Hashivenu Forum 2012 Beverly Hills, CA

The Vocation of Messianic Jewish Community

A Response to Jen Rosner, Messianic Jewish Life Together: Covenant, Commission and Cultural Brokerage

Carl Kinbar

Jen Rosners paper, Messianic Jewish Life Together, is jam packed with insightful comments on a broad range of issues involving Messianic Jewish identity, community, and vocation. I note especially her emphasis on covenant, the place of Yeshua in Messianic Jewish life and thought, and the importance of right relationships with Christians and the Church. At the end of this paper, I will respond to Rosners important challenge that our vocation must reflect Yeshuas embodiment of the particularity of Gods covenant with Israel and the universality of Gods call to discipleship.1 Near her conclusion, Rosner quotes from Mark Kinzers 2011 Hashivenu paper. Kinzer wrote that we can only understand our own calling as Messianic Jews in relation to this greater two-fold community,2 the Jewish people and the Christian Church. I submit that we need to begin with clear definitions of Jewish and Christian identity in order to understand our vocational relationship with the Jewish people and the Church. My response will focus on these definitions and how they inform the vocation of Messianic Jewish communities. In the first section of her paper, Rosner emphasizes the importance of construing Jewish identity, community, and commission along covenant lines. She writes, Covenant lies at the heart of the identity of the people of God, and our conversations
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Rosner, 20. Ibid., 30, quoting Kinzer, Messianic Jewish Community: Standing and Serving as a Priestly Remnant. (Paper presented at the Hashivenu Forum. Agora Hills, CA 2011), 32.

about Messianic Jewish community must be built upon the foundation of our inclusion and participation in the contours of covenantal life.3 Covenant is inherently communal and requires not only Gods action but human response, which is carrying out our covenantal commission.4 I could not agree more. Rosner and I agree that vocation flows from identity. Her approach is along the lines of identity theory pioneered by Erik Erikson in the 1950s, which is necessary for studying social identity formation and function, but does not address identity from a clearly covenantal perspective. Therefore, I want to sort through some of her comments on Jewish and Messianic Jewish identity and present what I believe are consistent, covenantal definitions of Jewish and Christian identity. Rosner begins her second section by noting that It is difficult to find an identity marker analogous to being Jewish. . . Though I am only comfortable using this term in a very qualified sense, the Jewish people are indeed called to be a sanctified ethnicity, as Kinzer suggested last year.5 Rosner does not explain the qualified sense in which she would use the term sanctified ethnicity and in fact, she does not use it in the remainder of the paper. She continues, To draw upon the covenantal distinctives outlined above, it is the corporate reality of the Jewish people that defines the particular identity of each individual Jew. We make sense of our own unique stories within the context of the larger story of the Jewish people; their story is our story in a profoundly determinative sense.6 This description represents social identity, which relates to ones group identifications and to ones assigned and chosen place in the social world, as well as to processes by which one negotiates ones way through the social world.7 I believe that something like this concept also underlies her later statement that it is the people of

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Ibid., 2. Ibid., 5. 5 Ibid., 7. 6 Ibid., 8. 7 Seth Schwartz, A New Identity for Identity Research: Recommendations for Expanding and Refocusing the Identity Literature. Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 20 No. 3, May 2005 293-30.

