Conduits of Healing and Liberation

Finding Jesus Second Edition!

I have some exciting news!

I have just signed an agreement with a new book publisher (Quoir), and we are putting together a launch team for the second edition of Finding Jesus!

If you have been blessed by the first edition, and you would like to see this book have greater exposure to reach an even larger audience, I want to invite you to be a part of the launch team.  This second edition will be available in paperback, Kindle and an audio book available on Audible. And great news for those who already have a copy of the first edition, the first 25 people to sign up to be part of our launch team will also receive a FREE Audible copy of the audiobook for Finding Jesus.

To join the Finding Jesus launch team, all you need to do is three things:

1) Email us at RHM and put “Launch Team” in the subject line. We’ll email you a free advanced copy of the book

2) On February 6 go to Amazon and purchase your print copy. After purchasing and write a verified-purchaser review for Finding Jesus. (You’ll be able to do this on day one since you’ve already read the pdf copy.)

3) Share your review of Finding Jesus on your social media pages that day, also.

It’s pretty simple. That’s all. And if you already have copy of the first edition this is a great opportunity to get the audiobook version on Audible as soon as it is available.

If you would like to join our launch team, you can email us at info@renewedheartministries.com and just put in the subject of your email “Launch Team.”

Thank you in advance for being part of this special second edition publishing and ensuring this edition is a success. 

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New Episode of JustTalking!

Season 1, Episode 49: Mark 1.29-39. Lectionary B, Epiphany 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 1, Episode 49: Mark 1.29-39. Lectionary B, Epiphany 5

 or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment

Thanks in advance for watching!

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Conduits of Healing and Liberation

Herb Montgomery | February 2, 2024

“To those outside of Evangelicalism, it is quite puzzling how those who claim to follow Jesus can be so loyal to such a partisan, unChristlike ideology.”

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 

That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. (Mark 1:29-39)

A lot of subtle truths are being communicated in this week’s reading as we transition from Jesus’ inaugural acts to his ongoing mission. Immediately after Jesus’ inaugural exorcism, we encounter a story of healing. 

Historical Jesus scholars all agree that Jesus was characterized as a healer. Last week we saw that Jesus was associated with exorcism from the demons of Roman occupation, possession, and oppression. Similarly, Jesus’ healing was to be associated with both liberating the oppressed from Roman possession and the work of healing the vulnerable masses from harm done by Roman occupation. 

When we read these stories from our vantage point today, it’s easy to read these stories as individual occurrences of “Magic Jesus” as my friend Todd Leonard refers to them. But the stories in Mark were originally intended to be read politically, socially, and economically as signs of the arrival of God’s just world (the kingdom) and liberation from Roman oppression and harm to Jesus’ community. Mark’s Jesus is casting out the demons of Roman oppression and healing the people’s maladies that oppression has caused. 

There is also a subtle tension building between Jesus’ exorcisms in the Roman coopted synagogues (sacred space) and Jesus’ acts of healing and the restoration of the original intention of the Sabbath (sacred time). In this week’s story, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law on the Sabbath and the people won’t come for healing until after sunset. As soon as the Sabbath hours are over, though, the rest of the town shows up at the door. In this story, the Sabbath is not a conduit of healing and restoration but a barrier that the people must wait out so they can come and be healed. This sets up the tension of healing on the Sabbath and the authority of the local powerbrokers that will come into even greater focus later in Mark. We’ll get to that in upcoming weeks. 

For now, we see the Sabbath had also been coopted. Healing was completely detached from it. If you were to be healed, it had to be outside of the Sabbath, after the Sabbath had passed. The Sabbath, which was originally a time of healing and restoration, had now become a day where healing was forbidden. So Restoring the Sabbath’s liberation value is also a subtle part of this story. 

Walter Brueggemann makes a modern application for the value of the Sabbath as we, too, find ourselves in contemporary systems of economic extraction:

“The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath.” (Sabbath as Resistance, p. 11)

“In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget . . . But Sabbath is not only resistance. It is alternative.” (Sabbath as Resistance, Preface)

In future weeks, we’ll discuss this tension between Jesus’ healings and the Sabbath as it continues to build in Mark’s stories. 

In the final part of our reading this week, Jesus withdraws from the crowds for some self-care. It’s an example of the balance that’s so vital to the sustainability of any justice work. And Jesus shares his own understanding of his mission in this version of the Jesus story:

“Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach [the gospel of the kingdom] there also. That is why I have come.”

Next Jesus embarks on an itinerant circuit throughout Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, or the good news of the arrival of God’s just world within the synagogues throughout Galilee. The story makes a point to specifically name that the gospel work includes “driving out demons.”

Preaching the arrival of God’s just world in the synagogues includes exorcisms performed in the synagogues. These exorcisms aren’t anti-synagogue, anti-Jewishness, or anti-Sabbath. Instead they’re opposing the Roman Empire coopting the synagogue and the Sabbath. They’re oppositng the complicity of those in power with the Roman Empire. They’re opposing the Empire’s possession of sacred places in both space and time. 

As I shared last week, whatever we make of it through our scientific lenses today, exorcism was a common practice in Jesus’ world. That practice typically gathered zero pushback from the establishment. But Jesus’ exorcisms in Mark’s gospel are different. Those in power push back against Jesus’ exorcisms immediately, and are threatened by them. This is because exorcism in Mark is a metaphor for exorcising Rome (see Mark 5:9):

Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. (Mark 3:6)

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” (Mark 3:22)

So what are we to make of Mark’s stories of exorcism and healing in our post-enlightenment world today?

Through rising Christian nationalism, a political party has coopted evangelical Christianity. Misinformation takes advantage of vulnerable White Christians through their personal biases and bigotries. Partisan fidelity has “possessed” evangelical Christianity to the point that, like those in the exorcism stories in Mark, they simply cannot free themselves. To those outside of Evangelicalism, it’s quite puzzling how those who claim to follow Jesus can be so loyal to such an unChristlike ideology. Evangelical Christianity today needs an “exorcism” from demons like White supremacy, Christian nationalism, heteropatriarchy, and authoritarian totalitarianism. Just as the injustices of the Roman empire coopted the Temple state in Jesus’ community, our societal demons today have possessed larger sectors of Christianity.

The good news in the Jesus story is that we see the Jesus movement grow from the margins of Galilee through nearby villages to “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

And today, whether we use Christian language to describe it as the kingdom, God’s just world, or the reign of God or use more accessible language about the way of distributive justice, the way of love, and the way of compassion and caring, our justice work can continue to grow, too. We may feel like our justice work is small, and it may be beset by contemporary obstacles, but we should never underestimate the power of local efforts toward making our communities a safer, more just place for everyone. We may feel like we are only working in a “nearby village,” but every act, big or small, has a ripple effect and we never know just how far those justice ripples will travel. Today, as Jesus followers, we too can “cast out” the demons of injustice and be conduits of healing to those injustice has harmed. 

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. Where do we need systemic healing and liberation today? 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 have some exciting news! I have just signed an agreement with a new book publisher (Quoir), and we are putting together a launch team for the second edition of Finding Jesus, coming out next week!

This second edition will be available in paperback, Kindle and an audiobook available on Audible. And great news for those who already have a copy of the first edition, the first 25 people to sign up to be part of our launch team will also receive a FREE Audible copy of the audiobook for Finding Jesus.

If you would like to join our launch team, you can email me at info@renewedheartministries.com and just put in the subject of your email “Launch Team.”

Thank you in advance for being part of this special second edition launch and ensuring this edition is a success.

You can find Renewed Heart Ministries 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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