A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity
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New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 36: Matthew 22.34-46. Lectionary A, Proper 25
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 36: Matthew 22.34-46. Lectionary A, Proper 25
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity
Herb Montgomery | October 27, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
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“In the end, for me, it’s no longer enough to say that God is love. If our ideas of God’s love don’t also address love of neighbor in very real, concrete, material ways, then we are still missing the mark.”
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Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied. He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.’
If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”
No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Matthew 22:34-46)
A version of our reading this week is found in each of the synoptic gospels (Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-29). Each quotes two passages from the Hebrew scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:18)
The gospels attest that the early Jesus movement and the historical Jesus both favored this interpretive move of defining fidelity to God as love of neighbor and using this lens to interpret the Torah. Fidelity to the God of the Torah impacted how one concretely and materially related to others. Love to God was expressed through the love of the neighbor believed to be made in the image of God. And that “love of neighbor” meant something specific. Social justice circles today often say that social justice is what love looks like in public. This is similar to how the early Jewish Jesus movement interpreted Torah fidelity as well.
This interpretive lens has lots of history in Jewish wisdom. It is most often attributed to the progressive Pharisee Hillel. The story is that Hillel was approached by a proselyte one day who asked if Hillel could teach the questioner the entire Torah while the student stood on one foot. Hillel responded, “What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn that!” (see Hillel)
For most of the Jesus story, Jesus sides with Hillel’s more progressive interpretive lens of love. There are only two cases where Jesus departs from Hillel. The Pharisaical school of Hillel was not the only school of interpretation in Jesus’ time. Another popular sect of Pharisees was the school of Shammai. Shammai was deeply concerned with protecting Jewish culture, identity, and distinctiveness, and one of the subjects where Jesus departs from Hillel and agrees with Shammai is the subject of divorce.
The school of Hillel taught that a husband could divorce his wife for any reason at all. In a patriarchal society, this led to systemic economic injustice toward wives sent away by their husbands. On this issue, however, Jesus sided with Shammai. In one gospel he states that divorce was simply not allowed. In another, he says that it was allowed but only in the context of infidelity. Again, I believe that this teaching was concerned with the economic hardships that unconditional divorce placed on women who found themselves on the receiving end of this practice in the patriarchal cultures of the 1st Century, trying to survive.
The second area where Jesus disagreed with Hillel was also economic. Hillel was the originator the prozbul exception. A rich creditor could declare a loan “prozbul” and therefore immune to cancelation in years such as the year of Jubilee. Remember that there was no middle class in Jesus’ society. Many people depended on loans to survive. So if a year when debts were to be cancelled was approaching, many rich creditors would simply not make loans they believed they would lose on. This left many others without a means of survival. Out of concern, then, Hillel made an exception available: loans made close to the year of cancellation could be declared “prozbul” and be exempt from being cancelled. Jesus departs from Hillel incalling for a return to the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:19) where all debts would be cancelled and all slaves set free.
Other than these two cases, Jesus interpreted the Torah like a Hillelian Pharisee. The conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees in the gospels are the same conflicts the Hillelian Pharisees had with the Shammai Pharisees. In those years, the Shammai Pharisees were still in positions of power and influence. But ultimately the more progressive Hillelian Pharisees won the interpretive debates in Judaism: out of Hillelian Pharisaism, Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged and grew. (See Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Kindle Locations 7507-7540)
Gamaliel, in the book of Acts, was also most likely a Pharisee from the more progressive school of Hillel.
“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while.” (Acts 5:34)
Acts associates the Apostle Paul with Gamaliel, too:
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.” (Acts 22:3)
Paul also expresses a very Hillelian way of interpreting the Torah in the book of Galatians:
“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14)
All of this taken together makes a strong case for a more progressive form of Christianity that uses love as its interpretive lens. In this form of Christianity, we ensure that our interpretations of love don’t become sentimental or meaningless, and we manifest love through concern for a distributive justice for others. As Dr. Emile Townes so rightly states when you begin with the idea that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.
This speaks volumes in the context of debates still raging between more fundamentalist and/or conservative sectors of Christianity and more progressive and/or liberal sectors. The early Jesus movement evolved during similar tensions, and the gospels characterize Jesus as siding with the more compassionate Pharisees of his time.
As we shared earlier, there are exceptions to this. The two times Jesus departs from the Hillel Pharisees to side with the Shammai Pharisees was over economic justice issues. This says to me that the highest value was compassion. The highest value is distributive justice, treating one’s neighbor as yourself, as an extension of yourself, as you yourself would like to be treated if you were in the same situation. If we are to follow the Jesus of the gospels, we will find ourselves siding with those calling for a politics of compassion and distributive justice. We will find ourselves doing so because our chief concern is love of neighbor and justice for our neighbor as we would want for ourselves.
Political parties don’t always get justice right because they also are endeavoring to balance the desire to stay in power. One party might most often get it right, but where they fail, we must still choose to stand on the side of distributive justice, remembering the goal is love of neighbor. Following Jesus, we may find ourselves most often in more harmony with political positions of compassion, but there will be times when we may be achieving compassion in one area but will have to be honest when we are still missing the mark in another. There are discussions like this between feminists and womanists. I also think of wealthy LGBTQ people who support systemic harm toward those in their community who are poor; Christians who are concerned for the poor but still deeply patriarchal, homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic And there are movements for economic justice, including within White Christianity, that are still deeply racist.
In the end, for me, it’s no longer enough to say that God is love. If our ideas of God’s love doesn’t also address love of neighbor in very real, concrete, material ways, then we are still missing the mark. In the spirit of the interpretive lens of Hillel and Jesus, as Paul said: “The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What do politics of compassion 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.
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.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Render to Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work, you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 35: Matthew 22:15-22. Lectionary A, Proper 24
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 35: Matthew 22:15-22. Lectionary A, Proper 24
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Render to Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s
Herb Montgomery | October 20, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
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There are times when those teachings call me to lean more deeply into my civic duties because of the demands of love of neighbor and the belief that every person is the object of Divine love. As Dr. Emilie Townes so poignantly says, “If you begin with the idea that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.” And there are times when the state demands of me actions that opposes my commitment to justice. In moments like these, this story’s wisdom is helpful in navigating a life-giving pathway forward.
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Our reading this week is from the Gospel of Matthew:
Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away. (Matthew 22:15-22)
Jesus’ saying in our reading this week appears in all three synoptic gospels and in the gospel of Thomas. It’s one of the sayings of Jesus that’s most misunderstood today, especially by the Christian Right.
If we are going to arrive at a life-giving interpretation of this story, we’re going to have to back up some and consider some historical context.
Archeologists tell us that the most circulated coin in Jesus’ day was a small coin with Tiberius Caesar’s image on one side and a seated woman holding an olive branch and a scepter. On the side with Ceasar’s image were the words, “TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AUGUSTUS”: Tiberius is both Caesar Augustus (emperor), and the son of the Divine Augustus.
