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Being fully aware that often those encountering the worship services of Bet Emet Ministries are confused at the differences they experience when contrasting with their own churches, I felt it was time to express the truths gathered from my many years of study where I discovered the "pattern of service (worship)" given by Yahweh to David as detailed in I Chron. chapter 28. If you were to undertake a comprehensive study of the "pattern" you would be surprised to know that this "pattern of worship" survived among Gentile believers until the fourth century A.D. where is was finally crushed by anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism by the emerging "organized" Gentile Christian church headed by the Emperor Constantine. Efforts to destroy the pattern actually began as early as the middle of the second century with the forgery of Christian religious documents along with the persecution and destruction of the religious writings of the Jews and sadly ultimately succeed over the next three centuries in destroying almost all traces of the Jewish Roots of Christianity. Rome wins! Only by diligent research and scholarship have I been able to "rediscover" the faith once given to the saints. Before we go on let me ask you some important questions if I may:
Those were very good questions to say the least. The aim of this study is to present the Jewish liturgy in its "original freshness," so that all, both Jews and Christians, may come to see and realize how closely the Rabbis have preserved this "Pattern of Worship" down through history while others have deviated or even replaced this "Pattern of Worship". No renewal can come about except through a rediscovery of our Spiritual Roots and of the historical, spiritual, and cultural soil in which these Jewish Roots gave life to the New Testament experience. The church was born of Judaism and lived its life within Judaism for several decades, and only in the light of Judaism can it perceive and recover its vital identity which is so needful in today's world. But "rethinking theology" can man only one thing: the rediscovery of the Hebrew and Jewish categories within which Christian experience first appeared and which this experience used in order to communicate its truths as well. We are hearing more and more today such statements as this one of L. Swidler:
"Jesus was a 'Rabbi' and not a 'Father,' a 'teacher,' and not a 'reverend'; he was a Jew and not a Christian; he attended the synagogue and not a church; he celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday and not Sunday; he prayed in Aramaic and Hebrew and not in Greek or Latin; he read the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and not the New; he recited the psalms an not the rosary; he celebrated pesach (the Jewish Passover), shavu'ot (the Jewish Pentecost), and sukkot (huts) and not Christmas or Lent."
Now comes the hard part for you the reader.
Answer for yourself: Do you have the theological courage to draw the proper theological conclusions from such statements of fact? For me and many others who have studied to know the differences, the assertion of the Jewishness of Jesus must mean an assertion of the inescapable centrality of adherence to Jewish religion in the followers of Jesus and an acceptance of the need of returning to them and measuring ourselves by them in every effort we make to understand the Christian experience.
Answer for yourself: Why should we return to Jewish religion? Why go back in heart and mind to distant Jewish religious teachings that are so alien to the modern scientific and technological mentality as seen in the Gentile Christian church of today? The answer is simple. Those distant symbolic and literal teachings of Jewish religion contain concealed words and expressions of their meaning that if received, heard, and understood, have the power to enrich and give joy to human life as nothing else can. We need to rediscover Hebrew and Jewish truths so that we may once again hear in its original purity the logos and meaning that was revealed by God through them. We must rethink theology with the aid of Hebrew and Jewish perspectives not only because Jesus is Jewish, but to assure ourselves that we practice a faith unaffected by compromises with false worship masquerading itself as "holiness." Love for our origins is in fact a love for the present which is marked by high standards of quality. The rediscovery of one's origins is not a love for events that took place in a distant time; rather they are as it were the foundations that support the present. The rediscovery of origins does not mean a distancing from the present but a recovery of the roots and truths that must sustain the present.
For the sake of understanding, what are the "origins" from which our churches spring and on which today are built:
The Churches of Christ acknowledge that in God's plan of salvation the beginning of her faith and election is to be found in the patriarch, Moses, and the prophets. She professes that all Christ's faithful, who as men of faith are sons of Abraham (Gal. 3:7), are included in the same patriarch's call and that the salvation of the church is mysteriously prefigured in the exodus of God's chosen people from the land of bondage. On this account the church cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament by way of that people with whom God in his mercy established the ancient covenant of Abraham in which all nations (Gentiles) were to be blessed with the blessings of temporal as well as eternal blessings. Nor can she forget that she draws nourishment from that good olive tree onto which the wild olive branches of the Gentiles have been grafted (Rom. 11:17-24).
