Wisdom and Understanding Give Birth to Social Justice
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JESUS MAFA
Wisdom and Understanding Give Birth to Social Justice
Herb Montgomery; January 3, 2025
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this past weekend was from the gospel of Luke:
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:41-52)
Lukes’ gospel is the only version of the Jesus story to contain a narrative about the childhood of Jesus.
By the time Luke’s gospel was written, the Jesus community had become more diverse than the Jewish movement it began as. It had evolved into a richly cosmopolitan community where many members valued the hellenistic culture and stories they had been socialized by. By including a narrative about Jesus’ childhood, Luke’s gospel is taking a cue from traditional Greek biographies that told a story of the hero’s childhood that foreshadowed what kind of leader the hero would be.
This story of Jesus in the Temple forecasts that Jesus will become a wise teacher with exceptional wisdom and understanding that amazed the Temple teachers. The story concludes with Jesus returning to Nazareth and growing into even greater wisdom and understanding there .
By the time Jesus becomes an adult in Luke’s gospel, his wisdom and understanding of the Torah had grown into teachings that brought him a following. These teachings manifested in “good news to the poor . . . freedom for the prisoners . . . sight for the blind,” and teachings that “set the oppressed free” and proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
The childhood story invests Jesus with the wisdom and understanding that produces fruit in him as an adult teacher. That fruit is what we would call social justice today.
Jesus called for the kind of social justice, born out of love of neighbor, that stood squarely in solidarity with the oppressed of his own time and place. James Cone states in one of his last books, The Cross and the Lynching Tree:
“I find nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair, as revealed in the biblical and black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.” (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 201)
Social justice was the Hebrew prophets’ righteous endeavor:
“Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)
It was this prophetic tradition that both John the Baptist and Jesus stand in and expand to those pushed to the edges or margins of their society as well. To pursue social justice in whatever context we find ourselves is therefore a righteous act exemplified by Jesus himself.
Social justice is rooted in love of neighbor which, though not always practiced, is the central tenet of any religion about Jesus:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater. (Mark 12:31)
To love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Mark 12:33)
The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love [of neighbor] is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
(Galatians 5:14)
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. (James 2:8)
Loving your neighbor and social justice are two phrases referring to the same thing. As Stephen Mattson writes, “To dismiss social justice is to dismiss the worth and humanity of your neighbor” (On Love and Mercy: A Social Justice Devotional, p. 16).
Any Christian teaching, action, or movement that disparages, discourages or prevents adherents from caring about social justice rejects Jesus’ central wisdom and teachings on loving one’s neighbors. Any form of Christianity that inhibits your pursuit and practice of social justice denies the central tenet of the gospel that the Jesus of the stories taught, for the work of social justice is merely the act of applying the ethic of loving one’s neighbor.
And yet, even within some more progressive forms of Christianity today, pursuing social justice within and outside of one’s faith community too often comes at a high cost. After all, the Jesus of our story did end up on a Roman cross. (Though his story doesn’t end there.)
Pursuing social justice will cost you. If it doesn’t, then your story is the exception, not the rule, and your experience would be very unique. Too often, when someone seeks to pursue social justice as an expression of their faith in Jesus and his call to love our neighbor, the result is loss of reputation, friends, family, and income. And there are even those who have also lost their lives. You may find yourself feeling abandoned, but you are not. You are standing in a rich tradition and you are not alone. You and many others are in the same story we read of Jesus in the gospels. You’re in the right story. Even when we may find the path of loving our neighbor discouraging, keep learning, keep listening, keep doing. You are engaged in a holy act of love alongside a holy community of love. As it is written:
“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18, emphasis added.)
Love, compassion, and social justice are all connected here. However much we profess to love, that love will manifest itself in caring for the material needs of our neighbors.
It will lead us to seek to be more connected to the world around us. It won’t lead us to want to escape to some far distant cloud or private, inward place, but will lead us to be more effectively engaged with our world in solidarity with our neighbors. We won’t simply care about the wellbeing of our neighbors’ souls (whatever that may be), but we’ll care about their concrete, material existence and want them to receive social justice along with us.