Augustus, Tiberius’ father, had been declared divine by the Roman Senate in 14 C.E. upon his death. During his life, Augustus had circulated coins that referred to him as the son of God. After Julius Caesar’s death, a star (really a comet), had appeared at the summer games dedicated to his honor. Many Romans interpreted this as a symbol of Julius Caesar’s soul ascending to the heavens to dwell with the gods. A year and half later, the Roman Senate declared Julius divine and the star that appeared in the summer began being referred to as the “Julian star.” (I find it fascinating that when Jesus is born, Matthew’s gospel describes a new star appearing in the heavens.)
Because of this tradition, Augustus had coins minted and circulated that had his image with the words “Augustus Ceasar” on one side and, on the back, the Julian Star with the words “Divine Julius,” indicating that Augustus was the Son of God. Each succeeding Caesar after Julius and Augustus also described himself as the Divine Son of God (“God” being the previous Caesar), all the way to Tiberius in Jesus’ time.
As we’ve said, on the back of the coin most likely held up in our story this week was the image of a woman holding both a scepter and an olive branch to symbolize of both the rule and the peace of Rome (or Pax Romana). The woman is most often identified as Tiberius’ mother Livia, the mother.
This gives our story this week a bit more context. When Jesus held up the coin and asked whose “image” was on the coin, there were two images, one of Tiberius Caesar claiming he was the Divine Son of God and the image of his mother Livia, the mother of the Son of God. Keep this imagery and its claims in mind for a moment.
In our reading, Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to pay the Roman tax, nor does Jesus tell them not to pay the tax. What Jesus does tell them, holding this coin with its imagery and claims, is to know the difference between their obligations to Caesar and their obligations to the God of the Torah.
Now, consider those coin images and their claims again. Jesus’ Jewish listeners that day would have heard his reply and remembered the words of the Torah itself:
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20:2-5)
On the surface, the words “give to Caesar Caesar’s due” would have sounded like an affirmation of paying taxes to Rome and thus kept Jesus out of trouble with the Romans. But to his Jewish listeners who knew the words of the Torah the following words “given to God what is God’s” would have held a much deeper, subversive message.
According to the Torah, someone could not both honor Caesar’s divine claims and honor the God of the Torah. These two claims were diametrically opposed to each other such that one could not honor one without violating the other. You could not serve both the God of the Torah and Caesar as God. The question that had been given to Jesus was an effort to entrap him before the Romans, yet his response had turned the trap around, indicting the elites and powerful who the poor viewed as serving Rome through their positions in the Temple State.
Honestly, I love how slick this story is in the end. The people questioning Jesus sought to render him guilty of violating the Pax Romana before Rome, and instead, they end up being rendered guilty of infidelity to the God of the Torah in the eyes of the people.
How might we apply the lessons of our story in our context today?
I live in the United States. There are times when the claims of my citizenship here are in perfect harmony with the teachings I believe are in the Jesus story. There are times when those teachings call me to lean more deeply into my civic duties because of the demands of love of neighbor and the belief that every person is the object of Divine love. As Dr. Emilie Townes so poignantly says, “If you begin with the idea that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.”
And there are times when the state demands of me actions that oppose the teaching I perceive in the Jesus story. I think of times when I’m asked to pledge allegiance to and support the American military-industrial complex. I think of the times when I’m asked to pledge allegiance to the economic exploitative and poverty-creating elements of a global capitalism. I think of when I’m called to pledge allegiance to American policies that still systemically hurt those made vulnerable. I think of the systemic racism and misogyny still baked into how we do things.
Being a Jesus follower who is also an American is complicated. Sometimes I’m proud of this nation and happy to participate in its society and fulfill civic duties. At other times I’m ashamed of our national actions and I participate in our society by speaking out and by obstruction. As someone who both loves the Jesus of the Jesus story and many of America’s democratic aspirations, even when I speak out, it’s because of love. Love of neighbor is my highest call. But I also love this nation, or rather, I love the ideals this nation claims to aspire to. If a human society actually could live up to these high ideals, they would not contradict the ethics and values I read in the Jesus story. What I read in the Jesus story would lead me to lean into those high ideals and my civic duties if those ideals could be realized. And that’s the big “if.”
The values of the Jesus story call me to continually choose to work toward making our world a safe, compassionate, home for everyone. Wherever people are working to make American society a safe, compassionate home for everyone, I can come alongside them and participate in the work. Where they are working to make American society unsafe, lacking in compassion, and unjust, I can come alongside those working to oppose them. My allegiance is to love and justice and compassion first and foremost. My allegiance to America is contingent upon its fidelity to these values. I don’t give my country a blank check when it comes to my allegiance. When I oppose spaces that contradict the values I am most deeply committed to, I oppose them out of love for what we as a society could be if we leaned more deeply into the just demands of love of neighbor.
This is what the gospel teaching render to Caesar those things that are Caesar’s and to God those things that are God’s means for me in my context today. It means to know the difference between the obligations of my civic duties as an American and to understand my higher commitments to love, justice and compassion. It means to hold the former wholly dependent on my fidelity to the latter.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How are your own civic responsibilities contingent on your commitments to love, compassion, and justice? 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.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
All Are Invited, Not All Are Welcome
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work, you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 34: Matthew 22.1-14. Lectionary A, Proper 23
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 34: Matthew 22.1-14. Lectionary A, Proper 23
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
All Are Invited, Not All Are Welcome
Herb Montgomery | October 13, 2023
“All are invited to sit at the table of justice but not all are welcome: this table that we sit down to requires that we stand for something. The justice table is about justice for everyone: justice for women, justice for people of color, justice for the LGBTQ community, justice for Indigenous people, justice for the poor and the list could go on. This table is about justice for everyone, especially those the present system does harm. And everyone is invited to the table. But to be welcome at that table, one has to take off the garments of patriarchy and put on the clothes of egalitarianism. One has to take off the garments of racism and put on the clothes of racial justice and inclusion. One has to take off the garments of White supremacy and authoritarianism and put on the clothes of a diverse, democratic society. One has to take off the garments of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia and put on the clothing of equality. One has to take off the garments of colonialism, and put on the clothing of reparations and repentance. One has to take off the garments of classism and put on the clothing of resource sharing, wealth redistribution, and equity”.
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” For many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:1-14)
The first thing we must stress as we ponder this week’s reading is that the parable is not about heaven, but about the Kingdom. In the gospels, the Kingdom is Jesus’ vision for a just human community. Jesus was leading a Jewish renewal movement, and his “kingdom” was his vision of what a safe, inclusive community could look like if his society returned to the social justice themes in the Torah. This is the soil out of which Luke’s and Matthew’s versions of this parable grew.
