Tag Archives: Gnosticism

Reuniting the Material and the Spiritual

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Our reading from the gospels this coming weekend is from the gospel of John.

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:1-17)

If we are going to reunite the material and the spiritual, we need to understand how they became separated in the first place. In our reading this week, we encounter what scholars today describe as early Christian proto-Gnosticism. Jewish Gnosticism predates Christian Gnosticism although clear divisions between the two continue to be difficult (See Gnosticism).

Christian Gnosticism, like other forms of Gnosticism, promoted a dualistic way of understanding our experiences as flesh and spirit. Pharisaic Judaism was predominantly holistic, placing significance on our material existence along with other ways of describing how we exist in our world. The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are all rooted in this Jewish holistic way of understanding ourselves. The synoptic gospels are deeply concerned not just with people’s spiritual needs but with their concrete, physical, and material needs as well (see Mark 2:8-11).

In our reading this week, we also see tensions that existed between the proto-gnostic, Johannine community and the Pharisees in Judaism at that time.

“Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

The division pointed to here between the Johannine community and the Pharisees was not unique. Pharisees would have opposed Jewish forms of Gnosticism, just as much they opposed Christian ones. 

In harmony with the Gnostics’ definition of salvation as having secret knowledge, Nicodemus stands for someone on the inside of the Pharisees’ community who secretly followed the Johannine Jesus. Nicodemus is mentioned three times in John’s gospel and each time he’s represented as a covert Jesus follower:

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” (John 7:50-52)

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. (John 19:38-41)

The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in this week’s reading centers around distinguishing between what is born of the flesh and what is born of the spirit. This division between the flesh and the spirit, between the physical, material world and the spiritual has born seriously destructive fruit throughout Christianity.  

Recently I have been reminded of what Fredrick Douglass wrote about the fruit of these kinds of divisions. If we see the ethics and teachings of the Jesus story as only applying to our spiritual dimensions and not also to our material existence, we can too often slide into contradictions between what we believe spiritually and what we practice materially.

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Douglass writes:

“Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which everywhere surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence.” (Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave.)

Some may deem Douglass’ experience an extreme example of the disconnect between material and spiritual worlds. I can’t help but think of the Inquisition, the Crusades, colonial Christianity’s treatment of Indigenous populations, and more. Even today, many Christians have an impossible time applying even the simplest golden rule ethic to the United States’ predatory capitalist economic system. We too distinguish between the spiritual and material.

But what would happen if we took seriously the Jewish Jesus of the synoptic gospels who saw the Divine as concerned about our material everyday lives materially and how his society was shaped to harm those on its margins. This Jesus didn’t traverse the countryside of Galilee to get people to say a special prayer so they could spiritually escape now and experience postmortem bliss later. The synoptic Jesus worked to bring about justice as a manifestation of God’s will being done, “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). This Jesus sought to affect people’s physical realities as a source of healing, life, and liberation, and modeled salvation as relating to one’s spiritual wellbeing and material liberation as well.  

The Jesus we see in the other gospels did not separate the spiritual from the fleshly or material. He taught his followers how to navigate their material world by loving their neighbor as a part of themselves (Luke 10:25-37) and relating to those our societies deems “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46). The Jesus of the synoptics announces the arrival of the reign of God in our material world and invites all to be a part of it. He rights injustice, ends oppression, and offers healing alternatives to violence. This Jewish Jesus did not separate the spiritual and material to offer a path of escape from the material world around us. Rather he taught his followers how to lean into the material world in life-giving ways, to bring healing to themselves and those around them, and to shape our material world into a safe, compassionate, just home for all. 

Discussion Group Questions

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

2. In what ways do you believe the material needs reuniting with the spiritual again in our Christian practice 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. 

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. 

If you would like to listen to these articles each week in podcast form, you can find The Social Jesus podcast on all major podcast carriers. If you enjoy listening to The Social Jesus Podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if your podcast platform offers this option, consider taking some time to leave us a positive 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.

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 JustTalking!

 

Season 2, Episode 14: John 3.1-17. Lectionary B, Proper 3 (Trinity Sunday)

Reuniting the Material and the Spiritual

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/0jpJ0_LV9E4?si=Ih85mVUPT9RKoPRd

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 7: Reuniting the Material and the Spiritual

John 3:1-17

“This division between the flesh and the spirit, between the physical, material world and the spiritual has born seriously destructive fruit throughout Christianity. The Jesus in the synoptic gospels did not separate the spiritual from the fleshly or material. He taught his followers how to navigate their material world by righting injustice, ending oppression, and offering healing alternatives to violence. That Jewish Jesus did not separate the spiritual and material to offer a path of escape from the material world. Rather he taught his followers how to lean into their material world in life-giving ways.”

Available on all major podcast carriers.

Or at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/reuniting-the-material-and-the-spiritual

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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Differences in John and Why They Matter

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

by Herb MontgomeryAvailable now on Amazon.

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.

New Episode of JustTalking!

Season 2, Episode 2: John 2.13-22. Lectionary B, Lent 3.

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 2, Episode 2: John 2.13-22. Lectionary B, Lent 3.

 or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment

Differences in John and Why They Matter

Herb Montgomery | March 1, 2024

“Are we defining our humanity as broken and salvation as when we’re set free from our humanity? Or have we lost touch with our humanity ourselves or because others are attempting to dehumanize us? If so, salvation is our reclaiming our humanity!”

