It’s Okay to Discover You Are Wrong
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 26: Matthew 15.10-28. Lectionary A, Proper 15
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/nauEBogqH10
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
It’s Okay to Discover You Are Wrong
Herb Montgomery | August 18, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“She calls him out on the hurtfulness of his rhetoric. She also uses his language against him to show him how blinkered his understanding is. And Jesus models humility. She is right, and Jesus makes an about-face.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:10-20, 21-28)
Before we begin this week I want to address some harmful language in our reading. The first is a generalizing reference to Pharisees. The Pharisees were a very diverse group that held many of the same ethical views of love and inclusion as the early Jesus community did. They were the progressive liberals of their community, and appealed to a large portion of the masses. The Pharisees later evolved into what would become Rabbinic Judaism. Their ethics of love and compassion, justice, and inclusion are a central part of Jewish wisdom today.
This is important to say because using the term “Pharisee” as a pejorative slur is historically incorrect and has also been the root cause of antisemitism in Christianity over the centuries.
There was a sect of the Pharisees (the school of Shammai) that opposed the more progressive Jesus community. But this group of Pharisees were just as much opposed to their more progressive fellow Pharisees in the school of Hillel.
Because of this complex historical reality, as we tell the Jesus story we need to remember that many of the debates we encounter in the Jesus story were not between Christians and Jews (as Jesus himself was never a Christian). They were a debate within the Jewish community, between competing voices in Judaism, over what fidelity to their God looked like.
The first portion of our reading addresses whether things we eat defile us individually and whether how we relate to one another defile us collectively. This was a debate between Jesus and some of the Pharisees, and also a debate among the Pharisees themselves.
Second, this passage refers to blindness pejoratively too. Equating a disability like blindness with being inferior, sinful, or adversarial is harmful to people who live with disabilities every day. Again, today we can do better when we tell the Jesus story.
Later in this week’s reading, we encounter a story of a woman whom Matthew refers to as “Canaanite” and Mark calls “Syrophoenician” (Mark 7:26). When Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite, his listeners would have recalled the region’s ancient Indigenous populations within their own cultural stories and folklores of exodus, migration and settlement there.
The early Jesus movement was not monolithic on the underlying message of this passage. Some members of the early Jesus movement felt their purpose was more in-house: they believed they were to be about winning fellow Jews to follow the Jewish Jesus. Many of these members stayed in Judea, specifically Jerusalem, and recognized the apostleship of Peter and James (see Luke and Acts). Others in the early Jesus community believed they were called to win those outside of the Jewish community to become followers of Jesus. Paul and the Matthean community in Galilee held this view (compare the endings of Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s). In Luke’s gospel, all the disciples remain in Jerusalem and grow the Jesus movement among the Jewish people from there. But in Matthew’s gospel, all the disciples return to Galilee and grow the Jesus movement from there, embracing even those who were not Jews.
The story of the Canaanite woman supports the Matthean community’s view that Jesus teachings should be shared beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community.
What I love about this story is that we get a picture of a very human Jesus. He models being open to listening to those our theologies, interpretations, or views harm and being willing to grow and change. When we discover that something in our theology or our interpretations is harmful, this Jesus tells us it’s okay to learn and change. It’s okay to admit that once you held a harmful position, you now know more than you knew then, and your mind has changed.
This story forces us to embrace an evolving Jesus, not a fixed one. As the gospel of Luke says, “The child [Jesus] grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40).
When Jesus became an adult, did this growing and learning in wisdom stop? Did he just know everything as an adult? It may appeal to some to view Jesus this way, but it doesn’t align with our own experiences or how much we keep learning, evolving, and growing as adults.
Consider this passage in the New Testament book of Hebrews: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5.8)
Jesus learned obedience. And he learned it through those things he suffered. This sounds a lot like the way all of us learn: through experience and the hard way. It’s a picture of a very human Jesus who, when his understanding broadened, embraced change to become even more a source of healing and life to those he came in contact with.
