TIME TUNNEL IN BIBLE?

I previously likened the "bridge building project" as being designed to span a two-mile wide chasm but in practicality, requiring a bridge linking San Francisco and Hawaii. Now I'm considering the gulf to be more "interplanetary" so any "fellowship" will have to be conducted (metaphorically speaking) via radio or rocketship. If our two planets exist in separate solar systems in different parts of the galaxy, then we'll require fictional assistance in the form of "sub-space radio", "warp drive", or a transpacial wormhole.

Point being, this bridge building job just got a whole lot harder.

While structure remains a problem, Dr. Kinzer says the following is of vital importance:

It seems clear from the Apostolic Writings that one of the crucial functions of this ritual is to be an expression and instrument of unity (1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:17-32). It is also clear that the Apostles viewed the partaking of food at the same table (in contexts which likely included a eucharistic dimension) as a primary sign of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in one community (Galatians 2:11-14). Thus, any adequate structural and communal embodiment of bilateral ecclesiology will need to provide contexts where members of the Jewish and Gentile wings of the one ekklesia can gather together to celebrate HaZikkaron as one two-fold body.

Ovadia suggested a practical application based on my Boychiks in the Hood metaphor:

Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians can be "ekklesia" together without necessarily being part of the same congregations. We should worship jointly, feast for Yeshua's sake jointly, participate in tikkun olam jointly, study jointly. But jointly. Not as an blob of amorphous Jew-Gentile, but as Jews and Gentiles, each confident in their own God-given identity, together. In your metaphor, the two neighborhoods should come together regularly to throw block parties, and keep those friendships.

That requires some working out of community standards for food at the very least and perhaps a mutually agreed upon worship structure (siddurim, hymnals, or both?) as well. 

Of course, Dr. Kinzer is talking about establishing and maintaining relationships primarily with people who are affiliated with a traditional Christian church, not those of us who are part of what Derek Leman calls Judaically-informed Christian congregations (AKA One Law groups). To be fair, Derek is suggesting a third alternative for Gentiles in "the movement" who would not be entirely welcome in a traditional Messianic Jewish venue (that is, a traditional synagogue service for Messianic Jews) nor be comfortable returning to a traditional church setting. His viewpoint is controversial as he readily acknowledges, but he is trying to see to the needs of people like me, who are not accounted for in Kinzer's model.

If we accept as a given that Jews in the Messianic movement require a traditional Jewish worship setting that allows them to maintain an observant lifestyle, has a strong affiliation to the covenant and Israel, and provides potential linkage to a larger Judaism, then assuming that the linkage also travels in the direction of the Christian world by virtue of a common worship of the Jewish Messiah, we need to start working on the currently non-existent "practical structure of a bilateral ekklesia".

I used to be a pretty big science fiction fan and as a kid in the 1960s, I watched a lot of hokey TV shows. One of them was the Irwin Allen "classic" (I say that tongue-in-cheek)The Time Tunnel. This was a secret Government project designed to create a point-to-point link between the present and any other moment in time. Of course, it got broken, sending two American scientists across the time-line and stranding them in one cornball version of a historical event after another on a weekly basis. Nostalgia makes the show for me a fond memory and in the current context, it becomes a persistent image.

Like my former reference to a wormhole (which is at least theoretically possible), maybe given the distance between us, we don't need a bridge so much as a conduit that creates a virtual "tunnel" between our two worlds. Like many inventions suggested by science fiction and then realized in the world of technology (1966 Star Trek communicators and 2010 cell phones, for instance), maybe what seems impossible now is just waiting for the right moment to become possible.

Or are we waiting for the finger of God to start writing on our world...or in our hearts?