Lightening the Burden of Others
Herb Montgomery | December 21, 2018
“This Christmas, we may not all have someone whose economic debt we can cancel. But are there other types of forgiveness we could embrace? Are there reparations for past wrongs we still need to make? Does someone else’s peace and reconciliation depend on my apology? Can I participate in restoring Jesus’ distributive justice, especially for the marginalized?”
“To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.” (Luke 1:77-78)
Since I was young, my all-time favorite Christmas story has been Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I don’t think it’s really possible for me to even get into the festive spirit every year without partaking of this story in some form.
This year, I sat down with my younger daughter to watch the film The Man Who Invented Christmas. I wanted to see it last year when it came out, but we live in such a small town that it never screened at our local theater. When I was finally able to watch it at home, I loved it. In the movie, one line from Dickens comes when Charles’ father reminds him, “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” I love the transformation of Scrooge in the story where he learns this lesson.
I hope this is how I will be remembered when my time here is up: as one who lightened burdens. But why should we stop at lightening burdens? Many burdens are made and could be eliminated entirely! This line in the film made me think about similar words from Matthew’s gospel. Jesus says:
“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 11:28-30)
The Gospels’ Christmas stories are rooted in liberating people from the weariness and burden-bearing that any form of oppression places on them. This teaching is in every gospel. In Luke’s gospel, for example, we read of Zechariah who speaks prophetically of John the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus. According to Zechariah, John’s role would be:
“To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.” (Luke 1:77-78)
There is an order here that struck me. First, “salvation” here could just as easily be translated as “liberation.” “Salvation” was not a preoccupation with an afterlife. Salvation in first century Jewish culture was much more about participating in making this world a better place in the here and now. Many of the Jewish people in Jesus’ day longed to be liberated from Roman occupation and oppression, and they tied this liberation to the idea of forgiveness. As we covered last week, the Hebrew concept of Divine forgiveness included collective forgiveness for the social sins of injustice and exploitation of the vulnerable. This forgiveness was not privatized, and not about individuals and their personal morality. Some believed these social wrongs explained their repeated occupation by Gentile Empires: foreign occupation was seen as a punishment that would end when the people had made reparations for collective wrongs and Divine forgiveness resulted. Liberation would result from “the tender mercy of our God” forgiving social exploitation.
Please notice the order here. Forgiveness would not result from Divine wrath being appeased by a violent death on a cross. An already existing mercy in the heart of the Divine is the cause of the forgiveness. Following this, humans who chose to mirror this forgiveness toward one another would then be participating in a wealth redistribution (debt cancellation) toward shaping a distributive justice society which would include those who were previously being marginalized.
In the gospels, when forgiveness isn’t from the Divine to humans but between humans, the concept has an economic context. (See A Prayer for Debts Cancelled.) Forgiveness wasn’t initially about people facing oppression unconditionally forgiving their oppressors. Instead the call to forgiveness was originally aimed at the economic elite, and meant a Jubilee-like cancelling of debts. It was a cry for the privileged and powerful to forgive all debts on behalf of those living under debt burdens. Talk about lightening the burdens of another. What would your life be like if every one of your debts were forgiven in one day?
Human-to-human debt forgiveness was to be rooted in the already-existing forgiveness in the heart of the Divine, the One whose heart was already full of mercy. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus explains it like this:
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:23-35)
Notice that the original forgiveness was rooted in the creditor’s tender mercy. When the debtor could not pay, the creditor simply forgave the debt. There were no conditions and no contingencies. Initial forgiveness should have awakened a spirit of forgiveness in the debtor. Just as the saying goes that hurt people hurt people, forgiven people should forgive people.
But that’s not how Jesus’ story goes. The debtor in the story didn’t internalize the lesson and becoming more forgiving. Instead, he turned to his own debtors and exacted payment. His own forgiveness had no conditions but was given freely in mercy. But if the forgiven person failed to internalize the ethics of forgiveness and apply them to how they related to others, they would forfeit the forgiveness so freely given to them. There was no contingency in obtaining freely given forgiveness. But there was a condition for keeping the freely given forgiveness. One could lose liberating forgiveness if they failed to forgive toward their own debtors.
It’s also very important to note that Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness included reparations. Those who followed him would not only forgive debts, but also offer reparations for past exploitations. Consider the story of the wealthy tax collector, Zacchaeus.
“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. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’” (Luke 19:7-8)
Forgiveness in Jesus’ paradigm was not individualistic freedom from condemnation, but liberation from debt, reparation for exploitation, and yes, letting go of past abuses in the context of those reparations. To call for reconciliation without liberation or reparation is to perpetuate injustice, violence, and oppression. Peace and reconciliation are to be the fruit of forgiveness and also the fruit of justice restored and reparations made. Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness included all of these elements.
A community initiative was to set in motion a change in the world: the forgiven were to become forgiving.
All of this is implied in our text this week:
“To give his people the knowledge of salvation [or liberation] through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.” (Luke 1:77-78)
The myth of redemptive suffering destructively teaches that Jesus’ cross makes possible the forgiveness of God, but this text teaches the opposite. Knowing salvation or liberation was to come from forgiveness rooted not in a violent death, but in an already existing tender mercy in the heart of God. God’s mercy, leading to forgiveness, leading to liberation from oppression and transforming people becoming a collectively just and safe society would be like the rising of the sun on a brand new day. It would bring new life and a new hope. It would be a dayspring to us from heaven.
This language harks back to Jeremiah’s words in Lamentations:
“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22)
Discussions on forgiveness today are almost always directed toward survivors, calling for them to give even more. But in the Jesus story, forgiveness was initiated by a wealthy creditor or oppressor toward those in their debt. These types of debt cancellations have been more common throughout history then you might guess. An especially insightful and relevant article was written by Mehreen Khan back in 2015 explains this history. I would encourage everyone to contemplate it: The biggest debt write-offs in the history of the world. In it Khan rightly states:
“Loans were less a way to make money than they were a means to help one’s fellow man. Given that all worldly wealth and property belonged ultimately to God, a creditor’s rights over it were temporary rather than absolute.”
Khan goes on to speak about the ancient Babylonian practice of smashing debt tablets and modern European and other global examples. These examples are inspiring as we consider present and future possibilities for debt forgiveness.
This Christmas, we may not all have someone whose economic debt we can cancel. But are there other types of forgiveness we could embrace? Are there reparations for past wrongs we still need to make? Does someone else’s peace and reconciliation depend on my apology? Can I participate in restoring Jesus’ distributive justice, especially for the marginalized?
Let’s keep the spirit of this festive time of year in these ways, and so set in motion a more beautiful world today and for tomorrow.
“To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.” (Luke 1:77-78)
HeartGroup Application
Last month, we asked our HeartGroups to participate in a show of love initiated by Auburn Seminary in New York toward the Tree of Life* Or L’Simcha Congregation.
I’m happy to share that this generated nearly 2,000 messages of love and support! You can read these messages at: http://bit.ly/treeoflifethanks
Take a moment this week and together as a group read through some of these.
A Special Request
Also we would like to remind each of you our special request from you as the end of 2018 approaches.
Renewed Heart Ministries has been in existence for over a decade now, but over the last four years we have gone through transition. We have become a “welcoming and affirming” ministry. We have also become more intentional and passionate about the intersection of the teachings of Jesus in the gospels and our work today of love, compassion, action and justice in our larger society. It’s been a time of rebirth and rebuilding here at RHM, and we believe we are a much healthier ministry with a much healthier focus, as a result.
Yet these changes have not been without deep loss. We’re asking you to help us avoid a budget shortfall for 2018 and be able to plan for 2019. We have many projects in the works for next year that we would love to see come to fruition. We would love to be able to expand both our online presence, as well as the number of free, teaching seminars we conduct across the nation. An initial edit has also been completed for my upcoming book that will be a sequel to Finding the Father. The title for this new, second book will be Finding Jesus. We would love to see this manuscript be able to go through its final stages and go on to publication this next year.
As many of you already know, to help RHM this year, a very generous donor has pledged to match all donations to this ministry for both this past November and this present December.
If you have been blessed this year by RHM’s work, take a moment this holiday season and support our work.
You can do so by going to our website at renewedheartministries.com and clicking “donate” or you can mail your contribution to:
Renewed Heart Ministries
P.O. Box 1211
Lewisburg, WV 24901
If you would like your donation to be matched just make sure it’s postmarked by December 31.
Help us continue to grow this ministry in 2019 as we, together, follow Jesus more deeply in the healing work of love, compassion, action and justice for the marginalized.
Thank you in advance.
I love each of you, dearly.
There will not be an eSight next week due to the holidays.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year!
We’ll see you in 2019.
Healing Our World, Part 2
Herb Montgomery | November 29, 2018
“Exclusion, whether racism, misogyny, homophobia, or whatever, is already within many us. What are our faith traditions doing to challenge and change us so that we can participate in making our larger society more compassionate, inclusive, just and safe for everyone? Are they helping us be more just, or are they embedding injustice more deeply into our souls?”
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” (Matthew 12:33)
Before we begin this week, I want to take a moment and thank all of you for support during this year’s #GivingTuesday. With all of our matching-funds donors we raised just under $6000 to help Renewed Heart Ministries grow and I can’t thank you enough. Our work resonates with so many of you and I’m so thankful for your support. We are looking forward to doing even more in this coming new year.
This last October, we ran an article entitle Healing the World. Shortly afterward my friend Joel Avery sent me a story about deep racist medical neglect and abuse in a healthcare facility then owned by the Christian denomination I grew up in. If we are to be agents of healing and change, we must admit where we have been the source of injustice rather than healing.
“I think sometimes we believe that the very nature of the healthcare industry, and the particular view of healthcare that we have here at Advent Health University insulates us from the ills of society.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Lucy Byard is a name not often remembered inside or outside of the Seventh-day Adventist Church – understandably so. She arrived at Washington Sanitarium and Hospital (an Adventist Hospital) on October 14, 1943, in critical condition.
Because of her condition, the hospital admitted her immediately. There was just one problem – she was Black and Washington Sanitarium did not admit Black people. Once they discovered her ethnicity, they removed her from the room they had given her and made her wait in the hallway in a robe.
Hospital managers made arrangements to transfer Byard from the Maryland-based hospital to Freedman’s Hospital, the Black hospital in Washington, DC. No one at Washington Sanitarium examined or treated her before they transferred her.
They eventually transported Byard to Washington, DC not in an ambulance but in a car.
Unfortunately, she died at Freedman’s Hospital before doctors could treat her there.
Lucy Byard died after being rejected from an Adventist hospital. On that day in 1943, healthcare workers decided to exemplify the worst that society has to offer.
Byard’s death incensed African-American Adventists in the Washington, DC area. As a result, African-Americans created an advocacy group and sought equality of treatment in the Adventist Church.
In response the church created a half measure not requested by those who protested—a segregated church structure. [To this day Adventism in North America has both Black and White Conferences.]