Social justice is the practical fruit of loving one’s neighbor. Therefore, to say that Christianity is rooted in love of neighbor is to also state that Christianity bears the fruit of rooted in social justice out of love for our neighbor. Whatever form of Christianity we subscribe to, our faith should not disconnect us from our world, from our community, from our society. It should propel us to lean into and be more deeply connected to our world, community and larger society.
This coming year, let’s lean more deeply into Jesus’ wisdom and teachings on loving our neighbor and embrace whatever adventure to which that leads.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How do you want to lean into loving your neighbor this new year? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.
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The Social Jesus Podcast is available on all major podcast carriers.
You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking” where Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 2 Episode 1: Wisdom and Understanding Give Birth to Social Justice
Luke 2:41-52
“Any Christian teaching, action, or movement that disparages, discourages or prevents adherents from caring about social justice rejects Jesus’ central wisdom and teachings on loving one’s neighbors. Any form of Christianity that inhibits your pursuit and practice of social justice denies the central tenet of the gospel that the Jesus of the stories taught, for the work of social justice is merely the act of applying the ethic of loving one’s neighbor. Social justice is the practical fruit of loving one’s neighbor. Therefore, to say that Christianity is rooted in love of neighbor is to also state that genuine Christianity bears the fruit of social justice out of love for our neighbor. Whatever form of Christianity we subscribe to, our faith should not disconnect us from our world, from our community, from our society. It should propel us to lean into and be more deeply connected to our world, community and larger society.”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.
Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.
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Declaring War Against Poverty
November is A Shared Table 2021 month! Find out more here.
(To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast, click here.)
by Herb Montgomery | November 12, 2021
“Seen through this lens and given Jesus’ love for the poor of his own society, Jesus’s criticism of the state was a criticism of a system that had both created poverty and then further exploited those forced to live in that poverty . . . In the gospels we get a picture of Jesus who, focused on sustainable (eternal) life, would have criticized any system that created luxury for a few at the expense of the many.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.” (Mark 13:1-8)
By the time this week’s reading was written, the Jesus movement was living in the wake of destructions including the Jewish-Roman war (66-70 C.E.) that culminated in Rome’s razing Jerusalem and the Jewish temple to the ground. These followers of Jesus are trying to make sense of all these events.
Mark’s gospel therefore paints Jesus as critical of Jerusalem and the temple as the capital seat of the Temple State to the point of foretelling their destruction. Each gospel’s version of the Jesus story describes Jesus as critical of Jerusalem and the temple, and Mark even includes Jesus’ criticism as one of the charges brought against him in his final trials:
“Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: ‘We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’ Yet even then their testimony did not agree.” (Mark 14:57-59)
I want us to wrestle with why Jesus, a faithful Jewish male in early 1st century Judaism, would have been critical of the temple or Jerusalem? Think of the term “Jerusalem” here in much the same way as many say “D.C.” or “Washington” when speaking of the system of government centered there.
Christians have long interpreted the events fo 70 C.E. as God punishing the Jews for rejecting Jesus, and that’s been deeply harmful to our Jewish siblings. I want to offer an alternative interpretation.
The Temple was the heart of Judaism during the time of Jesus, but let’s look at this week’s passage in more than its religious context. As the seat of the Jewish Temple State, the Temple was also the heart of the banking system and the food industry (both meat and grain), and the seat of political power for Judea under Rome.
Jesus’ criticisms should not be interpreted as anti-Jewish or anti-Judaism. Jesus was a faithful Jewish man debating within his own society, and his voice was one of many at the time arguing about what it meant to be a faithful Jewish follower of the Torah given the Torah’s teachings on the poor and eliminating poverty. Seen through this lens and given Jesus’ love for the poor of his own society, Jesus’s criticism of the state was a criticism of a system that had both created poverty and then further exploited those forced to live in that poverty.
Those living after the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 C.E. would have recognized the events described in this week’s passage. As we’ve discussed, the Jewish-Roman War began an initial uprising of the poor against rich Temple elites who served as conduits of the Roman Empire. The poor people’s revolt began with their overrunning the Temple and burning all the debt records held against the poor, and each stage of the takeover escalated. Once the Jewish rebels gained control and Rome was brought in, a war broke out between the rebels and Rome while the Jewish elites futilely endeavored to maintain allegiance to Rome as violent uprising erupted all around them.