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Jesus-For-Everyone-150x150.png

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:13-22)

If you’re familiar with our Social Jesus Blog, Weekly eSights, Jesus for Everyone podcast, or weekly YouTube show Just Talking, you won’t be surprised by the stark differences between this version of the Jesus story, which emerged out of the Johannine community, and the earlier gospels in our sacred canon, the synoptics Mark, Matthew, and Luke. 

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ protest in the temple state’s courtyard comes at the end of the the story and is the reason the state executes Jesus on a Roman cross. John was written much later than any of the other canonical gospels, and by that time, Jesus’ death on the cross was far removed from his protest in the temple. The protest happens at the very beginning of the story and the crucifixion comes at the end. These events have nothing to do with each other in the Johannine community’s gospel.

It’s not only the narrative location of this story that is different between these gospels. Jesus’ motive is vastly different as well. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus’ protest is rooted in zeal for the masses who are being marginalized and crushed by the Temple State’s complicity with the Roman empire. Consider Mark’s version of the story:

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of crooks.’” (Mark 11:15-17)

Jesus’ words in Mark’s story combine two passages from the Hebrew scriptures, the first from Isaiah and the later from Jeremiah.

“These I will bring to my holy mountain

and give them joy in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar;

for my house will be called 

a house of prayer for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:7)

“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you 

do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent 

blood in this place, Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of crooks to 

you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 7:5-11)

What we must pay attention to in Jeremiah is where the phrase “den of crooks” comes from. A den of thieves and robbers is not where theft is taking place but where the thieves retreat, thinking they are safe after their theft has been committed. The temple functioned in exactly this fashion for the elites and powerful in the temple state. They could oppress the “foreigner, the fatherless or the widow” while practicing their religious piety and claiming they were still in good standing with the God of the Torah because they were still practicing the ritual ceremonies of the temple:

“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury . . . and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe;—safe to do all these detestable things?” (Jeremiah 7:9-10)

“Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” (Jeremiah 7:4)

Consider how this theme appears in the book of Isaiah, another Hebrew prophet:

“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 worthless 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 hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

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.

Defend the oppressed. 

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:11-17)

For the prophets, God is much more concerned with social justice than with all the people’s religious ritual observances. It’s this Hebrew, prophetic justice tradition that Jesus is standing squarely in in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

But in John’s gospel, this tradition is wholly erased and Jesus’ motive is the exact opposite.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.” 

John’s Jesus is no longer zealous for the oppressed. Now, in this late gospel, Jesus is consumed by zeal for the purity of the temple and maintaining the purity of religious ritual observances there.

Another significant difference between the gospels is the overt antisemitism held in the Johannine community by the time John’s gospel was written. In the synoptics, rejection of Jesus is a matter of classism. The Jews loved Jesus and hung on his every word. Why wouldn’t they? Jesus’ message was a populist message that resonated deeply with the people who were suffering at the hands of those in power. It was the powerful, propertied, and privileged responsible for crushing the masses through complicity with Rome and who created enormous wealth for themselves who rejected Jesus’ calls for a return to the economic justice teaching of the Torah. 

Notice this difference in Luke:

“Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders [these were political positions] among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. (Luke 19:47-48)

In John’s gospel, however, there is no distinction between the rich and poor, the powerful and the marginalized, or the elites and the masses within Jesus’ Jewish society. In John, the opposition is all wrapped up in one simple, antisemitic designation: “the Jews.”

Lastly, the gospels switch from critiquing the injustice of the temple state, with its physical capital in the temple, to spiritualizing the temple as a symbol of Jesus’ body.

The presence of proto-Gnostic tendencies in the writings of the Johannine community is well-documented by scholars. Christian Gnosticism would come to teach a dualistic way of looking at our world through the lens of separating our bodies from our spirit. Later, Gnosticism would teach that the material world was evil and spiritual was good. It therefore defined salvation as the point at which our spirits are finally set free from imprisonment in our material bodies and material world. (This sounds a lot like many of the sectors of Christianity today, which is why I say that much of Christianity today is more gnostic like the Johannine community than the Jesus of the synoptic gospels.)

In the synoptics, Jesus prioritizes setting people free from material, concrete, very tangible suffering. but not from the material, concrete, and tangible itself. 

What are we to make of these differences? Both teachings are in our sacred texts. Both are biblical. And both are ways of viewing and defining Jesus. For those who want the Bible to make all of their decisions for them, it’s not that simple when the Bible offers two different options. We have to take some personal responsibility. We have to actually decide which way of practicing Christianity today in our context is more life-giving. 

We have to choose how we practice our own Christianity. Both options are biblical. And they each produce radically different fruit. Are we focused on postmortem destinations or saving people from what they are suffering in this life? Are we defining salvation as celestial, heavenly bliss in another life, or do we define salvation as the synoptics do, as being set free from death-dealing oppression, injustice, violence, and marginalization in this life? Are we defining our humanity as broken and salvation as when we’re set free from our humanity? Or have we lost touch with our humanity ourselves or because others are attempting to dehumanize us? If so, salvation is our reclaiming our humanity! (Jesus defines salvation in Luke’s story of Zacchaeus in this way.) 

