Salt, Light, a City on a Hill and a Justice Oriented Faith
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Salt, Light, a City on a Hill and a Justice Oriented Faith
Herb Montgomery | February 6, 2026
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 Matthew:
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-20)
This week’s reading has multiple themes worth looking at. Let’s begin with the metaphor of Jesus followers being “salt.” When Jesus tells his listeners, “You are the salt of the earth,” he draws on an image of something that is earthy, practical, and quietly subversive. In the ancient world, salt was not a luxury garnish but a necessity. It preserved food from decay, brought out flavor, and in Jesus’ own culture was often associated with making covenants. Read through the lens of our justice work today, the metaphor could also point to a community whose presence actively resists corruption and nurtures life in the midst of systems that harm and exploit. Let’s see.
Salt preserves by slowing decay. In a social context, this suggests a calling to confront and restrain forces that degrade human dignity such as poverty, racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, violence, and economic exploitation. To be “salt” is not to retreat into purity but to be mixed into the realities of the world, especially where suffering is acute. Salt only works when it comes into contact with what is spoiling. Likewise, justice-oriented faith requires proximity to injustice and a willingness to be changed by that encounter.
Salt also enhances flavor. This points to the positive, creative dimension of justice work: cultivating communities where hope, equity, and mutual care can flourish. Justice is not only about naming what is wrong but about helping life taste more fully human. In a just society, policies, economies, and institutions are shaped around compassion and shared wellbeing rather than profit or power alone.
Finally, Jesus warns that salt can lose its saltiness. In social justice terms, this is a caution against accommodation and complacency. When faith communities absorb the values of domination or individualism, they lose their distinctiveness and moral force. To remain “salty” is to stay grounded in solidarity with the marginalized and committed to transformation, even when such commitment is costly. “You are the salt of the earth” calls for an engaged, courageous presence: even only in small doses, salt is still capable of preserving life and bringing out its best flavors.
Next let’s consider Jesus’ image of a “city on a hill.” This imagery has often been lifted out of its context and repurposed to describe nations, power, or exceptionalism. Writers from the United States, notably, have used this image to describe their country. Yet in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not addressing empires or nations. He is instead speaking to a marginalized community of disciples living under Roman occupation, and calling them into a distinctive way of life shaped by God’s justice. Jesus’ metaphor is ethical, not nationalistic.
A city on a hill is visible not because it dominates, but because it cannot hide. In the same breath, Jesus speaks of light, good works, and glorifying God. The “light” he envisions in this chapter is the concrete practice of compassion and justice, peacemaking, and solidarity with the poor that he has just described in the Beatitudes. This city shines when people who hunger and thirst for justice forgive debts, refuse violence, and love their neighbors and their enemies. Its visibility comes from lived faithfulness, not military might, economic supremacy, or cultural dominance.
So to read the “city on a hill” as a nation-state is to invert Jesus’ meaning. Empires seek to be seen through power; Jesus instead calls his followers to be seen through compassion and a justice that results in peace. The city he imagines is not built by coercion or exclusion but by communities that embody God’s reign, the Kingdom. That kingdom is God’s just future where the vulnerable are protected, resources are shared, and humanity is restored. This kind of visibility often brings risk, not praise, because it exposes injustice and challenges systems of exploitation.
Jesus’ words call his followers, not countries, to account. The question is not whether a nation shines, but whether Jesus-following communities reflect the justice and mercy of God in public and unmistakable ways. When followers of Jesus engage their world by organizing for things such as fair wages, welcoming migrants, and resisting racism, all while standing alongside those harmed by unjust systems, they became that city on a hill. Their light points beyond themselves, not to national glory, but to the character of the Jesus they follow and the world his teachings have led them to not only imagine, but also to work to shape.
This makes even more sense when we hold it in the context of the image of a lamp on a lampstand. Jesus’ lampstand image calls followers to let justice-shaped faith be publicly visible. Light is not meant to be hidden in private piety or confined to personal morality while injustice persists around it and while the world burns. The saying challenges communities to place their values where they can illuminate real conditions of harm and inequality. A lamp on a stand exposes what is broken and guides others toward safer, more just paths. When Christians advocate for the oppressed, confront unjust systems, and practice compassion openly, their faith demonstrated through their choices and actions “gives light to everyone in the house.”
Lastly let’s consider Jesus’ words, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). These words are often heard as a theological clarification, but they are also a deeply social and political statement. Spoken to people living under Roman occupation and local elites who benefited from systems of exploitation, this declaration situates Jesus firmly within Israel’s long tradition of justice-seeking faith. These words signal continuity with the ethical and societal justice demands of the Torah and the prophets, and challenge any religion that divorces faith from the well-being of the vulnerable.
The “law and the prophets” were never merely about ritual observance or abstract morality. Torah and the prophetic tradition were concerned with concrete social realities: fair treatment of the poor, protection of widows and orphans, limits on wealth accumulation, hospitality to the stranger/migrant, and resistance to oppression. When prophets like Amos, Isaiah, and Micah condemned Israel, they did so not because people lacked religious zeal, but because they practiced worship while neglecting justice. By declaring that he fulfills rather than abolishes this tradition, Jesus affirms that God’s concern for justice is ongoing and non-negotiable.
In Matthew’s Gospel, fulfilling the law meant that Jesus consistently deepened and intensified the law’s ethical intent: justice for the vulnerable and marginalized. Matthew’s gospel moves beyond surface compliance, and Matthew’s Jesus opposes violence, promotes community, and extends love even to enemies. In social justice terms, Jesus’ fulfillment exposes systems that technically obey rules while producing harm. It critiques structures that claim legality or tradition while perpetuating inequality, exclusion, or violence.
Jesus’ teaching also resists the use of the law as a tool of domination. In his context, legal interpretations were often shaped by those in power to protect their own interests. By reclaiming the law’s original purpose of human flourishing and communal well-being, Jesus challenges both religious and political authorities alike. His fulfillment of the law centers those most impacted by injustice: the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and the outcast. This orientation suggests that any interpretation of faith that harms the vulnerable is a betrayal of the law’s true intent.
Today, Jesus’ words caution against forms of Christianity that dismiss social responsibility in favor of spiritualized belief or personal salvation alone. They also challenge movements that appeal to “biblical values” while ignoring the prophetic demand for justice. Faithfulness to Jesus does not mean abandoning moral traditions or prophetic critique; it means carrying them forward in ways that confront contemporary injustices such as economic exploitation, racism, patriarchy, LGBTQ discrimination, mistreatment of migrant communities, and more.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets” is ultimately a call to a justice-shaped faith. It insists that following Jesus means participating in the long, unfinished work of aligning social life with God’s vision of justice, compassion, and liberation: the hope of both the law and the prophets.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. What does a justice-oriented faith look like for you? 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.
