Right Now Matters
Thank You!
We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your invaluable role in the Renewed Heart Ministry community and for your dedication to our mission of fostering love, justice, compassion, and healing. Your support is the bedrock of our work. Your support empowers us to do what we do. At a time when ministries like ours are being asked to achieve more with fewer resources, your support is incredibly important, and we want to simply say thank you. Whether in our larger society or within our local faith communities, Renewed Heart Ministries remains committed to advocating for change, working towards a world that is inclusive, just, and safe for everyone, and being a source of love in our world. From all of us here at Renewed Heart Ministries, thank you for your generous support. We deeply appreciate each and every one of our supporters.
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Herb Montgomery, August 24, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
This is our last reading from the lectionary this month from chapter 6 of John:
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” [Jesus] said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:56-69)
This is our last lectionary week in John for a while. Next week, the lectionary returns to the gospel of Mark. We have spent the last four weeks not simply in the gospel of John, but specifically in one chapter, John 6. This final passage sums up the four messages of that chapter.
The first message is a prescription to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood. The second denigrates physically feeding the multitude or meeting people’s material, concrete needs: “Your ancestors ate the manna and died.” The third exalts the Spirit over our material existence. And the fourth emphasizes that our flesh, body, and material existence in this world “counts for nothing.”
We have spent the last four weeks contrasting this way of characterizing Jesus and his ministry with the way Mark, Matthew and Luke characterize them. The Jewish Jesus of Mark, Matthew, and Luke would not have used the language of eating his flesh and drinking his or any blood. Consider the following cultural prohibitions against ingesting blood:
“This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: ‘You must not eat any fat or any blood.’” (Leviticus 3:17)
“And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people.” (Leviticus 7:26)
“I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. Therefore I say to the Israelites, ‘None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.’ . . . You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.” (Leviticus 17:10-14)
Drinking or eating blood, even drinking blood “that makes atonement,” was a foreign idea.
It’s also problematic to devalue the work of meeting people’s material needs like Moses did by feeding a multitude of people with manna during the exodus, Jesus did with loaves and fish, or as many today do through soup kitchens today. This is the tension that exists between the present and future. Some people say our lives don’t matter because we are all going to end up dead. Others, even those who are non-religious, say that ultimately dying doesn’t negate how meaningful present realities are. These things may or may not have meaning in the future, but they all still have meaning right now. In the present, we are alive, and what what we are experiencing means much to each one of us. It betrays a deep lack of compassion to say someone’s experience of hunger right now doesn’t matter because it may or may not matter in the future.
The choices we make today also affect what other people are experiencing right now, and can spill over into generations to come after we are gone. Over the last hundred years alone, so many who are no longer living made discoveries and choices that benefit all of us today. To say that our present realities don’t matter because we will one day die (or that one day billions of years from now the sun is going to burn out) is a very stunted way of looking at our existence. What we are encountering in John is simply a Christianized version of this way of looking at our material existence.
I grew up in churches that would put on charity programs, not in the liberation spirit of the Jesus of Mark, Matthew, and Luke but more in the spirit of the Jesus we find in John 6. This kind of charity work was only temporary and only for the purpose of harvesting leads for upcoming evangelistic events. Saving souls was much more important than saving bodies, and that logic was rooted in the thinking we find in John 6. In the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), we don’t see a Jesus who is only concerned with people’s eternal well-being but one who was also deeply troubled with concern for people’s present, material, concrete well being. The multitudes who ate the loaves and fish still died! But this didn’t stop Jesus from feeling compassion for their hunger and desiring to feed them. The Jesus of the synoptics is different from the Jesus of John. John’s Jesus is all about getting people connected with the Spirit so they can have eternal life, while the synoptic Jesus is deeply concerned with liberating people, especially marginalized people, from lives in which they lacked things essential for well-being like food and warmth.
Stop and contemplate Luke’s Jesus for a moment. Luke’s author could have characterized Jesus’ ministry in so many ways but chose a passage from Isaiah and the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
The poor, the imprisoned, the disabled, the oppressed—these were who Luke’s gospel was for. The Jesus of Luke doesn’t just offer them eternal life as an opiate that enables them to patiently endure their present experience. He doesn’t tell them that their present experience in the big scheme of things “counted for nothing.” What Luke’s gospel offered these people was proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favor,” the year of jubilee when all debts were forgiven and wealth was redistributed, emancipation was given to those enslaved, and all those who had been oppressed were liberated.
