Tag Archives: Resistance

Deliverance From Evil

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Herb Montgomery | October 19, 2018

Silhouette of woman with upraised fist.

Photo credit: Miguel Bruna

“What does it mean to be delivered from economic oppression and ecological oppression as well? The U.N. reported this last week that we have only twelve years left to address climate change, and if we don’t we face dire consequences.”

“And lead us not into the time of testing, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew 6:13)

As we wrap up our look at what we call the Lord’s Prayer, I want to begin with a story of a dear West Virginian woman, her children, and her husband in context of deliverance from evil. There is a type of coal mining here in West Virginia called mountain top removal. It’s legal here and is happening in much of the southwestern region of the state. Many of our elected representatives are financially supported by coal mine owners who profit from how those representatives structure our laws. This is the story of a family involved in trying to change these laws. Listen to how the mother of this family tells her story:

“Coal miners work in the coal mines because they have no other choice, others because they enjoy that type of work. Most coal miners have college degrees in many things, yet Coal mining is the only thing we have to offer them.

My husband has a degree in electronics engineering and 1080 [credit hours] in industrial electronics, but his only choice was to become a Coal miner. He worked in the mines for two years, the toll it took on his body… that was heartbreaking. When he would come home from work he looked like death in the face. He worked twelve hours a day six days a week — the kids and I only saw him on Saturdays and half a day on Sundays. His skin was stained black, he coughed constantly as if he had the flu.

I was 8 months pregnant with our son the day the UBB mine disaster happened. I had laid down to take a nap. When I got up my cell phone had 10 missed calls and 20 text messages on it. The calls and messages were from my two oldest daughters and my sister, asking if my husband was working. I called my 15-yr-old first and asked what was wrong. She was in a total panic and crying wanting to know if her step-dad was ok, that a mine just blew up and 12 (at the time) miners were trapped. The news didn’t report which mine or [its] location until later. When I informed her he was ok and was getting ready for work, she responded ‘NO, do not let him go back to work mommy, Please!’ I got her to calm down then called my 19-yr-old and got the same response. ‘Mommy, please don’t let him go.’ It broke my heart in two knowing he had to go to work to pay bills and take care of our babies. But what hurt the most was the fear and heartbreak that my children were feeling.

Anyway, I turned on CNN and started to watch the heartbreaking events unfold. I knew that come 9:00 pm my miner would be walking out the door to go to work. But somehow this night was different than all the other nights I told him goodbye. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had never felt before in my life. The mining pay was great, it gave us tons of nice things and plenty of money to provide for our family. But at that moment, I didn’t care if we had a dime in the bank and had to live in a tent. I was sending the love of my life, my best friend and my children’s father out the door not knowing if he would ever be back. He was killing his body and he was risking his life to provide us with worldly things, things that could be replaced. After he left, I sat and watched CNN until daylight waiting on his morning call letting me know he was coming home. Thank God in heaven I received that call.

As the evening went on I continued to watch the events at UBB unfold. As I watched the [miners’] families standing, praying and waiting on the news of their miner, it broke my heart. I will never forget the look on one young man’s face when a reporter [asked] him how he was feeling (stupid question). His response was ‘it feels like I’m getting punched over and over in the stomach.’ I knew at that moment, I didn’t want my son or daughters to ever experience that feeling… Two days later, he decided to leave the mines.

It has been 8 months now since he quit, we are all doing fine. We may not have as much money as before, but we do have the most important thing to our family and that’s DADDY!

I just wish our elected officials would see that West Virginia’s most valuable resource is our Miners themselves and not the Coal. But I’m afraid that they will continue to fight for the Coal Barons’ wallets and the campaign funding, as long as they ‘Keep Them in the Coal’ our politicians will be fine. Please keep our West Virginia Coal Miners in your thoughts and prayers. Never forget the ones we have lost in Sago, UBB and other places.” (Source)

Jesus envisioned a world where people were valued over profit, property and power. That’s where this week’s portion of the Lord’s Prayer comes in.

This is a prayer for liberation. This week’s portion of the prayer begins with “Lead us, not into the time of testing.”

A time of testing was a familiar concept in the Jewish tradition. 

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” (Deuteronomy 8:2, cf. Exodus 16:4, Ecclesiastes 3:18, Isaiah 48:10, and Zechariah 13:9)

In the Psalms we read:

“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did.” (Psalms 95:8-9, emphasis added., cf. Psalms 106:14)

It seems from these passages that in the Jewish tradition both humans and God could be tested. Yet, regardless of who was testing whom, people in Jesus’ day understood the idea of a time of testing. First century Zealots (see Faith Like a Mustard Seed) also used this phrase.

