The Good News Is About Life and Love, Not Death and Dying
Now Available on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 5: John 20.1-18 and Mark 16.1-8. Lectionary B, Easter 1
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/Rpy-a_aB8TA?si=giEc-Sf7VH74n7Mv
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
The Good News Is About Life and Love, Not Death and Dying
Herb Montgomery, March 30, 2024
“Easter reminds us that our story isn’t about dying either. Our story is about how life can overcome death even when death is wielded as a weapon of injustice or used as an attempt to keep us down. The God of the resurrection story is on the side of the oppressed, marginalized, and downtrodden. And the power that can save our world is not one that appeals to more dying, but to a refusal to let go of life.”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
This week, our readings are from the gospels of John and Mark:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20:1-18)
And Mark
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:1-8)
With these passages, the lectionary calls our attention to the earliest telling of the resurrection story in the gospels and the latest. What jumps out to me first is the evolution of women’s role in the stories. In Mark, women choose to be silent. But in John’s gospel, not only are women the first to announce the resurrection, but also, and in uncharacteristic fashion, the gospel names a specific woman (Mary) as the first among them to proclaim the good news of the resurrection.
Many scholars date the writing of the book of Mark as the same time as the pseudo-epistles of Paul. While the author of Timothy was telling women to be silent (cf. 1Timothy 2:12), Mark’s gospel is showing us what would have happened in relation to the resurrection if they had been. As patriarchal forces in the early church were gaining power and influence and women began to be marginalized in the Jesus movement (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:34), Mark’s gospel warns us of such non-egalitarian trends. The implication is, “Thank God women were not silent!” Because if they had been, we might never have heard the good news of the resurrection.
This leads me to what I believe was the original good news of the gospel for the early Jesus movement. The good news of the gospel was not that Jesus was crucified or had died for anyone, but that Jesus was alive! The cross had been reversed, overcome, and undone! And the news about that could not be contained!
Consider these passages that emphasize the preaching of the church in the books of Acts. Notice they aren’t merely preaching Jesus crucified. They are announcing Jesus has been resurrected!
With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:33)
You crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. (Acts 2:22-24)
This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. (Acts 2:32-33)
You handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, but God raised from the dead. (Acts 3:12-16)
. . . Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead. (Acts 4:10-11)
The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. (Acts 5:30-32)
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day. (Acts 10:36-43)
Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . . And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus. (Emphasis added) (Acts 13:35-38)
The good news for those in the book of Acts was not that Jesus had died, but that Jesus, whom the state had executed, had been brought back to life!
Whatever we make of these reports today, the lessons in these stories’ emphasis are not from Jesus’ dying but in the undoing of his death. The story is one about the ability of truth to overcome falsehood, of life to triumph over the death-dealing agents of our world, for love to conquer hate. Injustice doesn’t have to have the last word in our stories.
The good news, to use the words of Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, was that the “crucifying powers of evil” have been defeated!
“The resurrection is God’s definitive victory over crucifying powers of evil . . . The impressive factor is how it [the cross] is defeated. It is defeated by a life-giving rather than a life-negating force. God’s power, unlike human power, is not a ‘master race’ kind of power. That is, it is not a power that diminishes the life of another so that others might live. God’s power respects the integrity of all human bodies and the sanctity of all life. This is a resurrecting power. Therefore, God’s power never expresses itself through the humiliation or denigration of another. It does not triumph over life. It conquers death by resurrecting life. The force of God is a death-negating, life-affirming force.” (Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, pp. 182-183).
And a few pages later:
“What the resurrection points to, however, is not the meaning of Jesus’ death, but of his life.” (Ibid. p. 188)
The powers of the status quo had attempted to silence Jesus’ life-giving, “saving,” redemptive work. Yet through the narrative element of the resurrection, this attempt to end Jesus’ work is turned into a mere interruption. Whereas the cross was the state’s attempt to stop Jesus’ salvific work, the resurrection causes that work to continue despite the cross, and to especially continue in the lives of Jesus’ followers as we seek to be conduits of life, healing, and liberation our own contexts today.
