Q. What did your family think about your keeping these traditions, I mean, was it welcomed wholeheartedly, was it, kind of, did they think it was weird? How did they respond?
A. Not so much weird as "don't quite understand it". I think for extended family members, umm, it's probably considered a little weird. "I wonder what they're into now." [laughs] That kind of thing. Because even being a born-again, sold-out-for-the-Lord Christian is a little bit weird for some people. So now taken this level of trying to understand Jesus and His life, yeah, it is considered a little weird. I don't know that it's judged so much as it is cautioned.
Q. What do you mean by cautioned?
A. I think they're cautious, people are cautious because they don't want to be weird, they don't want to do things that are weird. They want to be your normal, average people. And so they don't want to take themselves in any way that would make them look weird.
But the truth is, once you get to understanding this [the Feasts of the Lord], it doesn't matter what people think because you get so much more of a level of richness about your Christian faith and your Christian walk that it's all worth it.
This is interview comes from the fine folks at Threads Media, who were kind enough to send me a free copy of their Feast leader kit: a pack of materials for small Christian groups wanting to learn about the Feasts of the Lord.
It contains a CD with Christian Feast-centered music and interviews with the Christians who keep the Feasts, a DVD of Messianic Rabbi Derek Leman and friends sharing a Sabbath meal together and talking about the tradition and what it means in their lives as Messiah-followers to keep the Feasts of the Lord.
It also contains Derek's new book, Feast: Finding Your Place at the Table of Tradition.
Questions like,
Why keep the Feasts of the Lord?
Why should gentiles keep "Jewish" feasts?
How in the world can a non-Jew living in this culture keep the Feasts? What am I supposed to do?
The materials in the Feast leader kit look at these questions from a gentile Christian perspective and answers them with personal experiences of other Christians. If you're a Christian who's even the least bit curious about the Feasts of the Lord, you owe it to yourself to discover more of the times the Lord appointed for His people: His set-apart Feasts.
Some time in the coming weeks, I'll be doing a little Q&A interview with Derek about his book and about the Feast kit. Do you fine blog readers have any tough questions for Derek? Skeptical questions about the Feasts? Maybe you've got a quote from Paul that just shuts down all this Jewish stuff? Or maybe you're curious about how to go about actually celebrating one of the Lord's Feasts?
Here's your chance to ask a Real Live Messianic Rabbi® your questions about the Feasts. Post them in the comments and I may use them in the interview.
Shalom.