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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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 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 3 Episode 6: Salt, Light, a City on a Hill and a Justice Oriented Faith
Matthew 5:13-20
Today, Jesus’ words caution against forms of Christianity that dismiss social responsibility in favor of spiritualized belief or personal salvation alone. They also challenge movements that appeal to “biblical values” while ignoring the prophetic demand for justice. Faithfulness to Jesus does not mean abandoning moral traditions or prophetic critique; it means carrying them forward in ways that confront contemporary injustices such as economic exploitation, racism, patriarchy, LGBTQ discrimination, mistreatment of migrant communities, and more. This passage is ultimately a call to a justice-shaped faith. It insists that following Jesus means participating in the long, unfinished work of aligning social life with God’s vision of justice, compassion, and liberation: the hope of both the law and the prophets.
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.
Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.
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When Healing Justice Comes Near
Herb Montgomery | January 20, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Today we still have social sicknesses that desperately need healing justice. I think of the sicknesses of patriarchy and misogyny, of racism and White supremacy, of classism and victim blaming practiced toward poor people, of heterosexism and bigotry toward same-sex sexuality, and bigotry from certain cisgender people toward transgender or nonbinary people. Healing justice can still liberate today as it did in some of our most sacred, ancient stories.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:
“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.”
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.
Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. (Matthew 4:12-23)
This week’s reading starts with John the Baptist in prison. As we discussed two weeks ago, John preached against social and systemic injustices of his society. (See Breaking With the Way Things Are) Preachers don’t get imprisoned for handing out tickets to heaven. They’re imprisoned for calling for systemic, societal change that threatens those benefiting from the current status quo (see Letter from a Birmingham Jail).
When Jesus hears of John being arrested and put in prison, he leaves the area and goes to Galilee. The author associates this geographical shift with a passage from Isaiah. As much as I understand the rhetorical purpose of contrasting light and darkness for those who lived in the Middle East before electricity and modern lighting, we should now be careful with this language.
The authors of both Matthew and Isaiah were people of color. The Bible was not written by White people. Today, though, we live in the wake of a long history of White people demonizing darkness in ways that harm people whose skin color is darker than theirs. Whiteness and light and darkness and Blackness have been closely associated in White supremacist polemics. Today it behooves us, given White degradation of Black people, to say unequivocally that we are all equal. Our differences reveal the rich diversity of the human family of which we are all a part. And our differences are to be celebrated, not used to create hegemony or a hierarchy of value.
This impacts how we talk about the Bible’s use of light and darkness, too. We don’t have to demonize the darkness to talk about the benefits of light. Light has intrinsic value and benefit. So does darkness. Darkness is not evil. It is life giving. Things grow in darkness, not just in light. In darkness, we rest and heal. Too much light can also harm.
We could perhaps reclaim the rhetoric of light and darkness today by speaking of balance between the light and the dark. Socially, making one difference supreme over another is death-dealing. As we need balance biologically, we need egalitarianism socially. Our call is not to lift up light over the darkness, but to work toward a world that is safe and just for us all; a place where each of us can feel at home. We are called to work toward a world that has room for all of our differences and is big enough for us all.
In our reading, with John now in prison, Jesus embarks on his own journey, preaching that the kingdom has arrived. This language, too, needs updating within our context. The language of a kingdom might have been meaningful when contrasted with the Roman empire and given the hopes for the renewal of David’s kingdom among 1st Century Jewish liberationists, but today we live in a multiracial, multi-gendered, richly diverse democracy.
Kingdoms are both patriarchal and hierarchical. What could Jesus’ “kingdom” be called in our democratic context today? Some have updated the language to call it the beloved community. Others refer to this change as God’s just future that is breaking through into our world here and now. Still others call it a kin-dom referring the kinship we all share being part of one another within our human family. (See Finding Jesus, Herb Montgomery, p. 53) Here at Renewed Heart Ministries we call it making our world a safe, just compassionate home for all. Whatever one decides to call it, we are talking about changes here and now, not post mortem bliss in the future but life-giving healing and change from the violence, injustice, and oppression (hell on earth) that many people face on our planet, today.
Lastly in our reading this week, Jesus calls the disciples. Last week’s reading had these events taking place on the banks of the Jordan. This week, John has been arrested and the action takes place in Galilee instead. Each of the gospels have differences like this depending on the audiences and political purposes each was written for. Matthew was written for Galilean and primarily Jewish Jesus followers.
As we’ve discussed before, 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 the position of power where they were wielding harm. It wasn’t about saving souls so they could enjoy post mortem bliss, but about changing systemic injustice in the here and now.
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)
And commentators agree on this association:
“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)
If this is a new interpretation for you, you may be interested in reading my brief article Decolonizing Fishing for People.
Our reading this week ends with Jesus’ Jewish renewal movement traversing through Galilee, teaching in synagogues and proclaiming the good news or “gospel” of the kingdom. The term “gospel” was taken from the Roman empire. Rome proclaimed a gospel each time it arrived to take over new regions. The gospel authors appropriate this term to contrast Rome’s approach with Jesus’ vision for ordering our world in ways that are life-giving for all.
Our passage characterizes Jesus’ way as being one of healing.
Today we still have social sicknesses that desperately need healing justice. I think of the sicknesses of patriarchy and misogyny, of racism and White supremacy, of classism and victim blaming practiced toward poor people, of heterosexism and bigotry toward same-sex sexuality, and bigotry from certain cisgender people toward transgender or nonbinary people.
This week, let’s choose to focus our following of Jesus on working to heal and eradicate these social diseases. Healing justice can still liberate today as it did in some of our most sacred, ancient stories. May it continue to do so through us, today.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How has your Jesus following changed as a result of testing the fruit of your beliefs and actions by the condition of whether they are life-giving? 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.
And if you’d like to reach out to us 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 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!
It’s here! 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, just in time for the holidays!
Here is just a taste of what people are saying:
“Herb has spent the last decade reading scripture closely. He also reads the world around us, thinks carefully with theologians and sociologists, and wonders how the most meaningful stories of his faith can inspire us to live with more heart, attention, and care for others in our time. For those who’ve ever felt alone in the process of applying the wisdom of Jesus to the world in which we live, Herb offers signposts for the journey and the reminder that this is not a journey we take alone. Read Finding Jesus with others, and be transformed together.” Dr. Keisha Mckenzie, Auburn Theological Seminary
“In Finding Jesus, Herb Montgomery unleashes the revolutionary Jesus and his kin-dom manifesto from the shackles of the domesticated religion of empire. Within these pages we discover that rather than being a fire insurance policy to keep good boys and girls out of hell, Jesus often becomes the fiery enemy of good boys and girls who refuse to bring economic justice to the poor, quality healthcare to the underserved, and equal employment to people of color or same-sex orientation. Because what the biblical narratives of Jesus reveal is that any future human society—heavenly or otherwise—will only be as good as the one that we’re making right here and now. There is no future tranquil city with streets of gold when there is suffering on the asphalt right outside our front door today. Finding Jesus invites us to pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ on our feet as we follow our this liberator into the magnificent struggle of bringing the love and justice of God to all—right here, right now.”—Todd Leonard, pastor of Glendale City Church, Glendale CA.
