Jacob’s Ladder
Finding Jesus Second Edition!
I have some exciting news!
I have just signed an agreement with a new book publisher (Quoir), and we are putting together a launch team for the second edition of Finding Jesus, coming out next month!
If you have been blessed by the first edition, and you would like to see this book have greater exposure to reach an even larger audience, I want to invite you to be a part of the launch team. This second edition will be available in paperback, Kindle and an audio book available on Audible. And great news for those who already have a copy of the first edition, the first 25 people to sign up to be part of our launch team will also receive a FREE Audible copy of the audiobook for Finding Jesus.
To join the Finding Jesus launch team, all you need to do is four things:
1) Go to Amazon and pre-order a copy of the second edition when pre-orders become available.
2) Read the pdf copy of the second edition of Finding Jesus that I will send you after your pre-order the book so that you’re ready on launch day.
3) On launch day go back to Amazon and write a review for Finding Jesus. (You’ll be able to do this on day one since you’ve already read the pdf copy.)
4) Share your review of Finding Jesus on your social media pages that day, also.
It’s pretty simple. That’s all. And if you already have copy of the first edition this is a great opportunity to get the audiobook version on Audible as soon as it is available.
If you would like to join our launch team, you can email me at info@renewedheartministries.com and just put in the subject of your email “Launch Team.”
Thank you in advance for being part of this special second edition publishing and ensuring this edition is a success.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 46: John 1.43-51. Lectionary B, Epiphany 2
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 1, Episode 46: John 1.43-51. Lectionary B, Epiphany 2
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Jacob’s Ladder
Herb Montgomery, January 12, 2024
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Are there places in our world where we’re struggling to believe there is hope for change? Where in our world do we need to be reassured that earth and heaven are still connected? Where do we still long for liberation from that which is causing harm? Whether we call it Jacob’s ladder, Jesus’ “kingdom,” God’s just future, or simply the way of justice and love, where are we longing for reassurance that a world of compassion and enough for everyone is still possible and still worth fighting for?”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”
Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.
“Come and see,” said Philip.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:43-50)
The first thing I always chuckle at in this passage is how it characterizes Jesus with a slight case of sarcasm. Philip has found Nathanael and told him about Jesus. Nathaniel’s response is “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” No sugar coating, no niceties, just says things as he perceives them to be: no pretense. Jesus, meeting Nathaniel, claims Nathaniel doesn’t mince words just to be polite. Nathaniel’s not socially sensitive and doesn’t attempt to hide how he really thinks or feels about something or someone. He has “no deceit.”
Last semester my daughter had the privilege of playing Célimène in her university’s Creative Arts and Theater department production of Molière’s The Misanthrope. The play makes fun of French social hypocrisies like customs of niceness between members of aristocracy with little regard for what is actually true. The show centers around Célimène and Alceste’s relationship and asks whether Alceste is a hero for his uncompromising honestly devoid of all tact or is just a social fool. Alceste and Nathaniel from our reading this week remind me a lot of each other.
Nathaniel doesn’t think deeply about what he’s saying about Nazareth or people who live there. He simply reveals his bigotry toward those people. It’s not honesty or freedom from deceit as Jesus subtly (sarcastically) points out here, but harmful bias.
This passage also reminds me that the early Jesus followers had no decision to “accept” Jesus as their personal, private “Savior.” Such an individualized approach had not crept into the Jesus community yet. Instead, the call that Jesus makes in all of the gospels is to follow him, not to accept a gift from him.
Consider the following passages from the gospels. I’ve added italics for emphasis:
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” (Mark 1:17)
As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. (Mark 2:14)
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” (Matthew 4:19)
But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:22)
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:38)
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him. (Luke 5:27)
He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” (Luke 9:59)
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Luke 18:22)
I share all of these passages so we can really get the impact of what the gospel call was. It was not to mentally assent and then go on living life as you always had. No, it was a radical departure from the status quo. You reordered your life to follow Jesus and his teachings, specifically his teachings about the “kingdom,” a way of being human together that was rooted in the Golden Rule, enemy love, nonviolence, resource-sharing, wealth redistribution as restoration and reparations, and more. It was a social vision where people committed to taking care of one another as the objects of God’s love and making sure each person had what they needed to thrive. It was about love of neighbor and a preferential option for those the present system marginalized.
