A Gospel of Economic Justice
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A Gospel of Economic Justice
Herb Montgomery, January 25, 2025
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this upcoming weekend is from the gospel fo Luke:
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“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.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21)
Out of all of the passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that the author of Luke could have chosen, they connected Jesus with these words from the book of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:1-3)
Luke’s gospel squarely places Jesus in the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition, speaking truth to power, on behalf of the poor in this case.
A Gospel of Wealth Redistribution
Considering how many times Luke’s gospel mentions “the poor,” it is no wonder that many consider it to be the gospel of economic justice. I’m reminded of what the late father of liberation theologies Gustavo Gutiérrez wrote in solidarity with the poor: “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.” (The Power of the Poor in History, 2004, p. 45).
Certainly this was Jesus’ call in Luke, too.
So central is Jesus’ gospel of the wealth redistribution of the kingdom for the poor that when John’s disciples ask Jesus about the authenticity of his own movement, he responds that the good news to the poor validating his ministry:
So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. (Luke 7:22)
One of the transitional moments for me in my own journey in ministry was realizing that the Jesus of the gospels never mentions so many of the things I used to be passionate about preaching. And so many of the things Jesus taught and that were central to his emphasis in the synoptic gospels, I never even mentioned.
The poor, poverty, and economic justice were one of themes for me.
In Luke, Jesus centers the poor. The kingdom belongs to them. And Jesus’ “kingdom” is good news for them. As Gutiérrez would say, it’s a different social order where poverty is no longer created. Poverty is an indictment of the system it exists in, because that system creates and allows for poverty. A system of winners and losers will always have those who lose. But in Jesus’ new social order, everyone has enough to thrive:
Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20)
For Jesus, everything depended on how generous our attitude and actions were toward those our system places in poverty. Notwhithstanding the problematic nature of purity cultures in general, and given that this passage was written within a kind of purity culture, notice how everything “being clean” hinged on generosity toward the poor:
But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you. (Luke 11:41)
It is often said that Jesus’ advice in Luke 18 to the rich man, to sell his superfluous possessions and give them to the poor, were an isolated, private, and individual call only to that man. But this is far from the truth. Consider Jesus’ words to this man in Luke 18 and then compare them to Jesus’ words to the crowd in Luke 12. In Luke 12, this call is not to a specific wealthy person, but to all wealthy listeners in general.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Luke 18:22)
“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” (Luke 12:33)
The wealth redistribution Jesus was calling for actually makes sense. Today, the difference between a $30,000 income and a $60,000 for a family is dramatic for the adults but especially dramatic for that family’s children. Their stress, health, life expectancy, and social outcomes are all dramatically different. At the same time, we now know people aren’t dramatically happier or more fulfilled if their net worth grows from $1 billion to $10 billion.
I’m reminded of Zacchaeus, who in Luke is one of those wealthy members of society (who also was a tax collector) who choose to heed Jesus’ call:
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” (Luke 19:8)
A Gospel of a New Social Order
So central was this call to create a new social order where poverty is no more that in Luke’s companion book, Acts, the first generation of Jesus followers who put Jesus’ societal vision into practice eliminated poverty in their group entirely:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2:42-45)
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35, italics added)
In our reading, Jesus’ gospel doesn’t just end with the poor. It also includes freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor when slaves would be set free, debts cancelled, and lost or sold land returned back to ancestral families. The prisoners, the blind, and oppressed are all people whose social system had failed them. The blind were imprisoned in a dark Roman cell and deprived of all light. Their situation was referred to as “prison blindness.” In this context, “recovery of sight” means setting free those in these dark cells and ushering them back into the freedom of the sunlight where they could see again. This gives me pause for all whom our justice system in the U.S. is failing today. (To learn more about mass incarceration and the justice system, read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander; Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson; and Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate by Helen Prejean.)
Today, we could extend this list of system failures even further. Participating in Jesus’ justice work today is to combat white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It means combating misogyny and patriarchal norms. It means standing for the safety and well-being of our LGBTQ family and friends, and even more. This list ultimately includes all of us. Because to follow the Jesus of our reading this week means to engage the ongoing work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone, whatever obstacles we might face.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. Do you consider economic justice as foundational to other areas of social justice? How so? 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.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts.
Thank you for listening to The Social Jesus Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if the podcast platform you’re using offers this option, please leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our YouTube show each week 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 social 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.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 44: Luke 4.14-21. Lectionary C, Epiphany 3
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to 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 at:
New Episode of 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 2 Episode 4: A Gospel of Economic Justice
Luke 4:14-21
“Poverty is an indictment of the system it exists in, because that system creates and allows for poverty. A system of winners and losers will always have those who lose. But in Jesus’ new social order, everyone has enough to thrive. In our reading, Jesus’ gospel doesn’t just end with the poor. It also includes freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor when slaves would be set free, debts cancelled, and lost or sold land returned back to ancestral families. Today, in addition to econimic justice, we could extend this list of system failures even further. Participating in Jesus’ justice work today is to combat white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It means combating misogyny and patriarchal norms. It means standing for the safety and well-being of our LGBTQ family and friends, and even more.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/a-gospel-of-economic-justice
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.
Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.
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When Faith Does Societal Harm
We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your invaluable role in the Renewed Heart Ministry community and for your dedication to our mission of fostering love, justice, compassion, and healing. Your support is the bedrock of our work. Your support empowers us to do what we do. At a time when ministries like ours are being asked to achieve more with fewer resources, your support is incredibly important, and we want to simply say thank you. Whether in our larger society or within our local faith communities, Renewed Heart Ministries remains committed to advocating for change, working towards a world that is inclusive, just, and safe for everyone, and being a source of love in our world. From all of us here at Renewed Heart Ministries, thank you for your generous support. We deeply appreciate each and every one of our supporters.
If you’d like to join them in supporting our work, please go to renewedheartministries.com and click on “Donate.”
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When Faith Does Societal Harm
Herb Montgomery, November 1, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Herb Montgomery, November 9, 2024
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:38-44)
Our reading this week contains one of the most misunderstood stories in Mark’s gospel. There’s quite a bit to unpack here, so let’s jump right in with the political context of Jesus’ critique of the “teachers of the law.”
Political Context of Mark 12
Interpreting Jesus’ critique of the teachers of the law without its context too often leads to thinking that Jesus was against the law (Torah) itself. Jesus was not engaging in a Protestant, post-Reformation contrast of the law versus grace. That way of reading our story is anachronistic and misses Jesus’ point entirely.
Jesus was leading a Jewish renewal movement that hoped to liberate and restore the rural village communities disintegrating because of the Roman occupation. Jesus was calling his listeners back to fidelity to the Torah’s justice in opposition to the ruling class of his day, which was colluding with Roman oppression for its own gain.