Without a doubt Christianity is grounded and sustained by the Hebrew and Jewish origins of its faith, election, call, exodus, people, bondage, Old Testament, covenant, root, peace, and reconciliation.
Judaism does not have a theology in the strict sense, that is, a systematically organized reflection on God; for the same reason, it gives priority to practical action. This explains the importance of the liturgy. It is this Jewish Liturgy, patterned after the commandments in the Oral and Written Torah, which provides a place for both symbolic and direct encounters with God. Such a place is where one does not speak about God, but speak to God, where one does not think about God but think in the presence of God, and where God is not an object of thought but a subject who calls and challenges His people. This space is made up of words, gestures, music, movements, listening, story telling, silence, rites and ceremonies that have been taught and handed down by God to man since the beginning of time.
For the Church, then, a return to its origins must mean a return to this space in which Israel experienced itself as the people of God. It must mean entering into these rituals of words and gestures, music and movements, and silence and ceremonies that is also ours as Christians. Let the Christian never forget the spiritual ties that link him through the Re-newed Covenant with the stock of Abraham. Such ties between the Church and Israel unite the two and they become one in fulfillment of Scripture. Such a bond is not accidental but essential in light of the revelation of Eph. 4 where there is only "one faith" and not two! The Church's identity is connected with Judaism as it shares the same space and vitality. This co-existent heritage is best expressed by the people of the "Re-newed" Covenant with the stock of Abraham through adherence to the pattern of liturgy "once given to the saints."
For too long the majority of Christian scholars have never taken seriously the fact that Christian experience and, above all, the Christian liturgy are bound up with Jewish religious ceremonies. For them Jesus Christ is presented as the originator of the Christian liturgy; either an absolute originator in regard to both content and form, or content and not form. This is simply not the case and a fabrication and distortion of Biblical history. The truth of the matter is that the forms of worship practiced by Jesus and first century Jews, Converts, and Godfearers were not new but only inherited as handed down from Jewish posterity; in particular King David. So there are two views on this matter. These parties, once split in their opinion have conceded their opinions to the wealth of Biblical scholarship that exists today. Nowadays no informed scholar thinks of looking outside the Biblical and Jewish tradition for the origin of the Christian sacraments and liturgy. But in reading these scholars one develops the sense that the "place of origin" is looked upon as unimportant and concessions are implicitly made that allows for Christianity's divergence from the "pattern" with its resultant inclusion of many facts of paganism that go unnoticed to the unlearned. Besides this, often negative judgments are made and passed upon Jewish worship. On reflection, this is of course a perfectly logical step, since once Jewish worship has been reduced to a lifeless skeleton, what is left but to decide that it is useless and a thing of the past? That is what Constantine believed and said and this idea he imposed upon the world! Such is due to the sinister working of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism that has infected many doctrinal positions of the contemporary Christian Church, primarily due to dispensational theology which is replete with replacement theology which does such damage to the truths of God's revelation in Holy Scripture.
Upon years of scholarship and intense study, I am supremely confident that our need is to reverse the procedure of the scholars I have been describing who espouse Replacement Religion and begin to assert the greatness and originality of the New Testament's depiction of Jesus not outside of Judaism in being in opposition to Judaism thus creating a new replacement religion, but to envision the depiction of the explanatory Jew, Jesus, along with and within Judaism, bringing the finer parts of his faith to life in his own life as he modeled God's truths as demonstrated for us in his recorded teachings, conduct and behavior.
First Century Judaism which gave the world this example of Jesus to follow as the "perfect" man, his mother Mary, the apostles, the early communities, and the first Christians (both Jewish and Gentile) were all nourished by the "Pattern" of worship given by God to David which had been faithfully protected and handed down to their generation. Such prayers, psalms, rites, and ceremonies brought them life because they were God breathed.
In the following articles it is not my purpose to compare Jewish liturgy with the Christian, but rather to present you with truthful information so you can better understand how greatly the original Christian community were indebted to the Jewish liturgy, and above all, how much a part the liturgy plays in "linking" us today with the stock of Abraham and the Churches of Christ that exist today.