I find it escapist and defeatist to separate Jesus’ gospel from this life and transform it into being solely about spiritual realities in preparation for a next life. For myself, I find the focus of the synoptic gospels in our present social context to be much more relevant and much more life-giving.

Group Discussion Questions

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

2. How do the differences in the different versions of the Jesus story in our New Testament impact your own social just work today as a Jesus follower? 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. 

I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success. 

Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon 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 new 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.

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.

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John Chapter 9 and Our Need To Tell A Better Story

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New Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube

New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

Season 1; Episode 6. John 9.1-41. Lectionary A, Lent Week 4

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/8ir6Ew5bhDw

 or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment

Thanks in advance for watching!

John Chapter 9 and Our Need to Tell A Better Story

John Chapter 9

Herb Montgomery | March 17, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

We don’t need to assign moral value to the ways we each encounter our world. All in all, John chapter 9 is a reminder to me that today, as Jesus followers, we need to tell the Jesus story in better ways than this chapter does. As Jesus followers today, we should be about shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. A world that big enough for all of differences, where each person can “sit under their own fig tree” (Micah 4:4), and no one—no one—has to be afraid.

The lectionary reading this week is from the Gospel of John:

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided. Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.”

They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?” “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 9:1-41)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone!

Our reading this week is interesting and there’s a lot here to cover in this story. We won’t get to it all but we’ll cover what we can.

Most academic scholarship agrees today that Gnosticism has both Jewish and Christian starting points. It evolved in the late 1st Century CE out of nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects during the time that the Gospel of John was being written in the Johannine community. I believe that the author or authors of John’s gospel looked at the world similarly to the community that would later come to be known as Christian Gnosticism. Some things in John are different from later Gnosticism, and they have many things in common. A couple weeks ago, I shared from the works of Irenaeus how later Gnostics only valued the gospel of John out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Pharisees and the proto-Christian Gnostics would have deeply disagreed about how to look at the world, and we bump into this division in our story. These worldview disagreements were very similar to those that later Rabbinical Judaism, which grew out of Pharisaical Judaism, had with Gnostic Judaism. These were not primarily a struggle between Christianity and Judaism. Only insofar as Christianity or Judaism took Gnostic forms would it have conflicted with Rabbinical Judaism.

Anti-Judaism was already present by this time among Gentile Christians, but this story and stories like it in the gospel of John have a long history of inspiring Christians to see all of Judaism as negative through negative stereotyping and the label Pharisees. The schools of the Pharisees that followed Hillel had much in common with early Christian communities that looked more like the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is important because atrocities Christians have been responsible for against the Jewish community that can be traced back to interpretations of stories like this week’s. With stories like this, Christians have characterized the struggle as between Christians and Jews rather than between the Pharisees of that time and all forms of Gnosticism, Christian or Jewish.

The very first thing we bump into in the story is how the Gnostics explained so much concrete suffering in our world. The question “Who sinned?” betrays a worldview that assumes that all misfortune is somehow deserved. Many forms of early Jewish and Christian Gnosticism were not purely monotheistic but dualistic: they believed the material world was made by one God who had done the best they could but still created a world that involved suffering and pain. Christian gnostic sects framed Jesus as a Gnostic savior who came from a second Divine entity and saved the world through gnosis or knowledge (see John 17:3).

If John’s gospel was not written by those who were themselves proto-Gnostics, they definitely wrote a gospel that was especially vulnerable to being valued and interpreted by Christian Gnostics later.

Our story this week includes other binaries such as day and night, which we’ve spoken about the last two weeks. We even have a debate between the Pharisees and Gnostics over the Sabbath. Remember that the Gnostics were all about liberating our good souls/spirits from our material world of pain and suffering. The Sabbath was about a physical, enfleshed, material resting of bodies from physical labor each seventh day, and therefore would have fallen under the category of the material/physical, which Gnostics did not particularly value or prioritize.

Something we should mention here is the implication in the story that miracles are the sign of whether someone’s teachings are true. Our sacred texts aren’t monolithic on this topic. They include multiple warnings that even if miracles are performed, we should not trust that alone.

In the end, though, the Johannine community declares that the school of the Pharisees should be rejected because their spiritual understanding is blinkered. I could not disagree with this more. There is much Jewish wisdom that we Christians would do well to listen to.

Lastly, the narrative uses blindness as a metaphor and the way to describe the Pharisees as worthy of rejection by those seeking gnosis. I’ve said this repeatedly: using blindness to negatively characterize an opponent, adversary, or story nemesis is very ableist. It’s also harmful to those who live with physical blindness. We don’t need to assign moral value to the ways we each encounter our world.

All in all, John chapter 9 is a reminder to me that today, as Jesus followers, we need to tell the Jesus story in better ways than this chapter does. As Jesus followers today, we should be about shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. A world that big enough for all of differences, where each person can “sit under their own fig tree” (Micah 4:4), and no one—no one—has to be afraid.

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. How would you answer the disciples question at the beginning of our story this week? Share with your group.

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

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.