As this new year begins, this is a good time for all of us to take a little inventory of what it means to be a Jesus follower today. It’s more than worshipping Jesus. It’s more than accepting him. It’s more than trusting Jesus the way we trust an insurance company. It’s about following him and his vision for what life could look like here on earth, and working toward shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. Love of neighbor means seeing your fellow human, whomever they are, as part of yourself and all of us together as part of the human family. It means committing to be a part of what is best for us all.
Lastly in our reading this week, Jesus speaks to Nathaniel about seeing the heavens open. There is a reference to Jacob’s ladder, and to the apocalyptic Son of Man.
The “heaven opening” language is the same language the synoptic gospel authors used to tell the stories of Jesus’ baptism:
Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. (Mark 1:10, italics added.)
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. (Matthew 3:16, italics added.)
When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened. (Luke 3:21, italics added.)
The synoptic gospel authors connected Jesus’ baptism to the imagery in Isaiah 42 that describes one who would establish justice in the earth and in whose name, as the Christmas carol “O Holy Night” reminds us, “all oppression would cease.” In undoing our systems of economic extraction, this “chosen one” would end violence and bring “peace on earth.”
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:1)
John’s gospel connects this baptism imagery with imagery from Genesis of Jacob’s ladder:
He [Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28:12)
John’s author conflates the imagery of Jacob’s ladder with Jewish apocalyptic imagery of the Son of Man in Daniel chapter 7. In Daniel 7, the Son of Man would bring liberation from injustice, oppression, and violence of the world’s empires and bring about a new way of shaping human communities:
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed…
As I watched, this horn was waging war against the holy people and defeating them, until the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the holy people of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom…
“But the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.” (Daniel 7:13-14, 21-22, 26-27, italics added)
These are ancient Jewish liberation texts in which the people long to be delivered from their imperial oppressors.
What John’s Jesus is doing for Nathaniel in this week’s passage is connecting the images of Jacob’s ladder and the Son of Man and telling Nathaniel that he’s going to see it all! Jacob’s ladder assured Jacob, who longed for deliverance from his brother Esau whom he had wronged and from whom he was fleeing for his life. Jacob was on the run, an exile. After Jerusalem and her temple were no more, the people for whom John’s gospel was written felt like exiles too. So this passage offers them the same assurance once given to Jacob: that earth and heaven are still connected. All is not lost and the world can still be made right. Violence can end. Oppression can cease. And injustice can be made right.
This leads me to a possible application for us in this new year, too.
Are there places in our world where we’re struggling to believe there is hope for change? Where in our world do we need to be reassured that earth and heaven are still connected? Where do we still long for liberation from that which is causing harm? Whether we call it Jacob’s ladder, Jesus’ “kingdom,” God’s just future, or simply the way of justice and love, where are we longing for reassurance that a world of compassion and enough for everyone is still possible and still worth fighting for?
As 2024 begins, may we each take a moment to remember that earth and heaven are still part of one another. In this new year, may our daily lives be the lived prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does it mean for you to “follow” Jesus? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
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You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My latest 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.
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Jesus and Antisemitism
Herb Montgomery | January 28, 2022
“We can do better today. We don’t have to disparage Jewish people, Jewish wisdom, or Judaism to value Jesus and his ethical teachings. There is so much good in the Jesus story that can benefit our communities today as we live out the golden rule and shape our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. That “everyone” genuinely means everyone, including Jewish people. And that means that we have to be honest about the harmful way Christian narratives have been told in the past and are still told today. We have to name those harmful story elements in our text. We must do better.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Luke:
Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (Luke 4:21-30)
There is a lot in our reading this week. The author of Luke’s gospel is elaborating on the theme of Jesus’ home-town rejection by using a contemporary proverb about a doctor being admonished to cure their own ailment.
This narrative first appears in Mark. Then it is expanded in Matthew, and elaborated on even further in Luke. Here are both Mark’s and Matthew’s versions:
He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief. (Mark 6:1-6)
He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.” And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:54-58)
Luke’s gospel adds the saying, “Doctor, cure yourself!”
