What are your endless sacrifices to Me?says Yahweh.
I am sick of holocausts of rams
and the fat of calves.
The blood of bulls and of goats revolts Me.
When you come to present yourselves before Me,
who asked you to trample over My courts?
Bring Me your worthless offerings no more,
the smoke of them fills Me with disgust,
new moons, sabbaths, assemblies—
I cannot endure festival and solemnity.
Your new moons and your pilgrimages
I hate with all My soul.
They lie heavy on Me,
I am tired of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands
I turn My eyes away.
You may multiply your prayers,
I shall not listen.
Your hands are covered with blood,
wash, make yourselves clean.
Isaiah 1:11-16a
How can YHWH God, the God of Israel, say this about sacrifices and other ceremonies which He ordained through Moses His holy prophet, to be observed till the end of time? The key is in the last sentence in the passage quoted, and amplified in the following four verses. God hates to be treated as if He can be tricked, as if He, like the unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling elilim, those nothings that are the gods of the nations, can be parleyed with, can be bought with blood money. The holy prophet Isaiah continues,Take your wrongdoing out of My sight.
Cease to do evil.
Learn to do good,
search for justice,
help the oppressed,
be just to the orphan,
plead for the widow.
Come now, let us talk this over,
says Yahweh.
Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing to obey,
you shall eat the good things of the earth.
But if you persist in rebellion,
the sword shall eat you instead.
The mouth of Yahweh has spoken.
Isaiah 1:16b-20
We can see in retrospect what this prophecy meant for the people Israel. The second Temple was laid waste and their nation dispersed among the nations. What happened to them is a paradigm of what happens to all peoples in all times, even all individuals, when they try to live a double life. For, as Jesus, the Word of God in human form, says,No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24
Right from the first, the tug back to Judaism was felt, so strong a tug that the first council of the Church was called to relieve it, laying down the principle that the commandments of God which constituted the moral code were binding on the disciples, but nothing more. The apostles, all of whom were faithful Jews and not Gentile converts, issued a letter to the churches, which is typically Jewish in style,
The apostles and elders, your brothers, send greetings to the brothers of pagan birth in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. We hear that some of our members have disturbed you with their demands and have unsettled your minds. They acted without any authority from us, and so we have decided unanimously to elect delegates and to send them to you with Barnabas and Paul, men we highly respect who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly we are sending you Judas and Silas, who will confirm by word of mouth what we have written in this letter. It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves not to saddle you with any burden beyond these essentials: you are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from fornication. Avoid these and you will do what is right. Farewell.
Acts 15:23b-29
They do not mention the moral code at all, as this was a given. Elsewhere in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and in the epistles, especially in the letter to the Galatians, other Jewish religious obligations, such as circumcision, and the kosher laws dividing clean from unclean foods, are examined and dispensed with. The dispensation from the kosher laws was, as a matter of fact, not a teaching of a Gentile convert, but of the holy apostle Peter himself, who again was a believing Jew. If there were any reason for Christians to continue observing the ceremonial laws of Judaism, it seems certain that it would have been taught by the original apostles, all of whom were Jews, and passed down to us through the orthodox, apostolic Church. On the contrary, this has never happened from the first generations until now.Yet, we are troubled even today, as were the early Gentile converts by those whom Peter calls “some of our members.” Peter wasn’t saying, “these men are not Christians,” but rather, “they acted without any authority from us.” There have proliferated since the founding of the state of Israel many new sects claiming to be “messianic Jews,” who are trying to recover the lost heritage of a speculated Hebrew Christianity, going so far as to produce Jewish versions of the New Testament and repudiating and denigrating the Greek originals. Some of them carefully sidestep the explicit anathemas against Judaizing that are found in the letter to the Galatians, but as the movement has grown, other groups have emerged that throw all caution to the winds and reveal themselves for what they are, making the words of holy apostle Paul, himself a believing Jew, as relevant as ever,