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

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A World That Is Safe for Everyone

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New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

John 3.1-17. Lectionary A, Lent, Week 2

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/_mF6Tol5WSQ

 or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

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A World That Is Safe for Everyone

Herb Montgomery | March 10, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

“That’s not necessarily bad. We simply need to make sure we are interpreting John’s Jesus in a way that doesn’t ignore the very concrete harm many are suffering because of unjust systems. Today, we don’t need a form a Christianity that is so afterlife-focused that it merely anesthetizes its adherents so we passively bear present injustice, look toward afterlife bliss, and don’t challenge, transform, or liberate folks suffering from this unsafe, unjust, and death-dealing world.”

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons [and daughters] and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship God neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Judeans. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship God in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers God seeks. God is spirit, and God’s worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:5-42, Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. )

The Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story begins with a collection of dialogues. Last week we looked at the first one, the story of Nicodemus. This week we are looking at a story that many scholars believe is included to explain why the Johannine community included Samaritan Jews when the Jews of Judea excluded them, and why they also included women, who are seen as disposable within patriarchal societies. The woman in this story had experienced rejection many times from the various men in her life, and her latest situation was filled with anxiety. The Jesus of this story is speaking directly to women like her.

Our reading is comprised of three sections: Jesus’ dialogue with the nameless woman, his exchange with the disciples after she departs, and the many Samaritan Jews that come out to meet Jesus and embrace him as “Savior of the world,” a title usually used then to refer to Rome and Caesar.

In each of these sections, the author of the gospel strings together sayings that could have been said by the historical Jesus. The overarching point of the story and the context that the minor details should be understood in is that this story seeks to show where the Samaritan Jewish population in the Johannine community can trace their roots back to.

One thing we bump into repeatedly in the gospel of John is tension between Samaritan Jews and Judean Jews. There was a long history here that, at the risk of oversimplifying, revolved around debates over what fidelity to the Torah looked like. Judean Jews accused Samaritan Jews of practicing different religious traditions than them, and they attributed the difference to their mixed heritage and history. Having been excluded from participating in the temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritan Jews had their own temple and their own version of the books of Moses. If Galilean Jews were marginalized by Judeans because of their Hellenistic practices, then Samaritan Jews were marginalized even more because of their heritage and alternative religious practices.

I find it encouraging to picture a Galilean Jesus embracing Samaritan Jews instead of following the exclusionary practices that may have been common in his society. Including those presently marginalized is a theme that we, as Jesus followers today, could learn a lot from. Our society also practices pushing certain people and communities to the edges because of their differences.

We also bump into the Johannine pre-Gnosticism that I mentioned last week as we read the story of Nicodemus. Real water contrasted with the mystical water of knowledge (gnosis) that will give a person eternal life. Debates over worshipping God at a physical location rather than worshiping God in spirit and truth. The claim that God is spirit.

In the exchange with the disciples, spiritual food replaces physical food. Concrete material harvests and how they were being exploited by Roman imperialism to the detriment of rural farming communities mentioned in the other gospels become a mystical, spiritual harvest.

All of this would later evolve into Gnosticism, which devalued what people experienced in their physical world, including injustice, oppression and real harm and encouraged Gnostics to gaining knowledge that would one day liberate their sprits/souls from being entrapped in physical existence.

Many sectors of Christianity today have much more in common with those early Gnostic communities than they do with the this-life and this-world focus of the Jesus of the synoptic gospels. I believe that commonality can be traced back to the gospel of John and its embrace of proto-Gnostic ideas and ways of looking at the world.of

The Johannine Jesus is very different from the synoptic Jesus we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That’s not necessarily bad. We simply need to make sure we are interpreting John’s Jesus in a way that doesn’t ignore the very concrete harm many are suffering because of unjust systems. Today, we don’t need a form a Christianity that is so afterlife-focused that it merely anesthetizes its adherents so we passively bear present injustice, look toward afterlife bliss, and don’t challenge, transform, or liberate folks suffering from this unsafe, unjust, and death-dealing world.

Lastly, I am encouraged that this story ends with contrasting Jesus with Rome. Again, Rome and Caesar were both referred to as savior of the world. Although some later less life-giving forms of Gnosticism would interpret this “saving” as an escape from this life, today we can interpret Jesus and his teachings as offering a set of values and ethics that put us on a life-giving path. The path Jesus sets us on assists us in transforming our physical world into a just, safe, compassionate home for everyone, a world large enough to hold all our differences, where we are not simply tolerated but celebrated, and where we not only survive but we thrive. In this world, exploitation and extraction is replaced with reciprocity and sharing. There’s enough for everyone. And everyone can experience home.

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. How does this story of the woman at the well speak into your justice work? Share with your group.

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

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast thro  ugh 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

The Seven Last Sayings of Jesus; Part 7 of 9

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 Part 7 of 9

by Herb Montgomery

I Am Thirsty

Wooden Rosary

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” (John 19.28)

As we continue in John’s telling of the Jesus story, I want to remind you that what makes his telling unique is that he is writing in conversation with early Gnostics.  A dialectic relationship exists between John’s gospel and the dualism of Gnosticism.  An oversimplified explanation of the Gnostics’ dualism is that they first believed that all matter was evil.  Secondly, they believed that humans possessed an immortal soul which was good.  Thus humanity had a dualistic nature of being simultaneously good and evil.  It is this element of “matter being evil” that John is meeting head on.