So often, when Black and Hispanic people object to police brutality, White people divert the attention away from police with a “black-on-black violence” narrative or argument. This is a way of telling these communities to “cure yourself” rather than hold up law enforcement to scrutiny. When there’s an effort to hold oppressors accountable, oppressors and those who support them change the subject and find fault with the victim in an ad hominem attack.
This proverb also reminds me of a Twitter conversation where I was speaking of the differences between systemic injustice and personal or private injustice. One Twitter user replied, “You change your system and let us know how that goes” and made some comment about poor people needing to be made to work.
By contrast, I saw a meme this week that said the role of prophetic Christianity is to hold society accountable. But I think Christianity needs to heal itself first in matters of justice and equity before it should speak over the rest of society. Christians have little credibility critiquing other groups when there is so much housekeeping that needs to be done inside Christianity. We do not want to be open to charges of hypocrisy.
With this story, Luke also foreshadows how Jesus would later be mocked at his execution:
And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Anointed of God, God’s chosen one!’ (Luke 23:35)
That’s not all that Luke foreshadows in this story. He also lays the foundation for tension that emerges between Jewish and Gentile Jesus followers in the early Jesus movement. By the time Luke is written, Gentile followers of Jesus already want to distance themselves from the Jewish community in the eyes of the Roman empire, and this story illustrates that.
In this story, Luke’s Jesus uses two ancient Jewish folk stories (1 Kings 17:1-16 & 2 Kings 5:1-14) to justify including Gentiles in his community. Luke then paints the Jewish audience as becoming homicidally angry at even the notion that Gentiles should be included. I find this odd because usually when one group speaks ill of another in these stories, it is not Jewish Jesus followers speaking ill of Gentiles; it’s Gentile Jesus followers speaking ill of Jewish people. Later on in Acts, however:
After they [local Jewish leaders] had set a day to meet with him, they came to him at his lodgings in great numbers. From morning until evening he explained the matter to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. Some were convinced by what he had said, while others refused to believe. So they disagreed with each other; and as they were leaving, Paul made one further statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your ancestors through the prophet Isaiah,
‘Go to this people and say,
You will indeed listen, but never understand,
and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.’
Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.” (Acts 28:23-28)
Our story this week doesn’t direct our focus to “those Gentiles” or how much “they” want to exclude Jewish people. It focuses on “those Jewish people” and how deeply and violently they hate having to share a world with Gentiles. Luke/Acts was written by Gentiles, the group of believers that won the early Jesus movement, and this week’s reading paints the people sitting in the synagogue with Jesus that Sabbath day in the worst possible light. This mischaracterization of Jewish people in later versions of the Jesus story has proven to be so harmful.
Gentile Christians have committed grave harm against Jewish people throughout history because of how our Jesus story is written. As the adage goes, history is told by the conquerors. As the Jesus community became primarily Gentile, it added anti-Jewish elements to our sacred stories, subtly painting Jewish people in those stories and even Jesus himself as anti-Jewish.
In our society, whenever people call for inclusion or equity for Black or Brown people, some White and other voices allege that these efforts are somehow harmful to White people. Making the United States a multiracial democracy is not being anti-White people; it’s being pro-all people. But looking back at Luke, I wonder how much of the Jewish bigotry toward Gentiles that we read in the gospels is really Greek-speaking Jesus followers seeking to paint their Jewish peers in the worst possible light to justify the distance they wanted between Christianity and Judaism.
It’s been quite effective. How do you disparage a community that you are bigoted against? Accuse them of murderous bigotry toward you instead. Though there were competing Jewish voices within Jesus’ own Jewish society with varied Jewish attitudes toward Gentiles (I think of the differences between the teachings of the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai, see Rabbi Harvey Falk’s Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus), Judaism itself has always taught that there are those deemed “righteous” among all nations.
Unfortunately this anti-Jewish theme paved the way for the Roman empire, when it finally absorbed Christianity as Rome’s official state religion, to escape being held accountable for executing Jesus. Instead, Roman Christianity scapegoated the Jewish people and blamed them for Jesus’ execution. Christian anti-semitism continued to evolve. So much so that in certain eras, we find anti-semitic Christians opposed even to the reminder that Jesus himself was a Jew.