Josephus corroborates Mark’s descriptions of this era. In The War of the Jews, he describes “a great number of false prophets” who with “signs and wonders” promised “deliverance” or liberation. But in the end, their movements only resulted in masses of the “miserable people” who followed them being slaughtered by Rome (Book 6.285-309). Josephus also writes of the famine in Jerusalem that resulted when the grain storehouses “which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years” were burned by various “treacherous faction in the city” (5.21-26).Finally, he describes the burning the Temple itself (6.249-266).
Many more than Jesus called the people to address the plight of the poor and to end a system that financially benefited wealthy families at the poor’s expense. The rich got richer and the poor only got poorer.
So Mark’s gospel called its audience to see the overthrowing of such economically exploitative systems not as “the end,” but as the “beginnings of birth pains” for a new world.
This makes me think of how so many living at this stage of the pandemic now long for a return to normal. I don’t want to go back to that normal, a world that disproportionally harmed certain sectors of society while giving others privilege, power, and property. I don’t want a post-pandemic world that looks like the pre-pandemic world. We can do better. And we have an opportunity to do just that now. With all the talk of “building back better,” we must continue to ask “better for whom?” Over the last year, the billionaire class has only become more wealthy despite almost 5 million lives lost globally and over 742,000 within the U.S.
So Jesus’ critique of the Temple and Jerusalem was not about being against Judaism, but rather his opposition to an economic, political, and social system that creates and worsens poverty. I wonder what Mark’s Jesus would say of the United States today if he were on earth?
Jesus’s path pointed us toward life, life to the full (John 10:10), specially for the poor (Luke 6:22)—life and life more abundantly for all. In the gospels we get a picture of Jesus who, focused on sustainable (eternal) life, would have criticized any system that created luxury for a few at the expense of the many. Following Jesus’ path means following him in rejecting any system that manufactures scarcity to create wealth at the expense of vulnerable people.
I’m reminded of the words of liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez:
“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.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History, p. 44)
Gutierrez’ words resonate with Mark’s picture of Jesus. What would a different social order look like to you? Can you imagine a world without poverty? What would we need to have in place to eliminate poverty? Jesus’ gospel spoke of a God of life who loved all and desired “life to the full” for all the objects of that love.
Are these just words? Do we who follow this Jesus really believe that a world like that is possible? Can poverty really be overcome? The child tax credit that has already lifted 40% of children out of poverty here in the U.S., and the US just approved billions of increased dollars for the U.S. military budget. I wonder what would happen if we apportioned that same money toward a war against global poverty instead?
It’s convenient for Christians to interpret Jesus’ criticism of the Temple as being about Judaism rather than being about addressing poverty. After all, poverty is a matter of human responsibility. We create it. We can change it. If we choose to interpret Jesus’ words as the latter, then we, too, are called to address poverty. That is the life-giving interpretation; the other bears the fruit of poverty being inevitable or unchangeable and therefore the fruit of death and harm.
I’ll close this week with the words of Nelson Mandela from a speech he gave in 2005 at the Make Poverty History rally in London’s Trafalgar Square:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been discussing what life-giving sharing looks like? Are there societies that in your opinion are managing wealth disparity well. What is it about those societies that you like? What are things in those societies that you feel still need addressed? What parts would you like to see reproduced here in the U.S.? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, action, and justice.
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Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, and Jesus
BY HERB MONTGOMERY
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34
Before you imagine that Jesus is endorsing taking up a sword here, understand that he’s describing a sword raised against himself and his followers for calling for a change in the status quo. Those benefitting from the current social order would raise their swords against the changes Jesus came to make. If we simply keep reading, Jesus implores his followers not to take up a sword in response to others, but to instead embrace the cross:
“For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:35-39, emphasis added.)
The nonviolence Jesus taught here would create disruption. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice. Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence not only included passive noncooperation; they also included nonviolent direct action. Nonviolent direct action disrupts the status quo, the domination system. It confronts oppression, yet at the same time seeks to win oppressors away from their systems of oppression.