Because the Gnostics believed all matter was evil, they taught that the Divine could never become entangled with embodiment (having a body, i.e. “matter”).  Divinity was not dualistic in the fashion that humanity is.  (Their dualism ran deep, dividing humanity and Divinity as well, as contrasted with humanity being fashioned in the image of Divinity and being the very offspring of Divinity.  But we’ll have to save that conversation for later.)  The Gnostics would have taken issue with John’s “incarnation” that the Logos (the Divine) was “made flesh” (matter).  The Divine could not be identified with the flesh. [1]  Gnosticism, as some scholars have pointed out, would have taught that “Jesus walked on the beach but left no footprints.”  The Gnostics’ version of the Jesus story taught that Jesus’ Spirit (the holy part) departed from him prior to him being crucified, because the Divine could not participate with the material human flesh on that level of physical suffering.  This is why John’s Jesus, on the Cross, is not a human victim, but Divinity embodied, as the revelation of the Divine suffering in solidarity with all who have ever been oppressed, or who have suffered injustice at the hands of dominant systems in every age.  John’s telling of the crucifixion is his way of saying “no” to early Gnosticism.  Jesus in John’s Gospel is fully Divine while fully embodied; he is fully human and his physical suffering at the hands of the injustice of his day is not to be dismissed or devalued.

Yet the question that we must ask is why is John pushing back so hard against Gnosticism?

Simply put, because the belief in the dualistic nature of humanity, specifically that all matter was evil, was causing a shift among the early Christians.  Toward the close of the first century, they were focusing more on liberating their souls from their physical bodies in some far distant “heaven.”  They were abandoning the core principle of what John felt it meant to follow Jesus—which was the “healing of the world” here and now.  John’s Jesus states unequivocally that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world [matter is evil] but that the world through Him might be healed*.” (John 3.17, emphasis added.  *Sozo can be translated as heal as well as save.  Jesus was the great healer.)  The goal of the ancient Hebrews was not to one day become some disembodied soul on some far distant cloud, but to see a time when the Messiah would come and end all the injustice, oppression, and violence here on earth.  A Hebrew telling of the Jesus story did not have at the end, as its goal, “getting to heaven”; on the contrary, the goal of Jesus’ coming would have been “the healing of the world” (“tikkun olam”).

I cannot pass up this opportunity to point out that most Christians today (although certainly not all) are more concerned with escaping this world, for which they believe there is no hope, and making it to heaven, than in healing this world and bringing an end to the present order of domination, oppression, injustice, and violence.  Jesus’ “Kingdom” was a new social order here and now!  It was the subversive “mustard seed” planted in the “soil” of this world that was to grow (like leaven in dough) until the old order was choked out and Jesus’ new social order of restorative justice, transformative mercy, and redeeming LOVE was all that remained.

Gnosticism, at the turn of the first century, was transforming Jesus’ followers into “escapists” rather than the subversive force for dismantling privileged pyramids and exclusive circles in the here and now.  Today it matters not whether those pyramids and circles are economic, religious, political, or social.  Wherever we find domination (pyramids) and exclusion (circles), whether in matters of race, gender, wealth or orientation, as a Jesus follower, we are to be more concerned with bringing a healing revolution than reaching some far distant “heaven.”

This may come as a shock to some, but Christianity today is more Gnostic than Christian, if we allow the historical Jesus to be that which defines Christianity.

John foresaw this result in the beginning of what he was witnessing around him in his day.  John’s entire telling of the Jesus story is a retelling of Genesis chapter 1, which was the Hebrews’ origin story.  Genesis chapter one (as contrasted with Genesis 2 [2]) reminded the Hebrews that this earth is good, very good.  That we are all (male, female and any combination of those two book ends that nature may produce) made in the image of God and that none are to be the subject of domination or exclusion by another.  We are all children of the same Divine Parents.  And we are all going to have to learn to sit around the same family table once again.  I’m not saying that the Hebrew people always rightly perceived these insights within the narrative of their origin story in Genesis 1.  What I’m putting forth is that this was Jesus’ subversive interpretation and application of the Hebrew origin story of Genesis 1.  I hope to write on this more at length in a future eSight.

John takes Genesis chapter 1 and frames the entire Jesus story, using Jesus as the Christian origin story.  Genesis 1 begins with the phrase, “in the beginning . . .”  So does John: “In the beginning . . .” (John 1.1)  In Genesis 1 there are seven days of creation.  In John’s version Jesus’ life is divided up and told with seven “signs.”  Genesis 1’s narrative of the physical creation of the world climaxes with Elohim saying, “It is Finished.”  So John’s telling of the Jesus story climaxes as Jesus cries out over his restored (new) creation with the words, “It is Finished.” (We’ll cover this at more depth next week.)  As Genesis 1 has Elohim resting on the Sabbath day, so Jesus rests from his work of restoration in the tomb on the seventh day.[3]  As the narrative of Genesis then moves quickly into a garden with a woman being the first to be deceived, John’s gospel moves quickly into another garden [4] with a woman being the first to be enlightened, becoming an apostle to the apostles.  (I’ll say more about this next week as well.)

