Whoever Takes You in Takes Me in
Both the positive and negative implications.
by Herb Montgomery
“Whoever takes you in takes me in, and whoever takes me in takes in the one who sent me.” (Q 10:16)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:40-42: “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”
Luke 10:16: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me*; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
Since the 11th Century (1094 C.E. to be exact), thanks to Anselm of Canterbury, some Christians have thought that Jesus’s death was a vicarious substitution that satisfied something in God that needs us to die. The seeds of Anselm’s views existed before him, and his views were further developed by Calvin and Luther, but Anselm was the first to systematize this way of “believing in” Jesus and not just “believing” him.
This week, Jesus’ saying from Q describes a different kind of vicarious substitution. Jesus isn’t standing in for you: you are standing in for Jesus! Jesus was so committed to this idea that he taught his disciples that the way a village responded to the community Jesus sent out was a response not just to them but to Jesus as well.
Oppressive History of Christendom
When we look back at what we have been seeing this year in Sayings Gospel Q, it seems clear to me that the version of Christianity I was raised in and Jesus could not be more different. Religion, including Christianity, is so often employed to offer security rather than what is true.
And because of the way we Christians have acted, great swaths of the human populous immediately shut down any time we even mention the name “Jesus.”
Whomever received the people Jesus sent into the world received Jesus, and also, whomever, in the two thousand year since, witnesses racism, exploitative wealth, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, violence, or any form of oppression by Jesus’ followers witnesses it being done by “Jesus.”
For many, only when they discover for themselves the Jesus we are seeing in Sayings Gospel Q do they realize there is a Jesus that’s radically different than the Jesus they encountered in the religion that formed around him.
This discovery is an ongoing process for South Americans, Africans, African Americans, Women, Transgender people, and those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or questioning. In those encounters, Jesus of Nazareth is often reclaimed. That looks very different than how we originally presented Jesus to them.
There is a difference between how those with power and resources present Jesus and how those on the fringes and the underside of our societies experience him. That difference must not be dismissed.
Continuing Need for Rediscovering the Jesus of the Disinherited
Today, I often meet folks who resonate with what I believe Jesus taught. They subscribe to inclusivity, nondiscrimination, nonviolence, interdependence, and radical resource-sharing as their way of life. They see the ugliness of many of Christianity’s various forms. And as soon as I mention Jesus or they find out that I teach the Bible, the walls between us immediately go up.
I long to be able to help people see a Jesus who is not just for the religious, but for the non-religious too. Because Jesus has been so abused, part of reclaiming Jesus is simply agreeing on the set of values and ethics attributed to him in the gospels.
This love for a set of values, the same values taught by Jesus, in combination with a low tolerance for any mention of Jesus is the fruit of the dynamic that the author of Matthew’s gospel saw in his own day. For a millennia or two, those who’ve called Jesus “Lord” have not “done” or “practiced” Jesus’ actual teachings (see Matthew 7:21-24).
This is the inverse of the reality in this week’s saying: the community formed around Jesus and Jesus himself are so connected with each other that what happens to one also happens to the other, and what happens to Jesus’ followers happens to him.
Positive Connection
There’s also a positive side to the connection between Jesus and the Jesus community that we read in this week’s saying. When we are promoting the teachings of Jesus, and people respond, it is not only us that they’re responding to. They’re also responding to Jesus!
The early Jesus community talked about “the kingdom” or the “empire of God.” More contemporary folks who have uncovered its egalitarian quality have referred to it as the beloved community. Whatever we call it, we are a part of something that includes us and is also much bigger than our individual efforts. As with all power, whether isolated in one individual or shared by all alike, power can be used for great evil or great good.
This week, let’s use our community power for good, using our choices to put on display the beauty of a world transformed by Jesus’ teachings, teachings that include non-discrimination, inclusivity, egalitarianism, nonviolence, social justice, love, healing, and more in our present world today.
Remember that when we choose these teachings, when we embrace and practice them, not just as individuals but also as communities centered around these values and the value of listening to the most vulnerable, we too are listening to and embracing Jesus. Those who resonate with these values and choose to join us, they too embrace Jesus as they embrace us. This is about becoming a part of what has the potential to heal our world. What Jesus taught can heal the world we are living, moving, and breathing in today.
As we press together this week, as our relationships with each other continue to reflect the values and teachings we have been looking at this year, others will take notice. They may never say a special prayer. They may never become more “religious” than they presently are, and may never join an organization. But if in their hearts and lives, they embrace the beauty of the universal values that the Jewish Jesus also taught, and they strive within community to apply those values in their own context, much more has taken place than what institutional, religious, and too often surface judgments can see. This is a beautiful change, much more substantive than what it means for many today to simply take on the name “Christian.”
Because of the classism, sexism, racism, and heterosexism that has become associated with the name of Jesus, some people may never be comfortable referring to themselves as a “Jesus-follower,” either. I understand. I, too, wrestle with this. I continually want to disassociate from rather than own my own complicity in injustice. Yet if a person embraces the values we have discussed, for example, methods of nonviolent conflict resolution, voluntary wealth redistribution, mutual aid, and anti-kyriarchical sharing of community power and resources, that’s what Jesus was trying to encourage within his own society as well.
I can’t help but believe that the historical Jesus understood that it was never so much about him as it was about what he taught: the beloved, humanity-affirming community. As his followers went out, sharing the values they had discovered through this Jewish teacher, what people responded to and embraced was a path, a set of values and ethics, informed by the stories of the most vulnerable. It was, in the end, a choice to embrace the risk of what it takes to heal our world. So this week, let’s contemplate both the negative and the positive implications of what it means in our day and multiple contexts to hear the following words:
Whoever takes you in takes me in, and whoever takes me in takes in the one who sent me. (Q 10:16)
HeartGroup Application
- This week, go back through this year’s eSights and pick a value or principle that we have found in Gospel Sayings Q.
- Discuss how this principle was applied in a 1st Century Jewish context under Roman oppression.
- Discuss possible applications of this same principle today, and choose one of those applications to lean into together. Begin to put it practice.
Thank you so much for joining us for another week.
Keep living in love, wherever this may find you, together, making the world a safer, more compassionate, more just home for us all.
Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns. I love each of you, dearly. I’ll see you next week.
*There is a qualification that must be made with this passage in Luke. Just because someone is rejecting you does not always mean they are rejecting Jesus. At times, that may be true, but at other times it might be your presentation of Jesus that people are actually rejecting, even if you may be claiming Jesus’ name all the while.
Woes against Galilean Towns
by Herb Montgomery
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the wonders performed in you had taken place in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, in sackcloth and ashes. Yet for Tyre and Sidon it shall be more bearable at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, up to heaven will you be exalted? Into Hades shall you come down!” (Q 10:13-15)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 11:21-24: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Luke 10:13-15: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades.”
Let’s do some basic geography so that we don’t get lost in our passages this week.
First Century Palestinian Geography
Chorazin, was a middle-sized city in upper Galilee.
Bethsaida, to the best of our knowledge, was a fishing polis near the mouth of the Jordan river on the northern side of the sea of Galilee.
Tyre, a Gentile, maritime-merchant, Phoenician city, was captured by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, and then by the Greek Seleucids from 316 to 125 BCE. The Roman Empire conquered it in 64 BCE.
Sidon was an ancient, Gentile, Phoenician city with a long history of being conquered repeatedly by Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. It also belonged the often negative ancient Hebrew narrative of being “other.” Originally, it was assigned to Asher, but was never subdued (Judges 1:31). The Sidonians long oppressed Israel (Judges 10:12). By the time of David’s narrative, Sidon began to wane, and Tyre, its “virgin daughter” (Isaiah 23:12), rose to eminence. Solomon entered into a matrimonial alliance with the Sidonians, which became the accused source of “idolatrous worship” in the land of Israel (1 Kings 11:1, 33). Jezebel was also a Sidonian princess (1 Kings 16:31).
Capernaum, another fishing village on the north shore of the sea of Galilee, was a base for Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels.
James Robinson in his volume The Gospel of Jesus explains how all of these towns relate:
“Jesus developed on the north shore a small circuit of three villages, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. These towns may also have been helpful. His base camp at Capernaum was still in Galilee, ruled by Herod Antipas, who had put John to death. But [Capernaum] was a border town, and Jesus befriended the Roman centurion stationed nearby. It was on the frontier of the territory of Philip, a less threatening ruler. Bethsaida, across the frontier just outside Galilee, was in fact the capital of Philip’s territory, so it may well have been politically safer. It was also the hometown of one of John’s converts who became Jesus’ first disciple, Andrew.” (Kindle Location 2550)
Rejection, Hades & Sodom
The “woes” we encounter in this week’s saying are addressed to the vprimary towns Jesus conducted his ministry in. His teachings about nonviolent enemy transformation, peasant mutual-aid, community interdependence, resource sharing, and voluntary wealth redistribution from the rich, I can imagine, must have been about as popular back then as they are today.
As we have covered previously, the Hebrew prophets pronounced woes that announced or warned of impending destruction on societies whose injustice and oppression were reaching a critical breaking point. Our societies can learn from the path that many followed in Palestine and the Roman destruction that came as an intrinsic result forty years later. Violence used to solve the world’s problems, isolationism, independence and individualism, and growing global and national wealth disparities are all warnings to those today who have eyes to see that the path we are on cannot continue indefinitely. It’s not sustainable politically, socially, economically, or environmentally.
Just as Capernaum did, a society may consider its wealth a sign of being “God blessed” and “heaven” bound, all while their riches are the fruit of exploitation and they’re bound for hell or “hades.” Jesus, here, is using Hebrew prophetic liberation imagery found in Isaiah 14:
“On the day the LORD gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labor forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:
How the oppressor has come to an end!
How his fury has ended!
The LORD has broken the rod of the wicked,
the scepter of the rulers,
which in anger struck down peoples
with unceasing blows,
and in fury subdued nations
with relentless aggression.
All the lands are at rest and at peace;
they break into singing.