Josephus tells us how how the zealots used this idea of a test for one’s faith. He writes of incidents during the mid-1st Century, when revolutionary prophets/zealots would lead large groups of people into a desert outside Jerusalem on the premise that, if they took the first step, if they submitted to testing, God would see their faith and respond by bringing them liberation from Roman oppression. 

Felix, the Roman procurator, regarded these gatherings as the first stage of revolt, and so sent cavalry and heavy infantry to cut the mob into pieces (see Josephus, The Jewish War, p. 147). The most infamous of the revolutionary prophets who promised the people reward if they would first step out in faith (the test) was a militaristic messiah referred to as “the Egyptian” (Acts 21:38). 

Josephus describes the event as follows:

“Arriving in the country, this man, a fraud who posed as a seer, collected about 30,000 dupes, led them round from the desert to the Mount of Olives and from there was ready to force an entry into Jerusalem, overwhelm the Roman garrison, and seize supreme power with his fellow-raiders as bodyguard.” (Josephus, The Jewish War, p. 147)

Josephus believed the future of the Jewish people depended on the elites collaborating with Rome rather than rebelling against Rome. Most scholars think he exaggerated the numbers of people involved: “30,000 dupes” as compared with the book of Acts’ “4,000 assassins.” But the fact that he mentions the event at all is important. In a parallel account, Josephus includes the “sign” that this rebel had claimed would be shown to the people if they passed the test of going out to assemble. It was supposed to be a sign like Joshua’s at the Battle of Jericho: at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down so that his followers could enter and seize the city. However, before he could make his signal, the Roman cavalry and infantry slew and captured hundreds and put the rest to flight, including the militaristic messiah himself. (Josephus, Antiquities, pp. 170-172). Liberation prophets like the Egyptian framed the people’s act of taking an initiative despite hopeless odds as a test of faith that their God would honor with liberation from Rome.

Jesus grew up in Galilee in the wake of a similar destruction that Rome had wrought on revolutionaries in Sepphoris. I believe this played a role in Jesus seeking a different path toward liberation than violence, one that incorporated the best odds of survival and would not just be about the liberation of Jerusalem, Galilee or Judea, but also be about an end to socio-political structures of domination for humanity as a whole.

Gustavo Gutiérrez writes about this at length:

“This universality and totality touch the very heart of political behavior, giving it its true dimension and depth. Misery and social injustice reveal ‘a sinful situation,’ a disintegration of fellowship and communion; by freeing us from sin, Jesus attacks the roots of an unjust order. For Jesus, the liberation of the Jewish people was only one aspect of a universal, permanent revolution. Far from showing no interest in this liberation, Jesus rather placed it on a deeper level, with far-reaching consequences. The Zealots were not mistaken in feeling that Jesus was simultaneously near and far away. Neither were the leaders of the Jewish people mistaken in thinking that their position was imperiled by the preaching of Jesus, nor the oppressive political authorities when they sentenced him to die as a traitor. They were mistaken (and their followers have continued to be mistaken) only in thinking that it was all accidental and transitory, in thinking that with the death of Jesus the matter was closed, in supposing that no one would remember it. The deep human impact and the social transformation that the Gospel entails is permanent and essential because it transcends the narrow limits of specific historical situations and goes to the very root of human existence: relationship with God in solidarity with other persons. The Gospel does not get its political dimension from one or another particular option, but from the very nucleus of its message. If this message is subversive, it is because it takes on Israel’s hope: the Kingdom as ‘the end of domination of person over person; it is a Kingdom of contradiction to the established powers and on behalf of humankind.’ And the Gospel gives Israel’s hope its deepest meaning; indeed it calls for a ‘new creation.’ The life and preaching of Jesus postulate the unceasing search for a new kind of humanity in a qualitatively different society. Although the Kingdom must not be confused with the establishment of a just society, this does not mean that it is indifferent to this society. Nor does it mean that this just society constitutes a “necessary condition” for the arrival of the Kingdom nor that they are closely linked, nor that they converge. More profoundly, the announcement of the Kingdom reveals to society itself the aspiration for a just society and leads it to discover unsuspected dimensions and unexplored paths. The Kingdom is realized in a society of fellowship and justice; and, in turn, this realization opens up the promise and hope of complete communion of all persons with God. The political is grafted into the eternal. This does not detract from the Gospel news; rather it enriches the political sphere. Moreover, the life and death of Jesus are no less evangelical because of their political connotations. His testimony and his message acquire this political dimension precisely because of the radicalness of their salvific character: to preach the universal love of the Father is inevitably to go against all injustice, privilege, oppression, or narrow nationalism.” (Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: 15th Anniversary Edition, pp. 134-135, emphasis added.)

Jesus promoted a path toward liberation that parted ways with the methods of the Zealots and the elite Sadducees who wanted to cooperate with Rome hoping for greater representation in a system of exploitation. Jesus presented a restructuring of the norms we use to interact with one another, and at the heart of these new norms was a preferential option for the vulnerable, exploited, and marginalized.  