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” —Nonviolent direct action, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
This past weekend I had the privilege of traveling to Baltimore with my daughter Emarya to participate with many others in a rally against Police Brutality. Some stand in solidarity with #blacklivesmatter and others stand in solidarity with #policeofficersmatter, yet most should be able to agree that police brutality is dehumanizing and damaging both to officers and to community members.
Emarya and I left home at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning to embark on a four-and-a-half hour journey to the lawn outside of Baltimore City Hall. We arrived just before lunch, and, after a quick bite to eat, we grabbed a parking place and Emarya’s poster, and began our four-block hike to the rally.
My experience at the #blacklivesmatter rally in Baltimore took me right back to the Jesus story. Allow me to recount that narrative for a few minutes.
Jesus shut it down.
The Temple stood as a domination system of oppression toward the poor. The system sacrificed those who were innocent for the benefit of those in power. The Presence had long departed this system that demanded the sacrifice of innocents. Yet the cursing of the fig tree in Matthew and Mark, which marks the end of the Temple, is more than the end of Jerusalem as the city of the “elect” and more than the end of animal sacrifice in religious worship.
Through this story, Matthew and Mark are whispering to us about the end of a way of life founded on sacrifice. This end began with Jesus’ exposure of the sacrificial system in the Temple, and his uncovering of a larger reality where we see that it is the marginalized, disinherited and subjugated who are the actual innocent victims of the slaughter. The Temple in Jesus’ day not only promoted the way of sacrifice, but placed it at the very heart of Jerusalem’s religion and worship. (When we add Divine affirmation to any system of oppression, the abuse becomes decisively compounded.) Jesus had come to bring an end to domination systems’ way of life here on Earth, and he initiated the commencement of an entirely new, radically different way of life. Jesus announced a radically new social order that he referred to as “the kingdom.” Though it looked nothing like any kingdom that had ever existed throughout history, it was not imperial. Jesus’ new social order took the form and shape of a shared, heterogeneous table.
The rest of the Jesus story flows from cause to effect. Jesus’ nonviolent direct action in the Temple leads to his ultimate arrest by the Temple Police. Jesus is then subjected to multiple trials from the Powers that benefit from the way of life that his kingdom threatens to take away. These three sacrificial systems, which we will cover in a moment, unite to crucify Jesus in a supreme act of injustice. But then the injustice of the Domination Systems is overturned and conquered by the resurrection of Jesus, the glorifying of him as the founder of a new healed world.
The resurrection marks the end of all domination systems that demand the sacrifice of innocent victims for the benefit of the masses. It doesn’t matter whether the domination system is political, represented by Pilate. A political domination system depends on violence against political enemies and a “religion of war” in which the present generation is sacrificed, like lambs to the slaughter, to sustain the belief that citizens are worthy of the sacrifices of past wars. It doesn’t matter whether the domination system is religious, represented by Caiaphas. A religious domination system is rooted in fear of divine repercussions. Adherents are threatened if those deemed as “sinners” are not shunned, marginalized, scapegoated, and ultimately sacrificed to maintain the favor of God or the gods. And it doesn’t matter whether the domination system is economic, represented by Herod. An economic domination system, driven by greed, sacrifices the poor at the bottom of society’s pyramid structures to maintain the lifestyle of the few positioned at the top (see Luke 6:20, 24).
The story of the Resurrected One shows that the presence of God is not found in the most exclusive “holy places” belonging to those “dirty rotten systems” as Dorothy Day called them (see Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45). The Jesus story teaches us that the Presence truly dwells in the ones shamefully lynched on the orders of the united, threatened Powers-that-be. And the story of the Resurrected One proclaims the beginning of a whole new world in which we need not fear the consequences of our nonviolent engagement against those political, religious, and economic systems and powers, engagement rooted in transformative love for both the oppressed and the oppressors. We stand in the victory of Christ over each of these domination systems, a victory that has already been won. We are people standing in the light streaming from the empty tomb, and we are following the Resurrected One.
Seen in their own context, the stories of Jesus’ nonviolent direct action, arrest, trial, execution by crucifixion, and victory through resurrection converge to produce a worldview paradigm-shift. This shift was too significant and too exposing for political, religious, and economic systems based on violence, fear, and greed to tolerate.