Christianity isn’t a death cult. I agree with womanist matriarch Dr. Delores Williams, who has been relentless through the years in pulling back the curtain and showing us the intrinsic harm of faith traditions that find meaning in Jesus’ death on a cross: “Jesus came for life and to show us something about life and living together and what life was all about” (in Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas’ What’s Faith Got to Do With It?, p. 90)
Williams also wrote:
“Christians…cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render…exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify the sin of defilement.” (Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God Talk, p.132)
So for me, the Jesus story isn’t about death. Easter reminds us that our story isn’t about dying either. Our story is about how life can overcome death even when death is wielded as a weapon of injustice or used as an attempt to keep us down. The God of the resurrection story is on the side of the oppressed, marginalized, and downtrodden. And the power that can save our world is not one that appeals to more dying, but to a refusal to let go of life.
Hate doesn’t have the last word. The Jesus story doesn’t end on Friday evening. And we can choose love and life as the last word for our stories too.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How does focusing on the resurrection rather than the crucifixion as the redeeming element in the Jesus story shape your own experience as a Jesus follower? Share and discuss 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.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. 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.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk 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.
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.
Are you getting all of RHM’s Free Resources?
Free Sign Up Here
The Harmful Myth of Redemptive Death
Now Available on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 4: John 12.20-33. Lectionary B, Lent 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
Season 2, Episode 4: John 12.20-33. Lectionary B, Lent 5
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
The Harmful Myth of Redemptive Death
Herb Montgomery, March 15, 2024
“Truth can overcome falsehood, life can triumph over the death-dealing agents of our world, love can conquer hate, and, in the end, it may look differently than we expected, yet we can choose for justice, love and life to have the last word. No matter how hopeless the present moment, our story isn’t over yet.”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. (John 12:20-33)
We continue in the gospel of John this week. Our passage, once again, has a problematic history of justifying death or abuse for those in disadvantaged or marginalized social locations or in predatory personal relationships. We must be careful and intentional not to perpetuate that harm (see God So Loved the World?). We’ll consider this further in a moment.
First, remember this is the last gospel to be written among those in our sacred canon. And it was written very late, almost a century removed from the events it writes about. This version of the Jesus story that was written by the Johannine community is radically different from the others as well. The few stories that it has in common with Mark, Matthew and Luke have different spins, different emphases, and different interpreted lessons (see Differences in John and Why They Matter).
In the other gospels, Jesus is executed by the state for speaking truth to power about the harm being done to the marginalized in his society. His protest culminates in his flipping the tables in the temple courtyard. In John’s gospel, this event has nothing to do with Jesus’ execution. Even the emphasis subtly changes. It’s no longer referred to with the overtones of a imperial execution for politically threatening the Pax Romana. Now its simply a “death” or “dying.” It’s referred to not as being crucified on a Roman cross, but, more opaquely, as being “lifted up.” The emphasis, unlike the synoptics, is not so much on the redemptive resurrection of Jesus as it is undoing, overturning, and reversing everything accomplished through Jesus’ crucifixion. The emphasis is on Jesus’ dying itself, and that death becomes redemptive.
In Mark, the Markan community was trying to make sense out of Jesus’ execution. In their telling, Jesus must be crucified and resurrected. In fact, the only reason Jesus is allowed to be crucified is so that he can be resurrected. By the time we get to John’s telling, though, Jesus must simply die. Everything is accomplished through the dying. The resurrection is simply a mysterious afterward but all redemptive accomplishment is done through his dying.
These are not insignificant theological difference between the gospels. These theologies have produced very different results in the lives of Jesus communities that emphasize one or the other.
I want to say one brief word about this shift in John. Even when Jesus’ death becomes redemptive in the Johaninne Jesus community, this death is never punitive or at the hands of God. Jesus doesn’t die as our substitute in John. Even though Jesus’ death is redemptive in that gospel, it doesn’t fit very easily within Western Christian penal substitutionary theology. It fits more easily in other atonement theories that have been held by Christians throughout history, especially the Christus Victor paradigm (“now the prince of this world will be driven out.”) and the Moral Influence paradigm (when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself). But John’s gospel never says that Jesus’ death is to satisfy justice or a God that needs someone to stand in the gap and be punished for everyone else. That explanation doesn’t show up at all as an explanation to why Jesus (the seed in our reading) must die.
