Participation Not Substitution
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Participation Not Substitution
Herb Montgomery, October 18, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45)
In our reading this week, we are again encountering themes that repeat multiple times in the gospels of Mark.
James’ and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand echoes the scene in Mark 9 where the disciples were competing to be the greatest. (I wrote at length on this when we covered Mark 9; see Servants of the Most Vulnerable).
Jesus’ response promoting servanthood is also the same here as in Mark 9. When this rhetoric is directed at those seeking power and privilege over others, it can be a corrective. Those who were seeking status above others should instead have aspired to serve them. Yet, this passage has historically been directed not at those seeking privilege over others but at those seeking equity and equality with others. Christians have used servanthood to inspire some to passively accept a lower status think their social, political, or economic place held some quality of greater holiness. This passage was also used to defend the institution of slavery.
This passage can be used for life-giving purposes, but it has also been used in death-dealing ways. It is critical that we learn to rightly discern the difference and intentionally understand and apply this passage. Ask who is the target audience of a given interpretation. Is this passage being shared with servants to keep them in their servitude, or is it used to challenge the ambition of those who are seeking to be served?
What I find fascinating about Jesus’ responses in Mark 9 and 10 is that Mark references objects that Christianity has typically viewed through the lens of substitution and atonement, but frames them in terms of participation.
Whether we are discussing a cross (Mark 9) or a cup and a baptism (Mark 10), these did not represent things Jesus was doing instead of us or even in our place on our behalf. These were activities Jesus was inviting his disciples to join him in and to participate in themselves. In Mark, Jesus isn’t doing things for his disciples. He is calling his disciples to do them, too.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan remind us that, “For Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time” (Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Kindle location 1582).
But we must be careful here as well, lest we promote the destructive myth of redemptive suffering. Whether we participate in a cross, a cup, or the fiery baptism spoken of in these passage, we must remember that the way of Jesus is not a death cult. It is about our refusal to let go of life, not our embrace of death. As Delores Williams rightly reminds us, Christians who are suffering under oppression “cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render…exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify the sin of defilement” (Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God Talk, p.132).
A cross is not intrinsic to following Jesus. When we follow Jesus, we are choosing to stand up to injustice and call for a world shaped in justice and love. A cross only enters this scenario if those who benefit form an unjust system become threatened by our calls for change and threaten us with a cross if we don’t become silent. If they don’t choose to impose a cross as a threat, then there would not be one. This is a subtle but important element in our reading this week. Jesus didn’t choose to die. He refused to let go of life even with threatened to do so: “Jesus chose to live a life in opposition to unjust, oppressive cultures. Jesus did not choose the cross but chose integrity and faithfulness, refusing to change course because of threat” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World? Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 27).
Jesus didn’t choose to suffer. He choose to stay committed to life and those things that are life-giving. We must remember: “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 fully to live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering” (Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 18).
When Jesus invites us to follow him, he invites us to take hold of life in opposition to the death-dealing forces in our world. He calls us to participate with him in shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. And if those who have privilege and power fear losing those things through our society becoming more just, if they threaten us if we don’t sit down and be silent, then Jesus calls us to not let go of life and to keep calling for change even in the face of threats. This is one of the most compelling elements of the Jesus story for me personally. Jesus was leading a Jewish renewal movement in opposition to the elite class who were complicit with the Romans’ oppression of his people. The Jesus story is a story of a Jesus who stood up to those in power for what was right. He stood in his own Hebrew prophetic justice tradition of speaking truth to power. He called out the injustices of his day in the very heart of the temple state, and was crucified as a result. But the story doesn’t end there. This story isn’t about death or dying. In this story, God doesn’t triumph over death by more death, even one more death, even if it’s Jesus’ death. Death is reversed, overturned, and undone by life, resurrection life.
“The resurrection is God’s definitive victory over crucifying powers of evil . . . The impressive factor is how it [the cross] is defeated. It is defeated by a life-giving rather than a life-negating force. God’s power, unlike human power, is not a ‘master race’ kind of power. That is, it is not a power that diminishes the life of another so that others might live. God’s power respects the integrity of all human bodies and the sanctity of all life. This is a resurrecting power. Therefore, God’s power never expresses itself through the humiliation or denigration of another. It does not triumph over life. It conquers death by resurrecting life. The force of God is a death-negating, life-affirming force.” (Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, pp. 182-183).
