Thinking Eastern Pt. 3

We have been looking at this study of 'thinking Eastern' for the last 3 weeks. It has captured my attention and my thoughts for several weeks now. When I was growing up in Church as a child, we rarely dealt with the Old Testament. As children we were taught the stories of Creation, Noah and the Flood, Samson, and the Boy David slaying Goliath. But we ignored completely the Levitical Law, The Song of Solomon and those little books at the end of the Old Testament.

Perhaps because of this background the fact that Jesus was most often referred to as Rabbi never really struck me until I read "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey. In this book Yancey argues convincingly that we can only truly understand Jesus within his backdrop of Judaism.

I have been mulling this over for several years now, and as we walked through the words of Christ this past year, it seemed to me that there was a hidden key within Judaism that I had overlooked. Now, as I am seeking to put together the pieces of what it truly means to be the community of God, I have returned to these scriptures as a means of understanding the early disciples. As I was studying this week's lesson, I was looking at Mark 2:20-ff., where Christ is discussing the Sabbath. I went to my Early Christian Commentary, and found to my surprise that the early Church Fathers did not deal at all with the Sabbath, but instead focused on the fact that since Jesus was eating he was a real man, and what it meant for his followers to be true disciples. Consider this quote:

"Now every week has seven days. Six days God has given to us for work, and one for prayer, rest, and making reparation for our sins, so that on the Lord's Day we may atone to God for any sins we have committed on the other six days. Therefore, arrive early at the church of God; draw near to the Lord for confess your sins to him, repenting in prayer and with a contrite heart. Attend the holy and divine liturgy ; finish your prayer and do not leave before dismissal. Contemplate your master as he is broken and distributed, yet not consumed. If you have a clear conscience, go forward and partake of the body and blood of the Lord." -- First Century Sermon recorded by the Historian Josephus.