Entering Yeshua's Anguish for His People

Entering Yeshua's Anguish for His People

Rabbi Stuart Dauermann, Shuvah Yisrael, Plainview, New York

Our Focus for the Forty Days of Teshuvah. https://youtu.be/B6miFy_uDaI

Weeping over Jerusalem

We are now in our tradition’s most intensive season of repentance and prayer, the forty days from the first of Elul to Yom Kippur (August 13–September 21). But a moment’s reflection will reveal that this season should not simply be about us and our sins, our forgiveness, and our concerns. Beyond that, as members of a Kingdom of Priests, we are called to struggle in prayer to help rectify the cosmos, “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12).  

Beyond praying for ourselves, we are called to pray for the salvation of Israel, the nations, and all that is. Yes, really. In Romans 8:18–27, Paul positions us within a profound vision of redemption structured around interconnected groanings. He compares these groanings to labor pains—the necessary, active agonies preceding the renewal and consummation of all things. These labor pains testify that something is struggling to be born, which Paul terms the revealing of the children of God.

When redeemed humanity enters into resurrection life, then the cosmos itself will be freed from its bondage to decay. The people of God are struggling even now in the tension between the already and the not-yet. We already have the firstfruits of the Spirit but continue to live in a tension between flesh and Spirit until we enter into the not-yet fullness of our redeemed resurrection reality. Meanwhile, the tensions attendant to the activity of the Holy Spirit in our life of prayer bear witness to these struggles.

Paul reminds us how we already want to pray, but we do not yet know how to pray as we ought, a tension reflected in the groaning of the Spirit within who works in our hearts, minds, and prayers according to the will of God. Boldly, Paul also likens the struggles of his apostolic ministry to the sufferings of Messiah. After all, in the Holy Spirit, Paul’s ministry embodies the not-yet dynamics of the Age to Come, as did Yeshua’s ministry. Therefore, Paul can say, “I am completing in my own flesh what has been lacking of the Messiah’s afflictions, on behalf of his Body, the Messianic Community” (Colossians 1:24). And so should we. 

This brings us to a long-neglected issue that should dominate our prayers, thoughts, and actions, not in this season only but through all our days. That issue is Yeshua’s own agony revealed to us when he wept over Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate! For I tell you, you will never see Me until you say, “Baruch ha-ba b’shem Adonai. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Luke 13:33-35)

Can we who claim to love Yeshua even for a moment justify being indifferent to his anguish? Never! Shouldn’t our lives be dominated by our efforts to assuage his anguish?  Surely. A Hasidic tale drives the point home. A rabbi asks his disciple: “Do you love me?”To which the disciple replies: “Of course I love you!”The rabbi continues. “Do you know what causes me pain?” he asks.“Rabbi, how can I know what causes you pain?”To which the rabbi responds: “If you do not know what causes me pain, how can you say that you love me?”

The only thing we know of that causes pain to our Messiah is our people’s estrangement from him.  

If we agree (as we should) that we cannot say we love Yeshua and be indifferent to his anguish, then the most pressing and penetrating question for us and our community will be this: As a movement and as individuals, what are we doing to address and relieve Yeshua’s agony by bringing our people to declare him the Blessed One?

If we love him, this should be priority one for us.