Sarx

I met with a Rabbi on Thursday who made it quite clear that conversion, per se, isn’t necessary for a Gentile. Unlike the Christians and the Muslims, the Jews don’t have sense of “evangelism”. We had a nice conversation and he suggested I read a book - now out of print - which I found on eBay that night for only $6, including postage! I promptly ordered it.

I was to go to services on Friday night but the entire week of resumes and interviews and general stress had left me in a place of not wanting to meet any strangers. So I stayed at the house until leaving to spend the weekend w/ Brodie.

After I passed the customs station on the Canadian side of the border, I turned on my iPod, plugged into the car stereo, and began listening to a podcast. On the way I listened to a Rabbi discuss last Saturday’s (2/16) Torah portion: Tetzaveh. Then I listened to a discussion of this week’s (2/23) portion, Ke Tisa. I listened to two more podcasts on the way home today, on the same two portions of the Torah.

I arrived home, in Buffalo, at a very different place from when I left.

To explain this, here are some sentences, ripped from their context, that all struck me at the same time during this weekend’s journey.

1) In studying Judaism I meet the warm, Semitic deity I expect (but do not find) in traditional Christianity as I have experienced it.
2) The commentaries (as explored by some Rabbis) theorise that God gave the Tabernacle to the Jews to help them with the problem expressed in the worship of the Golden Bull.
3) Without the Rabbinic Commentary you can read the (Hebrew) scriptures to point directly to Jesus on the Cross or to my Bar Mitzvah.
4) Before I read Why the Jews Rejected Jesus I thought the issue was that there was a common text between Jews and Christians about which they simply disagreed. - Nothing could be further from the Truth.
5) The past has a vote but not a veto.
6) Christianity is a religion of Creed. Judaism is a religion of Deed.

Sentences 1 and 4 are mine, in dialogue with others. I’m talking there. 2 and 3 are recaptured from my audio memory - #2 from the podcasts this weekend and #3 from Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch. Sentence 6 is a quote from Mordecai Kaplan and, amongh Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic sorts, I often here the reverse sentiment expressed. 6 came from an online course for which I registered. It ties back to a discussion a year ago this week about the difference between Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy. Most of these came up - in one form or another - in the conversation with the Rabbi as well as in other conversations I’ve had around the net with all sorts of people.

What came to me in the zen of driving was that, really, I am still deeply committed to following God in the way of Jesus. What I blogged back in December is still true:

Yeshua: Rabbi? Yes, who fully participated in the Rabbinic debates of his time. Messiah? I’m confused as I look more into what Jews thought of the text they had. God-in-the-the-flesh? Well now…

So much of the theology I understand, so much of the theology by which I see God, experience the word, deal with my neighbour, understand forgiveness, healing/salvation/wholeness (tikkun olam) is exactly incarnational. I can’t make the leap. If Jesus isn’t God in the Flesh, not only does Christianity not make sense, but so also does nothing else.

Judaism, Islam and Christianity all three have their true believers: people who somehow imagine the Sacred Text or Form of thier religion to have existed somehow, unchanged from all eternity. I’m told that Allah had a Koran in mind at the creation of the world. I’m told that the scrolls of the Torah sat in HaSham’s throne for eternity before they were given to Moses. I’m told that Jesus was alive on the Throne of Glory even as he died on the Cross and that the Gospel was planned from all eternity. But what comes to me, over and over, having looked at the claims and the reality, is that There is no way to get to a “pure” religion - if that means a religion some how crafted by God and handed whole cloth to man.

There may *be* such a path, but unless it shines with gold light for everyone to see, we’re not going to know what it is. Each of us is called to the Holy One in the voice designed to speak to us, in the voice we are designed to hear.

The next thing that came to me in the zen of driving, is the realisation that if what I believe to be true really is true… then I am a Christian - whatever that may mean - and that I must do that in a Christian community - whatever that may mean - rather than a Jewish one. I say that no matter how I might feel about the various points in the Nicene Creed. (There are times when I can’t get past the first paragraph without hedging my bets or crossing my fingers.) But what I *do* believe is in the deeds that Yeshua taught, some of which are Jewish, through and through, and some of which are elaborations on Judaism and some of which, finally, are Jesus (or his followers’ communities’) Jazz riffs on elemental truths.

From the Sh’ma we get to the Trinity - in round about ways.
From the Torah we get to the Sermon on the Mount.
From the Shabbat and Pessach Seders we get to the Communion Supper.
From the Hillel we get to the Greatest Commandment.
From Shammai we get to the teaching on Divorce.

Judaism has Rabbis - so does Christianity: for everyMaimonides there is a Gregory of Nazianzus; for every Shimon bar Yochai there was a Gregory of Nyssa; for every Rashi an Origen. For every one of Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith there is a point in the 12 sections of the Nicene Creed. It is, however, only at that point that Judaism and Christianity part company for even with these two “creeds” the two communities differ. The Jews debate the meaning of the 13 points and even deny their creedal necessity. Many Christians (even those who might debate the finer meanings of various points), however, insist that the Nicene Creed is sort of a checklist that defines one’s status as a Christian.

What Judaism does not have is the ability to make a final statement. What Christianity did not have until Constantine, was a desire to make such a statement: she has largely made a fetish of it. What Judaism does have is a conscious, overt debate and stylistic give-and-take between opposing schools of thought. What Christianity fails to name is her own give-and-take, being hung up on the claim that someone must be right and someone must be wrong.

Christianity - in her institutional forms (which Jesus would never recognise) attempts to close all discussion down.

Judaism - in her institutional forms (especially in the ones Jesus would recognise in our day as being descended from those of his day) attempts to keep discussion open.

To use to game theory as expressed in Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games, Christianity, as projected by her institutions (liberal and conservative) is best understood as a finite game. Judaism - at least as far as Rabbinic Debate is concerned, is an infinite game.

The rules of the finite game may not change; the rules of an infinite game must change.
Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.
A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength.
A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time.
The finite player aims for eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth.
The choice is yours.

The issue is, at heart, to find a way to follow God in the way of Jesus that is aware (and honest) about growth, evolution and change and that seeks to further all three. In short, one seeks to find a way to Do Church as an Infinite Game.

Is it possible to read the scriptures - and all of our history - and to live, honestly, in relationship with those sources: and yet be in a different place?

I’m going to stop there, because, at the age of 43, I feel I’m on the verge of a Manifesto which is to be avoided, I think, at all costs.