Pentecost and a Spirit of Justice
This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 1, Episode 15: John 7 & 20. Lectionary A, Pentecost
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ykqgj9pEP_8
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | May 26, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Maybe you, too, still feel the pull to spiritualize that list from Isaiah and Luke, as so many Christians have before us. But what if we lean away from a gnostic response to this list and instead interpret it literally and materially? How could taking this list literally affect us? To actively participate in receiving the Spirit of Acts 2 means to care about the concrete well-being of those who are being harmed in our society today.”
Our lectionary gospel readings this week are both from John’s gospel. We considered the second reading from John 20 a few weeks ago.
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39)
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:19-23)
This coming weekend is Pentecost, the festival commemorating when the Spirit was poured out on the first Jesus followers and they developed the ability to communicate Jesus’ teachings in other languages.
Languages are not the only differences among members of our human family. We also have cultural differences, and political, social, and economic differences, as well. What could it mean today for the Spirit to enable us to understand one another, especially as we listen to those our present systems do the most harm?
Let’s consider the passage in John 7.
The first thing that jumps out at me in this passage is the Johannine community’s proto-Gnostic tendency to devalue the material, concrete, physical realities in which people suffered.
So here, “if anyone is thirsty…” let’s not dig a well or find out who is stopping the community from receiving clean drinking water, but let’s promise them an ethereal spirit instead.
In John, Jesus’ state execution liberated his spirit from his material body. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus was thereby “glorified” or transformed. This was the moment when Jesus’ spirit was freed from concrete, lowly embodiment, and was adorned with its inherent splendor.
At this time the community believed the Spirit was given to proto-Gnostic Jesus followers so they too could follow Jesus on this path, on the way to the same kind of spiritual liberation.
As I’ve said repeatedly over the last few weeks, much of western Christianity today is more gnostic than it realizes when it prioritizes the afterlife over the here and now, or prioritizes the spiritual (i.e. saving a person’s “soul”) over setting them free from material harm they are working to survive from social, political, economic, or interpersonal systems.
I want to contrast this with the Jesus we find in the synoptic gospels. Mark’s, Matthew’s, and Luke’s version of Jesus is much more concerned with the material experience of people in his society.
In Mark 8, for example, when the multitude was hungry, the synoptic Jesus did not offer them spiritual food or use food as a metaphor for his teachings. He stopped teaching and fed them literal loaves and fish. In Mark 10, seeing the wealth disparity in his community and noticing the poor suffer in a system that created winners and losers, he told an affluent man to literally sell his superfluous possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus didn’t simply point the poor toward the spiritual wealth of knowing him (gnosis).
I believe we don’t have to choose the spiritual over the material. I believe we can and must have a healthy balance of both. We need a holistic, life-giving interpretation of what it means to follow Jesus, one where people’s spiritual wellbeing is connected to their physical, material, emotional, psychological, economic, political, and social wellbeing. We don’t have to emphasize any of these to the exclusion of others. A more Jewish view of Jesus would have preserved his concern with liberating the whole person in whatever aspect of their lives they experienced harm.
As Jesus followers today, we must guard against the notion that only saving a person’s soul for eternity is important. That is not what Jesus teaches in our sacred stories. Yet our Christian history is littered with examples of a religion about Jesus that has cared more about saving people for eternity than creating a better world in the here and now where people are saved from the hell they are already enduring.
But like the water in the story of the woman at the well in John 4, the verses in this week’s reading have a gnostic bent to them. The water of life or of the Spirit is the special gnosis or knowledge that sets the believer on a path that will culminate in their own spirit being glorified once it is released from this fleshly housing at death. I understand where the Johannine community was coming from on this, but today we need a much more balanced understanding of what it means to follow Jesus or live in him.
One way to redeem this passage is, as the lectionary does, to connect it to John 20, where Jesus breathes the Spirit onto the apostles after resurrection. Today we too can inhale this Spirit and exhale justice, liberation, and life. Consider how in Luke’s gospel, the Spirit that Jesus is imparting to his followers in John was manifested on Jesus himself:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
We must be careful here not to spiritualize away the above passage. The poor here are economically poor. In both Isaiah and Luke, the writers spoke of those who were actually poor in the economic systems of their day. The prisoners are those who were literally, not merely metaphorically, in need of liberation and justice. The blind were those who were in a Roman cell, a hole dug in the ground that was so dark they physically could not see their hands in front of their faces. The oppressed are not experiencing mystical, spiritual oppression but marginalization, subjugation, and oppression in their daily lives. And, finally, the year of the Lord’s favor was not someone’s warm and fuzzy assurance deep inside that God liked them. “The year of the Lord’s favor” was a Jewish reference to the literal year of Jubilee, when all economic debts would be forgiven and cancelled.
