Christmas Past, Jewish Future

One of the features of religion is how it lives in the past. We are people with a story and religion is a story. Of course, story and history are the same, they are about where we have been. We measure where we are according to where we were, who we are to what we have been.

Bu what of the future? For faith is also prophetic, and a good part of all stories is the ability to be prophetic, to reach beyond the present moment. In my past life, Christmas was one of those past stories, a story I could scarcely make sense of. This is not the same as not believing, I simply could not understand what it meant to me. I really stopped being concerned with messiahs awhile ago, my standard joke being that I had one for thirty years and didn't really need another one. Messianic Jews, and I mean all Jews who speak of the coming of a messiah, not simply Jesus Jews, I found rather unnecessary.




Now ir is Advent, now in the sacred space of carols playing I realize that to be a messianic Jews is nothing more than being a Jew who looks for a future era, one who believes that, in the end, there will be an age to come when wrong is made right and judgment restored. It is to believe that God will, eventually, indeed intercede and in no small way to change the whole world. As a factual event I'll admit Christmas makes very little sense to me, and not because it is unbelievable. God must be unbelieable. He must be magical. No, Christmas has been, as an historical event and the basis of faith not sensible because it rest outside of tme, because it promises that by its happening all is made well when all certainly is not, because it has little or nothing to do with the rest of the life of Jesus, for many more reasons than its simply being unbelieable.

But it is real, and I do believe in its promises, and I think it did happen and is happening and what is more will happen and like all good Jews I stand to say it is not fulfilled and keep this season of Advent in expectation that one day, it will be.