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The Beginning of Birth Pains

Herb Montgomery, November 15, 2024

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our reading this week is from the gospel of 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)

Jesus as More Than a Religious Figure

When we characterize Jesus purely as a religious figure, we back ourselves into a corner where our interpretations can do harm. Let me explain. 

The gospels repeatedly represent Jesus in the narratives as being against the Temple. As Richard Horsley writes, “The Gospels and the materials they incorporate portray Jesus as adamantly opposed to the high priests and the Temple and portray the high priests and scribal-Pharisaic representatives of the temple-state as eager to destroy Jesus” (In Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, p. 48).

A few examples from the gospels are:

“Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them.” (Mark 12:12)

“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” (Mark 14:58)

They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” (Mark 15:27-30)

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (John 2:19)

Even in the Gospel of Thomas (71) we read a similar saying: “Jesus said, ‘I shall destroy this house, and no one will be able to build it.’

Interpreting Jesus only as religious sets us up to interpret these passages as if he were somehow against the religion of the temple, and that has led many Christians through history to separate Jesus from his Jewishness and create a Christianity-versus-Judaism tension that has done untold harm to Jewish people. 

But Jesus was not against his own religious tradition as much as he was against his people’s economic and political exploitation by the high priests and others tied to the Roman-installed Temple State. The Temple State was an extension of Rome during Jesus’ time. Through the Temple State and its complicity with Rome, Jesus’ community experienced injustice, exploitation, and social disintegration. 

So instead of reading Jesus’ critical statements about the temple, high priest, Pharisees, scribes, synagogue leaders, and teachers of the law as Jesus being against Judaism, we should understand that he critiqued the power brokers, apologists, and propagandists of a political and economic unjust system within his own society that was doing deep harm by it’s complicity with the Roman Empire. 

In the stories, these leaders spin Jesus’ critical statements about the Temple State as against the Torah and Moses. But this was their attempt to discredit Jesus and his calls for economic justice, which would have ended their power and profit at the expense of the masses. We see this interpretation in the book of Acts:

“They produced false witnesses, who testified, ‘This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.’” (Acts 6:13-14)

Remember, Jesus was a Jew. He was never a Christian. His followers started Christianity, for sure, but Jesus himself was leading a Jewish renewal movement in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets and he called the village communities of Galilee and Judea back to the Torah’s social justice teachings in opposition to the exploitation and harm being perpetrated at the Temple.

Navigating Trauma in Mark 13

Today, scholars argue over whether Mark’s gospel was written after the Jewish-Roman War or  immediately before it. I’m of the opinion that that Mark was written after the fact as an explanation for world-upheaving events. Either way, Mark’s gospel aims to provide answers for a Jewish Jesus-following community that is either having their world turned upside down or have just had it overturned. 

Our reading this week aligns with Josephus’ descriptions of the events leading up to the Jewish Roman War in 66-69 C.E. (see Josephus’ The Jewish War). He describes famine, false prophets, and  events leading up to the razing of the Temple itself. 

In his account, Mark uses the hyperbolic language of apocalyptic writings of the time and the kind of language the prophets of old used to describe destruction brought on their nation by conquering foreign empires:

“The floodgates of the heavens are opened, the foundations of the earth shake. The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is violently shaken. The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind; so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls—never to rise again.” (Isaiah 24:18-20)

We must not underestimate the trauma that the Jewish community at large and the Jesus-following Jewish community specifically was enduring at this time. 

Looking for answers, it was only natural for the Jesus community to look back to Jesus’ calls for economic justice and his critical statements toward the Temple State to explain the devastation Rome had just wrought on Jerusalem and the surrounding regions.