I wish the Lucy Byard incident had a more Hollywood ending. I wish some white knight at Washington Sanitarium rode in on his trusty steed to stand up to racism and save the day. I know this story makes us uncomfortable. However, it is important for the Lucy Byards of the world to be remembered and for their stories to be told, despite how much it hurts us to tell them, and to remember that we live in a world where these things can happen.
Black History Month is not only about celebrating the accomplishments and societal contributions of a particular group of people. It is also about the recognition that part of what makes those achievements so extraordinary is the pain and anguish overcome in order to make those accomplishments a reality.
Moreover, to remember Lucy Byard is to be fully cognizant of the fact that ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
Equality, justice, and fair treatment do not happen by accident and are not transferred through osmosis. It requires effort on our part to make the decision every day to do the right thing. Let us resolve to use this ministry to move the world forward.” (Dr. Jason Hines)
For more background about Lucy Byard and her story see Black History Month: Lucy Byard; Death in D.C. and Lucy Byard (1877-1943).)
Christians have a long history of reflecting the social ills of their society rather than being a part of movements for change. In his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963), Dr. King wrote, “Here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.”
Race is not the only issue where many faith traditions are on the wrong side of history. The same denomination whose hospital turned Byard away is today faltering on the path to gender equality with a century-too-late debate on whether or not women can be ordained as pastors. They also, with most faith traditions today, are still the source of much of the exclusion, pain and damage experienced by many of my LGBTQ family, friends and neighbors.
Yet it, like others, is a religious tradition that has grown out of the teachings of the same Jewish teacher that taught:
“You are the salt of the earth.
“You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:13-14)
It is perfectly appropriate, given Christianity’s long history, to ask Jesus’ question:
“But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (Matthew 5:13)
I’m often embarrassed to be associated with Christianity. The salt really has lost its saltiness. We can be added over and over to whatever issue, and rather than changing the flavor toward justice, we instead take on the flavor of the social ills around us. When it comes to justice, inclusion, or equity, often the outcry is that the church is being negatively influenced by culture. Truth be told, it always has been.
We are people living within time, space, and cultures. And we must ask: are we adding the flavor of justice, inclusion, and equity to our society or are we are taking on the bigotry, fear and exclusion we see in our culture around us? Exclusion, whether racism, misogyny, homophobia, or whatever, is already within many us. What are our faith traditions doing to challenge and change us so that we can participate in making our larger society more compassionate, inclusive, just and safe for everyone? Are they helping us be more just, or are they embedding injustice more deeply into our souls?
A few weeks ago I shared with friends a Washington Post article on the historic level of diversity we are now seeing in among incoming Congressional freshmen in Washington, D.C.. While several of my Christian friends know how much representation matters and saw the news as a sign of hope, a few of my other Christian friends saw it as bad news, as slander against White people. I had to shake my head.
Large sectors of Christianity here in North America today are primarily focused on individuals attaining postmortem bliss rather than engaging a present and local work in harmony with Jesus’ prayer for people’s quality of life to become “on earth as it is in heaven.” (see Matthew 6:10, Luke 4:18, and 6:20-21) This is a problem! A faith tradition focused on attaining heaven with very little emphasis on participating in liberating societal change is extremely vulnerable to glossing over oppression, marginalization, and exploitation in the present. I’m at a loss to understand how such an escapist tradition could be built on the Jesus who taught about liberating the oppressed in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who spoke truth to power and called for societal injustice, oppression and violence be put right. (See Amos 5:24)
The kind of Christianity that’s focused on postmortem bliss is too easily co-opted by those at the top of social structures. It becomes complicit in oppression, whether it be in matters of economics, race, gender or sexual equity, or other issues. Mainstream Christianity has played a role, sometimes the central role, in damaging marginalized groups, and the idea of getting to heaven has been used to keep marginalized people pacified. In the gospels, we don’t read of Jesus going from place to place trying to get people to say a special prayer so that they could go to heaven when they die. He brought liberation into people’s lives in the here-and-now, today.
This is not easy to hear if, like me, you identify with the Christian tradition, but I imagine that non-Christians might positively resonate with much of it.
As followers of Jesus we’re called to bring economic healing, racial healing, gender-inequity healing, political healing, religious healing. We are called to bring healing. Full stop.
But how? Where do we start when we have such a history of quite the opposite?
First, we must be willing to name or admit societal ills, and we must own where we have played a part in those ills in the past.
We must learn from those affected most by our past actions, including those whose have lived experiences as survivors. Then, where we are able, we must work for reparation, transformation, and healing alongside those who have been hurt.
The story and teachings of Jesus can inform each step of this process, too.
But we must first learn to listen to those we’ve hurt.
I believe we can change. I believe we as Christians can be re-introduced to our Jesus and his teachings. This process will be challenging. I know. For some it will be deeply unsettling. For others it will be a welcomed relief! I encourage us to lean into whatever challenges we may find rather than away from them. It’s worth it. Jesus once contrasted letting go of the present to take hold of the new. A world of inclusion and connectedness will become a reality when we are fully willing to let go of the one we already created:
“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.” (Matthew 13:45-46 )
Another world is possible. It’s not easy. It is work. But it’s possible, and worth it.
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” (Matthew 12:33)
HeartGroup Application
Last night I attended the Hunger Summit event here in Lewisburg sponsored by the Greenbrier County branch of the National Poor People’s Campaign, a Call for Moral Revival. This event was designed to increase public understanding of the challenges encountered by those who live in poverty here in Appalachia. Those who spoke relayed firsthand experiences with poverty and then we all were invited to participate in creating and implementing possible solutions.
This week, as we begin the holiday season, as a Heartgroup, choose some avenue in your community to become involved in and engage in the work of healing our world.
This is a time of year when want is not only felt, but hearts become more open to caring for one another. I want to encourage you to get involved in your community as a group and make a difference.
Write in and share your experience with us here at RHM. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Keep living in love, compassion action and justice. Keep following the one whom many celebrate this time of year “in whose name all oppression shall cease.” (John Sullivan Dwight, O Holy Night.)
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly.
Happy Holidays.
I’ll see you next week.
Justice, Grace & Charity: Part 2
by Herb Montgomery | November 16, 2018
“While we work toward a better world we must also be about mitigating the damage being done in this one. But do not think for a moment that if we have only offered charity to those this world makes hungry, poor, mournful, or last, we are done with our job of following Jesus. Jesus helped those who were suffering before him, yes. He also rode his donkey into the Temple, the symbolic heart of the Temple state to which he belonged, and disruptively overturned tables to protest the Temple’s economic exploitation of the poor. Christians today excel at charity. We are not so good at justice.”
“But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.” (Luke 11:41)
My family and I were visiting the Atlantic coast for Crystal’s birthday. Though West Virginia is beautiful, Crystal’s first love is the ocean. We had gone out for a birthday dinner and were walking home with almost a whole pizza in a pizza box. My daughter told us that we didn’t need to keep the pizza and suggested we find someone on the street to share it with. She was speaking my language. While the rest of the family went back to the hotel, my daughter and I began walking down the strip to find someone to share some pizza with.
We met a wonderfully kind homeless man named Jeff who loved pizza, and spent some time getting to know him, hearing his story. Then we parted ways and headed back to where we were staying.
On our walk back to the hotel, my daughter asked, “Papa? Why do we have homeless people?” I explained that a very small amount of people choose to revolt against capitalism and conventions about how they should live, but the majority of homelessness is the result of people being on the losing side of capitalism. We then had a long talk about the economy, life, and the Parker Brother’s game Monopoly, and she rightly said, “We don’t need more pizza, we need a different game!”
As we walked, we discussed the difference between charity and justice. Charity does harm mitigation right now, but we must also be engaged with movements working for a world where charity is no longer needed. We talked about how charity can actually empower systemic injustice, although it’s still needed until something more just dismantles and replaces those systems. I shared with her Gene Robinson’s analogy of people drowning in a river: charity pulls people who are drowning out of the river, and is vital. Yet at some point someone has to walk upstream and ask who’s throwing all these people into the river to begin with. And I would add to the analogy that once we diagnose who it is, stop them.
We eventually arrived back at our hotel and I completely forgot about our talk. But a few months later, my daughter asked if we could drive about 6 hours east to Baltimore to stand alongside with those protesting the murder of Freddie Gray. During our weekend in Baltimore, we stood on the lawn outside of Baltimore City Hall. A woman came over to where we were standing, sizing up my daughter and I. My daughter was wearing a black t-shirt with white letters that said, “Black. Lives. Matter.” and she carried a sign that said the same. As we were two of the very few White people present, the woman addressed my daughter and very sweetly asked, “Young lady, what are you doing here?”
My daughter looked at me and then back at her. She responded, “Ms., we’re from West Virginia. We wanted to come stand with you today. This isn’t charity. This is about justice.”
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells his listening audience:
“Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys.” (Luke 12:33, Revised English Bible)
In this verse, the Revised English Bible (REB) uses the phrase give to charity. The Greek phrase behind this text is didomi eleemosunen. It can mean giving alms, showing pity, having compassion, or beneficence to the poor.
Luke’s gospel describes Jesus talking to a religious leader who prioritized ritual or religious purity more than compassion toward the vulnerable and marginalized:
“But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.” (Luke 11:41)
Charity was a core component of Jesus’ teaching. In the language of the Gospel authors, the Greek root of charity was the word we translate today into mercy. Jesus’s vision for a new world was one where the merciful are not only prioritized but also recipients of the merciful world they had shaped by their own mercy.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
In Matthew’s gospel and in a context where charity was used to further privilege, benefit the givers of charity, and possibly marginalize recipients of charity further, Jesus gave this instruction:
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2)
The kind of mercy or charity Jesus taught was one where the recipients of the charity weren’t further marginalized or “sacrificed.” It was to steer clear of victim blaming and not condemn the poor. In a world where poverty was not the result of chance but rather a system that created few wealthy winners at the expense of the masses, Jesus said,
“If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Matthew 12:7)
All of this leads me also to critique charity. Certainly there will always be a need for charity that lends a hand to those who are victims of calamity. But what about charity that is needed because of a system that places people in a position of need? Can we work toward a world where this kind of charity is no longer needed because we live in a world of distributive justice, one where no one has too much while others don’t have enough?
Rebecca Ann Parker’s fantastic book Saving Paradise sheds light on how Rome included charity in its system of oppression:
“To stave off riots and resistance, Roman officials distributed wheat imported from Egypt, North Africa, and Asia throughout the empire. Shipments from the fertile Nile delta were so crucial to Rome that protection of them from piracy was a major function of its navy—the Mediterranean was commonly referred to as the “Roman Lake.” In the miracle of the bread and fish, large crowds flock to Jesus, hungry in spirit and body, and they depart filled. His act of feeding offered compassion for the needy, encouraged generosity for the good of all, even among those with little, and affirmed life abundant for everyone, regardless of status or need. This value system undermined the paternalism of Rome, which was built on an elite and powerful few having so much that they might scatter their largess, distributing 20 percent of their grain as a dole to the vast masses. The poor and powerless were expected to be grateful to the empire for acts of charity that maintained its domination. Jesus, on the other hand, belonged to the peasant class and working poor, and his relentless judgments against the rich and powerful revealed how injustice betrayed God’s desire for all to have abundant life. He challenged this paternalistic system by offering food blessed by heaven and not by Rome.” (pp. 32-33)
Again, if someone needs help, by all means we should help them. But with our other hand we should be working on a world where economic domination systems have been dismantled. We can work toward a world characterized by an equity that minimizes the need for so much charity. As Marcus Borg used to say, and as my daughter understood, “The prophets didn’t call for charity. They called for justice.”
