice. If you've ever read Richard E. Rubenstein's When Jesus Became God (and yes, with a title like that, it is controversial in Christian circles), you understand that the jockeying for position of the various factions of Christianity in the days of Constantine were conflictual to the point of violence, rioting, and even murder. Early Gentile Christianity wasn't pretty.

I'm not saying all this to be divisive or to argue, but to illustrate that what we (what I) have been searching for; an original pattern on which to base Gentile participation in the worship of and lifestyle in the Jewish Messiah doesn't appear to exist. If that's the case, do we simply throw up our hands, say that there is no established method except what exists in the Christian church and part company? Here's the core problem.

Telling a Gentile about the Torah; about a deeper understanding of who God is and who human beings can be in Him, is a bit like letting the proverbial Genie out of the bottle. Once you pop the cork, you won't be able to easily get it back in. In fact, once out, the concepts, practices, and lifestyle expand to the point where they'll never fit back into the original container.

I was trying to explain that this morning to someone (I never got to the point of using this metaphor), but this is why when, for instance, First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) announced it's basic theological shift away from One Law and more in line with Messianic Judaism, all the wheels fell off the cart and Gentile MJ/OL adherents experienced an emotional power surge of outrage and betrayal. I remember going into shock for a bit myself and recovery is slow. Throwing a "dysfunctional family" into crisis may be therapeutically beneficial in order to help them become more healthy, but it still doesn't feel good, and a positive outcome isn't guaranteed. I'm not saying any of this is FFOZ's fault and admire their courage and honesty for making such a change, but the outcome was inevitable.

Previously, what I would have said was that there's a void now facing Gentiles who have become spiritually and emotionally attached to at least some of the Torah (such as the Law isn't dead, it wasn't nailed to the cross with Jesus, and the Gentiles haven't really replaced the Jews in the covenant promises of God), but I'm not so sure that the void isn't just an illusion. It's not an illusion emotionally. People's feelings are real. The problem is, what we, as Gentile "Messianics" once thought applied to us never applied. The unity between Jews and Gentiles in the Messiah may well have never existed. There may never been a unity within first century Messianic Judaism as to what to do with Gentile converts once they became grafted in (at least those who had not previously been God fearers).

What do you do with ecumenism now? History tells us that the Christian church, in all it's many and varied forms, operated as it's own "thing" and the church and synagogue remained more or less apart from each other all down through the long centuries. Even now, as at least some churches are acknowledging the Jewish people are still the special, chosen people of God, Christians maintain that to be saved, all people, including Jews, must accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and homogenize into the church. Judaism rightly maintains its distinction and continues to not even entertain the notion that Jesus could possibly be the Messiah if, for no other reason, because rabbinic Judaism doesn't require the Messiah to be God. The church and synagogue maintain a polite relationship with each other and we all feel pretty much free to use the term "Judeo-Christian" but there will always be certain boundaries that will never, ever be crossed, at least this side of the Messiah's return.

Messianic Judaism is neither fish nor fowl (and I'm not even talking about One Law now). While internally experiencing a completely Jewish identity and lifestyle, the larger rabbinic and secular Jewish world does not accept MJ as a Judaism but rather, sees it as yet another form of Christianity. At worst (and I had a Jewish woman tell me this once), they see MJ as another form of "Holocaust", designed to "trick" Jews to convert into Christians.

Some of the blame can be laid at the feet of One Law, but pointing fingers is meaningless at this point. The damage is done. In reality, OL is really just a drop in the racial memory bucket of the Jewish people, who have plenty of other reasons to be wary of any flavor of a Christiandom (regardless of the label) that apparently is seeking to rid the world of Jews through conversion.

The flip side of the coin is how the church sees Messianic Judaism and One Law (and like rabbinic Judaism, they don't actually see a difference between the two) which can be viewed as being "under the Law" and their (our) efforts to connect with the church are viewed as an attempt to bring the church out from grace and back into "Law slavery".

OK, I'm painting a pretty grim picture, but I'm beginning to see that such "grimness" has always been there in these relationships. Whatever Yeshua was thinking when he said, "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", we can never know. If he had a picture as to how this was supposed to look and a process by which it was to be accomplished, we can't experience it.

There's this clawing, frustrated creature living inside my chest that wants me to do something to repair this situation and it won't leave me alone. I feel it gnawing inside of me, disturbing my sleep and interrupting my thoughts. It wants me to fix this whole thing somehow, at least within my own little corner of the universe, but I'm running out of tools and diagrams.I've gone through "Plan B", "Plan C", and most of the rest of the alphabet and I'm running out of letters.

If anyone out there has an idea about how to cast a wide enough net and bring us all together for the first time ("fishers of men" from Matthew 4:19 comes to mind), now's the time.