Why Don’t Christians Count the Omer?

You shall count for yourselves -- from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving -- seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days. -Leviticus 23:15-16

You shall count for yourselves seven weeks, from when the sickle is first put to the standing crop shall you begin counting seven weeks. Then you will observe the Festival of Shavu'ot for the LORD, your God. -Deuteronomy 16:9-10

Last week, our congregation had our annual community Passover Seder. As always, it was a wonderful time and is still in my heart on this last day of the week of Unleavened Bread. Of course, Passover, among other things, starts the beginning of the 50 days of Counting the Omer. Originally, this was the period of time between the Children of Israel leaving slavery in Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai 49 days later, by the Almighty Himself. The counting period is considered to have been a time of spiritual cleansing for the Children of Israel in preparation for receiving the Torah of God.

Since that time, the period of Counting the Omer between Passover and Shavuot has a similar function in Judaism. Actually, the preparation for Passover itself is a time to clean out the "hametz"; leaven or sin in our lives, so Jews prepare their souls to break with the sins of the past and dedicate the coming year to drawing closer to God. Passover also "starts the clock" of the seven weeks (also why Shavuot is called "The Festival of Weeks") of Omer counting and the anticipation of Shavuot, which is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

The meaning of the Torah for observant Jewish people goes well beyond what the Bible typically means to the Evangelical Church (which is not to say that the church doesn't highly regard the Bible). It's not "just" considered the Word of God. Jews consider the Torah as having a spiritual and mystical "life" beyond the printed word. In a sense, they believe that the world was created for the sake of Torah and that if the Jews had rejected Torah at Sinai, all of Creation would have been undone. Torah is also considered the means by which God created the Universe and everything in it. Torah is the guide to Holy living, the path to wisdom, and the means to draw nearer to God. Torah scholars are considered on a higher spiritual level and closer to the Creator because of their study, and Torah study and worship of God are considered the same thing.

I'm providing this context to communicate the incredible importance that the giving of the Torah has to the Jewish people. That means the Counting of Omer is a time of tremendous anticipation. It's like knowing the most important event in your life will happen 50 days from now. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event that will change you forever. Naturally, during that 50 days, it will be all you can think and talk about, and it stands to reason you'd want to spend those 50 days getting as ready as possible for this exceptionally important moment.

That's what the Counting of the Omer is. A period of intense preparation for an encounter with God. It's a countdown to the day when you will receive the most important gift in the world from the Creator of the world. But what does this have to do with Christianity?

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues (languages) as the Spirit enabled them. -Acts 2:1-4 (NIV)

The festival of Shavu'ot arrived, and the believers all gathered together in one place. Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. They were all filled with the Ruach HaKodesh and began to talk in different languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak. -Acts 2:1-4 (CJB)

What the Church calls Pentecost and considers the anniversary of the giving to the Holy Spirit to the disciples in Jerusalem, Judaism calls Shavuot and considers the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai; but they're the same day. A too casual reading of Acts 2 might cause us to forget a few things. First of all, the Disciples were all Jewish, so it makes a huge amount of sense that they'd be celebrating the Biblical festivals, including Shavuot. They'd be gathered together in fact because of Shavuot, in remembrance of that day and in obedience to the commandments.

Also in obedience of the commandments, the Disciples would have been counting the Omer, just as their forefathers had done for thousands of years. The crucifixion of Yeshua (Jesus) on the threshold of Passover and his subsequent resurrection and ascension wouldn't have done anything to change that. Certainly, there's nothing in the Bible that records Yeshua saying to not count the Omer that year and that "all bets were off", so to speak.

So here you have a group of Jews, who have come to faith in Yeshua as the risen Messiah. They have gone through 49 days of counting, and are now gathered together for the festival of Shavuot, commemorating the giving of the Torah. The giving of Torah is the most important and binding event in the lives of every Jew in existence, past, present, and future (it was the reason why Acts 2 records that there were Jews in Jerusalem from all over the diaspora, and why they understood the disciples when they were speaking in different languages; the languages of the nations they lived in). With the stage set, God does something incredible; He gives another gift, this time, the Holy Spirit to dwell within the disciples and to specifically empower them to begin the mission assigned to them by their Master and Messiah, Yeshua at the end of the book of Matthew.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." -Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV)

The events in Matthew 28 and Acts 2 go hand in hand. Matthew 28 defines the assignment and Acts 2 provides the tools to accomplish the assignment. It wasn't that the Holy Spirit didn't connect to faithful and righteous people before that time. After all, consider the Prophets and, at the end of Exodus when the Shekinah; the Glory of God, descends onto and into the Tabernacle in the desert, the Talmud states that at that moment, each Jew was to consider that a small piece of the Shekinah was dwelling in their individual hearts. I know that Christianity makes a distinction between the Spirit dwelling "on" vs. "in", but why would God do that? The Spirit is the Spirit. Why would all righteous people be considered "second hand (spiritual) citizens" prior to the coming of the Messiah?