But this doesn’t completely solve the problems. Even if we embrace a different explanation of why Jesus died than penal substitutionary atonement, those other explanations have still produced harmful fruit for people who have subscribed to them.
Let’s talk about the fruit produced by the Christus Victor explanation first. Those who believe Jesus’ death was redemptive too often also interpret their own suffering with similar implications. To explain their own suffering they respond by simply and sometimes lethally being patient in the face of harm. They think something good will come of this rather than see it as an evil that must be stood up to. They then are persuaded to passively endure their suffering and come to believe that God is working through their suffering. Some go so far as to believe that even if they die as a result they are fulfilling some higher divine purpose.
Joanne Brown and Rebecca Parker correctly critique this model:
“Such a theology has devastating effects on human life. The reality is that victimization never leads to triumph. It can lead to extended pain if it is not refused or fought. It can lead to destruction of the human spirit through the death of a person’s sense of power, worth, dignity. or creativity. It can lead to actual death. By denying the reality of suffering and death, the Christus Victor theory of the atonement defames all those who suffer and trivializes tragedy.” (God So Loved the World? p. 5)
The moral influence explanation doesn’t fare much better; it’s just as harmful. Again, from the deep and insightful work of Brown and Parker:
“The moral influence theory is founded on the belief that an innocent, suffering victim and only an innocent, suffering victim for whose suffering we are in some way responsible has the power to confront us with our guilt and move us to a new decision. This belief has subtle and terrifying connections as to how victims of violence can be viewed.” (God So Loved the World? p. 9)
In our work of trying to effect social change in response to social racism, classism, sexism, cis-heterosexism, or other systems, the moral influence theory has too often been peddled as a method: we suffer for the purpose of changing the hearts and minds of our oppressors or abusers. In this paradigm, victimization is “lifted up” as an agent that, if patiently endured, will persuade those responsible for our harm to embrace justice instead. Our suffering, if patiently endured, can change them. This is very destructive. It prioritizes the oppressor’s or abuser’s need for redemption over and above the rights of those who are genuinely, concretely, being harmed, included in losing their most basic right: to simply exist and live.
Viewing Jesus’ death as redemptive, no matter how you explain that redemption, has historically proven harmful for those who apply that theology to their own suffering, abuse, and injustice.
This is my most serious concern with the gospel of John. It is very different from the other gospels, and these differences are not always benign. The shift away from a redemptive resurrection to the salvific agent being Jesus’ cross alone may sound good at an emotionally tugging altar call. But when we try to live this theology, we need something better.
This is why I favor Mark, Matthew’s and Luke’s attempts to explain Jesus’ execution over the Johannine community’s explanation. The goal in John’s gospel is always Jesus getting to the cross. But in the synoptics, the goal of Jesus’ death is getting past the cross to the resurrection. This difference matters to me. For me, it has serious life or death implications for those who are choosing how to relate to their own suffering or how to navigate the injustices they face.
I’ll close this week with words I shared a couple weeks ago, of Dr. Katie Cannon in the foreword of the 20th anniversary edition of Dr. Delores Williams classic Sisters in the Wilderness:
“Theologians need to think seriously about the real-life consequences of redemptive suffering, God-talk that equates the acceptance of pain, misery, and abuse as the way for true believers to live as authentic Christian disciples. Those who spew such false teaching and warped preaching must cease and desist.”
For me, the Jesus story is not a story that glorifies death and suffering. It’s not about the cross. It’s a story that communicates how truth can overcome falsehood, life can triumph over the death-dealing agents of our world, love can conquer hate, and, in the end, justice, love and life will have the last word. No matter how hopeless the present moment, our story isn’t over yet.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How do the gospel stories call you resist suffering and injustice? Share and discuss 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.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. 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.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk 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.
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.
Are you getting all of RHM’s Free Resources?
Free Sign Up Here
A Socially Engaged Gospel
Now Available on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb MontgomeryAvailable.