In John’s telling of the Jesus story, it is no accident that John focuses our attention on three things:

1.  The very human, physical relationship between Jesus and his mother. (Last week’s eSight.)

2.  The very human, physical sensation of having “thirst.” (This week’s eSight.)

3.  The deep connection between the Hebrews’ human origin story and Elohim’s creation of the physical world by Jesus’ dying cry of restoration, “It is Finished!” (Next week’s eSight.)

What is John saying by all of this focus on the humanity and physicality of Jesus?

John is saying to Jesus’ followers of his day (as well as Jesus’ followers today), “STOP FOCUSSING ON ESCAPING THIS WORLD AND GETTING TO HEAVEN!  GET BACK TO WORK RESTORING, HEALING, TRANSFORMING, AND REDEEMING THE WORLD AROUND YOU!”

The Jesus of John is not an itinerant teacher traveling the countryside offering people an easy way to get to heaven!  John’s Jesus is proclaiming a frequently dangerous, and difficult at times, of healing the world!

The Jesus in John’s gospel isn’t trying to get people to heaven.  He is bringing heaven to the people who live here today!

Current statistics show that 70% of all theists (including Christians), when confronted with injustice, will do nothing.  If this offends you, then this merely shows that you happen to belong to the 30% who actually do something about it.  But that is still a horrible percentage.  Don’t you agree?

As a Jesus follower, I must confess that I have wasted too many years trying to sell a post-mortem insurance policy and arguing with other Christians over what the premium should be.

I’m done.  If John were alive today, I’d tell him, “I hear you!”  I want to follow Jesus.  I, too, want to be a conduit for dismantling systems of dominance and exclusivity.  I, too, want to turn pyramids of privilege upside down. [5]  I, too, want to be an agent of healing change, tearing down walls of marginalization that confine fellow humans to being “others” or “outsiders.”

I know I will do poorly.  I’m not claiming that I ever have, or ever will follow Jesus well.  Yet my heart is captivated by the values of the Jesus story, the ethics of that itinerant Rabbi, the non-homogenous, shared table where all (regardless of race, gender, wealth, or orientation) are invited to take a seat, alongside each other, and share their stories.  This is a table where we are all welcome, and where we, by virtue of valuing each other as fellow Divine image bearers, learn to integrate the many and diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole.

I’m done being a Christian Houdini.  I’m done being a feel-good escape artist.  I’m choosing to be a mustard seed, a WEED, nurtured in the soil of this good earth, subversively growing, little by little, toward a safe and compassionate world for all.  I’m choosing a life of restorative justice, transformative mercy, here and now, till the only world that remains is a world where Love reigns.

And I’d absolutely love it if you will go on this journey with me.

HeartGroup Application

The time is fast approaching when many in Western Christianity will celebrate the resurrection.  Next week we will be addressing the seventh of the last sayings of Jesus in the gospels.  After that we will look at the vindication of Jesus and his teachings through the resurrection.

But before we get into all of that, this week I’m asking you to do the following three things in preparation for this series end.

 

1.  Spend some time in contemplation (“sitting with Jesus” is what I call it), reading through John’s gospel with the goal of noticing where John is focusing on Jesus’ body, Jesus’ humanity, Jesus’ physicality, and Jesus’ message of healing this world rather than abandoning it.  Start in John 1 and just read.  I’ll give a few examples to start with.  The first example you’ll encounter is where logos (a gnostic term) becomes “flesh.”  In John 2 you’ll find Jesus making water into wine!  A scandal for those who believed we should deny any pleasure to our physical bodies as a means of liberating our sacred, immortal souls.  And then you’ll encounter Jesus speaking of the temple, the dwelling place of the Divine Presence, but referring specifically to his body.  In John 3, you’ll read of how Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Son’s purpose is not to condemn this world but rather to save or heal it.

That should get you started.

2.  Journal what you discover.  Don’t get distracted.  There are many rabbit holes in John you could go down.  Step back and keep your focus on the forest, not the individual trees.  Remember, you are looking for where John gave us subtle hints that matter is not evil, but the good creation of the Divine, worthy of our efforts in shaping it to be a safer, more compassionate home. [6]

3.  Share with your upcoming HeartGroup what you discover.

As I shared last week, our narrative is one of hope.  A new day has dawned.  A light is shining from an “empty tomb.”  If any are in Christ, “New Creation has come!” [7]

Remember, this week you’re a mustard seed!

Therefore, keep living in love, loving like Jesus, till the only world that remains is a world where Love reigns.

One shared table, many voices, one new world.

I’m still praying for your heart.  I’m praying for it to be enlarged and liberated as you move more deeply into the contemplation of the great healer and liberator, Jesus of Nazareth.

I love each of you deeply.

I’ll see you next week.

 

1. 1 John 4.2—This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
2 John 7—Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

2. Jesus contrasts the ethics of Genesis 1 with the ethics of Genesis 2 in Matthew 19.4 and Mark 10.6. I plan to say more on this in an upcoming eSight.

3. This is actually in Genesis 2 but the chapter division is misplaced. The first three verses of Genesis 2 actually belong to the narrative of Genesis 1.

4. John 20.15—Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

5. See the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6.

6. Remember the form of the New Testament we have today ends with our home being here, a new heaven and new earth, reunited. The Greek word for new, used by the New Testament when referencing the New Earth, is not neos, meaning a second earth, but kainos, meaning a restored, healed, and redeemed first.

