victoria's blog.....

ok, so the following sentiment is by my friend victoria....who used to be a nun.

(2000) .....
Victoria Scarborough 11 July 2004


During the past IN THE BEGINNING .,

several months, we've been fortunate to have heard some excellent, scholarly talks about what the earliest forms of Christianity may have been like. We've heard a lot about apocryphal gospels, with their differing views of Jesus and his message, and we've heard about the systematic suppression of any of those writings which did not reflect the party-line. Hopefully, this information has broadened our perspective and enriched our Christianity. While I am not a scholar, I hope today to contribute something to this discussion by examining another aspect of earliest Christianity that we somehow overlook, the fact that the earliest Christians were Jews. Jesus, or rather Joshua ben Joseph, lived and died a faithful Jew; his followers, men and women alike, were all faithful Jews. Scholars in the field of first century Christianity are united in the opinion that this Joshua ben Joseph did not intend to establish another religion but that his life and ministry were embedded solidly within Hebrew tradition, especially the Hebrew prophetic tradition. The Acts, both canonical and apocryphal, indicate that the earliest disciples continued worshiping at the Temple, continued in the daily sacrifices and prayer rituals associated with the Judaism of that time, that they remained faithful, practicing Jews.
So, what happened? When did we cease being Jewish and commence being Christian? And why? What event or events intervened to sever the faithful Jew, Joshua ben Joseph, from the faith that shaped him? When and why did we decide to ignore, even to denigrate, the traditions that gave him his life, his passion, his power? Well, these are all good questions, questions to which there are many good, scholarly answers. But the question I would like to pose today is a more imaginative one: What might we be like today, as Christians, if we had remained Jewish? If we had not turned our back on our Jewishness, if we were to hear and experience this charismatic Joshua ben Joseph as Jews, what difference might it make to us who today identify ourselves, some emphatically and some tentatively, as Christians? In short, what have we missed?
Like any imaginative question, this one can only engender imaginative answers, but I hope my particular imaginings this morning are based on some basic feel for some of the traditions of Judaism, gleaned from
several years of reading, studying, and discussing. And, as you may have noticed, the question "What have we missed?" presupposes that we have indeed lost something, a proposition with which many Christians may be uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I believe we would be better people, better followers of Jesus/Joshua ben Joseph, if we were better Jews. And so, let us imagine . . .
For one thing, I think we might be freer in our thinking about God and more willing to entertain the idea that other people might see God differently than we do. A central tenet of the Jewish faith is that God reveals Godself to each person in a different way. You can't be taught who God is, you can only experience God for yourself. You can certainly learn about how God revealed Godself to others but their revelation is not yours. The primary responsibility of the Jew is to devote sufficient time, energy, and commitment to this process of uncovering his own particular revelation. He owes it to God to discover that divine spark within himself. The first commandment, "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me" has been interpreted to mean that you must find the Lord YOUR God and not give yourself to the worship of the gods of other people.
This personal relationship with God, this unique and personal revelation given to each person, is then meant to be shared with the world. The Jew owes it to his family, his community, his world, to manifest the God he has discovered within himself. In this way, God is glorified and the richness of God's nature is at least partially revealed. When we see Jews poring over texts, studying the Law, or engaging in seemingly endless debate over what appear to be minor issues of faith or practice, we are seeing this process in action. We are seeing unique individuals looking inward for their divine spark then sharing that revelation with others who are engaging in the same process. Jews don't expect to agree with each other; they expect to manifest different aspects of God's immeasurable richness and complexity. If we look again at the gospel stories of Joshua ben Joseph debating on the steps of the Temple, we are not seeing Jesus under attack by the establishment of rule-bound Pharisees and Sadducees, we are seeing faithful Jews engaging in the manifestation of who they are and how they understand God. And the Pharisees are as faithful to this process as is Joshua ben Joseph. This is not to say that Jews do not believe in divine truth; it is to say that Jews recognize that the divine can never be completely grasped by any one person or any one group. It is to say that the divine revelation given to one person may appear to be diametrically opposed to the revelation given to another but that, given the enormous complexity of God, both may be true.