The other and primary connection that needs to be understood is the link between Exodus 20 and Acts 2; the giving of Torah and the giving of the Spirit. I don't believe that, in a created universe, there is such a thing as coincidence; certainly not on the level of Shavuot and Pentecost "just happening" to be on the same day. Therefore, it fulfills the plan of God that these two events be connected. On a larger stage, perhaps the giving of the Spirit enables us to fully implement, not only the Matthew 28 directive, but the Torah as well.

Does that mean, in essence, these two events are the same event? If so, or at least if they are intimately connected, it has incredible implications in the life of every believer in Yeshua (that is, the life of every Christian). What would have been assumed by the Jewish Disciples is considered revolutionary to we 21st Century Gentile believers. 1st Century Jews wouldn't have batted an eye at the thought of obeying the Torah commands. They were taught this from childhood. If the Spirit enabled them to more completely obey the commands of God and "The Great Commission" as it is called by the Church, then so much the better. But what about us?

If the Spirit enables the modern Church to continue the commandment of Jesus to "go and make disciples of all nations", that's completely acceptable and understood (as long as you understand that the terms "convert" and disciple" aren't synonyms). However, understanding that these two events and concepts are also fused with the giving of Torah at Sinai and the enabling to "keep Torah", is likely a stunning revelation to a non-Jewish believing audience. There is much debate over how a Gentile disciple of the Master is to "keep the Torah" vs. the obligation of the Jewish people to the commandments, but given the undeniable link between Shavuot and Pentecost, I can't see any reason why a Christian shouldn't count the Omer.

In other words, given all of my prior statements about why it is so important for observant Jews, to this day, to count the Omer, and prepare themselves for a "close encounter" with God, if Christians believe that the giving of the Spirit is also a "close encounter", then why not count the Omer, too?

It seems like Evangelical Christians are really missing out on something special. I think it's part of why we Gentiles who are attached to the "Messianic movement" do what we do. The living out of the Biblical festivals has not just ancient, but modern applications as well. Hopefully this modest article has brought a few of those applications out into the open. Pentecost didn't "replace" Shavuot, nor did the Spirit replace the Torah. The Spirit is God dwelling within us and the Torah is God's practical and mystical guide to Biblical wisdom and righteous living. We are told that the Word (or Torah) is written on our hearts, which makes the Spirit and Torah more closely linked than we may imagine. If the Children of Israel in Exodus already understood that connection, no wonder Jews, even today, are so in awe of the Torah and of God. They count the Omer with a sense of anticipation and wonder at the immense graciousness and kindness of God. Gentile believers need to recapture that sense of awe of God and what He has given us. One way to do that, is to count the Omer and to eagerly look forward to that encounter. Remember, there's a final anticipated meeting that is yet to arrive. He's coming.

He one who is testifying to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon! Amen! Come, Lord Yeshua! May the grace of the Lord Yeshua be with all! -Revelation 22:20-21 (CJB)

A slightly different version of this article was originally published at the Congregation Shema Yisrael blog. You can find a related article on the same blog called Of Matzah, Bagels, and Omer.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Friday's Child in the Family of God

Friday's child is loving and giving...

-from an old nursery rhyme

I keep forgetting it's Good Friday, the day the Christian church commemorates as the day Jesus died. For the past several days, I've been trying to work up some sort of feeling for this coming Easter Sunday. I've been reading a few Christian and Messianic blogs and it seems as if folks are just "on fire" for the coming of Easter and the celebration of the resurrection.

I'm not "feeling" it.

Actually, I've never had a strong emotional response to Easter. My parents took me to church when I was a young teen, but no one ever got around to asking me if I believed in Jesus or what it all meant to me. Being a "good kid", I did what my parents told me to do (for the most part) which included going to church. But I didn't believe. Christmas was a time when there was loot under a tree. I don't like hard boiled eggs or milk chocolate, so Easter didn't even have that much appeal.

When I was old enough, I told my parents I wasn't going to church anymore. My father wasn't a believer at the time (he has since found faith) so he didn't say much. I could tell my mother was hurt, but she accepted my decision.

I didn't come to faith in Jesus (Yeshua) until my early 40s. That was about 15 years ago or so. Even with that, I only worshiped in a traditional church setting for a few years before shifting into a "Messianic" context. I never developed an emotional attachment to the Christian holidays as Christian holidays. I never learned to love Christmas because of the birth of Jesus and I never acquired an adoration of Easter because of the resurrection.

Apparently, my perspective is something of an oddity in Messianic circles (it's a foregone conclusion that it's outright strange from a Christian point of view) if the Messiah Connection blog is any indication. If you've been reading my blog this week, you'll know that of late, I've also been questioning a Gentile Christian's (me) role in participating in the Passover, at least as a Christian rite, as opposed to the traditional Jewish festival.

But if I don't feel connected to Easter and Passover is becoming a question mark, where does that leave me?

