Out of the Building and Into the Streets
The ninth day of Av is for most people in the world a day with not much meaning. For the Jewish people this day is a landmark in history. In Jerusalem restaurants and coffee shops are closed, there are no movie theaters open; all forms of entertainment don’t function on this day. Much of the Jewish population of Israel and all around the world take this day as a fast day, a reminder, a memorial, not so much for what our enemies did to us but what we have caused God to do to us in order to restore us to be what we ought to be.
I am very interested in the shift of emphasis that has occurred in this nation in the last twenty five years. It used to be that the emphasis in the media and in the synagogues was on the evil of our enemies, Babylon, Persia, the Greeks Seleucid Empire, Rome, the Crusades, the Muslims, the Russian Cossacks, the Nazis, and the beat goes on until today’s hate mongering terrorists from all races and religious backgrounds. Now the Israeli public and even some of the Orthodox Jewish religious leadership have turned inward. There is a whole lot of introspection and soul searching in the Israeli society and the emphasis is not so much on what happened that our first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon on the 9th of Av and the second temple was destroyed by Rome on the 9th of Av, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was on the 9th of Av, and many more events that are not so uplifting all happened on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av.
Of course there are the standard slogans and cliché’s that everyone uses. The first temple was destroyed because of idolatry, and the second temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred, or just plain racist prejudice and insensitivity to the pain and need and plight of your fellowman. But, when I take these slogans that might be full of meaning for a moment and break them down into daily activities the idea becomes a nightmare that fills my own heart with fear.
Can you imagine the guilt feeling that a sensitive Jew must have in his heart to believe that when he expressed negative and prejudicial and racially hateful feelings against his Jewish or Arab neighbor he actually causes God to punish the nation with such destruction as the one that happened in 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was ransacked and burned and the temple was destroyed by Rome? Can you imagine how a conviction like this ought to affect a person today in the land of Israel, where racial and sectarian hate and rage actually fuel the very fabric of our society? So many people today in Israel are turning to God, to an alternative God, not the God of inside the Synagogues, not the God of the black-dressed ultra orthodox, but a God that can meet the person on the streets of Tel-Aviv, and in the coffee shops of Ben-Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. A God that is not boxed up in a neat package wrapped in beautiful colored paper and presented from a well polished pulpit, but a God that speaks to prophets prostitutes, beggars and Kings at the same time and in the same voice.
Last night there was a reading of the book of Lamentations in the Tzavta club in Tel-Aviv. The Tzavta club in Tel-Aviv one could say is the Mecca of secularism in Israel. In fact it was created and envisioned by the son of the former chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, Rabbi Daniel Zion who was a firm disciple of Yeshua the Messiah. The Rabbi’s son rebelled against religion and became totally secular, a leader of the secular Israeli culture and created the Tzavta club. Last night in this temple of secularism in Tel-Aviv the secular Israeli crowed read together the book of Lamentations, the book of the Bible that laments the fall of the first temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
Who knows may be God is working in Israel not through the established “high priesthood” of the religious temples of doom that seek to enslave people in their systems, but again through those who are not wise and not rich and not learned. Who knows, may be God is speaking to prostitutes and tax-collectors again and gathering them in the most unlikely places to speak of how to fix the problems of our history and calling to be a holy nation a nation of priests? I hope so! I pray so! I want so! I hope that you do too, because the same problems that we have in Israel and in our synagogues, you too have in your churches in the showcases of the Hollywood gods where Benjamin Franklin is not one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, but a key and a ticket to buy God’s blessing and prosperity. Maybe you too want to pray to be able to meet God in the most unlikely places like in the living room of your next door neighbor.
I write these things not to be negative towards church, but to urge the church, to get out from behind the pulpits and get back into the society where they have to deal with evangelism and pain, and suffering, and poverty, and do the work of the Gospel, all the good works for which we were saved by God’s grace. (Ephesians 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”)
It is a good thing to remember the grace of God and His blessings, but also a remembrance of His wrath and punishment because of our sins. The idea that Christianity is always going to be talking about only the positive things and remembering only the wonderful love and grace of God, is a weak and half true idea. We have to see the fullness of God’s relationship with mankind and know that the same God that so loved the world and gave His only begotten Son so that we might all be saved from the wrath of hell is the same God who controls the sea, the waves and the winds of the tornado and hurricane. He is the God who took Israel out of Egypt but also the same God who walked with them into the German gas chambers in Buchenwald and Aushwitz, and went up in the smoke of the Crematoriums to show the world how evil man can become when politics control the church and the church controls politics.
by Joseph Shulam, The Jerusalem Prayer List, July 30th, 2009
Further Note from Pastor Chris
For some, we are the only Bible or Jesus people will see and know. What do people know about Jesus from your life? Recently, I was in Israel and was asked what I do for a living. I told this person that I am a teacher just like them, but that I taught the Bible. They said to me, “Everyone believes in the Bible, don’t they?”
I said that it is true that people know about the Bible, but that seeking to live it out in their daily lives is a completely different thing. I gave them the example of this in action with their own people. The Church tortured the Jewish people in order to get them to turn to Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew). I told this person that this is not what the Bible taught; at least I couldn’t find it in the Bible. In fact, I read just the opposite. Jesus said in Matthew 5:44, “I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” Jesus teaches us to love people into the kingdom, not torture them. And if we are God’s children, we will put this love into daily action.
If it is true that the first and second Temple’s were destroyed because of the behavior of the Jews living in the land at those times, what actions will Jesus have to take with His Bride, the Church, in order to get her doing what she should be doing? If you have put your faith in Jesus, you belong to the Church (1 Cor. 12:13). What are the prostitutes and the tax-gatherers seeing in your life? But I guess an even better question is, are you even around such people for them to see the Jesus you have in the first place?
When Jesus saw the crowds of humanity he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. I believe the Bible teaches us to hit the streets and start loving on people so they can see the Jesus of the Bible and find the hope, the new hope, which can only come from the Jesus of the Bible.