“Herb Montgomery’s teachings have been deeply influential to me. This book shares the story of how he came to view the teachings of Jesus through the lens of nonviolence, liberation for all, and a call to a shared table. It’s an important read, especially for those of us who come from backgrounds where the myth of redemptive violence and individual (rather than collective) salvation was the focus.” – Daneen Akers, author of Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints and co-director/producer of Seventh-Gay Adventists: A Film about Faith, Identity & Belonging
“So often Christians think about Jesus through the lens of Paul’s theology and don’t focus on the actual person and teachings of Jesus. This book is different. Here you find a challenging present-day application of Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God and the Gospel. Rediscover why this Rabbi incited fear in the hearts of religious and political leaders two millennia ago. Herb’s book calls forth a moral vision based on the principles of Jesus’ vision of liberation. Finding Jesus helps us see that these teachings are just as disruptive today as they were when Jesus first articulated them.” Alicia Johnston, author of The Bible & LGBTQ Adventists.
“Herb Montgomery is a pastor for pastors, a teacher for teachers and a scholar for scholars. Part memoir and part theological reflection, Finding Jesus is a helpful and hope-filled guide to a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and who he can be. Herb’s tone is accessible and welcoming, while also challenging and fresh. This book is helpful for anyone who wants a new and fresh perspective on following Jesus.”— Traci Smith, author of Faithful Families
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
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Transparency and the Vilification of Darkness
“What the passage from John describes is the desire to avoid the light of justice for fear of harmful actions toward others being exposed, actions that benefit some at the expense of others. We read about some hiding in the shadows for fear of being discovered, maybe held accountable, and most definitely being stopped. It’s about them coopting the darkness, which is not inherently evil, and using the darkness not for the life giving purposes of which it is intended, but to hide so they can continue doing harm.”
Herb Montgomery | March 12, 2021
This week’s reading is from the gospel of John,
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:14-21)
The phrase in this passage that speaks most to me now is in verse 20: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” This passage speaks to us of transparency versus hiding. Let’s unpack this a bit with an example from current events.
U.S. President Biden recently released an unclassified version of the National Intelligence report on the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist. The report finds Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved Khashoggi’s killing.
By contrast, the previous administration had refused to release this report. In the language of our passage this week, they had refused to let the report come to light because the deeds it exposed were deeply evil. Bob Woodward reports in his book Rage that Trump even bragged about protecting the Saudi prince. “I saved his ass,” Trump told Woodward, while many in the U.S. were calling for justice after Khashoggi’s murder. Trump continued, “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
This week’s passage from John’s gospel includes language that has been interpreted to blame Jewish people for Jesus’ death. I reject this anti-semitic interpretation. What the Jesus narrative does demonstrate is a universal dynamic of classism. The elite in Jesus’ society were threatened by his teachings, while most of the people loved his gospel to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized.
In Luke’s version of the Jesus story we read,
“When the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people. (Luke 20:19, emphasis added, cf. Luke 4:18-19)
In much the same way, Miguel A. De La Torre writes, global elites today see liberation theology as a threat:
“I am amazed at the misinformation surrounding liberation theology . . . Why is this theological perspective deemed so dangerous? Why have governments, including that of the United States, committed so many resources to bring about its obliteration? . . . Liberation theology is so dangerous because it disrupts a religious and political worldview that supports social structures that privilege the few at the expense of the many. Ignorance of the causes of oppression is crucial to maintaining this worldview. But as the consciousness of the oppressed begins to be raised, as they begin to see with their own eyes that their repressive conditions are contrary to the will of God, the power and privilege of the few who benefit from the status quo is threatened.” (Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians, Introduction)
In Jesus’ society it was not the people in general who rejected light for fear of being exposed, but, certain people, the elites, those in positions of power and privilege who “loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
In my home state of West Virginia, we are now in the midst of our 2021 legislative session. The Republican party won a supermajority in both houses of the West Virginia legislature in last November’s election. Now an alarming trend is developing.
Over half a dozen bills moving through the halls of legislature either remove all requirements for public disclosure of meetings and information, or make agency information private and not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. That’s not how government that claims to derive its power from the consent of those it represents should work. Government should be transparent. Everyone should be able to know what is being done, and be able to keep those who represent them accountable. It makes one wonder what is being hidden, what is being kept out of the light of public consciousness.
I want to offer a word of caution regarding the phrase in our passage about “loving darkness.”
The vilification of darkness in the gospels is problematic today. However innocent the original intent may have been of the gospel authors, equating darkness with evil has been a deep part of White supremacism. White supremacists have used Biblical passages to equate whiteness with goodness and superiority and blackness with evil or inferiority. Equating blackness with evil is how colonists imagined God and holiness as white and therefore, Black and Brown people as something else. This seed has borne deeply harmful and destructive fruit in the lives of all who are not White. (In different ways it has also damaged White people. One cannot advance supremacism and be unscathed.)
I’ve noticed that the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney uses the language of “gloom” or “shadow” instead of “darkness.” After all, there is nothing inherently evil about darkness and we need a balance of both light and darkness in our lives for health. The darkness of the womb is where we were all given life. Darkness is where we rest and heal, and some forms of life only grow in darkness. Again, it’s about balance: both light and darkness in a dance, so to speak, with neither overcoming the other. We can speak of the goodness of the light without vilifying darkness. Darkness calls us to the goodness of rest and recovery. Light calls us to wake and to get to work. We need both. (For more on this see Rev. Dr. Gafney’s Embracing the Light & the Darkness in the Age of Black Lives Matter and Dark and Light: Wil Gafney on White Supremacy in Biblical Interpretation)
What the passage from John describes is the desire to avoid the light of justice for fear of harmful actions toward others being exposed, actions that benefit some at the expense of others. We read about some hiding in the shadows for fear of being discovered, maybe held accountable, and most definitely being stopped. It’s about them coopting the darkness, which is not inherently evil, and using the darkness not for the life giving purposes of which it is intended, but to hide so they can continue doing harm.
A just society requires accountability, and accountability requires investigation. Those who have something to lose deeply fear investigation. Keep the tax returns hidden, they might say. Don’t set up a committee to investigate January 6, 2021, or broaden an investigation’s scope to dilute its power of discovery and make it more likely that some things stay hidden. Don’t release investigative reports, or at least don’t make them public. Watch for where you see those in positions of power and privilege seeking to keep their actions out of public consciousness in these ways.
