MessianicMusings.com

So, you may ask, what is replacement theology, anyway?

It’s the kind of question that’s important to ask because it’s not as easy to recognize as the difference between a Sleep Number bed and a TV lift cabinet. It’s more subtle than that.

At its core, replacement theology is the notion much of Christianity is afflicted with that says, “God rejected the Jews. All their promises transfer to us now, but the curses are theirs alone. We (usually “we” is considered to be either the Christian church or, in the USA, this nation) are the “new Jerusalem” and “the shining city on a hill” spoken of in Scripture.”

It’s a mindset that says the “law” (e.g., Torah) is done away with and now we only have grace, only have forgiveness, and since we’re forgiven, anything goes, really… since it’s all a matter of repenting and claiming the forgiveness found in Jesus.

And it’s also the mindset that assumes the rules are different for “Christian” believers than it was for Jews who followed Adonai and His Torah. In doing this, the replacement theology mindset robs the Jewish people of all that Adonai promised them, and transfers it to Christianity. The danger in this, seldom recognized by those who hold such beliefs, is that makes Adonai a promise-breaker, not a promise-keeper. It makes haShem someone who changes, rather than someone who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. It ultimately robs haShem of his character, so in essence, replacement theology constitutes lashan hurrah against the L-RD Himself, and if that isn’t blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, it’s getting pretty darn close at least.

Not everyone who holds a replacement theology mindset, however, realizes they hold it, or that it’s wrong. It’s simply a false teaching that’s been around since the time of Constantine, and arguably before him since he merely codified it into “the Church.” And since it’s been passed down from generation to generation for nearly 1900 years or thereabouts, it’s the only thing many in Christianity know as a way to think about these things.

How do you recognize it? It can be as simple as recognizing what the implications are when someone utters a few off-the-cuff words like, “That’s an Old Testament thing.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, my friend. The things done in the flesh still matter. Believing otherwise cheapens grace and diminishes the work of Yeshua at Calvary.

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.

As I said in my first up-front talk on Friday, one of the things that is a mystery to me is why so few people want to take part in children’s ministry, and why it’s so hard to find teachers when we have so many parents.

Sure, kids can be a bit intimidating as a group the first time you stand in front of them as their teacher, and they’ll never stop testing limits with you, but they’re pre-teens, for heaven’s sake. They tend to listen if they can tell you mean business.

While my wife and I don’t have kids of our own yet, because we’ve decided to wait a bit longer, we both care about bringing the kids in our kehilat up in the ways of the L-RD. That’s why I teach bar/bat mitzvah class and why she does praise and worship for the younger kids.

If we’re not parents and we see the need and fill it, how could a person who is a parent not want to be a part of their kids’ Shabbat School experience? Maybe they need a good liver cleanse?

If for no other reason, they should at least want to know what their kids are learning and make sure it’s consistent with the beliefs of their kehilat. Yet, as the old saying goes, what seems simple, isn’t.

One of the scary things about delivering a mini-sermon, as I did for the first time last Friday, is that afterward you can get a recording of yourself and, for the first time, have to hear what you sounded like to others. That, for me, was scarier than taking a diet pill without reading the label first.

My first impression of my own speaking voice is not great; I sound high-pitched and a bit nasal. That’s not as I’d prefer it, obviously. I’d like more of the bass in my voice to come across, and have a richer, fuller-sounding voice that sounds stronger.

But, my voice is my voice and I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to be done about it. I mean, much as hearing it is a bit annoying, I’m sure my reaction is one more of shock than of anything. When I was younger, back in high school, I sang with the baritones and basses, depending on the song. Now my voice sounds more like a high tenor.

Scary. But in terms of ministry relevance, probably a lot of fuss over nothing essential.

It came with little warning, little preparation time, and a whole lot sooner than I’d planned; but last Friday, I finally had a chance to go up in front of the congregation and give a short talk. I wouldn’t quite call it a full-blown sermon; I was given 5-10 minutes and ending up running over 13 minutes, but I did reference over half a dozen Torah and Brit haDasha sources, so it felt a bit like a sermon. Or at least close enough for horse shoes and hand grenades. Take a listen and decide for yourself.

Anyway, the initiation was thrilling and fortunately everone was very supportive and offering positive feedback. I have a lot of seeking God left to do, but at least now I have some confidence about my ability to produce and deliver something approaching a sermon.

Sure, it’s not the kind of achievement that merits renting Vegas hotels for a getaway after, but it is a big milestone nevertheless.

Here’s me pulling back the curtains of a ministry a bit again, but in the months I’ve been working at my messianic shul, one of the things that struck me is how churches get the strangest calls, sometimes.

