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I grew up in a Jewish family in the United States, but after I graduated from Harvard, I came to faith in Yeshua (Jesus). I began to see that the whole message of the New Testament is within the worldview of the classic Jewish faith.
Since 1978, I've been part of a movement to help foster Messianic congregations in the United States and around the world. I came to Israel to plant congregations here, along with my wife, who is also Jewish, and our four children.
My commitment to reconciliation goes back to my first understanding of the gospel, that not only are we reconciled to God, but we're also reconciled to other human beings. Today I think reconciliation between ethnic groups is touching the hearts of Yeshua's people all over the world.
Of all interracial reconciliations, the deepest one has to be between Arab and Jew. We're talking about 3,000 years of division that need to be healed. All racial reconciliations are important for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. But Arab-Jewish reconciliation is unique, because no other one so much affects believers' interpretation of the Bible. Jew and Arab becoming reconciled is not only an application of the cross; it involves some very deep implications on how I read my Bible and understand the Kingdom of God.
When I first came to it, I must admit that I was not that emotionally pleased with the concept of meeting with Arab people and being reconciled to them. But when I moved here, I saw both sides. Then my heart changed, and I began to develop a real love for the Arabs. Instead of seeing them as our enemies, I began to realize that racially they are our closest relatives.
There are a number of groups here working on Arab-Jewish reconciliation, but I am particularly attracted to the Musalaha Ministry led by Salim Munayer. I have worked with Salim to organize a monthly prayer meeting, to bring Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews together to pray.
All of us believe the gospel can demonstrate the solution to any problem in life. Perhaps the greatest problem in the world today is the enmity between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. So we are praying for a miracle that is akin to raising someone from the dead. Here in the Middle East, we see the potential of the whole world falling into World War III over the conflict between these two groups of people who are actually very small--maybe 4 million Israelis and 1.5 million Palestinians. Being a testimony of reconciliation in the midst of that is spiritually very significant. It's a confirmation of the hand of God, because humanly speaking it can't be done. Reconciliation through the cross starts on the personal level. We want to see a larger political solution, but if we start with a political agenda, it's going to break down or be superficial. We believe it starts with a Kingdom commitment, first to Yeshua and then to our fellow believers.
For a Palestinian, social justice means freedom from economic and social oppression--they haven't had the right to vote for 25 years and are living in poverty under what they see as military occupation. For someone from the Jewish side, justice means stopping terrorism and regaining all of the land back for our people so that we have a safe place to live. As believers, we can't be superficial. We Jews need to wrestle with how the Palestinians feel who don't have any place to work or anything to eat, to taste their bitterness at seeing Israeli soldiers come into their neighbourhoods. And our Palestinian brothers need to understand the deep pain of Israeli families, all of whom have had a relative murdered by a terrorist attack. This is the compassion of Yeshua, to feel the depth of the hurt and struggle on both sides.Salim desires to see the gospel incarnated as Palestinian, in a fully Arab cultural identity. It is neither a Western thing nor a Jewish thing; it's the incarnate gospel. My desire is to see that same incarnation expressed to the Jewish people, fully within the Jewish culture. So there are two Kingdom issues here: incarnating the gospel within the cultural context of our own communities, and then reconciling those two communities. We don't lose our identities as Arabs or Jews, but we have also the identity of the Messiah, and therefore we can be reconciled.When those two cultural communities are both anti-gospel in the first place, and then anti-each other, it's a dual problem. We're in conflict both on the right hand and the left, and we feel very torn. But that's part of the nature of the gospel. We're standing for truth in the midst of political and historical forces that are tearing us apart.
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