7. 2 Corinthians 5.17 (NIV)—Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

 

 

The Seven Last Sayings of Jesus; Part 6 of 9

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Part 6 of 9

Woman, Here Is Your Son

BY HERB MONTGOMERY

Wooden RosaryMeanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:25-27)

This week we begin to move into John’s telling of the Jesus story.

John’s telling is unique among the four canonical gospels. John’s is the latest written, and his Jesus story shows high Christology (Jesus as fully Divine). Unlike other writers in the New Testament whose Christology is more ethically centered (Jesus is defined by what he did and taught), John’s Christology seeks to define who Jesus was ontologically and cosmologically. It it in John’s gospel that the idea of a divine Jesus is most fully developed among the four gospels.

Ever since I read Irenaeus’s Against Heresies, the parallels between Irenaeus and John’s gospel have lead me to believe John was seeking to tell the Jesus story in such a way as to intersect and inform what he felt was the threat of early first-century Gnosticism.

Many aspects of John’s gospel make more sense when we place them in this cultural context. Many regard Gnosticism as the first great Christian heresy. It took the focus of Jesus’ followers off of a renewed and restored earth to an escapist goal of attaining heaven instead. Scholars today see Gnosticism’s dualism between the body and the soul (body or nature is evil/soul is good; body or nature is mortal/soul is immortal) and Gnosticism’s abandonment of the body and the good world around us as evil to have caused a significant shift in the focus of historic Christianity. This shift, coupled with other influences, is why, to a large degree, some Christians today focus on post-mortem bliss rather than the liberation of the oppressed and healing of injustices in our present world. An example of this is how White Christians in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s were committed to “getting to heaven” while ignoring and even perpetrating a very “present hell” here on earth. Ida B. Wells once wrote, “Our American Christians are too busy saving the souls of white Christians from burning in hellfire to save the lives of black ones from present burning in fires kindled by white Christians.” [1]

John’s method then needs to be understood. His intent was to show Jesus to be fully Divine (Holy, from above) and then show how integrated he was in humanity, his body, the earth, and the dirt. He also portrayed Jesus as genuinely human.

This is the controversy John refers to in 1 John 4:2, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (Emphasis added.)

The Gnostics taught that for Jesus to have truly been Divine or Holy, he could not have genuinely possessed a physical body but only the appearance or “impression” of a body. Therefore to show Jesus as also fully human would have taken the focus of those affected by gnosticism off of their post-mortem bliss, and back onto the work of restoration and healing that we see so markedly evidenced in Jesus’ own life and work.

Reread John’s gospel and see how much John emphasizes Jesus’ body and Jesus’ genuine bodily functions. (We’ll look at this more next week when we look at John’s words of Jesus on the cross, “I thirst.”)

What John wants us to encounter first about Jesus’ experience on cross, unlike any other gospel author, is Jesus’ very human relationship with and concern for his mother. This is the humanity of Jesus that Gnostics would be confronted by and need to address.

Womanism and The Jesus Story

I also want to draw attention to a womanist reading of this passage in John this week.

In James Cone’s phenomenal book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone recounts the experiences of what it was like for African Americans during America’s post slavery era in relation to the lynching being carried out by White Christians.

Cone writes, “The fear of lynching was so deep and widespread that most blacks were too scared even to talk publicly about it. When they heard of a person being lynched in their vicinity, they often ran home, pulled down shades, and turned out lights—hoping the terror moment would pass without taking the lives of their relatives and friends.” [2]

Cone retells the story of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father, who witnessed a lynching at a very young age. Daddy King states, “All I could do was to run on home, keep silent, never mentioning what I’d seen to anyone, until many, many years later, when I understood it better.” [3]

The parallels between the lynching of African Americans in America and the lynching of Jesus in the first century are astounding. [4] The horror of crucifixion by Rome and the nightmarish atrocity of lynching in America by White Christians served very similar purposes within their perspective cultures. Both were forms of terrorism used by the dominant system of the day.

The fact that John tells us there were those who didn’t “run home” when Jesus was lynched is a testament to the Jewish women John lists, a testament we come to understand and appreciate more deeply when seen through the lens of what Black women experienced in America’s lynching history. These women did not run home, as did most of the followers of Jesus, but stood by, not abandoning Jesus when the dominant system “strung him up.”

Black women should not be made invisible in America’s lynching history. They were not exempt to White Christian mob violence in America. Not only were Black women lynched as well, but those who were not, “not only suffered the loss of their sons, husbands, brothers, uncles, nephews, and cousins but also endured public insults and economic hardship as they tried to carry on, to take care of their fatherless children in a patriarchal and racist society in which whites could lynch them or their children with impunity, at the slightest whim or smallest infraction of the southern racial etiquette.” [5]

Jewish women belonged to a similarly patriarchal society. For Mary, the mother of Jesus, to lose Jesus, the specific male she was economically dependent on, to mob violence in her day also meant economic hardship and poverty as she would be left to try and carry on.

Yet John’s Jesus is no victim. John’s Jesus will leave behind no orphans [6], and as we also see here, no widows.

John’s Jesus looks down from the cross and, much to the dismay of the Gnostics of John’s time, the first thing Jesus attends to is the human, intimately familial relationship between himself and his mother.

