Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
Yeshua Ha’Mashiach

Yeshua Ha’Mashiach

Last updated on: August 20, 2013 at 1:00 am by Bradford Winters

Yeshua Ha’Mashiach 2013-08-19T12:13:15-07:00 Bradford Winters

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In drafting my last post, “Orthodox Films Fill the Void,” I intended to end the piece with a story that would serve as a thematic button: the day after seeing Fill the Void (a remarkable film released this summer about an ultra-Orthodox family in contemporary Tel Aviv) I finally made good on a long-standing wish to visit a Messianic synagogue.

For the latter experience filled an even deeper void in its own right than the former—or filled the same void to a deeper degree.

But no less thematic was the fact that my cup had nearly runneth over the word count by the time I was done singing the praises of Fill the Void (and My Father, My Lord before it). As it is wont to runneth over here, looking back on that steamy Saturday morning last month at Congregation Beth El in Manhattan, where I first witnessed Messianic Jews sing the praises of Yeshua Ha’Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah.

Whoa!

More on that shortly. First, whence this desire on my part to go there, both literally and figuratively speaking? Good question. I’m glad I asked.

The answer goes back a long way, a good twenty years. Maybe even longer than that, all the way to the WASP nest country clubs of my childhood to which we sometimes belonged—not for but despite the sociocultural hive free of Jews. Given our Jewish friends outside the hive, the discrepancy was often a quietly disturbing one.

More to the point, I found my way back to poetry in college after losing it a bit from church and the ritual side of Christian faith that had been an underpinning from boyhood through high school.

When I returned to the lyric depths of the Old Testament and found an anchor there in my post-collegiate drift, it was with new ears that I could hear the New Testament afresh. It was King David, Job, Isaiah, Solomon, and Zechariah that helped forge my way back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul.

In a word, it was the word that unveiled with apocalyptic import the Word made flesh.

As I returned with a newfound respect, and eventually a deep need, for the Word-soaked Episcopal liturgy of my upbringing, I was lucky enough—nay, blessed enough—to happen upon the scholarly works of Walter Brueggemann and Margaret Barker.

Between Brueggemann’s clarion call to today’s church with the Prophets for his trumpet, and Barker’s fascinating excavations of the Temple roots of Christian liturgy, my Judeo-Christian heritage slowly but surely began not only to assume a greater balance between its hyphenated terms, but to see that hyphen as a living bridge.

Along the way, once in the bluest moon which made it all the more rare given that I was living in New York, where anything and anyone goes, I would come across sidewalk evangelists for that outermost fringe phenomenon: Jews for Jesus.

Roz Chast, cartoonist for The New Yorker, does justice with hilarity to the phenomenon in a cartoon that features one such evangelist sitting at a table with a poster that reads:

“Jews for Jesus and also for pissing off one’s parents, even if they weren’t religious, in ways that the Hare Krishnas can’t even begin to imagine.”

Before my recent sojourn to a service there, Congregation Beth El’s website let me know that they were not Jews for Jesus—in spirit, yes, but not in name, as the Messianic movement is a tree with many branches.

And I was not a Gentile, but one of the “People of the Calling” invited to join them for worship on Shabbat. The poetic ring to the invitatory term fell on open ears.

As did the sound of a harmonica and guitar when I entered the midtown Presbyterian church where the synagogue meets on Saturday mornings. The rabbi and his two cantors, a twenty- or thirty-something duo who, within the hour, would break my heart wide open, were just warming up—already soaked with sweat, in fact, given the heat wave outside and the lack of air conditioning inside.

I instantly had the sense this was going to be church first-century style, climate included, the instrumentation and sound system notwithstanding.

Perhaps sensing my stranger’s stench of unease at the materials table in the back, a kind man named Randy from the Bronx came to explain and outfit me with what I needed: a siddur (prayer book), tallis (prayer shawl worn by males), and kippah (cap also worn by males).

But he might as well have handed me a time machine, one that traveled in two directions at once between the old and new Jerusalem, for what it was like to hear those two cantors sing their and our hearts out in Hebrew to Yeshua Ha’Mashiach; to behold the joyous greeting of the Torah scroll and see it kissed or touched as it traveled the congregation before the reverential reading; to see Rabbi Bruce Cohen travel from the guitar to the piano and finally to the lectern where he expounded on Exodus with humility, humor, and infectious delight in the blessing of being there all together to worship the One.

What the heaven have I walked into? I wondered in my pew.

There were moments I also could have used a tissue from Randy, whether it was singing “Holy of Holies” that brought me to my knees in bringing me to my feet, or seeing at the end the sight of husbands and wives arm-in-arm beneath the tallis for the closing prayer.

In opening a copy of the latest popular installment to the biographical abyss that is the life of Jesus Christ, Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, I happened upon this quote in the middle: “Yet if one wants to uncover what Jesus himself truly believed, one must never lose sight of this fundamental fact: Jesus of Nazareth was first and finally a Jew.”

I would argue the point elsewhere if Aslan’s underlying claim is that Jesus was ultimately and only a Jew.

But here I will simply say, and in Hebrew at that: Amen.

Bradford Winters is a screenwriter and poet, and works for The Levinson/Fontana Company as a producer and writer in television. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.

Previous Post

August 18, 2013

Can I See You?

Next Post

August 21, 2013 We Have Eternity in Our Hearts

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many days did God take to create the world?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Seven Ten Six Two