What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?
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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 32: Matthew 21.23-32. Lectionary A, Proper 21
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/0Usj6s3tUyk?si=QIMehXJWRl1nZYSt
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?
Herb Montgomery | September 29, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” (Matthew 21:23-32)
If we are going to arrive at life-giving interpretations that do not devolve into anti-Semitic tropes, we’ll need to understand the context of this passage. First, this passage represents a debate within Judaism. Christianity does not exist yet. So the passage doesn’t point to a choice between Christianity and Judaism, or some embracing “Christianity” ahead of others. Jesus was a Jewish man. The tax collectors and prostitutes in this passage are all Jewish folk, as were the chief priests and all the elders.
This is instead a debate among people in different social locations within Judaism, the elite and powerful of a society and those who were shunned or pushed to the edges of their society, about what faithfulness to the God of the Torah looked like and how to follow the Torah’s economic teachings.
Jesus had just overturned the money changers tables in the Temple, a political symbol and not solely a religious one. The Temple was the “Capital building” of the Temple state of Jerusalem over which Rome exercised imperial control. The chief priests and elders were not only religious leaders but also held political positions of power, property, and privilege.
By flipping over these Temple tables, Jesus staged a political protest over the exploitation of the poor, and his authority for teaching and acting was challenged by those in positions of authority within the Temple state.
Again, all of this happening economically, politically, socially, and religiously, and within Jewish culture and society.
This story gives those of us who are not Jewish a window into a society from which we can glean wisdom as we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized, those in underprivileged social locations in our own society.
Jesus also mentions tax collectors and prostitutes in our reading. These people were labelled transgressors of national interests (tax collectors) and of religious morality (prostitutes), but they also embraced Jesus’ vision for human community (the kingdom) and its economic teachings of sharing resources, mutual aid, wealth redistribution, taking care of the vulnerable, and including the marginalized and excluded. Zacchaeus was an example of those who breached the national interest, and it’s interesting that, in true patriarchal form, we have no names of prostitutes passed down. Instead, we have the later fabrication that labels Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This fabrication was a patriarchal (or patristic) attempt to lessen her influence and marginalize those who recognized her apostleship. (Thus the term patristic fathers.)
Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming. There is a vast difference between working for the equal opportunity to compete in a system that rewards some and harms others and working toward an entirely different social order that doesn’t produce winners and losers. This “entirely different social order” means a way of living together with enough for everyone, where we only take what we need and share the rest, and where we make sure everyone cared for.
In this light, taking up the cross becomes a mandate to flip oppressive tables even if you are threatened with a cross for doing so. We can read a lot more from this story that may help us in our justice work today.
If the powerful and privileged elites in Jesus’s society couldn’t recognize that John the Baptist was standing in the authority of the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition, they would not recognize him doing the same. Note that Jesus doesn’t attempt to convince them. He doesn’t waste time defending his right to speak out or his right to exist. He’s got work to do. He dismisses their challenges to his authority to speak out and gets back to his work of shaping our world into a just, compassionate, safe home for everyone, specifically those presently marginalized.
There is a lesson in this for us. Don’t get side tracked or distracted by the naysayers or those who want to pivot away from the injustice we are challenging to ourselves and what gives us permission to speak out again the injustice. We don’t have to have anyone’s permission to speak out. The presence of injustice is permission enough. Care for our fellow human beings gives us the right to speak out. Being a member of the human family gives us intrinsic authority when we see fellow humans being harmed. This applies ecologically and environmentally also. Humans are harmed by ruining our shared home on this planet in order to profit a few in the short term.
Lastly, our reading this week includes the parable of the two sons of which scholars have spent much ink debating on the variations of this story that we have today (there are three different versions). Thee author of this story is placing much more emphasis on a person’s actions than their words. It’s not enough say yes to Jesus kingdom if the actions that follow that yes don’t align with the ethics and values of Jesus’ kingdom. In other words, accepting a ticket to a heaven later in other words is meaningless if we aren’t attempting to follow Jesus today in making our present home safe and just for everyone. In the end, the professions of the two sons didn’t matter’ . It was their actions that mattered. This is why I value whether someone is part of the solution to today’s injustice or whether they are part of the cause far more than whether that person claims or embraces Christianity or even Jesus. Professions matter little. The question is not what you believe or don’t believe. The question is whether you are choosing to be a life-giving human to those around you. In the end, and in the words of our story, Christian or not, those making the world a safer place for everyone are the ones doing what the “father wanted.”
I’ll close this week with the words of the late Oscar Romero:
“Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.” (Quoted by Leonardo Vilchis, We Cry Justice, p. 93)
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the parable of the two sons inspire you to work for justice? 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
Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
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 29: Matthew 18:15-20. Lectionary A, Proper 18
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/_E6OhdHRp_Q?si=d743j2SBjL8gJLBJ
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
Herb Montgomery | September 8, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:15-20)
Our reading this week is not found in Mark’s or John’s version of the Jesus story. It is included in Luke’s version of our reading this week:
“So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” (Luke 17:3-4)
I find it interesting that Matthew’s version explains to how Jesus followers should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who doesn’t listen. Luke’s version only explains how they should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who repents.
The admonition to forgive seventy times seven times if need be (Matthew 18:20-21 cf. Luke 17:3-4) has produced a lot of abuse because that passage can be interpreted in harmful ways. We’ll explore that soon. This week’s lectionary reading, though, focuses on verses 15-20.
This is a passage written when the Jesus community was grappling with how to respond to fellow Jesus community members who were making choices the community felt were out of harmony with the teaching they attributed to Jesus.
We also get a taste of the Jewishness of the Matthean Jesus community here, which cites precedent from the Hebrew scriptures:
“One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” (Deuteronomy 19:15)
This text from Deuteronomy would have spoken to the Matthean Jewish Jesus followers in Galilee.
Another interesting note is how this passage reflects more of the social bias against pagans and tax collectors in the larger Galilean society than the rest of the Jesus story does. This apparently negative admonition seems to contrast starkly with the way Jesus actually treated pagans and tax collectors in Matthew’s version of his story.