“What does it mean for Jesus’ followers today to follow that path? What does it mean for coal mining families here in West Virginia to be delivered from the evil of corporate oppression where the owners continue to gain more and more while the majority of the people struggle without being able to make ends meet? What does it mean to be delivered from economic oppression and ecological oppression as well? The U.N. reported this last week that we have only twelve years left to address climate change, and if we don’t we face dire consequences. A prayer for deliverance from evil also has its application for the evil of bigotry that many in the LGBTQ face. We might expect to be delivered from the evils of racism, sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, and more.”

Jesus, whose teachings we follow, stood in the Jewish tradition that traced its roots all the way back to the liberation story of Moses’s alignment with toiling masses of slaves. So what is our work, today? 

What injustice or evil are you staring at this week?

What does it mean to work toward deliverance from evil in your context? 

What does it meant to work in solidarity with other communities affected most deeply by these evils as they also work toward their deliverance?

I’ll close this week with a statement by Dorothy Day that encourages me when I feel like our small efforts are insignificant, and I feel like a world structured in a way that answers Jesus’ prayer in Matthew is so far, far away:

“One of the greatest evils of the day is the sense of futility. Young people say, ‘What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform these actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.” (Catholic Worker, September 1957)

This week choose something to do, no matter how large or small, that aligns with Jesus’ prayer in Matthew:

“And lead us not into the time of testing, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew 6.13)

HeartGroup Application

Sharing our stories is how we heal the world. Hearing one another’s stories empowers us to let go of our fear of one another and enter into compassion. Listening to the diverse experiences of one another’s lives leads us to replace insecurity with a much broader understanding of each other and our larger world.  

1. This week I want you to take some time in your HeartGroup and let those who wish to share tell their story to the group.  

2. We here at Renewed Heart Ministries also want to hear your story.  We are asking our followers to share their stories with us. How has this ministry impacted your life for the better?  How have you been blessed by Renewed Heart Ministries?  How has journeying alongside RHM inspired you or made a difference for you? We want to hear your story! And if you give us permission, we may feature your story in one of our upcoming newsletter issues so your story can help others, too! (But only if you give us permission.) Send your story of how you have been positively impacted by the ministry of Renewed Heart Ministries by emailing info@renewedheartministries.com.

3. Consider making story-telling a part of HeartGroup experience on some type of ongoing basis, either monthly, quarterly, or even weekly.

We believe every person’s story matters and every person’s voice has value. The Jesus of the gospels spent the majority of his time teaching by telling stories. Author Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees) states, “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” 

I’m looking forward to hearing from you, with much gratitude and excited anticipation.

Picture of a pottery bowlAlso, don’t forget about our Share Table Fundraiser for the month of October.  Find out how you can participate and get your own Share Table Pottery Bowl as representation of Jesus’ shared table philosophy of doing life together. If someone wanted to actually use it, they by all means could. Each time you eat from your bowl or use it as a serving dish, you can be reminded of Jesus’ shared table, mutual aid, and philosophy of resource sharing as a means of restructuring our communities and healing the hurts in our world. You can also place it on your coffee table or desk at work as a conversation starter. When asked about it you can share with them about the Shared Table philosophy, and even direct them to Renewed Heart Ministries to find out more. That way you can partner with us in even more ways to spread the message of love, compassion, justice, sharing and taking care of one another.

Find out more here:  A Shared Table: A Fundraiser for RHM

Thanks for checking in with us with week. Keep living in love, resistance, survival, liberation, reparation and transformation.

Another world is possible.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

 

A Prayer for Debts Cancelled

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by Herb Montgomery | October 11, 2018

Brick wall with stenciled "Until Debt Tear Us Apart"

Photo Credit: Ehud Neuhaus on Unsplash

“‘Politics is really about how we as a community choose to distribute resources and power among people and groups of people.’  She goes on to say, therefore, ‘There’s no opting out of it.’  We are either a target of others’ political engagement or we are choosing to instead help shape that distribution. Jesus taught distributive justice.”

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)

This week I want to look at a portion of this prayer that has evolved: the portion on forgiveness. To the best of our knowledge, Matthew’s version is much earlier than Luke’s. We’ll see the significance of this in a moment. And before Matthew’s version, many scholars believe the earliest version of the prayer was:

“When you pray, say‚ Father — may your name be kept holy! — let your reign come: Our day’s bread give us today; and cancel our debts for us, as we too have cancelled for those in debt to us.” (Saying Gospel Q 11:2-4, emphasis added.)

In this earliest version of the prayer, notice the specific economic quality. It’s about cancelling the debts of those who are indebted to us. There is quite a bit of history behind this. 