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 3: John 3.14-21. Lectionary B, Lent 4
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
Season 2, Episode 3: John 3.14-21. Lectionary B, Lent 4
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
A Socially Engaged Gospel
Herb Montgomery | March 9, 2024
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this fourth weekend of Lent is from the gospel of John:
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” John 3:14-21
Most New Testament scholars today recognize the proto-gnostic or gnostic tendencies of the Johannine community that produced the gospel of John. Later Gnostic Christians even only honored and read from the gospel of John (cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies).
Some of the Gnostic elements we encounter in John’s gospel include glorifying the Moses’ snake (a symbol in early Jewish gnosticism); a dualistic way of dividing our experiences between the material, deemed evil, and the spiritual, deemed good; and defining salvation as when our souls are finally liberated from our bodies and this finite, material plane.
Although those who won the power in the early Christian church deemed Christian gnosticism a heresy, much of western protestant Christianity today ironically looks a lot like early gnosticism, at least relation to the elements we have mentioned here.
Today, John’s gospel is the favorite of the New Testament gospels for many who practice the kind of Christianity that is hyper-focused either on gaining heaven or attaining the inward, individual, privatized spiritual experience with a cosmic Jesus often referred to as having “a relationship with God.” If either of these kinds of Christianity happens to be your experience, I don’t want to degrade that experience in the slightest. I just want to push it further. Whether someone’s focus is getting to heaven or having a private relationship with their individual Lord and savor, we must be honest about how those two focuses can divert our attention from the focus of the Jesus in the synoptic gospels. That Jesus was a source of healing and liberation for folks, not from a private internal hell unattached to the society around them or a post mortem one but from the living hell they were suffering through concrete social realities.
In 1958, responding to a complaint that someone’s pastor was talking about the NAACP during their sermon, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King responded,
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men [sic] and is not concerned about economic conditions that cripple them and the social conditions that damn them is a dry as dust religion in need of new blood. Therefore your minister by including so-called ‘worldly things’ in his sermon revealed that he is a man of great spiritual depth and deep civic conscience. He revealed his awareness of the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ deals with the whole man [sic]—his [sic] body as well as his soul, the earthly as well as the heavenly.” (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Advice for Living, September 1958)
There are two ditches on either side of the paths we journey as Christians. One ditch is to be only focused on heaven. This is what some have referred to as being “so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” The other ditch is to only be focused inwardly on private and personal piety or a cosmic “relationship” to the exclusion of the center: our path following Jesus which is being a source of life-giving change in our world here and now.
It doesn’t matter which of these ditches we fall into. Whatever we believe, our beliefs should make us a more engaged and better humans in relation to our world we are living in today.
Why does this matter in relation to our text this week? This week’s passage is a favorite for those who live solely in either ditch. For those in the ditch of getting to heaven, the phrase “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” has special resonance. For those focused on a private, individual relationship with Jesus or God’s love, the phrases “God so loved the world” and “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world” especially resonate. And rightly so.
While there may be some value in these beliefs, there is no reason why this passage should only belong to those who focus on them. This passage can also speak to those who care about making a difference in our material world and on personal and systemic suffering today.
Why can’t the condemnation in this passage be similar to how the Hebrew prophets defined divine condemnation? In the Hebrew prophets, condemnation was not focused on individuals but on people groups, societies, and communities. When their social systems engaged in harmful practices toward the poor, the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow (in a patriarchal society), that society would suffer divine condemnation. They understood that condemnation was expressed through a calamity, natural, military, or a combination of both. If the teaching in John was similar to the Hebrew prophets’ teaching, God did not send God’s son into the world to perpetuate this cycle of unsustainable injustice and the intrinsic fruit of oppression and violence, but to shows us a way out.
And this leads to us defining salvation socially not individually. As Walter Rauschenbusch so rightly stated almost a century ago, “If our theology is silent on social salvation, we compel [people] to chose between an unsocial system of theology and an irreligious system of social salvation” (A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 7) This social salvation can lead us into some beautifully inclusive realizations and practices. As the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis so beautifully states, “If there is such a thing as salvation, none of us are saved, until all of us are saved.”