Consider the following examples:
Jesus welcomed and shared table fellowship with tax collectors:
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)
Further, one of Jesus’ own disciples was “Matthew the tax collector.” (Matthew 10:3)
Jesus was also labelled a friend of tax collectors:
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:19)
Jesus even affirmed tax collectors who were entering his vision of a just human society (the kingdom) over people who refused the vision due to the economic losses they stood to suffer:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.’” (Matthew 21:31)
Although Zacchaeus’ example is found in Luke, not Matthew, it is a great representative of the tax collectors who were choosing to following Jesus:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
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.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:1-10)
This leaves us with interpretive options. It is quite possible that the the early Jesus community created the procedure in our reading this week as the need arose. It is also possible (though less probable) that this procedure originated with Jesus himself: in this case, the passage teaches us to relate to fellow Jesus followers refusing to listen as Jesus did, as someone to be won again, and as worth extending table fellowship and an invitation to follow Jesus again. I find this interpretation less compelling given how tax collectors and pagans were treated at the time Matthew’s gospel was written.
Regardless of its origins, I do appreciate the nugget of wisdom within the procedure: When a fellow member of your religious or non-religious community is engaging in harmful behavior, go to the person and talk to them about it. So many misunderstandings can be solved through a conversation.
The next step in the procedure, “take one or two others along,” sounds a lot to me like an intervention. Thus the issue has to be important enough to justify bringing others in.
When I consider real-life examples where the person being spoken to doesn’t respond in ways their friends or community members want them to, what always follows is a schism in the relationship with the person bringing the concern or in relation to the community.
I’ve been on both sides of this procedure. I’ve been among friends who in love for another friend staged an intervention which saved their life: today our friend is in a much better place than they would have been had they continued down their original path of self-destruction.
I’ve also been on the receiving end. Many times folks attempted to intervene with me when I and Renewed Heart Ministries first began affirming and welcoming those who are part of the LGBTQ community. Eventually I and those who came to me concerned about who I was affirming and including in a gospel of love parted ways. Looking back now, as the adage goes, I’d rather be excluded over whom I include than included for whom I exclude.
Just a few weeks ago, I answered a call from a concerned White Christian who thought I speak out about racial justice too much. Our conversation didn’t change their mind, and I’m not about to change either in the face of the racially based harm still happening in our society. So we parted ways.
In these cases, I guess I’d have to say I am now treated as a “tax collector” or a “pagan”: their relationship to me resembles much more the biases against pagans and tax collectors in 1st Century Galilee than it does the Jesus of the gospels. I would love it if they treated me the way Jesus treated tax collectors! But that’s not been my experience.
So what is a life-giving way to relate to those with whom we have significant differences? Are all differences the same? Are some differences of such intrinsic significance that in the wake of disagreement, we must end relationships? Disagreements about a person’s worth and right to existence are much different than other conflicts. Are we sure that what we disagree about is at that level? Or are we too quick to sever relationships over the slightest differences? We must weigh both the values over which we are disagreeing and the value of the relationship that may be lost.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, do we turn a blind eye because we are conflict averse and afraid of rocking the boat? I appreciate that in this week’s reading, Jesus followers are not encouraged to avoid conflict, but to lean in, beginning with one-on-one conversation.
How I wish many stories that have circulated about me over the years would have begun first with a simple conversation. Conversations don’t solve everything. Sometimes the conflict is unavoidable. But how much misinformed harm can been averted with a conversation? We shouldn’t jump to rumors, nor bury our heads in the sand. The life-giving option lies somewhere in the middle, beginning with a direct discussion. Which steps come next can’t be predicted, but whatever those steps are, may we take each one thoughtfully with life-giving intent for everyone involved.
The rest of our reading refers to binding and loosing. You can hear me and Todd Leonard discuss this teaching on YouTube.
Lastly for this week, the promise of where two or more are agreed in our reading this week repurposes Jewish rabbinic wisdom contemporary to this passage. The wisdom stated that where two or more studied the Torah, God was present in their midst.
The life-giving grappling for me this week revolves around the first portion of this week’s reading: What is a life-giving procedure for relating to those in our communities with whom we have concerns and disagreements?
Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the counsel in week’s reading inform your relationship with others with whom you may disagree? 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
What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
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 28: Matthew 16.21-28. Lectionary A, Proper 17
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/IWvmLXmKTss?si=8h2rhEwJMyGUpIFB
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
Herb Montgomery | September 1, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:21-28)
Seeing Jesus’ death as his destiny to suffer was only one way early Christians sought to make sense of his state execution.
As we consider this week’s reading, let’s consider that during this time, Jesus’ followers were facing persecution and martyrdom for pushing for a world that was safer, more compassionate, more egalitarian, and more inclusive: changes that would cost the privileged, propertied, and powerful who were profiting from their society’s injustices and unequal structure.
What I find most fascinating about this week’s reading is that multiple segments of early Christians equated the cross with an unjust backlash from those in power for promoting a more just world (as Jesus did when he flipped the money changers’ tables in the Temple). That world was something followers of Jesus were to embrace as part of what it meant to follow Jesus in their social context. Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place:
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:38)
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
And also in the non-canonical gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “Whoever doesn’t . . . take up their cross like I do isn’t worthy of me.” (Gospel of Thomas 55)
Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out how prevalent in the gospels this point of view is when they write:
“For [the gospel of] Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time.” (The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Kindle Locations 1591-1593)
A word of caution, though: As much as participation remedies harmful substitutionary interpretations of Jesus’ death, the mantra of “taking up one’s cross” has also been used to harm marginalized and disenfranchised communities and people trying to survive abuse.
Taking up or bearing one’s cross has often been used as a metaphor for being passive in enduring the abuse and/or injustice someone may be facing. Pastors used this rhetoric to counsel my own mother to stay in abusive marriages. It’s counsel that has often proven lethal, both for men and women.
Taking up a cross and following Jesus doesn’t mean putting up with abuse or injustice. The cross was the tool of the state used against those who were resisting abuse and injustice, not being passively silent. Rome used the threat of the cross to quell uprisings and revolts.
In other words, the cross is not an injustice that someone should simply bear with their hopes and sights set on heaven. The cross was what someone suffered at the hands of the powerful and elite when that person or others did not simply bear the injustice and harms of their oppression and marginalization.
If you don’t speak up, if you remain passive in the face of injustice, there is no cross to bear. A cross only enters the picture when we speak up and speak out, and those in power are threatened enough to threaten us with a cross if we don’t shut up.