The tension in the gospels is not between Jesus and the law, but between Jesus and Roman oppression, including the Romans’ client regional ruler Herod and high priests of the Temple State. Roman exploitation and oppression through those Rome had placed in positions of power in the Temple State was wreaking economic and social havoc on the vast majority of people living in villages of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. According to Richard Horsley, those named in the gospels such as the scribes, the Pharisees and the “teachers of the law” served in the Judean temple-state as “intellectual-legal retainers.” (Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, p. xi)
This leads to some interesting political and social insights into who these “teachers of the law” were.
Teachers of the Law in Mark 12
The teachers of the law in our reading this week advised the Judean rulers of the Temple State and enjoyed political and economic favor as a result. They were those whose interpretations of the Torah provided religious justification for the unjust status quo of the Roman-appointed high priestly rulers.
Jesus offers two critiques of these teachers in our reading: they desired status and privilege rather than the life-giving pedagogy of the Torah and they were “devouring widows’ houses,” which indicates their complicity in the economic exploitation through over-taxation taking place in the Temple-state.
The first critique, desiring the most important seats and places of honor, should be read with the backdrop of the lessons Mark’s gospel just taught in Mark 10. James and John also desired the most important seats and places of honor, and asked to sit at Jesus’ left and right hands in the kingdom. Mark 10 contrasts this request with the request of Bartimaeus, who rightly perceives Jesus’ movement and joins it. (For more, we discussed this at length in Bartimaeus and Christians of Privilege.)
Next, Jesus zeros in on the intrinsic harm the teachings of these teachers was actually doing. Their teaching made the rich powerbrokers in the Temple state richer at the expense of the most vulnerable in Jesus’ society.
Mark’s gospel critiqued this group’s teachings on the basis of the economic injustice they were causing in Mark 7:
And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (Mark 7:9-13)
“Devoted to God” meant devoted to the Temple-State, and it didn’t trickle down to the poor, but rather into the pockets of those in positions of power who already possessed so much. It gave them even more at the expense and harm of those from whom these resources were being taken, all while they piously said lengthy prayers in public to add religious influence to their economic exploitation. Standing in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, Jesus like the prophets of old who spoke truth to power, declared that these teachers of the law would be “punished most severely.”
Our reading gives a clear example of this exploitation in one of the most misunderstood economic teachings in the gospel Mark: the story of the widow’s mites.
The Widow’s Mites of Mark 12
Whenever I heard the story of the widow’s mites growing up in church, it was always held up as an example of the piety and fidelity we should follow. She gave so much with the little she had and we should sacrificially do the same. But nothing could be further from the point of why Mark’s gospel is actually telling this story. The widow’s mites story is not a story to applaud the widow’s dedication to giving but a story that critiques how the widow was being exploited. The widow is not an example for the poor to follow but the system that exploits her is an example for the wealthy and powerful not to follow.
“The story does not provide a pious contrast to the conduct of the scribes in the preceding section (as is the customary view); rather it provides a further illustration of the ills of official devotion. Jesus’ saying is not a penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament…. Jesus condemns the value system that motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do it.” (A. Wright, 1982, “The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament? A Matter of Context.” CBQ, 44, pp. 256ff, quoted by Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, p. 321).
The teachings of the Temple-State have robbed this woman of her means of livelihood. Those who were to protect the vulnerable are no longer protecting widows but exploiting them and others in their social and economic position. Jesus, in disgust, departs from the temple for the final time.
What does this mean for us today?
Do our religious teachings today cause political and social harm and death or bring healing, life, renewal, restoration, and liberation? Is our religious teaching politically and socially death-dealing or life-giving? I can’t help but think of the way certain Christians are pro-birth but oppose state programs that ensure that same child, once born, is fed, housed, educated, and raised in a home where their parents can afford to live. I can’t help but think of the life-saving healthcare for women who have either died or almost died since the loss of Roe here in the U.S., a loss that some Christians are so proud of. I can’t help but think of how our trans community and immigrants are being scapegoated right now in our political debates. I’m not saying that Christians are the only ones engaging in such harmful misrepresentations, or that all Christians are. What I am saying is that I’m shocked that anyone, even one person, who claims to be following Jesus and his teachings is. History will not be kind to the way Evangelicalism has embraced the politics of harm. With Jesus’ critique of the teachers of the law as our backdrop, what critique might this same Jesus make of American Christians today?
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. What societal healing do you believe your faith can be channelled toward? 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.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts.
Thank you for listening to The Social Jesus Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if the podcast platform you’re using offers this option, please leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our YouTube show each week 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 social 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.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 35: Mark 12.38-44. Lectionary B, Proper 27
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to 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 at:
New Episode of 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 30: When Faith Does Societal Harm
“Whenever I heard the story of the widow’s mites growing up in church, it was always held up as an example of the piety and fidelity we should follow. She gave so much with the little she had and we should sacrificially do the same. But nothing could be further from the point of why Mark’s gospel is actually telling this story. The widow’s mites story is not a story to applaud the widow’s dedication to giving but a story that critiques how the widow was being exploited. The widow is not an example for the poor to follow but the system that exploits her is an example for the wealthy and powerful not to follow. ‘Devoted to God’ meant devoted to the Temple-State, and it didn’t trickle down to the poor, but rather into the pockets of those in positions of power who already possessed so much. It gave them even more at the expense and harm of those from whom these resources were being taken, all while they piously said lengthy prayers in public to add religious influence to their economic exploitation. Standing in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, Jesus like the prophets of old who spoke truth to power, declared that these teachers of the law would be “punished most severely.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/when-faith-does-societal-harm
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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God and Money
We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your invaluable role in the Renewed Heart Ministry community and for your dedication to our mission of fostering love, justice, compassion, and healing. Your support is the bedrock of our work. Your support empowers us to do what we do. At a time when ministries like ours are being asked to achieve more with fewer resources, your support is incredibly important, and we want to simply say thank you. Whether in our larger society or within our local faith communities, Renewed Heart Ministries remains committed to advocating for change, working towards a world that is inclusive, just, and safe for everyone, and being a source of love in our world. From all of us here at Renewed Heart Ministries, thank you for your generous support. We deeply appreciate each and every one of our supporters.
If you’d like to join them in supporting our work, please go to renewedheartministries.com and click on “Donate.”
Herb Montgomery, October 13, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark,
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (Mark 10:17-31)
This week’s reading gets to the heart of one of the central teachings of Jesus in the synoptic gospels—the gospel Jesus himself teaches in the story. It may be challenging for us today depending on how invested we are in our current economic system. To understand it in its context, let’s go back to an ancient story in the Hebrew scriptures that may have shaped Jesus’ vision of a world where everyone has enough to thrive. This is the story of the manna provided during the Exodus narratives.