In the Jesus story, Jesus emerged as a Galilean prophet of the poor, calling for life giving changes within his own society. He called for the redistribution of wealth, the inclusion of the marginalized, and the politics of compassion and protective justice toward those most vulnerable to being harmed by the then present system. For this reason, the powerful who were benefiting from the harm being done to others tried to hide. After all, when public consciousness is raised, change isn’t very far behind, and change is what those benefiting from the status quo most desperately want to stop.
In John’s story, the powerful elite succeed. Jesus is silenced through execution. Those with too much to lose interrupted his salvific work with a Roman cross, murdering him for earthly, political reasons, not cosmic theological ones. As we near the season of celebrating the resurrection across Christendom, we’ll discuss this further. For now, watch for where you see hiding and obfuscation. Don’t allow the shadows to be used for harm. Call for transparency, and affirm and support it wherever you see it being practiced.
HeartGroup Application
We at RHM are continuing to ask all HeartGroups not to meet together physically at this time. Please stay virtually connected and practice physical distancing. When you do go out, please keep a six-foot distance between you and others, wear a mask, and continue to wash your hands to stop the spread of the virus.
This is also a time where we can practice the resource-sharing and mutual aid found in the gospels. Make sure the others in your group have what they need. This is a time to work together and prioritize protecting those most vulnerable among us.
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Share with the group a story from your own experience that teaches the value of transparency, either within secular society or faith communities.
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
Salt, Light, and Cautious Optimism
Herb Montgomery | February 19, 2021
“But mere diversity is not the goal. A safe and just world for everyone, where everyone can call our world home, is the goal. It will not be enough to see a more diverse neoliberalism in response to the last four years of neo-facism. We will have to see if the inclusion of more diverse voices will allow those included to change the very systems they’re joining. I have hope. But we will see.”
The Salt of the Earth
In Matthew’s sermon on the mount we read,
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Matthew 5:13)
Audiences matter. Jesus directed these words to people in his society who faced daily oppression under Rome and marginalization in their own community. Many of them would have been farm workers. In the 1st Century, farmers used salt as fertilizer added to manure to enrich their soil. With this metaphor, Jesus encourages his listeners to more fully engage their world, not to try to escape it. They are to re-enrich the nutrient-depleted soil of this earth, to place their focus on “this world,” not on the next. He directs his audience away from escape and he empowers them to make a difference in the world they live in.
Imagine it this way: Compassion and safety for everyone are just two plants that grow in the soil of a healthy society. When certain voices are marginalized or pushed to the fringes, however, their absence depletes the social soil. Jesus is telling the marginalized and oppressed that they are the salt of the earth. Their inclusion can give back to the soil of a society the nutrients of a wider consciousness and perspective that enables compassion and safety for all to grow again. Including marginalized voices means integrating the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole: inclusion uproots weeds of fear and insecurity and provides rich soil for a society to produce compassion in the place of those weeds.
We in the U.S. have just going through more than four years of our society enduring the depletion of compassion and safety for those who share this globe with us but whom our systems force to live on the fringes. Today’s passage reminds us that they are the “salt” or fertilizer, and their voices will return to the soil the nutrients that need adding back to our society.
Jesus’ shared table is not homogenous. It’s at a heterogenous table that we can share our unique and different life experiences, form a more beautiful and coherent worldview, and, with others, make this world a safer, more compassionate place for us all. Through this teaching, Jesus is saying that it is the subordinated, oppressed, and marginalized who restore the nutrients of society’s depleted soil. It is the disinherited who are the “salt of the earth.”
But mere diversity is not the goal. A safe and just world for everyone, where everyone can call our world home, is the goal. It will not be enough to see a more diverse neoliberalism in response to the last four years of neo-facism. We will have to see if the inclusion of more diverse voices will allow those included to change the very systems they’re joining. I have hope. But we will see.
The Light of the World
Next in Matthew’s passage, we read:
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine. (Matthew 5:14-15)
When we understand Jesus’ audience to be disinherited Jews under Rome, those who were pressed down and silenced even among the ones forced to live on Jewish society’s fringes, it becomes empowering to hear Jesus affirm that they are the light of the world. Jesus is investing those around him with value and telling them not to hide their light. They are to “let their light shine!”
Over the last four years, some of you who are reading this article (or listening to it) have been told that your voice is not welcome and you’ve been made to feel you are “other.” To you, first and foremost, Jesus would say, “You are the light this society needs.”
There is also another truth to what Jesus is saying here. Too often, Christians have taken for granted that they are the light of the world when they have in fact called for the exclusion of those unlike them. Whether it be with the banning of Muslims, the silencing of women’s voices, Black voices pushed aside by White supremacy, the poor marginalized by the rich, or those who belong to the LGBTQ community excluded by Christians—yes, there are exceptions, but some Christians have spent the last several years making the loudest calls for certain voices and certain stories to be pushed to the margins.
Again, when anyone’s voice, anyone’s story is shut out from Jesus’ shared table, the absence of those voices will harm us all. The excluded and marginalized in every situation are Jesus’ “light” that must be brought back. When Christians exclude and marginalize, they cease to be “light.” It would be well for those who have historically claimed to be the “light of the world” to listen to Jesus’ words here.
The community to which Jesus is speaking is one whose theism, morality, and ethics had been shaped through the interpretations of the Torah and the social elite. To get through to the people, Jesus must first disturb their confidence in these interpretations. Repeatedly in the sermon on the mount Jesus points out the inadequacy of the approved teachings. In verse 17, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ‘Fullfil’in this verse is pleroo, which means to complete or to make more full. In the very next verse Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” The word for “accomplished” is ginomai and also means “to complete.”
In American civil mythology, we often use the phrase, a “more perfect union.” I was struck during the January 21 inauguration by these words in Amanda Gorman’s poem: “It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”
We have much to repair, not only from the last four years, but also from the last four hundred years, and reparations is the watch word. From reparations to Earth in the midst of a sixth major extinction event to reparations to the descendants of enslaved people upon whose backs US wealth still grows; reparations to first Americans whose land is still being threatened, and to migrants unjustly treated to preserve a White majority in the U.S.; reparations to poor, rural Americans whose few resources get redistributed, too, to those who already have so much—we have much to repair, and now is the time to begin.
Jesus invites us to step into a way of viewing our own well-being as deeply connected with the well-being of everyone in our society.
If Jesus’ disinherited listeners were to experience liberation, it would be because they overcame injustice together. No more exclusion of those marginalized as other. Jesus’ new social order, God’s just future, or what the text refers to as ‘the kingdom’, is a world where all oppression, injustice, and violence is put right, internally and externally, privately and publicly, individually and collectively.
So now is a moment for us to begin again. We can exhale deep relief from the political transition we have just witnessed. And we can take up the work once again, of pushing a new, diverse administration toward policies and systemic change that help make our world a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone.
We still have work to do, not only to ensure past harms do not repeat, but also to ensure that the future does not return us to the normality of the past.