I understand that the Johannine community was estimating the worth of the eternal life they believed could be found in Jesus. But we don’t need to say our material experience counts for nothing in order to do that. Dualistically dividing our existence into categories of things of the spirit and things of the flesh and then saying the fleshy stuff counts for nothing has produced untold harm throughout Christian history. Our bodies matter. Our present moments matter. Today we can do better.
Today, in the spirit of the Jesus of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, we can say that what we are experiencing right now does matter. Here and now matters. The kind of society we are choosing to form right now matters for all who are alive right now. We are not just passing through! We cannot allow ourselves to become so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good, or to put it in John’s language, so eternity minded that we are not presently any good.
Christianity that is only concerned with the future and not concerned with the present is not only insipid, but also become vulnerable to being coopted by those who use Christianity to harm people today while passing out tickets for eternal life.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. Why does right now matter to 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.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts.
Thank you for listening to The Social Jesus Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if the podcast platform you’re using offers this option, please leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 25: John 6.56-69. Lectionary B, Proper 16
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out at:
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 1 Episode 19: Right Now Matters
John 6:56-69
“These things may or may not have meaning in the future, but they all still have meaning right now. In the present, we are alive, and what we are experiencing right now means much to each of us. It betrays a deep lack of compassion to say someone’s experience of hunger, for example, right now doesn’t matter because it may or may not matter in the future. What we are encountering in John is simply a Christianized version of this way of looking at our material existence. The future will come. But right now, we are alive. We live in this moment. Our material existence does matter. Injustice, oppression, violence, and suffering matter. Love for those who are experiencing these realities demands that they matter.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/right-now-matters
Now Available on Audible!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon
Available now on Audible!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
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Apocalyptic Passivity
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters.
Please see the various thank you offers following this week’s article, below.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 38: Matthew 25.1-13. Lectionary A, Proper 27
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 1, Episode 38: Matthew 25.1-13. Lectionary A, Proper 27
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Apocalyptic Passivity
Herb Montgomery | November 10, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“To be clear, in the gospels, both a here- and-now, the “kingdom has arrived and is among you” Jesus and an apocalyptic, the “kingdom is coming” Jesus are portrayed because both matched an era of the early Jesus community. But a Jesus who taught us that God’s kingdom is already here for our participation seems to me to offer more life-giving options right now. A Jesus who only taught that hope was coming in the near future and that we must patiently, personally prepare for it doesn’t offer much hope for those who are suffering today and simply cannot wait.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten maidens who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the maidens woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’
“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The maidens who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:1-13)
Our reading this week offers me an opportunity to share something that has been on my heart for some time now.
The parable in our reading this week is unique compared to other parables in Matthew’s gospel in both subject and the language it uses. Absent from this parable is Jesus’ usual humor and hyperbole. The parable doesn’t critique those in power in the prophetic way most of his other parables do. There is no plot twist or surprise ending to leave listeners scratching their heads. The lesson is pretty straightforward and obvious: Be prepared. Those who are prepared go in. Those who aren’t prepared are left out.
This lesson repeats common universal wisdom, and it’s also quite apocalyptic. It sounds a lot more like it’s addressing issues existing in the Jesus community when the gospel of Matthew was written down than when the events in the story were taking place. In Mark, for example, when Jesus is approaching his trial and death, he tells his followers he will leave them and calls them to participate with him in the speaking out that will eventually get him killed. In Matthew, these closing parables beginning in chapter 24 are about being ready when Jesus returns after his departure, and it closes with the same words found at the end of the parable in Matthew 24:42:
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” (Matthew 24:42)
This apocalyptic theme reflects more the concerns of the Jesus community after Jesus’ death than it does the teachings of Jesus before his unjust execution. In the rest of the gospels, the writers announce the good news or gospel that the time has come, the “kingdom” is here, and all are invited to join in Jesus’ vision for a just, inclusive, compassionate community. This invitation was deeply attractive to the marginalized and those pushed to the edges and undersides of Jesus’ society, but the calls to justice in Jesus’ typical “kingdom” teachings and parables were not as attractive to those benefiting from the unjust status quo. To these people, Jesus was seen as a threat that must be silenced.