The story of the Resurrected One offers the same challenge for us today. The resurrection invites each of us to align our own stories with the story of Jesus, to cleanse Temples, and, if need be, to embrace our crosses to expose and disarm the dominations systems of our day.
Yes, Jerusalem was teetering on the precipice of destruction in her relations to Rome. But Jesus wasn’t arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. He was offering Jerusalem the chance to participate in a whole new way of life and a different future from the events of A.D. 70. When we follow Jesus in our world today, we’re not arranging deck chairs on the Titanic either. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be healed. And this is true of us as well.
If we would simply be open to learning how to recognize and then speak the truth about the systemic evils of oppression, violence, fear, and greed, a new awareness of, and an honesty about, could lead to a decided action toward change.
Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many more, far from seeing Jesus’ actions in the Temple as contradicting nonviolence, saw in his actions the first step of nonviolent direct action. Jesus shut it down. Nonviolent direct action is, at minimum, is a three-step process. First, the systemic oppression must be confronted. Second, wait for the violent response that the domination system metes out when it feels threatened. Third, bear that violent response with enemy-transforming love to awaken those who perpetuate the system and who, by perpetuating the injustice, tie their own victimhood to systemic evil.
Gandhi, King, and others saw in Jesus’ nonviolent direct Temple action hints for how we can and should engage the domination systems of our own day. Each follower of Jesus is called to engage as well. Whether we drive out livestock and overturn money-changers’ tables (Jesus), tear up a passport in South Africa or lead a salt march in India (Gandhi), or join sit-ins, freedom rides, and marches in the white, evangelical, “Christian” South (King), the Jesus story calls us to align our stories with the story of Jesus: to embrace and even to subvert our “temples,” to face, if need be, a cross, and if so, also a resurrection. The Jesus story calls us to act redemptively and transformatively toward those who benefit from the current structure and systems even when they mock, threaten, insult, accuse, and hate us for engaging them. We are to respond transformatively as we name or expose the injustice of the present systems and display the radical whole new world rooted in and centered around Jesus’ teachings. His story whispers to us that a new world is here, if only we have eyes to see it.
The Resurrection of Jesus is God’s endorsement of Jesus, his teachings, his critique, and his way. When we participate in nonviolent direct action as a method of transforming our world, again, we are simply aligning our stories with the Jesus in the Temple, putting on display, come what may, the truth that a new world has arrived. Again, we stand in the Victory of Christ over each of these domination systems—a Victory that has already been won. We are people standing in the light streaming from the empty tomb, following the Resurrected One.
Last weekend, we followed him to Baltimore City Hall
While at City Hall, I quickly saw there a broad spectrum of people who were also taking part in the events of the day. Folks came from the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam to those who self identified as disciples of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and everyone in between.
I want to say, upfront and unequivocally, that I was blessed by everyone I met at this rally. And it was a paradigm-shifting experience for me. What struck me most was not that I was a white life in the midst of many black lives, but that mine was a lower-middle-class life immersed in a world where so many precious lives were fettered to inner city poverty.
Racism and economics go hand in hand in America. We live in the shadow of a capitalist system that has been fueled by racism and enforced by militarism. Today, it is different, but not wholly corrected. Think of it in terms of Hasbro’s game Monopoly.
During the Reconstruction era in America, Jim Crow laws significantly limited how much and how easily black people could compete in the game of capitalism. Not only has black life still not fully recovered from those limitations, but, from what I witnessed in Baltimore, the limitations themselves have also not been fully corrected. Today, for many black lives to escape inner city poverty, they have to possess a higher than average level of talent in areas such as sports, music, entertainment, general academics, or medicine. There are artificial limitations still placed on their ability to play the game, imitations that I simply never have to face. Those who live daily in the desperation of trying to survive while trapped in inner city poverty will live in ways that those in middle and upper classes simply cannot understand.
Before last weekend, I knew the intersection of race and economics in theory. And then Saturday submerged me in a community where I witnessed people still experiencing the reality of an economic system where race is a significant factor.
It was through watching these people that Jesus’ liberation work for the poor clicked for me.