HeartGroup Application
We at RHM are continuing to ask all HeartGroups not to meet together physically at this time. Please stay virtually connected and practice physical distancing. When you do go out, please keep a six-foot distance between you and others, wear a mask, and continue to wash your hands to stop the spread of the virus.
This is also a time where we can practice the resource-sharing and mutual aid found in the gospels. Make sure the others in your group have what they need. This is a time to work together and prioritize protecting those most vulnerable among us.
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How would you like to see society change over the next four years? What can you do in your sphere of influence to help?
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
The Jaundiced Eye Darkens the Body’s Light
by Herb Montgomery
Featured Text:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is generous, your whole body is radiant; but if your eye is jaundiced, your whole body is dark. So if the light within you is dark, how great must the darkness be!” (Q 11:34-35)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 6:22-23: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Luke 11:34-35: “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.”
Gospel of Thomas 24:3: “Light exists inside a person of light, and he shines on the whole world. If he does not shine, there is darkness.”
To begin, our saying this week uses metaphors that are rooted in ableism. Fish don’t know they’re wet. Able-bodied people often don’t realize how ableist they are being. But acknowledge it we must, for this is a first step toward change. Naming injustice is a primary step toward action that reverses injustice. “In ableist societies, able-bodiedness is viewed as the norm; people with disabilities are understood as those that deviate from that norm. Disability is seen as something to overcome or to fix, for example, through medical intervention. The ableist worldview holds that disability is an error or a failing rather than a consequence of human diversity, akin to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism)
With this in mind, let’s look at what this week’s saying was attempting to teach.
Lamp of the Body is the Eye
In 1st Century Jewish culture, people believed that a person possessed either light or darkness within them: “The human spirit is the lamp of YHWH that sheds light on one’s inmost being” (Proverbs 22:27). In our saying this week, Jesus uses the eyes as a symbol for determining whether what is inside his listeners is truly light or really darkness. “Many people believed that light was emitted from the eye, enabling one to see, rather than that light was admitted through the eye. Although here Jesus compares the eye to a lamp, he speaks of ‘diseased’ eyes which fail to admit light.” (IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament; Matthew 6:22-23 cf. 11:34-36)
When one steps back into the cultural context of this week’s saying, the meaning is rather simple: what you see when you look at others determines whether what is inside of you is “light” or “dark.” Two people can look at the same person and see very different things, based on what their eyes are trained to see.
A fun, literary example is found in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes. As a private investigator, Sherlock’s eyes and powers of observation are well trained to see much more than others around him see. In our saying this week, Jesus is teaching his listeners about a specific power of observation that he desired his followers to become proficient in: the ability to look at others who share our world with us through the lens of generosity.
Generosity
When you look at others, what do you see? Is it typically positive by default? Do you give people the benefit of a doubt? Do you assume the best about them? Or is your eye judgmental, maybe critical, or even condemnatory?
Jesus spoke positively of having an eye that was “single,” “generous,” or “healthy.”
A healthy eye sees others generously. And it is singular, too, in the sense that one is persistent in generously extending the image of God to everyone that one encounters. A person with a healthy eye remembers the truth in the Jewish story that an angel walks before each of us declaring “Behold the image of God.” Being disrespectful or to humiliate anyone bearing the Divine image is a denial, in that person, of the Divine whose image they bear. These acts were also seen as a defacement of the Divine image. To lie about another person was to deny the very existence of God. The school of Hillel in the first century taught that murder was both a civil violation and a sacrilege of that which was sacred. The Hebrews’ sacred text taught that when we shed human blood, the act is regarded as diminishing the corporate divine image within humanity. In the Hebrew creation story found in the second chapter of Genesis, humanity begins with the whole of humanity in one person. This was believed to have taught that the taking of a human life is equivalent to annihilating the entire world. The opposite was held to also be true—to save one life was to save the entire world. (Remember the ending scenes of the film Schindler’s List.) This applied to slaves and to non-Jews as well. The Jewish religion of the Rabbis became inseparable from the practice of the golden rule to others and practicing the golden rule became the touchstone of one’s religious worship of the Divine.
This is listening for and seeing God in the Other. According to Genesis, all persons bear the image of God (see Genesis 9:6). In the Christian New Testament we find this passage: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1John 4:20). If every person bears the image of God, I’m called to see and to listen to God in you, whoever you are. If we generously kept in mind the view that every person we meet bears the image of God, how different our world might be.
In addition to this, Matthew’s context builds on this generous view with a focus on economic generosity: Jesus’ vision of a world where people take responsibility for taking care of one another. “Jesus speaks literally of a ‘single’ eye versus a ‘bad‘ or ‘evil‘ one. A ‘single‘ eye normally meant a generous one. A ‘bad‘ eye in that culture could mean either a diseased one or a stingy one. Such eyes become a symbol for the worthlessness of a stingy person.” (IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament; Matthew 6:22-23 cf. Luke 11:34-36)
Luke adds another statement to this emphasis on resources. A few passages later, Jesus states, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.” (Luke 11:39-41)
In both of these gospels, this saying refers to serving other people. Again, Jesus’ new world is defined primarily by people taking care of people. Later New Testament letters include these words: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:17)
In addition, Jesus’ generosity goes far beyond economic generosity. It also encompasses the whole person. The media plays a part in this for us. When people of color, especially men, are victims of police brutality, the media goes to work to criminalize them so as to bias how the rest of us see them. (See How News Networks Criminalize Black Victims of Police Violence.) Contrast this with how the media characterized Brock Turner, a rapist, and put the highest possible spin on his character to the masses. Just this week, Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the article My President Was Black, was interviewed on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. In the interview Cotes contrasted the path it took for Obama to become president and the path Trump took to do the same:
“If I have to jump six feet to get to the same place you have to jump two feet for, that’s how racism works . . . to be president he [Obama] had to be scholarly, intelligent, president of the Harvard Law Review, the product of some of our greatest educational institutions, capable of talking to two different worlds. Donald Trump had to be rich and white. That was it. That’s the difference.” (See the interview here.)
What we chose to see when we look at another person should be more than skin deep. What we choose to see and what we choose to believe about a person will directly impact our thoughts, feelings, opinions and attitudes toward them and ultimately our behavior. This is possibly why in this week’s saying, Jesus says that what we see in another determines whether we truly possess light instead of darkness.
The very first thing we should choose to see and believe in each person we encounter is that they are of inestimable worth simply because they are a part of the human web. This applies not to just individuals, but also to the entire planet. As Oscar Romero taught, “We are not three worlds [First World, Second World, and Third World], we are one world.”
In Jesus’ worldview, God indiscriminately causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall:
“ . . . He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)
“ . . . he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” (Luke 6:35)
Jesus called his followers to relate to genuine political and economic enemies with love that seeks to transform them from oppressing the lower classes. Yet some White Christians today still discriminate against others based on their skin color, and some Evangelical business owners discriminate in whom they bake cupcakes and pizzas for.
