Boycott the Checkpoint?

Our UMJC rabbis were discussing whether it was a good idea for Messianic Jewish leaders to attend the recent “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference, which was clearly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel in its orientation. I posted this response, which I’d like to share here:

My view is that some may be genuinely called to attend, being wise as serpents and innocent as doves, but it’s a really complex issue with several important components:

1. There’s a public relations battle, in which we need to clearly and forcefully confront replacement theology and anti-Zionism. I’d say that having some MJ attendees could help with this if these attendees continue to confront these false theologies before, during, and after the conference, and to show how the conference supports them. The CATC local committee set up their PR to stigmatize people who refused to attend and we don’t want to play into that entirely. At the same time we need to recognize that public support for their anti-Zionist agenda is probably their highest priority, and be careful not to be used.
2. Having said this, I personally would not attend a conference entitled “Christ at the Checkpoint,” especially with its claim to bring “Hope in the Midst of Conflict.” Despite their protestations to the contrary, the organizers set up the conference to undermine Christian support for Israel as the Jewish state, and packaged it as a conference on peace and reconciliation. It’s the mixture of those two themes that I find so offensive, as if the obstacle to Christian hope is the Israeli checkpoint.
3. Years ago, when I led a local congregation, I was approached by a man who was helping organize a visit to Albuquerque by Billy Graham. I like Billy Graham and his ministry, but I said that as a Jew I couldn’t publicly support any effort that billed itself as a “Crusade.” It was just too offensive and insensitive to Jewish history, and really to the nature of the Crusades themselves. How much more do I feel like I need to distance myself from a conference whose central image is Christ confronting, or being confronted by, the Israeli presence in Eretz Yisrael.
4. But there’s another struggle, which is for reconciliation with fellow Yeshua believers among the Palestinians, and that’s worth fighting for too. I do not want us to fall into the radical and even racist sort of response to Palestinians that is common among Christian Zionists, and I’m afraid, Messianic Jews. And I don’t want to draw a hard line between Arab Christians who support Israel and those who don’t. I’m going to be closer to the former, but still need to reach out to the latter. Furthermore, I don’t find it shocking that most Arab Christians hold to replacement theology—so do most Western Christians! I’d like to find ways for genuine dialogue even with that starting point, and hope that we might influence them to reconsider, even as our community needs to reconsider some of its attitudes toward Arabs in general.

Another Palestinian perspective

Amazing timing: “Christ at the Checkpoint” ended two days ago and tonight I met a Palestinian Christian leader who supports Israel and completely rejects the replacement theology that undergirded that whole CatC conference. Steven Khoury grew up in a Christian family in Jerusalem and threw rocks at Israeli soldiers as a kid during the first Intifada. He was finally confronted by too many scriptures to keep going in that direction—scriptures that commanded him to love his neighbor and forgive his enemies, and also scriptures that spoke of God’s unchanging love and promises toward the Jewish people. Steven turned away from his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes and today, along with his father Dr. Naim Khoury, is one of very few Palestinian Christians who openly support Israel as a Jewish state. They have encountered tremendous opposition and pressure because of this stance, which is based on deep biblical conviction–beatings,  bombings, and harassment.

Steven told me that just yesterday, a representative of the Palestinian authority showed up at his father’s church in Bethlehem and told him that they no longer considered his church to be legitimate and would not accept any of their paperwork in the future. The PA left it unsaid that this was about the Khourys’ support for Israel.

We need to  pray for the Khourys and stand with them as they seek to reach their own people for Yeshua, and spread a fully-orbed biblical message that honors the people of Israel as well. Check out www.holylandmissions.org and an article at umjc.org that mentions them as well: http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/news-mainmenu-40/1-latest/754-israeli-commentary-on-qchrist-at-the-checkpointq.

Resurgent replacement theology

As I’ve been speaking and writing lately against the new wave of replacement theology (the idea that the church replaces or supersedes Israel in God’s purposes), a few people have asked me why I think this old doctrine seems to be making a comeback today. I’ve referred to this comeback in passing in several of my recent blogs, and you can do your own research to verify that it’s really happening. But why is it happening? I can identify three major reasons.

Matthew 18 and “Christ at the Checkpoint”

Since my last blog, the UMJC joined with other international Messianic Jewish organizations to issue another statement on the controversial “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference. You can read it, and an article on the same topic by an Israeli colleague, under “Community News” at umjc.org.

For now I’ll just respond to one complaint raised by the conference sponsors when they received a copy of our first statement. Both statements are pretty critical, and the local coordinating committee of Christ at the Checkpoint took us to task for not going to them privately in accord with Matthew 18:15-20 “in order to resolve differences rather than send a public letter to appeal for dialogue through the internet.” I’ve heard this sort of appeal to Matthew 18 a few times in this sort of context, and it’s worthy of a response.

Christ at the Checkpoint?

I haven’t been blogging much lately, partly because I’ve been involved in drafting a couple of important public affairs statements that you can see under “Community News” at http://www.umjc.org. One of them has to do with “Christ at the Checkpoint,” a controversial conference hosted by Palestinian Christians next month in Bethlehem. I mention it in my Torah study for the week, so here it is:

“That I may dwell among them”

Parashat T’rumah, Exodus 25:1–27:21

When does the story of the Exodus from Egypt reach its climax? As I remember it from watching “The Ten Commandments” as a kid, the highpoint is the crossing of the Red Sea, when those towering walls of water come crashing down on the hapless Egyptian troops. Later, as I read the book of Exodus as an adult, I began to see the arrival at Mount Sinai, or the giving of the Ten Commandments (after all, they named the movie after that) as the climax. But now, I’m wondering if the climax of the Book of Exodus doesn’t come later­, in one verse in this week’s parasha: “And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8). Here’s the goal and highpoint of the whole story: the God of Israel, Creator of heaven and earth, will dwell tangibly in the midst of his people Israel.

