By his wounds we are healed

A great evening at St Peter's last night, as we welcomed Yoel Ben David, the UK Director of Jews for Jesus.
Yoel was an Orthodox Jew in his early 20's when he began to read the Old Testament for himself, rather than simply listening what others had said about it. He reached Isaiah Chapter 53 and, like many before him and since, realised that he had to find out who this figure was: 

Surely he took up our pain    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,    stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions,   he was crushed for our iniquities;the punishment that brought us peace was on him,    and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray,    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him    the iniquity of us all.

With the help of a Christian woman he and his wife knew, he discovered that the figure, who suffers innocently and in doing so brings healing and God's forgiveness to many, is Jesus - a clear picture of Jesus about 800 years before he was born in Bethlehem. You can watch Yoel tell his story here.

The evening was called 'Christ in the Passover', and was the final evening of our Lent studies in how Jesus used food and meals to connect with people. The 48 of us gathered in St Peter's hall were taken through a Passover Meal - red wine, matzoh and more - to see what it means to a Jewish family, but also to see how Jesus is foreshadowed in the events of the Passover.

The 'afikomen', a piece of matzoh that is pierced, broken, hidden and then revealed, pointed us powerfully to the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, and is eaten alongside 'the cup of freedom'. A member of St. Peter's said in the Q&A at the end that Communion would never be the same again. Not half!
The evening was inspiring, and left those who gathered more confident in faith and understanding. It was also entertaining, as Yoel told stories and engaged with his audience. 

Yoel's experience of living in Jerusalem - a city divided by religion - led him to say that the only hope for peace and reconciliation in that city is for people to unite in honestly seeking the truth about God, rather than listening to what they are told to believe (and not believe) by their religious leaders. His own experience was that when that happens, God makes himself powerfully present and brings Jew and Arab together.

A life-changing moment for him was his wife's comment when they first came to faith in Jesus: 'Why has no-one told us this before?' They are now committed to sitting down with people in formal and informal situations - in church, around a table at home, or over a coffee in Costa - and showing from the Bible who Jesus is. As a family (Yoel and Adel have 4 children) they are going back to Israel in July to continue the ministry of Jews for Jesus there. We wish them well and will be thankful to Yoel, for a long time I believe, for what we learned and were reminded of about Jesus and the Jewish roots of our faith.

The food and practical prep for last night took a lot of hard work on the part of our Social Committee - thanks to them and all who cooked the authentic Jewish chicken casseroles!