Again, Matthew’s gospel refers to this woman as a Canaanite woman. I love that the person who teaches Jesus to see the world through a much larger lens is a woman. When Jesus refers to Jewish people as God’s children and non-Jews as less than dogs, she calls him out on the hurtfulness of his rhetoric. She also uses his language against him to show him how blinkered his understanding is. And Jesus models humility. She is right, and Jesus makes an about-face.
Remember, this is not just any Gentile woman. Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite.
This calls to my mind the words of James Cone in his classic, God of the Oppressed, and Philip Jenkins’ comments in Laying Down the Sword. Here are both:
“Native American theologian Robert Warrior [reads] the Exodus and Conquest narratives ‘with Canaanite eyes.’ The Exodus is not a paradigmatic event of liberation for indigenous peoples but rather an event of colonization.” (James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, Kindle Edition Location 130)
The story of the Exodus speaks of liberation to some oppressed communities, and to others, this same narrative speaks of colonization.
“The parallels are all the more painful as European colonialists over the centuries consciously used the conquest of Canaan as a model for their own activities.” (Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses, p. 20-21)
This month’s recommended reading from Renewed Heart Ministries is Randy Woodley’s Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonized Approach to Christian Doctrine. This volume is well worth reading as we also follow Jesus in listening to and growing our understanding of, relationships with, and reparations toward Indigenous populations today.
Who might our Canaanite women be today? Who might we need to listen to?
How can we follow the Jesus of this week’s reading and be willing to listen to communities our theologies and interpretation have harmed? Jesus followers who are men could begin by listening to the experiences of women. Jesus followers who are straight and cisgender could begin by listening to the experiences of those who identify as LGBTQ. Jesus followers who are White could listen to the experiences of people of color. Jesus followers who are upper class or middle class could listen to the experiences of those who spend every day trying to survive poverty. The list could go on and on.
What does it look like for us today to follow the Jesus in our reading this week? Again, who are the Canaanite women that we need to listen to today?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Think back to an experience from your own journey where you discovered you were wrong and that you needed a larger worldview through which to relate to others in our shared world? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Trading Individualism for Community
Herb Montgomery | October 7, 2022
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Those of us from Western cultures have a lot we can learn from cultures that value community wellbeing over or alongside individual thriving. There are ways of structuring our society where the common good is emphasized, where the community thrives alongside each person comprising it, where we collectively take responsibility for taking care of every person.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Luke:
Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:11-19)
This story appears only in Luke. It may be modeled on a story in Mark (see Mark 1:40-45 ) and on Jewish tales of Elisha’s healing Naaman (see 2 Kings 5:1-15).
We can glean something from this week’s reading, and we have a few things to unpack first. We are far removed from the cultural setting of our story, but if we give it a moment, wisdom will come to the surface.
First, let’s understand how the Torah approached skin abnormalities. Anyone with a skin problem was to show it to the priest. If the issue was thought questionably contagious and a danger to the community, the person would be isolated for a period and re-examined before regaining access to the community. The result was either re-inclusion or continued isolation.
“If the shiny spot on the skin is white but does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest is to isolate the affected person for seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine them, and if he sees that the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin, he is to isolate them for another seven days.” Leviticus 13:4-5
Leprosy was an especially harmful skin disease socially. Not only did the person have to deal with the negative effects of the disease itself, they also had no social reinstatement to look forward to. Lepers were sentenced to an isolated life, living away from their community and alone for the rest of your days. Leper communities were invented so that lepers could still have some type of community with whom to survive.
Survival in Jesus’ world depended on belonging to one of many village communities. Belonging to a community comprised of a network of rural families was how you survived. A person would not survive on their own.
Now let’s look at the purpose of the healing stories in the Jesus story.