In those moments, Jesus encourages his followers to keep speaking up, keep speaking out, keep pushing for change. This is a far cry from Jesus counseling his followers to simply bear injustice. Jesus encourages his followers: when they are afraid, when they experiencing pushback in response to their calls and demonstrations for change, keep at it even if they threaten you with a cross.
These are the moments when we are not self-sacrificing. We aren’t choosing to die; we are choosing not to let go of that which is life-giving, just, right, and good. Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose not to let go of life when threatened with death for doing so. There is an important difference. If we define the cross as passivity that we should imitate, how we respond to injustice and wrongs in our world will also be passive. We’ll set our sights on a future heaven, leaving our present world untouched, unchallenged, and unchanged.
But if we define the cross as punishment for speaking up and working for a safer, more compassionate, just world here, now, we will see it as punishment that we are not to allow to silence us. We will bear it as we keep working to make the world a better place, and that will change our response to injustice and abuse in our daily lives.
Choosing death doesn’t bring life. Choosing life brings life. In the very next statement of our passage, Jesus says:
“For whoever wants to save their life [by choosing to be silent] will lose it [abuse and injustice will continue], but whoever loses their life for me [speaking out about harms being committed] will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world [by being silently complicit in injustice], yet forfeit their soul [their being, who they are]? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
Again, this was written at a time in Galilee when the Jesus-following community was experiencing persecution for their vision of a society where everyone was taken care of. That vision, inspired by Jesus, was a threat to those profiting from inequity.
What does this mean for us today?
Think back to a time when you experienced pushback for speaking out against injustice. Were you encouraged not to rock the boat or to just remain silent? Were you misguidedly told to simply “bear your cross?”
That situation was not your cross to bear. It was injustice. The Jesus of our story this week encourages you to keep speaking out even if those who are disturbed threaten you with a cross.
I want to be clear here. The cross is not an intrinsic part of following Jesus because following Jesus is not a death cult. It is a life path. The cross only becomes a part of following Jesus when those threatened by a more just world choose to use a cross to threaten you.
We are witnessing this in the U.S. daily. From courtroom judges receiving death threats for doing what is right and privileged people being threatened by a multiracial, diverse democracy, to men responding in fragility to a doll movie or cisgender people feeling attacked when trans people experience equality and justice, there are so many, many stories. Crosses have not disappeared, they’ve simply changed form.
When a more compassionate, just, and safe world for everyone is perceived as a threat to privileged people, when those people lash out and seek to silence you, using rhetoric like “being woke” as a slur, the Jesus of this week’s reading is telling us, keep going. It’s working.
Even in the face of threats, keep speaking out and working alongside those our present system deems “the least of these.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does taking up a cross mean to 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 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
Injustice, Oppression, and Violence Being Put Right
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!
Season 1, Episode 27: Matthew 16.13-20. Lectionary A, Proper 16.
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/I0tZzUzbl1o?si=BsitUoNr_ZA6YJOn
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | August 25, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“For Jesus followers today, do we believe that in the teachings of Jesus there is a path toward healing injustice, oppression, and violence in our world today? Or does Jesus’ death just provide us with a ticket out of this place to a better world? I side with the former.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
When Christians today call Jesus “Messiah,” we must take great care not to drift into supersessionism or antisemitism. Let’s talk about it.
At the time of Jesus, the great Jewish hope was not that humans would one day become disembodied souls in a post mortem blissful realm or some far distant cloud. It was that Jewish liberation from foreign oppression would come, and that this liberation would also mark the end of all injustice, violence, and oppression not only for the Jewish people but for the entire world. This was a time that might begin with local liberation, yet it would swell to the setting right of all injustice, the putting right of all that is wrong with the world, and the end of all oppression and all violence. Establishing justice would usher in an era of peace and safety where no one need be afraid anymore.
“Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.” (Isaiah 9:7)
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations. (Isaiah 42:1)
“Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. (Isaiah 51:4)
“Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the LORD Almighty has spoken.” (Micah 4:4)
Again, this was not a hope of one day entering a postmortem heaven, but of establishing a just, compassionate, safe world here on earth, one where each person could experience home.
For many of those within the community of Jewish wisdom, this hope was associated with placing a Jewish King from the line of David back on a Jewish throne again (see Isaiah 9). This is where the idea of a Messiah first emerges. The Messiah (King) was God’s “anointed one”—and that is simply what “Messiah” means: anointed one.
But it wasn’t from the Old Testament that our modern way of thinking of Messiah came about. Our modern understanding developed later in Rabbinic Judaism, after the destruction of Jerusalem. Early Rabbinic Judaism developed alongside the early Jesus movement, and in dialogue with this Jewish wisdom the early Jewish Jesus community began referring to Jesus as the Messiah.
Here a few examples, most canonical and one non-canonical. Also notice that in each of these stories the claim that Jesus is the Messiah is never directly made by Jesus about himself but always a claim made by Jesus’ followers in the narratives.
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter ). (John 1:35-42)
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (John 11:25-27)
Jesus said to his disciples, “If you were to compare me to someone, who would you say I’m like?” Simon Peter said to him, “You’re like a just angel.” Matthew said to him, “You’re like a wise philosopher.” Thomas said to him, “Teacher, I’m completely unable to say whom you’re like.” Jesus said, “I’m not your teacher. Because you’ve drunk, you’ve become intoxicated by the bubbling spring I’ve measured out.” He took him aside and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked, “What did Jesus say to you?” Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the things he said to me, you’ll pick up stones and cast them at me, and fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.” (Gospel of Thomas, 13)
Like the story of Peter getting out of the boat and walking on the water with Jesus, the words about Peter after his declaration are Matthew’s addition to the story. Here is the account in the earlier written gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. (Mark 8:27-30)
Luke’s version is closer to Mark’s version of this story than Matthew’s:
Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.” Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. (Luke 9:18-21)
For the early Jesus community, the idea of calling Jesus the Messiah was, for better or worse, much less about establishing a Jewish King on a Jewish throne to bring about Jewish liberation and much more about seeing Messiah as someone who would establish justice on Earth, ending oppression for all universally, both those Jewish and non-Jewish.
“For he has set a day when he will order the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31)
Today, however, it is much more life giving to speak of Jesus without using the language of messiahs and heroes. For Jesus followers today, do we believe that in the teachings of Jesus there is a path toward healing injustice, oppression, and violence in our world today? Or does Jesus’ death just provide us with a ticket out of this place to a better world? I side with the former.
