I grew up in a culture and context far removed from anything Jewish, so if you were to mention the word Jew to me, I would think of the people who lived in the time of the Bible and that the Jews had something to do with World War II and the Holocaust. Other than that I had no real thoughts on Jews or what it meant to be Jewish or had any Jewish friends, certainly it had nothing to do with my faith and my relationship with Jesus. But...
Jesus was a Jew!
Therefore I can no more understand Jesus apart from His Jewishness, than I can understand Ghandi apart from his Indianness.
So as somebody who claims to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, I need to go back and try to understand Jesus as a first-century Jew with Palestinian dust on His sandals. Now I cannot time-travel (sometimes I wish I could) but I can go to the places he went and travel some of the same journey's, get some of that same dust on my shoes, and experience a culture which hasn't changed all that much, and hopefully it will help me understand the story and the person of Jesus better.
I am leaving next week and I am hoping to post daily messages on my blog as well as some youtube clips on my thoughts as I travel through Israel.
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