“Moses and Amos are not asking the kings to up their charitable giving, they are asking that their contemporary domination system give way to a more just and less violent world.” (Marcus Borg; see Social Justice in the Book of Amos)
Yes, we are called to be good Samaritans to those who have experienced catastrophe, yet even here we must do double work. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his final book:
“We are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.” (Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community? pp. 187-188)
This month at RHM, our annual reading course book is Dorothee Soëlle’s Theology for Skeptics. In this book she states unequivocally:
“Comfort [charity] and justice are not split apart in the Bible such that the church should ease difficult fate for individual persons with the newest psychotherapeutic methods and leave justice to the leading industrial nations. God does not come with cheap consolation, like a comforting lollipop from heaven. God does not console in such a way that we get something shoved into our mouths to quiet us down.” (Kindle Locations 1166-1168)
Here, Soëlle is directly speaking to the kind of charity that merely pacifies the exploited, as the Roman Empire once did. In this context we must take to heart Gustavo Gutierrez’s wise words:
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, Power of the Poor In History, p. 44-45)
As we said last week, we need a justice that is distributive, a grace that manifests itself in liberation for the oppressed, and a charity that doesn’t perpetuate economic systems of exploitation and marginalization, making many poor while making many rich beyond their wildest possible use of funds.
I don’t want to be misunderstood this week. If someone needs help, by all means available, help them! While we work toward a better world we must also be about mitigating the damage being done in this one. But do not think for a moment that if we have only offered charity to those this world makes hungry, poor, mournful, or last (see Luke 6:20-23 and Matthew 20:16) we are done with our job of following Jesus. Jesus helped those who were suffering before him, yes. He also rode his donkey into the Temple, the symbolic heart of the Temple state to which he belonged, and disruptively overturned tables to protest the Temple’s economic exploitation of the poor. Christians today excel at charity. We are not so good at justice.
Again, if someone is drowning, pull them out of the river. Let’s also walk upstream and do something about those who are throwing people in the river to begin with. Let’s not blame those who are drowning for someone else throwing them in. Let’s work toward a world of distributive justice and, as we do, let’s also engage Jesus’ other teachings on mutual aid, resource sharing, and taking responsibility for each other’s survival and thriving.
People matter.
Another world is possible.
“But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.” (Luke 11:41)
HeartGroup Application
- This week, share together some more of the differences you see between justice and charity.
- List some of the things your group participates in that could be categorized as either charity or justice.
- Are you focusing more on charity? Are you also engaging the activities that lead to systemic justice? Do you need to be stronger in one area, or maybe both?
- Name some of the things you’d like to affirm in what you are already doing and list some things you’d like to do more of. This holiday season, pick one from this list and, together, do it.
Wherever you are this week, thanks for checking in with us. Keep living in love, compassion, action, charity, and justice.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
Justice, Grace & Charity: Part 1
by Herb Montgomery | November 9, 2018
“We need justice that is distributive.
We need grace which is liberating.
Only with both will we see far enough to have a life-giving discussion about charity.”
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.” (Matthew 12:18)
My younger daughter came home recently, visibly upset about misogyny in her high school. While she was speaking out against some of the structural, systemic privilege that boys receive at her school, one of her close male friends made a very patronizing, anti-feminist remark. She was shocked and disappointed.
Later, she told me she couldn’t believe that one of her friends could have said and thought such a thing. She then repeated a saying I used to tell her when she was in elementary school. “Fish don’t know they’re wet,” she said. “He’s regurgitating only what he’s heard from the men in his life.”
She wanted her friend to be a better human. She believed he could be a better human. She didn’t want to believe her friend could genuinely be so patriarchal. “He must not know any better,” she decided, and the next day she was determined to enlighten him.
The following night she reported that her friend did apologize and had been open to listening. I wondered whether he was only trying to pacify her in order to keep her friendship, or was sincerely open to seeing another’s perspective. My daughter wanted to believe he was being sincere. “Oh this, by far, doesn’t fix things,” she said. “But it’s a start. We’ll see. Time will tell.”
Time will tell. For all of us.
This week I want to begin a two-week discussion of three words: Justice, grace and charity.
How we define each of these words makes a significant difference in whether we act as mere pacifiers for people’s or communities’ suffering or whether we go further and work as agents of change.
Justice
In the Hebrew scriptures, justice was understood not as retributive but as distributive. It was not about punishment but about resources and power being distributed fairly to all, so that everyone possessed what they needed to thrive. When justice prevailed, people would not thrive as individuals only: survival would not come at another’s expense. Instead, they were to thrive together. That’s the kind of justice that we find in the Jesus story. Matthew’s gospel refers to Jesus by quoting the book of Isaiah:
“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he has brought justice through to victory.” (Matthew 12:20)
“Bringing justice to victory.” I love that imagery. It captures the idea of distributive justice being presently obstructed, yet eventually overcoming through our choices for a more just world. Justice will one day be victorious.
Too often within Christian communities, justice is defined as retributive punishment or vengeance. This kind of justice then becomes seen as negative, something to be overcome by grace (another of our words this week that we’ll discuss in a moment). It becomes something that is escaped when grace prevails. But the hope of the gospels, like the hope of the Hebrew prophets, is not that justice will be overcome by grace, but that injustice, violence, and oppression will be overcome by justice—a distributive justice.
These same prophets do talk about punishment, too, but in the prophets’ writings and the gospels, the idea of punishment is restorative, not retribuitve. There were two Greek words for punishment in the cultures from which the gospels were written: timoria and kolasis. Both are translated in our English Bibles as “punishment.” Yet consider the ideas behind these two words.
Timoria implies causing people to suffer retributively. It’s very retributive and its purpose is penal. It refers to satisfying a need in the one who inflicts the punishment. Stop and consider that for a moment. The purpose of this kind of punishment is to satisfy a need not in the one receiving the punishment, but in the one inflicting or demanding it. That is retribution. (See Louw & Nida Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains and Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.)
Yet, as we know, there are other types of punishments—disciplines—that are not for the purpose of satisfying something in the punisher. When a parent rightly and healthfully disciplines a child, they don’t do so to satisfy their own retributive, punitive desire that demands payment from the child. Life-giving discipline is transformative, reparative, and/or restorative. It’s still a form of punishment. Yet the goal of restorative punishment is to win the child away from the behavior they have chosen to a different course. We should note at the same time that one of the perverse things about fundamentalism is how it teaches folks to inflict retributive, punitive pain and reframe it as restorative.
Kolasis implies this kind of reparative punishment, and Plato describes it in Protagoras:
“If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired; no one punishes [kolasis] the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong,—only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment [kolasis] does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished [kolasis], and he who sees him punished [kolasis], may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught.”
Various Greek lexicons and modern commentaries define kolasis similarly:
- “chastisement, punishment” (A Greek-English Lexicon To The New Testament, William Greenfield)
- “the trimming of the luxuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful” (Graecum Lexicon Manuale, Benjamin Hedericus and Johann August Ernesti)
- “the act of clipping or pruning, restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement” (A New Greek and English Lexicon, James Donnegan)
- “pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction” (A Greek-English Lexicon, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Franz Passow)
On later translations from Greek into Latin, Max Müller writes, “Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment, the Latin pæna or punio, to punish, the root pu in [Sanskrit], which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing, correcting, delivering from the stain of sin” (in Chips from a German Workshop, p. 259). For still more on the differences between timoria and kolasis see William Barclay, The Apostle’s Creed, p. 189, and J.W. Hanson’s Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine Of the Christian Church During Its First Five-Hundred Years, pp. 39-41)
What kind of punishment is kolasis then? It’s restorative, redemptive, and transformative. It’s the kind of punishment or discipline that a loving and functional parent gives a wayward child hoping to help them see the intrinsically destructive consequences of their choices so that they will turn from those choices and make better ones. It’s restorative justice, not retributive justice.
What’s most important: whenever Jesus speaks of punishment in the gospels, the gospel authors use the word kolasis and never timoria! Jesus’ punishment is not a retributive punishment. It’s restorative, transformative punishment designed to reform the recipients.
Yet, again, in the gospels and in the prophets, when they speak of “justice,” it’s not about punishment, but about a restoring a just distribution of resources.
Consider this story in Luke’s gospel:
“Jesus said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”’ And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.’” (Luke 18:3-8)
In the gospels, then, the story of distributive justice is carried onward toward victory.
Grace
Grace is another word we find in the gospels. Consider how it is used in Luke:
“And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.” (Luke 2:40, emphasis added)
Grace in the gospels is “favor that manifests itself in deliverance” (see Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible). It’s favor that works out liberation from oppression.
In Christian circles, however, grace is too often defined as letting someone off the hook from punitive, punishing justice. In this context, grace becomes victorious over justice rather than justice being victorious over injustice, violence, oppression, marginalization, exploitation, subjugation, etc. When it’s all about grace, the discussion is about guilt alleviation rather than systemic change. The discussion is about a grace or unmerited favor that doesn’t condemn oppressors rather than a grace, a favor, that manifests itself in liberation for the oppressed. In the gospels, grace is expressed as a preferential option for the oppressed, for the vulnerable, for the marginalized. It’s favor or solidarity on the side of those hungering and thirsting for distributive justice or “righteousness.” (See Matthew 5:6.)
One of my favorite stories of Gandhi is how when he bumped into the idea of grace as simply being let of the hook. Gandhi tells of interacting with a Christian he refers to as “one of the Plymouth Brethren.”
The Plymouth Brother says to Gandhi:
“How can we bear the burden of sin? We can but throw it on Jesus. He is the only sinless Son of God. It is His word that those who believe in Him shall have everlasting life. Therein lies God’s infinite mercy. And as we believe in the atonement of Jesus, our own sins do not bind us. Sin we must. It is impossible to live in this world sinless. And therefore Jesus suffered and atoned for all the sins of mankind. Only he who accepts His great redemption can have eternal peace. Think what a life of restlessness is yours, and what a promise of peace we have.’
Gandhi responded,
“The argument utterly failed to convince me. I humbly replied: ‘If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.’”
(Gandhi, Mohandas K. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, pp. 63-64)
Favor that manifests itself in liberation of the oppressed is miles away from favor that lets oppressors off the hook without discussing reparations or making things right.
Next week we’ll connect this to how the gospels speak of charity.
For now,
We need justice that is distributive.
We need grace which is liberating.
Only with both will we see far enough to have a life-giving discussion about charity.
