MessianicMusings.com

This past weekend, my wife and I had our first visit with mom since she was diagnosed with cancer. Here’s what we know: it’s stage four cancer of the pancreas, as well as some spots of lung cancer from her smoking habit. Today (Monday) she was meeting with another doctor who would be describing the course of treatment, care options and the like that he would be recommending for her case.

It’s a tough, grim diagnosis and a topic that makes something as common and pedestrian as door hardware seem like a preferrable topic of conversation. But as we visited, I was struck by our ability to make the time together enjoyable and fun, rather than morose and full of tears.

I suspect we were all trying to create some good memories to fall back on, once this progresses a bit more. That’s what I think. And I think it’s needed.

Mom tires too easily to go out for lunch anymore, so we brought a homemade meal to her. My wife, who is a wonderful cook, fixed up some homemade spaghetti sauce and brought it down with noodles and cheesy garlic bread. On the trip down, we stopped by a grocery store and picked up six different kinds of brownies: peanut butter, cherry frosted, mint chip, German chocolate, caramel and regular fudge. We all had a taste of each of the ones we liked.

We left the leftovers with Mom and Dad to make sure they had something nice to heat up for the next few meals. We took pictures and played cards and handheld games together at the table, talked some serious stuff but didn’t allow our time together to become dominated by the cloud of doom trying so hard to hover over us and spoil our time.

The end comes of each of us, eventually, until Yeshua’s return; with Mom, we have a warning that it’s coming soon, so I’d rather spend that time letting her know what she means to both my wife and me, creating as many good memories as we can in the time that’s left, than sitting around weeping about what we cannot change.

There will be time enough for tears in private… before she passes, and after.

The holiday that Jews and messianics refer to as Shavuot, and which Christians call Pentecost, is a matter of some controversy; all three groups celebrate it on a different day and some feel it might take a CAT5e to figure out the truth.

Well, that’s not so. In fact, it’s a rather simple matter.

Christians are on an entirely different calendar altogether, led there centuries ago by the anti-Judaeic Constantine, so their date for Shavuot/Passover is way off.

That leaves the Jewish Shavuot and the “other” Shavuot. The Jewish Shavuot is a tradition handed down by the Pharisees, who counted seven Shabbats, which included a festival Shabbat and has them celebrating Shavuot a few days earlier than those who celebrate the “other” Shavuot.

The “other” Shavuot tradition comes from the Sadducees, who reacted to the Pharisees interpretation and said, basically, “Hold on, the meaning of Torah here is seven REGULAR Shabbats after the feast of first fruits of the barley harvest.” That means that, for messianics like those of us at Sar Shalom, Shavuot must always fall on a first day of the week - Sunday - which was yesterday.

Anyone who reads the Torah passage completely in relation to this would, I believe, come to the same conclusion.

Why someone would want to sit around, when the people being talked about aren’t there, and allege that a messianic family does not believe in the messiah is beyond me. If it is a simple question of whether it’s true or not, the best way to find out the truth is to approach that family and ask them directly. Right?

Well, hold on to your platform beds, because that’s not always how it goes. This weekend, my wife was present at a table where just such a conversation was going on. She was going to speak up right away, but another person at the table, who knew the family in question, spoke up first and told this gossiper that she was wrong and the allegations weren’t true.

Bad enough, right?

But what makes it worse is that the person brushed off the truth of the matter, saying, “Oh, I’m just repeating what I’ve been told by someone who should know.”

This person was told by both my wife and this third party that this was definitely a case of lashan hurah, and that she was hurting her witness by persisting. That’s about the time I arrived and left with my wife, so she’s not sure if the discussion ended there or not.

But really, how many times does a congregation need to be told to avoid gossip (bearing false witness) and engaging in lashan hurah (evil speech)? It’s a message that’s been shared several times on Shabbat morning and is even part of our bylaws.

It’s loose talk like this that led to many deaths when the children of Israel were in the wilderness. Evil speech and gossip kills any sense of safety and community. It must be avoided.