I mean, yes, most of our calls are of the rather normal and mundane variety, but as a house of worship, we attract our share of … colorful callers. I’ve fielded phone calls from self-proclaimed prophets who didn’t even have the courtesy to say “Hi” before going into their rant, as well as some rather interesting and unique requests from complete strangers.

Now, a lot of these callers are well-meaning folks and when we get calls from people like that, oddity doesn’t really matter. However, I have had a couple calls from folks who seem to think that we’re more of a public library than a house of worship.

It’s not a big deal and often, even the odd calls add some fun and variety to my day. And it certainly helps expose me to a wide variety of expectations people bring to the table when they interact with a house of worship. Good training ground for me, as I forge ahead in my advanced studies. I learn from fielding these calls, more than I would have expected to.

If memory serves, it used to take a fraction of my day at work to pull together the slide shows for our Erev Shabbat and Shabbat services. However, since deciding last week (due to difficulty getting an old version of Corel Presentations 10 to install under Windows Vista with Service Pack 1) to move the show over to PowerPoint, it’s been taking a bit longer.

That’s not because PowerPoint is a harder program to use, by the way; it has to do with file conversion. Fortunately, I was able to get all our service and song files saved in Corel Presentations as PowerPoint 95 documents, saved to a flash drive, and loaded up into Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.

Trouble is, pretty much everything needed to be tidied up and redone to get the shows and songs looking good in PowerPoint. Nearly all the text boxes came over too big and with fonts set too large.

It’s been a bit of a labor to tweak everything, but I get the two services completed just in time last week, and this week I’ve been able to work on going through the songs and trying to get them redesigned so that we can get back to the whole process being quick and easy.

It’s been worth all the labor, however; our slide shows are now more future-proof than before, and personally I prefer PowerPoint.

You don’t have to be a PC expert to be a messianic rabbi, but it helps. I learned this when my rabbi recently ordered and built from the ground up a brand new PC for me to use at my workspace last week. The one I was using was running out of hard drive space … fast.

The new one has 1.4 TB of hard disc; it should last a year or two! One of the components he installed is that hot nVidia 8600 GT video card I want for my own Acer Aspire at home.

What a HUGE card it is; it even has its own cooling fan built into the card.

Anyway, graphic card aside, the only hiccup we ran into is that Vista with service pack 1 didn’t get along with our old Corel Presentations software anymore, so we had to switch all our service overheads over to Microsoft Power Point.

Other than being more up-to-date, it’s not a big issue, except for the time frame I had to work in to get everything converted over. It was a tight squeeze, but I made it and the worst thing that happened is that I forgot to update one overhead slide from what it said a week ago to what it needed to say this past week.

All in all, it would be hard to imagine a PC switch going much more smoothly.

It doesn’t require any Delta machinery, but it does take a lot of courage to step out in faith and admit the goals you have in pursuing deeper study of the Torah and ministry. Recently, I had to ask my rabbi if the advanced study classes I was taking would continue, since attendance seemed to have fallen very low.

When I confessed to him that I hoped there’d be a way for me to continue, he got straight to the point: “To what end?” It’s a relevant question, because he is not one who believes in study for study’s sake.

Going under the concept that to those whom little is known, little is required, and to whom much is known, much is required, he does not give out ordinations lightly or as bookshelf trophies. He wants to know what a person’s going to do with it.

For me, that’s simple; well, actually, simple on the surface and highly complex in the details.

The simple truth is, he’s inspired me and I now know why G-d prompted me to be part of the advanced study in the first place; I believe I’m called to become a congregational leader.

That’s the simple part.

The complex part is figuring out how to live up to that calling; it’s no easy job, being a messianic rabbi, and certainly not for the faint of heart.

When I admitted I wanted to be a congregational leader, his next question was equally pointed and insightful.

“Do you think you can weather the storm that’ll come your way?”

That one requires more thought; while I beleive with training I can become the kind of person who can, I think it would be the height of ego to say I’m already there. I need time, training and the blessings of the G-d of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, Yeshua, and the gifts of the Spirit if I’m ever going to reach that stage.

But I’m willing to being the journey; hopefully that counts for something.

There’s a lot of business behind running a church; that’s one of the things I’m learning since I began working at mine. There are bills to be paid, and most of them are pretty standard, but one thing I discovered is one that makes sense but never occured to me.

Amid the heat and electric bills, phone bills and all the typical stuff you’d expect with any building, including mortgage life insurance and other stuff, I found out churches also carry ministry insurance.

I guess it makes sense; ministries are as likely as any to get sued, I suppose, and since one of the services a ministry performs is a form of counseling, it makes sense to cover that kind of risk. I suppose it’s something I should have figured out long ago; but it was still an eye-opener. Learned something new.