We don’t need charity that is only temporary and leaves injustice not only untouched but also supported. We need a kind of justice and grace that shapes our world into one where charity is no longer necessary.
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations.” (Matthew 12:18)
HeartGroup Application
This week, take some time together as a group and make a gratitude list. There are plenty of things that still need changed in our larger communities. Yet progress is being made, too!
- Each person write down three things you are thankful for this week.
- Go around the room, and from those who are willing to share, share why these items are valuable to you.
- Take a moment to bask in your gratitude and then name one area in which you see work still needs to be done.
Also, don’t forget all contributions to RHM this month are being matched dollar for dollar. You can make your support go twice as far during the month of November. [Find out more.]
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Wherever you are, keep living in love, compassion, action and justice.
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Justice and the Love of God
Herb Montgomery | November 2, 2018
“To believe in universal love is to work for a distributive, societal justice for those who are the objects of that universal love.”
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God.” (Luke 11:42)
All of my children love being involved in our local theater here in town. A few years ago my elder daughter auditioned for the high school musical. She was cast as Gertrude McFuzz in Seussical, an adorable retelling of Seuss’ most popular tales. As a result, our son, who was five or six years old at the time, took up reading many Seuss books. Horton Hears a Who became his favorite.
In this story, Horton the elephant hears a call for help coming from a speck of dust. Though he endures much derision from his neighbors as a result of hearing something they can’t, he chooses to respond. He eventually learns that the call for help he hears is coming from a group of small creatures named Whos that live on this speck of dust. Horton is disbelieved, ridiculed, harassed, thought crazy, and eventually tied up. Horton’s neighbors also take the speck away from him and almost destroy it, but Horton convinces its inhabitants to begin making noise in hopes that they will be heard. The noise isn’t loud enough until one last Who named JoJo is found not participating. JoJo’s voice added at the very end gives the Whos enough volume to be heard by Horton’s fellow jungle animals and convinces them to join Horton in protecting the Who community. The catchphrase that Horton repeats throughout the story is, “A person is a person, no matter how small.”
Theodor Seuss Geisel wrote Horton Hears a Who after visiting Japan after World War II. (See Morgan & Morgan, pp. 144–145, and Richard Minear, Dr. Seuss Goes to War.) Geisel had held deeply racist and anti-Japanese prejudices before and during the war, but his visit to Japan, with other events, caused a dramatic reversal in Geisel. He wrote Horton Hears a Who as an allegory. The book includes veiled references to the war and the U.S.’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki like “When the black-bottomed birdie let go and we dropped, We landed so hard that our clocks have all stopped.” Geisel also dedicated Horton Hears a Who to a Japanese friend, Nakamura. He commented in interviews that when one considers Japan’s size as a country the theme becomes obvious, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Shortly after the local performances of this play ended in our town, a dear family friend met with Crystal and me. They shared with us that they were trans and that they would be taking steps in the near future to live into their gender identity. Our friend had seen some of the beginning steps Crystal and I had taken to become affirming allies of the trans community, and she had decided to trust our family with her story and invite us to continue being part of her life.
As we shared the news with our children, I knew my two eldest kids well enough to know their responses would be affirming and positive. It was my son, the youngest, who I was most curious about. As our friend shared with him as much of her story as was appropriate for his age, I could see him processing this new information. She was the first trans person he would ever know. After a moment, she asked what he thought. He reached up and took her hand. He looked into her face, said the new name she had just told him, and said, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
This week I want to talk about two values that are juxtaposed for us in Luke’s gospel: justice and love. In the short film Journey to Liberation: The Legacy of Womanist Theology, which I watched last year, Dr. Emile M. Townes states, “When you start with an understanding that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.” This statement resonated so deeply for me that it brought tears to my eyes.
Before I became an ally to trans people, and before all the fallout with our early followers, I had spent years speaking, writing, and teaching on the universal love of God for everyone! (See Finding the Father.) But one response I repeatedly heard during our transition as a ministry was people’s inability to understand what made us shift from God’s love to God’s justice. I spent countless hours trying to help folks understand that love means justice! They aren’t separate! One is the fruit of the other, and you can’t genuinely have one without the other. As Cornel West famously stated, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
What do we at RHM mean by the term justice?
Justice is distributive. Speaking of how the Hebrew scriptures define justice, John Dominic Crossan writes, “The primary meaning of ‘justice’ is not retributive, but distributive. To be just means to distribute everything fairly.” (John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, p. 2)
If we believe in universal love then why wouldn’t that belief lead us toward compassion, action, and ensuring a distributive justice for all?
Distributive justice is the outgrowth of Jesus’ belief in a God that offers universal love.
“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” (Luke 12:24)
“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!” (Luke 12:27-28)
“[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)
Jesus’ God universally loved even the ravens and lilies, therefore Jesus envisions God as also concerning Godself with distributive justice for us as well. For Jesus, God’s love was at the root of God’s radical vision for a world in which all had enough.
A God who indiscriminately loves is also a God who indiscriminately and justly sends rain and sunshine on the objects of that love. Jesus is standing firmly in his own Jewish tradition when he connects love and distributive justice. Consider the following passages from the Hebrew prophets where love and distributive justice are intrinsically connected.
“In love a throne will be established;
in faithfulness a man will sit on it—
one from the house of David—
one who in judging seeks justice
and speeds the cause of righteousness.” (Isaiah 16:5, emphasis added.)
“But you must return to your God;
maintain love and justice,
and wait for your God always. (Hosea 12:6, emphasis added.)
Calling for distributive justice was a way in which the Hebrew prophets spoke truth to power.
“For I, the LORD, love justice;
I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness I will reward my people
and make an everlasting covenant with them.” (Isaiah 61:8)
“Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.” (Amos 5:15)
“Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.” (Isaiah 1:17)
As we mentioned last week, it is this preoccupation with distributive justice that defines whether someone in the Hebrew culture “knew God.”
“He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?”
declares the LORD (Jeremiah 22:16)
Jeremiah states that someone’s picture of the Divine will inevitably work its way out in whether they defend the oppressed and vulnerable or whether they drive oppression, marginalization, and/or exploitation. According to Jeremiah, to know the Hebrew God accurately is to defend the vulnerable. Gustavo Gutierrez confirms this interpretation:
“For the prophets this demand was inseparable from the denunciation of social injustice and from the vigorous assertion that God is known only by doing justice. (A Theology of Liberation: 15th Anniversary Edition, p. 134)
Gutierrez also writes, “To know God is to work for justice. There is no other path to reach God.” (Ibid., p. 156)
The Hebrew sacred text is repeatedly concerned with a societal, distributive justice. See Exodus 21:2; Exodus 22:21-23; Exodus 22:25; Exodus 23:9; Exodus 23:11, Exodus 23:12; Leviticus 19:9-10; Leviticus 19:34; Leviticus 23:22; Leviticus 25:2-7; Leviticus 25:10; Leviticus 25:23; Leviticus 25:35-37; Leviticus 26:13; Leviticus 26:34-35; Deuteronomy 5:14; Deuteronomy 5:15; Deuteronomy 10:19; Deuteronomy 14:28-29; Deuteronomy 15:1-18; Deuteronomy 24:19-21; Deuteronomy 26:12; 2 Kings 23:35; Nehemiah 5:1-5; Job 24.2-12, 14; Isaiah 3:14; Isaiah 5:23; Isaiah 10:1-2; Jeremiah 5:27; Jeremiah 5:28; Jeremiah 6:12; Jeremiah 22:13-17; Ezekiel 22:29; Hosea 12:6-8; Amos 2.6-7; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:7; Amos 5:11-12; Amos 8:5-6; Micah 2:1-3; Micah 3:1-2; Micah 3:9-11; Micah 6:10-11; Micah 6.12; Habakkuk 2:5-6 . This tradition is carried on in the more Jewish portions of the New Testament texts, see Luke 6:24-25; Luke 12:13-21 ; Luke 16:19-31; Luke 18:18-26; James 2:5-9.
It makes perfect sense, then, that a Jewish prophet of the poor from Galilee who in the first century traversed the region teaching about a God who universally loved ravens, lilies, and all people, too, would live, teach, minister, protest, and be crucified in profound solidarity with those who were suffering from injustice in his society.
If we define politics as we did last week, as the distribution of resources and power, the gospel has real political implications that we must not hide or hide from. The portions of the New Testament believed to have been written by the Johannine community are the portions of the New Testament most preoccupied with defining God as “Love.” They don’t miss this connection between love and justice either:
“How can the love of God be in anyone who has material goods and sees a sibling in need and yet refuses help? . . . Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:17-18)
I want to close this week with one more statement by Gutierrez that I believe it would be well for us to spend this coming week contemplating:
“This does not detract from the Gospel news; rather it enriches the political sphere. Moreover, the life and death of Jesus are no less evangelical because of their political connotations. His testimony and his message acquire this political dimension precisely because of the radicalness of their salvific character: to preach the universal love of the Father is inevitably to go against all injustice, privilege, oppression, or narrow nationalism. (A Theology of Liberation: 15th Anniversary Edition, p. 135, emphasis added).
Those who believe they genuinely possess an understanding of God’s character should be the loudest in the room opposing the injustices of classism, racism, misogyny, patriarchy, bigotry toward and erasure of our LGBTQ siblings, and more. To believe in universal love is to work for a distributive, societal justice for those who are the objects of that universal love.
After all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue, and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God.” (Luke 11:42)
HeartGroup Application
Last weekend, a deadly mass shooting occurred at Tree of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburg, PA. Eleven people were killed. Nine people were injured. The Anti-Defamation League has stated that the shooting is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States. For Renewed Heart Ministries response to this attack, see Tree of Life* Or L’Simcha Congregation.
Renewed Heart Ministries stands in solidarity with our Jewish friends, neighbors and loved ones as we condemn and oppose Anti-Semitism in all its varied forms. Our hearts are with the families of the victims and the survivors. We at Renewed Heart Ministries choose the resistance of love rather than hate. We will continue to daily take up the work of engaging the intersection of faith, love, compassion and justice. We will continue educating followers of Jesus, especially, in regards to the role Christianity has played in harming the Jewish community as well as other communities who have also been marginalized and harmed by us. We will continue to work together alongside targeted communities to heal our world, reshaping it into a compassionate, just and safe home for all; or, as our Jewish friends say, “the work of Tikkun Olam.”
This week, I want to invite all of our HeartGroups to take a moment and send the Tree of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation a message of support or a prayer and to recommit to just action in you daily lives.
Last Saturday’s attack was connected to more than a thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism as well as to White supremacist murders of Black people and Sikh people and breaches of sacred space in Birmingham, in Charleston, at Pulse, and more. (See Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s thread as well as Charleston to Tree of Life: White nationalism is a threat to us all ) My wife Crystal commented, “The truth is this country was built on the premise that some lives matter more than others. Racism has been woven into the very fabric of our existence. Othering is in our very foundation. We stole this country from it’s native people and claimed it for our own, based on the idea that we were more worthy than they, calling them savages when we murdered and stripped them of everything. We brutally enslaved races of people and claimed we somehow deserved to own and abuse them based on nothing more than the pigment of our skin and the fact that we could overpower them. Now we are shocked when a racist leader barely scratches the surface and all of this vile evil rises to the surface. It has always existed. We have to be honest with our past if we are going to do better in the future.”