These two versions are very different. Most scholars believe that Luke’s version is the oldest and most closely resembles the oral parable passed down in the Jesus community between Jesus’ crucifixion and the writing of the Jesus story. Let’s consider Luke’s version: it will help us understand the changes Matthew made and, possibly, why.
Luke’s Version
Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’ Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’ (Luke 14:16-24)
In Luke’s version, the overall point is that Jesus’ kingdom will be composed of those his society marginalized, excluded, and pushed to the edges and undersides. This parable illustrates a common gospel theme: that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
The elite, privileged, propertied, and powerful were invited first, and they refused to come. So the gates were swung wide open to anyone in the town’s streets and alleys, including the “poor, the crippled, and the blind, and the lame.” It must be stressed that these people were those Jesus’ society shunned. They were, in economic terms, the lowest of the low, often forced into begging for money and barely surviving.
Luke’s Jesus teaches a vision for our world that is a safe, compassionate, just home especially for those the present system makes vulnerable to harm. In this world, privilege and elitism has no place, and so those who want to hold on to forms of classism find themselves on the outside of Jesus’ kingdom.
Now, with this as our backdrop, let’s consider Matthew’s version.
Matthew’s Version
Remember that Matthew’s audience was much more Jewish than Luke’s. Luke’s community of readers was more cosmopolitan, and Luke was written in the wake of Paul’s and others’ work to include Gentiles in the Jewish Jesus community.
Matthew, on the other hand, was written for a Galilean audience. Although that audience included Gentiles, it was a much more Jewish concentrated community of Jesus followers. Like Luke’s gospel, Matthew’s was also written after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. These Jewish Jesus followers, like all Jews at this time, were wrestling with what to make of a world that no longer had a Jewish temple and in which Jerusalem was destroyed. In this context, Matthew’s author adapts the parable to their community’s needs: it becomes a parable that explains the destruction of Jerusalem as the result of the leaders’ rejection of the Torah’s economic teachings, especially in regards to the poor. These poor people revolted in the poor people’s revolt of the mid 60’s C.E. Their revolt led to the Roman Jewish War of 66-69 C.E., which in turn resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem the following year.
I want to steer clear of supersessionism here: I don’t interpret Matthew’s parable as anti-Jewish or pro-Christian. That would be harmful and overly simplistic. Again, Matthew’s community was composed of a large number of Jewish Jesus followers in and around Galilee. When Matthew refers to an enraged king who sends his army to destroy murderers and burn their city, he is referring to a long history of the elites and the powerful, those who economically benefited from a system that impoverished others, repeatedly rejecting the economic teachings of the Torah in relation to the poor, the Hebrew justice prophets’ call to return to those teachings, and Jesus’ call to do the same. Jesus stood squarely in the justice tradition of the Hebrew prophets. And so this parable tell its audience that the recent events in Jerusalem were caused by the refusal to embrace economic principles that would have eradicated poverty in their society.
This is important. This is not a parable that says Jerusalem was destroyed because “the Jews rejected Jesus.” No. That is an anti-Jewish interpretation. Rather, this parable claims that Jerusalem was destroyed for refusing to take care of the poor. And that interpretation can lead us to advocate for an end to poverty.
Interpreting this passage in terms of poverty harmonizes with the Hebrew prophets as well. Notice why they stated Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed:
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49)
Making this connection also helps us understand the last portion of the parable about the person found without a wedding garment. At the time of Matthew’s writing, the community was expanding the invitation into Jesus’ kingdom to those outside of Jewish society. But that invitation still came with the warning that weddings require appropriate attire. Jesus’ kingdom here on earth requires regard for people harmed by our world’s systems. If we disregard the social harm being done to others, especially those most vulnerable to that harm in our present system, we will end up just like those in the parable who were originally invited.
And this leads me to one application to our context today. All are invited to sit at the table of justice but not all are welcome: this table that we sit down to requires that we stand for something. The justice table is about justice for everyone: justice for women, justice for people of color, justice for the LGBTQ community, justice for Indigenous people, justice for the poor and the list could go on. This table is about justice for everyone, especially those the present system does harm. And everyone is invited to the table. But to be welcome at that table, one has to take off the garments of patriarchy and put on the clothes of egalitarianism. One has to take off the garments of racism and put on the clothes of racial justice and inclusion. One has to take off the garments of White supremacy and authoritarianism and put on the clothes of a diverse, democratic society. One has to take off the garments of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia and put on the clothing of equality. One has to take off the garments of colonialism, and put on the clothing of reparations and repentance. One has to take off the garments of classism and put on the clothing of resource sharing, wealth redistribution, and equity.
All are invited, and not all are welcome. To be welcome at the kingdom table, you have to embrace the values, ethics, and principles for which the table stands, because this is a table that is first and foremost about transforming our present world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What are some ways the parable of the wedding banquet inform your justice work today? 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.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Unheeded Calls for Justice in the Parable of the Vineyard
We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work, you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 33: Matthew 21.33-46. Lectionary A, Proper 22
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 33: Matthew 21.33-46. Lectionary A, Proper 22
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Unheeded Calls for Justice in the Parable of the Vineyard
Herb Montgomery | October 6, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“The crowds of people found hope and resonance in these the teachings of reversal: the elite and powerful would have the reins of society taken away from them and given to the marginalized and excluded. And if this parable did teach that power and resources would be taken away from the powerful, propertied and privileged, and given to the masses, then it makes sense that when those in power heard this, they sought to kill Jesus. It also makes sense that they had to be ever so careful because they knew the people heard something in this parable in the long line of justice prophets that made them love Jesus all the more.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.” (Matthew 21:33-46*)
The last sentence in this week’s reading from Matthew is the most important sentence. It holds a tension with the rest of the reading that can potentially keep us from harmful interpretations about ourselves and others.
The crowds, the masses, the people, consider Jesus to be “a prophet.” This is because out of all the forms Jesus could have emerged in within his own Jewish society, he is squarely in the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition. He’s spearheading a Jewish renewal movement and calling his community back to the justice of the Torah and the Hebrew prophets. His teachings emphasized the portions of the law and the prophets that were about social and economic justice, making our communities a safe, compassionate home for everyone.
The parable in this week’s reading is about a landowner who rented out his vineyard to other farmers. The crowds around Jesus would have heard this parable differently than the elites and powerful. Jesus’ society had no middle class. There were only the rich and those struggling to scratch out an existence in one difficult way or another. There were only the haves and the have nots. Only the upper class and the lower class, and only a few belonging to the upper class aristocracy were connected to the temple state in Jerusalem.