According to the Exodus stories, one of the very first lessons the Hebrews learned in their wilderness journey was to trust God to provide for their daily needs to the degree that those who had more than they needed shared with those who had less and everyone was ensured to have enough.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’” The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed. Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them. Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. (Exodus 16:15-21)
If anyone attempted to hoard rather than share, what they hoarded spoiled and was full of maggots. The point of this was, there will be more manna tomorrow. Everyone could bring what they gathered each day and find it was enough to divide between everyone, an omer per person. There was enough for every person’s need, but not every person’s greed.
Later in the book of Deuteronomy, we encounter an ethic on debt that seems to have shaped Jesus’ teachings on economics. Jesus called for the year of the Lord’s favor the first time he taught (see Luke 4:18-19). The year of the Lord’s favor was a year when all indentured slaves were set free, all lands were returned to their original owner, and all debts were forgiven/cancelled. The goal here seems to have been the same as in the manna story: there need be no poor or needy among their people.
At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the LORD’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed . . . there need be no poor people among you,” (Deuteronomy 15:1-4)
In our reading this week, Jesus is accessing lessons he learned from growing up on these stories: Those who have more than they need are to take care of those who have less than they need.
Years ago, I was deeply moved by how James Robinson describes Jesus’ teachings in the synoptic gospels in his classic book The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News:
“The human dilemma is, in large part, that we are each other’s fate. We become the tool of evil that ruins another person as we look out for ourselves, having long abandoned any youthful idealism we might once have cherished. But if we each would cease and desist from pushing the other down to keep ourselves up, then the vicious cycle would be broken. Society would become mutually supportive rather than self-destructive. This is what Jesus was up to. Jesus’ message was simple, for he wanted to cut straight through to the point: trust God to look out for you by providing people who will care for you, and listen to him when he calls on you to provide for them. God is somebody you can trust, so give it a try.” (James M. Robinson, The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News, Kindle Edition Loc. 58)
On the next page Robinson continues:
“Put in language derived from his sayings: I am hungry because you hoard food. You are cold because I hoard clothing. Our dilemma is that we all hoard supplies in our backpacks and put our trust in our wallets! Such ‘security”’ should be replaced by God reigning, which means both what I trust God to do (to activate you to share food with me) and what I hear God telling me to do (to share clothes with you). We should not carry money while bypassing the poor or wear a backpack with extra clothes and food while ignoring the cold and hungry lying in the gutter. This is why the beggars, the hungry, the depressed are fortunate: God, that is, those in whom God rules, those who hearken to God, will care for them. The needy are called upon to trust that God’s reigning is there for them (‘Theirs is the kingdom of God”’).” (James M. Robinson, The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News, Kindle Edition. Loc 71)
Robinson’s words give us much to think about. Robinson evaluates Jesus’ teachings by what happens in the early church where Christians tried to follow them. Notice the result: “there were no needy persons among them.” They had accomplished the goal of the ancient stories: they had eliminated poverty in the early Jesus movement.
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-35)
This explains why Jesus says that whatever we give up to practice these teachings, we get in return over 100 times within the community because everyone is sharing to make sure everyone has enough. They aren’t hoarding against the fear of future need. They created a community where no matter what the future brought, they had each other’s backs. They could face the future as a community where the central ethic was making sure everyone’s needs were taken care of. They would receive “homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields (along with persecutions)” because no one considered any of these only their own. They considered them as belonging to the community as well. Each gave as they were able and each person received according to their need: “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” (Acts 2:45)
Will Jesus followers today as a community ever return to these practices and teachings? We live in a very individualistic culture. The first step may be to create communities that make our hyper-self reliance obsolete. We have people in all classes in our communities. Some have nothing to give because their needs aren’t even being met. Others are living month-to-month and just barely getting by. Their needs are met, but they have no extra. Some in our communities have a little extra that they are saving for a future emergency. And others have so much extra they couldn’t possibly spend it all in multiple lifetimes, much less their own.
So today as we read Jesus’ call to share our possessions with others, questions of fairness are raised. I encourage you to lean into this tension. Peter Gomes had something to say on this:
“It is interesting to note that those who most frequently call for fair play are those who are advantaged by the play as it currently is, and that only when that position of privilege is endangered are they likely to benefit from the change required to ‘play by the rules.’ What if the ‘rules’ are inherently unfair or simply wrong, or a greater good is to be accomplished by changing them? When the gospel says, ‘The last will be first, and the first will be last,’ despite the fact that it is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions, it is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first.” (Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?,p. 42)
This helps me understand why Jesus said entering Jesus’ kingdom or community here on earth was difficult for some of us. It calls us to a different set of priorities:
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. What does the phrase, “You cannot serve both God and money” mean to you? 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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You can watch our YouTube show each week 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 social 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.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 31: Mark 10.17-31. Lectionary B, Proper 23
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to 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 at:
New Episode of 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 26: God and Money
Mark 10:17-31
“Will Jesus followers today as a community ever return to these practices and teachings? We live in a very individualistic culture. The first step may be to create communities that make our hyper-self reliance obsolete. We have people in all classes in our communities. Some have nothing to give because their needs aren’t even being met. Others are living month-to-month and just barely getting by. Their needs are met, but they have no extra. Some in our communities have a little extra that they are saving for a future emergency. And others have so much extra they couldn’t possibly spend it all in multiple lifetimes, much less their own. So today as we read Jesus’ call to share our possessions with others, certain questions arise.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/god-and-money
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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Reaping What Is Sown
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Please see the various thank you offers following this week’s article, below.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 39: Matthew 25.14-30. Lectionary A, Proper 28
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 39: Matthew 25.14-30. Lectionary A, Proper 28
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Reaping What Is Sown
Herb Montgomery | November 17, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“If we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. But we can instead sow love, and justice, and compassion, and safety. We get to choose what we set in motion. We get to choose what we sow. What kind of world do we want? However we answer that question, we have the agency in our daily choices, big and small, to set in motion the kind of world we desire. And we aren’t the only ones who get to choose.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
“‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
(Matthew 25:14-30, Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™)
Not every truth is for every audience. That’s why it makes a difference whom we perceive this parable was directed to. Most Jesus scholars trace this parable back to the historical Jesus. If Jesus was using this parable to speak to the poor indentured farmer/slaves in his society, then it paints the God of the Torah with the same character and attributes as those farmers’ harsh absentee landlords. This would contrast starkly with how the Jesus of the gospels typically presents God in the stories.
But if we back up and understand this parable as directed to the those harsh absentee landlords whose motives were grounded in profit for a few on the backs of the many, not in economic justice, then this parable takes on a different, justice-flavored meaning.