Take a moment this weekend, and, as a HeartGroup, send this congregation a message of love and solidarity through this link:
In Solidarity with the Tree of Life Synagogue, We Pray and We Pledge!
This project was created by Auburn Seminary’s Senior Fellows. A friend of mine who works at Auburn Seminary along with her colleagues will be collecting and delivering these prayers and notes of support.
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Wherever you are, keep living in love, compassion, action and justice.
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
Healing Our World, Part 1
by Herb Montgomery | October 26, 2018
“’The separation between Church and State is different from the separation of faith and public life.’ . . . The separation of church and state is about keeping the state out of matters of religious conscience. Separation of church and state is also about keeping the church from wielding the power of the state to enforce its own articles of faith. It does not mean that people of faith and goodwill cannot follow Jesus in advocating alongside vulnerable communities, engaging social good, and calling for just distribution of resources and power.”
“For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to heal the world through him.” (John 3:17, personal translation)
This week I want to begin with a fable familiar to many who daily do the work of healing our world. To the best of my knowledge, this story was originally told by Kurt Kauter but I cannot find the original source.
The fable tells of a conversation between a wild dove and a coalmouse.
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coalmouse asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coalmouse said.
“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow – not heavily, not in a raging blizzard – no, just like in a dream, without a wound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,742,952. When the 3,742,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the coalmouse flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”
In Matthew’s gospel we read these words:
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news [euangelion] of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23)
This passage begins with Jesus going throughout “Galilee, teaching in [Jewish] synagogues.” It’s important to make a couple of things clear.
First, the gospels were originally written within a Jewish context: they are Jewish written works. The Jesus of these stories was never a Christian; nor did he promote a new religion. This Jesus was a Jewish man seeking to make change and challenge injustice within his own Jewish culture. These stories have been historically used for anti-Jewish purposes, but I would argue that we should not freeze Jewish people in our minds as the gospel writers framed them two thousand years ago. The gospels are not a reflection of Jewish culture today, and injustice is injustice in any place and in any time.
I believe that we can derive insight from these stories of resistance into how to address injustice in our culture today. Yet we must not use them as tools of oppression toward Jewish people. And this leads me to my second point.
I want to recognize and name how these stories of resistance have also been used, sometimes even unintentionally, as tools of oppression against people with disabilities. Certain interpretations of Jesus’ healing stories (like we find in this week’s passage where Jesus heals “every disease and sickness among the people”) have been deeply harmful to people with disabilities. Through these stories, people with disabilities have been dehumanized and used as symbols or metaphors that promote ableism. So I begin this week by affirming the full humanity of both Jewish people and people with disabilities. I push back against interpretations of these healing stories that support an idea of “normal” that creates for some of our siblings the perception or feeling that they’re less than. We’ll address this further as we continue.
As well as telling us that Jesus healed, this passage also tells us that what Jesus was teaching in the synagogues was “the good news (or gospel) of the kingdom.” The term gospel or good news was not originally a religious term about being saved from post mortem torment. It was instead a deeply political term. When the Roman Empire conquered a new territory, it would send out evangelists whose job was to proclaim to the newly conquered territory the euangelion (gospel or good news) that the empire had come and the people of that territory were now part of the Roman Empire. Here are a few examples:
“Even after the battle at Mantinea, which Thucydides has described, the one who first announced the victory had no other reward for his glad tidings [euangelion-singular] than a piece of meat sent by the magistrates from the public mess” (Plutarch; Agesilaus, p. 33, 1st century).
“Accordingly, when [Aristodemus] had come near, he stretched out his hand and cried with a loud voice: ‘Hail, King Antigonus, we have conquered Ptolemy in a sea-fight, and now hold Cyprus, with 12,800 soldiers as prisoners of war.’ To this, Antigonus replied: ‘Hail to thee also, by Heaven! but for torturing us in this way, thou shalt undergo punishment; the reward for thy good tidings [euangelion – plural] thou shalt be some time in getting’” (Plutarch; Demetrius, p. 17, 1st century).
“Why, as we are told, the Spartans merely sent meat from the public commons to the man who brought glad tidings [euangelion] of the victory in Mantineia which Thucydides describes! And indeed the compilers of histories are, as it were, reporters of great exploits who are gifted with the faculty of felicitous speech, and achieve success in their writing through the beauty and force of their narration; and to them those who first encountered and recorded the events [εὐαγγέλιον – euangelion] are indebted for a pleasing retelling of them” (Plutarch; Moralia [Glory of Athens], p. 347, 1st century).
The gospel authors take this language from Rome to tell the story of Jesus who came preaching an alternative vision for human society.
“But he said, ‘I must proclaim the good news [euangelion] of the kingdom of God [as opposed to Rome] to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.’” (Luke 4:43, emphasis added.)
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news [euangelion] of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news [euangelion – gospel]!’” (Mark 1:14-15, emphasis added.)
Jesus’ good news was the proclamation of an alternative vision for human society where people carried out God’s will for distributive justice, mutual aid, and caretaking rather than subjugation. In the following passages we see that the gospel authors tied this proclamation to healing narratives as well.
“As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:7-8, emphasis added.)
“Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ (Luke 10:9)
“So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news [euangelion] and healing people everywhere.” (Luke 9:6)
These are parts of the gospels that have been used in deeply problematic ways for people who live with disabilities. I believe the gospels were intended to be stories of survival, resistance and liberation, but have been used oppressively toward many. Rather than using healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing leapers, and driving out demons as ableist metaphors for societal injustices, which I believe they were in the stories, I want to instead concretely name some injustices that we, as Jesus followers, can address in our culture today: racism, sexism and misogyny, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, queerphobia, xenophobia, etc. By concretely naming these issues we can better understand passages like this in John’s gospel:
“For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)
The Greek word here translated “saved” could just as accurately be translated as “healed.” What makes this passage special to me is that it is not referencing individuals being saved but the world being saved. It’s not a privatized or personal healing, which too often proves vulnerable to the above type of abusive interpretations, but a collective, societal, communal healing. It’s a call to allow your faith to influence how we relate to one another! It’s a call to allow your faith to move you to engage public life not just your own personal life. This is a very Jewish understanding of faith: our beliefs call us not only to personal piety, but also to public engagement with the work of healing the world. Jesus practices this kind of societal confrontation and healing in his protest in the Temple, the heart of the Temple State of his society.
Tikkun olam (Healing the world) is the Jewish idea of one’s obligation to engage in social action. Seeing Jesus in this tradition leads us to the same conclusion as Latin Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez who saw in Jesus’ “kingdom” teachings a commitment to creating a just society. This commitment means being on the side of oppressed, marginalized, and exploited classes of people. A belief in the healing love spoken of in John 3:16-17 should lead one to “inevitably to go against all injustice, privilege, [and] oppression” (Gustavo Gutiérrez. A Theology of Liberation, p. 135).
The radical changes we need in our society can only take place through movement building. Yet, while we are building and participating in those long-term movements, we must also be engaged in what my friend Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, co-executive director at Highlander Center, refers to as damage mitigation. How do we do this? One way is through our votes.
Because people matter, voting matters. Here in America, we make a mistake in how we define politics. For far too many, politics means “parties, partisanship, lobbying, or law.” And while politics can include those things, I prefer how my friend Dr. Keisha McKenzie recently defined politics in a Facebook conversation: as “the distribution of resources and power among people and groups of people.” She went on to say, therefore, “There’s no opting out of it.” Either we become targets of others’ political engagement or we choose to help shape how resources are distributed. Jesus taught distributive justice, and as followers of Jesus, we, too, should care about how power and resources are distributed because their distribution can concretely help or hurt people. Our beliefs and values should move us to engage our public life. As McKenzie explained, wherever we share space with other people and “there are norms governing how you interact with them or a budget governing common resources,” there is simply no way to be apolitical. There is no such thing as political neutrality that doesn’t help the powerful or hurt the vulnerable. When we understand this we can see readily why the late theologian and activist Dorothee Sölle stated, “Every theological statement is a political statement as well.” Believing in a Universal Love leads us to work toward a universal distributive justice for the objects of that love. Being one who “knows the Lord,” in the book of the prophet Jeremiah is defined as “defend[ing] the cause of the poor and needy”:
“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.’ So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red. ‘Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the LORD. ‘But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion.’”(Jeremiah 22.13-17)
Recently I received an email from Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, President of Auburn Seminary, that said, “The separation between Church and State is different from the separation of faith and public life.” I could not agree more. The separation of church and state is about keeping the state out of matters of religious conscience. Separation of church and state is also about keeping the church from wielding the power of the state to enforce its own articles of faith. It does not mean that people of faith and goodwill cannot follow Jesus in advocating alongside vulnerable communities, engaging social good, and calling for just distribution of resources and power.
This is why we here at RHM believe that healing the world is not simply about voting but does include voting. The late Ron Dellums used to remind folks that we need both movement building and people in office that can help support those movements. I’ve witnessed this first-hand here in West Virginia. We spend countless hours building movements for social change here in this state, only to have people in office obstruct those changes. The opposite is also true, we can elect solid people as public servants, but if there is not a movement for them to act on, they have nothing to advocate for from the “will of the people.” Those who desire an unjust distribution of resources are putting people in office who will act on their wishes. Again, there is simply no way to opt out. We are either participants in the discussion or we are the targets of others’ agenda. It’s been said that we are either seated at the table or we are on the menu. Given our current social mess, voting, especially for marginalized communities, is only a part of the process of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for all, yet it is a part of that process.
So this week, I want to encourage you to vote your values this November remembering that people matter and will be concretely affected by the outcome. (For some of you early voting is already open.) Also encourage others to participate and vote to ensure all of our communities are truly represented.
Another world is possible. And as Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson says, our work is to “trouble the waters” and “heal the world.”
I’ll close this week with the words of Anne Frank:
“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can all start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway… And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!” (The Diary of Anne Frank)
How can you engage the work of healing the injustice in our world? Who knows? As the story we began with this week reminds us, you may be the last “snowflake” needed. “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”
“For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to heal the world through him.” (John 3:17, personal translation)
HeartGroup Application
This week, how can your HeartGroup be a source of healing in your surrounding community?
- Take some time to dream up some ways you can be a positive influence for change in your area.
- Discuss what it would take to make some of those dreams a reality. What concrete steps would you need to take?
- Pick one of those dreams that you believe the steps to make it a reality are possible and make a plan. Divide up the tasks that need to be done and start on them. Before long, that dream will begin to take shape and the healing changes in your area will be closer to coming to fruition.
Each of us had a sphere of influence. Each of us has something we can do. And we combine those things and work together, it’s amazing what we can actually accomplish.
Again, to believe in a Universal Love is to work toward a distributive justice for all of the objects of that love.