Even the junipers and the cedars of Lebanon
gloat over you and say,
‘Now that you have been laid low,
no one comes to cut us down.’
The realm of the dead below is all astir
to meet you at your coming;
it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you—
all those who were leaders in the world;
it makes them rise from their thrones—
all those who were kings over the nations.
They will all respond,
they will say to you,
‘You also have become weak, as we are;
you have become like us.’
All your pomp has been brought down to the grave,
along with the noise of your harps;
maggots are spread out beneath you
and worms cover you.
How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
to the depths of the pit.” (Isaiah 14:3-15, emphasis added.)
The fact that Hades is mentioned at all in this saying is evidence to many scholars that this is a Galilean saying. Galilee was more influenced by their Hellenistic neighbors than the Jewish community south of them in Judea, and Sayings Gospel Q was the collection of sayings cherished by the Jewish followers of Jesus in Galilee.
Within the Hellenistic worldview, Hades was synonymous with death, and the dualism of a post mortem Heaven and Hell are late arrivals to the Jewish people of the first century. Many Jewish people subscribed instead to an apocalyptic world view.
In regards to Sodom, we discussed last week, at length, that Sodom’s story wasn’t finished yet. Sodom was envisioned by Ezekiel as being fully restored. As stigmatic as the narrative surrounding Sodom and its economic individualism was (its independent isolationist rejection of mutual aid and basic hospitality to visitors as well as immigrants); the day of judgment coming at the end of the apocalyptic age would be more bearable for it than for the Galilean communities if they continued choose (economically, religiously, and politically) to remain on the path they were presently on.
Day of Judgement
As we discussed in An End of the World Savior versus Present Liberator, Jewish apocalypticism looked forward to a day of judgment when all oppression, violence and injustice in the world would be put right. Early Jewish followers of Jesus believed that his emergence in the Jewish community was the apocalyptic event they were looking forward to. There was much more to this view, of course, but the “day of judgment” was central.
The Day of Judgment was a day of great reversal regarding power and resources. On this day of things being put right, those in dominant positions of exploitative and oppressive power would receive their due, and those who had been oppressed and subjugated would be liberated. The Pharisees of the school of Shammai shared this view, except that their definition of the oppressed and subjugated who would be liberated and rewarded would have focused on those oppressed people who also faithfully practiced the School of Shammai’s interpretation of the Torah. Jesus enlarged his definition of those who were oppressed and soon to be liberated to include the poor, the marginalized, people labeled as “sinners” by the followers of Shammai, and even the tax collectors. Jesus’s group of oppressed and subjugated was much larger than the religious boundaries in place in his day.
Jesus taught the people that the day of things being made right was coming, and that they had to choose the way of putting things right. Remember, Jesus’ subversive “empire” of God was defined as people taking care of people. According to Jesus, those early followers were the ones through whom God would begin to put things right. Their choices and participation were essential.
Present Path
I do not believe that we here in America can continue indefinitely on our present path: we are approaching a breaking point in our history. However, I do believe that Jesus’ two thousand-year-old Jewish sayings are intrinsically valuable and are relevant to our challenges today. The path of nonviolence; the path of resource sharing, voluntary wealth redistribution, mutual aid; the power of interdependent communities, these teachings of Jesus represent rich alternative ways of doing life that offer us a different path for us. Jesus teaches us that power and resources are to be mutually shared, not wielded. Fear of the future and one another and fear of those who are unlike ourselves can be replaced by mutual love and caring. Greed, racism, hierarchies, and a myriad of phobias toward others don’t have to be our driving societal forces.
For us, if we don’t choose an alternate path as a society, then not too far in the future, the saying Jesus shares in our verses this week could be said of us as well. The woes he once uttered toward communities who chose to remain on their path until it was too late could also apply to us. In his historical context, it was not until after the people’s bright hopes for the future were devastatingly decimated that they chose alternatives. But change doesn’t have to come through such violent upheaval. It could start today. Here. Now. With you and with me, if we will choose it.
This year, we have been taking a close look at our best understanding of the sayings of Jesus. And like those who heard those sayings long ago, we are brought to a cross roads. Those sayings are still recruiting people into the “empire” of God today. They are still calling, “Follow me.” Here, once more, is our saying this week:
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the wonders performed in you had taken place in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, in sackcloth and ashes. Yet for Tyre and Sidon it shall be more bearable at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, up to heaven will you be exalted? Into Hades shall you come down!” (Q 10:13-15)
HeartGroup Application
This week I want you to take a moment in your HeartGroup and do something just for me.
- First, please sit in a circle.
- Then, invite each person to go around the circle and share one thing they appreciate about everyone else in the circle.
- Lastly, encourage each person to then say something they appreciate about themselves.
This has been one of the most effective relationship-building exercises we’ve done in our HeartGroups. Who knows, you may like it so much, you decide to begin doing it each week.
Whatever your circumstances this week, thanks for checking in and reading along with us.
Keep living in love and loving radically, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
Response to a Town’s Rejection
by Herb Montgomery
“But into whatever town you enter and they do not take you in, on going out from that town‚ shake off the dust from your feet. I tell you: For Sodom it shall be more bearable on that day than for that town.” (Q 10:10-12)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:14-15: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”
Luke 10:10-12: “But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”
Our saying this week has a long history of anti-Semitism. Christians have used the phrase “shaking the dust from one’s feet” as a symbol of Jews rejecting Gentiles. But it is simplistic to say that Jews shook the dust off of their feet when leaving Gentile territories as a rejection of Gentiles and it is anti-Semitic to use it to justify rejecting Jews for their rejection of “Jesus as their Messiah.”
What is a better way to understand this ancient practice?
Shaking Dust from One’s Feet
If this was a practice of the first century Jewish people it would have most likely been a practice of those who followed the Pharisaical school of Shammai. The school of Shammai wanted to maintain the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles in an effort to preserve Jewish identity and culture when Hellenism was threatening their culture. I don’t believe that tribal distinctions are the healthiest way to preserve identity, nor do I subscribe to Shammai’s teachings on this, but I can’t fault the people of that era either. I get it. This was a people who were still recovering from their exile and dispersion throughout the region and trying desperately to hold on to their identity.
The Pharisaical school of Hillel, which many of Jesus’ teachings are more in harmony with, did not follow that strict distinction between Jew and Gentile. Instead, Hillel taught that every person, Jew or Gentile, was created in the image of God and worthy of respect and treatment according to the Golden Rule. (We covered this in much more detail earlier this year in The Golden Rule.)
Ultimately the Jewish people abandoned the school of Shammai in favor of Hillel’s more inclusive practices. Karen Armstrong writes about the people’s choice in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem:
“It happened that R. Johanan ben Zakkai went out from Jerusalem, and R. Joshua followed him and saw the burnt ruins of the Temple and he said: ‘Woe is it that the place, where the sins of Israel find atonement, is laid waste.’ Then said R. Johanan, ‘Grieve not, we have an atonement equal to the Temple, the doing of loving deeds, as it is said, ‘I desire love and not sacrifice.’
“Kindness was the key to the future; Jews must turn away from the violence and divisiveness of the war years and create a united community with ‘one body and one soul.’ When the community was integrated in love and mutual respect, God was with them, but when they quarreled with one another, he [sic] returned to heaven, where the angels chanted with ‘one voice and one melody.’ When two or three Jews sat and studied harmoniously together, the divine presence sat in their midst. Rabbi Akiba, who was killed by the Romans in 132 CE, taught that the commandment ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ was ‘the great principle of the Torah.’ To show disrespect to any human being who had been created in God’s image was seen by the rabbis as a denial of God himself and tantamount to atheism. Murder was a sacrilege: ‘Scripture instructs us that whatsoever sheds human blood is regarded as if he had diminished the divine image.’ God had created only one man at the beginning of time to teach us that destroying only one human life was equivalent to annihilating the entire world, while to save a life redeemed the whole of humanity. To humiliate anybody—even a slave or a non-Jew—was equivalent to murder, a sacrilegious defacing of God’s image. To spread a scandalous, lying story about another person was to deny the existence of God. Religion was inseparable from the practice of habitual respect to all other human beings. You could not worship God unless you practiced the Golden Rule and honored your fellow humans, whoever they were.”
(Armstrong, Karen; The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Kindle Edition.)
Luke, the most Gentile of the synoptic gospels, colors Jesus’ instructions with the phrase “as a warning.” By rejecting the values and teachings that Jesus and Hillel sought to promote in Judaism, those in the school of Shammai who practiced shaking Gentile dust off their feet were headed toward the same fate that they claimed the Gentiles were headed toward. In their ethic of separation, alienation, and independence, they were actually aligning themselves more with the path of destruction then the Gentiles they wanted to be separate from.
Remember, Jesus’ community practiced interdependence, mutualism, and resource-sharing. The Jewish followers of Shammai rejected the path of interdependence for independence, isolationism, and exceptionalism, and so they shared with violent revolutionists a path that would ultimately lead to a devastating backlash from the Romans.
Shaking the dust off of one’s feet could not have indicated rejection of the Jews because Jesus was himself a Jew, not a Christian. Yet a Jewish Jesus would have felt burdened to communicate that there was no moral difference between those who rejected his values and those they claimed moral superiority to. Jesus makes this statement in Matthew’s gospel:
“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even gentiles do that?” (Matthew 5:46-47, emphasis added.)
Shaking dust off of one’s feet was not an act of rejection, but an act of warning. It was a warning to those one genuinely cared about, was invested in, and saw as one’s own people. It was a sign of deep concern with the direction one’s own community was headed in.
Sodom’s Story: Not Finished.
Let’s close this with the 1st Century Jewish belief that Sodom’s story was not finished. Sodom still had a future, and I believe this is important.