The elites would have seen themselves in the parables as the farmers renting the vineyard from the landowner who was away. The people would have viewed themselves as the indentured workers who daily witnessed the elites enriching themselves with worker exploitation. And with the elites becoming so attached to their enrichment at the expense of the masses, the crowd would have perceived the beaten, killed, and stoned vineyard servants in the parable as symbols of the Hebrew prophets. There is precedent for this imagery. Consider Isaiah 5:1-7:
“I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”
There are differences between Isaiah’s use of the vineyard imagery and Matthew’s. In Isaiah the vineyard is destroyed, whereas in Matthew the vineyard is taken away and given to others. In Isaiah the vineyard represents the nation of Israel; in Matthew it represents “the Kingdom,” which is Jesus’ vision for a just, inclusive, compassionate human community. There are also similarities between Isaiah and Matthew: the vineyard owner comes to the vineyard looking for justice and finds only exploitation, marginalization, oppression, and bloodshed.
Let’s now talk about what the kingdom being taken away and given to others would have meant .
First—and this is very important—this parable is not about the Kingdom being taken away from the Jewish people and given to Christians. The last two sentences state: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.”
The Jewish crowds would not have supported Jesus if this parable taught that they were being replaced. This parable is about “the kingdom.” It’s about the elite in society losing positions of power and that power being given to the masses. The crowds of people found hope and resonance in these the teachings of reversal: the elite and powerful would have the reins of society taken away from them and given to the marginalized and excluded. And if this parable did teach that power and resources would be taken away from the powerful, propertied and privileged, and given to the masses, then it makes sense that when those in power heard this, they sought to kill Jesus. It also makes sense that they had to be ever so careful because they knew the people heard something in this parable in the long line of justice prophets that made them love Jesus all the more.
What might this parable be saying to us today? What would a reversal look like in our society? What would it look like for the control in our society to taken from wealthy corporation owners who have bought democracy and politicians, leaving the masses with little say in how society functions and whom it benefits? What would it look like for each person to have a voice? Can you imagine it?
Originally, Thomas Paine called for this kind of democracy, but his calls were ultimately rejected by the aristocratic founding fathers, who called Paine’s ideas “radical democracy.” He called for the end of slavery and a vote for women, but in their revolutionary decision to declare independence from Britain, the founding fathers created a democracy that only gave a vote to propertied, White men. We still have yet to witness America living up to its high ideals. When we consider who is left out today, economically, socially, politically, what would it look like for control in our society to be taken from the powerful, the elite, and given, genuinely, to the masses.
What could a safe, just, compassionate society look like? How would it differ from our present system? Take some time this week to imagine how a just society would be shaped and whom it would take care of? Before we can work for it, we have to first imagine it. Then we can name it. And then, we can roll up our sleeves and work toward it.
___________
*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Take some time this week to imagine how a just society would be shaped and whom it would take care of? 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.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 32: Matthew 21.23-32. Lectionary A, Proper 21
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/0Usj6s3tUyk?si=QIMehXJWRl1nZYSt
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?
Herb Montgomery | September 29, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” (Matthew 21:23-32)
If we are going to arrive at life-giving interpretations that do not devolve into anti-Semitic tropes, we’ll need to understand the context of this passage. First, this passage represents a debate within Judaism. Christianity does not exist yet. So the passage doesn’t point to a choice between Christianity and Judaism, or some embracing “Christianity” ahead of others. Jesus was a Jewish man. The tax collectors and prostitutes in this passage are all Jewish folk, as were the chief priests and all the elders.
This is instead a debate among people in different social locations within Judaism, the elite and powerful of a society and those who were shunned or pushed to the edges of their society, about what faithfulness to the God of the Torah looked like and how to follow the Torah’s economic teachings.
Jesus had just overturned the money changers tables in the Temple, a political symbol and not solely a religious one. The Temple was the “Capital building” of the Temple state of Jerusalem over which Rome exercised imperial control. The chief priests and elders were not only religious leaders but also held political positions of power, property, and privilege.
By flipping over these Temple tables, Jesus staged a political protest over the exploitation of the poor, and his authority for teaching and acting was challenged by those in positions of authority within the Temple state.
Again, all of this happening economically, politically, socially, and religiously, and within Jewish culture and society.
This story gives those of us who are not Jewish a window into a society from which we can glean wisdom as we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized, those in underprivileged social locations in our own society.
Jesus also mentions tax collectors and prostitutes in our reading. These people were labelled transgressors of national interests (tax collectors) and of religious morality (prostitutes), but they also embraced Jesus’ vision for human community (the kingdom) and its economic teachings of sharing resources, mutual aid, wealth redistribution, taking care of the vulnerable, and including the marginalized and excluded. Zacchaeus was an example of those who breached the national interest, and it’s interesting that, in true patriarchal form, we have no names of prostitutes passed down. Instead, we have the later fabrication that labels Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This fabrication was a patriarchal (or patristic) attempt to lessen her influence and marginalize those who recognized her apostleship. (Thus the term patristic fathers.)
Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming. There is a vast difference between working for the equal opportunity to compete in a system that rewards some and harms others and working toward an entirely different social order that doesn’t produce winners and losers. This “entirely different social order” means a way of living together with enough for everyone, where we only take what we need and share the rest, and where we make sure everyone cared for.
In this light, taking up the cross becomes a mandate to flip oppressive tables even if you are threatened with a cross for doing so. We can read a lot more from this story that may help us in our justice work today.
If the powerful and privileged elites in Jesus’s society couldn’t recognize that John the Baptist was standing in the authority of the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition, they would not recognize him doing the same. Note that Jesus doesn’t attempt to convince them. He doesn’t waste time defending his right to speak out or his right to exist. He’s got work to do. He dismisses their challenges to his authority to speak out and gets back to his work of shaping our world into a just, compassionate, safe home for everyone, specifically those presently marginalized.
There is a lesson in this for us. Don’t get side tracked or distracted by the naysayers or those who want to pivot away from the injustice we are challenging to ourselves and what gives us permission to speak out again the injustice. We don’t have to have anyone’s permission to speak out. The presence of injustice is permission enough. Care for our fellow human beings gives us the right to speak out. Being a member of the human family gives us intrinsic authority when we see fellow humans being harmed. This applies ecologically and environmentally also. Humans are harmed by ruining our shared home on this planet in order to profit a few in the short term.
Lastly, our reading this week includes the parable of the two sons of which scholars have spent much ink debating on the variations of this story that we have today (there are three different versions). Thee author of this story is placing much more emphasis on a person’s actions than their words. It’s not enough say yes to Jesus kingdom if the actions that follow that yes don’t align with the ethics and values of Jesus’ kingdom. In other words, accepting a ticket to a heaven later in other words is meaningless if we aren’t attempting to follow Jesus today in making our present home safe and just for everyone. In the end, the professions of the two sons didn’t matter’ . It was their actions that mattered. This is why I value whether someone is part of the solution to today’s injustice or whether they are part of the cause far more than whether that person claims or embraces Christianity or even Jesus. Professions matter little. The question is not what you believe or don’t believe. The question is whether you are choosing to be a life-giving human to those around you. In the end, and in the words of our story, Christian or not, those making the world a safer place for everyone are the ones doing what the “father wanted.”