Maybe you, too, still feel the pull to spiritualize that list from Isaiah and Luke, as so many Christians have before us. But what if we lean away from a gnostic response to the list and instead interpret it literally and materially? How could taking Luke 4’s Spirit literally affect us?
To actively participate in receiving the Spirit of Acts 2 means to care about the concrete well-being of those who are being harmed in our society today. It means to care about LGBTQ people still being marginalized within and outside of our faith-based communities. It means to proclaim in solidarity that Black lives really do matter. That trans kids’ lives matter. That the children in our schools are of greater value to us than our freedom to own an AR-15. That the well-being of people migrating across our borders and coasts is a priority.
Who else would be included if Luke 4 were re-written in our social context today?
On this year’s Pentecost, what can it mean for us in our context to inhale the same Spirit being breathed on disciples in our gospel readings this week? How will that spirit be exhaled? What will it look like for us to breathe in and breathe out Jesus’ gift of the Spirit: a love that manifests itself in a faith that works justice, and an exhaling that is life-giving to those around us.
This Pentecost, may this same Spirit that blew on the primordial waters of our sacred creation stories blow once again today, spawning life and life-giving things into our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the Divine.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does the Spirit showing up and manifesting itself as activity in justice work mean for you? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
(Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™)
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
A Unity That’s Big Enough
This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 1, Episode 14: John 17.1-11. Lectionary A, Easter 7
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/NFukfGUUlEQ
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | May 19, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
What we want is a unity that is safe for everyone. A unity that is compassionate. A unity that walks arm and arm with justice. A unity that’s big enough to wrap its arms around all our varied differences and call them “good.” A unity that at its heart holds the well-being of every member as its highest priority of value.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.
For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.
For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.
All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.
I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17:1-11)
Our reading this week is John’s version of Jesus’ farewell prayer. This passage deeply influenced Christians during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., and it became the basis of the discussions and conclusions that became the orthodox doctrinal understanding of Jesus’ relation to God.
When Jesus’ followers are referenced in this prayer, it’s difficult to discern whether the prayer is talking about Jesus’ first disciples before his crucifixion or the whole Johannine community in the century afterwards.
The prayer is unique to John’s gospel. Some consider this prayer to be the Johannine community’s equivalent of the “Lord’s Prayer” in the synoptic gospels. The key words, phrases, and expressions in this prayer are all uniquely Johannine.
Firstly, this community defined eternal life or salvation as a special knowledge. Consider the following passages from this week’s reading:
Now this is eternal life: that they know you… (John 17:3)
Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. (John 17:7)
They knew with certainty… (John 17:8)
As an exercise, look up every time “knowing” is the important element emphasized in the book of John. When we acknowledge how central “knowing” was to the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, we discover the entire gospel is about gaining this knowing (gnosis) from Jesus. In fact, giving us this gnosis, the gospel of John tells us, is the entire reason Jesus came.
This is a very different emphasis from the one we read in Mark, Matthew and Luke.
Secondly, the early Johannine community didn’t treat a bodily resurrection as all that necessary for Jesus. In John 17, it is through the cross (death being the separating of the gnostic soul from the material body) that Jesus would be reunited with the Father. Looking to the cross and speaking to his Father, Jesus says, “I will remain in the world no longer . . . I am coming to you.”
This is one of the many reasons why a gnostic Jesus doesn’t quite fit the versions of Jesus we encounter in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There would come to be deep divides and differences between later gnostic Christianity and what would become orthodox Christianity, and these divides were what led many Church Fathers to deem gnostic forms of Christianity as heretical.
The gospel of John later seeks to correct the implication of this prayer in Jesus’ statement to Mary at the tomb:
“Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (John 20:17)
As I’ve shared as we’ve re-read the gospel of John, I prefer the more material Jesus we encounter Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There are still gems to mine from the gospel of John (the supremacy of Love is one), but I resonate much more with the synoptic Jesus, who is striving to make our concrete world, here and now, a safer, more compassionate, just home for everyone. I prefer that Jesus over the Johannine Jesus, who is primarily concerned with imparting a special knowledge that is the path or “way” and that ultimately liberates our spirits from our flesh.