Let’s unpack this a bit. Earlier in Matthew’s gospel, we read:
“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1, emphasis added)
Being treated the way one has treated others has a rich history in Jewish wisdom. Injustice is unsustainable for the long term, and Jewish wisdom often reminds its listeners that we intrinsically, eventually reap what we sow. Consider the following sayings:
“A wicked person earns deceptive wages, but the one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.” (Proverbs 11:18)
“Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity, and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.” (Proverbs 22:8)
“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7)
This wisdom is repeated by the Paul in his letter to the Galatians, although with a slightly different application.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (Galatians 6.7-8)
The book of James also repeats this wisdom:
“Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” (James 6:7)
So do the gospels:
“With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.” (Mark 4:24)
If the intended audience for this week’s reading was the unjust, harsh absentee landlords of Jesus’ society, then Jesus is pronouncing judgment on the elite and wealthy classes who were unjustly exploiting workers through indentured slavery.
It is helpful to remember that Matthew was written after 70 C.E. Much of this section of Matthew is constructed to make sense of Rome’s tragic destruction of the Jewish people. Economic injustice is unsustainable: the poor who had finally had enough revolted and violently took over Jerusalem and the temple, burned the debt records held in the temple, and drove the wealthy elites from the city. In the wake of these events, these revolutionaries then launched the Jewish-Roman war of 66-69. The Jewish poor didn’t stop at their own liberation from the elites in their community. Instead, feeling their efforts had been blessed, they set their sights on an even bigger goal: liberating the Jewish people as a whole from their Roman oppressors too. This ultimately resulted in Rome visiting destruction on Jerusalem in 70 C.E.
The poor indentured farmers of Jesus society were once the owners of the farms they were now working, but had lost their land by defaulting on debt. Jesus called for Jubilee, for all debts to be cancelled, all slaves set free, and all land returned to its original owner. (Luke 4:19) This is where we encounter the multiple layers of this week’s reading. If the poor farmers were the slaves of the elite absentee land owners, the absentee land owners were in a similar relationship to their absentee rulers in Rome. It was Rome that eventually “returned” to Judea, storming in and demanding an account. It was Rome that threw the elites who had failed to govern Judea peacefully into “outer darkness” along with everyone else. If we’ve correctly identified the parable’s intended audience, then God is not the absentee landlord who shows up demanding an account of his servants. Rome was. These actions correctly resemble what Rome did to Jerusalem in response to the poor people’s revolt and war with Rome that wealthy elite’s economic exploitation had intrinsically caused. In the gospels Jesus calls for a voluntary year of Jubilee, and, for Matthew’s author, that Jubilee could have circumvented this revolt.
So what can we derive from this parable in our context today?
The Jewish wisdom this week’s parable is rooted in teaches us that with what measure we use, it will be measured back to us. If we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. But we can instead sow love, and justice, and compassion, and safety.
We get to choose what we set in motion. We get to choose what we sow. What kind of world do we want? However we answer that question, we have the agency in our daily choices, big and small, to set in motion the kind of world we desire. We aren’t the only ones who get to choose. Others are setting in motion the kind of world they want, and those of us who desire a world with no injustice, no oppression, no violence must be vigilant. Sowing love doesn’t guarantee we’ll get all we want, but we most definitely won’t get it if we sit back and sow nothing. I’m reminded of the wise words of Dorothy Day:
“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness)
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What we sow in our communities matter, what would you like to be sowing both in your local community and larger society? 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 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.
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.
Matching Donations for the Rest of 2023!
As 2023 is coming to a close, we are deeply thankful for each of our supporters.
To express that gratitude we have a lot to share.
First, all donations during these last two months of the year will be matched, dollar for dollar, making your support of Renewed Heart Ministries go twice as far.
Also, to everyone how makes a special one-time donation in any amount to support our work this holiday season we will be giving away a free copy of The Bible & LGBTQ Adventists.
When making your donation all you have to do indicate you would like to take advantage of this offer by writing “Free Book” either in the comments section of your online donation or in the memo of your check if you are mailing your donation.
Lastly, its time for our annual Shared Table event once again. For all those who choose to become one of our monthly sustaining partners for 2024 by clicking the “Check this box to make it a monthly recurring donation” online, we will be sending out one our a handmade Renewed Heart Ministries Shared-Table Pottery Bowl made by Crystal and Herb as a thank you gift for your support. Becoming a monthly sustaining parter enables RHM to set our ministry project goals and budget for the coming year.
To become a monthly sustaining partner, go to renewedheartministries.com/donate and sign up for an automated recurring monthly donation of any amount by clicking the “Check this box to make it a monthly recurring donation” option. Or if you are using Paypal, select “Make this a monthly donation.”
We will be starting out the new year by sending out these lovely bowls as our gift to you to thank you for your sustaining support. Look for them to arrive during the months of January and February.
Our prayer is that whether displayed or used these bowls will be reminder of Jesus’ gospel of love, caring and shared table fellowship. They also make a great gift or conversation starter, as well.
If you are already one of our sustaining partners for 2024, we want to honor your existing continued support of Renewed Heart Ministries, too. You’ll also receive one of our Shared Table Pottery Bowls as a thank you.
No matter how you choose to donate to support Renewed Heart Ministries’ work this holiday season, thank you for partnering with us to further Jesus’ vision of a world filled with compassion, love, and people committed to taking care of one another. Together we are working toward a safer, more compassionate, and just world both for today and for eternity.
From each of us here at RHM, thank you!
We wish you so much joy, peace, and blessings as 2023 comes to a close. Your support sustains our ongoing work in the coming year.
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In this coming year, together, we will continue to be a light in our world sharing Jesus’ gospel of love, justice and compassion.
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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A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity
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New Episode of JustTalking!
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.
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 36: Matthew 22.34-46. Lectionary A, Proper 25
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
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.
_________________________________________________________
“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.”
_________________________________________________________
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 1st 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 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.
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.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Unheeded Calls for Justice in the Parable of the Vineyard
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work, you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 33: Matthew 21.33-46. Lectionary A, Proper 22
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 33: Matthew 21.33-46. Lectionary A, Proper 22
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Unheeded Calls for Justice in the Parable of the Vineyard
Herb Montgomery | October 6, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“The crowds of people found hope and resonance in these the teachings of reversal: the elite and powerful would have the reins of society taken away from them and given to the marginalized and excluded. And if this parable did teach that power and resources would be taken away from the powerful, propertied and privileged, and given to the masses, then it makes sense that when those in power heard this, they sought to kill Jesus. It also makes sense that they had to be ever so careful because they knew the people heard something in this parable in the long line of justice prophets that made them love Jesus all the more.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.” (Matthew 21:33-46*)
The last sentence in this week’s reading from Matthew is the most important sentence. It holds a tension with the rest of the reading that can potentially keep us from harmful interpretations about ourselves and others.
