Great new blog post by friend Miri. Seeking to understand what kashrut means is essential to building a mature Messianic Judaism.
Thanks for your contribution to this discussion, Mirela!
Six Things I Wish I Knew Before I Went Kosher | Biblically Kosher | Biblical Eating.
In Yochanan 20:17-28, we read about the important topic of leadership and we get some important lessons on leadership from our Messiah.
We read first of Ya’akov and Yochanan, the sons of Zavdai and their desire for a prominent role of leadership in the Messianic kingdom:
Then Zavdai’s sons came to Yeshua with their mother. She bowed down, begging a favor from him. He said to her, “What do you want?” She replied, “Promise that when you become king, these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right and the other on your left.” But Yeshua answered, “You people don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We can.” He said to them, “Yes, you will drink my cup. But to sit on my right and on my left is not mine to give, it is for those for whom my Father has prepared it.” (vv. 20-23)
Yeshua’s response demonstrates that Ya’akov and Yochanan were not aware that leadership, as Yeshua demonstrated it was a path of sacrifice.
In the next verses we get some important words from Yeshua on what a leader should be:
But Yeshua called them and said, “You know that among the Goyim, those who are supposed to rule them become tyrants, and their superiors become dictators. Among you, it must not be like that. On the contrary, whoever among you wants to be a leader must become your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave! For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve — and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (vv. 25-28)
The path to follow to be a leader like Yeshua is not the path of seeking power or position for selfish motives to be a tyrant or to be a leader without taking into account that there is sacrifice required. Yeshua lays out here that leadership requires one to be a servant and to like our Messiah demonstrate a life of leading by serving others.
With Passover just about a month ago, I am reminded of Yeshua giving his talmidim an important lesson in leadership which took place at Passover:
Yeshua was aware that the Father had put everything in his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he rose from the table, removed his outer garments and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the talmidim and wipe them off with the towel wrapped around him. (Yochanan 13:3-5)
In this lesson on leadership we see our Messiah taking on the role of a slave and washing the talmidim’s feet, in this Yeshua’s teaching on leadership became a visual demonstration.
As we look to the future of Messianic Judaism we must seek to build up the next generation of leaders. For those of us in their 20’s and 30’s who will have to be these next generation leaders we must follow our Messiah’s example and grow as servant-leaders. For our mentors and teachers we need your support and help to stay on the right path and if we stumble off the path like Ya’akov and Yochanan did, like Yeshua did point us back to the right path.
So then let us seek to be like our Messiah and follow his example and lead by serving and may we each play our role in building a mature Messianic Judaism for the future!
To obey is better than sacrifice
I want more thanSunday and Wednesday nights
‘Cause if you can’t come to me every day
Then don’t bother coming at all(To Obey is Better Than Sacrifice by Keith Green)
As we continue to explore the building of a Messianic Judaism for the future we need to realize that intrinsic to living a true Messianic Judaism is that it is more than just something we do on Saturday mornings but a lifestyle done seven days a week guided by our Torah.
The above words written by Keith Green, of most blessed memory, who was a Jewish follower of Yeshua who left this world before the Messianic Judaism movement began, and therefore framed his Yeshua faith within the Christianity of his day, lays out that a life of following God is not just attending services but living everyday for God. I imagine that if Keith would be living today as a Messianic Jew that I imagine the lyric would be “I want more than saturday mornings…”. One of my cherished memories was meeting Melody Green, Keith’s widow at a High Holyday service about 10 years ago and she shared that Keith would have loved to participate in Messianic Jewish life if he would have had the opportunity in this world. He is now living each moment in the radiance of King Messiah.
Though we don’t have Sunday and Wednesday as our days of religious services (common in evangelical Christianity), the lesson we can learn is that there is more to a Messianic Judaism life, more to walking in the way of Torah, than just attending Shabbat services and doing Messianic Judaism for 2-3 hours on Saturday mornings. Messianic Judaism is a life of walking Torah everyday and is more than just being a Sabbatarian, but a Jewish life of walking a Torah life each day.
So how can we consciously build up a daily walking in Torah ways?
The key is community, being that Judaism is to be lived communally. We need to seek to build up chavurot, Erev Shabbat gatherings, home study groups and even seek to build intentional communities of Messianic Jews living together, either in shared housing, in the same apartment building or in houses in the same neighborhood. We need to be in community to fully live out our lives walking Torah in “the other 6 days”.
May we seek to walk in God’s Torah each day and seek to build living breathing 24/7 Messianic Judaism communities!
It is incumbent to await the coming of Moshiach every single day, and all day long.. It is not enough to believe in the coming of Moshiach, but each day one must await his coming..