The Torah taught that every seventh year in Jewish society, all debts were to be cancelled:

“At the end of every seventh year you must make a remission of debts. This is how it is to be made: everyone who holds a pledge shall return the pledge of the person indebted to him. He must not press a fellow- countryman for repayment, for the Lord’s year of remission has been declared . . . There will never be any poor among you if only you obey the Lord your God by carefully keeping these commandments which I lay upon you this day.” (Deuteronomy 15:1-4) (REB)

There were also strict warnings to lenders as they watched the seventh year approaching, in case they thought they could not make loans at all rather than make loans that would soon be cancelled:

“Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: ‘The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,’ so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.” (Deuteronomy 15:9-10)

We’ve discussed Rabbi Hillel’s prozbul as a way to solve money lenders’ reluctance (see Renouncing One’s Rights and The Golden Rule). The prozbul was a loophole where a loan made just before the seventh year could be declared exempt from cancellation. This loophole was Hillel’s solution to the wealthy not wanting to make loans that less affluent farmers needed for survival whenever the seventh year was near. Although Jesus taught similar ethics to Hillel in other areas, in this area Jesus parted ways with Hillel and taught what the Torah had stated in Deuteronomy:

“Do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42, cf. Deuteronomy 15:1-5, 9-10)

And

“And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” (Luke 6:34-35; Deuteronomy 15:1-5, 9-10)

Debt in the ancient world led to slavery, poverty and death.  In short, debt was a conduit of oppression. Jesus choose to stand in the stream of Jewish tradition that called for the liberation of the oppressed.  In Luke’s gospel Jesus’ liberation is tied directly the cancelling of all debts, or to put it in the language of his Jewish culture, “the year of the Lord’s favor.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

The year of the Lord’s favor was “the year for canceling debts” (Deuteronomy 15:9), the year where there was to be a “remission” of all debts (Deuteronomy 15:1). That year was a type of wealth redistribution. It was a check on any system where the wealthy could just keep on getting wealthier while the poor kept on getting poorer. It was a safeguard against some having too much while many went without enough. If the Torah’s economic teachings were followed, poverty could have been eliminated: “There need be no poor people among you” (Deuteronomy 15:4).

In Jesus’ time, this aspect of the Torah was being disregarded and violated outright or through Hillel’s prozbul. Jesus was calling for a return to a deeply Jewish practice.

You can understand why many of the wealthy elites of Jesus’ society and others of privilege and power combined their efforts to have Jesus and his movement silenced. 

If this is the early form of the language of this prayer, which makes sense given its Jewish roots in the Torah, there is a telling evolution in the language.

In Matthew’s gospel, the word “forgive” replaces the word “cancel,” yet the economic word of “debt” remains. 

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)

Once we get to Luke’s gospel, written much latter, the economic element of this prayer is wholly removed, and the prayer’s application has been universalized instead of referencing a specific economic situation.

“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:2-4)

Crossan also sees this evolution of language:

“I have three conclusions from all of that textual activity. One is that ‘debts’ was originally intended quite literally. Jesus meant that eternal peasant dyad of enough bread for today and no debt for tomorrow. Were it originally and clearly metaphorical—‘debts’ meaning ‘sins’—everyone would have understood that intention and the progression in terminology from ‘debts’ to ‘trespasses’ to ‘sins’ would not have been necessary. Another is that, from Mark through Matthew and into Luke, ‘debts’ change to ‘trespasses’ and then to ‘sins. ’ In its present format, therefore, it seems advisable to read Matthew’s text as including both debt and sin—not debt alone, not sin alone, and certainly not sin instead of debt, but both together. Indeed, the ultimate challenge may be to ponder their interaction. And, at least for the biblical tradition, when debt creates too much inequality, it has become sinful.” (John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, pp. 159-160)

Debt can become exploitative. To curb this exploitation, the Torah did not permit debts to extend past seven years.

The language in the prayer changes as the followers of Jesus change. As the early movement of Jesus followers changes from illiterate to more literate, from marginalized and impoverished to more centralized and more affluent, this prayer also changes from the wealthy cancelling debts to the violated forgiving perpetrators for sins committed against them.

These changes transfer responsibility from those in power to those in a very different social location from them. When we consider the societal cone that privileges and empowers some at the center and top of society and pushes others to the margins and undersides of society (see Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community, Part 1 and 2), the original language of this prayer makes those at the center and top responsible for canceling the debts of those on the peripheries or further down the social hierarchy. As the language evolves, it risks being coopted by the elite, and the responsibility is now placed on those on the margins and undersides to forgive the injustice of their violators and exploiters so that they too might be forgiven. This removes the responsibility of creating a more egalitarian world, cancelling actual debts, and redistributing wealth from those who will lose with these changes. It also asks those exploited by debt to simply forgive without the world or its structure being challenged or changed. 