If the sun shines on a person, if the rain falls on a person, we are called to see them as a bearer of the image of the Divine, to look for God in them, regardless of how much we feel tempted to “Other” them as instead. We are all connected.
Yes, we are different, and those differences should be seen and celebrated, but we are all still part of one another and in this together. When we fail to celebrate each other, when we choose to neglect this basic step in how we are seeing others, it does not matter what we claim to be—light bearer or reflector—the light we claim to possess is actually darkness.
With these thoughts in mind, let us contemplate our saying this week:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is generous, your whole body is radiant; but if your eye is jaundiced, your whole body is dark. So if the light within you is dark, how great must the darkness be!” (Q 11:34-35)
HeartGroup Application
In the book I wrote over a decade ago now (Finding the Father) I proposed that what a person believes about God determines how they think and feel toward God, especially in the context of the spiritual abuse many theists within Christianity have suffered. I proposed that however we choose to see a God ultimately affects how we choose to behave and what type of a person, as a worshipper of that God, we will become.
This week I want to draw our heads out of the clouds for a moment and place our feet firmly on planet Earth. Apply this week’s principles to how you relate to other people. What we choose to believe about others, what we choose to see when we look at another, will determine our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, opinions, and our behavior in relation to them.
Jesus taught that one cannot live out indiscriminate justice, faith, and love toward others without it impacting how one begins to perceive others. We start with the behavior of simply listening to the experiences of those who are not like us. A Buddhist friend of mine introduced me to this saying, and I believe it teaches the same universal truth that we are seeing in the sayings of Jesus this week:
“Some people live closely guarded lives, fearful of encountering someone or something that might shatter their insecure spiritual foundation. This attitude, however, is not the fault of religion but of their own limited understanding. True Dharma leads in exactly the opposite direction. It enables one to integrate all the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole, thereby banishing fear and insecurity completely.” Lama Thubten Yeshe, (Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations)
Jesus’ saying invites us to do the same, to “integrate all the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole, thereby banishing fear and insecurity completely.”
If the sun shines on them, if the rain falls on them, we have a mandate from the saying of Jesus to imitate Jesus’ God as we interact with them.
- List ways that you can begin making space in your life to listen to those who are different from yourself, especially those whom the present status quo does not benefit. If the sun and rain are for all, prioritize listening to those whom society prevents the sun and rain from reaching. Try actual conversations (where your posture is one of simply listening), following people on Twitter, listening to podcasts, and reading books by authors from a different walk through life than your own.
- With as much honesty as you can achieve, contrast the ways you now choose to negatively see some people and write the positive assumptions that you could choose instead. Pay close attention to how these assumptions would affect how you think, feel, and relate to those people.
- As a group, begin making space for voices that are different. One of the ways HeartGroups can do this well is by asking others to simply come and share their experience with the group. I have been invited to go and share at a very warm and welcoming interfaith fellowship in my home town. HeartGroups can do the same. We can look for things we have in common with others, like the universal values of compassion and justice. And we could benefit from comparing and valuing our differences, viewing them in the light of intrinsic fruit.
What does it mean for you to begin listening for and looking for God in the other?
Wherever this finds you this week, I’m glad you’re here. Keep living in love, loving with the equity of the sun and the rain, with a preferential option of those being prevented from accessing what meant for all equally.
This will be our last eSight/podcast for 2016. We’ll be back in two weeks. Have a happy holidays and we here at RHM wish you a very happy new year.
I love each of you dearly.
See you in 2017.
The Light on the Lampstand
by Herb Montgomery
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a hidden place‚ but on the lampstand, and it gives light for everyone in the house.” Q 11:33
Companion Texts:
Matthew 5:14-16: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Luke 11:33: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.”
Gospel of Thomas 33:2-3: “For no one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, nor does he put it in a hidden place. Rather, he puts it on a lampstand, so that everyone who comes in and goes out will see its light.”
This week’s saying appears in all three of the gospels we have been using as our companion texts this year. Matthew and Thomas both focus on the followers of Jesus’ teachings being light. Luke, as we will see next week, warns about what we call light really being the spreading of darkness. We’ll discuss the relevance of Luke’s saying to today’s western Christianity in more detail in our next eSight.
Matthew’s Focus
What I want us to notice first this week is an emphasis that some would be uncomfortable with. The focus of the saying is not on Jesus being the light of the world, but rather on Jesus’ followers being a source of light for the world (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14). In Luke, Jesus is warning about those who claim to be light becoming a source of darkness in the world. How often have status quo complicit Christians been found on the wrong side of history!
The statement is just as troubling for those who object, “Jesus is the light of the world, not us.” This objection comes from a desire to uplift Jesus to hero status, a position some people feel is threatened if we focus on being the light rather than pointing to Jesus as light.
Another possible root of discomfort with this saying is the belief that we are incapable of doing anything good and that Jesus has to do it all. This is a destructive belief taught in some sectors of Christianity that, too often, is used to lull Christians back to a position of passivity after they have been convicted or moved to action. I witnessed this recently when speaking on the Sermon on the Mount. After my presentation, the pastor got up and told the congregation that everything I had just spoken of (what Jesus taught in the Sermon the Mount) was impossible for any of us to do and Jesus must do it for us.
But we have the power to think and to do.
We have the power to make choices.
I have wondered why many atheists accomplish more in societal justice than some fundamentalist Christians do. Womanist writers such as Alice Walker have rightly captured the same universal truth that the Jesus of Sayings Gospel Q also taught: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting on.”
Jesus in Sayings Gospel Q is not preaching “Sit back and let me do everything.”
Jesus focuses on creating a community rooted in ethics and values that center the experiences of the vulnerable and marginalized in his own society and that call his community to make better choices. He believes that those following him can actually do better. They can be different. He shows them the way, casting before their mind’s eye what a path that is genuinely, holistically better can look like. In her volume Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God- Talk, writes:
“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.” (pp. 130-131, emphasis added)
This way Jesus showed his followers is a way of survival, resistance, liberation, transformation, and restoration. In short, it is salvation. Not a post-mortem non-smoking section salvation, but a present, concrete, life-right-now salvation rooted in the context of community, together.
Luke’s Emphasis
Luke doesn’t focus exclusively on Jesus’ followers being the light of the world. Luke jumps straight to the absurdity of hiding a recently lit lamp when the obvious intent of lighting the lamp in the first place is to share the light with everybody.
At this stage of Luke’s version of the Jesus story, pressure is beginning to mount. The number of those positively resonating with Jesus’ teachings continues to grow, and the elite class in society begins to feel the threat of the momentum among the economically exploited. This saying may also reflect a temptation growing in Jesus himself to hide his own light. When those in places of privilege begin to feel threatened, they can be quite effective at threatening those they deem responsible.