There is much to draw from the Jesus story when we see it through the lens of the Jewish hope of putting to right all injustice in our world today. As I mentioned two weeks ago, today we face the injustices of racism, White supremacy, Christian nationalism, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, economic elitism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, and so many more challenges. And though these issues are not all directly named in the Jesus story, his story does model how to be a source of healing and life when facing things that are harmful. Principles for how we can be about healing the harms in our present world are there for us to experiment with.
Today, I don’t use “Messiah” language to describe Jesus or my claims about Jesus. But I do affirm that in the Jesus of the Jesus story, we encounter values, ethics, and teachings that if actually applied to our lives could make Jesus followers a source of healing for the harms in our world. Let me be clear that Christians are right now largely responsible for many of these harms. And so maybe that’s where we as Jesus followers can start if we haven’t started already.
Rather than “converting the world” to Jesus, maybe we could focus today on working to win Christianity and those who bear Jesus’ name to the teachings of the Jesus in the gospels. If we could just apply Jesus’s teachings to the list of injustices listed above that are within Christianity today, we’d be a long way toward being a source of healing and life in our larger world. In the words of 1 Peter 4:17, may the putting right of injustice in our world “begin with God’s household.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the Jesus story inform how you relate to injustice, 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
It’s Okay to Discover You Are Wrong
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!
Season 1, Episode 26: Matthew 15.10-28. Lectionary A, Proper 15
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/nauEBogqH10
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
It’s Okay to Discover You Are Wrong
Herb Montgomery | August 18, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“She calls him out on the hurtfulness of his rhetoric. She also uses his language against him to show him how blinkered his understanding is. And Jesus models humility. She is right, and Jesus makes an about-face.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:10-20, 21-28)
Before we begin this week I want to address some harmful language in our reading. The first is a generalizing reference to Pharisees. The Pharisees were a very diverse group that held many of the same ethical views of love and inclusion as the early Jesus community did. They were the progressive liberals of their community, and appealed to a large portion of the masses. The Pharisees later evolved into what would become Rabbinic Judaism. Their ethics of love and compassion, justice, and inclusion are a central part of Jewish wisdom today.
This is important to say because using the term “Pharisee” as a pejorative slur is historically incorrect and has also been the root cause of antisemitism in Christianity over the centuries.
There was a sect of the Pharisees (the school of Shammai) that opposed the more progressive Jesus community. But this group of Pharisees were just as much opposed to their more progressive fellow Pharisees in the school of Hillel.
Because of this complex historical reality, as we tell the Jesus story we need to remember that many of the debates we encounter in the Jesus story were not between Christians and Jews (as Jesus himself was never a Christian). They were a debate within the Jewish community, between competing voices in Judaism, over what fidelity to their God looked like.
The first portion of our reading addresses whether things we eat defile us individually and whether how we relate to one another defile us collectively. This was a debate between Jesus and some of the Pharisees, and also a debate among the Pharisees themselves.
Second, this passage refers to blindness pejoratively too. Equating a disability like blindness with being inferior, sinful, or adversarial is harmful to people who live with disabilities every day. Again, today we can do better when we tell the Jesus story.
Later in this week’s reading, we encounter a story of a woman whom Matthew refers to as “Canaanite” and Mark calls “Syrophoenician” (Mark 7:26). When Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite, his listeners would have recalled the region’s ancient Indigenous populations within their own cultural stories and folklores of exodus, migration and settlement there.
The early Jesus movement was not monolithic on the underlying message of this passage. Some members of the early Jesus movement felt their purpose was more in-house: they believed they were to be about winning fellow Jews to follow the Jewish Jesus. Many of these members stayed in Judea, specifically Jerusalem, and recognized the apostleship of Peter and James (see Luke and Acts). Others in the early Jesus community believed they were called to win those outside of the Jewish community to become followers of Jesus. Paul and the Matthean community in Galilee held this view (compare the endings of Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s). In Luke’s gospel, all the disciples remain in Jerusalem and grow the Jesus movement among the Jewish people from there. But in Matthew’s gospel, all the disciples return to Galilee and grow the Jesus movement from there, embracing even those who were not Jews.
The story of the Canaanite woman supports the Matthean community’s view that Jesus teachings should be shared beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community.
What I love about this story is that we get a picture of a very human Jesus. He models being open to listening to those our theologies, interpretations, or views harm and being willing to grow and change. When we discover that something in our theology or our interpretations is harmful, this Jesus tells us it’s okay to learn and change. It’s okay to admit that once you held a harmful position, you now know more than you knew then, and your mind has changed.
This story forces us to embrace an evolving Jesus, not a fixed one. As the gospel of Luke says, “The child [Jesus] grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40).
When Jesus became an adult, did this growing and learning in wisdom stop? Did he just know everything as an adult? It may appeal to some to view Jesus this way, but it doesn’t align with our own experiences or how much we keep learning, evolving, and growing as adults.
Consider this passage in the New Testament book of Hebrews: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5.8)
Jesus learned obedience. And he learned it through those things he suffered. This sounds a lot like the way all of us learn: through experience and the hard way. It’s a picture of a very human Jesus who, when his understanding broadened, embraced change to become even more a source of healing and life to those he came in contact with.
Again, Matthew’s gospel refers to this woman as a Canaanite woman. I love that the person who teaches Jesus to see the world through a much larger lens is a woman. When Jesus refers to Jewish people as God’s children and non-Jews as less than dogs, she calls him out on the hurtfulness of his rhetoric. She also uses his language against him to show him how blinkered his understanding is. And Jesus models humility. She is right, and Jesus makes an about-face.
Remember, this is not just any Gentile woman. Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite.
This calls to my mind the words of James Cone in his classic, God of the Oppressed, and Philip Jenkins’ comments in Laying Down the Sword. Here are both:
“Native American theologian Robert Warrior [reads] the Exodus and Conquest narratives ‘with Canaanite eyes.’ The Exodus is not a paradigmatic event of liberation for indigenous peoples but rather an event of colonization.” (James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, Kindle Edition Location 130)
The story of the Exodus speaks of liberation to some oppressed communities, and to others, this same narrative speaks of colonization.
“The parallels are all the more painful as European colonialists over the centuries consciously used the conquest of Canaan as a model for their own activities.” (Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses, p. 20-21)
This month’s recommended reading from Renewed Heart Ministries is Randy Woodley’s Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonized Approach to Christian Doctrine. This volume is well worth reading as we also follow Jesus in listening to and growing our understanding of, relationships with, and reparations toward Indigenous populations today.