Economic exploitation had reached a pivotal moment in the mid 60’s C.E., and the poor people revolted. The officials of the Temple State were driven out of Jerusalem. Revolutionaries and liberationists burned the Temple State’s debt records. This revolt then quickly evolved into an all-out assault on Rome itself as poor people tried to free themselves not just from local leaders but also from Roman occupation itself.  This led to the Jewish Roman War of 66-69 C.E. and the Roman destruction of the Temple itself in 70 C.E. This pattern repeated in the second century when Rome banished the Jews from Jerusalem and Palestine and destroyed the entire city of Jerusalem in 135 C.E.  

Mark’s gospel’s hyperbolic language in our reading this week is best understood against the back drop of this tremendous societal trauma.

The Hope that Injustice is Unsustainable

And this leads us to our application today. Injustice, whether political, economic, social, ecological or whatever, is unsustainable. It cannot endure. Injustice always eventually reaches a breaking point. And when it does, the transition is always destructive, and most destructive to those most vulnerable. Voluntarily abandoning unjust systems ahead of time is always difficult, but much less difficult and less harmful than waiting for change to be forced.

I think of the economic stress so many are under presently. I think, too, of the political divisions that continue to grow here in the U.S. I think of the acknowledged and unacknowledged radical and misogynistic biases so many of us still have inside ourselves in the country. I think of the ecological damage we cannot continue to perpetuate.“Rising inequality and global warming are the most pressing issues of our time,” says Thomas Piketty, author of Capital and Ideology. Add to all of this the recent gut punch of the recent election results and what those results reveal about who we are here in the U.S. and how far we still need to go toward a multicultural democracy. 

It’s the last phrase in the reading that gets me. Rather than a pessimistic outlook as if the world is about to end, our reading characterizes all of this pain as the “beginning of birth pains.”

This is not the end. If we choose it, all of our present challenges now could be the beginning of us giving birth to something new. We don’t have to give up hope. We can look at the world around us and still imagine a world that is a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone.  The current loss and anxiety, our energy and concerns, can be channeled into a renewed commitment to resistance giving birth to the kind of world we want to live in, a world where there is room enough for all of us thrive. Things will be different this time. But we are different this time, too. We are more organized, and we are ready. We are not alone. Our community of resistance is still here.

To be clear, our present challenges will be significant. I don’t want to gloss over those or only consider them through rose-colored glasses. But we have an opportunity to meet significant challenges with extraordinary resistance. Are we creative enough to envision a world that is just, safe, and compassionate for all? The Jesus of our gospels asked us to. And again, if we choose, the pain many of us are presently experiencing could be a foreboding of life rather than death. These don’t have to be death-pains. It’s still painful. Yet through our continued commitment to resistance and justice, we can transform our pain into the beginning of birth-pains instead: the beginning of something, that in the end, may be beautiful. 

We are not alone. We still have each other. And our work, once again, is laid out for us.

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. What are you feeling in the wake of last week’s election choices by the majority of our fellow citizens? Share and discuss with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? 

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. 

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You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

Season 2, Episode 36: Mark 13.1-8. Lectionary B, Proper 28

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out at:

New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 1 Episode 31: The Beginning of Birth Pains

Mark 13:1-8

“I think of the economic stress so many are under presently. I think, too, of the political divisions that continue to grow here in the U.S. I think of the acknowledged and unacknowledged radical and misogynistic biases so many of us still have inside ourselves in the country. I think of the ecological damage we cannot continue to perpetuate. Add to all of this the recent gut punch of the recent election results and what those results reveal about who we are here in the U.S. and how far we still need to go toward a multicultural democracy. This is not the end. If we choose it, all of our present challenges now could be the beginning of us giving birth to something new. We don’t have to give up hope. We can look at the world around us and still imagine a world that is a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone.  The current loss and anxiety, our energy and concerns, can be channeled into a renewed commitment to resistance giving birth to the kind of world we want to live in, a world where there is room enough for all of us thrive. Things will be different this time. But we are different this time, too. We are more organized, and we are ready. We are not alone. Our community of resistance is still here.”

Available on all major podcast carriers and at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-beginning-of-birth-pains

Now Available on Audible!

Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon

Available now on Audible!

After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.

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