I too know something of what it means to stand up for justice and love. I know something of pushback from those who are benefitting from an unjust system, pushback that threatens your own livelihood and ministry. These days, I’m thankful for resurrecting life. My life looks nothing today like I thought it would twenty years ago. But that’s okay. I wouldn’t change the stances I’ve taken or the people being harmed that I’ve stood in solidarity with. I know it’s the same for many of you too.
Standing up for love and justice sometimes involves drinking the same cup Jesus drank and being baptized with the same baptism he was baptized with. In those moments we are participating with Jesus in standing up rather than choosing to be silent. We are in the right story. We must remember, this story doesn’t end in death, dying, or a cross. This story, and our story, ends in resurrection. Love wins.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. Is participation more life giving for you than substitution? In what ways? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.
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You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 32: Mark 10.35-45. Lectionary B, Proper 24
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out at:
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 1 Episode 27: Participation Not Substitution
Mark 10:35-45
“I too know something of what it means to stand up for justice and love. I know something of pushback from those who are benefitting from an unjust system, pushback that threatens your own livelihood and ministry. These days, I’m thankful for resurrecting life. My life looks nothing today like I thought it would twenty years ago. But that’s okay. I wouldn’t change the stances I’ve taken or the people being harmed that I’ve stood in solidarity with. I know it’s the same for many of you too. Standing up for love and justice sometimes involves drinking the same cup Jesus drank and being baptized with the same baptism he was baptized with. In those moments we are participating with Jesus in standing up rather than choosing to be silent. We are in the right story. We must remember, this story doesn’t end in death, dying, or a cross. This story, and our story, ends in resurrection. Love wins.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/participation-not-substitution
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Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon
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After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
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Resurrection as the Good News
This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 1, Episode 10: Luke 24:13-35. Lectionary A, Easter 3
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/9W7UpdIG2P4
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Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | April 21, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
If you find more life-giving value in the teachings of Jesus, teachings that the resurrection testifies to, I want to encourage you this week: you are not alone. Many who live in or stand in solidarity with oppressed communities have seen how destructive traditional explanations of Jesus’ death have been and can be.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Luke:
Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had see`n a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. (Luke 24:13-35*)
For the early Jesus followers, the good news was not that Jesus had died, or that Jesus had died for them, but that their Jesus, whom the Romans crucified, was alive! All that had been accomplished through the death of Jesus had been reversed, overcome, and undone. Jesus’ murder on the state’s cross had been intended to stop his life-saving work, but his resurrection transformed it into a mere interruption. The resurrection caused his saving work to live on, especially in the lives of his followers as they lived and shared what their Jesus taught.
I feel so strongly about this point. Much harm has been done in Christianity by focusing on Jesus’ death in other ways. I often refer to the essay For God So Loved the World? by Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, which explains some of the issues. As I’ve shared before, it is Jesus’ teachings that the early followers found to be intrinsically life-giving. That is the good news in the book of Acts: He whom “they” had killed, “God” had brought back to life.
“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:33)
“You crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” (Acts 2:22-24)
“This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” (Acts 2:32-33)
“You handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, but God raised from the dead.” (Acts 3:12-16)
“. . . Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead. (Acts 4:10-11)
“The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.” (Acts 5:30-32)
“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day.” (Acts 10:36-43)
“Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . . And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus.” (Acts 13:35-38)
If you find more life-giving value in the teachings of Jesus, teachings that the resurrection testifies to, I want to encourage you this week: you are not alone. Many who live in or stand in solidarity with oppressed communities have seen how destructive traditional explanations of Jesus’ death have been and can be (see What if Crucifixion Is Not Salvific? by Miguel A. De La Torre).
This week, in the spirit of those in our lectionary reading for whom the good news was that Jesus was alive, I want to share a small collection of encouraging quotations from other theologians who have deeply encouraged for me, and who have come to your same conclusion.