I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them...If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. -Romans 11:13-14,17-21

We Gentiles are "grafted in" to the natural root. Jesus said that he was the vine (natural root) and we (Gentiles, in my case) are the (grafted in) branches (John 15:5), co-existing, so to speak, on the same vine as the natural branches. But we're not the same...I'm not the same.

Many years ago, I worked in social services and part of my job was "special needs adoptions". Among other things, that means, finding adoptive homes for older children who have been removed from their birth families by the court (usually due to some unrepairable parental problem that resulted in child abuse). One of the things that child psychologists and other, similar professionals know about kids, is that they bond with their parents really, really early in life and once that do, that's it. No matter who those parents are or what they've done, those kids are bonded. If kids miss that special window for bonding because no "parental object" is available, they're "unbonded" forever, which usually results in all sorts of psychological and behavioral problems. Finding them a "good home" after the bonding window is closed doesn't open it again...ever.

Kids who are adopted into families at an older age almost always struggle with issues of identity and belonging. Even well into adulthood, when these "adoptees" have married and are raising their own families, many of them still question if they really have a family, if they really belong, and if they were ever really loved by anyone.

I was "adopted" into the "family of God" at an older age. I wonder if I failed to bond? Could that be the reason that, as Easter approaches and even the old city of Jerusalem is alive with Good Friday observances, I feel as emotionally flat as a piece of matzah?

My friend Gene Shlomovich wrote a blog today that said something very telling about this point, quoting his Muslim friend "Ahmed":

I was thinking Israel is really taking our lands, killing Palestinians, [they are] war criminals, etc… When I grew up I wanted to see what is the “Jew”, what kind of religion. They (Arab propaganda) make it like hell. Oh no, I want see. I read some books. I found out it is so close to our way of worshiping, it is so close, very very very close, and too far away from Christians! And then I wanted to know about land issues. I say now: oh yeah, we got 50 Arab countries, they (Jews) got none, just that one. So let them live in peace and give them more!

I’m telling you - a Jew is way too far from Christianity! And makes me feel sad of how much Jews and Muslims are far from each other nowadays and how close Christians are to Jews. Makes me enjoy this relationship.

In his missive, Gene referred to Ahmed and himself as cousins because of their common ancestor Abraham and the large number of similarities between Muslim and Jewish religious practice and perception...much closer than the resemblance between Judaism and Christianity. Jewish Israeli author Yossi Halevi made the exact observation in his book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden when he undertook a spiritual journey to find "connectedness" with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

This probably wasn't Gene's intent, but the wonderful story he told about his conversation with Ahmed continued to cement my impression that the gulf between God's natural root and those of us who have been grafted in is much wider than we'd like to admit. During the week of Unleavened Bread, during Holy Week, on Good Friday, with both Erev Shabbat and Easter Sunday waiting in the wings, while the world of Christians and Jews celebrate an unquestioned sense of belonging, I'm still not sure where in all this I fit in. Is it possible to be a square peg in a universe where God created only round holes?

A few days ago, my 2 year old grandson Landon had a fever that spiked at 104 degrees F. He's still sick and has both an upper respiratory infection and a virus. He's doing better, but his Mom's come down with it now. My wife and I took Landon in last night to give his parents a break. He's still himself, but the poor little guy isn't feeling well.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, my wife asked me to hold him for a bit. He reached out to me and as I took him in my arms, he folded quite comfortably onto my shoulder and started to doze. In that moment, I knew I belonged to someone, at least for that tiny march of minutes. A two-year old little boy is wonderfully accepting and once he loves you, he loves you unconditionally.

While driving to work this morning, I wondered if perhaps those few, sweet minutes of holding my grandson would be the only worthwhile thing I'd end up doing today?

Today is Good Friday and I don't feel anything about it. What bothers me is that I think I should feel something. But I don't.

The poem I quoted from above was first published in 1838 and is meant to be a "fortune-telling" song which predicts a child's character based on the day of the week he or she was born. I used "Friday's child" because it's Good Friday. Also, I was born on a Friday. But if Friday's child is "loving and giving", Wednesday's child is "full of woe" and Thursday's child "has far to go".

The road is long and seen from the "rest stop" of Good Friday, I have far to go.

A Shroud for the Dead

The Gemara concludes that even though shrouds for the dead are exempt from the mitzvah of tzitzis, when a body is prepared for burial we do wrap a garment with tzitzis around the body. The idea is based upon the verse in Mishlei (17:5) which states “One who mocks a pauper insults his Maker.” The term “pauper” refers to a person who has died and is therefore no longer obligated in mitzvos. We are not allowed to mock his inability to perform mitzvos, so we dress him with tzitzis.
"Tzitzis on the garments of the dead"
Menachos 41
Daf Yomi Digest

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...
-1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Jesus is dead. At least he's dead if this is just after the Passover. Since the timing of when he was executed varies from one Gospel version to the next, we aren't absolutely sure what "three days" means in terms of hours and minutes, or just how long the Master spent entombed as a corpse. But we know he died.