Who might our Canaanite women be today? Who might we need to listen to?
How can we follow the Jesus of this week’s reading and be willing to listen to communities our theologies and interpretation have harmed? Jesus followers who are men could begin by listening to the experiences of women. Jesus followers who are straight and cisgender could begin by listening to the experiences of those who identify as LGBTQ. Jesus followers who are White could listen to the experiences of people of color. Jesus followers who are upper class or middle class could listen to the experiences of those who spend every day trying to survive poverty. The list could go on and on.
What does it look like for us today to follow the Jesus in our reading this week? Again, who are the Canaanite women that we need to listen to today?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Think back to an experience from your own journey where you discovered you were wrong and that you needed a larger worldview through which to relate to others in our shared world? 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
When Working for Justice Feels Like Walking On Water
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!
Season 1, Episode 25: Matthew 14.22-33. Lectionary A, Proper 14
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/Tx_GTZXvuF8
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | August 11, 2022
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“This story was not written for our time and place, but for an audience that looked at the world very differently . . . Nevertheless, for us today, this story can be a very powerful metaphor.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:22-33)
The earliest canonical version of this story that we have is from the gospel of Mark (6:47-52). Matthew adds the detail of Peter following Jesus by walking on the water too. In Mark’s version, Peter’s attempt is absent. Also, in Mark’s earlier version, the disciples are left befuddled, in not-sure-what-to-think amazement (existemi, Mark 6:51). In Matthew, by contrast, the disciples affirm “Truly you are the Son of God.” We’ll talk about these two different endings in a moment.
First, let’s acknowledge how strange a story like this is to our post-enlightenment, science informed minds today. No one believes it’s possible for any of us to walk on water today.
This story was not written for our time and place, but for an audience that looked at the world very differently. Let’s look at a few of the possible roots of this story in the Hebrew Scriptures. And let’s keep in mind that in the Matthean Jesus community of Jesus followers, most of the early Jesus followers would have been Jewish.
Describing the Divine, the book of Job reads,
“[God] alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.” (Job 9:8)
Compare this to Job 38:16: “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?”
Next consider Psalms 77:16-19:
The waters saw you, God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.
The clouds poured down water,
the heavens resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.
Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.
Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.
In this ancient story, the waters were parted so the people could follow God’s “way” through the sea, whereas in Matthew, Peter attempts to walk on the sea like Jesus.
Before Jesus, Second Maccabees describes the oppressor of the Jewish people, Antiochus:
“Not content with this, Antiochus dared to enter the most holy temple in all the world, guided by Menelaus, who had become a traitor both to the laws and to his country. He took the holy vessels with his polluted hands, and swept away with profane hands the votive offerings that other kings had made to enhance the glory and honor of the place. Antiochus was elated in spirit . . . Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea.” (2 Maccabees 5:15-21)
Let’s add to this background a Hellenist legend in the culture surrounding Matthew’s Jesus and the community in which he lived. In many Hellenistic stories, characters cross the seas rapidly by various magical means. One story is the story of Orion, son of the god Poseidon. Orion could walk on water.
“Hesiod says that [Orion] was the son of Eurayle, the daughter of Minos, and of Poseidon, and that there was given him as a gift the power of walking on the waves as though upon the land.” (Eratosthenes, fragment 182, quoted in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, James D.G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, editors)
As strange as this story may be to us today, it would not have been strange at all for those who originally heard it. The story would instead have signaled to the hearers of Matthew’s gospel just what claims the Matthean community was making about Jesus. This story ends with the disciples explicitly proclaiming that Jesus, like the Hellenists’ Orion was “truly the Son of God.”
Again, there is another difference in Matthew’s story: Peter’s attempt to follow Jesus in walking on water. And this is the part of the story that I believe can still speak to us, today.
In the previous chapter of Matthew’s Jesus story, Jesus has just explained how his gospel of love for one another manifested in inclusion, justice, and shaping a community (“the kingdom”) safe for everyone (see our article from two weeks ago, “Kingdom” Parables for Social Change), was considered by the elites, the powerful, propertied, and privileged of his society. They considered it and him to be a weed that must be quickly weeded out before it took over the hearts of the masses, or like a corrupting leaven that if not dealt with would transform the entire dough of their society.
For us today, the story of Jesus walking on water and Peter’s attempt to follow him on those rough seas can be a very powerful metaphor. There are times when following Jesus in working toward a world that is safe, compassionate, and just for everyone is hard. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s harder than it is. But I want to be honest about how difficult, at times, it is. Today, following Jesus means standing up to the winds and waves of racism, White supremacy, Christian nationalism, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, economic elitism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, and so many more. And though these societal issues are not directly named in the Jesus story, his story does model the principles of being a source of healing and life in our world when facing those things that do harm. The principles for how we are to respond are laid out in the Jesus story for us to apply in our time and context.
When we seek to stand up against those things that do harm today the way Jesus stood up to systemic harm in his own society, we can find ourselves outside the boat at times. In those times, our material survival could be seen as impossible as walking on water. This is why in many grassroots communities of Jesus followers working toward some form of liberation the saying is often repeated, “God makes a way out of no way.”
Sometimes following Jesus, making the world a better place, and even surviving economically, socially, or materially feels as impossible as walking on water. But that is what it means to choose to follow Jesus in his work. In moments like this, the words of this beautiful story mean something to me:
“Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
And when Peter tried to follow, but because of the waves and the wind became afraid and found himself beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” The story says that immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him with the words, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
So this week, let’s be honest. Sometimes following Jesus in working for social change, whether within faith communities or outside of them, can be hard and even feel impossible. When we become afraid. That’s okay. You’re in the right story. Keep doing what you can. Don’t lose heart. Don’t give up.
Together, even if at times it feels like we are being called to step out of the boat to walk on water, we are making a way out of no way. Together, we are not alone. We don’t know what tomorrow will hold. But I believe our efforts will pay off.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Think of times in your own experience when following the teachings of Jesus felt like getting out of the boat and walking on water 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 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
Kingdom Parables for Social Change
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 23: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. Lectionary A, Proper 12
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/oG16JTOGXQ8
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
“Kingdom” Parables for Social Change
Herb Montgomery | July 28, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“When we discover we have been wrong, that’s okay. That’s a good thing. We can make old, death-dealing interpretations give way to new, life-giving interpretations. We can hold on to old, life-giving interpretations too, and adopt new interpretations that we think are more life-giving as new information is discovered. When what we thought was life-giving turns out not to be, we can hold on to the good old, letting go of the bad old, and replace it with the new. The object is not to protect everything that is old, but to ask whether what we are believing and practicing is truly life giving for all.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied.