Kelly Brown Douglass gets us started:
“Jesus takes on evil. He takes on and defeats . . . not granting the power of death any authority over him . . . he does not respond in kind, by adopting the methods of this power. The final triumph over the death of the cross is the resurrection of Jesus . . . The resurrection is God’s definitive victory over the crucifying powers of evil . . . The cross represents the power that denigrates human bodies, destroys life, and preys on the most vulnerable in society. As the cross is defeated, so too is that power [defeated] by life-giving rather than a life-negating force . . . That is, it is not the power that diminishes the life of another so that others might live. God’s power respects the integrity of all human bodies and the sanctity of all life. This is a resurrecting power . . . God’s power never expresses itself through humiliation or denigration of another. It does not triumph over life. It conquers death by resurrecting life . . . If indeed the power of life that God stands for is greater than the power of death, this must be manifest in the way God triumphs over death-dealing powers. The freedom of God that is life requires a liberation from the very weapons utilized by a culture of death. In other words, these weapons cannot become divine weapons . . . The culmination of this liberation is Jesus’ resurrection.” (Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, p. 181-182)
Next is from Delores Williams:
“It seems more intelligent and more scriptural to understand that redemption had to do with God, through Jesus, giving humankind new vision to see the resources for positive, abundant relational life. Redemption had to do with God, through the ministerial vision, giving humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life. Hence, the kingdom of God theme in the ministerial vision of Jesus does not point to death; it is not something one has to die to reach. Rather, the kingdom of God is a metaphor of hope God gives those attempting to right the relations between self and self, between self and others, between self and God as prescribed in the sermon on the mount, in the golden rule and in the commandment to show love above all else. (Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, pp. 130-131)
Lastly is a passage from Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker:
“Suffering is never redemptive, and suffering cannot be redeemed. The cross is a sign of tragedy. God’s grief is revealed there and everywhere and every time life is thwarted by violence. God’s grief is as ultimate as God’s love. Every tragedy eternally remains and is eternally mourned. Eternally the murdered scream, Betrayal. Eternally God sings kaddish for the world. To be a Christian means keeping faith with those who have heard and lived God’s call for justice, radical love, and liberation; who have challenged unjust systems both political and ecclesiastical; and who in that struggle have refused to be victims and have refused to cower under the threat of violence, suffering, and death. Fullness of life is attained in moments of decision for such faithfulness and integrity. When the threat of death is refused and the choice is made for justice, radical love, and liberation, the power of death is overthrown. Resurrection is radical courage. Resurrection means that death is overcome in those precise instances when human beings choose life, refusing the threat of death. Jesus climbed out of the grave in the Garden of Gethsemane when he refused to abandon his commitment to the truth even though his enemies threatened him with death. On Good Friday, the Resurrected One was Crucified” (In For God So Loved the World?)
Maybe there are so many atonement theories that fail to adequately explain how Jesus death saves because it doesn’t save. Maybe our questions as to how Jesus’ death saves go unanswered because we are asking the wrong question. I, like the scholars mentioned above, find much more life in focusing on the intrinsic, saving value of the teachings of Jesus. For me, this intrinsic salvific value is life-giving good news.
The resurrection story elements in the gospels tell me that violence, bigotry, misogyny, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, classism, authoritarianism, environmental destruction, and a host of other injustices in our world today don’t have to have the last word. They may interrupt our work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for all, but if we keep at it, they will just be interruptions. Love can transform hate. Elements of our communities and societies that are death-dealing can be undone by our choosing things that are life-giving. Death and injustice don’t have to have the last word.
For me, in the wake of Easter, this is much needed good news.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How is the resurrection good news for you? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
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Mary’s Perfume and No More Poverty
Herb Montgomery | April 1, 2022
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“I want to offer an alternative interpretation. Poverty is a human-made reality, and therefore poverty can be eradicated through our choices in how we structure our societies . . . I don’t believe Jesus’ words in John about poor people should be interpreted as establishing as an existential reality that poverty is an eternal, unchangeable given for our world.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
“Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” (John 12:1-8)
John creatively resets this story from previous versions of the Jesus story by including the characters Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. There are both significant differences and consistent story elements. What is common in each version is a meal, a woman interrupting the meal, a container of perfume, objections from some of those present at the meal, and Jesus’ defense of the woman’s actions. Oral storytelling traditions commonly alter story details for the storyteller’s purposes or the needs of their audience. John’s storytelling does that too.
In John’s version of this story, we are in Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ home, not the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke) or Simon the Leper (Mark and Matthew). The woman who interacts with Jesus is Mary of Bethany (Martha and Lazarus’ sister), not the woman of ill repute as in Luke, nor an unnamed woman as in Mark and Matthew, and most definitely not Mary Magdalene (contrary to the 6th Century Pope Gregory, Mary of Magdalene is a completely different character in John’s gospel). Mary also anoints Jesus’ feet (not his head as in Mark and Matthew). Foot-washing was a customary hospitality practiced at dinners in a culture where people ate together seated in a reclining position on the floor, not at a table that hid guests’ feet.