“Perish” can refer not to some post mortem hell, but to literally perishing here, now, today. As Gustavo Gutierrez often stated, poverty is death and means an early death. Eternal life can be about quality not quantity: about the abundant life now, where there is enough for everyone to thrive (cf. John 10:10) .This vision is for a world that prioritizes making sure everyone is taken care of rather than shaping the world with greed and funneling our resources into the hands of the few in positions of power.
Today, we can lean into this passage: God actually does loves the world! And if God’s love is universal, then we are to care about justice for everyone included in that world as the objects of that love. As Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes says, “When you begin with the idea that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.” Or as so many today are fond of saying, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” This world that is loved, we must be careful to define as everyone, with no exclusions. Those who comprise our world that are loved includes those that are different from ourselves, even those whose differences trigger our own bigotries and prejudices. We must be honest here.
I’m thinking of how women in positions of authority can trigger insecure or patriarchal men. I’m thinking of how racial and cultural differences trigger those whose internal bias is some form of White or western supremacy. I think of how trans and nonbinary differences and gender nonconformity triggers those who have cis-biases. Or how folks who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual trigger those with heteronormative biases. I think of class bias. I think of educational bias with what is now being called the paper ceiling.
If we are serious about leaning into the belief that every person is the object of divine love, then this would radically impact how we relate to those around us. Every person we meet is our sibling. Every person we meet is a part of ourselves. What impacts and affects one affects us all. Whether we like it or not, we are all connected to each other as part of this beautifully diverse human family that is loved by a universal love.
And this has grave implication for our everyday choices as well. You can’t love others and not care about the things they suffer from the way our society is shaped. You can’t love them and vote for legislatures who seek to do them harm. To come full circle, you can’t love them and be focused on only your own arrival into heaven or your own personal relationship with the Divine. Otherwise, our focus on God’s love mutates from God’s loving us alongside everyone else in the world into a self-absorbed need to be loved by God above all else. It’s an only-child-like syndrome where God may love others, but privately and inwardly we begin to believe that we are God’s favorite. This is the root of Christian and too often national exceptionalism.
To authentically reinterpret our passage this week through the lens of the Jesus we see in the Mark, Matthew, and Luke can still give us assurance of heaven, and still usher us into a relationship with the divine if that is your thing. And it also has the potential, when understood more broadly and deeply, to shape our practice of Christianity in ways that shape us into humans who make our world a safer, more compassionate, just home for everyone.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How do the gospel stories call you to be more socially engaged? Share and discuss 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.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. 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.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk 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.
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.
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Differences in John and Why They Matter
#1 New Release on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb MontgomeryAvailable now on Amazon.
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 2: John 2.13-22. Lectionary B, Lent 3.
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
Season 2, Episode 2: John 2.13-22. Lectionary B, Lent 3.
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Differences in John and Why They Matter
Herb Montgomery | March 1, 2024
“Are we defining our humanity as broken and salvation as when we’re set free from our humanity? Or have we lost touch with our humanity ourselves or because others are attempting to dehumanize us? If so, salvation is our reclaiming our humanity!”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:13-22)
If you’re familiar with our Social Jesus Blog, Weekly eSights, Jesus for Everyone podcast, or weekly YouTube show Just Talking, you won’t be surprised by the stark differences between this version of the Jesus story, which emerged out of the Johannine community, and the earlier gospels in our sacred canon, the synoptics Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
In the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ protest in the temple state’s courtyard comes at the end of the the story and is the reason the state executes Jesus on a Roman cross. John was written much later than any of the other canonical gospels, and by that time, Jesus’ death on the cross was far removed from his protest in the temple. The protest happens at the very beginning of the story and the crucifixion comes at the end. These events have nothing to do with each other in the Johannine community’s gospel.
It’s not only the narrative location of this story that is different between these gospels. Jesus’ motive is vastly different as well. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus’ protest is rooted in zeal for the masses who are being marginalized and crushed by the Temple State’s complicity with the Roman empire. Consider Mark’s version of the story:
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of crooks.’” (Mark 11:15-17)
Jesus’ words in Mark’s story combine two passages from the Hebrew scriptures, the first from Isaiah and the later from Jeremiah.
