Mary’s Perfume and No More Poverty
Herb Montgomery | April 1, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “I want to offer an alternative interpretation. Poverty is a human-made reality, and therefore poverty can be eradicated through our choices in … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | March 18, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “Democratic societies must be made to birth a distributively just society where the needs of everyone and not only … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | March 4, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “In the wilderness story, Jesus rejects the temptation to sacrifice himself and tempt God to save him in the end. This calls … Continue reading
Setting in Motion a Safe, Compassionate, Just Society
Herb Montgomery | February 18, 2021 (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.) “The passage describes the reciprocal nature of judgment, of condemnation, of forgiveness, and of giving. Our choices show not only what kind … Continue reading
When Social Justice is Rejected and Spoken of as Evil
Herb Montgomery | February 11, 2022 (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.) “But things never remain as they are. Change is the nature of reality. We can choose to bend the arc of the … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | January 21, 2022 “There are so many contemporary parallels to draw between the way Luke’s gospel characterizes the life and mission of Jesus and the justice needs present in our world today. Since his era, oppression, domination … Continue reading
November is A Shared Table 2021 month! Find out more here. (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast, click here.) by Herb Montgomery | November 12, 2021 “Seen through this lens and given Jesus’ love for the poor … Continue reading
A Widow, Taxes, and Giving More Than What is Life-Giving to Give
November is A Shared Table 2021 month! Find out more here. Herb Montgomery | November 5, 2021 “This story does not praise the piety of the poor within a system that takes economic advantage of their piety. It condemns any … Continue reading
Damage Mitigation Versus Changing the System
Herb Montgomery | October 22, 2021 “It’s not enough to remove the basis for people being treated as less-than. We must also challenge the very systems the create less-thans and greater-thans. Jesus didn’t just give Bartimaeus his sight. He continued … Continue reading
Getting Free from Fear and Facing the Future Together
Herb Montgomery | October 8, 2021 “Christians have always come up with ways around stories like these in the gospels, but imagine with me this week, a community didn’t try to get around them. What if we allowed … Continue reading
Renewed Heart Ministries is a nonprofit organization working for a world of love and justice. We need your support to offer the kind of resources RHM provides. Helping people find the intersection between their faith, compassion, and justice is work that … Continue reading
Renewed Heart Ministries is a nonprofit organization working for a world of love and justice. We need your support to offer the kind of resources RHM provides. Helping people find the intersection between their faith, compassion, and justice is work that … Continue reading
A Community of Dependence and Connectedness
Herb Montgomery | July 2, 2021 “In Jesus’ vision for human community in the synoptic gospels and the book of Acts, we take responsibility for taking care of one another, not to establish dependency, but because we already are dependent … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | June 18, 2021 “I need a Jesus that can challenge the great windstorm and the waves of deep homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in the Christian church that threatens to capsize the lives of LGBTQ young people … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | March 26, 2021 The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, offer consistent political comparisons between Jesus’ vision for human society (God’s just future) and the status quo of the society Jesus found himself in instead . . … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | March 5, 2021 This week’s reading is John 2:13-22. I prefer Mark’s version of this story: “On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned … Continue reading
The Falling and Rising of Many
Herb Montgomery | January 22, 2021 “This is the intrinsic reason why our collective thriving depends on raising up some in society while those who have gained too much power, privilege, property, or profit must fall back down. Ancient societies … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery | January 8, 2021 Mark’s stories about Jesus begin: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come … Continue reading
2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right now more … Continue reading
2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right now more … Continue reading
The Social Location of Your Christianity Matters
2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right now more … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | October 16, 2020 “Seeing the man set free from his internalized oppression, the society around him refuses to get free of the same ‘demons.’ . . . When people get free of collective violence toward a marginalized … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | September 25, 2020 “Beware when you see those in power using law and order rhetoric used to maintain power, position, control, and political office. Jesus’ followers should be the first to recognize when ‘law and order’ is … Continue reading
2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right now more … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | September 4, 2020 2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and … Continue reading
Three Paths Toward Change Rejected
Herb Montgomery | July 31, 2020 “And in each of these versions of the story, Jesus announces the arrival of God’s just future (‘the kingdom’) but rejects three methods for bringing justice to fruition. We’ll look at each of them.” … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | July 24, 2020 As COVID-19 cases continue to rise and set new records each day, remember that the world that exists post-COVID will be determined by the kind of people we choose to be right now during … Continue reading
Mislabelling Social Justice as Foolishness
by Herb Montgomery | July 17, 2020 “I find it alarming that there are Christian pastors or leaders who call fellow Jesus followers seeking social justice ‘fools.’ It is past time for those who bear the name of Jesus to … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | July 10, 2020 “The question I wrestle with most when considering communities like those I just described is how do we protect certain community members from others who may use their strength to overpower, take advantage of, … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | July 3, 2020 “Every generation faces these inflexible alternatives, transformation or eventual implosion—these are the inflexible alternatives before us, today, too. How much of what we are now experiencing was unavoidable? How much could we avoid in the … Continue reading
Choosing Peace through Militarized Policing or Distributive Justice
