Covered in the Rabbi's Dust
Well, Jesus was a Jewish man, and in their book Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, authors Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg help us Gentile Christians realize how the Jewishness of Jesus can transform our faith. It's a beautiful book, and I want to encourage you to read it. As I share some gems from it today, I hope you'll be inspired to get the book yourself and read it. Truly, we can't fully understand Jesus apart from His Jewishness.
Jewish Heritage
In chapter 1, the authors share a saying prevalent in Jewish culture at the time of Jesus: "Let your house be a meeting place for the rabbis and cover yourself in the dust of their feet and drink in their words thirstily." In those days, the rabbis would walk the streets, and their disciples would follow them. Jewish people would invite the rabbis into their homes to teach, sitting at their feet to listen and learn. Remember how Mary and Martha had Jesus in their home, with one busy serving Him and the other sitting at His feet? I wonder if you've invited Jesus, the Rabbi, the Teacher, into your home and gulped in His words, which come out of the Scriptures, covering yourself in His dust, so to speak.
Anointing Jesus
But there's another story in the Bible of someone sitting at Jesus' feet. In Matthew 26, Mary anoints Jesus' feet with expensive perfume. This was a powerful act of worship, anointing Him as the Messiah, affirming her belief in Him as the Anointed One. Here’s the amazing insight that the authors point out: that smell, that fragrance from the anointing oil, would have lingered on Jesus for days. Everywhere Jesus went after that, He would have smelled like a king. In those days, only kings and royalty carried that kind of fragrance.
Sitting at His Feet
On page 18, the authors write, "Imagine in the Garden of Gethsemane as Judas and the guards approached Jesus to arrest him. The guards must have sniffed the air and wondered who stood before them. When Jesus was on trial, mocked, whipped, and stripped naked, even then, the aroma must have clung to him. They must have known that he was something special because of this act of anointing, as Mary sat at his feet."
So, will you sit at the feet of your Rabbi today, drinking in His words and anointing Him as King in your life? Maybe, if you do that, the aroma that comes from Him will linger on you too, so that people will also sense Him in you today.