Jesus was choosing life, and encouraging and showing others how to thrive, survive, and transform the world into a just and compassionate home for all. And his vision of life involved changes for those benefiting by the way life was structured in Jerusalem. Jesus was choosing life, and he was about to be threatened with death if he did not lie down, roll over, and go back into the shadows.
In the volume Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn, Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker wrote:
“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.” (p. 18)
Jesus was not choosing a path of death. Jesus was choosing life. And when beginning to feel threatened and pressured to hide his light, Jesus made the courageous choice to hold on, to not let go. The cross was not Jesus’ path to life. The cross was what the status quo responded to Jesus with. It was the cross and the fear of death that the elites used to intimidate Jesus into letting go of his hold on life. And Jesus kept holding on. He could see where what he was teaching and the sector of society he was choosing to side with would lead, and he had the courage to keep doing it. He choose not to hide his light, but share light, just like he spoke of power and resources, with everyone.
Your Light
Luke and Matthew both ask: What does taking hold of life look like to you? Does your taking hold of life cause others around you to feel their own place of privilege in society is threatened? Jesus shared his vision of a world where everyone thrives with equity, with justice, with compassion. The Jewish concept of shalom describes a wholeness that involves everyone. Genuine shalom is not present till we all together have shalom, and not just us, but also every living thing. But in a world where one believes only a limited number of people can thrive, someone else taking hold of life threatens one’s own thriving because resources are limited. Someone in this position does not believe the earth provides enough for every person’s need, as Gandhi taught. They believe that there is not enough to go around, and that if we each let go of our hoarded power and possessions, we will go without. Jesus instead imagined a world where we all have enough together.
Does a fear of loss keep you from shining your light? Is there something that intimidates you into hiding your light under a basket rather than sharing unquantifiable light with everyone?
While recently reading Stephen Greenebaum’s The Interfaith Alternative: Embracing Spiritual Diversity, I was moved by these words and I share them with you this week:
“The truth is that none of us can control what kind of splash we will make in the world, let alone how big or small that splash will be. Perhaps our coming and our passing will cause no splash at all, just the smallest of ripples. To be a human being is to have an opportunity. But as we well know, it is not an ‘equal opportunity.’ Some people are born with great wealth and some in devastating poverty. Some are born with robust health and some must fight just to live from the moment they enter the world. And sometimes we stumble, no matter how hard we try. But life, all life, is an opportunity nonetheless. And it is what we do, or do not do, with that opportunity that defines us. For me, the clouds parted and I could make at least some sense of meaning when I could visualize a great scale with compassion and justice forming one side and self-centeredness and injustice the other. None of us knows how much we’ll be able to add to the scales, for that, to a large extent, is a matter of chance. But we do control, we alone, each of us, every day, to which side of the scale we will make that day’s contribution. It may be a mote of dust, a twig, a pebble or a huge boulder — again, the size of our contribution may be beyond our control — but whatever the size of our contribution, every day we add something to those scales: compassion and justice, or self-centeredness and injustice. I deeply believe that in the end it is not how much we add to the scales, but to which side of the scale we have added it.” (pp. 100-101)
This week, in the name of advancing compassion and justice in our world, may this week’s saying encourage you, even if others threaten you and attempt to silence your voice, to let your light shine.
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a hidden place‚ but on the lampstand, and it gives light for everyone in the house.” Q 11:33
HeartGroup Application
Last week I asked you to brainstorm and to make a list as a group some of the goals you would like to accomplish in the coming year. In our work of compassion and justice, consider Greenebaum’s words above. Whatever the size of your group’s contribution, ensure that you’re contributing on the right side of the scales.
- Pick three goals from your list last week.
- Begin getting informed regarding each one. This could involve coming alongside those already at work in those areas of justice/compassion work.
- Once you feel comfortable with your level of understanding about each goal, to the degree that you feel you can, define what meeting each goal would look like in tangible, concrete ways.
This last step may lead you to go back and pick another goal as well. That’s okay. However your list takes shape, make sure these are goals you are well informed about and that these are goals that can be defined by your group as a whole once that goal is met.
As this year is drawing to a close and another year is before us, I’m overwhelmed by how many of you are journeying with us. Thank you for showing up. I’m grateful to be on this journey with you, and know that together we can make a difference.
Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each one of you dearly.
Keep living in love.
I’ll see you next week.
Jesus’ Words to the Disinherited: Salt, Light, Justice, and Anger
BY HERB MONTGOMERY
“You are the light of the world.” — Jesus (Matthew 5.14)
Last week we talked about the difference it makes when we place the Sermon on the Mount in the context of Jesus belonging to and speaking among the community of the oppressed.
I’ve taken this week’s title from Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited. If you have not read Thurman’s work, you really do owe it to yourself to do so. It’s a short read, and packed with insight.
There are four passages from the Sermon on the Mount that I’d like you to consider this week. Notice how each changes when we name their audience as the disinherited.
The Salt of the Earth
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Matthew 5.13)
New studies show how first century farmers used salt as fertilizer added to manure to enrich their soil. With this metaphor, Jesus encourages his audience to more fully engage this world, “the earth,” not to escape it. The metaphor is about re-enriching the nutrient-depleted soil of this earth. Jesus directs the oppressed to place their focus on “this world,” not the next. He directs his audience away from escape and he empowers them to make a difference in the world they live in.
Imagine it this way. Compassion and safety for everyone are just two of the plants that grow out of the soil of a healthy society. When certain voices are marginalized or pushed to the fringes, their absence depletes the social soil. Jesus is here telling the marginalized and oppressed that they are the salt of the earth. Their inclusion can give back to the soil of a society the nutrients of a wider consciousness and perspective that enables compassion and safety for all to grow again. Including marginalized voices enables one to integrate the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole: inclusion uproots weeds of fear and insecurity, and provides rich soil for a society to produce compassion in the place of those weeds.
Our societies today are depleted of compassion and safety for those who share this globe with us but whom our systems also force to live on the fringes. Jesus actually believes they are the “salt,” or the fertilizer, and their voices will give back to the soil the nutrients that need adding back to the societies of our world. Remember, Jesus is looking at the disinherited when he says, “You are the salt of the earth.”
As we have said so often, Jesus’ shared table must not be homogenous. It is at a heterogenous table that we share our unique and different life experiences, form a more beautiful and coherent world view, and make this world a safer more compassionate place for us all. Through this teaching, Jesus is saying that it is the subordinated, the oppressed, and marginalized who restore the nutrients of society’s depleted soil. It is the disinherited who are the “salt of the earth.”