The crowds, the masses, the people, consider Jesus to be “a prophet.” This is because out of all the forms Jesus could have emerged in within his own Jewish society, he is squarely in the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition. He’s spearheading a Jewish renewal movement and calling his community back to the justice of the Torah and the Hebrew prophets. His teachings emphasized the portions of the law and the prophets that were about social and economic justice, making our communities a safe, compassionate home for everyone.
The parable in this week’s reading is about a landowner who rented out his vineyard to other farmers. The crowds around Jesus would have heard this parable differently than the elites and powerful. Jesus’ society had no middle class. There were only the rich and those struggling to scratch out an existence in one difficult way or another. There were only the haves and the have nots. Only the upper class and the lower class, and only a few belonging to the upper class aristocracy were connected to the temple state in Jerusalem.
The elites would have seen themselves in the parables as the farmers renting the vineyard from the landowner who was away. The people would have viewed themselves as the indentured workers who daily witnessed the elites enriching themselves with worker exploitation. And with the elites becoming so attached to their enrichment at the expense of the masses, the crowd would have perceived the beaten, killed, and stoned vineyard servants in the parable as symbols of the Hebrew prophets. There is precedent for this imagery. Consider Isaiah 5:1-7:
“I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”
There are differences between Isaiah’s use of the vineyard imagery and Matthew’s. In Isaiah the vineyard is destroyed, whereas in Matthew the vineyard is taken away and given to others. In Isaiah the vineyard represents the nation of Israel; in Matthew it represents “the Kingdom,” which is Jesus’ vision for a just, inclusive, compassionate human community. There are also similarities between Isaiah and Matthew: the vineyard owner comes to the vineyard looking for justice and finds only exploitation, marginalization, oppression, and bloodshed.
Let’s now talk about what the kingdom being taken away and given to others would have meant .
First—and this is very important—this parable is not about the Kingdom being taken away from the Jewish people and given to Christians. The last two sentences state: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.”
The Jewish crowds would not have supported Jesus if this parable taught that they were being replaced. This parable is about “the kingdom.” It’s about the elite in society losing positions of power and that power being given to the masses. The crowds of people found hope and resonance in these the teachings of reversal: the elite and powerful would have the reins of society taken away from them and given to the marginalized and excluded. And if this parable did teach that power and resources would be taken away from the powerful, propertied and privileged, and given to the masses, then it makes sense that when those in power heard this, they sought to kill Jesus. It also makes sense that they had to be ever so careful because they knew the people heard something in this parable in the long line of justice prophets that made them love Jesus all the more.
What might this parable be saying to us today? What would a reversal look like in our society? What would it look like for the control in our society to taken from wealthy corporation owners who have bought democracy and politicians, leaving the masses with little say in how society functions and whom it benefits? What would it look like for each person to have a voice? Can you imagine it?
Originally, Thomas Paine called for this kind of democracy, but his calls were ultimately rejected by the aristocratic founding fathers, who called Paine’s ideas “radical democracy.” He called for the end of slavery and a vote for women, but in their revolutionary decision to declare independence from Britain, the founding fathers created a democracy that only gave a vote to propertied, White men. We still have yet to witness America living up to its high ideals. When we consider who is left out today, economically, socially, politically, what would it look like for control in our society to be taken from the powerful, the elite, and given, genuinely, to the masses.
What could a safe, just, compassionate society look like? How would it differ from our present system? Take some time this week to imagine how a just society would be shaped and whom it would take care of? Before we can work for it, we have to first imagine it. Then we can name it. And then, we can roll up our sleeves and work toward it.
___________
*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Take some time this week to imagine how a just society would be shaped and whom it would take care of? 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 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.
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.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Equality, Generosity and Concern for Workers’ Needs
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 31: Matthew 20.1-16. Lectionary A, Proper 20
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/CPiJr7vlEYg?si=gouYfty9uvqNGVQZ
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Equality, Generosity and Concern for Workers’ Needs
Herb Montgomery | September 22, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Three themes surface, three values that have the power to inform how we shape the present world we are all sharing: a desire for equality, generosity concern for workers’ needs. The priority is a combination of equality, generosity, and concern for the needs of the workers. What might our present economic system look like if these three themes governed us?”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.
About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
‘Because no one has hired us.’ they answered.
He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.
So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:1-16)
I cannot express in words how much I love the parable in this week’s reading. I have my own history with this story. I was first introduced to its depth of potential years ago when I read John Ruskin’s Unto The Last, an essay he published in 1860. Ruskin lifts this parable out of religious interpretations created by privileged, propertied, and powerful religious apologists who diverted readers’ attention from how they benefitted from an inequitable economic system. In harmony with Jesus’ ministry in the tradition of the Jewish prophets, Ruskin treated this parable by addressing its social and economic implications.
Let me unpack those implications a bit.
Religious interpretations typically circle around themes from individuals getting a ticket to the same heaven to populations converting “late” to Christianity. (Traditionally this has been a foundational theme of colonialism.)
Yet Jesus did not show up in his society solely as a religious teacher or spiritual guru. He didn’t even show up as a priest within the temple state of his day as John the Baptist’s family did. Anyone who reads the Jesus story alongside the tradition of the Hebrew prophets will immediately see that Jesus was standing in the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition.
In the Hebrew prophetic tradition (see Luke 4:18-19), there are ever-present, ever-strong, social and economic justice themes:
Isaiah 1:17— Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
Jeremiah 5:28— And have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
they do not defend the just cause of the poor.
Amos 2:7— They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Amos 5:24— But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Micah 3:1— Then I said,
“Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
you rulers of Israel.
Should you not embrace justice?
(See also Isaiah 10:2; 56:1; 59:4,8; Ezekiel 34:16; Hosea 12:6; Habakkuk 1:4; Zechariah 7:9; Malachi 3:5)
This is just a quick cursory overview of the prophets. If we read Jesus in this prophetic tradition, we begin to see that this parable has precious little to do with getting to heaven and a lot to do with shaping our present world into a just, compassionate safe home for everyone.
Three themes surface, three values that have the power to inform how we shape the present world we are all sharing.
First, there is a desire for equality. As the grumbling workers from earliest in the day rightly say of the one who hired them, “you have made them equal to us.” For the first to be last and the last to be first doesn’t mean that they simply trade places. Trading places would only flip the hegemony upside down, replacing the present hierarchy with a new one. But in this parable “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” means all are treated equally, with no distinction between those who showed up first and those who showed up last.
This equality is a theme, not only in the Jesus story, but also in the economic teachings of the Torah and the Christian scriptures.
“This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’” The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.” (Exodus 16:16-18)
“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality.” (2 Corinthians 8:13)
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had . . . And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.” (Acts 4:32-34)
The second theme in this parable is generosity: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
What if our guiding value was not seeing how much we could amass but generously sharing, taking responsibility for each other, and making sure everyone had enough not simply to survive but to thrive?
