Daniel Davis - Church Visit #2

Church Name: Olive Tree Congregation
Church Address: 400 N. Elmhurst Rd., Prospect Heights, IL 60070
Date Attended: March 24, 2014
Church Category: Different ethnic or racial demographic (Messianic Jews)

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

The music part of the worship service felt like regular praise worship, but with a Jewish flair.  Some of the band members wore kippahs and some Jewish garb, and the service opened with the blast of a ram's horn.  We sang one Hebrew-English song at the beginning, and the rest of the songs were regular English worship songs that I am familiar with.  In between two songs, we all turned toward the east (the back of the room) and recited the Shema, which was printed on the back of the bulletin.  While the service had a Jewish flavor, it was very accessible to anyone outside the Messianic tradition.  There was no premium placed on ethnicity -- there were some non-Jewish attenders, though they constituted a minority in the church body.  We felt extremely welcomed.  We were approached by a number of congregants who chatted with us before and after the service.  It was a real blessing.

What did you find most interesting or apealing about the worship service?

I most appreciated the sermon, which addressed the issue of how Christians ought to relate to the Torah.  But I've written about this below.  My other favorite part of the service was the after-session ("Hebrew school," as they called it), in which we gathered to learn an ancient Hebrew chant.  The chant was a simple quote from Deuteronomy 6, where God tells the Israelites to write the law on their gates, their doorposts, to bind it to their foreheads, etc.  We would sing in both Hebrew and English, and we repeated after the instructor.  The instructor interjected frequently about the true meaning of the verses in the chant in light of Jesus.  He emphasized the internal nature of the law, that Deuteronomy 6 was intended to teach the Israelites to internalize the law and not merely to obey it outwardly.  True obedience comes from the heart.

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?

While I deeply appreciated all the teaching I received, I find the continued "Messianic" identity to be problematic, even in spite of this congregation's clear and correct stances on Jew-Gentile relations.  It seems to me that "Messianic" or "black" or "white" identities are precisely the walls that Paul intended to break down -- at least insofar as such identities were present alongside one another in society.  I think it is wonderful to celebrate the old Jewish customs, particularly in light of the Messiah -- it is fascinating and refreshing.  But I have trouble with a church identifying as "Messianic" when Jew-Gentile distinctions have no value in the New Covenant.  Of course, this critique may be leveled against any particular church that is defined by ethnicity, and perhaps exceptions must be made for ethnic communities that speak their own language.  It would also be unfair to make these judgments from a purportedly "neutral" perspective, which in fact is a de facto white perspective.  This is a difficult issue that requires more space than I have here.  My only conclusion is that the business of the gospel is to break down ethnic barriers, and the church at large must do a better job of integrating in places where ethnicities live in the same geographical context (i.e. America).

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

I expected the church to prize its Jewish ethnicity and culture, but they didn't.  The pastor's sermon contained serveral strong critiques of the broader Messianic church -- namely, that they tend toward legalism and hold their Jewish customs too highly.  He emphasized an orthodox view of the church as making no distinction between Jew and Gentile.  He preached from a Colossians passage that talked about "Torah-twisters," as he called them.  The sermon really illuminated the true and good nature of the Old Covenant commands and customs -- namely, that they all point to Jesus.  He iterated that such "shadows" are helpful insofar as they illuminate Jesus, but that they are only shadows.  I found this profoundly refreshing, and it gave me a renewed appreciation for Old Testament customs.  It is unfortunate that we tend to view the Old Testament as being reflected by people like the scribes and Pharisees.  They were actually the ones twisting the Torah and using religion for dishonorable gain.  We must read the Old Testament with Jesus in mind.