First, let’s be clear on what we are talking about. The atrocity of Sodom, according the Hebrew scriptures was this:
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
Sodom had become so wealthy and isolationist that any immigrants to Sodom were rejected, even if fleeing there for safety, and subjected to physical violence or even sexual violence. The threat of sexual violence we read about in Genesis 19, rape of men and women, was a common war practice in the ancient world, used to emasculate, dehumanize, and humiliate enemies.*
As inhospitable and greedy as Sodom was, however, Ezekiel uses Sodom’s narrative as an indictment against his own people:
“As surely as I live, declares the [LORD], your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.” (Ezekiel 16:48)
But then Ezekiel throws in a twist with the Sodom narrative. He envisions a river of life that one day flows out from Jerusalem (Ezekiel 47.1-2). And what this river of life does for Sodom is restorative, not destructive.
“He said to me, ‘This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. [In Ezekiel’s time, the Dead Sea was believed to be the region of ancient Sodom.] When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. People will fish along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.’” (Ezekiel 47.8-12, emphasis added.)
Ezekiel had previously said,
“However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and of Samaria and her daughters, and your fortunes along with them, so that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done in giving them comfort. And your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to what they were before; and you and your daughters will return to what you were before.” (Ezekiel 16:53-55, emphasis added)
Because of how many Christians use the New Testament passages of Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2:6 today, it is important to understand that Ezekiel saw a positive ending to Sodom’s narrative. Many Christians today use Sodom’s narrative as an example of the future destruction of some categories of people and this belief influences them to practice a hopeless exclusion of whomever they deem unlike them. But Jesus, like Ezekiel, believed that the future of his own people could still be bright.
So in this week’s saying about shaking the dust off one’s feet, Jesus stands in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets: he evokes the narrative of Sodom and compares it to his own people’s future fate. Jesus shows deep concern for the society of his day and the unbearable retaliation Rome would inflict upon Jerusalem if his community continued on its current path. Jesus’ nonviolence and the resource-sharing principles would have placed the people on a radically different trajectory.
I believe that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jewish people did, through the teachings of Hillel, partially transition to the path Jesus showed, and they made great strides in love, kindness, nonviolence, and radical inclusivity. Economically, Hillel’s and Jesus’ teachings were somewhat different, and I believe Jesus’ economic teachings were more in harmony with the Torah than Hillel’s. But Jesus’ radical resource sharing and ethics of nonviolence are both waiting for a present or future generation to choose.
Over the last three weeks, we’ve been looking at the interdependent elements of Jesus’ mission instructions. This week we’re beginning to transition into the next section of Jesus teachings. Just like this week’s saying, these next few sayings contain warnings for his generation if they didn’t abandon their path, if they didn’t choose the path he was presenting.
I can’t help but notice that history is cyclical. We in our society today may be being faced with the same choices that first generations of Christians were. With Jesus’ path of nonviolence and resource-sharing in mind, let’s take a moment to contemplate Jesus’ warning:
But into whatever town you enter and they do not take you in, on going out from that town‚ shake off the dust from your feet. I tell you: For Sodom it shall be more bearable on that day than for that town. (Q 10:10-12)
HeartGroup Application
I want to introduce to you a friend of mine, Mark Van Steenwyk. If you haven’t read his books, they are well worth it and I recommend them highly. This last week, Mark posted this statement on social media:
“I hate coercion!” says the modern man. “Except for, perhaps, the many coercions of the past that have made me so prosperous.”
It is like the parable of the man who slays an entire neighborhood and takes their treasures. Afterwards, he declares himself a pacifist. When the relatives of those slain [come] to his door, angrily holding bats, he says: “You should be pacifists, like me!”
1. In the context of this statement, discuss in your HeartGroup what it would look like for your group to lean more deeply into the nonviolence and resource-sharing that the Jesus of Sayings Gospel Q taught.
2. List three ways you believe the teachings of Jesus call you to embrace nonviolence in today’s society. Also list three ways you believe the teachings of Jesus call you to share resources and even participate in the reparations needed in our society today.
3. Pick one action from each list to put into practice between this week and next.
We cannot continue today on our current trajectory without reaching a breaking point. As we are contemplating the changes we so deeply need, the Jesus of Sayings Gospel Q and those whose experiences of life vary from one another can inform our choices to move toward a safer, more just, more compassionate world for us all.
It’s much easier to simply worship Jesus than to put into place the world-healing teachings he taught. But healing the world is what Jesus spent his life doing, and his story has called to those who would listen ever since saying, “follow me.”
Thanks for joining us this week.
Wherever this finds you, keep living in love, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you, dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
*It’s part of the implicit misogyny of the original culture and contemporary Christian culture that the threatened rape of Lot’s daughters—human women—is almost always glossed over in favor of horror about the threat of rape against “male” angels, the different flesh of Jude.
Sayings Gospel Q: What to Do in Houses and Towns
BY HERB MONTGOMERY
“Into whatever house you enter, first say: ‘Peace to this house!’ And if a son of peace be there, let your peace come upon him; but if not, let‚ your peace return upon you. And at that house remain, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the worker is worthy of one’s reward. Do not move around from house to house. And whatever town you enter and they take you in, eat what is set before you, and cure the sick there, and say to them: The kingdom of God has reached unto you.” (Q 10:5-9)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:7-13: “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. Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.”
Luke 10:5-9: “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
Gospel of Thomas 14:4: “And if you go into any land and wander from place to place, and if they take you in, then eat what they will set before you. Heal the sick among them!”
Last week we discussed the interdependence in the mission instructions that Sayings Gospel Q emphasized. This week, we’ll look at the way of mutual sharing or exchange of resources and abilities found in this saying.
Survival versus Liberation
A great summary of this section of Sayings Gospel Q comes from the work of Stephen J. Patterson:
“What does it actually mean for the empire of God to come? It begins with a knock at the door. On the stoop stand two itinerant beggars, with no purse, no knapsack, no shoes, no staff. They are so ill-equipped that they must cast their fate before the feet of a would-be host. This is a point often made by historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan. These Q folk are sort of like ancient Cynics, but their goal is not the Cynic goal of self-sufficiency; these itinerants are set only for dependency. To survive they must reach out to other human beings. They offer them peace—this is how the empire arrives. And if their peace is accepted, they eat and drink—this is how the empire of God is consummated, in table fellowship. Then another tradition is tacked on, beginning with the words ‘Whenever you enter a town.’ This is perhaps the older part of the tradition, for this, and only this, also has a parallel in the Gospel of Thomas (14). There is also an echo of it in Paul’s letter known as 1 Corinthians (10: 27). Here, as in the first tradition, the itinerants are instructed, ‘Eat what is set before you.’ Again, the first move is to ask. The empire comes when someone receives food from another. But then something is offered in return: care for the sick. The empire of God here involves an exchange: food for care.
This warrants pause. Food for care. In the ancient world, those who lived on the margins of peasant life were never far from death’s door. In the struggle to survive, food was their friend and sickness their enemy. Each day subsistence peasants earn enough to eat for a day. Each day they awaken with the question: Will I earn enough to eat today? This is quickly followed by a second: Will I get sick today? If I get sick, I won’t eat, and if I don’t eat, I’ll get sicker. With each passing day the spiral of starvation and sickness becomes deeper and deeper and finally, deadly. Crossan has argued that this little snippet of ancient tradition is critical to understanding why the followers of Jesus and their empire of God were compelling to the marginalized peasants who were drawn to it. ‘Eat what is set before you and care for the sick.’ Here is the beginning of a program of shared resources of the most basic sort: food and care. It’s an exchange. If some have food, all will eat; if any get sick, someone who eats will be there to care for them. The empire of God was a way to survive— which is to say, salvation.” (The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins, pp. 74-75)
In Luke’s gospel, the goal of Jesus’ ministry is the liberation of the oppressed:
“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)
This week’s saying describes the way Jesus’ disciples can survive as they work toward that liberation. It reminds me of Delores Williams’ critique of early black liberation theology. Using the Hagar story, Williams explained that “God’s activity” is not always liberation. There are times when, as in the case of Hagar, God provides a way of survival in exploitative situations.
“When our hermeneutical principle is God’s word of survival and quality of life to oppressed communities (or families) living in a diaspora, we put different emphasis upon biblical texts and identify with different biblical stories than do black liberation theologians.” (Sisters in the Wilderness, p. 194)
This week’s saying, seen through the lens of mutual resource-sharing, is a plan of survival. It can also be interpreted as creating a new world while the old exploitative one is still present, building a new society within the shell of the old.
Within the Shell of the Old
I read a great article this past week from the Center for a Stateless Society’s website about Alcoholics Anonymous illustrating how people can create structures that meet their communities’ needs today even as they look forward to one day when the present structures are no longer present. For those not familiar with C4SS, one of the senior fellows of this group is Gary Chartier, professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University.
Jesus showed how to build a new world within the shell of the old, and this was valuable in four ways:
First, the mutualism in Jesus’ sharing of resources enabled his impoverished followers to survive and, together, raise their quality of life despite Roman economic exploitation and the religious complicity of the Temple aristocracy.
Second, it empowered Jesus’ followers to speak the truth about the system that they lived in. Often, people subordinated in systems do not have the power to immediately abandon and separate themselves from their oppression. They are forced into participation against their will. So survival at times can include a type of lying about the system in order to placate oneself that it not that bad, it’s not perfect, but they can work with the present system.
Building a new world within the shell of the old does not require an impossible abandonment of the old world. It enables one to tell the truth about the present system, acknowledging one’s inability to fully escape that system, and still dedicate one’s efforts to creating a new society. We may not be able to escape it yet, but as we learned last month from Tolstoy and Gandhi, at least we can be honest about it.
Third, Jesus’ teachings encouraged his followers to direct their energy toward preparing for their liberation. Too often the need to survive is a reason one can’t abandon a present exploitative system. To use Delores Williams’ example again, Hagar had liberated herself from the oppression of Abraham and Sarah, yet she and her son were dying! They had become free, but to what end? She and her son were now alone in the wilderness and starving, and in order to survive, she had to return to the house of her oppressors.
Building a new world within the shell of the old promises that one will in the future be able to abandon present oppression because a more just society provides for the needs of the community and liberation moves everyone toward life rather than starvation.