We can do better today. We don’t have to disparage Jewish people, Jewish wisdom, or Judaism to value Jesus and his ethical teachings. There is so much good in the Jesus story that can benefit our communities today as we live out the golden rule and shape our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. That “everyone” genuinely means everyone, including Jewish people. And that means that we have to be honest about the harmful way Christian narratives have been told in the past and are still told today. We have to name those harmful story elements in our text. We must do better.
Some Christians today are doing better, and not just for our Jewish friends. They are raising consciousness of how Christianity has been used to harm Indigenous people, migrant populations, non-white and non-European people, women, the LGBTQ community, and so many more.
Jesus followers today have the responsibility to make sure our own house is in order. Before we can help anyone else with the speck that may be in their eye, we have to attend the beam that has been and still is in our own.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What areas of injustice are you engaging within your own faith community? What changes are you working toward? 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.
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
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice.
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Losing One’s Life
by Herb Montgomery
“Jesus didn’t die because he was a bigot, standing in solidarity with oppressors and justifying the domination of the vulnerable. He died because he stood in solidarity with the vulnerable against the status quo. It’s time we also stood with the oppressed. If there is a God of the oppressed in our sacred text, we can only be standing with that God if we‘re also standing with the oppressed and working toward liberation with them. We will only be able to reclaim the humanity of Christianity if we as Christians are working alongside those who are working to liberate themselves. . . . Resurrection that doesn’t follow standing with those on the undersides and edges of society isn’t authentic resurrection as defined by the Jesus story. If Christianity does not discover how to stand with women, people of color, immigrants, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people, it’s not a Christianity I want to be a part of.”
Featured Text:
“The one who finds one’s life will lose it, and the one who loses one’s life, for my sake‚ will find it.” (Q 17:33)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
Luke 17:31-35: “On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”
Context. Context. Context.
If you haven’t read last week’s entry, I strongly recommend you do as a foundation for understanding this week’s saying. This week’s saying, if not understood in the context we discussed last week, could easily be interpreted as Jesus teaching the oppressed a message of self-sacrifice rather than self-affirmation and self-reclamation.
But I don’t believe in the myth of redemptive suffering. Our hope is not in sacrificing our selves, but rather in learning how to reclaim our selves, to regain our own humanity, and to stand in solidarity with those who are doing the same. In a world where people’s selves are already being sacrificed by those who dominate, subjugate, and marginalize, I don’t believe Jesus offered a message of further self-sacrifice; I believe he offered a way for the oppressed to take hold of life in the face of the longest odds. In this world, where people’s existence is threatened or even denied, Audre Lorde reminds us that, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
So what other than self-sacrifice could Jesus have meant when he spoke of losing one’s life and finding one’s life? Remember, when the status quo is confronted, challenged, and threatened, those who have the most to lose to change will threaten some form of a “cross” as an attempt to silence those calling for change.
As we discussed last week, that cross is not intrinsic to following Jesus. It only comes into the picture when those in power and places of privilege use the threat of violence to quiet those they’ve repressed. Only at this point do these words of Jesus become a source of life for the oppressed. The question Jesus is asking is not “Are you willing to suffer,” but “do you desire to fully live?” Will you continue to thrive, even in the face of threats, or will you accept things as they are, reluctantly but without protest letting go of your hold on life? Remaining alive but silent is actually death, and refusing to let go of your hold on life, even when threatened with death, is life.
On March 8, 1965, the day after Bloody Sunday, Dr. King thundered from the pulpit:
“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died . . . A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. So we’re going to stand up amid horses. We’re going to stand up right here in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We’re going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We’re going to stand up amid tear gas! We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”
It is in this context that this week’s saying is not one of self-sacrifice, but self-affirmation in the face of threat.
“The one who find’s one’s life” is the one preserving their life by remaining silent in response to injustice. Finding one’s life this way is a way of actually losing it. You may keep breathing, but you are in reality dead. But in being willing to lose one’s life, if need be, to stand up for justice, one is not letting go of life, but “finding it.”
