Sent to be Socially Life-Giving

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Herb Montgomery | May 10, 2024

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our lectionary reading this seventh weekend of Easter is again from the gospel of John:

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. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. (John 17:6-19)

John 17 is referred to as Jesus’ “farewell” prayer in the Johannine community’s gospel. In the Christian faith tradition, this chapter in John has some history. This chapter, more than any other, influenced the church’s orthodox position on Jesus’ divinity in the 4th and 5th centuries. 

This chapter also gives us a window into how the Johannine community defined Jesus and his life work. At this time, the Johannine community was a generation removed from the historical Jesus. Those who wrote this version of the Jesus story were second-generation Jesus/John followers. They believed the first generation’s reports about Jesus and they took up the torch to promote this version of Jesus and his life work (see John 17:20-23) This gospel will take its place alongside the synoptic gospels as early as the end of the second century (Irenaeus groups together the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that we are most familiar today in his Against Heresies). 

Yet Jesus and his life work are subtly different in the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus’ life work is liberating those on the edges and undersides of his society, healing those who are oppressed by sickness and disease, and calling those responsible for the economic exploitation of the poor to abandon their complicity and participation in the status quo and join his movement to make the world a compassionate, safe, and just home for everyone. This is a movement that the synoptic Jesus in those gospels refers to as “the kingdom.” 

In the gospel of John “the kingdom” is wholly absent. John’s gospel pays lip service to the synoptics’ “kingdom” twice. But in both cases, it spiritualizes the kingdom as transcending Jesus followers’ concrete and material experiences or describes it as concerned primarily with matters of “another place.” John’s kingdom has nothing to do with threatening the privileged and exploitive power structures of this world or injustice. 

“Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.’” (John 3:5, emphasis mine.)

Jesus said [to Pilate], “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (John 18:36, emphasis mine.)

In John, Jesus’ purpose is to open death, transform it into a portal, and show us how we can follow him through death and resurrection into the higher, post mortem bliss of being rejoined and reunited with “the Father.” We see John’s gospels influence today in expressions of Christianity that are focused on getting to heaven in an afterlife while being oblivious to or unobservant of suffering and harm people around them experience on earth in the here and now. This focus looks nothing like the Jesus of the synoptic gospels.

There are a couple things in our reading this week that I think the Johannine gospel gets right. First is the concern for unity. I don’t mean unity at any price, though. At the time of this gospel’s writing, the early church was in jeopardy of splintering apart with conflicts over power and control and different definitions of what it meant to follow Jesus. Various Jesus communities, some more egalitarian and others more patriarchal were in conflict. Communities that recognized the apostleship of Peter, Mary, Thomas, John, and the other apostles found themselves having to justify their validity in a larger community where some defined themselves as the only true Jesus-following group and sought to delegitimize the others. It is in this context that we read Jesus’ farewell prayer that his followers “may be one” as he and the Father were one. The Johannine community was calling for a richly diverse but still unified Jesus community as opposed to one defined by oneness as “sameness.” It’s ironic given that Christianity today is an internally diverse and divided religion. But diversity doesn’t have to mean division. And unity doesn’t have to mean homogeneity. 

We can learn a lot from the Johannine community here. Today some in our larger society are holding on to a past era in American history where power and privilege were based on the sameness of being white, male, straight, and cisgender. Those holding on to this way of shaping the world are deeply opposed to the life-giving, diverse, multicultural, multiracial, egalitarian, radical form of democracy where power is genuinely shared and everyone has what they need to feel safe and to thrive regardless of race, gender, orientation, and gender identity. Many Christians are among those who are obstructing this more diverse way of shaping our world. Yet when we apply the principle held by the Johannine community to our world today, we remember that our diversity is something beautifully rich, something to be celebrated and embraced. John’s gospel reminds us that although we may be different, we belong to each other. What affects one affects us all. And we either thrive together or decline and wither together. Humanity is far from homogeneous, but we are all still part of each other. Like it or not, our shared humanity connects us all.

Another life-giving value we can glean from this week’s reading as Jesus followers is found in the next-to-last sentence of this week’s passage, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” The gospel has already used a phrase like this: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Are we to be sent into the world in the same way?

I’m reminded of both the writing of Delores Williams and the gospel of Luke here. Notice how Williams defines what it meant for Jesus to save the world: not from a post mortem hell, but from a hell many are enduring right now:

“Redemption had to do with God, through the ministerial vision, giving humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life. Hence, the kingdom of God theme in the ministerial vision of Jesus does not point to death; it is not something one has to die to reach. Rather, the kingdom of God is a metaphor of hope God gives those attempting to right the relations between self and self, between self and others, between self and God as prescribed in the sermon on the mount, in the golden rule and in the commandment to show love above all else. (Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, pp. 146-147)

The gospel of Luke also defines Jesus’ saving work this same way, as concerned with the very real concrete and material realities that those around him were suffering at that time:

“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)

As we look around us at our larger world today, what does it mean for us to be sent the same way Jesus was? To be sent in the same life-giving, healing way we see demonstrated in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John? To be sent as a source of love, compassion, justice, and safety for all, but especially for those presently striving to endure systemic harm? 

Discussion Group Questions

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

2. What does being sent as Jesus was sent mean for you in the context of societal justice engagement? 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. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

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If you would like to listen to these articles each week in podcast form, you can find The Social Jesus podcast on all major podcast carriers. If you enjoy listening to The Social Jesus Podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if your podcast platform offers this option, consider taking some time to leave us a positive 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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The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 1 Episode 5: Sent to be Socially Life-Giving

John 17:6-19

“Although we may be different, we belong to each other. What affects one affects us all. We either thrive together or decline and wither together. Humanity is far from homogeneous, but we are all still part of each other. Like it or not, our shared humanity connects us all.”

Available on all major podcast carriers.

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/sent-to-be-socially-life-giving

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Now Available on Audible!

 

Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon

Available now on Audible!

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.

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