Thanks for checking in with us this week. Keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation.
Don’t forget this is the last week for our Shared Table Fundraiser. You can find out all about it at renewedheartministries.com. You won’t want to miss out on it.
I love each of you dearly.
Again, another world is possible.
I’ll see you next week.
Another World is Possible (Part 1)
by Herb Montgomery | June 28, 2018
“Tempted to succumb to the narrative of scarcity and competition against one another for the one loaf in the boat, they forgot the lesson in the feeding of the multitudes. What little we have (even a few loaves and fish), when passed through distributive justice and shared with others, creates an entirely different order.”
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15)
In the gospel narrative, John the Baptist was arrested after being deemed a threat to Herod (see Mark 6:17-18). In Mark, his arrest marked the launch of Jesus’ itinerant teaching ministry. Jesus would also follow in John’s footsteps in becoming a threat to the status quo. Whereas John was arrested and beheaded, Jesus would be arrested, too, but his execution would also carry the extra political weight of crucifixion.
Which elements of Jesus’ teaching were so threatening to the privileged and powerful? Let’s consider a story Jesus told in Matthew’s gospel:
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”” (Matthew 20:8-16)
This story captures one of the central values of Jesus teaching. Jesus’ solution to the problems of his own society was community, but not just any kind of community. His community put “first” those his society was placing last. It reversed the status quo. To put it in the language of liberation theology, Jesus vision for humanity was a community that practiced a preferential option for those typically made “last.”
As I’ve shared before, this is good news for those who are last. It’s threatening and problematic for those who are first, especially those who have worked their entire lives competing and scheming through the power struggles of society to achieve their position. To those people, Jesus’ idea of reshaping human society into a community where those presently privileged and powerful become equal to those who have been pushed to the undersides and/or margins of society is deeply threatening. It causes trouble. Egalitarianism is not a good thing to people who want to be privileged above or hold power over others. To these people in Jesus’ story, the message that the “last will be first, and the first last,” that they would all be paid the same wages and treated equally regardless of how long each had labored that day, left them incensed. I love how the employer in the story responded: “Are you envious that I am generous?”
Another key value in Jesus’ vision of community was generosity. Jesus’ community was rooted in a generous sharing with one another based on need, not necessarily how many hours each one worked. In the book of Acts, Jesus-followers shared as they were able and received as they had need. Their community didn’t rely on individualistic competition, but on mutual aid and commitment to take care of each other. The future had hope not because each had insulated themselves from other members of the human family, but because they had embraced their connectedness to one another. They leaned into their connectedness and loved others “as themselves” (see Matthew 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31-33; Luke 10:27).
Today, there is a strong current in U.S. society toward rugged individualism. Each person is expected to take care of themselves. There is a concerted effort afoot to diminish social aid, (already at a bare minimum compared with places in Europe), which in the end would leave the vulnerable at the mercy of charity, the wealthy, and powerful corporations. Some want to exploit those who are more vulnerable for the benefit of a few who have money and power. Instead, Jesus teaches us to be generous toward those the present system makes last.
In Luke’s version of the Jesus story, we find another element of Jesus’ teachings that can easily be understood to have threatened those in power in his society.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Start preaching that poverty is not the result of chance but the cause and effect result of whatever system is producing that poverty and see how quickly pushback ensues. Start advocating for a new system that eliminates poverty entirely (a recent example would be the Poor People’s Campaign) and see how quickly opposition mounts.
But the passage in Luke 4 doesn’t just mention good news for the poor. It also includes good news to prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. What I believe Luke is referring to here is what many scholars of that time and culture call “prison blindness.” In that time, when someone was awaiting trial, they were simply thrown into a deep hole in the ground. It was so dark in that hole, the prisoner could not see their hand right in front of their face. So the recovery of sight to those with prison blindness simply meant release from incarceration. It was liberation. It was setting the prisoners free.
Begin today advocating for the abolition of mass incarceration and watch the result. Advocate for the end of the “war on drugs” which was created with racist intent and watch who begins to feel threatened by it (Report: Aide says Nixon’s war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies). Two books that in my opinion are must-reads if you want to understand how deeply unjust the U.S. judicial and mass incarceration systems are are Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Kelly Brown Douglas’ Stand Your Ground.
Douglas’ book Stand Your Ground also sheds tremendous light on U.S. immigration policy and what we are watching right now on the U.S.’s borders. U.S. immigration policy has always been about maintaining a White-majority population in the United States, and still is.
The next element mentioned in Luke’s passage of Jesus’ gospel was liberation, the setting free, of the “oppressed.” Liberation and survival is at the heart of Jesus’ teachings. Repeatedly Jesus’ vision of resource sharing and taking care of each other allowed his followers to survive the present world and also work to create another one. It helped them hold on to hope and practice the belief that another world was possible. I believe the greatest contribution liberation theologies have made to our understanding of the gospel over the last 50 years is a return to the heart of Jesus’ gospel of liberation for the oppressed. With that heart, many Christians have been introduced to Jesus for the first time.
Lastly, in Luke’s description of Jesus’ ministry, we read “and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This was the year when all debts were to be forgiven. It was to be the beginning of a kind of wealth redistribution: slaves freed, prisoners released, debts cancelled, and a reset back to level ground for all society. In the year of the Lord’s favor, the oppressed were freed from those in positions of power.
This part of Luke’s passage always reminds me of the game of Monopoly. Most folks love the game of Monopoly on the opening rounds. But the last two rounds are awful for everyone except the person who owns all the property on the board and has created the “monopoly.”
I have a friend who had to quit playing Monopoly because every time it would reach this point they would flip the board and send pieces and money all over the table. It reminds me of the story of how Jesus flipped the tables in the Temple, sending property and money over the courtyard. Capitalism has today reached the need for a reset as well. We can either choose it voluntarily or those who who have no other option will rise up and force the reset. Today 6 men own more than more than half of the entire global population. That is unsustainable as well as being distributively unjust. The God of the Jesus story, Jesus states, causes the sun to shine and rain to fall equitably on all (see Matthew 5:45).
If this discussion makes you defensive or apologetic, I’d ask you to consider these words in Mark’s gospel:
“The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. ‘Be careful,’ Jesus warned them. ‘Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.’ They discussed this with one another and said, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?’ ‘Twelve,; they replied. ‘And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?’ They answered, ‘Seven.’ He said to them, ‘Do you still not understand?’ (Mark 8:14-19)
According to the gospels, the Pharisees did not understand. As an aspiring economic and political class within Jesus society, rather than believing another world was possible and seeking to create it, the Pharisees simply sought greater power and privilege in the present one. (Listen to Fox Valley: Jesus From the Edges). The first Herod, too, had achieved great wealth and power by pushing himself to the very top of Jewish society. The Herod Jesus was referring to in this passage had done the same.
What then is the “yeast” that Jesus told his disciples to avoid? I believe it represents the lure of the present order that benefits a few at the expense of the masses; the lure of believing you can achieve the status of the 1% by competing and don’t have to lean into Jesus’ vision of mutual care and responsibility, sustainability and cooperation with others. Jesus references the stories of multitudes being fed by sharing few resources among them. “There’s only one loaf in the boat and if I want any of it I’d better fight for it,” they each were tempted to think. Tempted to succumb to the narrative of scarcity and competition against one another for the one loaf in the boat, they forgot the lesson in the feeding of the multitudes. What little we have (even a few loaves and fish), when passed through distributive justice and shared with others, creates an entirely different order. There is often fear that there is not enough to go around, that if we share rather than continue to compete, that we will go without. And that’s why Jesus asks, “how many basket fulls were left over each time?” The answer was enough for the crowd and for the disciples too. Jesus was offering a narrative of resource-sharing, generosity, distributive justice, peace-making, and gratitude in the face of the too-often-lived-by narratives of scarcity, competition, greed, monopoly, violence, and hoarding.
Jesus called for putting people first over profit, power, privilege, and property.
Another world is possible.
Will we believe it?
Will we choose it?
This gospel still calls to us today.
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15)
HeartGroup Application
Gustavo Gutierrez writes, “But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” (The Power of the Poor in History, p. 45)
1. What are some of the other ways Jesus teachings called for a “different social order” than what we have listed here in this week’s article? Make a list.
2. Discuss your list with your HeartGroup along with the lists others have made. What are some of the ways you can practice some of the things on your list this week?
3. Now pick something on your list and, as a HeartGroup, do it together.
Paulo Freire stated, “As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power. The minority cannot permit itself the luxury of tolerating the unification of the people, which would undoubtedly signify a serious threat to their own hegemony. Accordingly, the oppressors halt by any method (including violence) any action which in even incipient fashion could awaken the oppressed to the need for unity. Concepts such as unity, organization, and struggle are immediately labeled as dangerous. In fact, of course, these concepts are dangerous— to the oppressors— for their realization is necessary to actions of liberation.” (Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition; p 141).
There is power—people power—in combining our energies in working to make our world a safer, just, more compassionate home for us all. We saw this last week as a combined outcry challenged the U.S.’ policy of separating families entering its borders. This problem is not yet resolved. In fact, the “solution” still does inestimable harm. As people of faith and good will who seek the intersection of their faith and their work toward societal justice, this is a great petition to have your entire HeartGroup sign:
Petition: All Rights for All, Without Borders
“As scholars and teachers of religion, we rejoice that public pressure led to initial steps to end family separation. Yet, we remain deeply concerned with the Trump administration’s attempt to substitute mass detention of families as a ‘solution’ for family separation. These practices continue to be rooted in an inhumane policy of ‘zero tolerance’ that is morally, ethically, and spiritually reprehensible, and we exhort all people of faith, and all people of good will, to reject and resist this immoral approach.”
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation.
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week with part 2.
To support these podcasts, weekly eSight articles and to help us grow, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”
Political Jesus
by Herb Montgomery | May 17, 2018
“Jesus was political. Neither he nor those whom he cared about could afford to ignore the systems of injustice and oppression damaging real human lives.”
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15, emphasis added.)
Two weeks ago I stated, “Politics answers the question of who gets what. So Jesus was not a religious figure as much as he was a political one. He did not fundamentally challenge his Jewish religion . . . Jesus’ teachings centered the poor and gave them the entire ‘kingdom.’ Jesus’ teachings were political.” I want to follow up on that statement a bit this week.
It’s important to define the term “politics.” “When I use the term ‘political,’” I said last week, “I don’t mean partisan. Politics means related to the polis, the members of a community. Whenever you have two or more people doing life together, you have politics. Politics answers the question of who gets what.” So when I say political this week, I don’t mean who’s running for a political office. I’m referring to the question of how, within the polis, means of survival and thriving are justly, equitably distributed—the question of who gets what.
Jesus’ teachings were deeply political. He didn’t go around getting people to say a special prayer so they can go to heaven when they die. Rather, he taught survival and liberation for those scratching out an existence in a type of living hell here, now, today. His teachings were not exclusively focused on post mortem destinations but threatened the political and economic structures of his society. He was calling for a new social order now.