I also find the synoptics speak more relevantly into our justice work today. If changing our present world is the goal, I’ll take Mark, Matthew and Luke. But if getting to heaven is the goal, then John’s gospel provides the most warm and fuzzy path to that end and it depends simply on knowing the Father the way Jesus came to reveal Him.
A third theme repeated in our reading this week is the theme of unity. Unity can be both life-giving and death-dealing. Like peace, unity based on silencing opposition or accommodating harm is death-dealing. And, like peace, unity that comes through justice, through ensuring everyone is being taken care of, is life-giving. As Ched Myers rightly states in his classic commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, “We may rightly be suspicious of theologies of reconciliation that promote Christian unity at the price of political silence.”
I don’t believe that unity has to mean the homogeneous conformity of everyone involved. We can have unity alongside a beautiful, heterogeneous diversity where our differences are celebrated as the rich variations that we have as a human family, and where none are excluded or made to feel “less than” because they are different from those the present system prioritizes and privileges.
If we want unity, we should be working for justice. We don’t want a unity that comes at any cost, a unity that results from people who are being hurt being told to sit down and keep silent.
For many of us, unity now will have to come through reconciliation. And that reconciliation will have to come through restitution for past injustices and the transformation of our present system that corrects harms being committed. Unity depends on change, then. It has to follow present harms being remedied and made right. Until then, unity can’t be life-giving if it calls us to ignore or passively accept the concrete harms that have been and are being done to people made vulnerable in our society.
If we are praying for a unity that is the fruit of justice being restored and rooted in care that ensures everyone has what they need to thrive, then I’m all for it. But death-dealing unity that is mere silence in the midst of harm is not what I interpret our reading this week to promote.
What we want is a unity that is safe for everyone. A unity that is compassionate. A unity that walks arm and arm with justice. A unity that’s big enough to wrap its arms around all our varied differences and call them “good.” A unity that at its heart holds the well-being of every member as its highest priority of value.
If we, alongside the Jesus in this week’s reading, are praying for this kind of unity, then and only then can we say, “Amen.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does unity mean for you? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Loving What Jesus Taught
This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 1, Episode 13: John 14:15-21. Lectionary A, Easter 6
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/QnXt34XGexc
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | May 12, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“I don’t want it to be said of me that what I loved was the hope of heaven, not Jesus, because loving Jesus means actually loving the things he taught and following them. And so, in the spirit of this week’s reading, I have to ask myself: do I really love Jesus—the political, social, economic Jesus of the gospels? Or am I simply addicted to the religious candy that my religion about Jesus offers, if I only believe?”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” (John 14:15-21*)
I grew up hearing Christians interpret the Spirit as Advocate as an intermediary interposing between sinful humans and a holy God. Today, I reject any interpretation of this language that places humanity and divinity on polar opposites and a mediator in between. I experienced that bearing bad fruit in my own life and I believe it produces bad fruit societally as well.
This reading is from the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, and we should remember that as we consider this language. Repeatedly over the past few weeks, we have seen how the Johannine community characterized the Pharisees and Jewish leaders. We have also noted the tensions between Pharisaical Judaism and the early Gnosticism that the Johannine community was part of.
Consider the following passages in John, where being removed from the synagogue is a penalty for Jewish people who follow the Johannine Jesus.
“His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Anointed would be put out of the synagogue.” (John 9:22)
“Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.” (John 12:42)
John’s Jesus also repeats the warning in John 12, “They will put you out of the synagogues” (John 16:2).
In this context, characterizing the Spirit as an Advocate would have meant something to this community. The Spirit would not have mediated between them and God but between them and other members of their own religious communities. We must hold all of these references in John in tension with the fact that most of the history between Judaism and Christianity is not characterized by Jews persecuting Christians but by Christians persecuting Jews. The gospel of John was also written when Gentile Christians wanted to distance themselves from their Jewish siblings under the Roman Empire.
We find a different nuance in the synoptic gospels. The early Jesus community was comprised of those on the undersides and margins of their society who were in deep need of advocacy or justice socially, politically, and economically. This is the context in which I understand the work of the Spirit as Advocate to bear the most life-giving fruit. The synoptics characterize the Spirit as an Advocate between humans in matters of justice. For the original audiences of the synoptics, “advocate” would have called to mind actual legal proceedings that elites in Judea and also from the larger Roman society initated against Jesus’ followers:
“When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 13:11)
“When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:19-20)
“So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” (Luke 21:14-15)
“When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:11-12)
A representation of the Divine that places God against us with us in need of an Advocate before God ignores this context, the social context in which these passages were originally written.
Lastly, in this week’s reading we see an important if-then statement: If you love Jesus, then follow his teachings.