We also know that, as an observant Jew, he would have obeyed the commandment to wear tzitzit or "fringes" on the four corners of his garments (Deuteronomy 22:12). We see an example in the Gospels (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-47) that he wore fringes or tzitzit. It would have been unusual and even a little bizarre for a Jewish Rabbi and Prophet not to have obeyed the commandment of tzitzit as a representation of his obligation to the Torah.

And then he died. Another quote from the Daf:

Nevertheless, Shmuel agrees that if someone made burial shrouds for himself there is no obligation to place tzitzis on it.

While there's no obligation for the dead to be dressed in garments with tzitzit attached because a dead person cannot obey the commandments, as the earlier quote citing the Gemara states, we do not mock the dead. When Jesus was prepared for burial, his disciples, perhaps the women or even Joseph and Nicodemus, would have taken care of this important detail to honor and respect the Master. They loved him. They would not neglect him in this.

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. -John 19:38-40

Yet the dead cannot praise God and they cannot obey Him.

Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? -Psalm 6:5

It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence... -115:17

Who provided the garments for burial? Who offered the tzitzit to the Master's body? He was stripped when beaten, though his clothing was returned (Matthew 27:27-31), but the Roman soldiers removed his clothes when he was placed on the cross and cast lots for his garments (Matthew 27:35). When he died, he died almost naked.

But while the Romans and the faithless mocked the dying Jesus, those who loved him suffered in tears and when he died, they did not mock him by refusing to attach tzitzit to his garments as they prepared a shroud for the dead.

I know I'm extrapolating from later Rabbinic rulings to earlier practices, but in my imagination and in my heart, I do not mock the dead. As the Children of Israel died in the desert wearing tzitzit, and as Jews are commanded to wear tzitzit on their four-cornered garments, I can see the Master dressed for burial this way.

Shulchan Aruch (Y.D. 351:2) rules that we bury the dead with tzitzis, but Rema adds that the tzitzis should be invalid. Our custom is to wrap the dead in a tallis, but to cut the tzitzis from one of the corners.

In reading the Gospels, we jump almost immediately from the burial to the resurrection but I'm asking you to pause. Don't go on the the next paragraph or the next page yet. Stop and consider. In Christianity, we jump to Easter in a mad rush, eager to celebrate the risen Lord, running immediately from the ugly, bloody death to the party commemorating his life, but stop. Think about it. Consider the day after he died. Break a piece of dry matzah and put it in your mouth. It's almost tasteless. It's like death. It's like his body. Think about what the Passover and unleavened bread is trying to tell you. Ponder what the Master was saying when he compared his body to the bread and asked you to think of him when you eat it. Taste the dry, brittle bitterness of grief; let the salt water in which we dip our karpas during the Seder be tears.

He died. He was buried. Right now, immediately after the Passover feast, he is buried. We honor him and prepare his body, though our hearts are shattered within us. We apply myrrh and aloes to his broken and torn body and wrap him in fresh, clean linens, struggling between slowly and reverently attending the Master and the urgency to finish before the Sabbath. On his robes we make sure that the tzitzit are attached. Little do we know that they should not be "invalid" as Rema will later rule. In three days time, the Master will live again.

The dead do not honor and praise God. A corpse does not obey the commandments and perform the mitzvot. That is for the living. Today, Jesus is dead. Tomorrow, after the Sabbath, he lives again.

Praise God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Christian Passover

Some Christians eager to connect with their religion's roots in the Hebrew Bible also fashion a Christianized seder to reflect the common assumption that the Last Supper was a Passover seder. But scholars point out that the Gospels disagree among themselves over whether the Last Supper took place on Passover or on the day before. And in Jesus' time the seder service was not set in the way we know it today.

These Christianized seders show the Passover story as merely the prelude to the advent of Jesus. This distresses some Jews and Christians. "It's deceptive to introduce Christian themes into the Jewish seder. When you start talking about Jesus, that is no longer a seder. That is a different creation altogether," a vehicle for preaching or proselytizing, says Rabbi Neil Gillman, professor emeritus of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

from the story "Is Passover the New Christmas?
by Diane Cole
The Wall Street Journal

Just when you thought it was safe for Christians and Messianics to celebrate the Passover, another monkey wrench comes flying into the machine.

It's been awhile since I've seen a good knock-down-drag-out, Messianic Judaism, One Law, Bilateral Ecclesiology free-for-all in the Messianic blogosphere. We've all been (amazingly) well behaved, blogging about actual theological and faith issues, and pretty much not stepping on each others toes. I was almost convinced that these issues were settled between Christians and Jews, at least as far as Passover was concerned. Then I read Cole's story.

The interesting part is that my wife was the person who emailed this story to me, right before Passover started (about an hour before candle lighting). Reading the article, I couldn't help but consider that my congregation, a group of Christians from my wife's point of view, were going to be having one of those "Christianized seders" about 24 hours hence (last Tuesday night, actually). My wife denied having any ulterior motives for sending me the email. She told me she just thought I'd find the article interesting, but if she wasn't trying to send me a "message" consciously, I still wonder about what was lurking somewhere in the inner reaches of her brain pan. Maybe I'm being overly concerned.