We see this present politics in his predecessor, John. John, as our featured text states, was put in prison like the prophets of old, for speaking truth to power. Even today, people are not put in prison for what they believe happens after we die. They are imprisoned for threatening political and economic systems that prop up the privilege and power of the elite. Religious teachings that only focus on the afterlife have been coopted throughout history to legitimate oppressive economic and political structures of subjugation and exploitation. These are the teachings and teachers who “fool” us and leave us passive in the face of injustice, even as we believe ourselves to be religiously faithful. We do not find this type of teaching in either John’s nor Jesus’ teachings.
John was arrested for his teachings, and Jesus’ death was a political death as well. One commentator states, “Crucifixion was and remained a political and m ilitary punishment . . . Among the Romans it was inflicted above all on the lower classes, i.e, the slaves, violent criminals, and the unruly [think political protestors] elements in rebellious provinces not least Judea . . . These were primarily people who on the whole had no rights, in other words, groups whose development had to be suppressed by all possible means to safeguard law and order in the state” (Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, p. 86).
Notice that last phrase, “to safeguard law and order.” Things haven’t changed all that much. In the United States, The Anglo-Saxon ethnic origin myth, White supremacy, Manifest Destiny, slavery, and segregation have all evolved despite the US civil rights movement into a system of mass incarceration that targets people of color in the name of ‘law and order’ (see Stand Your Ground by Kelly Brown Douglas, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and White Rage by Carol Anderson).
In Jesus’ society and culture, crucifixion penalized political protest and/or subversive threats to the status quo. In Mark’s version of the Jesus story, Jesus takes his teachings from the margins of Galilee all the way to the center of his own political and economic structure, the door step of Caiaphas the high priest himself—The Temple State.
I understood this a new way last week when the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock spoke on the life of James Hal Cone at Cone’s deeply moving funeral at The Riverside Church in New York City. (If you have not had a chance to watch the service yourself, you can watch the replay online). Dr. Warnock chose Amos 7:10 for his eulogy:
“Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: ‘Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words.’”
This passage not only rightly applies to Cone, but also helps us to see Jesus in his own political tradition as well. Jesus stood in the Jewish prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power alongside of and in solidarity with the oppressed. When rescued from domesticated and house-broken interpretations, the Jesus story in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is deeply political. Jesus wasn’t running for some office within a political party or as a Pharisee or Sadducee seeking a spot on the Sanhedrin. He was political because he lived and taught in deep solidarity with the oppressed of his time and had compassionate concern for those exploited by the politics of his day:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me
to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor [all debts forgiven].” (Luke 4:18-19; cf Isaiah 61.1-3)
Jesus had called for those made last in their political and economic system to be placed first in the new social order he called the kingdom or reign of God: “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ . . . So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:8, 16)
We see Jesus’ politics in the way he related to those labelled sinners, too. As we have discussed, the label of sinner was not used universally as it is in many sectors of Christianity today. In Jesus’ time, it was a label used to religiously define and therefore politically marginalize some individuals or groups.
Yet these “sinners” were the people who heard Jesus’ message as good news and responded positively. Jesus was excluded and labelled as a sinner himself, too, for standing in solidarity with them:
“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” (Luke 15:1-2)
How this label of sinners was used and Jesus’ solidarity with those being labelled and marginalized will be our topic next week. For now, note that Jesus called his followers to welcome and center the very ones those in power had influenced his society to push to the edges and undersides of their society.
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” (Luke 14:13)
Jesus was a genuine threat to the social, political and economic order of his day. He was calling for his society to be turned upside down.
The same day I watched the live stream of Cone’s funeral last week, I also happened to be editing the quotations in RHM’s quotation library under the category “God of the Oppressed.” How appropriate. As I celebrated Cone’s life and teachings and mourned his loss, I was going through quotation after quotation on one of the central themes of his life. In Cone’s book by the same name, he states:
“What has the gospel to do with the oppressed of the land and their struggle for liberation? Any theologian who fails to place that question at the center of his or her work has ignored the essence of the gospel.” (James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, p. 9)
This is why Jesus was political. Neither he nor those whom he cared about could afford to ignore the systems of injustice and oppression damaging real human lives. Today some people’s privilege allows them to ignore all things political. Politics to them is a bother. There are others, though, who do not have this luxury. For them, the political issues of the day impact their lives directly. And for still others, the policies of the day are matters of life and death. They can’t afford to wait for utopia to fall from the sky some day. For them the time is now; they are trying to survive today. For them, politics isn’t just politics. It’s not a theoretical debate. It’s about people’s lives and their very survival. For these people, and for others two millennia ago, the synoptic Jesus was also a political one.
Ultimately, politics matter because people matter. Following Jesus is not about being apolitical. It’s about endeavoring to apply the politics of Jesus in our context of survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation, today.
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15)
HeartGroup Application
- This week, do a little exercise. Since we are defining politics as how we answer the question who gets what, go through Matthew, Mark, and Luke and try to find ten times Jesus answers that question. Write down the verse, who he is referring to, and what he states they should get.
- Share and discuss your list with your entire HeartGroup this upcoming week. See how long of a list you can make together.
- Compare this list with your own political values and discuss how this list impacts them. Consider what Jesus’ answers challenge or affirm within your own political views. What can you no longer support if you are going to follow Jesus? Lean in to those areas where you are challenged and see what happens.
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Wherever you are, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation.
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”
Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 2)
Jesus’ shared table community was an expression of voluntary “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
by Herb Montgomery | May 10, 2018
“Yet too often, historically, economic reforms have come at the expense of those barely getting by while the wealthy find new ways to profit. Jesus’ teachings are about breaking the cycle.”
“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 10:17-21)
Last week we looked at various shapes that human societal structures can take and compared them to Jesus’ vision for human community, a shared table. We considered that Jesus’ teachings were political, with an economic emphasis on distributive justice, not merely distant, purely religious theology.
I also want to be careful not to spiritualize Jesus’ vision. Jesus wasn’t telling us how to structure churches or worship services. His vision for human community was much larger: concerned with the structures of human community that create systemic oppression and social, political, and economic exploitation.
Jesus spoke about economics more than any other topic. He did not propose a system of charity, with the haves giving to the have-nots and leaving the system that creates haves and have-nots untouched. No. The vision of Jesus that we get from the stories was of an entirely different social order, one where no one has too much while others don’t have enough, where “sun” and “rain” were distributed justly on all. (See Matthew 5:45)
As he taught his followers in Luke:
“‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven [by giving to the poor] that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is [in the poor], there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:32-34)
It is appropriate for Jesus to address his audience’s fear here. Fear is the primary emotion that causes us to hoard more than we need for today. Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid.” He then reassures his followers, “It’s the Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This is not a world where the haves have all their possessions stripped away and given to the have nots. This is not a reversal of fortunes, but a redistribution that makes sure everyone has enough. Our fear of the future is replaced by a trust in our community—that we will take care of each other.
Jesus was calling those who had more than they needed to liquidate those properties and give to those whom the system had impoverished. This was a kind of wealth redistribution: sharing. Poverty is not the result of chance. It’s is the end result of how economic systems are structured. Chance and accidents will happen, but Jesus was offering a way to include everyone rather than benefit a few at the expense of the many. At its foundation, Jesus’ vision was a call to redistribute hoarded wealth, and his shared table taught shared economics.
Any time we speak of wealth redistribution, those who barely have enough start getting upset. They clutch the little they have and say you’re not going to take it away from me and give it to someone else. This is understandable. But Jesus wasn’t speaking to people who were just breaking even. In Luke, Jesus is speaking to those who have considerably more than what they needed. Jesus’ vision was a social and economic order that benefitted everyone, together, where everyone took care of one another. Yet too often, historically, economic reforms have come at the expense of those barely getting by while the wealthy find new ways to profit. Jesus’ teachings are about breaking the cycle. Jesus’ shared table was rooted in equity. Everyone might not necessarily have the same, but no one would go without.
In 1902, a Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher named Peter Kropotkin wrote an essay collection titled Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. In these essays, Kropotkin described mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity in both the animal world and human society. What he discovered was contrary to social Darwinism. The societies and species that were the “fittest” were not necessarily the strongest, where the strong ate the weak. The fittest communities practiced mutual aid. The strong took care of the weak. These species had the highest rates of “survival.”
What developed out of Jesus’ teachings was a community that sought to practice that kind of voluntary, non authoritarian, mutual aid.
Ability and Need
In the book of Acts, which is believed to have been written by the same author as Luke’s gospel, we find that the very first fruit of embracing Jesus’ vision for human society, his shared table, was economic. The very first change that followers made when they were baptized into the Jesus community of the 1st Century was to sell your extra so others would have enough or receive from others so that you had enough.
“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:41-47, emphasis added.)
Two chapters later we discover that these believers had completely eliminated poverty within their growing but small community.
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-35, emphasis added.)
In this community, each person contributed “as each one was able” (Acts 11:29). And within this community, each person was given to “according to their need.” (Acts 2:45; 4:35) Jesus’ shared table community was an expression of voluntary “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
The Jewish Sayings of Jesus contain the earliest version of Jesus’ instructions to those who creating these community structures. We spent an entire two years on this collection of sayings found in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels (see Sayings Gospel Q: A Two Year Journey Reaches Its End)
If you are new to Q, an excellent place to begin is James Robinson’s The Gospel of Jesus: A Historical Search for the Original Good News. I want to share two sections from Robinson that give insight on what we are discussing this week:
“His 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. All of us know the result all too well, for we have experienced it ourselves in one form or another: the breakdown of mutually supportive human relations that results in the distinction between the haves and have-nots; the ruling class subjugating serfs, sharecroppers, and blue-collar workers; the battle of the sexes; dictatorships of one kind or the other; exploitation in the workplace; and on and on. (The Gospel of Jesus: A Historical Search for the Original Good News; Kindle Locations 138-142)
“By using the ‘kingdom of God,’ Jesus put his ideal for society in an antithetical relation both to other political and social systems and to individual self-interest (“looking out for number one”). The human dilemma is, in large part, that we are each other’s fate. We become the tool of evil that ruins another person as we look out for ourselves, having long abandoned any youthful idealism we might once have cherished. But if we each would cease and desist from pushing the other down to keep ourselves up, then the vicious cycle would be broken. Society would become mutually supportive rather than self-destructive. This is what Jesus was up to . . . Put in language derived from his sayings: I am hungry because you hoard food. You are cold because I hoard clothing. Our dilemma is that we all hoard supplies in our backpacks and put our trust in our wallets! Such “security” should be replaced by God reigning, which means both what I trust God to do (to activate you to share food with me) and what I hear God telling me to do (to share clothes with you). We should not carry money while bypassing the poor or wear a backpack with extra clothes and food while ignoring the cold and hungry lying in the gutter. This is why the beggars, the hungry, the depressed are fortunate: God, that is, those in whom God rules, those who hearken to God, will care for them. The needy are called upon to trust that God’s reigning is there for them (“Theirs is the kingdom of God”).” (Kindle Locations 56-77)
Equity often feels like oppression to those who have more than they need. Many have solved the problem of future uncertainty by hoarding for themselves today, others be damned. For them, this is not about possessions as much as it about surviving if something bad should happen to them in the future. I believe Jesus realized this. His vision for human society was to create a community where people will care for you if some ill fate should impact you in the future, and, right now, you provide for someone devastated by ill fate today.