There is a lot to consider here and much room for pause. Putting the world right includes not just forgiveness but also reparations. To call for reconciliation without reparations, to call for reconciliation solely on the basis of forgiveness being exercised on the part of those who have been harmed, is a special kind of oppression. It fails to hold perpetrators accountable. It fails to value and protect survivors. It fails to work towards the transformation and re-humanization of perpetrators, and genuine healing for those who have been sinned against. Certainly Jesus taught forgiveness. Jesus also called the wealthy, like Zacchaeus and others, to make reparations. To focus solely on only one of these is move away from a safer, just, compassionate world rather than towards it. 

To reemphasize what we focused on last week, the original language of this prayer shows a concern the early Jesus followers had for people’s temporal needs as well as the spiritual and relational well being of all. It sees humanity as whole beings again in a very Hebraic fashion, rather than as divided people only impacted by the gospel in one aspect of life. It’s a holistic prayer.

I want to close this week with a story from Matthew, where the focus on monetary debt cancellation still remains:

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.” (Matthew 18:23-34)

Today, we live in a world where most of the globe is indebted to so-called developed counties with debts that are impossible to pay off. Six people possess more wealth than the entire lower 50% of the world’s population. But we have come to the end of the monopoly game. It’s time for a reset. It’s time for a Jubilee. It’s time for debts to be cancelled. 

One way or another, history proves this reset will come. We can choose a gentler path of debt cancellation and wealth redistribution now, or a more volatile path where many are hurt in the process will be chosen for us in the future. Historical resets are cyclical. We can choose whether they come in life-giving or destructive form. What is clear is that our current path is not sustainable, economically, socially, or ecologically. What does it mean to live in this world in such a way that the answer to Jesus’ prayer is realized?

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6.12)

HeartGroup Application

I have a unique request of all those in our HeartGroups. I believe everyone reading this would agree with me when I say people matter.  And that’s why this week I want to share with you why politics also matter. But hang on! How we define politics also matters. Here in America, we make what I believe is a mistake in how we define politics. Politics for too many means parties, partisanship, lobbying, or law. And while politics can include those things, I prefer how my friend Dr. Keisha McKenzie defines politics. “Politics is really about how we as a community choose to distribute resources and power among people and groups of people.”  She goes on to say, therefore, “There’s no opting out of it.”  We are either a target of others’ political engagement or we are choosing to instead help shape that distribution. Jesus taught distributive justice.  And as follower of Jesus, we, too, should care about how power and resources are distributed, because this distribution can concretely hurt people. Wherever we share space with other people and “there are norms governing how you interact with them or a budget governing common resources,” (McKenzie) there is simply no way to be apolitical.  There is no such thing as a political neutrality that doesn’t help the powerful or doesn’t hurt the vulnerable. When we understand this we can see readily why the late theologian and activist Dorothee Sölle stated, “Every theological statement must be a political statement as well.”

Recently I received an email from Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, President of Auburn Seminary where she made the statement, “The separation between Church and State is different from the separation of faith and public life.” I could not agree more.  The separation of church and state is about keeping the state out matters of religious conscience. Separation of church and state also is about keeping the church from welding the power of the state to enforce its own articles of faith. It does not mean that people of faith and goodwill cannot, in following Jesus, advocate along side vulnerable communities calling for a just distribution of resources and power. 

This is why we here at RHM believe that politics in not simply about voting. It also must be combined with movement building. The late Ron Dellums used to remind folks that we need both movement building and people in office that can help support those movements.  I’ve witnessed this first hand here in West Virginia. We spend countless hours building a movement for social change here in this state, only to have people in office obstruct those changes. The opposite is also true, we can elect solid people as public servants, but if there is not a movement for them to act on, they have nothing to advocate for from the “will of the people.”  Those who desire an unjust distribution of resources are putting people in office who will act on their wishes.  Again, there is simply no way to opt out. We are either a participant in the discussion or we are the target of another’s agenda.

Which leads me to say, that voting, given our current structure, and especially for marginalized communities, yes, is only a part of the process of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for all, yet it is a part of that process. So this week, I want you to do something simple. Check your voter registration to make sure it’s current. If you’re not registered, do so.  This November, vote your values remembering that at the end of the day people matter and they will be concretely affected by the outcome. Also encourage others to participate and vote to ensure all of our communities are truly represented.

Another world is possible.  As Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson shared, our work is to “trouble the waters” and “heal the world.”

Picture of a pottery bowlRemember, too, there’s still time to participate in RHM’s Shared Table Fundraiser for the month of October.  We’ve had a good response so far.  To find how you, too, can join in click:

A Shared Table: A Fundraiser for RHM

Thanks for checking in with us this week. Right where you are, keep living in love, justice, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation. Keep engaging the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate home for everyone.