Fourth and lastly, building a new world within the shell of the old critiques the present world, waking others to the injustices of a system they may still be complicit in. An unconscious person might ask, why build a different world if this one is so perfect, so “number one,” so “God blessed.” To work on a better world while the present world is in motion helps others to see the problems in the present system and provides an option that meets the needs of humanity without domination and subjugation. This method subverts the present world, allowing people to see and freely choose a better option. Thus they accomplish liberation through justice rather than through violence.
“When Power Resides With the Outsiders”
Lastly this week, I want to draw your attention to something in this week’s saying that I hadn’t noticed, and I want to talk about why I hadn’t noticed it. Dr. Keisha McKenzie beautifully pointed out that what we see in Jesus’ instructions to the disciples is a power dynamic working in reverse.
“So often when we talk about who is welcome or received, especially in churches, the congregation or pastor or elders are usually described as blessers. They have legal and sacramental authority, they often own the property, they can expel people or invite them into membership: we imagine the power to ‘bless’ resides with them.
That’s not the dynamic at work in this verse.
In this verse, it’s the itinerant community that blesses. The power to bring peace moves with them, and reluctant or rejecting hosts can resist it.
This is encouragement for people who don’t have conventional power yet may not realize that they aren’t without all power. Families may be icy tundras and congregations may be just as cold. But we have the ability to offer the mainstream ‘peace’ and wholeness, and they have the ability to repel both.” (Family Memories)
I encourage you to read the entire article. It is spot on!
What I also want to point out is that although Keisha gave a shout out to me for directing her attention to Luke 10, she captured an insight from our saying this week that I would never have seen on my own in a million years. Why? Because I’m an insider in most areas of the culture we live in today. I’m White. I’m male. I’m American. I’m straight. I’m cisgender. It never occurred to look at these instructions from the perspective of an outsider. I missed that! But most of Jesus’ disinherited followers were outsiders too. Jesus was empowering the outsiders of his day in a world where they had been religiously, socially, politically and economically kept out.
This illustrates for me once again why we so desperately need more eyes reading the Jesus story than just White, male, European theologians from the Western so-called “First World.” We need South American voices, we need Black voices, we need feminist voices, we need womanist voices, we need queer voices! It’s from the diverse perspectives and voices of those on the outlying edges of our societies that we can regain the original meanings of the Jewish Jesus story, not because of these identities in themselves, but because of the way people in marginal social positions experience life: they experience life differently from people in the dominant positions of our societies.
The Jesus we meet in the Jesus story resonated with the marginalized and oppressed of the 1st Century. It makes perfect sense that those who share that experience today will see within the Jesus story things that others in a more dominant social position will initially miss. In Western history, “ownership” of the Jesus story has most often been claimed by those in positions of power and privilege. This has almost obliterated the original meaning of the Jesus story to a point where we can barely recover it today. So recovering the historical Jesus is difficult for dominant society groups and may be much easier for those who parallel in our society those with whom the original story resonated so long ago. That story has been buried under interpretation after interpretation of those in positions of power, interpretations that protect the status quo, keeping it in place rather than subverting it from underneath. This is why, I believe, if we are to rediscover the historical Jesus, we must listen to the voices of those forced by society to live on the fringes of our world.
This is another example of our interdependence. We need each other. We need the value of all of our voices, and we especially need those whose experience is different from our own. Together we can integrate all of those experiences into a coherent and meaningful whole, choose to abandon our fear and insecurity toward those unlike ourselves, and work toward a world characterized by what Jesus subversively called the “empire” of God: a community of people taking care of people.
As we work toward a world that looks like this, let’s keep in mind those original instructions from Jesus, which emphasized our interdependence in concrete and practical ways:
“Into whatever house you enter, first say: Peace to this house! And if a son of peace be there, let your peace come upon him; but if not, let‚ your peace return upon you. And at that house remain, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the worker is worthy of one’s reward. Do not move around from house to house. And whatever town you enter and they take you in, eat what is set before you, and cure the sick there, and say to them: The kingdom of God has reached unto you.” (Q 10:5-9)
HeartGroup Application
This week I have a very simple exercise for your HeartGroup.
- As a group, write down five ways you feel you depend on one another.
- Now share what each of these connections means to each of you. Define them.
- Now list three ways that this week you can individually and together lean into these five areas of dependence.
None of us come into this life all on our own. We don’t thrive alone either.
Thanks once again for joining us this week.
Keep living in love, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
No Provisions
by Herb Montgomery
“Carry no purse‚ not knapsack, nor sandals, nor stick, and greet no one on the road.” (Q 10:4)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:7-10: “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. Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his food. Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave.”
Luke 10:4-9: “Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
Last week we began entering into what Q scholars refer to as Jesus’ Mission Instructions. These sayings show Jesus including others in the community he was seeking to create. As we discussed last week, Jesus didn’t perceive himself as a one-man-show. He was concerned with growing a community shaped by the values and social teachings he was promoting. In these mission instructions, we get a taste of Jesus’ and the Jesus communities’ actual practice in Galilee as he traveled from Jewish village to Jewish village. We assume that Jesus “practiced what he preached”: if there had been a gap between how Jesus lived and what he taught, it’s unlikely that the Q community would have been so captivated by what he taught, or preserved it.
Let’s begin with Matthew’s mission instructions first.
Matthew, Luke and Q’s Instructions
Initially, those who formed the Jesus community would have gone out into areas they did not know to get familiar with certain villages. Over time, some houses in these areas became known as the homes of Jesus followers or homes welcoming of Jesus followers. Those going out were going out cold, as it were, totally dependent on the hospitality of those that took them in.
This is not the safest way to meet new people. In our modern Western, capitalistic culture, which places a high priority on individualism and independence, this method is counterintuitive. Yet form follows function. I’m convinced that this method put into practice the mutualism, mutual aid, and interdependence that Jesus taught. We cannot use independent, self-reliant, individualistic methods to build a world where we demonstrate that mutualism, resource sharing, mutual dependence is how life on this planet truly flourishes. The world we are working toward and the path by which we travel to arrive at that world must be of the same substance.
It was in the soil of non-alienation and mutually beneficial relationships that the mustard seed of Jesus’ subversively named “empire of God” was to sprout and grow. And so those sent out to various villages practiced total dependence on others. Domination of one another begins with denying our dependence on one another. And the way of domination ends when we embrace and begin to lean into our mutual interdependence. Life is a shared experience. Rather than a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers, life is found in mutuality. We share resources, exercise our own ability to think and act, empower others to think and act, and are empowered by others to think and act as well.
Matthew’s Instructions
The Matthean Jesus community grew out of the Q movement and so reflected the Q movement’s mission practices with, as we will see, a few updates.
Over time, Jesus’ instructions about this method must have been abused, because in chapter 11 of the Didache, it states:
But concerning the apostles and prophets, act according to the decree of the Gospel. Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord. But he shall not remain more than one day; or two days, if there’s a need. But if he remains three days, he is a false prophet. And when the apostle goes away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodges. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet.
It’s not possible to harmonize Q’s instructions on taking no money bag or purse (no gold or silver) and where to lodge with the Didache’s decrees that staying in a home more than two days and asking for money for the trip marked an apostle as a “false prophet.” The most we can say is that the original saying implies mutuality, the exchange of care for the sick in exchange for food and provisions. Between Q’s instructions and the Jesus-communities who cherished the Didache, there must have been an imbalance in this exchange that the Didache strove to bring back to center.
Matthew reflects this in the statement that those sent out were to give without payment as they had received without payment: don’t put a price tag on the blessings and don’t monetize the teachings of Jesus. And Matthew also preserves the Q text’s emphasis on the apostles and the people’s interdependence and mutual generosity. Matthew does update the instructions with the Greek word trophe or food whereas Luke keeps more of the original idea with the word misthos or wages in his phrase, “the worker deserves his wages.”
These instructions delicately balanced the people’s hospitality and generosity with the “price” set or demanded for the ministry of those who were sent. Jesus was not to be transformed into a product to be sold (as he is with TV evangelists today within our culture). Givers would not be deprived of the voluntary embrace of the value of interdependence. And those genuinely laboring in this Jesus revolution were also worthy of being taken care of and provided for. They would not be neglected or made to go without. Having taken the first step towards giving freely, they weren’t to be left holding the bag; their work was to be valued and supported. Their support was to be wholly dependent on the choices of others, and they were simultaneously to be considered worthy of others’ hospitality and generosity. This was not charity, but mutuality. There is a difference.
Stephen Patterson captures the idea in his book The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins:
“What does it actually mean for the empire of God to come? It begins with a knock at the door. On the stoop stand two itinerant beggars, with no purse, no knapsack, no shoes, no staff. They are so ill-equipped that they must cast their fate before the feet of a would-be host . . . These Q folk are sort of like ancient Cynics, but their goal is not the Cynic goal of self-sufficiency; these itinerants are set only for dependency. To survive they must reach out to other human beings. They offer them peace—this is how the empire arrives. And if their peace is accepted, they eat and drink—this is how the empire of God is consummated, in table fellowship.” (pp. 74-75)
Luke’s Instructions
Luke’s gospel includes two separate sets of mission instructions, not just one. One comes from Mark, the gospel directed at Gentile Jesus followers:
“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: ‘Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.” (Luke 9:1-6)
The other instruction set is from Q, the gospel of sayings cherished by Jewish Jesus followers:
“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, “Peace to this house.” If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, “Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.” I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:1-16)
Luke did not revise these initial instructions as Matthew does, but leaves them in their original form. James M. Robinson’s book The Gospel of Jesus explains why:
“These constant clarifications in the mission instructions in Matthew are largely absent from the parallel text in Luke, for Q’s mission instructions are actually no longer being followed in Luke’s gentile church as it moves about in the big wide world beyond Galilee. Because Luke’s gentile Christian church had long since gone over to the practice exemplified by Paul in the book of Acts, it would have been less involved in updating the archaic mission instructions of the Jewish Christians found in the Sayings Gospel Q. As a result, Luke remained closer to the original language of Q’s mission instructions—thank goodness!”
