This is the life story of my wife Rhonie

Both fully Jewish and a Christian

I find it interesting that American Jews today find no problem with a Jewish person embracing yoga, or Native American tribal religion, secular humanism or even Bahai. But ask a Jewish person if you could be Jewish and Christian, you may get eyes rolling back and a quick response that once someone Jewish becomes a Christian, they cease to be Jewish. Fortunately, not all Jews see it that way. In the case of my wife Rhonie, she is both fully Jewish and a Christian (just not a Gentile one).

Raised in Buffalo, NY, the daughter of a dinette furniture store owning parents, Rhonie (whose name means “Little Rose”) would surprise her mom and dad with her showroom savvy. As a child, she’d explain with expertise the advantages of casters and swivel chairs over four-legged ones. When she made a sale, a whoppin’ 2% commission would go into her savings account. The Avners were of the Reconstructionist persuasion, so-named because the movement, which started in the 1940’s, attempted to reconstruct the Law to modern times. In practice, Reconstruction Judaism falls somewhere between Reform and Conservative Judaism. As she attended synagogue services, Rhonie didn’t really get teaching from the rabbi about Yahweh being a personal God. Years later she discovered he only believed in some vague cosmic force. But in the Sabbath Prayer book, she was struck by the simple fact that the Lord was spelled with a capital ‘L.’ Only people’s names get capitalized. Who was this Lord with the capital ‘L’?

Rhonie’s best friend growing up was Annie, just down the street. Annie’s family was Lutheran. From time to time Annie would come with the Avners to temple, and once or twice, Rhonie would attend Annie’s church. When Rhonie expressed an increasing curiosity about church, her parents announced those visits were over. Annie could still come to temple if she wanted, though.

When she went off to college in postcard-perfect Beverly, Massachusetts, Rhonie began to wonder why the drinking/partying crowd at her 2-year women’s college appeared to have no satisfying answers to her life-questions. But her resident assistant Carol did show love and concern to Rhonie, offering her a ride to the nearby seminary library where Carol was a student. The quiet study place and the square dance ho-downs and friendliness of these Christians studying for the ministry was enough to get Rhonie seeking what it was that made them different.

At college, she had to write an English paper on a topic of her choice, something she was interested in but knew nothing about. She decided to tackle a theological question. A verse of the Hebrew Scriptures indicates that God’s anointed (the Messiah) would be a prophet like Moses. She was being confronted in her world view about Jesus and the church’s claim that he is the Messiah. She studied Old Testament prophecies and lined them up with Jesus of Nazareth and found that he did fulfill these expectations, even the one about the Messiah being a prophet like Moses. Rhonie’s paper, typed manually so long ago on onion skin erasable bond paper, collects dust in our attic. It was the searching paper of a 19-year-old. As a theologian-type, even though I wholeheartedly agree with her conclusions, I found holes I could poke in her logic. But that’s okay. The paper got her mind working, and her heart was to follow.

Rhonie volunteered to baby-sit during one of the seminary’s student retreats. Her right heel burned with pain from a bone spur that had gotten serious. The students asked her if she wanted them to lay hands on her to pray to Jesus for her healing. This was a moment of decision for Rhonie. She couldn’t justify prayer to a deity she did not yet believe in, or give her allegiance to. It would have been hypocritical to just let the others pray just in case they were praying to the right God! She either had to decline their prayer, or accept the offer of salvation this Jesus the Messiah wanted to give her besides the physical healing. She accepted the offer!

She then went for surgery on the bone spur and was promised a six-month-to-one-year recovery time. Instead, rapid healing accompanied the surgery to where she was off crutches in two weeks and wearing regular shoes by four weeks! Rhonie gives glory to her Messiah, the Lord Jesus for this rapid recovery. It is not the most dramatic of healings, but that’s okay. Her life changed on the inside, too, not just physically. And that is always a miracle that causes the angels to rejoice from one end of heaven to the other. Rhonie has continued to serve the Lord ever since this experience in New England in 1977 without a bit of regret. After all, she had found the Lord with the capital ‘L’!