In our present system, an elite few has more than they could ever possibly need while others daily fight against an early death named poverty. Our society’s problem is not those on welfare but a system that creates such an expanse of winners and losers that welfare is needed. As Gustavo Gutiérrez rightly states:
“The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence 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.” (The Power of the Poor in History, Gustavo Gutiérrez)
It is this different social order based on a spirit of generosity that would make generous relief efforts obsolete, no longer even necessary. It would be rooted in a posture of generosity rather than one of hoarding.
The third and last theme is of concern for workers’ needs. Although some of the workers were not hired by anyone until the last hour of the day (‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.), they all still had the same daily needs. They may have had families that depended on what they brought home that day.
The landowner in this story is not concerned with how many hours they worked, but with using his land to provide for the needs of as many as could be provided for. The foundational concern, the priority of highest value, is ensuring these workers have their needs met. Certainly the landowner stood to gain from their employment, yet he was not focused on how much he could squeeze out of them so that he could become even wealthier. Each worker received a days wages.
I already hear friends objecting that if we had a system like this there would be people who would take advantage of it. My answer is, “And?”
Our current system has people who take advantage of it: those at the center and the top of our society. In our present system, the wealthy take advantage of loopholes to increase their passive wealth. Rarely does this social and economic class hear the New Testament words, “Those who don’t work don’t eat” applied to them. These words are usually weaponized against poor people who are accused of laziness or expected to explain and justify their poverty. We should instead understand the root cause of their economic situation: a system stacked against them.
To be clear: There are lazy people in all classes, and lazy people can thrive if they know how to work whichever level of the system they find themselves in. The theme in our reading is not how hard or how long a person works. The theme is how to take care of the needs of the laborers. The priority is not how far can we squeeze workers to enrich their employer with their exploited labor. The priority is a combination of equality, generosity, and concern for the needs of the workers.
What might our present economic system look like if these three themes governed us? There is so much talk among some Christians today about shaping our society according to Christian values. Yet whenever the values in the Jesus story are mentioned—equality, generosity, concern for workers—these same Christians label them socialist or Marxist. What if equality, generosity and wealth sharing, and concern for the needs of workers is actually the way of Jesus?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What shift in priorities do you perceive in our parable from this week’s reading? 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 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.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will 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 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.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Seventy Times Seven
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 30: Matthew 18.21-35
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/UECsbII4Hz8?si=hE3dv2K06J2jPF86
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Seventy Times Seven
Herb Montgomery, September 15, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“This parable originated not as allegory but as an example of real life indebtedness Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with. This was not a call for the indebted to forgive their abusive creditors, but for creditors to forgive the debts of those who owed them.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:21-35)
Even the most progressive Jesus scholars see this parable as part of the earliest oral traditions, tracing back to the historical Jesus himself. A rich man forgives ten thousand bags of gold owed by one of his slaves. Think of how much each bag would have been worth, and then multiply that by ten thousand. In compassion, the creditor simply forgives the entire debt.
Harmful interpretations of this parable teach the abused and oppressed to passively forgive their oppressor or abuser over and over again, but require no change from the one responsible for harming them.
Before we spiritualize this parable to all relationships and offenses, though, we need to step back and look at the original economic context. In the original context, oppressors, specifically creditors, are to forgive the debts of those they were oppressing based on how much the oppressors themselves had been forgiven by Jesus’ “heavenly Father.” This was not a call for the indebted to forgive their abusive creditors, but for creditors to forgive the debts of those who owed them.
Then the forgiven one runs into someone who owes him only 100 silver coins, a far lower amount. Rather than his own experience of forgiveness awakening more in him toward the person who owed him money, he seeks to exact every last coin from his own debtor.
Again, this parable originated not as allegory but as an example of real life indebtedness Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with. From the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Jesus shares a call to wealthy creditors to perform the ritual of “the year of the lord’s favor” or the year of Jubilee, where all debts would be forgiven. This was part of Jesus’ gospel: the call for economic liberation of those in debt. Debts were to be cancelled. This is how Luke’s gospel sums it up:
“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)
Matthew’s version of the lords prayer also uses economic language:
“And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)
Later in the Jesus community, this idea of forgiving debts expanded to include all offenses and trespasses, not just economic indebtedness. This is why in Luke’s later version of the same prayer no longer names the economic element but reads:
“Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4)
What once called creditors (oppressors) to forgive the debts of their debtors (the oppressed) became a universal call for everyone to forgive anyone of anything based on how much they themselves had personally been forgiven by God. What once involved the wealthy cancelling the debts of their poorer fellow Jesus followers became universalized. Social location was no longer the focus. Money owed became allegorical for general offenses. And forgiveness stopped meaning the cancelling of real, concrete debts; it became letting off the hook anyone who had done anything up to 490 times if they simply came back repeatedly and said they were sorry.
I’m not a fan of this evolution in the Jesus stories we have access to today. What it too often becomes is manipulative pressure for those who have suffered injustice or abuse to repeatedly forgive their abuses if the abuser expresses sorrow, whether they actually change or not. Some interpretations definethe one seeking forgiveness as truly changing, but if there were true, the number of times needing for forgiveness would never reach “seventy times seven.”
But if this was actually a call for creditors to practice Jubilee, repeatedly, seventy times seven, no matter how many times people became indebted, then this story takes on an economic dimension that requires social change. If the creditors who follow Jesus must forgive the concrete debts of their debtors, then before too long those creditors would be looking at the systemic causes of why folks were repeatedly being thrown into debt. As the saying goes, when you’re continually pulling people out of the water it doesn’t take long before one walks upstream to ask why those people are being thrown in the water to begin with.
What does this mean for us today?
First let’s say what it doesn’t mean. This parable doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold abusers accountable for the harm they inflict on others. Part of restorative justice is holding abusers accountable. Accountability is intrinsic to their own restoration and healing, too: it awakens and restores a sense of connection to their actions toward others. If there is an element of forgiveness involved, it refuses to sever the abuser from humanity, and the desire to hold them accountable comes not out of vengeance but out of a desire to see them reformed. Forgiveness should never be defined or interpreted as simply letting someone off the hook and pretending they did nothing wrong. Restoration and reparations must always be a part of the process of repairing harms committed for the life-giving well-being of all parties involved.
Yet this story still carries an economic element. How should Jesus followers relate to economic debt forgiveness? I heard many Christians voices over the last two years against student loan forgiveness. How would the Jesus of this week’s readings respond to the idea of students being forgiven the astronomical costs of becoming educated? How would he describe the predatory practices of the loan industry that takes advantage of those students. Consider the social location of those who have to seek student loans to gain an education. Considering these factors, certain Christians are grossly ignorant of how disconnected their religious worship of Jesus is from the values their Jesus taught and the themes of his gospel.