Israel and the body of Messiah that fundamentally inform our core identity.8 Here, identity is formed by membership in two covenantally-defined groups. But this does not work in the case of Jewish covenantal identity because individual Jewish identity actually is not defined covenantally by membership in the corporate reality of the Jewish people and Messianic Jewish identity is not defined by two corporate realities, the Jewish people and the Church. Let me explain with reference to Kinzers paper. Kinzer writes about the genealogically determined nature of embodied Jewish identity.9 That is, the Bible and tradition narrowly construe Jewish identity in terms of physical descent from the Fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This reflects the covenant God made with the descendants of Fathers. Even in the case of conversion, a person does not merely change beliefs or religion but enters a community of physical descent. The identity marker analogous with being Jewish is therefore the Jewish body, male or female. For males, embodied Jewish identity is incomplete without circumcision, the sign of the covenant.10 If I understand Kinzer correctly, this defines both individual and corporate Jewish identity. Kinzer calls the corporate identity as a common or sanctified ethnicity. I argue that there is no compelling reason to construe covenantal identity any other way. From a covenantal perspective, an individual Jew or group of Jews does not become more, less, or anything other than Jewish as a result of membership in other groups. Similarly, from a covenantal perspective, identity is not altered by history. If we embrace the Jewish story, it will affect our social identity but not our covenantal identity. I argue that when we are joined to Messiah, we do not receive a new or additional identity Messiah has always been the goal of the covenant and the goal of Torah. This is a critical distinction because our community vocation is fundamentally tied to our covenantal identity; though it is certainly affected by our membership in the larger two-fold community of the Jewish people and the Church, it is fundamentally defined by our covenantal identity as Israel. This perspective is also crucial for our

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Rosner, 18. Kinzer, 28 fn38. 10 Descent from the Fathers goes hand in hand with the promises made to the Fathers (Rom.15:8).

personal sense of identity. It will be difficult at best to retain a profound sense of membership in the Jewish community while thinking of ourselves as having a hybrid identity.11 Based on this understanding of Jewish covenantal identity, we can also approach Christian identity from a covenantal perspective. A Christian is simply a Gentile who has been brought into the commonwealth of Israel in Messiah (Eph. 2:12-19). How does this happen? Messiah Yeshua is a genealogically determined Jew, a descendant of the Fathers (Rom. 9:5, etc.).12 He is also the one-man Israel.13 For this reason, when a Gentile is joined to Messiah, she is simultaneously brought into relationship with the common ethnicity known as Israel or the Jewish people. She is now part of the commonwealth of Israel. She has been brought near into full and equal access to God as a Gentile and without an obligation to keep Torah. Gentiles who are joined to Messiah and Israel in this way constitute the Gentile Church.14 It seems to me that personal identity, corporate identity, and social identity are deeply tied to one another, or should be. All Jews together make up the corporate identity Israel and all Christians make up the corporate identity Church, which is part of the commonwealth of Israel. Israel and the Church are expressed on earth by social groups consisting of Jews (synagogues) or Christians (churches). In this scenario, social identity derives from covenantal identity because its members have a clear covenantal identity. So a group of covenantally defined Jews has a Jewish social identity. The question is whether Messianic Jewish communities should likewise express the reality of Israel and therefore be preponderantly Jewish, or should they partly or equally express the Church and include Christians? I argue that a community with a hybrid
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Rosner, 13. Yeshua is the Head of the Church; but he does not possess a Gentile identity and is not the one-man Church. 13 On Yeshua as the one-man Israel, see Mark Kinzer, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: redefining Christian engagement with the Jewish People. (Brazos, 2005), 217-232. 14 Within the commonwealth of Israel, the bilateral ekklesia consists of this Church and the body of Jews who are joined to Messiah. I do not see any covenantal basis for the idea of a multilateral or multinational ekklesia, though it is an important social reality. (See Rosner, 14-16.)