Here at the end of Matthew it’s as if we’ve witnessed a subject change. We are no longer talking about the good news of a concrete salvation that has arrived in the here and now. Now we are discussing being prepared for its arrival at some point in the future. The community is wrestling with how to follow Jesus after Jesus’ death. On top of that, the Jewish members of this community are also wrestling what life looks like after the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple: the temple is no more and Jerusalem has been leveled to the ground. Everything has changed, and in the shadow of such deep trauma and loss, it makes a lot less sense to say God’s just future has arrived than to look to the future and focus on being prepared for when God’s just future will arrive.
This is the context of our parable in this week. It is a lot more apocalyptic or future-looking than the typical here-and-now focus that Matthew’s Jesus has used in preceding portions of this gospel. These two different versions of Jesus in certain parts of the gospels are at the foundation of the debate among Jesus scholars as to whether Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher of a soon-to-come new world or teaching that God’s kingdom was already here and inviting folks to be participate in it here and now. (For detail, see Robert Miller’s The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate.)
I have my own leanings and opinions on this subject. First, I think you can be a genuine Jesus follower regardless of which camp you subscribe to. I also think it’s more difficult and requires more intention and care if you choose to view Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher. You have to be careful not to view his economic teachings (such as selling one’s possessions and wealth redistribution to the poor) as coming from Jesus’ thinking that the world was about to end and there was no need to prepare for the future. You must be careful to see that these teachings are rooted in economic justice and reflect a Jesus who thought the best way to prepare for the future was not in hoarding resources but in investing in community and a commitment to care for one another. We can face whatever the future brings, together, knowing we have each other’s back.
An apocalyptic Jesus offers an excuse to ignore many of Jesus’ teaching on the basis that Jesus supposedly thought the world was about to end. His teaching are not sustainable, in this reasoning, on a long-term ongoing basis. I disagree with that idea. I believe Jesus’ teachings are sustainable and place before us all a path for a safer tomorrow.
Another area of care one has to be intentional about is when someone feels the world is about to end or their hope is rooted in the world ending. These folks are not the best ones to come up with sustainable solutions that prevent the end of our world. In other words, people whose hope rests in the world burning make the worst environmentalists! Their worldview doesn’t enable and prepare them to see long-term solutions to the problems threatening humanity’s survival today.
Simply put, Jesus followers today who believe Jesus’ taught the kingdom has arrived have fewer theological hurdles in their way to making our world a safer, just, more compassionate home for everyone here and now. I wish I had a nickel for every time a Christian has accused me of only arranging deck chairs on the Titanic whenever I speak on social justice or environmental justice issues. Just this past week, a friend of mine was lamenting online how everything in our world seems to be crumbling and coming apart. A Christian friend of theirs who was first to respond, commented, “As in the days of Noah.”
How does that help? Rather than a call to roll up one’s sleeves and go to work relieving the harm and suffering that the most vulnerable in our communities are going through (which would look a lot like the Jesus we encounter in the majority of the gospel stories), there is a sad resignation that world will just keep getting worse and worse and there’s nothing we can really do about it until Jesus shows up.
Really? There’s really nothing we can do? It sounds more like we want the world to get worse and worse when some among us believe Jesus can’t come back until it gets a lot worse. Are we listening to ourselves when we say things like this?
Suffering should move Jesus’ followers to action, like it moved our Jesus. It shouldn’t lead us to a passive, powerless resignation that this has all been foretold and there’s nothing we can do but wait and be prepared ourselves. In the stories, Jesus’ desire for his followers is that they join him in his work of making our world a better place here and now. He said it’s here. “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:11)
Again, I understand how the Jesus movement became apocalyptic after Jesus’ death. I can see how Paul was apocalyptic. I can even see that John the Baptist was apocalyptic: he was looking for one “to come,” while Paul was looking for Jesus “to return.” But Jesus was announcing God’s just future had arrived! And if we lean into that version of Jesus in the Jesus story, it changes everything. It has for me. It has changed my focus from the future to the here and now. After all, didn’t Jesus say not to worry and be preoccupied about tomorrow, that “tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:34)? He called his listeners to focus on today and the good they could do now. He called his followers to do whatever we can, big or small, to make our world a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone, here and now.