Furthermore, it is not enough to await his coming every day, but it is to be in the manner of our prayer ‘we await Your salvation all the day,’ that is, to await and expect it every day, and all day long, literally every moment!
- Chafetz Chaim, Chizuk Emunah
These words lays out another important principle for the building of a mature Messianic Judaism and that being the primacy of our righteous Messiah and the hope of His return to bring the Messianic age.
This is important in dealing with two potential problems:
1. That Yeshua gets lost in our practicing Judaism.
2. That we get so focused on the Messiah’s return that we don’t build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future.
The first point is seen by many critics of our movement to be our critical error, in that Yeshua is secondary to our Jewish practice. We need to realize that Yeshua is the one that is so ever present in the prayers of the siddur and embodies the hopes of Judaism, including the Judaism of today. As Judaism has developed since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the messianic hopes of the Jewish people have sought for the coming redeemer. We who are followers of Yeshua know that this one that is alluded to each day in the prayers of the Jewish people is our righteous Messiah, Yeshua.
Whenever I consider the connection of Yeshua to my daily practice of Judaism the verse:
“If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)
plays a significant role and was a part of a homily that I gave one Shabbat during Passover, relating the eating of matzo per the Torah’s command to an act of love for Yeshua. In living a life within Judaism, seeking to follow Torah we are also performing an act of honoring our Messiah. So then this is also another response to those who hold to a Yeshua-Judaism dichotomy.
The second point and actually more direct to the words of Chafetz Chaim, is the prime duty to await the coming of Messiah. Yeshua is the long awaited Jewish Messiah that will come and establish Yom Shekulo Shabbat (A time of unending Shabbat). Though much of those in the Jewish world are expecting this to be the first appearing of Messiah, we know that this will be His glorious return. The coming of Messiah will be the full flowering of God’s consumation of history and the hope of the ages, yet this Messianic hope must not keep us from seeking to continue to build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future (for a more extensive posting on this see “Messianic Jewish Education and the End of the Age” on this blog).
We must as the words say “await the coming of Moshiach, every day, even every moment”, but while waiting we must be doing those things necessary to building our future, including establishing new Messianic syangogues, establishing educational programs, writing books, mentoring future leaders, writing children’s curriculum, dealing with formation of Messianic halakha and other vital tasks.
We need to see that our Messianic hope be tied to the work that will bring about this consumation of all things and to do our part to fulfill the words of Rav Shaul in Romans 11:26,
“On that day all Israel shall be saved”.
The salvation of the Jewish people is intrinsically tied to the work of our righteous Messiah and we as His followers must do our part to establish a place wherein the over 1800 year old breach of Yeshua from Jewish space will again be bridged and we can be the place where Jewish people can follow Torah, live in Jewish space and honor the Messiah of Israel and this can be done if we build a mature Messianic Judaism.
May we be worthy to see the coming of Yeshua, our righeous Messiah and if he tarries may we earnestly await His appearing and do our part in His service to establish Messianic Judaism for the future.
As we seek to build a mature Messianic Judaism for the future I would like to offer a brief look at how our Torah observance relates to our righteous Messiah, Yeshua, the one who lived a life of complete obedience to Torah and is our example.
The Torah is the way of life of the Jewish people and is the guiding document of what it means to live out the covenant between God and Israel. In our observance of Shavuot, the traditional time of the giving of Torah on Mt. Sinai; one of the most important parts of the story of the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt was the purpose of freedom. When God sent Moses to speak to Pharaoh, we read:
Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says, ‘Let my people go so that they may give me worship.’Exodus 9:1 BBE
The worship of God embodied in Torah observance was the reason for being freed from Egypt and our way to participate daily in and celebrate God’s great act of redeeming Israel from Egyptian bondage.
In Yochanan 14, we see some insights about the important issue of Torah observance for Messianic Jews from the teaching of Messiah Yeshua.
If you love me, you will keep my commands; and I will ask the Father,and he will give you another comforting Counselor like me,the Spirit of Truth, to be with you forever.Yochanan 14:15-16, JNT
This ties in well with the words of the Ve’ahavta section of the Shema wherein as we “accept the yoke of Heaven”, embodied in observing Torah, we recite, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Each day as we recite the Shema, we affirm the connection between living a life of Torah observance and whole hearted love for God.
In verse 16, Yeshua promised that by obeying Torah we would be given the Spirit of God to be our Comforter and helper to live Torah. So in obeying Torah we are granted the Spirit of God so that we can more earnestly live within a Torah life. Let us seek to live lives of Torah faithfulness and in so doing we will be obeying God, celebrating freedom from slavery, showing love to Yeshua, our righteous Messiah and also opening ourselves to receiving the power of God’s Spirit to live more fully the Torah.