social identity cannot maintain the identity of each group over a period of generations. (In reality, all communities include some members who do not share the common covenant identity. When that number gets large enough, the corporate identity has become a hybrid.) What I have described here is a starting point for the life of Messianic Jewish communities: they are Jewish social groups which express Israel in Messiah. They should relate to the larger Jewish community and the churches without risking this core identity. Michael Wyschogrod, an eminent Orthodox Jewish scholar, depicts the commonwealth of Israel in this way: There are those who without overlooking Israels failures sense the overwhelming love with which God relates to this people and who find it possible to participate in that love. Those who do, become adopted sons and daughters in the house of Israel. The others practice a Christianity that dwells in a house no longer shared with Israel. 15 But how many Christians or Jews actually think this way? When we speak of engagement with the Jewish community, we are speaking of a community which has no concept of a commonwealth of Israel in which Gentiles share. When we speak of engagement with the Church, we are speaking of a Church that essentially dwells in a house no longer shared with Israel. I agree with Rosner that Messianic Jews must concretely witness to the deep and abiding connection between these two larger communities.16 The connection that we must witness to is the commonwealth connection: the Church exists with Jews in the commonwealth of Israel. This is the deep and abiding connection that has invisibly bound Jew and Christian since the first century. Rosner believes that we are now at a place where we can and must begin to reengage with the world of Gentile Christianity.17 I agree that it is crucial to lay aside

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Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations. (Eerdmans, 2004), 174. Rosner, 20. 17 Ibid., 19.

attitudes and misconceptions that hinder relationships or even much contact with Christians. But I do not know what a movement-wide engagement with the Christian world would look like. More importantly, while some individual Messianic Jews are vocationally committed to engage with the Church world, our primary communal identity is the Community of Israel and our first priority is to engage with the Jewish world, with the common ethnicity of which we are a part. We have made progress in that regard but I do not yet see a critical mass of Messianic Jews making a serious effort to engage with the wider Jewish community as healthy and unashamed followers of Yeshua. If this is true, it would be a critical mistake to redirect our scarce time and resources to engage with the Christian world as a movement. Our Vocation As Rosner writes, To be Israel is to be tasked with a particular vocation in the world, a vocation made manifest through concrete daily practices infused with holy meaning whose significance ultimately affects all of creation. It is through these distinctive Jewish practices that we find God and make him known in the world.18 Kinzer is more specific, arguing that . . . our primary communal task is not teaching or preaching, announcing the Good News or advancing social justice. We are summoned to do all those things, but for us they must be subordinate to the explicit worship of God, and only as such do those things become for us a form of worship. The priestly service of the Messianic Jewish community, like the priestly service of all Jews, centers on the study of the Torah and the prayer regimen of the Siddur.19 On page 20, Rosner presents a challenge that goes to the heart of our priestly vocation. She writes, In his life and mission Yeshua perfectly embodies both the particularity of Gods covenant with Israel and the universality of Gods call to discipleship. As Jewish followers of Yeshua, we must likewise hold within ourselves and reflect within our communities [italics mine] the unique reality of Jewish existence
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Ibid., 9. Kinzer, 28.

as well as the universal scope of Gods redemptive purposes.20 Messianic Jews must internally and externally reflect Yeshuas way of relating to the world Brit Hadashah exhortations to imitate Yeshua seem to relate to his life on earth.21 We draw strength from the ascended Yeshua but we do not imitate him as such. Following this line of thought, I note that Yeshuas life began when he became [Jewish] flesh and dwelt among us [Jews]. (Jo 1:14). He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt. 15:24). He lived and died as a Jew who had very little recorded contact with Gentiles. Yet, his entire life, death, resurrection from the dead, and ascent were part of his priestly vocation for Israel and the whole world. I am not suggesting that we artificially limit our contact with Gentiles. Our situation is not fully parallel to Yeshuas because we live with Christians in a commonwealth intentionally limiting contact with Christians would be a serious violation of the unity that Yeshuas vocation brought into being. So I agree 100% with Rosners statement that we must not be a people [merely] concerned with its own well-being and consumed by narcissistic navel-gazing.22 At the same time, Yeshua shows us that the priestly vocation does not rely on social engagement with Gentiles or Christians. At the same time, following Yeshua, our vocation must be undertaken intentionally and completely for Israel and the whole world. This, in fact, seems to have been Israels intended vocation from the beginning as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exod. 19:16).

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Rosner, 20. E.g., John 13:15;1 John 2:6. 22 Rosner, 29.