There Must be Some Mistake

What I day I had. I’m almost too pooped to write about it.

I contribute to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. One of their reps contacted me a while back, asking to meet with me. I went, and we had an amazing conversation, and we became friends. She invited me to visit a Messianic synagogue she attends, and today was the day.

I visited Ayts Chayim (I wish I had asked how to pronounce “ayts”) in Boca Raton. At the moment, they’re meeting in a church. Because Jews worship on Saturday, the church is able to accommodate them.

I can’t tell you how strange it was to enter a building which was clearly a church and to find myself surrounded by the familiar mannerisms and speech patterns of Jews. I’ve spent much more time around Jews than in churches or around hardcore Christians, and I am very used to them, but being with them in a church is weird; it’s like being transported in time to the Messianic Age, when Jews and Christians will presumably be united and better able to associate in comfort.

They did a very good job. There was worship, and they brought the Torah out of the Ark (I wondered how they managed to get other Jews to sell them the scroll), and then the Torah was carried around the church, and people touched it and then kissed their fingers. The man who carried it made a couple of circuits around the seats while happy people danced behind him. There was a good deal of dancing throughout the service, and I was relieved to see that there was some dignity to it. These days, worship sometimes turns into a sideshow. The “Davidic worship” folks can get a little nutty.

They read today’s Parasha (Torah portion), and they added a New Testament portion which, in the opinion of the Rabbi, was related. Let’s see. I can’t remember the exact order of things. Prayer for the sick, musical worship combined with giving, and at the end, teaching. Something like that.

Rabbi Brawer taught on the story about Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. If I understood him correctly, it was his opinion that the angel was God himself. More specifically, the preincarnate Jesus. This is a fairly widely held belief. He pointed out a few things I had not noticed about the story, and he concluded with four lessons that logically followed. I would not have picked these things up on my own; they were the kind of things Spirit-filled pastors and evangelists come up with. If I had to name the main point, I would say that it was that ideally, man is supposed to deal with God up close and in person. Like David said, “When thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not thy face far from me. Put not thy servant away in anger. Thou hast been my help. Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation”

There was more to it than that, but like I said, I’m very tired. I recall this: he said the angel kept asking Jacob his name before he would bless him, because Jacob had lied about his identity when he convinced Isaac to give him Esau’s blessing. And Jacob demanded the angel’s blessing in order to make sure his legacy was not corrupted by a counterfeit blessing obtained by deceit. That was interesting. A couple of weeks back, I learned that David questioned his own legitimacy. Now I see Jacob may have had a similar issue.

After the service, I had lunch with some of the folks in attendance, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Believe it or not, I met some conservatives! And a bunch of them want to get concealed carry licenses, and the Rabbi is all for it! I may be invited to help out.

I learned that there is a very stealthy side to their faith. Because other Jews believe they have the authority to expel Messianics from the race and cause them problems should they try to emigrate to Israel, Messianics sometimes have to fly under the radar. I don’t mean they lie. But there is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at work. I can’t say more without casting unwanted light on the things that go on. I don’t mean they’re sneaking into synagogues and pouring holy water on the pews, or that they’re secretly baptizing their neighbors’ kids. It’s nothing sinister or weird, and it doesn’t involve proselytizing. But there are times when they have to keep quiet in order to associate with other Jews.

They’re not flogging them any more. That’s progress! Paul never had it this good.

I noticed something about the worship music. It was very good, but I thought it had a little bit of a mournful quality to it. Repressed sorrow, perhaps. Reminiscent of the superficial, bittersweet, determined gaiety of klezmer. Surely there must be a lot of sorrow in the life of a Messianic Jew. They feel they have something wonderful, yet the people with whom they yearn to share it consider them traitors. Literally worse than Hare Krishnas or pagans who disdain their God entirely. It’s surprising how much anti-Jesus sentiment there is among Jews. My IFCJ friend said starving Jews overseas have turned down IFCJ food, simply because the people who paid for it believed in Jesus. Everyone knows there has been anti-Semitic persecution, but it’s not like the IFCJ is grinding up communion wafers and putting them in the food.

I formed some other impressions. Maybe they’re wrong. It seemed that when the Rabbi spoke of deliverance from fear and anxiety–a gift many Christians are used to–these people praised God more intensely than ordinary followers of Jesus. Inner peace seems to be a special challenge for Jews. If so, it seems appropriate, because they are a nation of wanderers, separated from their homeland by centuries of exile and never quite accepted by their foreign hosts. Never quite safe. How can such a people relax the way the rest of us do? To quote David again, “Thou tellest my wanderings. Put thou my tears into thy bottle; are they not in thy book?”

In my church, you can generally feel the presence of the Holy Spirit very soon after worship begins. At Ayts Chayim, it took a while for the heat to come on. I was concerned at first. Some churches never light up, and that is especially true of churches where God’s power isn’t working. But as the service progressed, I began to feel the sensation. Maybe the delay has something to do with the relatively restrained nature of the people, compared to the Haitians and Cubans and white pentecostals I worship with. Or maybe it just reflects the fact that everything involving God has to be harder for Jews. A few Noachide laws for us; 613 commandments for them. That’s how it goes.

These people must be tough. If Jews are outsiders, what is a Jew who can’t turn to other Jews?

Hope your day was as interesting as mine.