The Jewish Annotated NT

For Hanukkah this year my lovely wife gave me a copy of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt (and author of the highly acclaimed The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus) and Marc Zvi Brettler, Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis. It’s packed with commentary and notes by a host of world-class Jewish scholars, including Daniel Boyarin, Shaye Cohen, Pamela Eisenbaum, Mark Nanos, Adele Reinhartz, and Geza Vermes, all reading and explaining the New Testament texts from deep within Jewish space. (New Testament isn’t my favorite term for the apostolic writings, but we’ll just go with it here for simplicity’s sake.)

Needless to say, I’m thoroughly enjoying this book, including the silent arguments I’m having with different contributors over their interpretation of various texts. For example, when Yeshua explains that he can’t get rescued from those who arrest him, because the Scriptures “say it must happen in this way” (Matt. 27:54), the note points out that Matthew doesn’t cite any specific Scriptures here, and claims, “no pre-Christian sources predict the arrest, suffering, and crucifixion of the messiah.” Perhaps you can argue that about the arrest and crucifixion per se, but surely the theme of a suffering Messiah is well established in the Tanakh, as rabbinic literature amply recognizes in the following centuries. And sometimes the notes don’t go far enough. Since I got The Jewish Annotated NT for Hanukkah, I read John 10:22ff early on. It mentions, of course, that “the festival of the Dedication” here is Hanukkah, but it doesn’t say that this is the earliest reference anywhere to Hanukkah as a holiday, or explain the connection between the festival and this pericope in John.

But what’s most striking about The Jewish Annotated NT is its deep engagement and respect toward Yeshua and the writers of the New Testament. In the Introduction, the editors cite Lutheran scholar Krister Stendahl’s phrase “‘holy envy’ to express the idea that a religious tradition different from the one we practice may express beautiful and meaningful notions.” Of course, we Messianic Jews would like our fellow Jews to get more out of the New Testament than “beautiful and meaningful notions,” but we also need to be confident that Scripture itself can get through to people, if they’ll only read it, and this publication can help many Jewish people to do just that with the New Testament.

Another benefit of the book from a Messianic Jewish perspective is that the authors read the texts without the layers of Christian preconceptions and dogmas that color the reading of Yeshua-believers, Messianic Jews as well as Christians. Here’s one example:

A couple of weeks ago (before I got the book), I spoke at a Navajo One New Man conference here in New Mexico (see http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/news-mainmenu-40/1-latest/729-navajo-nation-supports-israel). I opened with Revelation 7, where John hears the number of those sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel—144,000—and then sees “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7.9 NRSV). I said that this was a picture of the One New Man that this conference was speaking about—not a homogenized humanity, but still Jews and Gentiles. John hears the perfect number of redeemed Israel, with the twelve tribes represented, and then sees a remnant from all the nations, representing humankind in all its diversity, ultimately Jews and Gentiles worshiping God and the Lamb.

Now, traditionally Christian scholars have read Revelation through the lens of replacement theology and seen a “new Israel,” with 144,000 as a symbolic number for the redeemed, who appear in the next scene as the multi-national multitude that no one can count. Or, more recently, other Christians see the 144,000 as the literal number of Jews who will be saved during the great tribulation, even if the rest of Israel doesn’t make it. The multi-national multitude of those raptured before the tribulation worship before the throne while the drama plays out on earth. The Jewish Annotated NT, free of centuries of interpretive dispute, offers a simpler and more compelling reading of this passage: “John’s eschatology revolves around the restoration of the tribes of Israel, as in Ezek 37.15-22 . . . affirming the fundamentally ethnic ideology of this book.” The great multitude of 7:9 comprises “Gentiles who have devoted themselves to purity (white robes) and to the God and messiah of Judaism.” I might prefer to see Messiah capitalized, but I love the interpretation. It’s pretty much how I preached it to my Navajo brothers and sisters, but I was a little nervous about my interpretation until a Jewish scholar backed me up here.

I’m just starting to work with The Jewish Annotated New Testament, but I sense that it will provide lots of insights like this one as I incorporate it in my studies.

The Jewish Annotated New Testament, New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors.New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 637 pages, hardback.

Irreplaceable Israel

We’re in the middle of Elul, the sixth month, which means we’re in the middle of a prayer focus on protection and restoration for the land and people of Israel. The two prayer themes of protection and restoration or return (teshuvah in Hebrew, which also means repentance), are linked in Scripture, as in our theme verse, “Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal. 3:7).

This prayer effort (co-sponsored by the UMJC and the MJAA) is something we’ve never done before, but lots of us are also following an ancient tradition, reading through the Psalms during Elul. A couple of days ago I came to Psalm 80, which makes the same protection-return linkage: “O Lord God of Hosts, turn us back, cause your face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved” (vss. 4, 8, 20). First, there must be return, turning back to God, then God’s favor shines upon us and we are rescued or saved. This sequence is repeated throughout Scripture. You have to be careful how you use apply it, though, because it has been used in some circles (like replacement theology) to declare that God’s promises to Israel are null and void, since Israel has never really turned back to God. When the Messiah came and Israel still didn’t turn, so the theory goes, that clinched it.

But, of course, there’s another theme throughout Scripture that counters this interpretation: Israel is irreplaceable.