Call it evil speech, gossip or lashan hurah, but careless words can lead to the destruction of a congregation. The problem comes when trying to determine what is evil speech and what is speaking honestly when wronged by a fellow believer.

In any community of faith, people often prefer to do business with members of their own congregation when they can, whether it be buying insurance, stair lifts, or looking for someone to do auto repair. As long as the quality of the work or service provided is solid, this usually benefits all concerned.

But what happens when something goes wrong, or the quality of the work or service provided isn’t where it ought to be? Let’s imagine a scenario where you have a person who repairs PCs. Let’s call him Chuck, after the popular NBC character on the show of the same name.

To lure business, Chuck decides to cut his prices to members of his congregation. But because he’s earning less for that work, rather than put in his best effort as he would for any other customer, Chuck either repairs PCs for congregational members on the cheap, or has a less-skilled friend do it for him, one who is prone to make mistakes but needs the work.

Now, Chuck isn’t necessarily a bad person. He’s using cheaper parts to give folks he’s close to a better deal; or he’s giving work to a friend who needs to learn the PC repair trade, and by doing so, hopes to help out both his congregational customers since this trainee won’t be paid as much for his time, while also giving the trainee much-needed experience. Chuck’s heart is good.

But because the trainee’s less experienced, or because cheaper parts are being used, the quality of the work done for congregational members goes down. Hard drives crash more frequently. Motherboard problems arise. Computers repaired don’t stay repaired as long. Some PCs even fry.

So here’s the philosophical question: If you were a congregational member whose PC fried under such circumstances, how do you handle it? Is it evil speech to warn people away from Chuck’s PC repair? Is it wrong not to warn them? Is it better to simply take your business somewhere else, or do you confront Chuck about the quality of his PC repair work?

There are few easy answers. It is for situations like this, I believe, that people turned to rabbinical interpretation. However, I do tend to think that the Brit haDasha standard for resolving conflicts among believers would probably be the starting point for a correct messianic response.

Yom Kippur translates from the Hebrew as “the day of atonement.” It is a festival, established by Adonai with Moshe, as “an everlasting covenant,” a festival that all who fear the G-d of Abraham, Issac and Jacob are expected to observe.

There are no special accoutrements (like special prayer shawls or religious ornamentation, or even the carrying of a Swiss Army knife) that help celebrate this holiday. Instead, it is generally celebrated by wearing as much white clothing as possible to represent the washing away of sins, and is often accompanied by the observance of a fast.

One note I want to make about the celebration of Yom Kippur. While generally, the fast on Yom Kippur is observed with a complete fast from all foods, please note that one can fully and faithfully celebrate the Yom Kippur fast without going to unhealthy extremes.

For example, if you are on medication, it is not a breaking of your fast to take your medication on Yom Kippur. Remember the principle that must guide all Judeo-Christian observance: the preservation of life comes before all else.

Likewise, those who require special dietary considerations, such as diabetics, would be well advised to not observe a total fast, but a partial one. (For example, fast from sweets or something, but eat what you must to keep your blood sugar levels at a healthy balance.)

Finally, remember that among most messianic congregations, we are interested in following the pure, written Torah, but not necessarily the centuries of hallekah that have descended from Rabbinic oral Torah traditions. (Not that they are without value in some instances, but as a rule, the written Torah takes precedence over the oral Torah among the messianic community.)

Here’s an example of what concerns me. At our congregation this weekend, I overheard another member of our kehilat explaining how to observe the Yom Kippur fast to another member. She was insistent that the fast include all liquids, even water, from sundown to sundown. She then went on to repeat strict regulations on exceptions to the water portion of the total fast, insisting that the new member “try not to even drink water, but if you do, only take one ounce and, even then, you must not take water more than once every 15 minutes.”

This level of legalistic observance is overkill and is what Messiah Yeshua was referring to when he talked about the Pharisees of his day perverting the Torah into “a burden no one can bear.” In other words, be graceful in your observance of the Yom Kippur fast; it should be an observance of joy, not one of burden!