Hassidic Christianity

Dude, I don’t understand your family.” Vin sat with me on my front stoop as I played catch with my young son. I had met Vin through a teacher at the high school that was worried about him. In a lot of ways, Vin was your typical fringe kid - short, with long blonde hair and a black wardrobe that made his pale skin seem downright goolish. Which I think was the point.

There were lots of kids at the high school who looked like Vin, but Mrs. Kurtzer was particularly concerned for him because he seemed to take it to the next level. Vin was advertising a deepening participation in the occult and was starting to show up to school with his face painted al la Brandon Lee in “The Crow”.

Mrs. Kurtzer called me and asked if we could take Vin to camp.

Vin jumped at the opportunity and assumed he would terrify the church people by showing up to the bus in all black with his “Satan is Cool” shirt. He was a stark contrast to the guys in long, white tees and fitted caps and girls in their summer pastels. Most of them knew Vin and was surprised to see him on the trip…but everyone went along.

Vin was a bit disappointed that the proclamation on his chest didn’t really freak anyone out – so he upped the ante with face paint. Still, no one really noticed. People still talked to him and accepted him. By the end of the week Vin told us that even though he wasn’t ready to do the whole “Jesus” thing, he told us “I know for the first time that I am loved and that I can love back.”

I’ll take it.

Vin became a regular feature at my house that summer. Now, sitting with me he said “I want to make it my life to study your family. You seem to love your kids. You spend time with them and play with them. I just have never seen that before”. I was honest with him and told him it wasn’t because I was a particularly good guy, but knowing Jesus in an intimate way has changed how I think about life. Truly, it changed how I think about Vin.

Kids like Vin assume that they don’t belong with church people. Many inside the church have hijacked the idea of holiness to justify their isolation from people they don’t like or understand. The scriptures are clear that God calls us to be separate and God’s people have been getting it twisted since day one.

The Pharisee’s question in Matthew 9 is a fair one. Jesus has just asked a tax collector to be his disciple and is now at a party with a whole lot of tax collectors, prostitutes, and all kinds of people on the fringe. The Pharisees want to know why Jesus would eat with them when we are supposed to be holy.

Jesus gives them clarification on the theology of holiness. He quotes Hosea 6:6 and tells them to go figure out what it really means. The Hosea verse uses the word “hesed” that is translated all kinds of different ways in English. It is the word that describes what God really desires of his people. It means commitment to God on the deepest level. It’s the word used to describe the highest order of modern Judaism – Hassidic.

As with many words God gives us, it became a word used to cut off hurting and broken people from the warmth of God’s presence.

When Jesus grabs the word and couches it in the backdrop of dinner with sinners He is inciting a revolution. He is saying that holiness doesn’t mean running away from people, but embracing them. It means living a life transformed by love in front of and within people.

It means being the kind of man that God is making me to be and doing it with a psudo-satanist kid from New Jersey who sees in me the man he wants to be.