Easter Newness

Sunday was fun. I was so excited to see a newness and excitement around the celebration. Everything from dancing to harps there is a freshness in the air, as well as seeing 15+ coming out to help the community center throw a typical family Easter breakfast. What a fun time! Even with the event not being a church program we were able to help reveal the presence of God to the “common spaces”, the 3rd spaces as Frost would say. But what is so cool is the opportunity to live out what the New Covenant brought with Jesus’ death and resurrection which was highlighted at Pentecost, a presence of God and Word of God being lived out in the lives of those following Him. I like what Martin Buber say about the word becoming entwined in people.
A “Zaddik” (righteous person) said about the rabbis who “speak Torah” (ie., who interpreted the Scriptures for others) “What is the sense of their speaking Torah? Man should act in such a way that all his behaviors is Torah, and he himself is a Torah.” At another time it is said “the aim of the wise man is to make himself into a perfect teaching, and make all his acts as bodies of instruction; and where it is not possible for him to attain to this his aim is to be a transmission of teaching and a commentary on it, and to spread the teaching by his movements,”… The people in whom this Torah-nature fulfills itself are called zaddiks, “the righteous,” the law-full. They are the bearers of…teaching, not only as its apostles, but more as its effective reality. They are the teaching.
Wow, isn’t this really what is about? Proclaiming through our movements and actions (as well as by what we say). In fact if our actions don’t match up (or even speak louder) we don’t have anything to say. Guess what? We aren’t the most hospitable, the most loving, the most life-full, most grace giving people around, if we don’t live it out. It’s scary but the message is the medium. Jesus had strong word for the religious rulers who vocally had lots to say, but didn’t seem to connect it with their actions. I think the word was… umm… hypocrite. Anyway, it was good to be part of a movement this past weekend that was proclaiming…that was living Torah.