I'm also really, really surprised this issue didn't come up in our little corner of cyberspace. It seems like all of the "angst" of what I call "strict Messianic Judaism" as driven by the concept of Bilateral Ecclesiology (coined in Mark Kinzer's book, Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism and blogged about by Derek Leman and Gene Shlomovich, among others) has evaporated into a soft, gentile mist.

There was a time when, if any non-Jew did anything Jewish, the opposing comments from Jews in "the movement" would have been swift and decisive. Has everyone just gotten tired of arguing? Why no cries of outrage at Baptists and Methodists conducting their own Seders? Why no vocal protests against Gentile "Messianics" leading their own Seders and declaring themselves free from slavery in Egypt?

I'll make the situation even worse. I'll mention Jewish/Gentile intermarried couples as quoted from Cole's article:

The changing demographics of American Jewry have played a role, too. Before 1970, only 13% of married American Jews were married to non-Jews. By the turn of the 21st century, that figure was 47%, according to the National Jewish Population Survey. As a result, interfaith couples and families have had a growing presence at Passover seder tables, both as guests and as hosts.

For some of these families, the seder—which has a recognizable theme and generally takes place at someone's home, rather than at a synagogue—provides a comfortable introduction to Jewish ritual. That's one message of the recently published book by journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts, Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families. Themselves an intermarried couple (he's Jewish, she's Catholic), the Robertses have for decades hosted a Passover seder, mostly for other interfaith families.

Gentile/Jewish intermarrieds are another "hot button" issue that tends to touch a nerve in both Messianic and non-Messianic Jewish circles although, according to the statistic presented in the above-quoted statement, almost half of all U.S. Jews are married to non-Jews, so it must be the other half that's upset about it (or non-intermarried Jews in other nations, especially Israel). Additionally, the vast majority of Jews in the Messianic movement as a whole are themselves intermarried. It seems interfaith couples are not only bringing non-Jews to the Seder table, but into the worship of the Jewish Messiah as well.

In addition to Rabbi Gillman's objections to "Christianized seders", some Christian authorities are also concerned about Christians entering into the Passover arena:

Hal Taussig, pastor of Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church in Philadelphia and a visiting professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, says that after presiding over Christianized seders from the mid-1970s to mid-'80s, he had second thoughts. He chose to stop the practice, he says, because he recognized "the ways in which such a service replaces the Jewish celebration with a Christian one." And that, concludes Rev. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary, "makes Jews invisible."

While the portion of the Messianic world of which I am aware has chosen to remain silent regarding Gentiles and the Passover, both traditional Judaism and Christianity have taken up the banner and gone on record in asking us, "just what the heck do you think you're doing?"

What are we doing? Are we making Jews "invisible"?

My family and I have had Seders in our home before. I didn't really think it was inappropriate for me to lead the Seder as a Christian husband to a Jewish wife, but a few days ago, I had the distinct feeling of being uncomfortable. This is the first Seder we've had in our home since my wife has become so closely associated with our local Chabad community. In some ways, she's becoming increasingly Jewish right before my eyes. I don't object to this in the slightest, but I am mindful that it creates something of a gulf between us along the axis of our separate (and increasingly separating) faiths. I'm not sure anymore how much of Judaism I should try to connect to and still not seem like a caricature in my wife's eyes.

Like my marriage, Christians and Jews operate on the same planet (and in the case of my wife and me, in the same home) but not always in the same worlds. More accurately put, we operate in overlapping worlds, but just how far can we go before my Christian presence in her Jewish world becomes uncomfortable to her? We've seen this question played out in the Messianic movement time and again, and the current Christian fascination with "seeing Christ in the Passover" only heightens the "experience". If the "last supper" of Jesus (Yeshua) wasn't a Passover Seder, the imagery and symbolism of the Passover is still undeniably imposed on his last meal, and on his death. It may be uncomfortable for Judaism to accept this, but Christianity has a tangible link to the Passover, thanks to the Jewish Messiah (though he's not currently recognized as such by Judaism as a whole), and now we have to decide how to respond to it.

The "sacrament" of Holy Communion is the way the church has traditionally adapted the "bread/body" and "wine/blood" aspects introduced by Jesus, but that, and Easter, may be redundant and even misguided. While they make Judaism feel more secure because Communion and Easter separate Christian observances of "last supper" events from Passover, they also (in my opinion) don't honor the original intent and context of that last "Meal of the Messiah". That said, should Christians stick to Communion and Easter and leave Passover to the Jews? Did the Jewish Messiah open the door to a Christian application for the Passover, making Easter unnecessary? Is there a mandate for Christians to celebrate both Passover and Easter, or is that making a much larger mess out of an already confused situation?

Jesus said that, "many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 8:11). If we're good enough to sit down at a meal with the Patriarchs, why can't we sit down at a Seder with them as well?

