In fairness, she wasn't my best friend yet. Her dad, a covert to Judaism, a messianic one at the time, chased me down the sidewalk (I wasn't actually running) asking me if I knew Jesus was a Jew? I found myself, staring at this man, this balding man with a beard (I wasn't used to beards), and wondered why on Earth he would have ever thought I didn't know?
Years later, I found out two things:
1) There actually are Christians who are so incredibly thick headed and ignorant that they don't know this this already.
2) If I had been more versed in the history of the liturgy of the Feast of the Holy Name I could have told him Circumcision Sunday is a dead give away.
Oh how I lament not 'getting' him with that zinger to this day. Instead, I think I told him I'd known the guy for years, and it had come up once or twice when I offered him bacon as part of a lovely breakfast.
Oh wait, that's another zinger I didn't get to use. Instead, I looked at him, dumb founded and told him I knew that.
I think what blew my mind then, as it does now, is that Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua to his friends, doesn't make sense outside the context of Judaism. He worshiped at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, he quoted and claimed to fulfill Jewish scripture. His family waited 8 days to name him and they circumcised him. He went to Jerusalem for Passover. He worshiped at the synagogue.
If he wasn't Jewish, he was one terribly naughty gentile.
So why do people say it does't matter? Because he was so much more than that? Well, I am a lot more than a Terrell, but that's where who I am begins. Israel is where God began hammering into the heads of men what sort of God he is. It matters. It matters because the prophets foretold his coming to the Jews. It matters because this is how he learned to pray, repeating his mother's words at meals and bedtime. It shaped who he was as a man completely and who he is as God shaped Israel completely.
I think people like to overlook this because there were and are a lot of Jews who just couldn't accept this guy as the messiah they'd been promised. I see their point. I disagree. I still see their point. It's okay. I am at peace with being seen as a practitioner of a rather dangerous red headed step child's cult. I know a lot of people aren't. That's okay too. Ignoring this part of his spiritual heritage though is dangerous because it is also our own. It puts God's people solidly in an "other" category of this ancient game of us vs. "other" and that's how people start justifying hurting other people.
Not okay.
Someone has to stop throwing rocks. It might as well be you. It might as well be me. He was one of them and we are connected to Him through them and they are connected to us through him. Play nice. It looks good on your grade card. (And you might make a fried or two and discover a dimension to your religion you didn't even know you were missing.)
Disclaimer: While all of this was born out of a conversation with my older brother he is not the only person I've ever had this conversation with and I'm positive he won't be the last.
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