By the time Luke’s gospel was written the Gentile Christian Church was practicing Paul’s mission methods, not Q’s (see 1 Corinthians 9:1-6, 12) Paul took a more independent, self-reliant approach of working for a living rather than depending only on the interdependent hospitality and generosity of those who would take him in.
It is also curious that Luke is the only gospel to reverse Q’s mission instructions. Later in Luke’s gospel we find:
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?’ ‘Nothing,’ they answered. He said to them, ‘But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’” (Luke 22:35-36)
Luke’s gospel seems to use this reversal to create harmony between the instructions we find in Q and Paul’s independence. This passage has since become one that many people use to try to justify violence against one’s enemies.
Since Luke is showing that Q’s instructions are obsolete, he has no need to update them as Matthew does. Luke 10 (from Q) is believed to be more closely represent the Q original: he simply describes the movement’s early practices before the changes Paul brought.
But I believe Q’s original instructions should not be abandoned. The interdependence of the original Jewish Q community versus the independence of later methods is relevant to our struggle today. The harms of capitalist, patriarchal, individualist, dominating ways of structuring society are becoming more obvious to many people. And one of the most destructive fruits that our western individualism has perpetuated in human relationships is the suppression of our natural interdependence.
I want to return to Stephen Patterson’s words one more time as we end this week. What the Q community sought to preserve in the sayings of the Jewish Jesus was a way of forming societies or community rooted in mutualism and interdependence. Patterson notices just how remarkable this approach was given the culture Jesus taught in.
“In the ancient world, those who lived on the margins of peasant life were never far from death’s door. In the struggle to survive, food was their friend and sickness their enemy. Each day subsistence peasants earn enough to eat for a day. Each day they awaken with the question: Will I earn enough to eat today? This is quickly followed by a second: Will I get sick today? If I get sick, I won’t eat, and if I don’t eat, I’ll get sicker. With each passing day the spiral of starvation and sickness becomes deeper and deeper and finally, deadly. Crossan has argued that this little snippet of ancient tradition is critical to understanding why the followers of Jesus and their empire of God were compelling to the marginalized peasants who were drawn to it. “Eat what is set before you and care for the sick.” Here is the beginning of a program of shared resources of the most basic sort: food and care. It’s an exchange. If some have food, all will eat; if any get sick, someone who eats will be there to care for them. The empire of God was a way to survive—which is to say, salvation.” The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins (p. 75)
Today, let’s lean more deeply into our shared lives. Let’s find ways relevant for our world today of acknowledging and tapping our interdependence and shared power, the power of community. As we do this, let’s not forget the instructions Jesus’s early movement was rooted in:
Carry no purse‚ not knapsack, nor sandals, nor stick, and greet no one on the road. (Q 10:4)
HeartGroup Application
We tend to live in one of the binary options of self-reliance, independence, and individualism or dependence, community, and mutuality. Yet reality (and the way of life) is more and more being discovered to be simultaneous embrace of our differentiation from each other as well as our mutual dependent nature.
This week, take two words, compassion and empathy, and explore their relation to our interdependence. Think of the chicken or the egg question (which came first).
1. Compassion: How does recognizing our interdependence heighten our compassion for one another? How does practicing compassion deepen our appreciation of our interdependence?
2. Empathy: How does recognizing our interdependence lead us to more empathy? How does practicing empathy reinforce our appreciation of our shared, interdependent existence?
3. As a group, make a list of three things you can do this week to acknowledge and embrace our dependence on one another. This may take some practice. We are socialized to value independence and individualism instead. But with time and intention, I’m sure each of us can do this.
Thank you, once again, for joining us this week.
Keep living in love, till the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.
I love each of you, dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
Sayings Gospel Q: Sheep Among Wolves
by Herb Montgomery
“Be on your way! Look, I send you like sheep in the midst of wolves” (Q 10:3) .
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10.16: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
Luke 10.3: “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.”
The image of this week’s saying is one of risk. In the last saying, we prayed for laborers. In the saying for this week, we encounter Jesus sending forth fellow laborers and being honest and frank about the risk involved.
I want to point out the participatory nature of this week’s saying. And lastly we’ll look closely at the imagery of sheep versus wolves and consider what this might have meant given Jesus teachings on changing the status quo with self-affirming nonviolent confrontation. Let’s talk about risk first.
An Ethic of Risk Not Sacrifice
When people interpret Jesus’s message for victims and survivors of injustice as requiring them to embrace an ethic of passive self-sacrifice in the face of injustice, there are harmful results..Karen Baker-Fletcher has gone to significant, convincing lengths to show that Jesus’s message was of self-affirmation, the affirmation of living not dying, and that, although his message was nonviolent, it was nonetheless a message that confronted with nonviolent direct action those who perpetuate injustice.
Jesus’s message of choosing life also involved an “ethic of risk.” This “risk” was not intrinsic to choosing life but was the imposed result of the elite who felt threatened by the subjugated people’s life choice. The way of life is only a way that involves a cross when the status quo threatens the work of social justice with a cross.
In other words, when we follow Jesus, we are not primarily choosing a cross: we are choosing the way of life. But because the powers that be threaten those who choose the way of life with a cross, the way of life also becomes the way of the cross. It need not be thus.
The way of the cross is simply the choice to hold onto life (not suffering), even when threatened with pushback from the dominant party that may result in suffering. It’s choosing life and stubbornly refusing to relinquish that life even when the choice confronts the powers of death and the death (cross) they would silence you with. Jesus taught a message of life, survival and liberation. It was the society around him that determined that his message should also involve a cross. For Jesus and for us, the cross is the result of working for justice and transformation within oppressive systems and social orders.
“Persecution and violence suffered by those who resist evil and injustice is the result of an ethic of risk. The assassination of a Martin King or the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is part of the risk involved in actively struggling for social justice. But such people daily resist the very power of systemic injustice that may crucify or assassinate them.” —Karen Baker-Fletcher and Garth Baker-Fletcher in My Sister, My Brother: Womanist and Xodus God-Talk, p. 79
Rosemary Ruether also elaborates:
“Jesus did not ‘come to suffer and die’. Rather Jesus conceived of his mission as one of ‘good news to the poor, the liberation of the captive’, that is, experiences of liberation and abundance of life shared between those who had been on the underside of dominant systems of religion and state of his time . . . He did not seek to be killed by the powers that be, but rather to convert them into solidarity with those they had formerly despised and victimized.” (Introducing Redemption in Christian Feminism, p. 104)
“It is not the acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not, Am I willing to suffer? but Do I desire to fully live? The distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering. If you believe that acceptance of suffering gives life, than your resources for confronting perpetrators of violence and abuse will be numbed.” —Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 18
When we talk about the way of the cross, or our being “lambs among wolves,” we must be careful not to understand or communicate these images as an admonishment to be passive “lambs” on the way to sacrificial “slaughter.” The lamb/wolf dichotomy is a reference to methods of seeking social change. Self-affirmation and self-giving are involved, but not self-sacrifice. We are lambs only in the sense that our efforts are nonviolent in the face of wolves that use violent means to establish and maintain their position of control in society. Through nonviolent confronting means, after the example and teachings of Jesus and the early Jewish Jesus-community, we challenge privilege and favor that is enforced by violence.
Hero Liberator or Participatory Mutualism
Another element we encounter in this week’s saying is Jesus being more than an isolated hero liberator and forming a community. He not only went out himself, but also empowered a community to go out as well. This community was influenced by him, and also influenced him in a mutual give and take relationship. One example of this is found in Mark’s story, which Matthew includes in his narrative, of the Syrophoenician woman. Rita Nakashima Brock, in her fantastic work Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, contrasts the difference between viewing Jesus as a individual, isolated, hero-liberator and viewing him rather as a pioneer or center of a participator community where each member is participating in envisioning and creating a new social order:
“Jesus is the hero and liberator… The relationship of liberator to oppressed is unilateral. Hence the liberator must speak for victims. The brokenhearted do not speak to the strong [in] a unilateral, heroic model.” (p. 65)
What we see in this week’s saying is very different than that unilateral, heroic model. Brock would refer to it as a community participating in the work of liberation with Jesus rather than an individual Jesus doing the work of liberation alone on the community’s behalf.
“I believe the above views of Christ tend to rely on unilateral views of power and too limited understanding of the power of community. They present a heroic Jesus who alone is able to achieve an empowering self-consciousness through a solitary, private relationship with God/dess. If Jesus is reported to have been capable of profound love and concern for others, he was first loved and respected by the concrete persons of his life. If he was liberated, he was involved in a community of mutual liberation… the Gospel narratives give us glimpses of the mutuality of Jesus’ relationships… Jesus’ vision of basileia [kingdom] grew to include the disposed, women and non-Jewish . . . ‘the marginal,” because of his encounter and interaction with the real presence of such people. They co-create liberation and healing from brokenheartedness.” (p.67)
We should not underestimate that the power of the early Jewish Jesus-community was that it was a community. It was not a group rooted in the unilateral dominance of a lone, hierarchical leader, but rather in the power of community centered on the values, teachings, and ethics taught by Jesus and resonant with community members.
Even the collections of the community’s sayings, which we now recognize as our scriptures, bears witness itself to this. These writings are a manifestation of a mutually participatory group, not just a lone prophet of social change. Jesus never wrote anything down himself. The community that formed around his teachings did, and it’s because of that community that we have accounts of his ministry. We cannot simply gloss over this. We are not waiting for a heroic savior: We are the community he anticipated.
I had the privilege of witnessing two contemporary, practical examples of participatory mutualism this week in the form of two podcasts.
Both of these are community responses to the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando on June 12. The first is from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Young Adults Live Webcast. You can find it at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZetBq0vJEWE
The second is The Adventist Podcast: Pulse Massacre Orlando which you can download and listen to at:
http://spectrummagazine.org/article/2016/06/20/adventist-podcast-pulse-massacre-orlando
In each of these examples, those affected, the brokenhearted, are speaking to the dominant society. Rather than waiting for unilateral heroism, the community members are working themselves for survival, liberation, and thriving.