Consider the ravens. Consider the lilies. The system Jesus taught where we take care of one another is a much better solution for the future than fear. Why not give it a try?
“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 10.17-21)
HeartGroup Application
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells one of the wealthy, religious and political elites, “But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:41).
1. What does this mean for us today? Did Jesus really mean that “everything” is tied to our generosity toward those our present system impoverishes? It doesn’t matter why someone is othered and marginalized, whether because of race, gender, education, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, religion, ability or whatever! Everything is connected to our attitudes toward those who face exclusion and/or exploitation: whether we are generous and compassionate or participate in the exploitative status quo. Discuss this with your HeartGroup.
2. Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed Jesus’ preferential option for the marginalized and vulnerable. What does it look like to learn to listen to and believe the experiences of those the present structure disadvantages and exploits? Discuss this with your HeartGroup.
3. Is it enough to grant everyone an equal opportunity to compete in a system that still produces haves and have-nots? Did Jesus envision a different social structure where no one became a have-not? What examples do we have of attempts to create societies like that in the past? What prevented these societies from being successful? What external or internal challenges were involved? Discuss these questions with your HeartGroup.
Pick a practice you shared in number 2 above and practice it this week. What difference does it makes in your “generosity” toward the marginalized. Experiment with it. See if it’s true that in creating a world where generosity and compassion are exercised toward those exploited, “everything becomes clean.”
Thanks for checking in with us this week.
Keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation.
Another world is possible.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”
Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 1)
by Herb Montgomery | May 3, 2018
“Politics answers the question of who gets what. So Jesus was not a religious figure as much as he was a political one. He did not fundamentally challenge his Jewish religion, at least not much more than his predecessor Hillel did. He did challenge the Jewish elites of his time, much more than Hillel did. As we’ve discussed before, Hillel made concessions, such as the prozbul, that centered the wealthy while endeavoring to take care of the poor. Jesus’ teachings centered the poor and gave them the entire “kingdom.” Jesus’ teachings were political.”
Luke 6:20-26: “Looking at his disciples, he said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.’”
The domination structure of Jesus’ society was similar to ours today. Its structure was a combination of two two-dimensional shapes, a triangle and a circle.
Let’s talk about the circle first.
Circles have an inside and an outside. Societies shaped in the form of a circle can have a strongly defined border that distinguishes between insiders and outsiders. They can also have certain tests to decide who’s in and who’s out. Societal circles can also have people whose job it is to patrol the border to make sure no one from the outside is included and everyone knows when someone who was previously an insider no longer should be.
Control for circular social structures rests in the center of the circle. The more one adheres to the rules and identity of the circle, the closer one is to the center. The more someone varies, the more they are pushed to the margins of the circle. Even within the circle, among those who are insiders, some people will find themselves somewhere between the center of the circle and the edges.
What about the triangle?
The circle and the triangle are both hierarchical structures. Where the hierarchy in the circle is from the center out toward the margins, triangular societies have a top comprised of a few elites and a base composed of the majority. In triangles that practice domination and control, the closer one is to the top, the more power, privilege, control and ability to dominate others one also possesses. Your social location in the triangle determines the level to which you experience these privileges, and you can find yourself closer to the top in some areas of your life but closer to the bottom of the triangle in others. The triangle typically is structured to benefit those at the top at the expense and exploitation of those at the bottom.
What happens when we combine these structures?
The combination of these ways of structuring human society is a cone. Within this cone, the closer one is to the center, the closer one also is to the top. The more one is marginalized, the more one finds themselves at the bottom of their society.
This hybrid of the circle and triangle shapes, the cone, is the shape of the society Jesus lived in in the 1st Century. It’s also the shape of many of our religious and civil societies today. In Luke’s version of the Jesus story, Jesus states that people his society structure had made poor, hungry, or weep would be specifically “blessed” by his vision for transforming human society. Jesus wasn’t saying it’s a blessing to be on the margins or at the bottom of society. He was saying that if you’re on the margins, you who his gospel was especially for. As we discussed in Directed Good News, those on the margins in Jesus’ society heard his gospel as good news.
Matthew’s version of the Jesus story backs this up too. As we discussed last month in A Preferential Option for the Vulnerable, people the system had left too broken and impoverished in their spirit to keep trying, those whom the system had steamrolled over, those who hungered and thirsted for the world to be put right—these were the ones Jesus’ vision for humanity was especially targeted at (see Matthew 5:3; Luke 1:80; Matthew 5:5 and 5:6.[1]) These were the ones who had been labeled as “sinners” by those at the center/top of their society, and who, because of that labelling, had been pushed to the edges and underside of their community. They were drawn to the hope for change in Jesus’ gospel: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”(Luke 15:1-2) The term “sinners” is not a universal term here. It is used pejoratively to push some to the margins and bottom of the cone. It was a label those in power used to other people.
Jesus’ vision for human community, his shared table, specifically inclused those his cone-shaped society had excluded. It also had an economic component. Consider the reversal of economic exploitation and reparation found in Luke’s story of an oppressor who embraced Jesus’ teachings.
“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.’” (Luke 19:7-8)
Jesus’ shared table required those at the top/center of their societal cone to pay reparations to those whom they had exploited and pushed down. Tax collectors were economically part of the elite, but socially and politically within Jewish culture they were pushed to the outside and labeled as sinners because of their occupational cooperation with the Empire subjugating Judea and Galilee. They were privileged in certain areas of their lives but marginalized in others.
Jesus’ shared table was also political.
When I use the term “political,” I don’t mean partisan. Politics means related to the polis, the members of a community. Whenever you have two or more people doing life together, you have politics. Politics answers the question of who gets what. So Jesus was not a religious figure as much as he was a political one. He did not fundamentally challenge his Jewish religion, at least not much more than his predecessor Hillel did. He did challenge the Jewish elites of his time, much more than Hillel did. As we’ve discussed before, Hillel made concessions, such as the prozbul, that centered the wealthy while endeavoring to take care of the poor. Jesus’ teachings centered the poor and gave them the entire “kingdom.” Jesus’ teachings were political.
Recently, while chatting with a friend, I bumped into an often repeated misconception of how things worked in Jesus’ society. My friend claimed that Jesus never challenged the Roman civil government but only challenged the religious establishment of Judea. My friend went on to state that Jesus’ followers should ignore the state and simply focus on bringing about religious reform within their own traditions.
This is far from how Jewish society actually functioned in the 1st Century. Today our culture believes that church and state should be separated. But Jesus’ society didn’t have these distinctions. My friend claimed that Jesus was only focused on impacting the religious views of his community, especially as they related to the temple. But this simply isn’t true, historically.
First, the temple was not solely religious, and it was not merely the center of the Jewish “church.” The temple was the center of the Jewish state. The priests and the Sanhedrin were civil authorities, not only religious ones. In 1st Century Judea, there was not a separation between “church and state” or religious and civil duty as we understand either today. The Torah governed both, and they were not two distinct areas of life. They were just life.
The temple received taxes that were to be redistributed to the poor. That’s why the temple functioned as a centralized banking system through which money lenders lent their monies. When the poor took over the temple in the 60s CE, the very first thing they did was to burn the debt ledgers of the temple, which until then recorded all loans. By storming the temple, they forced political and economic change: a year of Jubilee and the forgiveness of all debts.
Secondly, Jesus was a Jewish laborer, not a Roman citizen. He didn’t have access to Rome to protest for change. But he did have access to his own state authority, the temple in Jerusalem. Note that even this distinction between the temple and Rome is not completely accurate either. Rome governed Judea through the temple. Rome determined who would be High Priest each year, and it was the temple that funneled collected tribute back to Rome. The Jewish aristocracy gained privilege and power by cooperating with Rome, and Rome received a degree of control over Judea by using the Jewish temple state in Jerusalem.
So when Jesus overturned tables in the temple-state, this was not only a religious protest; it was political protest as well. Jesus staged his demonstration in the temple with the money changers in solidarity with and on behalf of the poor who were being economically exploited by the Temple-state. Jesus was indicting both Rome and his own state. This is why his execution in response to the temple demonstration was at the hand of Rome, on a Roman cross.
Ched Myers confirms this in his commentary on the book of Mark, and notes the deep implications for all who should choose to follow this political Jesus.
“Jesus has revealed that his messiahship means political confrontation with, not rehabilitation of, the imperial state. Those who wish to ‘come after him’ will have to identify themselves with his subversive program. The stated risk is that the disciple will face the test of loyalty under interrogation by state authorities.” (Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus, p. 247)
When answering the question of who should get what, Jesus stated his political views:
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 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. For where your treasure is [in people not profit], there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12.32-34)
The poor, the marginalized, the pushed down, these were those to whom Jesus’ political views were good news. What he taught them was the gospel of hope. Gustavo Gutierrez accurately reminded us that this hope is more than a forward expectation of charity. This hope is for the creation of an entirely different social order:
“Love of neighbor is an essential component of Christian life. But as long as I apply that term only to the people who cross my path and come asking me for help, my world will remain pretty much the same. Individual almsgiving and social reformism is a type of love that never leaves its own front porch . . . On the other hand my world will change greatly if I go out to meet other people on their path and consider them as my neighbor, as the good Samaritan did… The gospel tells us that the poor are the supreme embodiment of our neighbor. It is this option that serves as the focus for a new way of being human and Christian in today’s Latin America. But the existence of the poor . . . is not neutral on the political level or innocent of ethical implications. Poor people are by-products of the system under which we live and for which we are responsible . . . That is why the poverty of the poor is not a summons to alleviate their plight with acts of generosity but rather a compelling obligation to fashion an entirely different social order.” (Gustavo Gutiérrez; Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith, p. 14)
When we follow Jesus, we don’t build a pyramid, a circle, or a cone. We build a shared table.
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:20-22)
HeartGroup Application
- Go through the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and find five of Jesus’ political views.
- What difference does it make to see Jesus not simply as a religious figure but as a political figure as well? What difference does it make to see Jesus’ temple protest not only as a religious protest but also as a political protest of those in power in response to their economic exploitation of the poor?
- Is there a difference between working toward a politic of distributive justice where everyone is safe and has enough, and there is equity, protection and compassion, and Christians wanting to co-opt political power in the spirit of domination and subjugation to legislate their moral views? Discuss this with your HeartGroup.
I’m so glad you checked in with us this week.
Wherever you are, keep living in love, in survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation.
I love each you dearly.
Another world is possible.
I’ll see you next week.
To support these weekly podcasts and eSights and help us grow, go to renewedheartministries.com and click “Donate”!
[1]
Matthew 5:3—“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Luke 1:80—And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
Matthew 5:4-5— Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:6—Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
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