I love each of you dearly. 

I’ll see you next week.

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

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by Herb Montgomery | September 28, 2018 

“‘When you start with an understanding that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.’ How many times have we witnessed traditional White Christianity emphasize religiousness, puritanical morality, and even the ‘love of God,’ but justice, justice for the oppressed, marginalized and exploited is neglected at best and at worst, obstructed? We have neglected the more important matters of the law! As Jesus prioritized people’s temporal needs, those temporal needs were also to be a priority for Jesus’ disciples.”

“Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:11-12)

Last week we began considering the prayer in Matthew’s gospel often referred to today as The Lord’s Prayer. This week we’re continuing with the portion, “Give us today our daily bread.” 

In the previous verse, Jesus prays for the reign of God, the will of God, to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. But just what is that will? We must exercise caution and care whenever we presume to speak of the will of the Divine. Good can be done from these discussions for the marginalized and oppressed, and great harm can also be done to the most vulnerable among us.  So let’s proceed this week with caution.

Let’s begin with a story found a little later in Matthew’s gospel: the feeding of the multitude.

“As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.’ Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’ ‘We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,’ they answered.” (Matthew 14:15-17)

What I want us to notice first about this story is that Jesus objected to the disciples sending the multitude away to meet their own concrete, physical needs. Too often, some Christians today promote the dualistic idea that a person’s temporal needs is categorically separate from their spiritual needs. Some faith communities therefore focus purely on the spiritual, believing that a person’s temporal needs are of lesser importance. 

This story strikes at the heart of this kind of dualistic thinking.

The disciples want to send the crowd away to find their temporal nourishment elsewhere. Jesus stops them and says, “They don’t need to go away. You feed them.”

This month, the book to read for RHM’s annual reading course is Gustavo Gutiérrez’ book A Theology of Liberation. It’s timely that we would also look at this passage in Matthew’s gospel this month, because Gutiérrez addresses this dualistic thinking too. While the temporal and spiritual are distinct, he writes, “there is a close relationship between temporal progress and the growth of the Kingdom” (p. 99). 

The liberation we find in the gospels stories is an integral liberation. It’s not about mere post-mortem escape, or private retreat into isolated, personal piety. This liberation integrates all aspects of each person’s being, including the temporal! It embraces the whole person. This is especially relevant to the question of what Jesus’ teachings have to offer us today in the way of resistance, survival, liberation, reparation and transformation. Again, Gutiérrez states, “The struggle for a just world in which there is no oppression, servitude, or alienated work will signify the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom and social injustice are incompatible (cf. Isa. 29:18-19 and Matt. 11:5; Lev. 25:10ff. and Luke 4:16-21). ‘The struggle for justice,’ rightly asserts Dom Antonio Fragoso, ‘is also the struggle for the Kingdom of God.’” (Ibid, p. 97)

The struggle for a just society is very much a part of following Jesus. People’s temporal needs matter, and Jesus teaches a whole liberation that goes beyond the individual person to include transforming and replacing oppressive structures and exploitative social systems. Gutiérrez calls for an expanded view of Jesus’ liberation gospel: even politically liberating events in history can be seen as part of the growth of what Jesus referred to as “the Kingdom.” Every event that leads to humans becoming liberated to experience full humanness can be seen as a salvific event.

“Nothing escapes this process, nothing is outside the pale of the action of Christ and the gift of the Spirit. This gives human history its profound unity. Those who reduce the work of salvation are indeed those who limit it to the strictly ‘religious’ sphere and are not aware of the universality of the process. It is those who think that the work of Christ touches the social order in which we live only indirectly or tangentially, and not in its roots and basic structure. It is those who in order to protect salvation (or to protect their interests) lift salvation from the midst of history, where individuals and social classes struggle to liberate themselves from the slavery and oppression to which other individuals and social classes have subjected them. It is those who refuse to see that the salvation of Christ is a radical liberation from all misery, all despoliation, all alienation. It is those who by trying to ‘save’ the work of Christ will ‘lose’ it.” (Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 104)

In Matthew, Jesus tells his listeners of a God who clothes the lilies, feeds the ravens, and “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). This is a picture of everyone’s temporal needs being meet, and not merely their needs for survival, but also what they need in order to thrive. Everyone has enough.

Our present structure doesn’t look like that at all. Some are growing increasingly wealthy while others are in an ever-increasing struggle just to survive.

In Matthew 19:21-2 Jesus tells a wealthy person, “If you wish to be whole, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in the kingdom of heaven; then come, follow me.”