We could interpret these healing stories through a post-Enlightenment, naturalistic worldview that challenges all miracles as a violation of natural laws. We could question the historicity of each of these stories too. But I find many more life-giving lessons from interpreting the healing stories as Richard Horsley does in his excellent volume Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder. This approach asks us to take the healing stories, not within our context today, but in the context the original audience would have heard them, given their assumptions. In the four canonical versions of the Jesus story we have today, we must hear each of these stories in the debilitating context of Roman imperialism.
Leprosy broke down a person’s place in their village community, isolating them from a community-based system of survival to an individualistic mode of survival on the edges of their society. They were on their own.
In our individualistic culture, we have the myth of success being the result of pulling up oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. One of the deepest fall-outs of colonialism is the repression of Indigenous community ways, such as the community coming together to make sure everyone is cared for, and where individual wellbeing was balanced with the common good or the community thriving. Colonialism has left each of us a “leper” today, isolated from community and having to make it on our own. This has been quite convenient for the capitalist elite, who can consolidate more power and wealth if we are only individuals working for our own survival, receiving only a portion of our work’s value, having the majority of our hard work only go to make someone else richer.
Jesus’ ministry was not to start a new religion, but to socially and economically renew his own Jewish society. His ministry involved restoring people to communal life in villages in a context where Roman imperialism was destroying communities, transforming landowners belonging to a small village community into isolated, individual, workers on land they’d once owned but lost through oppressive Roman taxation and defaulted debt.
In these stories, Jesus’ healings represent the restoration of the rule or kingdom of the God of the Torah and the victory of God’s rule over Roman rule. Jesus’ world was one where people were restored from the economic isolation of self-reliance to a community dedicated to making sure everyone had enough (see Acts 2 and 4). The leprosy is a real disease, and it was also used in the Jesus stories as a metaphor for the very real isolating effects of Roman imperialism. Roman rule was a disease that transformed the way people lived with each other.
So Jesus acted to heal and reverse the effects of Roman occupation. He called his listeners to rebuild their community life. And in this week’s story, we see yet another example of people being healed of that which kept them on the margins or edges of their society. His goal was not just to heal people as individuals, but that they also present themselves to their priests so they could be restored to their community.
If this is a new idea to you, I recommend the section “Healing the Effects of Imperialism” in Horsley’s book, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder.
Horsley writes:
“Like the exorcisms, Jesus’ healings were not simply isolated acts of individual mercy, but part of a larger program of social as well as personal healing…
In these and other episodes Jesus is healing the illnesses brought on by Roman imperialism.
He was pointedly dealing with whole communities, not just individuals, in the context of their meeting for self governance. He was not dealing only with what we moderns call ‘religious’ matters, but with the more general political-economic concerns of the village communities as well, as we shall see below.” (Kindle Locations 1391-1392, 1406, and 1440-1442)
He explains further:
“Jesus launched a mission not only to heal the debilitating effects of Roman military violence and economic exploitation, but also to revitalize and rebuild the people’s cultural spirit and communal vitality. In healing various forms of social paralysis, he also released life forces previously turned inward in self blame. In these manifestations of God’s action for the people, and in his offering the kingdom of God to the poor, hungry, and despairing people, Jesus instilled hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. The key to the emergence of a movement from Jesus’ mission, however, was his renewal of covenantal community, calling the people to common cooperative action to arrest the disintegration.” (Richard A. Horsley. Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, Kindle Locations 1634-1638)
At the end of this story, the writer states that the only leper who was thankful was a Samaritan. With this point in the narrative, we can see the antisemitism growing in Christianity by this point. So I don’t find this part of the story very life-giving for us. Jewish people had always believed that the restoration of justice and end of oppression and violence was for all people. Bringing up the Samaritans seems like just another Gentile Christian attempt to distance their group from their Jewish siblings and cast those Jewish siblings in a negative light. Had they wanted to extend Jesus’ liberation beyond the borders of Judea and Galilee, the author could have been accomplished this without this plot point, but since it’s in this story, it’s important that we as Jesus followers today be honest about it.
What is the gem of wisdom in this story?