I’ll close this week with the words of the late Oscar Romero:
“Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.” (Quoted by Leonardo Vilchis, We Cry Justice, p. 93)
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the parable of the two sons inspire you to work for justice? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Equality, Generosity and Concern for Workers’ Needs
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 31: Matthew 20.1-16. Lectionary A, Proper 20
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/CPiJr7vlEYg?si=gouYfty9uvqNGVQZ
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Equality, Generosity and Concern for Workers’ Needs
Herb Montgomery | September 22, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Three themes surface, three values that have the power to inform how we shape the present world we are all sharing: a desire for equality, generosity concern for workers’ needs. The priority is a combination of equality, generosity, and concern for the needs of the workers. What might our present economic system look like if these three themes governed us?”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.
About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
‘Because no one has hired us.’ they answered.
He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.
So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:1-16)
I cannot express in words how much I love the parable in this week’s reading. I have my own history with this story. I was first introduced to its depth of potential years ago when I read John Ruskin’s Unto The Last, an essay he published in 1860. Ruskin lifts this parable out of religious interpretations created by privileged, propertied, and powerful religious apologists who diverted readers’ attention from how they benefitted from an inequitable economic system. In harmony with Jesus’ ministry in the tradition of the Jewish prophets, Ruskin treated this parable by addressing its social and economic implications.
Let me unpack those implications a bit.
Religious interpretations typically circle around themes from individuals getting a ticket to the same heaven to populations converting “late” to Christianity. (Traditionally this has been a foundational theme of colonialism.)
Yet Jesus did not show up in his society solely as a religious teacher or spiritual guru. He didn’t even show up as a priest within the temple state of his day as John the Baptist’s family did. Anyone who reads the Jesus story alongside the tradition of the Hebrew prophets will immediately see that Jesus was standing in the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition.
In the Hebrew prophetic tradition (see Luke 4:18-19), there are ever-present, ever-strong, social and economic justice themes:
Isaiah 1:17— Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
Jeremiah 5:28— And have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
they do not defend the just cause of the poor.
Amos 2:7— They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Amos 5:24— But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Micah 3:1— Then I said,
“Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
you rulers of Israel.
Should you not embrace justice?
(See also Isaiah 10:2; 56:1; 59:4,8; Ezekiel 34:16; Hosea 12:6; Habakkuk 1:4; Zechariah 7:9; Malachi 3:5)
This is just a quick cursory overview of the prophets. If we read Jesus in this prophetic tradition, we begin to see that this parable has precious little to do with getting to heaven and a lot to do with shaping our present world into a just, compassionate safe home for everyone.
Three themes surface, three values that have the power to inform how we shape the present world we are all sharing.
First, there is a desire for equality. As the grumbling workers from earliest in the day rightly say of the one who hired them, “you have made them equal to us.” For the first to be last and the last to be first doesn’t mean that they simply trade places. Trading places would only flip the hegemony upside down, replacing the present hierarchy with a new one. But in this parable “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” means all are treated equally, with no distinction between those who showed up first and those who showed up last.
This equality is a theme, not only in the Jesus story, but also in the economic teachings of the Torah and the Christian scriptures.
“This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’” The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.” (Exodus 16:16-18)
“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality.” (2 Corinthians 8:13)
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had . . . And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.” (Acts 4:32-34)
The second theme in this parable is generosity: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
What if our guiding value was not seeing how much we could amass but generously sharing, taking responsibility for each other, and making sure everyone had enough not simply to survive but to thrive?
In our present system, an elite few has more than they could ever possibly need while others daily fight against an early death named poverty. Our society’s problem is not those on welfare but a system that creates such an expanse of winners and losers that welfare is needed. As Gustavo Gutiérrez rightly states:
“The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” (The Power of the Poor in History, Gustavo Gutiérrez)
It is this different social order based on a spirit of generosity that would make generous relief efforts obsolete, no longer even necessary. It would be rooted in a posture of generosity rather than one of hoarding.
The third and last theme is of concern for workers’ needs. Although some of the workers were not hired by anyone until the last hour of the day (‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.), they all still had the same daily needs. They may have had families that depended on what they brought home that day.
The landowner in this story is not concerned with how many hours they worked, but with using his land to provide for the needs of as many as could be provided for. The foundational concern, the priority of highest value, is ensuring these workers have their needs met. Certainly the landowner stood to gain from their employment, yet he was not focused on how much he could squeeze out of them so that he could become even wealthier. Each worker received a days wages.
I already hear friends objecting that if we had a system like this there would be people who would take advantage of it. My answer is, “And?”
Our current system has people who take advantage of it: those at the center and the top of our society. In our present system, the wealthy take advantage of loopholes to increase their passive wealth. Rarely does this social and economic class hear the New Testament words, “Those who don’t work don’t eat” applied to them. These words are usually weaponized against poor people who are accused of laziness or expected to explain and justify their poverty. We should instead understand the root cause of their economic situation: a system stacked against them.
To be clear: There are lazy people in all classes, and lazy people can thrive if they know how to work whichever level of the system they find themselves in. The theme in our reading is not how hard or how long a person works. The theme is how to take care of the needs of the laborers. The priority is not how far can we squeeze workers to enrich their employer with their exploited labor. The priority is a combination of equality, generosity, and concern for the needs of the workers.
What might our present economic system look like if these three themes governed us? There is so much talk among some Christians today about shaping our society according to Christian values. Yet whenever the values in the Jesus story are mentioned—equality, generosity, concern for workers—these same Christians label them socialist or Marxist. What if equality, generosity and wealth sharing, and concern for the needs of workers is actually the way of Jesus?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What shift in priorities do you perceive in our parable from this week’s reading? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Seventy Times Seven
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 30: Matthew 18.21-35
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/UECsbII4Hz8?si=hE3dv2K06J2jPF86
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Seventy Times Seven
Herb Montgomery, September 15, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“This parable originated not as allegory but as an example of real life indebtedness Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with. This was not a call for the indebted to forgive their abusive creditors, but for creditors to forgive the debts of those who owed them.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:21-35)
Even the most progressive Jesus scholars see this parable as part of the earliest oral traditions, tracing back to the historical Jesus himself. A rich man forgives ten thousand bags of gold owed by one of his slaves. Think of how much each bag would have been worth, and then multiply that by ten thousand. In compassion, the creditor simply forgives the entire debt.
Harmful interpretations of this parable teach the abused and oppressed to passively forgive their oppressor or abuser over and over again, but require no change from the one responsible for harming them.
