The Letter Kills

When I was a young child, I attended synagogue regularly with my family. It was something we did every Friday night and Saturday morning. I also attended Shabbat school and Hebrew school and for the most part I hated it. I didn’t hate G-D, Sukkot camping, or Hannukah. I didn’t hate the kiddishs and onegs (festive meals after service). But I did hate the services, especially the liturgy. Liturgy was either said so quickly that it was as if you were racing to get through it so that you could get to the kiddish or oneg. Or it was done so slowly and dryly that you thought it would never end. I knew the ancient prayers of my people were an important part of my heritage and that the actual words of the prayers were filled with meaning and purpose, but they had become something that you had to do, in order to get to the things you wanted to do, at least that's how I felt about it at the time.

That was true until our new chazzan arrived at the synagogue. For those who don’t know, a chazzan is a person specially trained to lead the liturgical part of a synagogue service. Our new chazzan was different from any leader I had ever met in synagogue. He was filled with joy and life, and he was also fun. From the moment I heard him sing the first word of our Hebrew liturgy that Friday night, my world was changed. The ancient melodies that I had dreaded for years, because they felt as if I was trudging through the desert on the way to the oasis of the kiddish, suddenly reached beyond my ears into my heart. The words were the same and most of the melodies were the same, but the experience was completely different. Somehow when our new chazzan chanted those words, what felt like a funeral before, suddenly became a wedding feast.

It was the first time in my life that I understood a Judaic concept shared by a famous rabbi that I wouldn’t read about until I read the New Testament: The letter kills, but the Ruach/Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:4-6). Our new chazzan didn’t just lead us as we recited the words of these vulnerable prayers sung to the melodies our people had sung for thousands of years and he didn’t sing those words from his head, but he sang them from deep within his heart. 

One of the complaints people state about Judaism and even Messianic Judaism is that we do liturgical prayers. If you attend a synagogue you will hear prayers in Hebrew and English which are sung or spoken every week. These prayers are purposefully ordered to represent the different aspects of the Temple service. There are those who say that these prayers are the vain repetitions spoken of in Matthew 6:7-8. If I am to be honest, in my earliest experience, these prayers were just that: empty words repeated weekly and weakly. However, from the moment our new chazzan walked up to the bima and began to sing, those words ceased to be in vain repetition and became the cries of our hearts to our G-D.

You see, one of the most important lessons I have ever learned, I learned in a moment in my synagogue, and it wasn’t in a class and it wasn’t taught as a lesson, it was demonstrated. In the space of time it took for my chazzan to sing the first few words of the first prayer he led, I learned the difference between empty ritual and worship and it changed my relationship with G-D and my synagogue.

At our Messianic synagogue today, we still have a liturgical portion of our service where together we sing the same songs that I sang as a young boy. They are led by Spirit-filled people who sing from their hearts and not just from their heads, and the entire congregation joins in with enthusiasm. Yes, we sing the same songs of praise and adoration week after week. But because we sing the same songs each week, it doesn’t make it a vain repetition any more than when a church sings “Good Good Father,” “I can only Imagine,” or “Just Like I Am”.

You see, when we read in the Bible that the Letter kills but the Spirit brings life, that isn’t a condemnation of the Letter. After all, Hebrews 4:12 describes G-D’s word as this:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword—piercing right through to a separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  

So it isn’t the Letter that kills, it is the Letter without the Spirit that kills. This is true whether you are reading Scripture, singing praise songs, chanting liturgy, or preaching. There is a huge difference between repeating the words written by those who came before us and allowing the Spirit of G-D to blow through you from your heart to your voice as you breathe out the same Spirit that gave life to Adam in the garden and breathed life into the dead bones of Ezekiel’s vision. In other words, the problem isn’t with the words being dead and dry, but with the speaker or singer being dead and dry.