In addition to being freer in our approach to God, I believe we might also experience more wholeness and integration in our personal lives. Jewish belief recognizes no dichotomy between the body and the soul. Men and women are created as "nefesh", a term which signifies a unified organic being. Jews have never shunned the body as unholy, nor have they ever suggested that the spirit is anything but incarnated within the flesh. The holiest day of the week, the Sabbath, is welcomed by lighting candles and singing songs that invoke the imagery of a Bride coming to her husband. It is celebrated with wine and good food, at home, with one's family and close friends. Jewish couples traditionally make love on the Sabbath as a further celebration of the gift of life and body. As Christians we have learned to make an artificial distinction between that which is spirit and that which is flesh. We have learned to value the one and denigrate or deny the other. We have seen the one as holy and sacred, the other as evil and sinful. Isn't this dualism what lies behind the recent reactions, ranging from titillation to horror, to the possibility that Jesus may have loved a woman? We have wanted to sever the spirit of Jesus from the body of Joshua ben Joseph. We have even gone so far as to divide the world into a larger version of this same dichotomy, calling part of the world sacred and part of it profane. We have forgotten that the answer to the psalmist's question, "Where can I flee from Your Presence, O Lord?" is precisely "No where." Were we to experience ourselves more profoundly as "nefesh", we might experience more profoundly the God who permeates the things and people around us, the God who is intimately available to us through our body's senses, the all-pervading Presence who declares that there are no profane places.
Finally, if we were better Jews, I suspect we might be more responsible, more compassionate people, or at least our faith would encourage us in that direction. There is no concept of original sin in Judaism. On the contrary, man is the darling of God, the apple of God's eye, imprinted with the very image of God. However, Judaism does recognize two impulses within human nature, the impulse for good and the impulse for evil. Both exist as potentialities, not as determinants, and both are God-given. Indeed, in what may seem very strange to us who have developed some very distinct neuroses about sin, Judaism goes so far as to say that it is impossible for a person to serve God without the evil impulse. It alone is the source of vitality, vibrancy, and action.
So the issue, then, becomes one of choice. Judaism is very clear that each person alone chooses what he will become, and what kind of a world he will create. And what he is choosing for or against is what Judaism calls "tikkun olam", the repair of the world. In Jewish belief, God invites us into co-creation, into the process of redemption which will bring forth the world of compassion, righteousness, and justice that God envisions but which man must implement in the here and newness of his individual life. Within Judaism is the belief that the Messiah will come, not to bring redemption and restoration to the world of men, but only when men have succeeded in redeeming and restoring the world for the Messiah. From the Jewish perspective, every action in which we engage changes the universe, for good or for ill. If we really believed that it was our responsibility to bring forth the Kingdom of God, wouldn't that make a difference in how we exercised this freedom of choice? When Joshua ben Joseph said that the Kingdom was within us, do you suppose he meant we should leave it there? Or was he pointing out to us our ability and our respons-ability to embody God's vision however and whenever we can? As Christians, we have sometimes assumed that the world is irredeemable and that it will take the Second Coming to restore what sinful man has broken. As Jews, we might just roll up our sleeves, flex our muscles, and get busy.
The earliest Christians identified themselves as Jews, a situation which persisted into the second and third centuries CE. They heard the message of Joshua ben Joseph against the background of their shared Jewish beliefs and practices. But for much of our history, we Christians have been cut off from our roots in the long, fertile centuries of Jewish faith; we have been denied access to some of the profound insights and rich traditions that empowered Joshua ben Joseph to live, to teach, to interact with people as he did. I think it's safe to say we have even taken some wrong turns, headed in directions that Jesus himself would not have supported, because we have forgotten who and what he was. "WWJD", "What would Jesus do?" has become a popular bumper-sticker-type question among some Christians today. Perhaps we would come closer to finding an appropriate answer if the question we asked - imaginatively, of course - was "What would Joshua ben Joseph do?"




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