And this is just one example. In our modern, global capitalist system, indebtedness is how countries continue to colonize and enslave other countries, even “independent” countries. Sometimes this debt is connected to the drive to “develop” those countries so that they their resources can be more easily exploited by global corporations.
If we followed the economic truths of our story this week it would turn our present economic world upside down.
Maybe we could start with Christians simply forgiving the debts of their fellow Christians. There are also Christian ministries that raise funds and donations purely for the purpose of being able to pay off people’s medical debts. What a blessing to be able to say to someone they are set free from what they owed for something as vital as their own health care.
And what about debt at faith-based hospitals? Or education debt owed to Christian colleges and universities? What about the indebtedness that comes when folks fall on hard times? How could it change the world if Christians and Christians institutions simply chose to cancel the debts of other Jesus followers? I’m not suggesting this be where the practice should end, but it would be a great place for a global “year of the Lord’s” favor to begin.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How do you imagine Jesus’ Jubilee Debt Forgiveness could be applied in our world 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 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.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will 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 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.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
The Deceitfulness of Wealth
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. 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.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 21: Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23. Lectionary A, Proper 10
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/vXMQHAoHjOI
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
The Deceitfulness of Wealth
Herb Montgomery | July 14, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“But wealth creates in us a kind security that isolates us from fellow members of our human family. Community, on the other hand, is a way of finding security to weather potential future hardships together. Even evolutionarily, species that have proven to be the “fittest” over time, are species that don’t go it alone but that practice care for vulnerable members rather than some taking care of themselves at the expense of others.”
Our reading this week is from two sections of Matthew chapter 13:
“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:1-9)
and
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:18-23)
The author of Mathew has mostly taken this section from the gospel of Mark (Mark 4:1-34). And for good reason. There is plenty here that it was important for the early Jesus community to remember.
The parable of the sower gives us a special glimpse into what the gospel Jesus himself preached actually was. What stands out to me is that of all the obstructions that the early Jesus community could have named to following Jesus, all the temptations that could have been mentioned, and all the sins that this parable could have railed against, the one thing named is “the deceitfulness of wealth.”
I ask why? How does wealth deceive and obstruct us from following Jesus? Why was it at the top of the list for the early Jesus community?
Wealth does not obstruct the contemporary gospel message of getting to heaven. You can “get to heaven” in many contemporary gospel narratives and still be immensely wealthy. But in Jesus’ gospel of wealth redistribution and resource-sharing from the haves to the have nots, it becomes immediately apparent how wealth obstructs. The desire to build or hold wealth is directly opposed to giving that wealth away to those negatively impacted in a system built to benefit a few at the expense of the many.
Jesus’ gospel was about creating a different way of being human together, here, now. It was not about a post mortem destination. Jesus was casting the vision of a beautiful community of people dedicated to making sure no one was pushed to the edges or undersides of their community, no one was made vulnerable, and every member of the community held a mutual commitment to share what they could to ensure everyone was cared for.
This was what the gospel authors called the “empire” or “kingdom” of God, a community in which God reigned. It was a community where people came first. So how does the deceitfulness of wealth obstruct this?
First, a community where God reigns according the gospel stories is a community where people are of a greater priority than profit or wealth-building. This is why the gospels repeatedly state that in a community such as the one Jesus describes, we have to choose between God and money. It’s one or the other.
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6.24)
This was also the practice of the early believers in the book of Acts:
“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had . . . there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-35)
But how is wealth deceitful?
Hoarded wealth gives us a sense of security, but this kind of security leaves us alone, isolated, on our own, each of us in our silos of hoarded resources, feeling that we will be able to take care of ourselves but living against the grain of reality and how we survive as a planet, together. As we discussed weeks ago, we are all connected. We are all part of one another. No one survives alone, and if there is such a thing as social salvation, no one is saved unless we all are saved.
But wealth creates in us a kind security that isolates us from fellow members of our human family. Community, on the other hand, is a way of finding security to weather potential future hardships together. Even evolutionarily, species that have proven to be the “fittest” over time, are species that don’t go it alone but that practice care for vulnerable members rather than some taking care of themselves at the expense of others.
This, too, was a common theme in the early Jesus community. Consider the following words from 1 Timothy:
“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God.” (1Timothy 6:17)
What does it mean in this context to “put their hope in God”. James Robinson, author of books on the historical Jesus and the gospel that Jesus taught, gives insights on what it might have meant for believers to “put their hope in God.”
“Such ‘security’ [or hope] should be replaced by God reigning, which means both what I trust God to do (to activate you to share food with me) and what I hear God telling me to do (to share clothes with you). We should not carry money while bypassing the poor or wear a backpack with extra clothes and food while ignoring the cold and hungry lying in the gutter. This is why the beggars, the hungry, the depressed are fortunate: God, that is, those in whom God rules, those who hearken to God, will care for them. The needy are called upon to trust that God’s reigning is there for them (“Theirs is the kingdom of God”) . . . Jesus’ message was simple, for he wanted to cut straight through to the point: trust God to look out for you by providing people who will care for you, and listen to him when he calls on you to provide for them.” (James M. Robinson, The Gospel of Jesus, Kindle Location 71)
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians also suggests how the members of early Jesus communities practiced this:
“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality.” (2 Corinthians 8:13)
How can wealth be used, today, not to give us individual, privatized security but to build community where our security is in each other, in people? The Jesus story is offering us two options, two competing places in which to “put our trust.” We can either put our hope in hoarding money against potential future hardships, or we can put our hope in a community of people who are dedicated to making sure their resources care for those in their community. Jesus’ way is about facing the future together, rather than alone. It’s about having each other’s back.
Here in the United States, we are continuing to move toward a society that leaves each person on their own. From Supreme Court rulings to local political supermajorities, we are shaping a country in such a way that leaves people on their own to pull themselves up by bootstraps they don’t even have. Those our system makes most vulnerable are the most being harmed.
Some societies and countries are deeply committed to democracy and also have strong social commitments to one another. They make sure community members’ needs are met. We, too, can still practice the freedom of democracy while we move toward making sure everyone in our democracy has what they need to thrive. These are not mutually exclusive goals. In fact, making sure everyone in our democracy is on level ground is deeply democratic in itself.
This call also harmonizes much more with the call of Jesus to work toward shaping a world where we are committed not to isolated, self-sufficiency in facing survival challenges on our own, but to practice the Golden Rule, love our neighbor as ourselves, and share with those who are in need. As the books of Acts says, “Each according to their ability, and each according to their needs.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How do you wish our society practiced more socially responsible care. Share that 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 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.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will 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 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.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Our Dependence on One Another
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. 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.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 19: Matthew 10.40-42. Lectionary A, Proper 8
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/kFO67xwCAsw
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | June 30, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“We are dependent on each other whether we are willing to admit that or not. And rather than developing stalwart, privatized systems of self-sufficiency, we should work toward building community where each person is taken care of, where we take responsibility for ensuring each person has what they need to thrive.”