He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)
There are so many beautiful themes in this week’s reading for us to dive into. First let’s consider the language here that refers to Jesus’ vision for human community as a “kingdom.”
Remember, Jesus’ gospel in these stories was not instructions for nor good news about a pathway to a post mortem heaven. Jesus’ gospel was good news that announced and called people to a new vision for human community in the here and now. A human community where those presently being marginalized and pushed to the undersides of society find a world that is safe, just, and compassionate for all.
Kingdom
The term “kingdom” combined the imperial culture of the Roman empire with the restoration hopes of the indigenous Jewish people of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee living under Roman imperial colonization. It is the language of that time and place. Today we rightly recognize the kingdom language as hierarchical and patriarchal. It is my studied opinion that we would harmonize more with Jesus’ vision of community cast in the gospels if we referred to this community in more democratic terms, in ways reflected in the democratic principles practiced in the book of Acts by early Jesus communities.
I also argue that the cosmic, post resurrection Jesus became the King of the early Jesus communities. Kingdom imagery was intended to help the church replace any earthly “king,” and make way for a more egalitarian community. Consider the following:
“And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.” (Matthew 23.9-10)
This same principle could be applied: Don’t have kings among yourself, you have one King, Jesus. All of you are to relate to each other non hierarchically as equals:
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. (Matthew 23:8, emphasis added.)
Again, this language attempts to communicate egalitarian siblinghood and yet even this version only mentions “brothers.” Today, we might say “brothers and sisters,” or more simply “siblings.” We can push this language to be more inclusive of women and nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and other people, and still be in perfect harmony with the trajectory of the intention of the original egalitarian and non-hierarchical passage.
Mustard (See also Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18-19; Gospel of Thomas 20)
The parable of the mustard seed is a political parable, not a botanical one. Botanically, mustard don’t grow into trees at all. They grow into shrubs of average size. This story is meant to be understood in the context of the political hopes of Jesus’ Jewish community. Consider the promise made to this people in Ezekiel:
“This is what the Sovereign God says, ‘I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.’” (Ezekiel 17:22-23)
A tree being used as a metaphor for a kingdom or empire was common in the scriptures. Consider how Babylon itself was described with the same language.
“Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and on it was food for all. Under it the wild animals found shelter, and the birds lived in its branches; from it every creature was fed . . . The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth, with beautiful leaves and abundant fruit, providing food for all, giving shelter to the wild animals, and having nesting places in its branches for the birds—Your Majesty, you are that tree! You have become great and strong; your greatness has grown until it reaches the sky, and your dominion extends to distant parts of the earth.” (Daniel 4:12, 20-22)
In saying that Jesus’ vision for human community would ultimately grow from tiny beginnings to the fulfillment of Jewish hopes of restoration and independence, the gospel authors were appealing to the Jewish people’s hopes in the midst of their imperial colonization by Rome.
This can be challenging for contemporary Christians to wrap their minds and hearts around, but the hard work of reading the Jesus story from the perspectives of marginalized and excluded communities is work worth doing.
Calling Jesus’ vision of human community a mustard seed was about more than its small beginnings. Most of the agricultural world at that time deemed the mustard plant a weed. So Jesus’ kingdom vision for human community was being likened in this parable to a weed. This called out how Jesus’ vision for what human community could be was deemed by the elite, powerful, propertied and privileged: a weed that must be speedily eliminated before it took over the imaginations of the masses.
Yeast (Luke 13:20-21; Thomas 96)
In the Passover traditions, leaven was a corrupting influence, and unleavened bread symbolized purity. So in this week’s reading, Jesus’ kingdom vision for human community is being likened to something that corrupted. Again, the elite, powerful, propertied and privileged considered this vision for human community that Jesus was casting a corrupting influence among the masses. If something wasn’t done about it quickly, it would permeate the entire society that the elites were profiting off of.
Historically, democracy was seen as a corrupting influence in societies that practiced monarchy or other forms of hierarchy. Today, even non-authoritarian, more democratic forms of socialism and communism are deemed as a corrupting influence by global capitalists who profit off the masses. (Consider the history of U.S. policy in relation to Vietnam and Cuba.)
Jesus’ love for the poor and his vision of a human community that practiced wealth redistribution, debt cancellation, resource sharing, and mutual aid inspired the poor and marginalized in his society, and benefitted those being exploited. It threatened the elites. Truly Jesus’ preaching was corrupting leaven and a noxious weed to them.
Priority of hidden treasure or a pearl of great price
The next parable characterizes Jesus’ kingdom not as a weed or a corrupting influence but as treasure: a pearl worth a person selling everything they have to obtain it. This language aims squarely at Jesus’ wealthy listeners who had much to lose by embracing Jesus’ vision for human community. Yes, the changes would cost their bottom line, but what they would get in return would be worth so much more. It would result in a world that would be safer, more compassionate, and more just for everyone including themselves. Notice how this language is repeatedly focused toward the wealthy in the Jesus story:
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.” (Mark 10:21)
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)
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)
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)
In the parables of the treasure located in the field and the pearl of great price, those who discovered it sold everything they had to obtain it. And in the book of Acts, wealthy Jesus followers did the same to create the kind of community Jesus’ teachings inspired them toward:
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2:45)
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 4:34-35)
A Net
Also in this week’s reading, we bump into a theme repeated in Matthew’s gospel. A wide net gathers all. Some people are labeled as good and some as wicked, and a sorting takes place at the end of the age. That “end” includes a purging or burning metaphor for the wicked. Given how long this week’s discussion is, I want to re-share last week’s critique of that way of viewing the world.
Things Old and New
In Jesus’ time, teachers of the Torah who embraced Jesus‘ kingdom paradigm would rightly be expected to bring out both old, universal truths and new ones. This reminds me today that it’s okay for Jesus followers, even within traditional expressions of Christianity, to present interpretations and teachings that mix old and new.