Addendum: A scientist claims to have definitively dated the last supper and resolved the conflict between the different Gospel versions of this event. I'm dubious, but have a look for yourself.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Desert

In each one of us there is an Egypt and a Pharaoh and a Moses and Freedom in a Promised Land. And every point in time is an opportunity for another Exodus.

Egypt is a place that chains you to who you are, constraining you from growth and change. And Pharaoh is that voice inside that mocks your gambit to escape, saying, "How could you attempt being today something you were not yesterday? Aren't you good enough just as you are? Don't you know who you are?"

Moses is the liberator, the infinite force deep within, an impetuous and all-powerful drive to break out from any bondage, to always transcend, to connect with that which has no bounds.

But Freedom and the Promised Land are not static elements that lie in wait. They are your own achievements which you may create at any moment, in any thing that you do, simply by breaking free from whoever you were the day before.

Last Passover you may not have yet begun to light a candle. Or some other mitzvah still waits for you to fulfill its full potential. This year, defy Pharaoh and light up your world. With unbounded light.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
The Inside Story on Passover
Chabad.org

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Simply objectify your achievements and shortcomings. Make the things that keep you in chains "Egypt" and the voice that says you're no good "Pharaoh". It sounds like the John who wrote Revelation was using the same basic material when he wrote the following:

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. -Revelation 12:9

The phrase, "who leads the whole world astray" is sometimes translated as "the accuser of the brethren". The idea is that your doubts, insecurities, and feelings of inadequacy don't actually come from you, but from an external, supernatural force or entity we refer to as Satan (Hebrew: HaSatan = "the Adversary" in English). And yet, that voice often comes from those who are closest to you, including your family and friends...and especially from yourself.

Rabbi Freeman links slavery in Egypt and the "accusing" voice of Pharaoh to the liberator Moses and freedom in the Promised Land. What his metaphor lacks is this:

The LORD replied, "I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea." -Numbers 14:20-25

Between freedom from slavery in Egypt and entry into the rest of the Promised Land is the desert. The desert is the result of fear, insecurity, lack of confidence, and lack of faith. God can and has sent a deliverer to all mankind, but although we are taught that salvation is a free gift, that doesn't mean it's effortless for us to accept that gift, open it, and then live out the contents. Accepting God and becoming a disciple of the Master isn't "as easy as rolling off the log". There can be many barriers and setbacks on the trail between "Egypt" and "Israel".

Yesterday, I wrote a blog about how we can be sitting on the keys to our own chains, and it sounds fairly easy to just get up, pick up the keys, and unlock the door to our prison. As Rabbi Freeman points out in today's Daily Dose of Torah, there is a metaphorical and spiritual connection between the Passover story and how we conduct our lives at any given point in time. Passover is a reminder of how much we have to gain and how much we have to lose, depending on which decisions we make each day. Freeman likens our achievements to mitzvot (commandments or deeds of kindness) but also to "lighting up our world" with "unbounded light".

Somewhere between the infinite darkness of a slave's life in "Egypt" and the "unbounded light" in the Land of "Israel" lies the shadowlands of the desert. We can be neither here nor there, neither a slave nor truly free. We can be in a state where we have escaped the darkness but still cannot walk into the light. Either something inside of us or something about our circumstances keeps us on the edge, as if staring into the abyss or waiting at the threshold of some gate into the unknown realms.

An entire generation was forgiven of their sins, yet died in the desert, one by one, dropping in their tracks, collapsing in the sand, because of their failure. Our existence, between birth and death, contains decisions, victories, achievements, and defeats. We succeed or we fail. We light the candle, or watch it burn out. Even on the eve of Passover, a time when there should be hope in our hearts, something can come along to smother that hope like suffocating a child in a crib. Sometimes, we stand at the edge of hope, with an infinite sky before us, and still we cannot breathe.

What do you do when you are at a wedding reception where you expect to find God and instead, the bride and groom have vanished, the room is dark, and the hall is empty?

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“For many are invited, but few are chosen.” -Matthew 22:1-14

Passover is not only a time when we discover how far we've come, but how woefully far we have yet to go.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Sitting on the Keys

In truth, the world, standing on its own, is a place of exile and captivity.

Even when a man stands upright on the tallest mountain and perceives all there is to perceive, comprehends all that can be comprehended, achieves a realization of the Ultimate Oneness and Void that is behind all this --

But in the end, he is still stuck on the ground where his feet have brought him, his eyes have not seen beyond his own eyeballs, his mind has only comprehended that which he can know and reached that which is reachable --he has remained within his own self.

And the proof:
he has remained with a G-d Who is above
and an earth which is below, and the two cannot meet.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth series
Liberated by Betrothal

Man is separated from God. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but for a thousand reasons, some of which you may know, we cannot ascend to God and God does not descend to us, at least in any way we can comprehend. Oh we try to reach God. We try to summon Him. We pray. We plead in our anguish. We cry out in our loneliness. But sometimes the only answer is silence.

