by Rabbi Russ Resnik
Jewish tradition assigns a special Torah reading for each of the haggim or pilgrim-festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, and the reading for Shavuot is perhaps the most notable: the Ten Commandments.
What is the connection between the Ten Commandments and Shavuot? Seven weeks after our ancestors departed from Egypt at the first Passover, they arrived at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah and their assignment to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Shavuot commemorates this event for all generations. One way to keep it alive is for everyone, even children and infants, to attend synagogue to hear the reading of the Ten Commandments from the Torah scroll. Thus, we relive the historic event when all Israel gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah and commit themselves to observe it.
The reading for Shavuot, however, is longer than just the actual commandments themselves, a detail that is all-important. The Ten Commandments comprise Exodus 20:1-17, but the reading for the day includes all of Exodus chapters 19 and 20. We are not to think of the Ten Commandments as a disembodied list of dos and (mostly) don'ts, but as a covenant document that captures a whole relationship between God and Israel. Accordingly, the commandments were not given in some abstracted, philosophical context, but in the midst of the dramatic encounter between God and Israel that had begun long before in Egypt. Indeed, Exodus 19, the introduction to the Ten Commandments, turns out to be one of the most dramatic chapters in Scripture:
Tradition calculates this "third day" of a three-day period of preparation (Ex. 19:10-11, 15) to be the sixth of Sivan, the date of Shavuot. The narrative is as intent on describing the scene of encounter as on conveying the contents of the word that Israel is about to receive. The cloud covering the mountain is the glory-cloud of God, which has already appeared at the splitting of the Red Sea, and as Israel's guide through the first stage of the journey. The rabbinic writings speak of this glory-cloud as the Shechinah, the tangible presence of God among his people. We often commemorate the Ten Commandments with replicas of the stone tablets engraved with the first words of each commandment, or simply with the numbers one through ten, represented by Hebrew letters or Roman numerals. But a more accurate commemoration must include the whole encounter at Sinai, and the presence of the Spirit in the glory-cloud of God. We cannot recreate this encounter with the Spirit, although we sometimes try, but we can remember it.
Believers sometimes feel a tension between Torah and Spirit, between the written word and its interpretative tradition on the one hand, and the immediate, present-tense activity of Ruach Hakodesh, the holy Spirit, on the other. Shavuot suggests that this tension may be our own creation, not God's. When the Lord gave the Torah, he also gave an unparalleled demonstration of his presence and immediacy, demonstrating that the two aspects of revelation, Torah and Spirit, arise from the same source. The Messianic Jewish community should readily embrace this union of Torah and Spirit, for it was on Shavuot, the anniversary of the Mount Sinai encounter, that the Spirit was poured out on Messiah's followers fifty days after his resurrection during Passover. Indeed, Luke's account of that day of outpouring echoes the description of Mount Sinai:
In recent weeks, the Messianic Jewish community in Israel has received tremendous exposure, much of it positive, in the mainstream media. One Israeli-American, non-Messianic writer, Ro'i ben-Yehuda, described us as "a religious community that follows a Torah inspired life-style while believing in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. . ." (www.jewcy.com/post/messianic_jews, 4/28/08 )-a reasonably accurate and remarkably positive definition coming from Israeli media. But I'd like to add the emphasis that we follow a Torah inspired life-style infused with the Spirit, enlivened by the immediacy of God's presence among us. We are not a form of Judaism plus Messiah, but the Judaism of Messianic presence, of the union between Torah and Spirit.
I believe the UMJC prayer campaign is a great example of this union. We have taken a rather obscure, although clearly Torah-based, tradition, the counting of the omer, and breathed new life into it as a time of unified intercessory prayer. Now it is time to take up another command of Torah, the offering for Shavuot, and renew it as a present-day, Spirit-empowered expression of worship. Shavuot is one of the three haggim, on which we are commanded to appear before the Lord to present an offering. Whether or not we make it up to Israel this year, we can reenact Shavuot by sending up an offering, which will go to help the Messianic community in Israel reach out to those in need and enhance the reputation of Messiah Yeshua, through efforts like . . .
Chag Sameach-May you have a joyous festival in Messiah Yeshua!
Rabbi Russ Resnik