When I go back and look at our parable in this light, I understand we must be prepared for the future, whatever it may hold. And the best way Jesus taught us to be prepared is to be about investing in each other, caring about each other, and doing what we can to promote the common good, today, here, now. People matter. The world is on fire. Will we pick up a pail of water to help put it out or will we stand back and simply view it all as unavoidable apocalypse?
To be clear, in the gospels, both a here- and-now, the “kingdom has arrived and is among you” Jesus and an apocalyptic, the “kingdom is coming” Jesus are portrayed because both matched an era of the early Jesus community. But a Jesus who taught us that God’s kingdom is already here for our participation seems to me to offer more life-giving options right now. A Jesus who only taught that hope was coming in the near future and that we must patiently, personally prepare for it doesn’t offer much hope for those who are suffering today and simply cannot wait. And for those who can choose a both/and approach, we must still be careful that our both/and approach doesn’t produce the fruit of apocalyptic passivity that ensures we have our own oil but doesn’t do much to make sure everyone else has the oil they need too.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does seeing Jesus’ teachings applying to the here and now affect your own Jesus following. 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, Instagram and Threads. 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.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My 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.
Matching Donations for the Rest of 2023!
As 2023 is coming to a close, we are deeply thankful for each of our supporters.
To express that gratitude we have a lot to share.
First, all donations during these last two months of the year will be matched, dollar for dollar, making your support of Renewed Heart Ministries go twice as far.
Also, to everyone how makes a special one-time donation in any amount to support our work this holiday season we will be giving away a free copy of The Bible & LGBTQ Adventists.
When making your donation all you have to do indicate you would like to take advantage of this offer by writing “Free Book” either in the comments section of your online donation or in the memo of your check if you are mailing your donation.
Lastly, its time for our annual Shared Table event once again. For all those who choose to become one of our monthly sustaining partners for 2024 by clicking the “Check this box to make it a monthly recurring donation” online, we will be sending out one our a handmade Renewed Heart Ministries Shared-Table Pottery Bowl made by Crystal and Herb as a thank you gift for your support. Becoming a monthly sustaining parter enables RHM to set our ministry project goals and budget for the coming year.
To become a monthly sustaining partner, go to renewedheartministries.com/donate and sign up for an automated recurring monthly donation of any amount by clicking the “Check this box to make it a monthly recurring donation” option. Or if you are using Paypal, select “Make this a monthly donation.”
We will be starting out the new year by sending out these lovely bowls as our gift to you to thank you for your sustaining support. Look for them to arrive during the months of January and February.
Our prayer is that whether displayed or used these bowls will be reminder of Jesus’ gospel of love, caring and shared table fellowship. They also make a great gift or conversation starter, as well.
If you are already one of our sustaining partners for 2024, we want to honor your existing continued support of Renewed Heart Ministries, too. You’ll also receive one of our Shared Table Pottery Bowls as a thank you.
No matter how you choose to donate to support Renewed Heart Ministries’ work this holiday season, thank you for partnering with us to further Jesus’ vision of a world filled with compassion, love, and people committed to taking care of one another. Together we are working toward a safer, more compassionate, and just world both for today and for eternity.
From each of us here at RHM, thank you!
We wish you so much joy, peace, and blessings as 2023 comes to a close. Your support sustains our ongoing work in the coming year.
You can donate online by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking “Donate.”
Or you can make a donation by mail at:
Renewed Heart Ministries
PO Box 1211
Lewisburg, WV 24901
In this coming year, together, we will continue to be a light in our world sharing Jesus’ gospel of love, justice and compassion.
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.
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John’s Inquiry about the One to Come
(Healing versus Destruction)
by Herb Montgomery
“And John, on hearing about all these things, sending through his disciples, said to him: ‘Are you the one to come, or are we to expect someone else?’ And in reply he said to them: ‘Go report to John what you hear and see: The blind regain their sight and the lame walk around, the skin-diseased are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor are given good news. And blessed is whoever is not offended by me.’” (Q 7:18-23)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 11.2-6: “When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.’”
Luke 7.18-23: “John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’ When the men came to Jesus, they said, ‘John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”’ At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, ‘Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.’”
Isaiah 35.5-6: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.”
As we discussed briefly last week, the story of the centurion, Jesus as a healer, and the liberation sayings of Jesus in the gospel narratives all led up to embracing Jesus as the “one to come.”
