My Story: Jew to Christian
September 19, 2021
Have you ever watched a movie and it seems to abruptly end? Usually that’s the sign of a sequel. I think the most famous, and maybe this dates me, has to be the “Who shot JR?” episode on the program Dallas.
You wait for the ending, and it’s not fun. I don’t like it when speakers seem to just stop. It can be really annoying when they say, ‘oops, my time’s up, so I need to be done.’ Well, I did that last week. I noticed the time and said, “oops, my time’s up.” So, I rushed to be done. There were quite a few folks who told me I didn’t need to stop like that. They felt I had them hanging on for more.
So, today is part 2 of my story. One of my concerns is that I really don’t want this to be about me, but about Christ. So, I’m going to try to weave that in and out of part 2. And I’m telling you right now, there is no part 3.
Some of my beliefs in what preaching entails comes from a couple of experiences. They’re not crazy experiences, but I still remember them. When I was in college I was at one of the high holiday, Rosh Hashonah, worships with my dad. At the time I was dating a non-Jew. NOT GOOD! During the rabbi’s message, he spoke about Jews dating non-Jews. UGH! I kind of shrunk in my chair.
Another time I was dating a Catholic and we went to Easter mass and the priest said, “well, you really don’t want to hear me, so I’ll make this short.”
Both of those experiences led me to see the importance in preaching Jesus. They had the biggest crowds on the most important days, and that’s what they chose to say? Even as a young Jewish adult, who was pretty agnostic, I thought this is a waste. Help me to know why this is important and why worshiping on this holiday is so important for our heart and soul.
It’s part of the reason why I believe in preaching the Word and using the word is so important. Now last week and this week, isn’t scripture filled because of the style of the message. But generally, we use lots of scripture.
So, those experiences helped shape my approach subconsciously to preaching.
While I was in my last year of seminary, my mom had cancer and ultimately died during the last quarter. She needed more care at home, so I dropped my classes and helped more at home and graduated a year later. During that last year, I began to work as a chaplain at an acute care hospital, like a Community hospital. I worked mostly in the oncology and cardiology, and occasionally in the ER. I saw lots of life and death. The 2 years of working in the hospital helped me grow and gain a better understanding of myself and life in general.
I then applied for a job I didn’t have the qualifications for, but got the job. I became a chaplain at a physical rehab hospital. In the rehab hospital I worked mainly with brain injured and orthopaedic patients. Some were there for up to 3 months, so you got to know the more acute rehab patients. I also worked with people who had spinal cord injuries, amputations, strokes, transplants as well as pediatrics. For awhile I was the team leader in the brain injury wing and helped write the manual for families.
It was fascinating working there. You met people at their worst. Really, they were. They were leaving the hospital and the reality of what happened to them was just sinking in. The beauty is that this was a Catholic (Franciscan) hospital and every patient was scheduled for a pastoral consult the day after they arrived. We met with families and patients and I saw so many different, good and bad coping mechanisms. Again, this helped me formulate more and more of my theology, which is really more of a practical theology.
I often saw the fallacy of neuropsychologists, as so many of them couldn’t understand how someone going through a difficult time in their lives, could still have hope and joy. They didn’t understand how some of the people, and I remember many of them, how they could smile, even in the midst of loss, pain and suffering. It’s easy to have a woe is me attitude, but we need to remember, the sun will come up tomorrow . . . and in the words of Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations 3:23-24 - -
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I also became a certified chaplain, which was nice, but the best part of working at the rehab hospital was meeting this great looking young lady, who is my better 1/2
I really thought about a career in chaplaincy, but God had other plans for me.
After Debbie and I were married, I felt God moving me in a different direction. I was being called into church ministry. I could see that in the way I was leading worships at the hospital and had this sense of calling from God. There was a real pull in that direction. I could see how God was leading me in that direction.
For 7 years I saw a great deal of healing and suffering in the hospitals, but for those in Christ, there was always the hope of eternal life. I want you to understand the blessing we have in Jesus. I want you to know that Easter is the most special of special days. It is a holy day.
You see, last Sunday was my sister Susie’s birthday. She died in 2005. She would have been 70 last Sunday. Susie was Jewish. She and I had talks about faith, and she supported me. Susie and her husband would come to worships I was leading. They even came to a sunrise Easter service I led and took communion, not knowing what else to do when the elements were passed to them.