Before we spiritualize this parable to all relationships and offenses, though, we need to step back and look at the original economic context. In the original context, oppressors, specifically creditors, are to forgive the debts of those they were oppressing based on how much the oppressors themselves had been forgiven by Jesus’ “heavenly Father.” This was not a call for the indebted to forgive their abusive creditors, but for creditors to forgive the debts of those who owed them.
Then the forgiven one runs into someone who owes him only 100 silver coins, a far lower amount. Rather than his own experience of forgiveness awakening more in him toward the person who owed him money, he seeks to exact every last coin from his own debtor.
Again, this parable originated not as allegory but as an example of real life indebtedness Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with. From the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Jesus shares a call to wealthy creditors to perform the ritual of “the year of the lord’s favor” or the year of Jubilee, where all debts would be forgiven. This was part of Jesus’ gospel: the call for economic liberation of those in debt. Debts were to be cancelled. This is how Luke’s gospel sums it up:
“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)
Matthew’s version of the lords prayer also uses economic language:
“And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)
Later in the Jesus community, this idea of forgiving debts expanded to include all offenses and trespasses, not just economic indebtedness. This is why in Luke’s later version of the same prayer no longer names the economic element but reads:
“Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4)
What once called creditors (oppressors) to forgive the debts of their debtors (the oppressed) became a universal call for everyone to forgive anyone of anything based on how much they themselves had personally been forgiven by God. What once involved the wealthy cancelling the debts of their poorer fellow Jesus followers became universalized. Social location was no longer the focus. Money owed became allegorical for general offenses. And forgiveness stopped meaning the cancelling of real, concrete debts; it became letting off the hook anyone who had done anything up to 490 times if they simply came back repeatedly and said they were sorry.
I’m not a fan of this evolution in the Jesus stories we have access to today. What it too often becomes is manipulative pressure for those who have suffered injustice or abuse to repeatedly forgive their abuses if the abuser expresses sorrow, whether they actually change or not. Some interpretations definethe one seeking forgiveness as truly changing, but if there were true, the number of times needing for forgiveness would never reach “seventy times seven.”
But if this was actually a call for creditors to practice Jubilee, repeatedly, seventy times seven, no matter how many times people became indebted, then this story takes on an economic dimension that requires social change. If the creditors who follow Jesus must forgive the concrete debts of their debtors, then before too long those creditors would be looking at the systemic causes of why folks were repeatedly being thrown into debt. As the saying goes, when you’re continually pulling people out of the water it doesn’t take long before one walks upstream to ask why those people are being thrown in the water to begin with.
What does this mean for us today?
First let’s say what it doesn’t mean. This parable doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold abusers accountable for the harm they inflict on others. Part of restorative justice is holding abusers accountable. Accountability is intrinsic to their own restoration and healing, too: it awakens and restores a sense of connection to their actions toward others. If there is an element of forgiveness involved, it refuses to sever the abuser from humanity, and the desire to hold them accountable comes not out of vengeance but out of a desire to see them reformed. Forgiveness should never be defined or interpreted as simply letting someone off the hook and pretending they did nothing wrong. Restoration and reparations must always be a part of the process of repairing harms committed for the life-giving well-being of all parties involved.
Yet this story still carries an economic element. How should Jesus followers relate to economic debt forgiveness? I heard many Christians voices over the last two years against student loan forgiveness. How would the Jesus of this week’s readings respond to the idea of students being forgiven the astronomical costs of becoming educated? How would he describe the predatory practices of the loan industry that takes advantage of those students. Consider the social location of those who have to seek student loans to gain an education. Considering these factors, certain Christians are grossly ignorant of how disconnected their religious worship of Jesus is from the values their Jesus taught and the themes of his gospel.
And this is just one example. In our modern, global capitalist system, indebtedness is how countries continue to colonize and enslave other countries, even “independent” countries. Sometimes this debt is connected to the drive to “develop” those countries so that they their resources can be more easily exploited by global corporations.
If we followed the economic truths of our story this week it would turn our present economic world upside down.
Maybe we could start with Christians simply forgiving the debts of their fellow Christians. There are also Christian ministries that raise funds and donations purely for the purpose of being able to pay off people’s medical debts. What a blessing to be able to say to someone they are set free from what they owed for something as vital as their own health care.
And what about debt at faith-based hospitals? Or education debt owed to Christian colleges and universities? What about the indebtedness that comes when folks fall on hard times? How could it change the world if Christians and Christians institutions simply chose to cancel the debts of other Jesus followers? I’m not suggesting this be where the practice should end, but it would be a great place for a global “year of the Lord’s” favor to begin.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How do you imagine Jesus’ Jubilee Debt Forgiveness could be applied in our world today? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work
you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 29: Matthew 18:15-20. Lectionary A, Proper 18
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/_E6OhdHRp_Q?si=d743j2SBjL8gJLBJ
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Relating to Those with Whom We Disagree
Herb Montgomery | September 8, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:15-20)
Our reading this week is not found in Mark’s or John’s version of the Jesus story. It is included in Luke’s version of our reading this week:
“So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” (Luke 17:3-4)
I find it interesting that Matthew’s version explains to how Jesus followers should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who doesn’t listen. Luke’s version only explains how they should respond to a fellow Jesus follower who repents.
The admonition to forgive seventy times seven times if need be (Matthew 18:20-21 cf. Luke 17:3-4) has produced a lot of abuse because that passage can be interpreted in harmful ways. We’ll explore that soon. This week’s lectionary reading, though, focuses on verses 15-20.
This is a passage written when the Jesus community was grappling with how to respond to fellow Jesus community members who were making choices the community felt were out of harmony with the teaching they attributed to Jesus.
We also get a taste of the Jewishness of the Matthean Jesus community here, which cites precedent from the Hebrew scriptures:
“One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” (Deuteronomy 19:15)
This text from Deuteronomy would have spoken to the Matthean Jewish Jesus followers in Galilee.
Another interesting note is how this passage reflects more of the social bias against pagans and tax collectors in the larger Galilean society than the rest of the Jesus story does. This apparently negative admonition seems to contrast starkly with the way Jesus actually treated pagans and tax collectors in Matthew’s version of his story.
Consider the following examples:
Jesus welcomed and shared table fellowship with tax collectors:
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)
Further, one of Jesus’ own disciples was “Matthew the tax collector.” (Matthew 10:3)
Jesus was also labelled a friend of tax collectors:
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:19)
Jesus even affirmed tax collectors who were entering his vision of a just human society (the kingdom) over people who refused the vision due to the economic losses they stood to suffer:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.’” (Matthew 21:31)
Although Zacchaeus’ example is found in Luke, not Matthew, it is a great representative of the tax collectors who were choosing to following Jesus:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:1-10)
This leaves us with interpretive options. It is quite possible that the the early Jesus community created the procedure in our reading this week as the need arose. It is also possible (though less probable) that this procedure originated with Jesus himself: in this case, the passage teaches us to relate to fellow Jesus followers refusing to listen as Jesus did, as someone to be won again, and as worth extending table fellowship and an invitation to follow Jesus again. I find this interpretation less compelling given how tax collectors and pagans were treated at the time Matthew’s gospel was written.