The blind regain their sight.
The lame walk around.
The skin-diseased are cleansed.
The deaf hear.
The dead are raised.
The poor receive good news.
Jesus is the proof of these liberatory hopes and expectations. Yet there are two kinds of liberation here. One is physical, and the other is economic. Understanding this is one of the hooks that prevents me from simply throwing out the Jesus story. Yes, the Jesus story includes supernatural healing stories. Yet its primary focus is not Jesus the miracle worker, nor Jesus the magician, but rather the Jesus the liberator of the suffering, the poor, the oppressed, the disinherited, and the marginalized. Liberation is the genus of his ministry, and physical healing and economic healing are two distinct species.
It’s worth noting that the original Jesus followers were not postmodern, modern, or post Enlightenment people as we are. They were a product of their own times, and the Jewish world view they subscribed to most was a Jewish apocalyptic worldview. (I have written on the tenets of Jewish apocalypticism; please see An End of the World Savior versus Present Liberator.) As we’ve shared before, the apocalyptic worldview, influenced by Zoroastrianism, saw this world as the visible expression of a much larger, behind-the-scenes, cosmic conflict between forces of good and evil: earthly political and physical forces were only the extension of that cosmic conflict. Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome would all have been viewed by Jewish apocalypticists as simply the puppet-empires of YHWH’s and Israel’s cosmic enemies.
They applied this belief in cosmic war to physical illness and disabilities as well. They had no understanding of germ theory or physiology, or even the insight modern people have into anatomy. If someone was sick, for example, it was the work of unseen cosmic forces from which the person’s need was liberation. Healing, was not supernatural, but rather liberating, about an assumed relationship between a seen effect and its unseen cause.
For Jesus to be a liberator in the way that his original audience would have understood it, Jesus’ liberation had to include economic and political liberation. The fact that it also included physical healing classified Jesus as a complete liberator in an apocalyptic dualist sense as well. This would have been deeply significant in their 1st Century setting.
A Noteworthy Transition
There is a noteworthy difference between the traditional apocalyptic liberator and the Jesus of the Jesus story, however.
Sayings Gospel Q begins with John announcing a coming judgment.
“He said to the crowds coming to be‚ baptized: ‘Snakes’ litter! Who warned you to run from the impending rage? So bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not presume to tell yourselves: We have as forefather Abraham! For I tell you: God can produce children for Abraham right out of these rocks! And the ax already lies at the root of the trees. So every tree not bearing healthy fruit is to be chopped down and thrown on the fire. I baptize you in water, but the one to come after me is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to take off. He will baptize you in Spirit and fire. His pitchfork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn on a fire that can never be put out.’” (Q 3:7-9; 16b-17)
Just as the apocalyptic world view viewed visible agents on earth as conduits of cosmic good or evil forces, John’s statement also looked forward to a dualistic judgment where the earthly oppressed conduits of cosmic good would be vindicated and liberated while their earthly oppressors, viewed as conduits of cosmic evil, would be judged, punished and destroyed. He foresaw liberation for the oppressed but vengeance on oppressors.
Sayings Gosepl Q shows a transition from John’s more punitive liberating judgment to Jesus’s restorative liberation: for Jesus, the humanity of both the oppressed and the oppressors would be restored. (See last week’s eSight to recall how this story relates to the story of the centurion.)
The liberation represented in the sayings of Jesus was not simply justice for the disinherited and vengeance on their enemies, but also a liberation marked by the healing or restoration of both sides, the subjugated as well as the subjugators. Jesus’s liberation called people away from the dehumanizing way of domination, where we endlessly create more and more effective ways of achieving power and control over others. He instead cast before our imaginations a world of mutual aid and resource sharing, where we together work to survive and then thrive as members of an interconnected human family.
When one couples this description of what the liberation of Jesus looked like—healing, restoration, liberation, and good news to the poor—with last week’s section of the gospel narrative, the point becomes stark. Jesus emerges not as a liberator wielding mass destruction on enemies, but as a liberator who works through restoration, healing, and even the nonviolent transformation of one’s enemies. It’s a humanizing liberation for all.
Granted, those who benefit from the way of domination (i.e. the dominators or those who participate in some way) don’t see this as good news today and didn’t in Jesus’s time either. As Peter Gomes stated in his book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, Jesus’s statement that “The last will be first, and the first will be last,” “is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions [but] is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first” (p. 42). What is good news to the people at the bottom of the social pyramid will never be perceived as good news to those at the top.