To be honest, it is a lot easier to revere Jesus and to worship Jesus in word and song than it is to choose every day to follow the ethics and values we find in the Jesus story. In the Jesus story we find a Jesus who taught inclusion of the marginalized, resource-sharing with the poor, wealth redistribution from the rich, nonviolent resistance for the oppressed, treating others the way we would like to be treated ourselves, and an ethic expressed through justice above all else.
It’s much easier for privileged, powerful, and propertied Christians to religiously worship a Jesus who promises us a beautiful afterlife, than it is for us to socially, politically, and economically follow the ethics and values our Jesus taught as challenging but fruitful means of reshaping the injustices, oppressions and violence of our present society.
I’m reminded of the poem “A Dead Man’s Dream” by Carl Wendell Hines, Jr. Hines who wrote this poem in 1965 after the assassination of Malcolm X. After Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968 his poem also came to be associated with Dr. King.
“Now that he is safely dead,
Let us praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.
Dead men make such convenient heroes.
For they cannot rise to challenge the images
That we might fashion from their lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to build a better world.
So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause for which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died is still a dream.
A dead man’s dream.”
To apply this poem to Jesus of Nazareth for Christians leads to some haunting questions. Have we simply built churches as monuments to Jesus? What images of Jesus that Christianity has shaped would Jesus challenge if he physically walked the earth today? Have we built a religion when we should have been building a different world, a safe, compassionate, just world big enough for all of our differences and where each us treat each other the way we would like to be treated? Have we taught the message of Jesus’ greatness while ignoring the truths he taught and the solidarity with the marginalized he modeled that made him so great?
The phrases that give me pause in this week’s reading are: “If you love me, keep my commands” and “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”
Forget a religion or gospel about Jesus for a moment. What was the gospel our Jesus himself taught in the story? Are the things we as Christians so passionate about the same things that Jesus was passionate about? Are the things this Jesus was so passionate about, the themes and truths that he taught and emphasized, the centerpieces of our teaching and action?
Some Christians today are intentionally endeavoring to answer in the affirmative. There are also large portions of Christianity that are known instead for their hate and bigotry. For these Christians, the Jesus of the gospels (even John) is strangely silent on the issues they are most vocal about, and the themes Jesus focused most intently on would threaten their social privileges too much. This kind of Christianity has to avoid or deprioritize the gospels because within those stories we run headlong into Jesus’ teachings.
I have to allow myself to be confronted by this contradiction regularly. It’s much easier for me to focus on the parts of the New Testament that subtly redirect me toward cosmological claims about Jesus rather than to Jesus’ call for obedience to his teachings. I don’t want it to be said of me that what I loved was the hope of heaven, not Jesus, because loving Jesus means actually loving the things he taught and following them. And so, in the spirit of this week’s reading, I have to ask myself: do I really love Jesus—the political, social, economic Jesus of the gospels? Or am I simply addicted to the religious candy that my religion about Jesus offers, if I only believe?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What are some of the things Jesus taught that you love and choose to follow? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
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Gendering God
This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 1, Episode 12: John 14.1-14. Lectionary A, Easter 5
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/LXBO0TD7kdM
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Thanks in advance for watching!
Gendering God
Herb Montgomery | May 5, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Gendering God can be either life giving or death dealing. Gendering God exclusively is harmful. How we gender God serves to mold us, and also preserves those shapes once they’ve been molded. Exclusively gendering God as male has served to harmfully exclude women in our Christian communities and frame them as ‘less than.’”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:1-14*)
This week’ reading is part of the farewell speeches in the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story. Jesus is saying goodbye.
The first thing that jumps out at me in this part is Jesus’ exclusivity. If you’ve been following my and Todd Leonard’s lectionary discussions over the past few weeks on YouTube (JustTalking), the idea that Jesus is the only means of experiencing gnosis or saving knowledge is very Johannine. It doesn’t work today in our cosmopolitan culture, given universal truths taught in other faith traditions as well as our own. My faith tradition is Christian, but every faith tradition, like mine, has teachings that are life-giving and those that are not. The goal that makes more sense to me is to collect the good in each.
The second theme in our reading this week that must be addressed is that our reading is very gendered. I assume it was written by men within the Johannine community. There is also a lot of gendering of God in this passage, so let’s discuss this.