Regardless of its origins, I do appreciate the nugget of wisdom within the procedure: When a fellow member of your religious or non-religious community is engaging in harmful behavior, go to the person and talk to them about it. So many misunderstandings can be solved through a conversation.
The next step in the procedure, “take one or two others along,” sounds a lot to me like an intervention. Thus the issue has to be important enough to justify bringing others in.
When I consider real-life examples where the person being spoken to doesn’t respond in ways their friends or community members want them to, what always follows is a schism in the relationship with the person bringing the concern or in relation to the community.
I’ve been on both sides of this procedure. I’ve been among friends who in love for another friend staged an intervention which saved their life: today our friend is in a much better place than they would have been had they continued down their original path of self-destruction.
I’ve also been on the receiving end. Many times folks attempted to intervene with me when I and Renewed Heart Ministries first began affirming and welcoming those who are part of the LGBTQ community. Eventually I and those who came to me concerned about who I was affirming and including in a gospel of love parted ways. Looking back now, as the adage goes, I’d rather be excluded over whom I include than included for whom I exclude.
Just a few weeks ago, I answered a call from a concerned White Christian who thought I speak out about racial justice too much. Our conversation didn’t change their mind, and I’m not about to change either in the face of the racially based harm still happening in our society. So we parted ways.
In these cases, I guess I’d have to say I am now treated as a “tax collector” or a “pagan”: their relationship to me resembles much more the biases against pagans and tax collectors in 1st Century Galilee than it does the Jesus of the gospels. I would love it if they treated me the way Jesus treated tax collectors! But that’s not been my experience.
So what is a life-giving way to relate to those with whom we have significant differences? Are all differences the same? Are some differences of such intrinsic significance that in the wake of disagreement, we must end relationships? Disagreements about a person’s worth and right to existence are much different than other conflicts. Are we sure that what we disagree about is at that level? Or are we too quick to sever relationships over the slightest differences? We must weigh both the values over which we are disagreeing and the value of the relationship that may be lost.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, do we turn a blind eye because we are conflict averse and afraid of rocking the boat? I appreciate that in this week’s reading, Jesus followers are not encouraged to avoid conflict, but to lean in, beginning with one-on-one conversation.
How I wish many stories that have circulated about me over the years would have begun first with a simple conversation. Conversations don’t solve everything. Sometimes the conflict is unavoidable. But how much misinformed harm can been averted with a conversation? We shouldn’t jump to rumors, nor bury our heads in the sand. The life-giving option lies somewhere in the middle, beginning with a direct discussion. Which steps come next can’t be predicted, but whatever those steps are, may we take each one thoughtfully with life-giving intent for everyone involved.
The rest of our reading refers to binding and loosing. You can hear me and Todd Leonard discuss this teaching on YouTube.
Lastly for this week, the promise of where two or more are agreed in our reading this week repurposes Jewish rabbinic wisdom contemporary to this passage. The wisdom stated that where two or more studied the Torah, God was present in their midst.
The life-giving grappling for me this week revolves around the first portion of this week’s reading: What is a life-giving procedure for relating to those in our communities with whom we have concerns and disagreements?
Concerns and disagreements will always happen. Human beings are messy. We all get to choose how we navigate those concerns and disagreements in a life giving or death dealing way.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the counsel in week’s reading inform your relationship with others with whom you may disagree? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 28: Matthew 16.21-28. Lectionary A, Proper 17
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/IWvmLXmKTss?si=8h2rhEwJMyGUpIFB
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
Herb Montgomery | September 1, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:21-28)
Seeing Jesus’ death as his destiny to suffer was only one way early Christians sought to make sense of his state execution.
As we consider this week’s reading, let’s consider that during this time, Jesus’ followers were facing persecution and martyrdom for pushing for a world that was safer, more compassionate, more egalitarian, and more inclusive: changes that would cost the privileged, propertied, and powerful who were profiting from their society’s injustices and unequal structure.
What I find most fascinating about this week’s reading is that multiple segments of early Christians equated the cross with an unjust backlash from those in power for promoting a more just world (as Jesus did when he flipped the money changers’ tables in the Temple). That world was something followers of Jesus were to embrace as part of what it meant to follow Jesus in their social context. Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place:
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:38)
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
And also in the non-canonical gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “Whoever doesn’t . . . take up their cross like I do isn’t worthy of me.” (Gospel of Thomas 55)
Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out how prevalent in the gospels this point of view is when they write:
“For [the gospel of] Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time.” (The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Kindle Locations 1591-1593)
A word of caution, though: As much as participation remedies harmful substitutionary interpretations of Jesus’ death, the mantra of “taking up one’s cross” has also been used to harm marginalized and disenfranchised communities and people trying to survive abuse.
Taking up or bearing one’s cross has often been used as a metaphor for being passive in enduring the abuse and/or injustice someone may be facing. Pastors used this rhetoric to counsel my own mother to stay in abusive marriages. It’s counsel that has often proven lethal, both for men and women.
Taking up a cross and following Jesus doesn’t mean putting up with abuse or injustice. The cross was the tool of the state used against those who were resisting abuse and injustice, not being passively silent. Rome used the threat of the cross to quell uprisings and revolts.
In other words, the cross is not an injustice that someone should simply bear with their hopes and sights set on heaven. The cross was what someone suffered at the hands of the powerful and elite when that person or others did not simply bear the injustice and harms of their oppression and marginalization.
If you don’t speak up, if you remain passive in the face of injustice, there is no cross to bear. A cross only enters the picture when we speak up and speak out, and those in power are threatened enough to threaten us with a cross if we don’t shut up.
In those moments, Jesus encourages his followers to keep speaking up, keep speaking out, keep pushing for change. This is a far cry from Jesus counseling his followers to simply bear injustice. Jesus encourages his followers: when they are afraid, when they experiencing pushback in response to their calls and demonstrations for change, keep at it even if they threaten you with a cross.
These are the moments when we are not self-sacrificing. We aren’t choosing to die; we are choosing not to let go of that which is life-giving, just, right, and good. Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose not to let go of life when threatened with death for doing so. There is an important difference. If we define the cross as passivity that we should imitate, how we respond to injustice and wrongs in our world will also be passive. We’ll set our sights on a future heaven, leaving our present world untouched, unchallenged, and unchanged.
But if we define the cross as punishment for speaking up and working for a safer, more compassionate, just world here, now, we will see it as punishment that we are not to allow to silence us. We will bear it as we keep working to make the world a better place, and that will change our response to injustice and abuse in our daily lives.