The examples are exactly what what I envision happening among those in whom Jesus’s sayings first began to resonate in the 1st Century.
Sheep Among Wolves
As we covered in Renouncing One’s Rights, Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence were not that victims should embrace passive self-sacrifice or self-denial in a world where oppressors already denied the selves of the oppressed. Jesus gave his listeners a vision of nonviolence that confronted and discomforted those in positions of dominance and gave those being subjugated a way to affirm themselves in a social order where they were being dehumanized.
Yet to choose to only use nonviolently confronting means of challenging injustice when those you are standing up to have not made those same choices is risky. It’s a choice to be a lamb among wolves. Yet it cannot be forgotten: the goal of Jesus’ new social vision is not to replace an old hegemony with a new one. His goal was not peace through victory, the victory of slaughtering our enemies, but peace through restored justice. He was not teaching a new social pyramid to replace the old, but a shared table where victims were not passively complicit in their oppression and their oppressors were not continuing oppression in more subtle ways. Victims were confronting injustice, not in order to become oppressors themselves, but, in the words of Ruether, to “convert” oppressors “into solidarity with those they had formerly despised and victimized.”
Too often the sheep among wolves imagery of nonviolence is used to keep victims passive in the face of injustice. Making sure those being oppressed remain passive co-opts the nonviolence that Jesus and others have taught. Martin Luther Kings’ nonviolence was trouble making. Gandhi’s nonviolence became feared and avoided. Those who use violence themselves will always desire their opposition to “remain nonviolent” if one defines that nonviolence as simply rolling over. Yet true nonviolence is a force more powerful. It is not passive. It confronts, awakens, at times even shames those it is seeking, but not to defeat them, to win and convert to a new paradigm of seeing and a new set of behaviors. To use Jesus, MLK, or Gandhi to induce the subjugated to remain passive and calm is a gross way to use their teachings.
We are sheep in the midst of wolves because our methods of action and the goals we hope to achieve by those actions are radically different from the wolves we seek to transform or change. The Jewish community that cherished Jesus’s imagery was a community that held the Jewish vision of a new social order described by the words:
Isaiah 11:1-9: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit . . . Justice will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.” (Emphasis added.)
Isaiah 65.25: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.” (Emphasis added.)
Isaiah 58.6, TEV: “The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free.”
In this week’s saying, those who believe Jesus’s teachings have intrinsic value and inform the work of nonviolently confronting, liberating, and transforming our world into a safe, more just, more compassionate home for us all, are reminded that this vision involves embracing an ethic of risk. As I have said before, Jesus was not giving us a hard way to get to heaven, but a risky way to heal the earth. We are also reminded that our hope is not in following heroic, unilateral liberators but in discovering and applying the power of mutual, participatory, nonviolent communities. And lastly, we are reminded that we are up against “wolves.” But we also hold the hope that wolves can be converted, and destruction and harm can be become, by our continued choice, a thing of the past.
A new world is coming, if we choose it. And today, while we make those choices, we find ourselves often in this story . . .
“. . . like sheep in the midst of wolves.” (Q 10:3)
HeartGroup Application
This week, discuss three sets of contrasts with your HeartGroup as you work together toward clarity.
- What are the significant differences you feel need to be communicated clearly between nonviolence direct action and merely being passive?
- What are the differences between a hero model of liberation and a community model rooted in mutual participation?
- What difference does it make for you to define the way of the cross we choose as Jesus followers as a refusal to let go of life rather than a way of merely sacrificing yourself with no change to the status quo around you?
Thank you for joining us this week. Keep living in love, working toward Justice, till the only world that remains is a world where only Love reigns.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
Sayings Gospel Q: Workers for the Harvest
What do you want the next revolution to look like?
by Herb Montgomery
“He said to his disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to dispatch workers into his harvest.” (Q 10:2)
Companion Texts
Luke 10:1-2: “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”
Matthew 9:35-38: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”
Gospel of Thomas 73: “Jesus says: ‘The harvest is plentiful, but there are few workers. But beg the Lord that he may send workers into the harvest.’”
A Ripe Harvest; No Laborers
The image of a plentiful harvest and few laborers to reap it would have spoken volumes to the audience that Jesus’ teachings resonated with. In that audience would have been indentured farmers who now found themselves being little more than indentured slaves. They had used to own land, but now labored hard to survive from day to day on land that now belonged to their wealthy creditors.
It has been said that you can’t force a revolution, and all one can do is be ready and prepared for one.
The Jewish societies of 1st Century Galilee and Judea were brimming, boiling with the spirit of sometimes violent revolution, and things were about to boil over. The poor were becoming more and more exploited. The indentured farmers were becoming more and more enslaved. The laboring class was becoming more and more oppressed by a wealthy aristocracy. And political oppression from the Romans combined with economic oppression from the Jewish aristocracy and temple class was about to reach its limit.
The Jewish Roman war of 66-69 CE is evidence of this. This war didn’t just happen out of thin air. There was a long and slow build up that finally erupted, and the horrific outcome was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Jesus’s saying this week is best understood with this historical backdrop. His efforts in Sayings Gospel Q are designed to avert failed revolution and the Roman backlash that was sure to come. Just like Hillel before him, Jesus was endeavoring to present a nonviolent revolution of restorative and transformative justice in the place of the divisive and violent revolution and the spirit of retribution that was growing in popularity at that time.
Revolution was brewing. The harvest was ripe. But finding those who understood the larger picture of what would result and how to avert catastrophe was a challenge. The numbers of those who sought out and taught the kind of revolution Jesus taught were few, according to this week’s saying. This different revolution was centered in voluntary wealth-redistribution, in resource sharing, mutual-aid, nonviolent enemy confrontation and transformation, restitution as a response to past injustices, and the restoration of justice to those presently being oppressed. It was rooted in the wealthy forgiving and cancelling debts, and the poor laboring class taking care of the sick and sharing of food with each other. In short, if embraced, it was a way of ordering society that would have revolutionized Jewish society as well as threatened the Roman way of life to its core.
The societal elements were ripe for this kind of harvest, but the workers, those who would labor a revolution characterized by these elements, were few.
Various Gospels
The fact that this saying survived to be included in the more platonic, introspective Gospel of Thomas is significant. This statement has an urgency even when removed from its Jerusalem context.
The gospel of Matthew, the first we know to have included this saying, situates it in a more sympathetic, compassionate context. Jesus is traversing the countryside, teaching and healing, and, on seeing the crowds, views the people as “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” More violent “shepherds” would surface in the coming years, and I can’t help but believe that Jesus understood the social dynamics in play and longed to save the “sheep” from being slaughtered.
Luke takes this saying and places a context of Jesus actually appointing and sending out seventy-two promoters, campaigners if you will, that would engage communities ahead of his arrival as he continued to travel and teach. These seventy-two campaigners would have been those who had already bought into the kind of society envisioned in Jesus’ “stump-speeches” later written in Sayings Gospel Q. As we’ve shared in previous weeks, the sayings in Sayings Gospel Q later became Matthew’s sermon on the mount and Luke’s sermon on the plain.
Second American Revolution
In our time, there are those who believe that a second American Revolution is coming. From those like George Orwell to those in more contemporary counter-cultural movements, some point to ever-worsening polls and people’s growing contempt for their governments as signs. The rumblings of our society suggest that a growing number of people are ripening for another American revolution. It’s not so far-fetched.
As with all revolutions, we have choices. We have an opportunity to shape what our revolution will look like. Could our society benefit in any way from a revolution characterized by some of the values and elements that the Jesus of sayings gospel Q offered? Voluntary wealth-redistribution, resource sharing, mutual-aid, nonviolent enemy confrontation and transformation, restitution as a response to past injustices, and the restoration of justice to those presently being oppressed: could this be a revolution we could live with? We could have a revolution where the wealthy choose to forgive or cancel of the debts of poor debtors, and a society where we take care of the sick together and ensure there is enough for everyone. We could have a safer, more compassionate, just world for us all.
This kind of revolution could begin in the hearts of humanity, allowing us to perceive one another and embrace our interconnectedness, our interdependence. It would transform our society. The reality is that it would also threaten our social elite classes. It could not be accomplished simply by replacing one hegemony with another.
John Lennon wrote, “You can say I’m just a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” There have been others, in every generation, especially from the marginalized and subjugated classes, that have envisioned this kind of society and worked to garnish support to experiment with what a society like this could look like.
Even theologians, who too often have benefitted in societies of oppression, are also opening up to a different lens. Christians specifically are waking up to a whole new and more historically accurate way of reading the Jesus story itself.
Gustavo Gutierrez, in the 15th anniversary edition of his A Theology of Liberation, states quite correctly:
“Black, Hispanic, and Amerindian theologies in the United States, theologies arising in the complex contexts of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific, and the especially fruitful thinking of those who have adopted the feminist perspective—all these have meant that for the first time in many centuries theology is being done outside the customary European and North American centers. The result in the so-called First World has been a new kind of dialogue between traditional thinking and new thinking. In addition, outside the Christian sphere efforts are underway to develop liberation theologies from Jewish and Muslim perspectives.”
Where might this revolution begin for us, today, right now? Perhaps with a simple choice from each of us. We can embrace a way of life where people take responsibility for taking care of each other as people taking care of people. This seems to me to be the root that, if really perceived and embraced, could threaten the whole domination structure.
Today, a harvest is ripening.
And, unlike in Jesus’s saying, there are many “laborers” teaching values that parallel and sometimes even center the values and ethics found in the sayings of Jesus in Q. Some of these laborers are within Christianity, but quite a few of them are not. It is this universal set of values that we must begin to recognize.
May it not be said of those who long for more holistic changes and have learned to recognize this universal set of values:
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. (Q 10.2)
HeartGroup Application
Often our texts this week are used to refer to evangelistic efforts within a Christian religious context where people labor to win as many converts as possible to one’s own religious beliefs. What does it begin to look like for you to take these texts out of that context and place them back within the revolutionary world of the 1st Century?