One time we had a discussion about death. It was before she had multiple maladies. She told me she was envious of what I had. She knew I had Jesus, and she knew I had eternal life. She knew I had a faith in a God who was going to be with me in this life and in the life to come.
She wasn’t sure what she had. She didn’t know what she believed, other than the fact that she was like my mom, born a Jew and I’ll die a Jew. Jews really don’t have a well defined and explained concept of death, and it can get a little complex.
Remember, Jews don’t hold to the New Testament, so belief in Jesus and eternal life is not in their belief system.
Without spending hours on this . . . but a few minutes. There a few major beliefs.
One of the main beliefs is something in Hebrew called OLAM HA BA. It means “world to come.” That’s heaven for the Jews. There is not a certain view even of heaven and hell, just heaven. For the most part, there are levels of rewards and those are according to your conduct in this world, which is called OLAM HA ZE.
Some rabbis did believe in a type of hell, called Gehenna. Yet, they believed that you would spend no more than 12 months there and you could even repent at the gates of gehenna and avoid punishment. After being punished in Gehenna, a soul was considered pure enough to enter what they called Gan Eden.
Gan Eden was viewed as a paradise for those who lived a righteous life - - and simply means "the Garden of Eden" in Hebrew.
There is a famous midrash story about how in both heaven and hell people sit at banquet tables piled high with delicious foods, but no one can bend their elbows. In hell, everyone starves because they think only of themselves. In heaven, everyone feasts because they feed each other.
So, that’s kind of a Jewish view of heaven. It’s more based on how good you were. Certain good deeds gain you extra points, while certain bad deeds take away the good points.
Lastly, it’s believed that when the Messiah comes to initiate the perfect world of peace and prosperity, the righteous dead will be brought back to life and given the opportunity to experience the perfected world that their righteousness helped create. The wicked dead will not be resurrected. So, there’s really no punishment, just extinction.
When you read the Old Testament, the focus for the Jews is on the here and now, not the future life. And because of the many variants and interpretations there are a number of extra books written . . . for example there is the
Midrash - interprets the Bible and its stories by ancient rabbis.
Mishnah - is an interpretation of the oral laws and traditions, believed to have come from Moses.
Talmud - is a central text of mainstream Judaism, containing a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history.
Kabbalah - was made a little famous by the fact that this is what Maddona practices. The kabbalah is from the root to receive and it’s Jewish mystical wisdom about how to experience God’s nature so we can make better sense of life. It kind of borders on new age philosophy.
So, for most Jews, it’s not so much about faith, it’s about living a good and right life. Doing the right things so you can receive the right reward. It’s really not very personal, which is why some are looking to the Kabbalah, and finding more of a communion with God.
OK, back to the story - - -
I ultimately received a call to be the pastor in a country church in central Illinois. It was a culture shock. A town of 1200. No stop lights, no pizza places, unless you consider Casey’s a good substitute for Chicago pizza, and no mail delivery. We had a PO Box.
But it was great to get our feet wet in church ministry. We moved when Joshua was 6 weeks old and when we next moved, Joshua was 7 and Zachary was 5. The boys loved the area. Lots of farming and they loved riding in combines and tractors. They’d be gone all day. It was a great experience for me in being a pastor. Debbie and I learned more about life, people and ministry. We endured a tornado which ripped through the church causing over $150,000 damage. I even made the national news with an interview.
Ultimately, and I say this with respect, there were factions growing in the church. New people were coming, the church was growing, and I know this sounds crazy, yet it happens in many churches, but the long time members, didn’t want to give up control to others. Instead of staging a coup, we believed it was best to move on. Even though the ending was hard, there were great times and great ministry and great friends.
We ended up accepting a call to pastor in Dearbon, Michigan. I had 2 calls at the same time, one in Indiana and one in Michigan. And one of the deciding factors to go to Michigan was the way the search committee was focused on the search. They actually came to see me preach on Mother’s Day Sunday. That spoke volumes to me that they were actually willing to leave their families on a pretty sacred day. The other church said no way to Mother’s Day.
So, off to Dearborn we went. Dearborn was a lot like suburban Chicago . . . or so we thought. Dearborn was only 20 minutes from Detroit and 30 from Canada. Dearborn has the highest muslim population in the USA. We met lots of muslims, had kids named Hussein, Mohammed and more at birthday parties, coached muslim kids in soccer; and never had an issue with their families or parents.