When we discover we have been wrong, that’s okay. That’s a good thing. We can make old, death-dealing interpretations give way to new, life-giving interpretations. We can hold on to old, life-giving interpretations too, and adopt new interpretations that we think are more life-giving as new information is discovered. When what we thought was life-giving turns out not to be, we can hold on to the good old, letting go of the bad old, and replace it with the new. The object is not to protect everything that is old, but to ask whether what we are believing and practicing is truly life giving for all. If we hold to this standard, it will produce a Jesus follower that isn’t afraid of the new.
Our goal is to be a source of healing and life and change for the better for everyone. And in this way, Jesus followers can, as our reading states, brings out of our storerooms new treasures as well as old.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How do these parables inform your own justice work? 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
How Not to View the World
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 22: Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43. Lectionary A, Proper 11
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/oG16JTOGXQ8
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
How Not To View The World
Herb Montgomery | July 21, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“We don’t need to label some as weeds with the sick assurance that one day they will be destroyed. How awful! Nor should we look at the injustices as our world as things we can do nothing about except endure until some point in the future when outside forces will set things right. We can do something about injustice, here, now, today.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’
Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)
I’m thankful we discussed the principle of all or nothing a couple weeks ago. I didn’t realize it would also prepare us to discuss this passage, and I’m thankful for that foundation. If you have not read The Destructiveness of All or Nothing I encourage you to go back and do so.
Our reading this week is an isolated parable found only in Matthew among the four canonical versions of the Jesus story. Outside of our canon, there is a version of the parable in the gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, ‘My Fathers’ kingdom can be compared to someone who had seed. Their enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The person didn’t let anyone pull out the weeds, “so that you don’t pull out the wheat along with the weeds,” they said to them. ‘On the day of the harvest, the weeds will be obvious. Then they’ll be pulled out and burned.’” (Gospel of Thomas, 57)
This parable probably circulated among the Matthean community orally before the gospel of Matthew was written. It wasn’t a saying of Jesus’ within the Markan community, the Johannine community, or the larger cosmopolitan Lukean community.
When a problematic passage only appears in one gospel, it gives me pause. We don’t need to throw it out, but should practice the utmost care with it. It’s difficult to attribute a reading like this to the historical Jewish Jesus who is characterized in most of the gospels as an inclusive, prophet of the poor from Galilee. It is much easier to attribute the passage to the Galilean, Jesus-following community: it reflects the concerns of that young community in protecting its own purity. Concern for protecting community purity, calling people “weeds,” and looking forward to their destruction doesn’t sound like the Jesus we encounter in the rest of Matthew. It sounds more like the apocalyptic John the Baptist than Jesus.
What this passage does do is reflect the worldview of the original audience of Matthew’s gospel. Apocalypticism divided our world between the seen and the unseen. The unseen world was composed of both good cosmic powers and evil comic powers, and that world was connected to our visible world. Good people were also connected to the good cosmic powers, while “evil” people were connected or even controlled by evil cosmic powers. We see this worldview expressed in passages such as this one from the book of Ephesians,
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
For the early, Jewish Jesus communities who subscribed to this worldview (not all did), Rome would have been the earthly, visible conduit of the destructive unseen cosmic powers of evil.
This way of looking at the world was somewhat pessimistic, as well. The world was what it was, controlled by whom or whatever. Nothing would change until the “end of the age” when there would be a great reversal and evil powers (and thus evil people) would be no more. Some of the early Jesus communities explained the world around them in these apocalyptic ways, where there wasn’t much one could do but patiently endure the present injustices of our world, holding on till the day of “harvest” when the “wheat” would be gathered up while the “weeds” would be destroyed.
Again, it is much easier to accept that this passage has its source in the Matthean community and was attributed to Jesus than that it came directly from Jesus but only the Mattheans community remembered it. Above all else, this way of looking at the world is deeply problematic and destructive. Let’s explore why.
First, we know from human history that when we forget that we are all connected and all part of one another, and we begin to define some among us as “evil,” or as “weeds” to use our parable’s language, it’s not long before those we deem to be weeds we then exclude, marginalize, scapegoat, and harm. Even if this parable says to leave “the weeds” alone, when we label someone as a weed and estimate them to be evil, we never make it our practice to let them be. We always set out at once to weed them out.
Second, it is intrinsically harmful to others’ humanity and to our own to look at fellow human beings as evil creatures who will one day be eradicated. We can’t help but seek to eradicate them in some form now, today. Add to this social dynamic of labeling some as evil or “of the devil,” the language of rounding them up and burning them. This is a holocaust. That is how millions of Jewish people were murdered last century. This is how people were tortured and killed during the Inquisition. This is how women were hanged or drowned as witches. There are so many more horrific examples in human history.
As I said in the article The Destructiveness of All or Nothing, “wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” And we need to judge this way of looking at our world and the people in our world by deeds it has produced throughout history. By those results, this way of looking at the world is the weed, not the people it maligns.
Today, it is not life-giving to look at the world through an apocalyptic lens. We don’t need to label some as weeds with the sick assurance that one day they will be destroyed. How awful! Nor should we look at the injustices as our world as things we can do nothing about except endure until some point in the future when outside forces will set things right. We can do something about injustice, here, now, today.
Is there anything that we can redeem from this passage?
There is one thing. And it is a corrective. This passage gives us the Biblical phrase, “gnashing of teeth.” Too often, Christians have assumed that “weeping and gnashing of teeth” refers to the physical agony those in the “fires” of this parable experience. But the gnashing of teeth is not a Biblical expression about being tormented. It’s a Biblical expression about being angry, so angry that they grit or gnash their teeth together.