Jesus’ work for the poor is the ideal point for us to start applying Jesus’ gospel to the lives of all those who are disinherited by our domination system today. Whether it be in matters of race, gender, or orientation, Jesus’ systemic change, his good news to the poor, is where we must begin. As James Cone wrote, “Accordingly any understanding of the Kingdom in Jesus’ teachings that fails to make the poor and their liberation its point of departure is a contradiction of Jesus’ presence.” (God of the Oppressed.)
In other words, if our gospel is not first and foremost systemic good news for the poor—fatally undermining all other forms of discrimination—then we have to at least wonder whether our Jesus is the same Jesus in the story. It’s not enough to enable black lives, women’s lives, and LGBTQ lives to advance in a “dirty rotten system.” It is not enough to enable all with the same opportunity to thrive in the status quo of haves and have-nots. Jesus was not preaching equality in regards to equal “opportunity” for all. Jesus’ new social order is one where there are no more haves and have-nots, where the last are the same as the first, and where those who gather much share with those who gathered little. The system is not to be cleansed. It is to be dismantled. The status quo is not to be simply critiqued. It’s to be deconstructed. Jesus didn’t cleanse the temple and its way of sacrifice, he ended it.
On my way home from the march, I picked up a copy of Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited. This was the book that MLK took with him when he travelled and read from before each march.
What I began to see as I stood in the midst of America’s disinherited last Saturday was that Jesus was not someone from the upper or middle class who chose to help the poor. There is a world of difference in picturing Jesus as the helper OF the poor and a Jesus who WAS poor. He WAS the disinherited. He emerged out of the very people I was standing in the midst of. These were his roots.
The significance of seeing Jesus as one of the disinherited can’t be overestimated. This shift breathes new life into his teachings and their practical implications for how we can follow Jesus nonviolently, confronting and transforming domination systems in our day. Jesus was not lecturing the upper and middle class on how they should help the people beneath them. Jesus spoke to his disinherited peers and equipped them with the means to subvert the entire system.
Yes, this was good news to those the present system left poor, hungry, and weeping. Jesus’ message was also deeply troubling to those benefiting from the present system, who didn’t want things to change.
Broderick Greer tweeted this statement this week: “If your ‘gospel’ isn’t good news to people mourning state-sanctioned police violence and the loss of black life, then it’s not the gospel.”
And I could not agree more.
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 liberation for the slaves, and recovery of sight to the blind in order to set the oppressed free. — Jesus (Luke 4.18)
HeartGroup Application
1. This week I want you to take time each day contemplate the following statement:
“Righteous wealth can only exist where no one is in need.”
2. Journal any thoughts, questions, agreements and disagreements, or insights you have as you reflect each day.
3. Share your notes with your HeartGroup and discuss them this upcoming week.
Till the only world that remains, is a world where Love reins.
I love each of you.
I’ll see you next week.
The Seven Last Sayings of Jesus; Part 1 of 9
Part 1 of 9
Two Definitions of Holiness
BY HERB MONTGOMERY
This week I want to begin a nine-part series leading up to this year’s Easter season. Beginning next week, we will take a look at each of the last sayings we are given in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We will begin with Mark and Matthew and progress from there. We will finally take a look at what relevance the narrative element of the Resurrection may have for us in our world today in the week leading up to Easter.
In the interest of being transparent, this series has come out of an exercise I was engaged in personally throughout 2014. As each week is composed of seven days, I took one of the last sayings of Jesus each day as the subject of contemplation—one saying, every day, for the whole year. What I’m about to share, very humbly, is simply the fruit of that year-long contemplation.
I want to begin this week by taking a look at what actually put Jesus on the cross.
Jesus’ crucifixion (and resurrection) in the gospels comes at the end of a long history of contention that began between the privileged/oppressive priesthood (Levitical) and prophets who spoke up as advocates for those the priests were oppressing. For dominating priests, holiness was defined by the purity codes attributed to Moses (sometimes referred to as holiness codes). For the prophets, holiness was defined not by ritualistic or religious “purity” but justice for the oppressed; mercy for the poor, fatherless children, and widows (within a patriarchal culture); and humility. [1]
The struggle between these two groups began, by most scholars’ reckoning, with Amos and Isaiah (Isaiah Chapters 1–39) in the eighth century BCE.