Again, we get a window into the reality of the necessity of Jesus’ connecting his mother to a new son through womanist perspectives today.

What we also receive from looking at this narrative detail of the interchange between Jesus and Mary through the lens of womanist theology is the knowledge that we do not have to interpret

Jesus’ death as some sort of righteous surrogacy or surrogate suffering. Remember, the cross is not the salvific act, according to the book of Acts, as much as the resurrection is [7], for it is the resurrection that undoes and reverses everything accomplished by the lynching of Jesus by the dominant system. The death of Jesus was the temporary victory of the oppression and injustice that Jesus was confronting and resisting. Far from understanding Jesus’ death as the glorification and justification of innocent suffering, the death of Jesus was a travesty of justice. It was the unjust response of evil and oppression to the threat of Jesus as he sought to heal and liberate.

Jesus in John’s gospel is not a victim. Nor is he passive. Jesus is an activist whose advocacy for the marginalized and outcast resulted in suffering. Jesus’ death was the natural result of Jesus’ confrontation of the dominant system. And as followers of Jesus we, too, are to actively oppose evil rather than passively submit to it. Yes, Jesus taught nonviolence, but we are not to interpret this as Jesus’ teaching passivity. Jesus taught a nonviolent, direct confrontation of injustice, oppression, and violence as the means of changing the world around us.

Jacquelyn Grant in her book White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response rightly states, “The significance of Christ is not found in his maleness, but in his humanity,” [8] and the history of Black women today, “the oppressed of the oppressed,” can inform and educate our understanding of Jesus’ death and resurrection in life- transforming, world-transforming, ways.

What we see in John’s interchange between Jesus and Jesus’ mother is Jesus’ humanity first and foremost. We see the cultural need for making sure his mother was provided for in a patriarchal society oppressive to women. We begin to understand Jesus’ death for what it is, not an act by which justice was satisfied but an act of inhumane injustice that was the result of Jesus’ confrontation with injustice. And last, we see Jesus’ death as that which the Divine Being of the Jesus story would reverse and undo. The dominant system does not have the last world in this narrative. The story does not end with a lynching but with a Divine Being standing in solidarity not simply with Jesus but with all who have been lynched (directly or indirectly) throughout history, whispering that this is not where our stories have to end. The climax of the Jesus story is that over and against those at whose hands Jesus was lynched, stands a Voice, calling the world, both oppressed and the oppressors, to a better way.

Southern trees bear strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black body swinging in the Southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree.
—“Strange Fruit,” Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allen)

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” (Acts 10:39)

Perhaps nothing about the history of mob violence in the United States is more surprising than how quickly an understanding of the full horror of lynching has receded from the nation’s collective historical memory.—W. Fitzhugh Brundage

HeartGroup Application

We are getting closer to when the western Christian world celebrates Easter with each passing week.

This week I want you to dedicate some time to contemplating what a difference it makes to see Jesus’ death not as the appeasement of an angry God so that those who have sinned can escape this world and be let into heaven, with the resurrection being a neat little affirmation of post- mortem bliss, but as the lynching that it was, a result of Jesus’ standing up to the injustice, oppression, and violence of the dominant system of his day. Try to see Jesus’ resurrection not as a tidy ending but as a Divine Being’s solidarity with all those who have been oppressed, violated, and affected by injustice throughout time, whispering to us that in this Jesus and the values he espoused and taught, a new world is coming. In fact, as a result of the resurrection, it has already arrived.

1. As an aid in helping you shift in your contemplation of Jesus’ death this week, I recommend you watch Billie Holiday’s performance of Strange Fruit. One free way to do this would be to simply go to YouTube here. Allow Billie to inform your understanding of the Jesus narrative as you overlay Jesus’ lynching on one of the most effective teaching moments in America’s recent history. Allow Billie’s performance to help you step back into and understand anew the death—and resurrection—of Jesus.

2. Journal what you discover.

3. Share what you discover with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.

As Jesus followers, we subscribe to a narrative that does not end in the defeat of Jesus by the lynching mob. The narrative ends with Jesus’ God standing in solidarity with him in his confrontation of injustice, even to the undoing and reversing of their murderous actions. Jesus’ death is not his nonviolent protest to injustice. It was the fatal result of this nonviolent protest. The resurrection is Jesus’ God’s having the last word over the lynching mob. This should give us pause to reflect.

Our narrative is one of hope. Hope that injustice does not have the last word, ever. A new day has dawned. A light is shining from an empty tomb.

Keep living in love, loving like Jesus, until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

One shared table, many voices, one new world.

I’m praying for your hearts to be enlarged and liberated as you move more deeply into the contemplation of Jesus’ death and resurrection and their implications for us today.

I love each of you deeply. I’ll see you next week.

 

1. Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice, pp. 154-55

2. Cone, James H. (2011-09-01). The Cross and the Lynching Tree (p. 15). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

3. Daddy King, p. 30.

4. Acts 5:30—The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree; Acts 10:39—They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. (Emphasis added.)

5. Cone, James H. (2011-09-01). The Cross and the Lynching Tree (pp. 122–123). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

6. John 14:18—“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”
7. Acts 13:32-33—And we bring you the gospel that what God promised to our ancestors God has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus.

8. Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response