The Light of the World
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine. (Matthew 5:14-15)
When we understand Jesus’ audience to be the disinherited Jews, those who are pressed down, and those who are silenced even among the ones forced to live on Jewish society’s fringes, it becomes empowering to hear Jesus affirm that they are the light of the world. Jesus is investing those around him with value and telling them not to hide their light. They are to “let their light shine!”
Some of you who are reading this have been told that your voice is not welcome. You have been made to feel you are “other.” To you, first and foremost, Jesus would say, “You are the light this darkened society needs.” Remember, darkness is only the absence of light. When we exclude and marginalize voices, their very absence creates darkness in society. And as Dr. King so famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Jesus is telling you that the inclusion of your voice brings “the light.” Your story is worthy of being shared at Jesus’ table. It is to you that he says, “Let your light shine!”
There is also another truth to what Jesus is saying here. Too often, Christians have taken for granted that they are the light of the world when they have been the ones in society calling for the exclusion of those unlike themselves. Whether it be with Jews and Muslims during the crusades, the silencing of women’s voices by patriarchal Christians, Black voices by White Christians, the voices of the poor by rich Christians, or the voices and stories of those who belong to the LGBTQ community by christians in general.) Yes, there are exceptions, but as a rule, Christians have made some of the loudest calls for certain voices, certain stories, to be pushed to the margins. Certain people are not ordained worthy of being heard.
Again, when anyone’s voice, anyone’s story is shut out from Jesus’ shared table, the absence of that voice creates darkness. It is the excluded and marginalized in every situation who are Jesus’ “light” that must be brought back to dispel the darkness that their absence created. When Christians exclude and marginalize, they cease to be “light,” and instead become the creators of darkness itself. “If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6.23) It would be well for those who have historically claimed to be the “light of the world” to listen to Jesus’ words here.
Surpassing Retributive Justice
Unless your justice surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5.20)
The community that Jesus is speaking to here is one whose theism, morality and ethics had been shaped through the interpretations of the Law and the Prophets approved and taught by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. These groups were the religious educators of the Jewish working class. To get through to the people, Jesus must first disturb their confidence in these teachers, and in this saying, Jesus points out the inadequacy of the approved teachings.
The Pharisees believed in a Messiah who would usher in world peace, and many believed this peace would come through a sword retributively raised against Israel’s enemies and energized and supernaturally empowered by the strictest Torah observance.
The justice that Jesus is placing before them in Matthew is of an entirely different nature: it is a restorative, transformative, liberating justice that includes one’s enemies. Jesus is clear in verse 17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. “Fullfil” here in this verse is pleroo, which means to complete or to perfect. In the very next verse Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” The word here for “accomplished” is ginomai which also means “to perfect or complete.” By implication, that which precedes this perfecting is imperfect or incomplete. What Jesus addresses in verse 20 is the retributive, punitive justice that is often found among those who have been oppressed and marginalized. Retributive justice is one of the elements that Jesus is referring to as incomplete, partial, underdeveloped and imperfect. Yes, within the Law and the Prophets one may find a justice defined as an eye for an eye. But one will also find a more complete, restorative, transformative Justice, too. Jesus is calling his audience away from an imperfect retributive justice to a more complete and holistic restorative kind. Jesus’ quality of justice was to “surpass” the eye-for-an-eye justice longed for by his contemporaries. So is the justice of his followers.
Liberation from Internalized Anger
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22)
This passage, our last for today, is where we see Jesus beginning to describe how his teachings would surpass the teachings his community was used to hearing. As we discovered last week, Jesus invites us to stop viewing well-being as solely external and recognize its internal nature as well. In this passage, Jesus is naming the hatred that those who have been wronged so often feel toward those who have wronged them. He teaches that the external liberation the disinherited so deeply long for is founded on prior internal liberation. An example of this is found in his teachings on nonviolence. These teachings were not simply techniques for more effective protest: they were that and they were also much more than that. Jesus’ ethic of nonviolence was rooted in an internalized love for enemies and forgiveness that enabled the Jesus follower to think and feel radically differently toward their enemies, to transcend revenge and instead work for their enemies’ transformation. Ponder what Jesus is saying in Matthew 15:
“Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.’ Then the disciples came to him and asked, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’ He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.’ Peter said, ‘Explain the parable to us.’ ‘Are you still so dull?’ Jesus asked them. ‘Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.’ (Matthew 15:10-20, emphasis added)
If Jesus’ disinherited peers were to experience liberation from their enemies, it would be because they were internally liberated from ‘anger’ against one’s enemies. Anger, wrongly placed, too often turns efforts that could have been restorative from transformation to retribution and mere punitive revenge. As King also said, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
This teaching highlights two ditches, two places we could stumble. One ditch is the idea that the disinherited need to focus only on external liberation with no thought for their internal relation to their oppressors. The second is the belief that all one needs is internal liberation, and that when this is in place it no longer matters whether a person is externally liberated. This second ditch has been dug over and over throughout history in the path of the oppressed: it pacifies the oppressed and leaves the status quo unchallenged and undisturbed. I see this too often, even today.
But make no mistake: Jesus’ new social order, Jesus’ new world, what he called “the Kingdom,” is a world where all oppression, injustice, and violence is put right, internally and externally. The new world subverts the status quo here, now. The whole system is to be dismantled. Jesus’ revolution doesn’t end with internalized liberation from hatred, fear, and anger toward one’s enemies. That is only where Jesus’ revolution begins.
HeartGroup Application
Reread Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and reflect on the significance of Jesus’ audience being his own community, a disinherited people. May this small interpretative key turn on some more lights for you as it does for me.
- Choose a section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount this week and contemplate its meaning within the context of his audience being his fellow oppressed. How does this audience inform your understanding of his words?
- Journal what you discover.
- Share your insights with your HeartGroup, your Shared Table, this week.
In the introduction to Jesus and the Disinherited, Vincent Harding eloquently states that Jesus’ teachings are replete with significance for any group being subordinated in modern domination systems: “Latinos, Native Americans, Southeast Asians, many women, and gay and lesbian people are only the most obvious additions” and the Black people Thurman originally wrote to. Today, so many make up the community of the disinherited, oppressed, marginalized, or as Thurman would put it, those whose backs are against the wall.” Jesus’ teachings directly empower these community members to live with dignity and creativity as they move toward liberation.
Whatever your place in this world, whether you belong to the community of the poor, the Native Americans, African-Americans, cisgender women, women of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, YOU have the power to enrich the nutrient-depleted soil of our society, YOU are the light of this world, and it is your voice that must be heard at Jesus’ table as we journey together toward a meaningful, more coherent whole, and a safer, more compassionate world for all.
Jesus’ new world is coming. In fact, in those whose hearts the Kingdom’s mustard seed has already sprouted, Jesus’ new world has already begun.
Wherever this finds you this week, keep living in love, enriching the soil of the earth around you, and shining bright like cities on hills, till the only world that remains is a world where Love reigns.
I love each of you.
And I’ll see you next week.
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