Our reading this upcoming weekend is from the gospel of Matthew:
“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42)
To get our heads around this week’s reading from the perspective of its original audience, we need to back up a bit. The subject here in Matthew 10 is Jesus’ instructions as he sends out early followers:
“Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.” (Matthew 10:9-14)
In the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), each version of these instructions differs slightly (cf. Mark 6:8-9, Luke 9:3; 10:4). But each version agrees that Jesus wasn’t sending out his followers to be independent, self-sufficient workers for Jesus’ vision of the new world. They were sent out to be wholly dependent on the hospitality, generosity, and resource-sharing of those to whom they were begin sent. This is important for our work today.
Let’s try to understand the context around what’s happening in these passages. In his excellent book The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins, Jesus scholar Stephen Patterson explains:
“It begins with a knock at the door. On the stoop stand two itinerant beggars, with no purse, no knapsack, no shoes, no staff. They are so ill-equipped that they must cast their fate before the feet of a would-be host. This is a point often made by historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan. These Q folk are sort of like ancient Cynics, but their goal is not the Cynic goal of self-sufficiency; these itinerants are set only for dependency. To survive they must reach out to other human beings. They offer them peace—this is how the empire arrives. And if their peace is accepted, they eat and drink—this is how the empire of God is consummated, in table fellowship. Then another tradition is tacked on, beginning with the words ‘Whenever you enter a town.’ This is perhaps the older part of the tradition, for this, and only this, also has a parallel in the Gospel of Thomas (14). There is also an echo of it in Paul’s letter known as 1 Corinthians (10: 27). Here, as in the first tradition, the itinerants are instructed, ‘Eat what is set before you.’ Again, the first move is to ask. The empire comes when someone receives food from another. But then something is offered in return: care for the sick. The empire of God here involves an exchange: food for care.” (pp. 74-75)
This stands in contrast with economic and political soundbites today. Many in our American capitalist culture today expect the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in a system stacked against them. We live in a culture of independence, isolation, and self-sufficiency that ignores the reality that whether we like it or not, we are all connected.
We are all dependent on one another for our survival. We are in this together. Social salvation means that if we are to be saved, no one is saved until everyone is saved. As King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. What affects one, thought it affects others differently, affects us all because we are a part of each other. We are connected to each other. And one of the central tenets of the Jesus of the gospels is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus wasn’t sending these disciples out as self-sufficient workers, but as disciples instructed to completely lean into our dependence on one another and make this their intentional practice.
Not all followers of Jesus followed this instruction, however. The apostle Paul worked.
“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living? . . . If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.” (1Corinthians 9.1-6, 12)
For whatever reason, Paul rejected dependence on those he served and choose a path of providing for himself—a practice of self-sufficient independence. But from this passage in Corinthians, we learn that he was the outlier here. Even in the Didache we see that Jesus’ original instruction was so practiced by the majority that some guidelines had to be added as a result of Jesus’ dependence instruction being abused:
“Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord. But he shall not remain more than one day; or two days, if there’s a need. But if he remains three days, he is a false prophet. And when the apostle goes away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodges. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet.” (Didache: The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, Chapter 11)
For Jesus followers today, this holds meaning for our justice work. We work to create a new world of mutual aid, resource-sharing, and a just wealth redistribution in the face of a world where a few have so much while too many don’t even have what they need to survive. As Jesus followers, we have to ask ourselves: does our programming of independence and being self-sufficient come from our American culture? Does it conflict with the teaching of Jesus? Does it even conflict with how our world really functions? We are dependent on each other whether we are willing to admit that or not. And rather than developing stalwart, privatized systems of self-sufficiency, we should work toward building community where each person is taken care of, where we take responsibility for ensuring each person has what they need to thrive.
I want to continue with Patterson’s words, because I think they are extremely relevant here:
“This warrants pause. Food for care. In the ancient world, those who lived on the margins of peasant life were never far from death’s door. In the struggle to survive, food was their friend and sickness their enemy. Each day subsistence peasants earn enough to eat for a day. Each day they awaken with the question: Will I earn enough to eat today? This is quickly followed by a second: Will I get sick today? If I get sick, I won’t eat, and if I don’t eat, I’ll get sicker. With each passing day the spiral of starvation and sickness becomes deeper and deeper and finally, deadly. Crossan has argued that this little snippet of ancient tradition is critical to understanding why the followers of Jesus and their empire of God were compelling to the marginalized peasants who were drawn to it. ‘Eat what is set before you and care for the sick.’ Here is the beginning of a program of shared resources of the most basic sort: food and care. It’s an exchange. If some have food, all will eat; if any get sick, someone who eats will be there to care for them. The empire of God was a way to survive—which is to say, salvation.” (pp. 74-75)
Years ago now I read a passage from historical Jesus scholar James Robinson that caused me to question whether I was preaching a gospel about Jesus or teaching the same gospel that Jesus himself taught:
“[Jesus’s] basic issue, still basic today, is that most people have solved the human dilemma for themselves at the expense of everyone else, putting them down so as to stay afloat themselves. This vicious, antisocial way of coping with the necessities of life only escalates the dilemma for the rest of society . . . I am hungry because you hoard food. You are cold because I hoard clothing. Our dilemma is that we all hoard supplies in our backpacks and put our trust in our wallets! Such ‘security’ should be replaced by God reigning, which means both what I trust God to do (to activate you to share food with me) and what I hear God telling me to do (to share clothes with you). We should not carry money while bypassing the poor or wear a backpack with extra clothes and food while ignoring the cold and hungry lying in the gutter. This is why the beggars, the hungry, the depressed are fortunate: God, that is, those in whom God rules, those who hearken to God, will care for them. The needy are called upon to trust that God’s reigning is there for them (“Theirs is the kingdom of God”) . . . Jesus’ message was simple, for he wanted to cut straight through to the point: trust God to look out for you by providing people who will care for you, and listen to him when he calls on you to provide for them.” (James M. Robinson, The Gospel of Jesus)
I know this flies in the face of much of how we are enculturated to live in our economic environment today. We learn early on that survival depends on competition instead of cooperation. That there is scarcity rather than enough for everyone. We are taught over time to hoard what we need rather than share with others who have needs. And this ultimately leads to us appealing to violence to protect our hoarded resources rather than a generosity that sees us rising or falling all together. Jesus’ early disciples were instructed to follow a practice of dependence and not lose sight of it. Our survival both economically and ecologically today is vitally connected to us embracing our dependence on one another. This week’s reading calls Jesus followers to take this to heart and let it inform how we live.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. In what ways do you wish our society today acknowledged our connectedness to each other more? 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.
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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will 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 JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
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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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