- What changes? (Make a list)
- Share with your HeartGroup which changes you feel are the most profound to you personally. Discuss together the practical difference that paradigm shifts such as these could make.
- Individually consider what these changes mean for you. Then, as a group, brainstorm how you can support one another as you each lean more deeply into these changes.
To each of you out there laboring for change, you’re not alone. Keep living out those values, living in love, setting in motion a different tomorrow. In the words of the late Howard Zinn, “What really matters are the countless small deeds of unknown people that lay the basis for the events of human history. These are the people who have made change in the past; they are responsible for making change in the future, too.” (Quoted in Requiem for the American Dream.)
Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you, dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
WV Flood Relief Update
Hello Everyone,
Here is a quick update for you on how the flood recovery efforts are going. (Original Flood Update)
First, I could not be more proud of my county. It was announced earlier this week that John Unger & FEMA have congratulated Greenbrier County for “having the fastest non-governmental response they have ever seen to a major crisis.” Our “local churches, civic groups, & organizations,” they said, “are miles ahead of others in similar circumstances.” Well done Greenbrier county.
Also, I cannot thank Bruce and Rita Engen enough. Bruce and Rita are two of our friends here at Renewed Heart Ministries. They follow us online and track with us through our many resources. And this week they packed their truck chuck full of tools and drove over from the other side of Virginia to help.
When Bruce, Rita and I showed up Wednesday morning in White Sulphur Springs to help, the volunteer dispatch center informed us that things were becoming more stable there and that an area that desperately needed our help was Richwood, WV (Nicholas County). We jumped back in the truck and off we went. When we arrived in Richwood we discovered they were right. Richwood was in desperate need of volunteers.
We found the flood relief and recovery efforts there to be extremely well organized.
Organization has been one of the greatest challenges for areas so far. With so many people taking the initiative to help their neighbors, the flood recovery efforts in each location have become comprised of many simultaneously moving parts. If you’re patient and flexible you’ll find a place to plug in and help. In Richwood all volunteers are being processed and dispatched from a central “needs” reporting station located at the Family Center on 3 Valley Ave downtown. Over the two days we were there we found each person we worked alongside of to be deeply appreciative of all the help we could give.
I want to also thank each of you who have given to Renewed Heart Ministries’ Flood Relief Fund, as well. So far we have raised just over $2,300.
If you would like to contribute, the need here is still very great. 100% of your donation goes directly to help the victims of the 2016 flooding here in Greenbrier County, West Virginia where Renewed Heart Ministries is located. We have set up a link through Renewed Heart Ministries webpage where you can give in increments of $15 all the way up to $5000. Every little bit helps when people have lost so much.
You can contribute to the recovery efforts through RHM’s website at the link below:
You can also mail your contribution to help to:
Renewed Heart Ministries
PO Box 1211
Lewisburg, WV 24901
If you do mail in a contribution please mark it as “WV Flood Recovery” so we can ensure that none of the funds we receive for this purpose will go toward RHM, but directly to aiding our local victims.
Lastly, I want to apologize again. This is the third week that there will not be a podcast/eSight. Right now we are faced with a choice of how to best use our time. We could stop and take the time to write and talk about what Jesus taught, or we could choose to direct our efforts toward trying to live out, shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Greenbrier countians, the mutual aid, the resource sharing, the “people taking care of people” ethic that we believe the historical Jesus taught. We’ve chosen the latter.
I’m sure things here at RHM will resume in the not too distant future. Please forgive us in our absence while our focus is on working alongside those in our community. And thank you for your patience with us during this time.
Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns,
Herb Montgomery
Director
Renewed Heart Ministries
West Virginia Flood Relief
July 1, 2016
by Herb Montgomery
Hello Everyone,
My heart is heavy as I write this.
So many of you have been asking for an update of what is happening here in the wake of the flood that ravaged West Virginia last weekend.
First, we (myself, Crystal, Emarya and Christian) were in Arizona until this past Wednesday. I was giving four presentations at an annual event for AWC. We were without cell phone signal where we were in Arizona, as well as having no way to connect to the internet for about four days. This explains why we were not able to publish a podcast/eSight last week. We were off the grid. (Smiles.)
We arrived back in West Virginia on Wednesday and hit the ground running. On Wednesday we received word of some of the needs of the shelter/station in Ronceverte (two towns away). We immediately hit all the stores and purchased every mop Crystal and I could find and ran it down to them. While there we were connected with a family of five who lost everything. The only things they were able to escape with were the clothes on their backs. Crystal and I purchased some more clothing for them and then connected them with the American Red Cross Station, United Way and FEMA. On Thursday I met up with a group of four friends here in Caldwell, one of the hardest hit towns in this area. We spent the day cleaning out three homes. In one we were slogging through mud up to our ankles while standing in the residents’ living room. Most of everything they had, as well as their home was lost. The most heartbreaking story was the home where we hauled out everything the flood had decimated on the first floor. This dear lady, with tears in her eyes, looked into mine and said, “This stuff doesn’t even begin to compare with what I have lost.” Her husband was one of the fourteen bodies found when the waters subsided. I fought back the tears in my eyes, as well. We helped clear out three homes there yesterday. Today my efforts were split between two homes. One was shoveling mud out of the home of a family in that same area, then in the afternoon I met up with that same group of friends to help clear out a home in White Sulphur Springs, one of the four hardest hit towns in this county. At our home, since Wednesday, our washing machine and dryer have also been running nonstop trying to help with specific laundry needs here in Lewisburg, as well.
One of my friends that I have been working along side is also a Katrina survivor. He was relocated here after the flooding of New Orleans. “There is a difference this time,” he said, “there is something very unique about the way West Virginians come together to take care of one another.” Amidst all the shock and grief, I continue to have moments where my eyes tear up as I hear heroic stories of the power of community; how our community is coming together to provide for and get each other through this. The generosity and selflessness of so many is astoundingly beautiful. One thing Mountaineers lead the way in (and it is this that for me sets the residents of the Mountain State apart from the rest) we know how to take care of our own. When horrific events strike, we’ve got each other’s backs. We know what love, especially in moments of horrendous tragedy, looks like. We open our hearts, homes, lives and we get each other back on their feet.
As I have had time to process everything I’m wading through each day, I’m overwhelmed by so much loss for this little community, both of property as well as loved ones. Pictures (and words) don’t even begin to tell the story of the magnitude of the devastation left in the wake of this flood. Greenbrier County was one of the hardest hit; the last lives-lost count I’ve seen is 23 state-wide with 17 of those from our little county. One of the 17 was one of our local High School students. Another 14 year old girl has still not been found.
My dear friend Dr. Keisha McKenzie recently wrote “There are enough resources on Earth to feed, water, and clothe everyone here. We don’t lack because there isn’t enough. People lack because we don’t care for each other enough to distribute what we have effectively.”
Moments like these are when the truth of statements like this are also keenly felt.
I’m writing this to ask you, as a follower of Renewed Heart Ministries, for help. I can count the times we have asked folks for money directly on one hand in the last ten years. But this seems different.
We have set up a link through Renewed Heart Ministries webpage where you can give in increments of $15 all the way up to $5000. Every little bit helps when people have lost so much. 100% of your donation will go directly to help the victims of the 2016 flooding here in Greenbrier County, West Virginia where Renewed Heart Ministries is located. You can also mail your contribution to help to:
Renewed Heart Ministries
PO Box 1211
Lewisburg, WV 24901
Please mark the contributions you mail as “WV Flood Recovery” so we can ensure that none of the funds we receive for this purpose will go toward RHM, but directly to aiding our local victims.
I also want to apologize. There will not be a podcast/eSight again this week. I’m so sorry. I simply have not had any spare time to write or publish. We are spending every moment we can, shoulder to shoulder, working along side those who, for now, have lost everything.
John F. Kennedy, while visiting in West Virginia, once said, “The sun does not always shine in West Virginia, but the people always do.”
We are a strong people. We will come back from this. You get the privilege of being able to participate in our recovery; helping in ways either big or small.
Thank you in advance for your kindness.
You can contribute to the recovery efforts through RHM at the link below:
May the bright rays of the sun continue to supersede the dark storm clouds that have battered our little community, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
Herb Montgomery
Director
Renewed Heart Ministries
Confronting Potential Followers
by Herb Montgomery
Before we begin this week, I want to take a moment to pause and remember the forty-nine victims of the Orlando Shooting. This tragic event took place at the gay nightclub Pulse, where our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning siblings within our human family were targeted. Fifty-three others were injured. That’s 102 beautiful lives either gone or at minimum will never be the same.
Within the Jewish wisdom tradition it is said, “Whosoever sheds human blood diminishes the divine image; destroying only one human life is equivalent to annihilating the entire world.” In this instance it was a specific demographic within our world that was purposely, hatefully, and senselessly singled out. This was the largest targeted mass killing of LGBT people in the Western world since the Holocaust.
Our hearts at Renewed Heart Ministries are with the families and loved ones of those who were both injured and lost. Our hearts are with the LGBTQ community at large who daily live in fear, afraid to drop their guard, constantly aware they are at some level of risk; ever performing habitual safety-checks assessing their surroundings when in public. You are not alone. We grieve with you. And we at RHM will continue to stand along side you in the work to end homophobia, heterosexism, and the violence through which they most often find their expression. We acknowledge and affirm your presence within our human family. You deserve dignity, respect and life. And to all the critics, our time among the LGBTQ community has taught us that there really is only one, as is so called, “gay agenda” and that too often, sadly, is simply to survive. If history has proven anything it is that those who are excluded today will be eliminated and exterminated tomorrow. To the LGBTQ community, we love you. We are standing with you, and when needed, we pledge to stand between them and you. The names of those lost will not be forgotten. Varied is the image of God. Our work will continue.
As the sun continues to rise, so will our efforts till the day comes when our world is a safer, more just, more compassionate home for us all.