In this story, Mary’s act is one of gratitude, specifically for the events of the previous chapter. In that chapter, Lazarus, Mary’s brother, had gotten sick and died, and Jesus brought him back from the dead to live again. This is a repeated theme in the gospels: life and life-giving overturning, undoing, and reversing death and death-dealing. It is one of the strongest, most life-giving interpretations of the Jesus story. The story is not primarily that someone died, but that that the state’s murder of someone who was calling for social change was overturned, undone, and reversed. The life-giving teachings of this Jewish prophet of the poor from Galilee lived on in the life of his followers. In Acts 13:32-33, the early believers say: “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus” (italics added).
The good news in this interpretive paradigm is not that Jesus died, but that Jesus overcame death, death-dealing and the state. His story is a story of life overcoming death, or love overcoming in the end—love that overcomes hate, fear, injustice, and bigotry.
In John 11, Jesus conquered, reversed, and undid Lazarus’ death. Jesus had said to Lazarus’ and Mary’s sister, Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life” (see John 11:25).
Again, in John, Mary is anointing Jesus in an act of gratitude for Jesus’ reversal of sickness and death and his channeling that reversal as “the resurrection and the life.” We must not miss that in John’s story, Jesus states that Mary had been saving this perfume for Jesus’ burial. So the fact that Mary instead uses it now hints that she has learned his lesson—life and love will overcome in the end.
Those hearing this story are being prepared for how John’s version of the Jesus story will turn out: Perfume will not be needed to anoint a dead body lying lifeless in a tomb. No, that tomb will be found empty. Mary has embraced Jesus as the resurrection and life, and has chosen, not to save her perfume for a dead body but to use it now in gratitude. Love will win in the end. She won’t need this perfume later, and she is banking on it.
So many social sicknesses are in need of reversal in our society, today: the sickness of White supremacy, the sickness of patriarchy and misogyny, the sickness of classism and greed, the sicknesses of bigotry against LGBTQIA people, and many more sicknesses that lead to death. What does it mean for us to live as people who overcome, who genuinely believe that love wins?
Lastly, I want to address Jesus’ words, “You will always have the poor among you.” This statement, which appears in each gospel, has been used by the wealthy to discourage Jesus’ followers from working toward economic justice and social change. In this interpretation, Jesus’ phrase is a prediction that trying to end poverty is futile, that poverty is an eternal social reality and there is nothing we can really do to prevent it. They would like us to think that all we can do to ease poverty in society is acts of charity and creating a society where poverty doesn’t exist is impossible.
But this interpretation benefits those who are enriched by the status quo and don’t want to see structural change. Charity is not justice, remember. Charity can ease injustice but leaves an unjust system unchanged.
I want to offer an alternative interpretation. Poverty is a human-made reality, and therefore poverty can be eradicated through our choices in how we structure our societies.
Consider this passage from the Torah:
“At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the LORD’S time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you. However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.” (Deuteronomy 15:1-5)
This passage states that there doesn’t need to be “poor people” among Israelites. They are being given instruction on how to eradicate poverty. Later in the same chapter, we read, “There will always be poor people in the land [i.e. the surrounding societies outside of Israel]. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land [as opposed to the larger societies in which poverty will always exist because the way those societies are shaped] (italics and capitalization added).
I don’t believe Jesus’ words in John about poor people should be interpreted as establishing as an existential reality that poverty is an eternal, unchangeable given for our world. Even if one does, however, then we can read Jesus as saying that Israelite society has become like the surrounding nations in Deuteronomy where poverty “will always exist” because of their structure. Jesus words here are an indictment of his society’s rejection of the mandate to forgive debts every seven years. Therefore, they were choosing to structure their society by immortalizing poverty as the surrounding nations in Deuteronomy 15 had. These choices can be reversed. We can structure our societies differently. The early Jesus followers in the book of Acts eradicated poverty from their own community in Jesus’ name:
“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
Remember, it was not that Jesus had died, but that he had been resurrected. His death had been reversed.
“And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales.” (Acts 4:33-34, italics added)
Last year, I mentioned these words of Nelson Mandela and Gustavo Gutierrez in Declaring War Against Poverty:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings.” (Nelson Mandela, in a 2005 speech at the Make Poverty History rally in London’s Trafalgar Square)
“The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History, p. 44)
There is a lot to consider here.
How are you being called to be a conduit of love, healing, life, and life-giving in your own contexts, this week?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How do you perceive poverty as something that could be prevented in our society? What would our society have to incorporate in order to eradicate poverty? Discuss (and imagine) with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
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