“These I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:7)
“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you
do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent
blood in this place, Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of crooks to
you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 7:5-11)
What we must pay attention to in Jeremiah is where the phrase “den of crooks” comes from. A den of thieves and robbers is not where theft is taking place but where the thieves retreat, thinking they are safe after their theft has been committed. The temple functioned in exactly this fashion for the elites and powerful in the temple state. They could oppress the “foreigner, the fatherless or the widow” while practicing their religious piety and claiming they were still in good standing with the God of the Torah because they were still practicing the ritual ceremonies of the temple:
“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury . . . and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe;—safe to do all these detestable things?” (Jeremiah 7:9-10)
“Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” (Jeremiah 7:4)
Consider how this theme appears in the book of Isaiah, another Hebrew prophet:
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:11-17)
For the prophets, God is much more concerned with social justice than with all the people’s religious ritual observances. It’s this Hebrew, prophetic justice tradition that Jesus is standing squarely in in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
But in John’s gospel, this tradition is wholly erased and Jesus’ motive is the exact opposite.
“Zeal for your house will consume me.”
John’s Jesus is no longer zealous for the oppressed. Now, in this late gospel, Jesus is consumed by zeal for the purity of the temple and maintaining the purity of religious ritual observances there.
Another significant difference between the gospels is the overt antisemitism held in the Johannine community by the time John’s gospel was written. In the synoptics, rejection of Jesus is a matter of classism. The Jews loved Jesus and hung on his every word. Why wouldn’t they? Jesus’ message was a populist message that resonated deeply with the people who were suffering at the hands of those in power. It was the powerful, propertied, and privileged responsible for crushing the masses through complicity with Rome and who created enormous wealth for themselves who rejected Jesus’ calls for a return to the economic justice teaching of the Torah.
Notice this difference in Luke:
“Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders [these were political positions] among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. (Luke 19:47-48)
In John’s gospel, however, there is no distinction between the rich and poor, the powerful and the marginalized, or the elites and the masses within Jesus’ Jewish society. In John, the opposition is all wrapped up in one simple, antisemitic designation: “the Jews.”
Lastly, the gospels switch from critiquing the injustice of the temple state, with its physical capital in the temple, to spiritualizing the temple as a symbol of Jesus’ body.
The presence of proto-Gnostic tendencies in the writings of the Johannine community is well-documented by scholars. Christian Gnosticism would come to teach a dualistic way of looking at our world through the lens of separating our bodies from our spirit. Later, Gnosticism would teach that the material world was evil and spiritual was good. It therefore defined salvation as the point at which our spirits are finally set free from imprisonment in our material bodies and material world. (This sounds a lot like many of the sectors of Christianity today, which is why I say that much of Christianity today is more gnostic like the Johannine community than the Jesus of the synoptic gospels.)
In the synoptics, Jesus prioritizes setting people free from material, concrete, very tangible suffering. but not from the material, concrete, and tangible itself.
What are we to make of these differences? Both teachings are in our sacred texts. Both are biblical. And both are ways of viewing and defining Jesus. For those who want the Bible to make all of their decisions for them, it’s not that simple when the Bible offers two different options. We have to take some personal responsibility. We have to actually decide which way of practicing Christianity today in our context is more life-giving.
We have to choose how we practice our own Christianity. Both options are biblical. And they each produce radically different fruit. Are we focused on postmortem destinations or saving people from what they are suffering in this life? Are we defining salvation as celestial, heavenly bliss in another life, or do we define salvation as the synoptics do, as being set free from death-dealing oppression, injustice, violence, and marginalization in this life? Are we defining our humanity as broken and salvation as when we’re set free from our humanity? Or have we lost touch with our humanity ourselves or because others are attempting to dehumanize us? If so, salvation is our reclaiming our humanity! (Jesus defines salvation in Luke’s story of Zacchaeus in this way.)
I find it escapist and defeatist to separate Jesus’ gospel from this life and transform it into being solely about spiritual realities in preparation for a next life. For myself, I find the focus of the synoptic gospels in our present social context to be much more relevant and much more life-giving.
Group Discussion Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How do the differences in the different versions of the Jesus story in our New Testament impact your own social just work today as a Jesus follower? Share and discuss 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.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. 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.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk 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.
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.
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