Herb Montgomery | June 26, 2020 This week we end our consideration of the final warnings in Luke’s version of the Jesus story and how they might relate to our society. In Luke 23, we read: “Jesus turned and said … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | May 29, 2020 “Our passage this week and this pandemic make me think of my working-class Appalachian friends, family, and neighbors—forgotten by the establishment or marginalized by the elite class as dumb mountain people. These forgotten people … Continue reading
Building the World We Want to Live In
“Today, many of us are seeing our society being pushed to yet another breaking point. Blessed are the ones calling for change now. Blessed are the ones modeling a compassionate new world. Blessed are the ones shaping a world that … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | May 15, 2020 “The contradictions of our present economic system are being exposed more every passing day. The exploitations built into our present system are straining in this pandemic. A system with such a long history of … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery | May 8, 2020 “What would happen if Christians stopped believing that Jesus’s way is impractical, naïve, insufficient, or “doesn’t work in the “real world” and began to follow the way of life Jesus came to teach … Continue reading
A Community of Healing Justice
Herb Montgomery | March 13, 2020 “At its source, it’s not about a lone hero who does something revolutionary on our behalf. It’s a call to participate, with others, in a community of healing justice. “You have said so,” Jesus … Continue reading
Zacchaeus and Christian Support of Destructive Administrations
“What is needed for empowered, privileged Christians who support a corrupt administration today to follow Zacchaeus’ example? What is needed for Christians to take more seriously Jesus’ commands to stand with the vulnerable and those on the margins rather than … Continue reading
The Refusal of the Older Brother
Herb Montgomery | February 7, 2019 “If you believe God loves someone, justice for them isn’t far behind. Love for those on the margins is the seed out of which the reality of God’s inclusive, just future sprouts.” “The older … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery | November 22, 2019 “Some will say, ‘This sounds like socialism!’ I’m reminded of the words of historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan, ‘Do not, by the way, let anyone tell you that is Liberalism, Socialism, or … Continue reading
Biblical Inclusion Versus Biblical Exclusion
by Herb Montgomery | November 8, 2019 “What is our relation, as followers of Jesus, to the marginalized of our day? To what degree are we marginalized in our own lives? Are we standing in solidarity with others who are … Continue reading
Herb Montgomery | June 21, 2019 It’s not enough to simply offer a gospel that only offers divine forgiveness of sins. A gospel that is faithful to the Jesus story must include people forgiving people. It must include a redistribution … Continue reading
Lightening the Burden of Others
Herb Montgomery | December 21, 2018 “This Christmas, we may not all have someone whose economic debt we can cancel. But are there other types of forgiveness we could embrace? Are there reparations for past wrongs we still need to … Continue reading
Another World is Possible (Part 3)
by Herb Montgomery | July 27, 2018 “The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” — Gustavo Gutiérrez; The Power of the Poor … Continue reading
Another World is Possible (Part 2)
by Herb Montgomery | July 13, 2018 “To live out the reign or kingdom of God is to replace wealth accumulation with a distributive justice that ensures people’s needs for survival and thriving are taken care of: an early version … Continue reading
Another World is Possible (Part 1)
by Herb Montgomery | June 28, 2018 “Tempted to succumb to the narrative of scarcity and competition against one another for the one loaf in the boat, they forgot the lesson in the feeding of the multitudes. What little we … Continue reading
Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 2)
Jesus’ shared table community was an expression of voluntary “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” by Herb Montgomery | May 10, 2018 “Yet too often, historically, economic reforms have come at the expense of … Continue reading
Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 1)
by Herb Montgomery | May 3, 2018 “Politics answers the question of who gets what. So Jesus was not a religious figure as much as he was a political one. He did not fundamentally challenge his Jewish religion, at least … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery | April 12, 2018 Jesus’ gospel was good news to those who were on the margins. If they were able to shape a safer, more compassionate, just society, this would, in the long run, be good for … Continue reading
The Parable of the Entrusted Money
by Herb Montgomery | February 1, 2018 “In the story, this king’s passion was profit. The God Jesus described at the heart of the kingdom was passionate about people, not profit. Jesus’ “kingdom of God” was a community where … Continue reading
“Jesus’s ethic is not capitalist. In a capitalist system, the goal is simply to create capital. The game is won by those who are able to create the most capital and use it to create more . . . Jesus … Continue reading
The Reversal of the Last and the First
by Herb Montgomery “Economies that keeps workers desperate are structured that way by design . . . Just this past week it was published that there is not one state in the US where a 40 hours a week (full-time), … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery “Why is the path narrow? It’s narrow simply because it’s traversed by so few. Paths are broad or narrow determined by the number of those who travel them. In other words, we too often think of this saying … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: While you go along with your opponent on the way, make an effort to get loose from him, lest the opponent hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the assistant, and the … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Fire have I come to hurl on the earth, and how I wish it had already blazed up! Do you think that I have come to hurl peace on earth? I did not come to … Continue reading
The Faithful or Unfaithful Slave
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Who then is the faithful and wise slave whom the master put over his household to give them food on time? Blessed is that slave whose master, on coming, will find so doing. Amen‚ I … Continue reading
The Son of Humanity Comes as a Robber
The banner reads: “Capitalism isn’t working: another world is possible.” G20, Meltdown Protest, City of London, Bank of England, 1 April 2009. Credit: Tony Hall. by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “But know this: If the householder had known in which … Continue reading
Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you are to eat, nor about your body, with what you are to clothe yourself. Is not life more than food, and the … Continue reading
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “When they bring you before synagogues, do not be anxious about how or what you are to say; for the holy Spirit will teach you in that hour what you are to say.” Q 12:11-12 … Continue reading
Speaking against the holy Spirit
by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “And whoever says a word against the son of humanity, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.” Q 12:10 Companion Texts: Matthew 12:32: “Anyone … Continue reading