To give you an idea about the animosity between some muslims and Jews, I went to pick up the boys at someone’s home who had a pool and they were Lebanese. It was during the Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006. I was talking to the mom, while the TV in the background was on. It was an Arabic news station on the TV. She was talking about her fear for her relatives in Lebanon. Her 10 year old son came downstairs, heard our conversation and said, he wanted to kill all the Jews. Suffice it to say I didn’t mention I was raised as a Jew! That’s a real feeling!
The church in Dearborn was different. I went from a farming community who hated to have meetings, to a church that had a parlor, which was held sacred, a literal board room, filled with Ford executives, lawyers, upper level management and more.
So, the atmosphere was very different, it was run with a business mentality. It was also a very conflicted church. We ripped apart their old by-laws and developed new, freeing by-laws . . . and even though they all wanted change, there was angst when we started to slowly change.
That’s a reality in churches, we want to change, but when it happens, there’s always a sense of losing something . . . which is really the truth. There is loss, even when good things happen. It’s trying to navigate a large group through that.
Their past conflicts were never resolved, and they weren’t resolved when I was there either. Some of the people believed that they could raise their voices, tell you how wrong you are, then you’d go out for dinner together. Not me! You do that to me, I’ll need time to heal. But go back to their mentality and it was a business model. Executives arguing in the board room . . . which literally had a 20' long table and high back executive chairs.
After 3 years, we really felt there was no more we could do in the church. We believed God was calling us to move on. Maybe they needed a different style of pastor to lead them, which is OK. We also sensed a desire to move into a more rural environment. As a side note, about 5 years later the church closed. Their conflicts could never be resolved . . . and honestly, that’s a shame!
I signed up for an interview process called face - to - face. It was in Terre Haute. The first church I interviewed with was Alexandria. The first people I met, and I could picture them were Jan McClead and Lynn Harris in the lobby. Of course, I later learned that the search committee joked that they shouldn’t hire the first person they interview.
Well, that’s the joke, and here’s the reality, I’m here!
I know there is no perfect church. We have our flaws! Yet, when I think about you and who you are . . . you are a blessing. There is no place I’d rather be. Even though rough times, you’ve never abandoned me or my family. You show great support.
Through the 14 years, I’ve grown, kind of matured a bit more. I do lots of reading, partly because I enjoy it, but also to grow. This year, reading the Bible has been super fun. I’m in the gospel of Luke and should finish the Bible by the end of November, and do a Christmas study.
I’ve read about 20 books this year. Most are leadership type books. Some are ---
The fish That Ate the Whale
The way of baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH
Think like a Rocket Scientist
Atomic Habits
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (500 BC)
Reading helps me to be a better leader. I usually have my evening routine, Bible reading, a couple of games and read a book or hang out with Debbie.
I’ve been empowered by many of you to do ministry in different ways. We’ve laughed a lot, and we’ve cried a lot. The key is that we’ve done this together. I looked it up and I’ve done over 125 funerals here alone. We’ve done our share of grieving. But we have that great hope in Jesus. In John 11, after Lazarus died - - -
25 Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though they die, yet they shall live.
26 and everyone who lives and believes in me, shall never die.” Then I believe Jesus looked right into Martha’s soul and asked her - - - - “Do you believe this?” And she said, “yes, Lord . . .”
And when we say yes to that question, we have the assurance of life everlasting. We have the promise that our loved ones in Christ are not resting, not waiting for Jesus to return . . . but they are celebrating, whooping, dancing, worshiping - - - powerfully praising God in the place where there is no more pain or suffering.
Let me end with this, when Paul talks about the church in Ephesians 4 - he wrote -
1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call —
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
That’s so important for us to hold onto. We’ve talked about it before. If we want to succeed and thrive in this world, if we want to be THE church - -
then we need to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
• We do it with all humility and gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love
• AND we’re fighting (in a good way) to keep the unity and the peace.
• It’s when we remember, but more than that, we believe, that there is this ONENESS . . . that we are one in Christ, one in body and spirit.
• That we have one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father over all.
You see, the church is the only and final hope of this world. When we really take Jesus seriously, when we hold to His word, we change and we then cause others to change, because they see Jesus is real and alive in the way we live our lives.
It happens in the ways we serve, in the ways we give, in the ways we even talk about church and worship, in the way we act in good and bad times. They see us, and that is contagious . . . and that’s a good kind of contagious! It’s the best!
That way we can go into the world and make a difference in the name of Jesus!!