Here is just a sampling:
Amos
This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.” (Amos 2.6–7)
There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground. (Amos 5.7)
You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. (Amos 5.11–12)
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5.21–24)
Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”— skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat. (Amos 8.4–6)
Notice the meticulous keeping of the New Moon and Sabbath (ritual purity codes) but utter disregard for justice toward the poor and oppressed.
Isaiah
Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah! [2] “The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the LORD. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1.10–17)
She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her—but now murderers! (Isaiah 1.21)
Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them. (Isaiah 1.23)
Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10.1–2)
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with justice he will govern the needy, with equity he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Justice will be his belt and integrity the sash around his waist. (Isaiah 11.1-5) [3]
LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name . . . You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress . . . (Isaiah 25.1-4)
The Maccabean Revolt
During the time of the Maccabean Revolt, there was a revival in fidelity to the purity codes and the definition of holiness as fidelity to those codes. It was during this time that we see the birth of the Pharisees. This group was more liberal in their theology (angels, resurrection, etc.) yet more strict in their adherence to the purity codes. They stood in alliance with the privileged class of priests, placing the blame for their captivity and foreign oppression on ritual or religious impurity in not keeping the purity codes of Moses. Yet it must be remembered that the prophets stood in direct conflict with this explanation of Israel’s history, expressing that the captivity was rather a result of the abuses of the priestly domination culture over the poor, fatherless, and widowed—of the privileged over the oppressed.
Jesus
By the time Jesus comes on the scene, the priests (along with the Pharisees) are well entrenched again within a politically and economically oppressive system consisting of the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, and Jerusalem/Judea at its heart. Jesus comes not as a teacher out of Judea, or the priesthood, but was rather from the northern region of Galilee, far removed. Galileans, according to the Pharisees and priestly class of Judea, were considered less faithful to the ritual purity/holiness codes as a result, not only because of their proximity to their surrounding Hellenistic culture, but also their distance from Jerusalem, the temple, and the theological leadership of the Pharisees and priestly class themselves.
When one understands this history, along with the political and economic privileges of the priestly class in Judea in the first century, the fact that Jesus takes up the heritage of the prophets in advocating for the oppressed is breathtaking.
“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.” (Luke 4.18)
Just like the prophets before him, in response to the privileged, priestly ruling class of his day, Jesus denounces economic oppression. [4] Just like the prophets before him, in response to the Pharisees defining of holiness as strict adherence to the ritual purity codes of Moses, Jesus stands in solidarity with those the Pharisees label as unclean and defines holiness rather as justice/mercy for those the Pharisees are marginalizing. [5] Remember, the Pharisees defined a “sinner” as a Jew who was not observing the ritual purity codes. That Jesus embraced and ate with these “sinners” infuriated the Pharisees. Holiness to a Pharisee was exclusive and punitive. Holiness to Jesus was inclusive and restorative. Holiness to a Pharisee was defined as strict adherence to ritual purity codes including the Sabbath, the New Moon, the sacrifices, etc. [6] Holiness to Jesus was justice for those the priestly class, along with the Pharisees, were oppressing based on their non-adherence to the purity codes. Jesus would offer a way of worshiping their God that completely bypassed the temple, the sacrifices, and the purity codes. [7]
If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. (Matthew 12.7)
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9.13) [8]
Jesus would take his final stand against the political and economic oppression of the priests, temple tax and its rituals. His effort was not to “cleanse” the temple but to dismantle the entire system.
For those who believed that holiness was defined as adherence to the ritual purity codes, with the temple and sacrifices at its heart, Jesus’ acts would invite greater foreign oppression. In their opinion, contrary to the prophets, it was laxness in adherence to the purity codes that had caused foreign captivity originally. Jesus’ opposition to the Pharisees and priests, along with his doing away with the temple and its rituals would surely bring the destruction of the nation at the hands of foreign enemies once again.
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin . . . “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (John 11.47–50, emphasis added)
It was the priests, along with the temple police, who arrested Jesus. [9] Their privileged way of life was at risk. And yet how twisted it was.
Their perception was thus:
- They defined holiness as adherence to ritual purity.
- The stricter the people were in following the purity codes, the more privileged their political and economic place in their society became.
- Failure to follow strict ritual purity would invite the punishment of their God.