Or so it seems.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. -James 4:1-3

The brother of the Master tells us that our selfishness and humanity get in the way of our prayers to God. In many ways, we are like the prostitute/wife of the Prophet Hosea, faithless and wandering after other lovers. Yet, we see a picture of God toward a faithless Israel in Hosea 3 that reminds us of ourselves:

The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days. -Hosea 3:1-5

Though we are faithless to God, He is faithful to us. Though we are unworthy, we will be redeemed.

This message should be very clear to us as we approach the time of Passover. The Children of Jacob were enslaved and through no power of their own, God sent a Savior and a Prophet to free and redeem them. The end of Rabbi Freeman's message which I quoted, but not in it's entirety, tells the message:

His only liberation, and the only liberation of the entire world, is when the One Above reaches down and tells us, "Do this. With this deed you are betrothed to Me."

And then there is no above and below. Then there is only One.

We cannot reach God on our own strength, but He does reach down to us. We, the entire world, are "betrothed" to Him and through that betrothal, there is only One. It sounds very much like this:

I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will know the LORD. -Hosea 2:19-20

This set of verses from the writings of the Prophet Hosea are also part of the blessings a Jew says when donning hand tefillin before prayer. You might say that the messages here of the Prophet and certainly of Rabbi Freeman, are intended only for the Jewish people, but the coming of the Messiah opens the door for the rest of humanity.

Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.” -Revelation 19:7-8

There are numerous "marital metaphors" in the Bible referring to Israel as the bride of God and the disciples of the Messiah (Jews and Gentiles) as the bride of Christ. All who join ourselves to the Messiah, both Israel and the nations, have a part in the life of the world to come. However, although this is abundantly available to us, escaping our slavery requires our willingness. Rabbi Freeman has a commentary about this, too:

Man, on his own, cannot reach higher than his own fingertips. He cannot break out of his own skin, he cannot lift himself up by pulling at his own hair. All of his achievements are tied to his ego. All that he may comprehend is defined by his own subjective perception. He is a prisoner by virtue of existence.

So G-d threw Man a rope. He gave him tasks to fulfill that are beyond his grasp, thoughts to fathom that take him outside the hollow of his subjective universe. All that is needed is his willingness to leave himself.

We are all prisoners. But we sit on the keys.

He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:5) and we can do anything if we are united with him, which includes escaping our chains. Sometimes however, we slump down in our jail cell, dejected and discouraged; lamenting our imprisonment and fearing we will never be free. Ironically, that freedom is always available to us. We just need to get up and see that, as Rabbi Freeman points out, we are sitting on the keys.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Oddly Scheduled Passover

“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do. -Exodus 12:14-16

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”

The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. -Mark 14:12-16

I hadn't planned to blog about Passover. This time of year in the Jewish and Messianic blogospheres, you'll find an abundant amount of material on the subject, so I thought whatever I chose to contribute would be redundant. Then a couple of things happened.

Last Sunday, my son David asked if we (as a family) were going to have a Seder. Sadly, we don't always have one. I attend the community Seder at my congregation and my wife usually attends the Chabad Seder. Schedules being what they are, we don't always have the "bandwidth" to organize and conduct a private home Seder as well. David hasn't been to a Seder in a number of years and particularly since he joined the Marines and then got married (he was honorably discharged about eight months ago), and his wife and son have never experienced a Seder. Seizing the opportunity, I asked my wife if we could have a family Seder this year and yesterday evening, I got my answer.

As I was getting ready to leave home to teach my class, my wife and daughter pulled into the garage and unloaded supplies of wine and matzah (kosher for Passover, of course). As a husband and father, I'm often "out of the loop" as to what the family is planning so I asked when we would be having our Seder.

Sunday.

What?

As most of you reading this know, this year, Passover officially begins at sundown on Monday, April 18th. My wife just told me we'd be having our Seder exactly 24 hours early.

There's a practical reason for this. We usually have the kids (and my grandson) over for a family dinner every Sunday evening. It's something we all look forward to, and we get to enjoy some good food and good company, and it's a fine way to end the weekend. Sunday evening fits into everyone's schedule. So my wife's logic told her that it would be a good time to have our family Seder.

It bothers me.

OK, despite the fact that some people might think I have a few goofy theological ideas, I'm something of a traditionalist. I like attending Seders during the week of Unleavened Bread. I believe it is what God intended.

At this juncture, you may well ask yourself what I'm worked up about since, not being Jewish, the various commandments regarding Passover observance don't specifically apply to me. To answer, I've been attending Passover Seders for decades, long before I became religious. I've had Jewish friends all of my adult life and have always appreciated and enjoyed being invited to their Seders. There's something about the Haggadah and the essence of the Seder that weaves its way into the fabric of my being. Also, while I may not be commanded to observe the Passover, I'm married to a Jewish woman who is, I have Jewish children who are, and although a Goy, I'm head of a family where all of the "nuclear" members are Jewish. We should celebrate the Passover "on time". Beyond all of that, I'm a Gentile disciple of the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish Messiah observed the Passover each year. Some say his last meal was a Passover Seder.