This is the self-affirming refusal to be bullied by those in power, a refusal to roll over and just patiently endure, a refusal to become nothing more than a doormat waiting for change to come from the top down. Change never comes from the top down.
That thought reminds me of three quotations.
The first quotation comes from Freire, who estimated oppressors’ inability to use oppression to liberate. He argues that oppressive power is intrinsically antithetical to liberation:
“The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.” (in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition, Kindle Locations 539-541)
In hierarchal power structures, the same tools used by those at the top to dominate and subjugate cannot be used to liberate.
The second quotation is from a speech Frederick Douglass gave in 1857 that has since been titled “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”:
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”
According to Douglass, then, change comes from the bottom up.
Lastly are the words of James H. Cone:
“There will be no change from the system of injustice if we have to depend upon the people who control it and believe that the present order of injustice is the best of all possible societies. It will be changed by the victims whose participation in the present system is against their will.” (in God of the Oppressed, p. 202)
It is not the responsibility of the oppressed to liberate the oppressors. No, theirs is a struggle for their own liberation. Yet the reality is that when the oppressed remove oppressors’ power, change is accomplished for all. Not only are the oppressed reclaiming their own humanity, but also they create the possibility for oppressors to rediscover and embrace their humanity, too. Whether oppressors take hold of their own humanity or pass off the stage of history in bitter, defeated bigotry is up to them.
Christianity must also face this choice, especially evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals’ support of the American establishment is nothing new: Christianity has a long history of being used to legitimize established orders. While enslaved Black people used Christianity as a means to survive and resist, many White people used Christianity to legitimize slavery and resist abolitionism. Today, too, many use Christianity to legitimize their homophobia and transphobia, their patriarchy and misogyny. I attended a conference this past month where many of the speakers voiced concerns for the future of Christianity and what can be done to keep it alive. Some said, “Let it die. Resurrection can only follow death.” But though this sound bite sounds right, it’s ill founded. Jesus didn’t die because he was a bigot, standing in solidarity with oppressors and justifying the domination of the vulnerable. He died because he stood in solidarity with the vulnerable against the status quo.
It’s time we also stood with the oppressed. If there is a God of the oppressed in our sacred text, we can only be standing with that God if we‘re also standing with the oppressed and working toward liberation with them. We will only be able to reclaim the humanity of Christianity if we as Christians are working alongside those who are working to liberate themselves.
I’m not saying Christianity is doomed. I’m saying that we have to stop caring whether we survive and choose instead the all-consuming preoccupation of standing with the vulnerable, alongside them and engaging the work of their liberation. If Christianity ceases to exist doing that work, then maybe there will be a resurrection for it. But a resurrection from any other type of institutional “death” is not a resurrection I’m interested in.
Resurrection that doesn’t follow standing with those on the undersides and edges of society isn’t authentic resurrection as defined by the Jesus story. If Christianity does not discover how to stand with women, people of color, immigrants, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people, it’s not a Christianity I want to be a part of. I’d rather follow Jesus and stand with the oppressed (Luke 4:18) than find a way for Christianity to continue in the old order.
In the Jewish prophetic, justice tradition, we find this ancient call to the Hebrew people:
“Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” (Isaiah 58:9-12)
Maybe we, too, might hear this call to do away with oppressing the vulnerable and live in solidarity with the liberation of the oppressed.
The one who finds one’s life will lose it, and the one who loses one’s life, for my sake [and the sake of the oppressed]‚ will find it. (Q 17:33)
HeartGroup Application
This week, take some time to contemplate Oscar Romero’s poem Taking the Long View:
Taking the Long View
by Oscar Romero
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
Which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything,
And there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
An opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
Between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
Ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.
2. What speaks to you in Romero’s words? Is there encouragement, challenge, affirmation, inspiration?
3. Share your thoughts with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.
Thanks for checking in with us this week. Keep living in love, participating the work of survival, resistance, liberation, restoration, and transformation as we, together seek to make our world a safe, compassionate, just home for all.
Tonight, I’m in Asheville for our first 500:25:1 event. Send us lots of well wishes!
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
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