I am astonished at the promptness with which you have turned away from the One who called you and have decided to follow a different version of the Good News. Not that there can be more than one Good News; it is merely that some troublemakers among you want to change the Good News of Christ; and let me warn you that if anyone preaches a version of the Good News different from the one we have already preached to you, whether it be ourselves or an angel from heaven, he is to be condemned. I am only repeating what I told you before: If anyone preaches a version of the Good News different from the one you have already heard, he is to be condemned. So now whom am I trying to please—man, or God? Would you say it is men’s approval I am looking for? If I still wanted that, I should not be what I am—a servant of Jesus Christ.Galatians 1:6-10
Even with these words on the books, or rather in the Book, we still find groups that call themselves “messianic synagogues,” their ministers “rabbis,” who wear prayer shawls with long tzitzit (tassels) and who daven (bob up and down) furiously as they worship. Very few of their members are actually Jews. Very few of their “rabbis” are Jews either. Yet they enforce rabbinical, not merely biblical, Jewish customs on their congregations. Some, trying to imitate rabbinical synagogue services and customs, divide their members into those who are Jews by ancestry from those who are not, allowing the former to come up and read a Torah portion, while the latter are told to be thankful that they’re allowed to be part of the qahal (Jewish community) at all. Again, these leaders are in most cases not Jews in the first place, even though some may claim Jewish ancestry. They are like those of whom Jesus Christ speaks in His letters to the churches of Asia,
I know the trials you have had, and how poor you are—though you are rich—and the slanderous accusations that have been made by the people who profess to be Jews but are really members of the synagogue of Satan.Letter to the church at Smyrna, Revelation 2:9
Now I am going to make the synagogue of Satan—those who profess to be Jews, but are liars, because they are no such thing—I will come and make them fall at your feet and admit that you are the people that I love.
Letter to the church at Philadelphia, Revelation 3:9
So, brethren, you ask yourselves, why is he writing this? Does he have an axe to grind? Is he an anti-Semite?
No, brothers, I am not an anti-Semite. In fact, some have accused me of being a Judaizer myself.
I read Hebrew. I pray the Hebrew Tehillim (Psalms). I sway when I pray. I have a long beard. I am respectful of Jewish scruples. I try to keep the Passover. And I am a Greek Orthodox Christian. I read Greek. I pray and worship the Greek liturgy. I kiss bibles, ikons, crosses and the hands of priests and other brethren. I follow the fast and feasts. I bow and perform prostrations. I confess my sins. I witness for Jesus Christ the God-Man and King of Israel. I believe in His cross, resurrection and ascension. I know He is present with us at this very moment. “So who am I trying to please, man or God?” I can ask myself with holy apostle Paul. My answer, humbly given, is “God, and that makes me what I am, His servant, though unworthy.”
This post is dedicated to those who may be imprisoned by this false philosophy that seems to bother the Body of Christ perennially. I am not including Jewish Christian faith communities, many of which also call themselves “messianic synagogues,” in this testimony. I also realise that there may be some groups that lie somewhere between the ethnic Jewish and the make believe Jewish category.
If you are a Jew by birth and have come to believe in Jesus, then do what He tells you. Thousands, even millions, have gone the path that lies before you. Even in the Greek Orthodox koinonia are sons and daughters of Israel who are Christians while not abandoning their identity as Jews, and we are honored to have them in our midst, as kinsmen of the Son of God. Some are even priests of the faith, like Fr Bernstein, who was one of the founders of Jews for Jesus.
If you are not a Jew by birth and are involved in a “messianic Jewish synagogue,” brother or sister, what are you doing there? Do you know your Bible? Do you know that the Church of Christ has been grafted onto the root of Israel, as the Word of God declares, and that is enough for us? As martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “The life of discipleship can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves, neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world. The disciple looks always only to his master, never to Christ AND the law, Christ AND religion, Christ AND the world. Only by following Christ alone can he preserve a single eye.”
The whole history of the Church of Christ from the day of Pentecost until today cannot be laid aside and replaced by a private fantasy of our own, no matter how attractive, how glorious, how righteous it seems. We are only of yesterday, but our Lord and His Bride are from before the beginning and reach to the ages of ages,
With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race that we have started. Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection.Hebrews 12:1-2a
He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.”