Gendering God can be either life giving or death dealing. Gendering God exclusively is harmful. Elizabeth A. Johnson’s classic book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse is especially helpful here. Johnson writes:
“What is the right way to speak about God? This is a question of unsurpassed importance, for speech to and about the mystery that surrounds human lives and the universe itself is a key activity of a community of faith. In that speech the symbol of God functions as the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of reference for understanding experience, life, and the world. Hence the way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicitly represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. Such speaking, in turn, powerfully molds the corporate identity of the community and directs its praxis.” (She Who Is, Kindle Location 807)
How we gender God serves to mold us, and also preserves those shapes once they’ve been molded. Exclusively gendering God as male has served to harmfully exclude women in our Christian communities and frame them as “less than.”
Johnson continues a few paragraphs later:
“The symbol of God functions. Upon examination it becomes clear that this exclusive speech about God serves in manifold ways to support an imaginative and structural world that excludes or subordinates women. Wittingly or not, it undermines women’s human dignity as equally created in the image of God.” (She Who Is, Kindle Location 825)
And yet the images we use for God can work inclusively when we use symbols to lift up and liberate those our present system pushes to the undersides and edges of our communities.
“Language about God in female images not only challenges the literal mindedness that has clung to male images in inherited God-talk; it not only questions their dominance in discourse about holy mystery. But insofar as ‘the symbol gives rise to thought,’ such speech calls into question prevailing structures of patriarchy. It gives rise to a different vision of community, community, one in which the last shall be first, the excluded shall be included, the mighty put down from their thrones and the humbled exalted—the words of Mary of Nazareth’s song of praise (Lk 1:52), creating conditions for the formation of community characterized by relationships of mutuality and reciprocity, of love and justice.” (Johnson, Elizabeth A., She Who Is, Kindle Location 854)
This challenges me as I reflect on some Bible passages that I’ve cherished at other stages of my journey. One of those passages is from the book of Hebrews:
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being . . .” (Hebrews 1:1-3)
The exact representation? How does this teaching function for women given that Jesus was male? The church has exclusively gendered God as male based on passages like this and then privileged cis-men in the Christian faith. The belief that the clergy should exclusively be cis-men is just one of those practices, and all of them are rooted in a male Jesus being the exact image of God. This assumption has been at the heart of centuries of harm to women in Christian history, and has led many women to reject Christianity because of the real, concrete harm they have experienced because of these practices. (See Jaqueline Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus, Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, p. 151-172)
But our stories about God, sex, and gender are not monolithic. We also have stories within our sacred text that remind us that we all bear the image of the divine. We all bear God’s image. In the context of our bodies, wherever our bodies may sit on the spectrum of sex, we all bear God’s image. In the context of gender identity and gender expression, wherever we may sit on that spectrum, we all bear God’s image. Our most ancient origin myths whisper to us these truths.
In the Genesis story, God made “two great lights,” “the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night” (Genesis 1:16) and yet we have times of day when both lights are active: sunrise, dusk, and twilight. So too in the story, God created humankind in God’s own image: “male and female, God created them” (Genesis 1:26). We also have a spectrum for sex and gender on which each of us lives out our lives. But wherever we find ourselves on this spectrum, it is the entire spectrum that bears the image of the divine. We all bear that divine image. As the Jewish tradition states, “Before each person there goes an angel proclaiming ‘Behold the image of God.’”
In this spirit, a dear friend of mine, Daneen Akers just published a new children’s book Dear Mama God. You can find out more at https://www.watchfire.org/dearmamagod.
After two millennia of exclusively gendering God as male, we don’t get to jump immediately to God being gender-less. We need to spend some time sitting with images of God in all genders. We need an imagining of the divine that is large enough to embrace all gender identities and expressions.
The closest I will ever come to God in this life, is you, my fellow human. How I treat you matters. How you treat me matters. If we would keep this thought close in our relating and in how we shape our world politically, socially, and economically, what a difference this single thought might make.
This leads quite naturally to the final point we encounter in this week’s reading. Those who follow Jesus will do as Jesus did. If every person bears the image of God, if every person has intrinsic worth and value, this must impact how we relate to them. Jesus models this in the gospel stories. When Jesus encounters an image-of-God-bearer under the weight of oppression, injustice, or suffering, he sets out to bring them life, healing, liberation, and change. He does this personally for the people in the stories, and he also does so by challenging the systems in his society doing those people harm.
This speaks volumes to me in our context today, as we consider what it means to be a Jesus follower, to do the works of Jesus. The work this sets before each of us is the work modeled by our Jesus: the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone, a world big enough not only to house many rooms but also to celebrate all of our many differences. This is the work I want to be about.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does gendering God as Mother change for you as a Jesus follower? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
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