As I briefly stated earlier, we are living in the wake of colonialism’s global destruction of so many indigenous cultures and repression of their communal way of life, including here in the United States. This week’s story calls into question the myth of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and calls us to lean into communal ways of living.
Those who have much more wealth to gain from our isolated way of living will try to scare us with labels like “socialism” or “communism.” Pay them no mind. Realize the game that they are playing.
Lean instead into the Jesus story. Those of us from Western cultures have a lot we can learn from cultures that value community wellbeing over or alongside individual thriving. There are ways of structuring our society where the common good is emphasized, where the community thrives alongside each person comprising it, where we collectively take responsibility for taking care of every person. They can call it “socialism.” I disagree because socialism doesn’t go far enough to follow the Jesus we read about in these gospel stories.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. List some of the ways you see our present system pushing us toward isolated individualism for our survival? Discuss these 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.
And if you’d like to reach out to us 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
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice.
Go to renewedheartministries.com and click “sign up.”
Free Sign-Up at:
https://renewedheartministries.com/Contact-forms?form=EmailSignUp
or Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Decolonizing Fishing for People
Herb Montgomery | February 4, 2022
(To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.)
“Fishing for people was about hooking or catching a certain kind of person, a powerful and unjust person, and removing them from their position of power from where they were wielding harm. This wasn’t about saving souls so they could enjoy post mortem bliss, but about changing systemic injustice in the here and now.”
Our reading this week is from the book of Luke:
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:1-11)
This story in Luke’s gospel conflates two stories found in other gospels. The author of Luke rearranges and modifies the account of how the first disciples joined Jesus (see Mark 1:16-20). In Mark, the initial calling takes place before Jesus begins to teach and heal (Mark 1:16-39). In Luke, it makes for better storytelling to put the disciples’ call after Jesus teaches in his hometown (Luke 4:14-5:11). Luke also adds a story about the disciples fishing all night and catching nothing, a story that John’s account places after the crucifixion (John 21:1-14).
Luke’s version of this story offers us a lot, but first we must unsettle the language of fishing for or “catching” people.
The metaphor of fishing for people has had a long tradition within Christianity for centuries. More recently, it has been interpreted in terms of evangelism, savings souls, missionary work, or “converting the heathen.” This interpretation has made Christian missionary efforts vulnerable to being coopted by European and later American colonial, capitalist abuses and the genocide of Indigenous people. Under the mantle of “reaching the world,” people who wanted to be fishers of people have done concrete harm while desiring to do spiritual good.
What if the phrase “fishing for people” was never intended to encourage Jesus followers to “save souls,” but to liberate those who were being harmed by bringing down the wealthy and powerful from their positions of privilege.
“Catching People”
Mark’s gospel reads, “‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’” (Mark 1:17)
I first learned an alternative interpretation of this metaphor from Ched Myers of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. I believe that if Jesus’ followers had chosen this interpretation, Christians would not have harmed or been complicit in the harm of Indigenous people through colonialism or Christianity:
“There is perhaps no expression more traditionally misunderstood than Jesus’ invitation to these workers to become ‘fishers of men.’ This metaphor, despite the grand old tradition of missionary interpretation, does not refer to the ‘saving of souls,’ as if Jesus were conferring on these men instant evangelist status. Rather the image is carefully chosen from Jeremiah 16:16, where it is used as a symbol of Yahweh’s censure of Israel. Elsewhere the ‘hooking of fish’ is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Amos 4:2) and powerful (Ezekiel 29:4). Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus is inviting common folk to join him in the struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege.” (Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, p. 132)
“In the Hebrew Bible, the metaphor of ‘people like fish’ appears in prophetic censures of apostate Israel and of the rich and powerful: ‘I am now sending for many fishermen, says God, and they shall catch [the people of Israel]…’ (Jeremiah 16:16) ‘The time is surely coming upon you when they shall take you away with fishhooks…’ (Amos 4:2) ‘Thus says God: I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt…. I will put hooks in your jaws, and make the fish of your channels stick to your scales…’ (Ezekiel 29:3f) Jesus is, in other words, summoning working folk to join him in overturning the structures of power and privilege in the world!” (Ched Myers, Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Stuart Taylor; Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, p. 10)
As Myers explains here, in several Hebrew scriptures, fishing for people was about hooking or catching a certain kind of person, a powerful and unjust person, and removing them from their position of power from where they were wielding harm. This wasn’t about saving souls so they could enjoy post mortem bliss, but about changing systemic injustice in the here and now.