Jesus proclaimed the very opposite:
- Holiness, like previous prophets proclaimed, is justice and equity for the marginalized, oppressed, subordinated, and disadvantaged.
- The dominance system of the present social order, where some are privileged at the subordination and oppression of others, must be abandoned.
- Failure to advocate for the marginalized and the oppressed would be at the heart of all that would eventually result in the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Rome.
How did the ruling class of priests along with the political party of the Pharisees respond to Jesus’ teachings?
Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. (Matthew 27.1, emphasis added)
I’ll close this week with a small insight we get from John’s version of the story of Jesus.
Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. (John 19.31)
It’s as if, right here, we step all the way back into the days of Amos and Isaiah. Once again, there are those who are more concerned with strict adherence to the ritual purity and holiness codes of Moses than this gross act of injustice against one they had just lynched. The story does not end with the success of the Pharisees and the priests in murdering Jesus. In the narrative element of the Resurrection, Jesus’ God stands victoriously against the God of the oppressors. Jesus’ God stands in solidarity with Jesus, as well as the prophets of old, bringing him back to life and overturning and undoing the lynching of Jesus over and against the political and economic oppression of Jesus’ day. The resurrection is God’s “yes” to Jesus and God’s “no” to the established authority. But we will get there. I’ll save that part for Part 9. First, let’s take a look at each of the seven last sayings of Jesus on the cross and see what those statements are whispering to us today.
Marcus Borg once stated, “”Christianity is the only major religion whose central figure was executed by established authority.” As we begin, it would be good to remember that our society today holds, in principle, the same dynamics that existed in Jesus’ day. Whether we are talking about the rich subordinating the poor, the educated subordinating the uneducated, whites subordinating nonwhites, men subordinating women, white women subordinating nonwhite women, straight people subordinating and/or extirpating those who are LGBQ, or cisgender extirpating those who self-identify as transgender, we are living in the Jesus narrative every day. Therefore, if you are a theist, you have to ask yourself how your God defines holiness. Does your God look like Jesus’ God, or does your God look like the God of the priests and Pharisees?
Jesus had a definition of holiness that radically attracted and was embraced by those who were repelled by or steered clear of the definition of holiness put forth by the priestly ruling class of Jesus’ day.
I guess what I’m asking is this: If you are a theist, does your God look like Jesus?
The answer to this question is at the heart of everything. Is your theism destructive or restorative? Inclusive or exclusive? Attractive and inspiring or repulsive? One leads to annihilation and the other to a whole new world.
HeartGroup Application
1. I’d like you to go back and reread all four Gospels. They won’t take you that long. They are shorter than you think. Watch for the dynamics I’ve put forth this week and see if you see them at work in the narrative as well. Look for why the narratives themselves tell us that Jesus’ ministry ended up on a Roman cross. Then we’ll go from there next week.
2. Journal what you discover.
3. Share with your HeartGroup what you write down this upcoming week.
Until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns. Many voices, one new world.
I love each of you.
I’ll see you next week.
1. Micah 6.8—He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
2. Two centuries later, Ezekiel would define the sins of Sodom (and Gomorrah) as violations of social justice. Ezekiel 16.49—“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.”
3. It is most interesting to read the rest of Isaiah 11 as a metaphorical description of a new social order where the present dominance order is replaced with a world where oppressors no longer oppress and victims are no longer victimized, but both, transformed, peacefully coexist.
4. Luke 6.20, 24—Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God . . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Mark 12.40—They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely. Mark 12.43—Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. Luke 18.3—And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
5. Matthew 9.11—When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Matthew 11.19—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 actions.” Luke 15.1–2—Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
6. John 9.16—Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” It is interesting to read the whole of chapter 9 with the redefinition of “holiness” and “sinner” away from the ritual purity codes to the restoration of justice and mercy toward the oppressed.
7. Mark 7.19—“For it doesn’t go into your heart but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)
8. Remember, Jesus is using the Pharisee’s definition of sinner here as someone who was living outside the ritual purity codes of Moses. Jesus defined holiness and the term “sinner” much more like the prophets of old did, which was radically different than the Pharisees, priests, and experts in the purity codes (“experts in the law”).
9. Luke 22.52—Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple police, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?
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