But my family will be observing the Passover a day early. Has this ever happened before?

Maybe.

Depending on which Gospel you read, Jesus (Yeshua) and his inner circle had their Passover Seder either on the first day of Passover after sundown or the day before. It's impossible to resolve the differences between the different Gospel versions (to see what I mean, read Derek Leman's blog posts: Passover, Last Supper, Crucifixion: 2011 Notes, Part 1 and Part 2).

If you read Mark's version (Mark 14:12-26), then Jesus and his disciples conducted their Seder on the 14th day of the month of Nissan (which began at Sundown in the traditional and religious way of counting days in Judaism). In this version, the sacrifices of the Passover lambs at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem wouldn't occur until after the following sunrise and would be happening at the same time that Jesus was slowly and painfully dying on the cross. That's Mark's version, at least as rendered by D. Thomas Lancaster at First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ). You'll understand what I mean by that last comment in a moment.

Every Passover, at my congregation's community Passover Seder, I read part of the chapter "One Long Day" from Lancaster's book King of the Jews. It recounts in exquisite detail, the day Jesus died, based on Mark's Gospel. It is a heartrending rendition, juxtaposing the trial, torture, crucifixion, and death of the Jewish Messiah against the virtually endless stream of Jews offering a vast sea of Lambs as sacrifices at the Temple, in accordance with the commandments. As thousands upon thousands of Passover lambs were bleeding and dying at the hands of the Temple Priests, the Lamb of God was bleeding and breathing his last at the hands of a faithless humanity.

There isn't a dry eye in the house by the time I'm finished reciting the chapter.

There are many scholarly opinions about why the timing of the "Last Supper" and the crucifixion don't line up in the Gospels, but I'm not here to address, let alone "solve" this mystery. However, to resolve my own "timing" conflict, I'm choosing to consider my family's early Passover Seder as a connection to Mark's telling of the Messiah's "Haggadah"; the speaking and relating of the Messiah's journey and the Passover, if you will, that results from his suffering, death, and resurrection; the Passover that can be accessed by all human beings if we believe and declare God's Lamb as Lord.

When I lead my family's Passover Seder at the start of the 14th of Nissan, I will have Jesus on my mind. One justification for Jesus and his disciples having their Seder a day early was that he desired anxiously to celebrate the Passover with them and knew that, the next day, he wouldn't be consuming the Lamb, he would be "consumed" as the Lamb. Next Sunday evening, during our telling of the Passover, I will choose to accept for that day, how Mark told of the Messiah's last Seder. I will envision breaking the matzah with him, drinking wine with him, and when I eat the maror and charoset, I will experience the bitterness of his suffering and death, and the sweetness of his resurrection,and the life we all have in him.

Chag Pesach Sameach. Happy Passover.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Diseased Messiah

Our Sages ask: “What is Mashiach’s name?” and reply “The leper of the House of Rebbi.” This is very difficult to understand. Mashiach will initiate the Redemption, and is associated with the pinnacle of life and vitality. How can his name be linked with leprosy (tzaraas), which is identified with death and exile?

-from Mashiach's Name
Commentary on Torah Portion Metzora; Leviticus 14:1-15:33
Chabad.org

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
-Isaiah 53:3-4

Both Christianity and Judaism understand the above-quoted passage from the Prophet Isaiah to refer to the Messiah. The "suffering servant" aspect of Jesus is well integrated into Christian belief, but it presents something of a problem in Judaism, where the Messiah is seen as a conquering King and a "political" figure who will return self-rule of the totality of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, and establish an era of peace for the entire world.

The Chabad commentary continues:

There is still a difficulty. Although the above passage explains why Mashiach must endure suffering, it does not show why that suffering is identified with Mashiach. Mashiach’s name who he is should be positive.

The First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) commentary presents a very similar take on how this coming Shabbat's Torah portion applies to the Messiah. As you can see, they mirror the Chabad's understanding and cite the same sources:

And the rabbis say: "[The name of Messiah] is The Leper of the House of Study, as it is said, 'Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.'" -Sanhedrin 98b

If you've been reading my blog posts lately, you'll know I believe that we (non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah) can achieve a better understanding of the Master we serve, by trying to see him through the eyes of his original disciples and their descendants; the Jewish people. I am beginning to gather some significant insights into the Messiah by reading and probing Talmudic and Chasidic thoughts on the matter. I am even occasionally amazed on how well some of these teachings illustrate the life and teachings of Yeshua (Jesus).

But while Judaism, at least in some perspectives, expects two Messiahs and not one (one a suffering servant and the other a conquering King), Christians and Messianics can see the one person being both the "diseased" Messiah and the ruling Messiah.

He has already removed the barrier that separates man from the divine by bearing our sufferings, our diseases, and our wounds (which he did not deserve but he took upon himself because we did...and do). May he come soon and in our day to repair our broken world and to reign over us all in justice and mercy.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. -Philippians 2:9-11

Amen.

Update: Friday, April 8: For more, read The Leper Scholar by Joshua Brumbach.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.