If this interpretation is life-giving, and I believe, given the examples in Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel, that it is, this gives Jesus’ call to the disciples a very different context. These were common fishermen who had failed in the past but now were experiencing immense, overwhelming success. They had fished all night on their own and caught nothing. With Jesus, they’d caught so many fish they needed to ask for help with the net.
What might this have meant for the original audience, people who had failed to remove harmful people from their places of power to abuse? What hope might this story have given early Jesus followers, whose past efforts to change harmful systems had had discouraging results?
Remember these disciples as fishermen first. It’s much easier to walk away from fishing for fish when you’re failing. It would be immensely harder to walk away from fishing for fish and embrace fishing for people when fishing for fish has just resulted in the largest haul you have ever seen. What did that night meant for their profit? In this story, Jesus calls them to walk away from their profits to take up the justice work spoken of by the Hebrew prophets.
Now, as then, Jesus calls his disciples to place people before profit—especially people who are being harmed, marginalized, excluded, and killed. This makes me think of our current capitalist system, which places profit above every other priority. I think of ministries and Jesus followers who have chosen to stand up for people being harmed rather than remaining silent and preserving their donor base. When I consider the communities being harmed, I think of those Christians who suffer great loss for joining the voices saying “Black Lives Matter,” or for celebrating LGBTQ folks rather than just including or affirming them; who advocate for the egalitarian treatment of women. I’ve had speaking events cancelled because of my solidarity with these and other communities. One event in the Dakotas was even cancelled because I blogged in solidarity with those speaking out at Standing Rock for both environmental justice and in solidarity with indigenous sovereignty. One of the church’s wealthiest donors worked for a pipeline company and had requested I not be allowed to come to their church. Because the church didn’t want to risk that person’s financial support, they canceled me. I’m still in awe that they were so transparent with me on the phone about their motive.
What would it mean for Jesus’ followers today to put people before profits, even and especially when the fishing is good, and to take up fishing for people as Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel would have defined it?
Speaking of those who do harm within their positions of power, Jeremiah reads:
“But now I will send for many fishermen,” declares the LORD, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks. (Jeremiah 16:16)
Speaking of those who “oppress the poor and crush the needy,” Amos reads:
The Sovereign LORD has sworn by his holiness: “The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks.” (Amos 4:2)
Speaking of the abusive Pharaoh, king of Egypt, Ezekiel reads:
In the tenth year, in the tenth month on the twelfth day, the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Speak to him and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
‘“I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt,
you great monster lying among your streams.
You say, “The Nile belongs to me;
I made it for myself.”
But I will put hooks in your jaws
and make the fish of your streams stick to your scales.
I will pull you out from among your streams,
with all the fish sticking to your scales.
I will leave you in the desert,
you and all the fish of your streams.
You will fall on the open field
and not be gathered or picked up.
I will give you as food
to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the sky.
Then all who live in Egypt will know that I am the LORD. (Ezekiel 29:1-6)
This way of understanding what it means to fish for powerful people who do harm resonates with me.
How are these stories in the spirit of liberation calling you to go fishing today?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What are some of the areas of difference this alternate interpretation makes for you? 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.
Go to renewedheartministries.com and click “sign up.”
Free Sign-Up at:
https://renewedheartministries.com/Contact-forms?form=EmailSignUp
If you find blessing, encouragement and renewal here,
please consider becoming a Monthly Partner with a reoccurring monthly donation of your choosing.
$5 / monthFollow Us