Matthew 28:18b-20
Do you believe this?
Good post, Romanos. I don’t know much about these “Messianic Jews”, so this is educating for me. Maybe those who stay in it simply have not learnt what Orthodoxy has in it.
ReplyDeleteWouldn’t also this apply to us, orthodox, though? At least the beginning of it. It’s easy to fall into this trap: we have rites and ceremonies and have to follow them scrupulously, and as long as we do every detail correctly – we’re with Him. But that’s not true, that’s not what He wants from us; the rites are only needed for us as the framework, but what is really important is living with the Spirit, by the Spirit, not by the letter. And the Spirit will teach us to love instead of brilliantly talking about love, and to pray fervently instead of reading the required prayers.
Of course, Sasha, this also applies to us! In fact, sometimes it's a great struggle for me personally (and I know it is for others who have confessed this to me as well), to be among Orthodox Christians who make meticulous observance of all our 'traditions' the focus of their Christian lives, all the while acting as though 'mercy' and 'kindness' were categories of behavior that only 'the saints' are expected to display. This is 'worshiping the Church' instead of worshiping and following Christ.
ReplyDeleteActually, to be truthful, this struggle is a major concern of my blog. To non-Orthodox, this misplaced 'worship of the Church' instead of Christ has driven away many sincere brothers whose faith should place them within the Orthodox Church.
I try to demonstrate that despite the faults of its members, the Orthodox Church is the heritage of all followers of Jesus, and that within the same generous space there is room for everyone: for developed, disciplined and wise followers of Christ, as well as those who are still groping their way to the Light through the dark forests of their flesh, sometimes making 'religion' of what could and should be the simple face-to-face encounter with the God-Man that transforms and saves all who come to Him.
Jesus Christ is the reason the Church exists, not the other way round. The traditions and customs of the 'New Israel' can obscure access to the living God just as much as did the traditions and customs of 'Old Israel', but that isn't a reason to abandon them.
Jesus says, 'Follow what the teachers of the Law tell you to do, but don't imitate their behavior.'
This applies to us in the Church of the New Testament, the Orthodox Church, which can be a religion to those who still need religion as they are gradually freed from the bondage of sin, and which can be a discipline of friendship with the Lord and with all men to those who knowingly and purposely walk in His presence.
Most of us are not fully one or the other, but somewhere in between. That's why we call ourselves pilgrims: we are journeying, walking behind Christ, as He leads us out of the city of destruction, to the City of God, where there is no night, where the Holy Trinity is the only Light, and the only Temple.
You've nailed it: "this misplaced 'worship of the Church" (and tradition) "' instead of Christ". This worried me a lot. I've seen too much of that in the Russian part of the church. In OCA the air is somehow fresher - maybe because it's the youngest of the sister-churches, and the life in it is simpler and somehow reflects the first Christians more than others.
ReplyDeleteSasha, I also, I should say, we also watch with trepidation as some parts of the Russian Orthodox community begin to take upon themselves the yoke of the 'Imperial Church' instead of the yoke of Jesus.
ReplyDeleteI find that the local OCA church is unaffected by this trend, and my spiritual home, the Greek church, even though as a Slav I should be with them, is to me very much foundationally evangelical, that is, true to the gospel. The Greek church, if it has a fault, is that it tends to morph into a kind of Orthodox version of Episcopalianism. I know what that looks like because I was in the Episcopal Church for 12 years, and I still consider myself an Anglican (Orthodox Episcopalian) as well as a Greek Orthodox. I still pray the prayers from both communities.
The Antiochians and the Serbians are two other Orthodox communities that I am familiar with, and both of them are very evangelical in their approach. Again, by evangelical I do not mean 'protestant-like' but rather, 'true to the gospels.'
I don't know what is going on with some of the Russians, but thank God, He will always preserve us, even when we get sidetracked for a time. God is God, and we are, as Saint Peter says to Jesus in the film Jesus of Nazareth 'just stupid men.'
Thanks, brother, always, for your friendship, your prayers, and of course, for your comments here.