Jesus’s liberation was also problematic to those among the people who thought violent revolution was their only hope. A nonviolent revolution did not seem very promising in the 1st Century; remember, this was before Gandhi and others demonstrated nonviolence. Though it may seem otherwise, liberation rooted in enemy love and transformation rather than the mass destruction of one’s enemies is good news.
Matthew and Luke both use the narrative of John’s disciples to connect Jesus’ liberation of the poor and oppressed with the liberation Isaiah looked forward to. Matthew includes this theme in his expansion of Mark, and Luke expands this theme even more so in his own gospel. An example of Luke’s greater emphasis on liberation is the story only found in Luke from Luke 4:16-20 where Jesus (who by all cultural expectation should have been illiterate) actually reads from Isaiah itself (cf. Isaiah 61.1-2).
For Q, Matthew and Luke, Jesus is the long awaited arrival of the liberation that Israel had been looking forward to since the days of Isaiah. Isaiah 35.5-6 states, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” But the nature or character of Isaiah’s liberation brought its own set of challenges, some of which we have mentioned this week. One element of the liberation found in Isaiah, which would have been and still is very puzzling for many, was the image of the suffering servant.
It’s important to realize that the Jesus of the gospels is not inventing nonviolence. He is simply taking the nonviolence in Isaiah seriously. He is leaning into it, exploring where it could lead if skillfully and intentionally applied to his own day and the dynamics between Rome and the Jewish poor.
Healing Versus Destruction
Today, we must be careful in both religious and secular settings not to describe the liberation we’re working toward as a vision of destroying people who oppose our work. Our goal is not to destroy our enemies but to transform them by winning them. John the Baptist’s “one to come” was a destroyer, separating humanity and bringing fire upon the chaff. But Jesus doesn’t quite line up with that description, and it causes John to question whether the people should be “looking for another.”Jesus teaches John that his liberation was quite different: it was to be a different “recompense.” Jesus’s liberating ministry is characterized by the healing, restoration and a radical change in the lives of those the status quo impoverished, for sure, but it was also to be a radical change in humanizing even the oppressors.
Rome had already made life a desert for the majority of Jewish citizens through violent oppression. Jesus did not come as another destroyer promising peace, but as a teacher showing the path toward liberation, life, and healing. He pointed the way to a world where, as Isaiah and Micah had hoped, there was enough for everyone.
“Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the YWHW from Jerusalem. He will govern between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” (Isaiah 2.3-4)
“Many nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid for the LORD Almighty has spoken. (Micah 4.2-4, emphasis added.)
This is a world that can be characterized as a safer, more just, more compassionate home for us all where all injustice, oppression and violence has been put right.
The question we’re returning to in this series is whether that vision cast by the Jewish Jesus in the 1st Century has any relevance to our world of corporatism, militarism, bigotry, and fear. Many in Jesus’s Galilean audience desperately longed for a change from Roman imperialist tyranny. And Jesus offered a path rooted in our interconnectedness with each other; a subversive way that called us to take up the work of making our world a safer home for us all.
To each of you on this path of healing and restoration as opposed to the path of destruction: may this week’s section of Q encourage and confirm you in the energy you invest in those around you:
“ . . . the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor . . . ” (Sayings Gospel Q 7:18-23)
Whatever portion of the work you are investing your time in, be of courage. Together we are making a difference in bringing liberation to the lives of those who are suffering.
HeartGroup Application
This week, go back and review John’s description of what he thought Jesus would be and the gospel writers’ description of what Jesus actually was.
- Try listing at least five contrasts between the two.
- Do you see these contrasting visions in contemporary religious groups of people who value the Jesus story? Which some communities do you see continuing John the Baptist’s work, warning of a coming destruction, living an ascetic life, and crying out repent? Which communities do you sense are focused on healing and liberation from suffering today? Which communities, like the one I grew up, are a hybrid of both?
- Discuss with your HeartGroup how you can lean into being a community centered in healing and restoration, and pick at least one action step from your discussion to begin implementing.
We are in this together, and there’s still so much work to do. Thank you for being on this journey of transformation and restoration, too. Keep living in love till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you.
I’ll see you next week.
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