“And someone said to him: ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him: ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the sky have nests; but the son of humanity does not have anywhere he can lay his head.’ But another said to him: ‘Master, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But he said to him: ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’” (Q 9:57-60)
Companion Texts:
Luke 9:57-60: “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ He said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But he replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’”
Matthew 8:19-22: “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’”
Gospel of Thomas 86: “Jesus says: ‘Foxes have their holes and birds have their nest. But the son of man has no place to lay his head down and to rest.’”
Jesus wasn’t a politician, and Jesus wasn’t a pastor.
Too often diplomacy, peace-keeping (as opposed to peace-making), and efforts to appeal to the largest number of people are the modus operandi of those working for social change while also trying to obtain or maintain a position of privilege in the status quo. But this wasn’t Jesus’s method in Sayings Gospel Q. I’m reminded of the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s song Like a Rolling Stone: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Jesus wasn’t trying to win at popularity. One of my favorite quotations from Peter Gomes’ book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus is this:
“Good news to some will almost inevitably be bad news to others. In order that the gospel in the New Testament might be made as palatable as possible to as many people as possible, its rough edges have been shorn off and the radical edge of Jesus’ preaching has been replaced by a respectable middle, of which “niceness” is now God. When Jesus came preaching, it was to proclaim the end of things as they are and the breaking in of things that are to be: the status quo is not to be criticized; it is to be destroyed.”(p. 31)
It seems that just about every time a crowd of followers begins to amass behind Jesus, he does something to ground them, making sure they understand exactly what they are signing up for. And what is their response? He loses that large numbers of followers every time.
Jesus wasn’t trying to get as many people to go to a post-mortem heaven as possible when they died. He was working to create change here, now, today, and he realized that lip-service wouldn’t change anything. I don’t think that Jesus would have been against large membership lists. I think he just understood that numbers are meaningless when the people that the numbers represent aren’t significantly challenging the injustice, violence and oppression of our world in their deeds.
Homelessness
This week’s statement is one of the most haunting statements that Jesus makes; at least it is for me personally. I am not homeless, and in my lifestyle here in America, I do not reflect Jesus much at all. I have a family. Crystal and I have children. We look more like foxes and birds than we do like Jesus. I do wrestle with this. I wonder: how much does my privilege, and my reluctance to jeopardize that privilege, hold me back from following Jesus’ teachings more deeply?
Also, I think of Christianity as a whole. Ever since the days of Constantine, the Church has become one of the greatest holders of land and property on Earth, all while claiming to be following the homeless Jesus. The Church’s land holdings have been at the root of poverty and complicit in economic structures that cause poverty.
Yet one of the elements of ancient Jewish hope was a vision of a day where “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” (Micah 4.4, emphasis added.) The vision didn’t include large land holdings exclusively owned by a small oligarchy. This ancient hope saw everyone with a secure place to live and provide for themselves.
Yet it seems that Jesus abandoned the pursuit of “property” as long as that property meant joining a coalition with a domination system that exploited the poor, transformed small independent farmers into debt-ridden indentured slaves under the Roman system, and pressured the Temple leadership to religiously legitimize the system. As a means of working toward the Jewish hope of property to all as a human right, Jesus chose solidarity with the property-less, rather than pursuing a propertied institution to establish his movement’s permanence.
The Christian Church has not done what Jesus did. This gives me much cause to pause and contemplate.
Studies of U.S. capitalism, English enclosures, Soviet collectivization, and South American latifundia have shown that there is a deep connection between the creation of a dependent labor force for the Western industrial revolution and the majority of the population’s loss of land ownership. In the United States, land was concentrated into the hands of a few and the majority of the population became dependent on working for industrialists just to scratch out a living. The same happened in state-enforced capitalism, state Soviet socialism, and colonial capitalism. (Land ownership is different from property ownership, though owning even a small home can leave people dependent on working for industrialists to pay a mortgage.) Much has been written on this history, and I recommend Joseph R. Stromberg’s English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization.
I wrestle with how to work toward Micah’s vision of everyone having their own safe vineyard. But I take that wrestling as a call to lean more deeply into experimentation to find things that work, and not stop at futility or throwing up my hands. As Dorothy Day once wrote in her journal, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”
At bare minimum, we might begin, as Tolstoy stated in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You, with being honest about what is transpiring around us. We can begin to tell the truth.
“And therefore you cannot but reflect on your position as landowner, manufacturer, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, and soldier, which is bound up with violence, deception, and murder, and recognize its unlawfulness. I do not say that if you are a landowner you are bound to give up your lands immediately to the poor; if a capitalist or manufacturer, your money to your workpeople; or that if you are Tzar, minister, official, judge, or general, you are bound to renounce immediately the advantages of your position; or if a soldier, on whom all the system of violence is based, to refuse immediately to obey in spite of all the dangers of insubordination. If you do so, you will be doing the best thing possible. But it may happen, and it is most likely, that you will not have the strength to do so. You have relations, a family, subordinates and superiors; you are under an influence so powerful that you cannot shake it off; but you can always recognize the truth and refuse to tell a lie about it. You need not declare that you are remaining a landowner, manufacturer, merchant, artist, or writer because it is useful to mankind; that you are governor, prosecutor, or tzar, not because it is agreeable to you, because you are used to it, but for the public good; that you continue to be a soldier, not from fear of punishment, but because you consider the army necessary to society. You can always avoid lying in this way to yourself and to others, and you ought to do so; because the one aim of your life ought to be to purify yourself from falsehood and to confess the truth. And you need only do that and your situation will change directly of itself. There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.” (pp. 263-264, emphasis added.)
I have found this to be true in my own life: Just keep “telling the truth”; “you need only do that and your situation will change directly of itself.” Maybe this is why Jesus was unlike foxes and birds himself. He chose to speak the truth in a society that exploited the many for the elite and marginalized an other-ed few. Jesus chose not to be silent, even knowing it could cost him his life; he saw what Desmond Tutu and others said much later on about silence and neutrality: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality” (in Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (1984) by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 19)
Jesus chose not to be silent, even if it would cost him his life, and it did.
The Dead
Last week’s eSight helped us to understand that Jesus would refer to the lethargic, passive, complicity larger society around him as “dead.” Some scholars believe that he made this statement about the dead burying their dead about a year after the would-be disciple’s father’s death.
In that era, the burial process sometimes had two parts. It involved an initial interment in caves, hewn tombs, sarcophagi, or catacombs. Then a secondary burial of the remains into ossuaries sometimes took place about one year after the original burial, after the body had decomposed and the only remains were the bones of the deceased loved one (see Death & Bereavement in Judaism: Ancient Burial Practices).
But it is difficult to tell for sure whether Jesus’s conversation with the follower was about their request to take part in a first interment or a second. It would be impossible for me to defend this saying if it was the first interment. Both within Jewish culture and according to Torah, denying someone burial was the most humiliating indignity that could be shown to the deceased (see Jewish Encyclopedia: Burial). Also, Jesus’s social vision was rooted in people taking care of people. I have a hard time believing Jesus would be so callous (as well as non-Jewish) as to not let grieving people bury and properly grieve the loss of their loved ones. (Especially in the wake of the events of this week.) If the context of this saying was the second interment, however, this would have been a year later, a year removed from the grief, and although still difficult to accept, the saying does contrast a Hellenistic-Jewish ceremony related to what a loved one was experiencing in their “afterlife” (see Jewish Burials), and the priority of a movement focused on taking care of those still alive. Sectors of modern Christianity place a high priority on obtaining entrance to a post mortem heaven or avoiding a hell while grossly ignoring the hell that many are living in now. It could be that, to them, the Jesus of this saying replies, “Let the dead bury their dead.”
This saying challenges me. I don’t see taking care of the living and honoring the dead as mutually exclusive; I see them as connected. However one interprets this saying of Jesus, whether one justifies this statement or believes Jesus went too far in prioritizing his revolution above what is decent and compassionate, this saying must be held in tension with a Jesus who elsewhere defined his vision for human society as people taking care of one another rather than disregarding them.
Either way, the confrontation in this week’s sayings is hard. It’s a serious wake-up call to us to genuinely understand what we are signing up for when we choose to lean more deeply into and begin following the teachings of the historical Jesus. This journey is not for those who desire to remain comfortable. It’s not about a post-mortem destination that has little to do with this present life. This journey is about change. It’s about liberation. It’s a path, sometimes very difficult, of compassionate work toward systemically resolving those things that presently cause humans suffering. It means embracing the “way of the cross,” not as “sacrifice” but, as Karen Baker-Fletcher and Garth Baker-Fletcher in My Sister, My Brother say, “actively struggling for social justice” (pp. 79-80). Make no mistake: the conventional domesticated Jesus of the American Christian religion is not the Jesus we find in the Jewish Sayings Gospel Q. And this is a difference that is worth recognizing.
Take some time this week to meditate on what this saying may mean for you:
“And someone said to him: ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him: ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the sky have nests; but the son of humanity does not have anywhere he can lay his head.’ But another said to him: ‘Master, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But he said to him: ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’ (Q 9:57-60)
HeartGroup Application
It is much easier to face the challenges of societal change as a community. In fact, to follow Jesus’s teachings regarding social change, it’s impossible to do so outside of community. Jesus’s method of subverting domination systems was community.
- This week, to honor your community, sit down with your HeartGroup and share with each other ways you can support one another in your private and communal efforts to follow the teachings of Jesus.
- Actually write them out and discuss ways you can come underneath and support one another. Note what that looks like, what it doesn’t look like, and what supporting one another would cost the group, as well as what it would cost the individual.
- Choose at least one other person in the group to affirm and support in tangible ways this week. Begin taking responsibility for taking care of each other personally.
As we have said before, we don’t want to make following Jesus difficult. We want to be honest about where following Jesus is difficult. This is not an easy, feel-good way to arrive at a celestial shore. This is a honest and compassionate way of healing and transforming our world, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
Thanks for checking in with us this week. Again, our hearts are with all those grieving the tragedy in Orlando.
Keep living in love.
I love each of you.
And I’ll see you next week.
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