Consider a few examples:
“God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me.” (Job 16:9)
“The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them…” (Psalms 37:12)
“When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him.” (Acts 7:54)
In the gospels, people gnash their teeth when they see those they excluded being welcomed to the center of God’s just future while those who were so assured they were so much better and deserving to be at the center are left outside because of their own exclusionary practices. As you sow, you reap. Or to put it simply, people gnash their teeth when angry at seeing who is being “let in” when they themselves aren’t. As the gospel of Luke explains, “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out” (Luke 13:28)
If any are excluded in the just world we are working towards and creating, it will be those who make it a practice of labelling others as weeds. It should give us pause to see the intrinsic destructiveness of looking at the world through the same lens as the authors of this week’s reading. Today, we can and must do better.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does labelling some people as weeds harmfully impacted the way you relate to others? What better way of relating to others who are different from you have you found? 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
The Destructiveness of All or Nothing
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 20: Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30. Lectionary A, Proper 9
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/0fZtVrHzL7g
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
The Destructiveness of All or Nothing
Herb Montgomery | July 7, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“By taking the Bible as an un-nuanced whole they are setting themselves up to always be
destined to exhibit “deeds” that mix life-giving and death-dealing practices. That’s why our own journeys within Christianity are often so complicated. All-or-nothing approaches set us up to try to follow a Christianity that is both extraordinarily beautiful in some regards and a nightmare in others. We must learn to choose between those things that are Christian but death-dealing and those things that are Christian and life-giving.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)
There’s a lot in this week’s passage to unpack that could guide our justice work today. I love how our reading begins with John and Jesus being likened to pipers. John played a dirge; Jesus’ pipe called hearers to dance. Neither gets their desired response. John gets beheaded. Jesus gets crucified. But in the end, “Wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
Two things resonate with me here. First is the feminine language for wisdom, in harmony with the Hebrew tradition. Second, she is proved right by the deeds to which she gives birth: wisdom produces deeds. It’s for us to discern from our own experience and the experiences of those not like ourselves whether what we think is wisdom has produced deeds that are life-giving or death dealing. It’s another way of saying, “by their fruits you will know them.”
Wisdom.
Is proved right.
By her deeds.
Are the actions being produced by so-called wisdom death-dealing? If they are, then we need to rethink what we have deemed to be wise.
I want to apply this to our faith tradition in a practical way for a moment. We can apply this principle to our expression of Christianity, our interpretations of the Bible, and the Bible itself, as well as the Jesus story within the Bible.
Let’s begin with the Bible. The Bible is not monolithic. The more one actually reads the Bible, the more one encounters passages in the scriptures that are life-giving and passages that are death-dealing. The Bible authors were trying make sense out of the world they were living in, within the bounds of their own time and space.
So this impacts how we relate to the Bible as a whole. I want to caution against an all-or-nothing kind of thinking. We can be honest about things in our sacred text that are not life-giving but destructive (its affirmation of slavery and texts of terror used against women are just two examples). And we can at the same time hold on to the things in the Bible that are beautifully good. We can hold on to the things that are life-giving, deeming them of enough positive value for us, yet not throwing our entire sacred text out because not everything in our sacred text has proven life-giving.
By their fruits we will know know them. Jesus practiced this method of interpreting his own sacred texts (cf. Luke 4:18-19 and Isaiah 61:1-2). We can take the good and let go of the bad by rightly discerning, or, to use Biblical language, “rightly dividing the word of truth” by testing passages by their fruit.
We can follow this same practice as we interpret specific passages as well. Sometimes it’s not the passage that is the problem but the way we have interpreted it. So we can hold our interpretations of texts to this same test: whether their fruit is life-giving or death-dealing, healing or destructive.
We can apply this to Christianity, holding its practices and doctrines to the test of “wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” And we can evaluate our interpretations of teachings we credit to the historical Jesus too. We can affirm the life-giving value of the Jesus story while also being honest about where the authors writing that story reflected the concerns and struggles of the early Jesus community out of which these stories evolved more than they reported direct transcripts from the historical Jesus. We can begin to embrace the humanity of Jesus himself, who “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and people” (Luke 2:52).
For those who object (I hear these voices loudly in my own head at times), it’s helpful to remember that there is really nothing more to be said if someone who views the Bible, or Christianity, or the Jesus story as an all-or-nothing deal, a book in which the authors never made mistakes or brought in their or their community’s concerns. By taking the Bible as an un-nuanced whole they are setting themselves up to always be destined to exhibit “deeds” that mix life-giving and death-dealing practices. That’s why our own journeys within Christianity are often so complicated. All-or-nothing approaches set us up to try to follow a Christianity that is both extraordinarily beautiful in some regards and a nightmare in others. We must learn to choose between those things that are Christian but death-dealing and those things that are Christian and life-giving. An all-or-nothing approach puts people in a place where they have to grapple with whether they are even Christian at all when nuance would give them a way to embrace the good while rejecting the bad.
Ultimately, we must instead learn to practice knowing something by its fruit or the deeds it produces. Even our sacred text can be embraced as being inspired by the Divine while having been written by humans. This allows us and it to not always get it right: neither it nor we are infallible. We are simply reaching for and attempting to find ways of answering the big questions that are life-giving. Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we do not. And some questions can’t be answered yet. It’s up to us to hold everything with an open hand, asking questions from our own to-the-best-of-our-knowledge context today. We can let go of things that are death-dealing and hold on to those things that are life-giving. And when we discover that something we thought was life-giving actually isn’t, we can then let go of that, giving way to making room to embrace that which is. We can always be in search of the most life-giving way to follow the life-giving Jesus today, not being threatened by discovering we’ve been wrong about something, and always reaching for what is true.
I feel like that’s enough this week for most of us to chew on, but there are two final things I want to address in our reading.
The exclusivity at the end our reading sounds more like the gospel of John than the Jesus we typically encounter in the synoptics. It may reflect the claims of the early Jesus community and their efforts to communicate Jesus’s importance through the language of exceptionalism.
Today, we can do better. We don’t have to put others down for Jesus and his teachings to be intrinsically valuable. And we don’t have to make Jesus the only source of life-giving things to emphasize the value of his teachings.
Lastly, I want to address the yoke of Jesus being easy and his burden being light. One’s social location matters here. This statement was addressed to those who were worn out from being over-burdened in that society. To them, the yoke of Jesus was much easier than the yoke of the system they were trying survive in. Jesus’ system of resource-sharing, mutual aid, and taking responsibility for ensuring the care and well being of one another was way easier than every person or family being for themselves in a society where every moment they were teetering between survival and catastrophe, living each day one at a time. Again, this statement was given to those whom that system had worn out and overburdened. For them, Jesus’ yoke/burden was easy and light. But for those benefiting from the present system, change would be different. It was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19.24) and embrace the changes Jesus’ teachings called them and us to.
Again, there’s a lot in this week’s gospel lectionary reading. What in our reading this week is resonating with you?
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 relate to the Bible or Christianity in nuanced ways, holding on to those things that are life-giving and rejecting those elements that are death-dealing. 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
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.
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
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