The wholeness I believe Jesus was speaking of here is a rediscovery or a reclaiming of one’s humanity. As we discussed in Another World is Possible (Parts 1-3), the narrative of scarcity, anxiety, accumulation, competition, and violence is dehumanizing whether you are made poor by this narrative or made wealthy by it. Instead of poverty or wealth, Jesus offers a narrative of enough. This is a narrative where there is enough for every person’s need. As in the story of the loaves and fish, even when we are tempted to embrace the narrative of scarcity, if we will in the moment choose a narrative of sharing, sharing our resources in distributive justice produces enough for everyone. It ends in gratitude, in cooperation, in connectedness. We begin to face the future with a different posture when we realize that we are in this life together and if we will choose to take responsibility for caring for one another, we can face whatever may come. It’s a collective stance more than an individualistic stance. It’s a vision of a distributively just world that gives birth to peace, where no one has too little or too much and everyone has enough.

It was this aspect of Jesus’ teachings that led the early church to hold “everything in common.” As Luke reports, “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes daily and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:41-47)

Salvation is not a post mortem life insurance policy. People were being saved from starving to death right then and there! Two chapters later in Acts we read, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had . . . And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-34, emphasis added.)

Can you imagine a world where there is enough bread for every person each day? Where world hunger is no more? This is why Jesus proclaimed, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” (Luke 6:21) This is a world that is especially in the favor of those the present world causes to go hungry. Those made last by the present structures are made first. 

Last week, we read from Amos about those who valued religiosity more than social justice. This week, Jesus stands in that same Jewish prophetic tradition. Consider this from Luke’s gospel:

“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God.” (Luke 11:42)

Luke’s and Matthew’s versions of this exchange (see Matt. 23:23) put justice in the family of “the more important matters of the law.” Justice and the love of God are intimately, intrinsically connected. As Dr. Emilie Townes says in the short film Journey to Liberation: The Legacy of Womanist Theology, “When you start with an understanding that God loves everyone, justice isn’t very far behind.” How many times have we witnessed traditional White Christianity emphasize religiousness, puritanical morality, and even the ‘love of God,’ but justice, justice for the oppressed, marginalized and exploited is neglected at best and at worst, obstructed? We have neglected the more important matters of the law! As Jesus prioritized people’s temporal needs, those temporal needs were also to be a priority for Jesus’ disciples. 

Antonio Fragoso drives this point home in Evangile et Revolution Sociale (The Gospel and Social Revolution): 

“The struggle for justice, is also the struggle for the Kingdom of God. The Gospel should strike the conscience of Christians and stimulate an understanding among all persons of good will regarding the liberation of all, especially the poorest and most abandoned.” (p. 15)

We are not to dualistically divide a person’s spiritual needs and their temporal needs. We are whole people. Jesus’ liberation in each gospel included the whole person. This is the example set for us to follow. I long for the day when Jesus’ name is not immediately associated with the supernatural and a disconnected privatized understanding of religion, but with relief work and social transformation/justice work for the vulnerable and marginalized that would make relief work unnecessary. 

Next week we’ll consider Jesus’ phrase, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). This week, what does it mean to live and work in harmony with these words of Jesus’ prayer for all?

“Give us today our daily bread.”

HeartGroup Application

Again this week, in the context of Supreme Court Confirmation hearings here in the U.S., we are hearing a lot of rhetoric that supports attitudes and a worldview that results in violence against women. This is the rhetoric of what has been defined as rape culture. Tolerance of jokes and excusing of behavior supports a normalization of a whole spectrum of behavior of which the other side results in violence, degradation and assault. 

Jesus stood in defense of women within his own culture.  What does it mean for Jesus followers to do the same today?

1. This week, if you are unfamiliar with what is meant by the phrase rape culture I’m providing four links that can start you on a better understanding:

http://www.southernct.edu/sexual-misconduct/facts.html

http://www.wavaw.ca/what-is-rape-culture/

http://www.dayofthegirl.org/rape_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture

2. Take time this week, again, to affirm the women in your HeartGroup. Discuss as a group what you learned from engaging the information in links above.

3. It is from making our smaller communities safer that I believe we create a larger world that comes safer for the vulnerable as well.  What can you do as a group to practice a preferential option for women and the vulnerable in your midst that makes your HeartGroup a safe place for them.  Make a list.  This next week, pick something from this list and implement it. Keep doing so each week till you’ve completed your list.

4. Don’t just stop with your HeartGroup. Engage the work of making our larger communities safer as well. Call your Representatives and share your concerns, too.

Thanks for checking in with us this week. Right where you are, keep living in love, justice, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation. Keep engaging the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate home for everyone.

And one last thing, as we approach Autumn, this is the time of year when Renewed Heart Ministries especially needs your support. Not only are we are planning for events next year, but we are working to prevent a budget shortfall for the present year. If you have been blessed by our work, please consider making a one-time contribution or becoming one of our monthly supporters. Go to renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.” Any amount helps. And thank you in advance for your support.

