Remember the old westerns?ÂThe ones where the good guys and the bad guys were easily identifiable.ÂSometimes it was as easy as looking at what color hat they wore.ÂSometimes the bad guy was the one who hadn’t shaved for days and the good guy was somehow always clean cut and well groomed.ÂIf someone had a scar running down the side of their face, you knew they were the bad guys.

  
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We are Christians in large part because of our Hebrew forebears.  Oh, you may have heard it all before: the Hebrew Bible, the collection of stories we sometimes call the Old Testament, is an important part of our heritage.  We cannot fully understand Jesus and his impact on his culture without having some passing acquaintance of the Hebrew Bible.  Indeed, we cannot understand the importance of Jesus on our culture without striving to understand the lessons of the Hebrew Bible.  That portion of our Holy Bible makes it clear that God chose to enter the world first through the Hebrew people: God’s chosen people.  Through them, God’s presence was experienced first and most directly.  And because Jesus was part of that chosen people, his voice found ears among those who understood who he was: the Messiah incarnate, come to connect God and humanity directly.

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