A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity

Posted on October 27, 2023 by Herb Montgomery

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Season 1, Episode 36: Matthew 22.34-46. Lectionary A, Proper 25

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.

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Season 1, Episode 36: Matthew 22.34-46. Lectionary A, Proper 25

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A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity

Herb Montgomery | October 27, 2023

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

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“In the end, for me, it’s no longer enough to say that God is love. If our ideas of God’s love don’t also address love of neighbor in very real, concrete, material ways, then we are still missing the mark.”

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Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied. He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

‘The Lord said to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand

until I put your enemies

under your feet.’

If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”

No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Matthew 22:34-46)

A version of our reading this week is found in each of the synoptic gospels (Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-29). Each quotes two passages from the Hebrew scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:18)

The gospels attest that the early Jesus movement and the historical Jesus both favored this interpretive move of defining fidelity to God as love of neighbor and using this lens to interpret the Torah. Fidelity to the God of the Torah impacted how one concretely and materially related to others. Love to God was expressed through the love of the neighbor believed to be made in the image of God. And that “love of neighbor” meant something specific. Social justice circles today often say that social justice is what love looks like in public. This is similar to how the early Jewish Jesus movement interpreted Torah fidelity as well.

This interpretive lens has lots of history in Jewish wisdom. It is most often attributed to the progressive Pharisee Hillel. The story is that Hillel was approached by a proselyte one day who asked if Hillel could teach the questioner the entire Torah while the student stood on one foot. Hillel responded, “What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn that!” (see Hillel)

For most of the Jesus story, Jesus sides with Hillel’s more progressive interpretive lens of love. There are only two cases where Jesus departs from Hillel. The Pharisaical school of Hillel was not the only school of interpretation in Jesus’ time. Another popular sect of Pharisees was the school of Shammai. Shammai was deeply concerned with protecting Jewish culture, identity, and distinctiveness, and one of the subjects where Jesus departs from Hillel and agrees with Shammai is the subject of divorce.

The school of Hillel taught that a husband could divorce his wife for any reason at all. In a patriarchal society, this led to systemic economic injustice toward wives sent away by their husbands. On this issue, however, Jesus sided with Shammai. In one gospel he states that divorce was simply not allowed. In another, he says that it was allowed but only in the context of infidelity. Again, I believe that this teaching was concerned with the economic hardships that unconditional divorce placed on women who found themselves on the receiving end of this practice in the patriarchal cultures of the 1^st Century, trying to survive.

The second area where Jesus disagreed with Hillel was also economic. Hillel was the originator the prozbul exception. A rich creditor could declare a loan “prozbul” and therefore immune to cancelation in years such as the year of Jubilee. Remember that there was no middle class in Jesus’ society. Many people depended on loans to survive. So if a year when debts were to be cancelled was approaching, many rich creditors would simply not make loans they believed they would lose on. This left many others without a means of survival. Out of concern, then, Hillel made an exception available: loans made close to the year of cancellation could be declared “prozbul” and be exempt from being cancelled. Jesus departs from Hillel incalling for a return to the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:19) where all debts would be cancelled and all slaves set free.

Other than these two cases, Jesus interpreted the Torah like a Hillelian Pharisee. The conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees in the gospels are the same conflicts the Hillelian Pharisees had with the Shammai Pharisees. In those years, the Shammai Pharisees were still in positions of power and influence. But ultimately the more progressive Hillelian Pharisees won the interpretive debates in Judaism: out of Hillelian Pharisaism, Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged and grew. (See Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Kindle Locations 7507-7540)

Gamaliel, in the book of Acts, was also most likely a Pharisee from the more progressive school of Hillel.

“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while.” (Acts 5:34)

Acts associates the Apostle Paul with Gamaliel, too:

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.” (Acts 22:3)

Paul also expresses a very Hillelian way of interpreting the Torah in the book of Galatians:

“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14)

All of this taken together makes a strong case for a more progressive form of Christianity that uses love as its interpretive lens. In this form of Christianity, we ensure that our interpretations of love don’t become sentimental or meaningless, and we manifest love through concern for a distributive justice for others. As Dr. Emile Townes so rightly states when you begin with the idea that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.

This speaks volumes in the context of debates still raging between more fundamentalist and/or conservative sectors of Christianity and more progressive and/or liberal sectors. The early Jesus movement evolved during similar tensions, and the gospels characterize Jesus as siding with the more compassionate Pharisees of his time.

As we shared earlier, there are exceptions to this. The two times Jesus departs from the Hillel Pharisees to side with the Shammai Pharisees was over economic justice issues. This says to me that the highest value was compassion. The highest value is distributive justice, treating one’s neighbor as yourself, as an extension of yourself, as you yourself would like to be treated if you were in the same situation. If we are to follow the Jesus of the gospels, we will find ourselves siding with those calling for a politics of compassion and distributive justice. We will find ourselves doing so because our chief concern is love of neighbor and justice for our neighbor as we would want for ourselves.

Political parties don’t always get justice right because they also are endeavoring to balance the desire to stay in power. One party might most often get it right, but where they fail, we must still choose to stand on the side of distributive justice, remembering the goal is love of neighbor. Following Jesus, we may find ourselves most often in more harmony with political positions of compassion, but there will be times when we may be achieving compassion in one area but will have to be honest when we are still missing the mark in another. There are discussions like this between feminists and womanists. I also think of wealthy LGBTQ people who support systemic harm toward those in their community who are poor; Christians who are concerned for the poor but still deeply patriarchal, homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic And there are movements for economic justice, including within White Christianity, that are still deeply racist.

In the end, for me, it’s no longer enough to say that God is love. If our ideas of God’s love doesn’t also address love of neighbor in very real, concrete, material ways, then we are still missing the mark. In the spirit of the interpretive lens of Hillel and Jesus, as Paul said: “The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

HeartGroup Application

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

2. What do politics of compassion look like for you? 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.

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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.

My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!

Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.

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