Time for Christians to resurrect the heritage of their Jewish roots

We’re back in Israel this week, exploring the land of the Bible and marking the celebration of Jerusalem’s two biggest holidays of the year.

For Jewish families, this has been Passover week. Everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve seen the signs of families on holiday. The big Passover meal was served Monday night, but every meal since then has reminded our non-Jewish group that there’s no yeast allowed for the rest of the week. And most noticeably, there’s a holiday joy in the air that’s as tangible as the lush, green land of the Galilee spring.

For Christians, this weekend marks the death and resurrection of Jesus. The crowds in Jerusalem for Good Friday were predicted to be large. I’m anticipating it’ll be the same way early Sunday morning as our group of 30 attends an Easter sunrise service at the Garden Tomb.

So strange that Jews and Christians could be so close together and so far apart at the same time.

The vast majority of Jews in the world reject Jesus as the Jewish messiah. Many of them would surely be surprised to find that Jesus was Jewish, or that the Christian scriptures are completely immersed in Jewish terminology.

Likewise, the vast majority of Christians have only the vaguest idea that Jesus was Jewish.

Need an example? Take the fact that Passover slipped by most Christians this week without notice, despite the fact that what Christians refer to as the “Lord’s Supper” was clearly identified in the Gospels as the Passover meal.

How followers of Jesus came to celebrate a Jewish feast with a miniscule amount of bread and wine is one of history’s great mysteries. Add the fact that the bread of a typical Christian Communion is often made with Passover’s forbidden yeast, and you’ve got a stunning divorce of all things Jewish for most churches today.

Thankfully, this is changing.

The information explosion and tourism in Israel during the last 40 years or so has accelerated our understanding that in the beginning, Jesus and Judaism were one and the same.

It’s impossible to walk through the land of the Bible and not see this.

Visit Capernaum and the other first century villages of the Galilee region and you’ll find synagogues instead of churches.

Come to Jerusalem and you’ll find the massive Temple Mount and Jewish micvahs all around it. Who knew Jewish people were practicing ritual washing long before Christian baptism was created? But do you remember the amazing Pentecost holiday recorded in Acts 2? Three thousand people were baptized as new followers of Jesus in a single day. Those Jewish ritual washing pools all around the Temple Mount were where those baptisms happened!

Visit Qumran along the northern coast of the Dead Sea, or the Shrine of the Book Museum, where that community’s famous “Dead Sea Scrolls” were discovered. Quite naturally, only Jewish scriptures were found in the Qumran caves. But did you know Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River only a short walk from that community … while the scrolls were being copied?

Read the Gospels again and focus on all the distinctly Jewish elements of Jesus’ story and message. Ask yourself, “What difference does it make that Jesus was Jewish?” I promise you this. You will spend the rest of your life finding the answer to that question, and the rest of your days enjoying the Bible like never before.

Jewish and Christian foundations are as intertwined as the Jews and Christians who walk through Jerusalem today. How tragic that so few in either group recognize the kindred spirits in the other.

When the sun rises Sunday morning, Christians the world over will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I cherish the opportunity to be in Jerusalem, where the most important event in history took place.

But it is my prayer that the day will come when Christians the world over also will resurrect the priceless heritage of our Jewish roots.

This story was originally published April 14, 2017 at 6:44 AM with the headline "Time for Christians to resurrect the heritage of their Jewish roots."