Choosing death doesn’t bring life. Choosing life brings life. In the very next statement of our passage, Jesus says:
“For whoever wants to save their life [by choosing to be silent] will lose it [abuse and injustice will continue], but whoever loses their life for me [speaking out about harms being committed] will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world [by being silently complicit in injustice], yet forfeit their soul [their being, who they are]? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
Again, this was written at a time in Galilee when the Jesus-following community was experiencing persecution for their vision of a society where everyone was taken care of. That vision, inspired by Jesus, was a threat to those profiting from inequity.
What does this mean for us today?
Think back to a time when you experienced pushback for speaking out against injustice. Were you encouraged not to rock the boat or to just remain silent? Were you misguidedly told to simply “bear your cross?”
That situation was not your cross to bear. It was injustice. The Jesus of our story this week encourages you to keep speaking out even if those who are disturbed threaten you with a cross.
I want to be clear here. The cross is not an intrinsic part of following Jesus because following Jesus is not a death cult. It is a life path. The cross only becomes a part of following Jesus when those threatened by a more just world choose to use a cross to threaten you.
We are witnessing this in the U.S. daily. From courtroom judges receiving death threats for doing what is right and privileged people being threatened by a multiracial, diverse democracy, to men responding in fragility to a doll movie or cisgender people feeling attacked when trans people experience equality and justice, there are so many, many stories. Crosses have not disappeared, they’ve simply changed form.
When a more compassionate, just, and safe world for everyone is perceived as a threat to privileged people, when those people lash out and seek to silence you, using rhetoric like “being woke” as a slur, the Jesus of this week’s reading is telling us, keep going. It’s working.
Even in the face of threats, keep speaking out and working alongside those our present system deems “the least of these.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does taking up a cross mean 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.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
Injustice, Oppression, and Violence Being Put Right
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 27: Matthew 16.13-20. Lectionary A, Proper 16.
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/I0tZzUzbl1o?si=BsitUoNr_ZA6YJOn
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
Herb Montgomery | August 25, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“For Jesus followers today, do we believe that in the teachings of Jesus there is a path toward healing injustice, oppression, and violence in our world today? Or does Jesus’ death just provide us with a ticket out of this place to a better world? I side with the former.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
When Christians today call Jesus “Messiah,” we must take great care not to drift into supersessionism or antisemitism. Let’s talk about it.
At the time of Jesus, the great Jewish hope was not that humans would one day become disembodied souls in a post mortem blissful realm or some far distant cloud. It was that Jewish liberation from foreign oppression would come, and that this liberation would also mark the end of all injustice, violence, and oppression not only for the Jewish people but for the entire world. This was a time that might begin with local liberation, yet it would swell to the setting right of all injustice, the putting right of all that is wrong with the world, and the end of all oppression and all violence. Establishing justice would usher in an era of peace and safety where no one need be afraid anymore.
“Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.” (Isaiah 9:7)
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations. (Isaiah 42:1)
“Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. (Isaiah 51:4)
“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 4:4)
Again, this was not a hope of one day entering a postmortem heaven, but of establishing a just, compassionate, safe world here on earth, one where each person could experience home.
For many of those within the community of Jewish wisdom, this hope was associated with placing a Jewish King from the line of David back on a Jewish throne again (see Isaiah 9). This is where the idea of a Messiah first emerges. The Messiah (King) was God’s “anointed one”—and that is simply what “Messiah” means: anointed one.
But it wasn’t from the Old Testament that our modern way of thinking of Messiah came about. Our modern understanding developed later in Rabbinic Judaism, after the destruction of Jerusalem. Early Rabbinic Judaism developed alongside the early Jesus movement, and in dialogue with this Jewish wisdom the early Jewish Jesus community began referring to Jesus as the Messiah.
Here a few examples, most canonical and one non-canonical. Also notice that in each of these stories the claim that Jesus is the Messiah is never directly made by Jesus about himself but always a claim made by Jesus’ followers in the narratives.
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter ). (John 1:35-42)
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 6:66-69)
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (John 11:25-27)
Jesus said to his disciples, “If you were to compare me to someone, who would you say I’m like?” Simon Peter said to him, “You’re like a just angel.” Matthew said to him, “You’re like a wise philosopher.” Thomas said to him, “Teacher, I’m completely unable to say whom you’re like.” Jesus said, “I’m not your teacher. Because you’ve drunk, you’ve become intoxicated by the bubbling spring I’ve measured out.” He took him aside and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked, “What did Jesus say to you?” Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the things he said to me, you’ll pick up stones and cast them at me, and fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.” (Gospel of Thomas, 13)
Like the story of Peter getting out of the boat and walking on the water with Jesus, the words about Peter after his declaration are Matthew’s addition to the story. Here is the account in the earlier written gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. (Mark 8:27-30)
Luke’s version is closer to Mark’s version of this story than Matthew’s:
Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.” Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. (Luke 9:18-21)
For the early Jesus community, the idea of calling Jesus the Messiah was, for better or worse, much less about establishing a Jewish King on a Jewish throne to bring about Jewish liberation and much more about seeing Messiah as someone who would establish justice on Earth, ending oppression for all universally, both those Jewish and non-Jewish.
“For he has set a day when he will order the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31)
Today, however, it is much more life giving to speak of Jesus without using the language of messiahs and heroes. For Jesus followers today, do we believe that in the teachings of Jesus there is a path toward healing injustice, oppression, and violence in our world today? Or does Jesus’ death just provide us with a ticket out of this place to a better world? I side with the former.
There is much to draw from the Jesus story when we see it through the lens of the Jewish hope of putting to right all injustice in our world today. As I mentioned two weeks ago, today we face the injustices of racism, White supremacy, Christian nationalism, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, economic elitism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, and so many more challenges. And though these issues are not all directly named in the Jesus story, his story does model how to be a source of healing and life when facing things that are harmful. Principles for how we can be about healing the harms in our present world are there for us to experiment with.
Today, I don’t use “Messiah” language to describe Jesus or my claims about Jesus. But I do affirm that in the Jesus of the Jesus story, we encounter values, ethics, and teachings that if actually applied to our lives could make Jesus followers a source of healing for the harms in our world. Let me be clear that Christians are right now largely responsible for many of these harms. And so maybe that’s where we as Jesus followers can start if we haven’t started already.
Rather than “converting the world” to Jesus, maybe we could focus today on working to win Christianity and those who bear Jesus’ name to the teachings of the Jesus in the gospels. If we could just apply Jesus’s teachings to the list of injustices listed above that are within Christianity today, we’d be a long way toward being a source of healing and life in our larger world. In the words of 1 Peter 4:17, may the putting right of injustice in our world “begin with God’s household.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the Jesus story inform how you relate to injustice, today? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
Get your copy today at renewedheartministries.com
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice. Free Sign-Up HERE
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