I love each of you dearly. 

I’ll see you next week. 

God the Father, Exclusive Othering, and a Distributive Justice for All

Posted on by

Herb Montgomery | September 21, 2018

“And if Amos were alive this week, he might have said, ‘I hate, I despise your endless religious statements that make you feel pious, protecting your phobias about those whose experiences in life are so different than your own. Away with your worthless statement and drafted expressions of bigotry. Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!’” 

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’” (Matthew 6:9-13)

This week, we begin a series of articles on Jesus’ revolutionary prayer in Matthew’s gospel, the prayer we label today as “the Lord’s prayer.” This prayer  frames an outline we can use to consider the themes in Jesus’ teachings in Matthew’s gospel. There’s much in it that I believe speaks to our work today of survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation.

The outline of this prayer is:

Our Father in Heaven:
Be hallowed Your Name
Be come Your Kingdom
Be done Your Will

As in Heaven, so on Earth: 
Daily Bread
Debt Cancellation
Deliverance from temptation to evil

Those are the themes that we’ll be looking at. Now, let’s dive right in. 

Our Father in Heaven

Historically, the exclusive image of God as “Father” has borne bad fruit for those who are neither male nor fathers. Some in the dominant social position have weaponized it against those whose differences are “Othered” and then dominated, exploited, and destroyed them. One example aptly laid out by Grace Ji-Sun Kim is how these images of God have been used against Asian American women. In her book Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love, she writes:

“As a poor Jewish peasant teacher from Nazareth, Jesus was marginalized and stood in solidarity with the marginalized throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus’ incarnate life, kingdom teaching, and crucifixion on a Roman cross unveil God as a lover of justice, peace, and liberation.

While Jesus was a revolutionary, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jesus becomes reimagined as a supporter of empire. Classical theism in the West often emphasizes God as an Almighty Father. This patriarchal concept of God has often been wielded in destructive ways throughout the history of Western Christianity. Through European colonization, too often guided by a patriarchal image of God, indigenous cultures have been dominated and destroyed, Africans have been enslaved, Asians exploited, women have been abused, and the poor have been economically exploited. The male God image mediated through the Almighty Father has often had negative conscious and unconscious effects on women, especially women of color. God the Almighty Father has often been a theological tool used by white men of European descent to subjugate woman and people of color.” (p. 116)

This title for God, “Almighty Father,” has proven extremely vulnerable to being coopted by sexism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and binary heterosexism for the abuse of those who, though not male and not fathers, are nonetheless bearers of the image of the Divine. For many, the phrase “Our Father” in such a transformative prayer as this is not an appropriate place to begin but a trigger of pain and suffering.

But for those also dedicated to contemplating and following the teachings of Jesus, this first portion of this prayer presents no small challenge. After all, Jesus was Jewish, and  Jewish tradition encourages practicing care with picturing  God in one’s mind’s eye. In the Torah we read, 

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13-14)

This cryptic description of the Divine within the Hebrew sacred scriptures provides for a universality in bearing the image of the Divine. “I am who I am” is left cryptically defined.  The question could be asked, “Who are you?” We must practice caution against answering the question definitely, for any word that comes next will undoubtedly limit the Divine.  

There is a rich diversity within the human race. And to believe that all of humanity, every member of the human family, all of our human siblings, are made in the image of God speaks to the rich complexity of God, too (See Genesis 1:26).  Our concept of the Divine must become more expansive and inclusive. It is okay to speak of God as male and as female. It’s okay to speak of God as nonbinary and ungendered, too!  God is not just White, but also Black, Asian, and more. God has traditionally been defined within the imagery of heteropatriarchy. We must be careful to allow every person to see themselves reflected in an expansive image of the Divine because “in the image of God has God made humankind.” (Genesis 9:6). And to the degree we exclude anyone from God’s image today, history shows we will exterminate them tomorrow. 

There are many ways to respond to this in prayer. Some of those who understand and practice this way of addressing the Divine in prayer use “Mother-Father God” or “Paternal God.” I’ve prayed, “Dearest Heart at the Center of the Universe.” I’ve also heard “Source of Light and Love,” “God of all nations,” “God of all peoples,” “Faithful One,” “Source of Wisdom,” or “Source of Goodness, Grace, Mercy and Justice.” On June 22, 2017, Rev. Kevin Kitrell Ross, addressed his prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives to the “Loving Presence,” and concluded with “In the name of a love supreme we pray.” 

The Jewish tradition seems to encourage not limiting God with our images of Divinity:

“You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.” (Deuteronomy 4:15-18)

I will admit that the authors’ intent in this passage was most likely to discourage people from using creation as any kind of referent at all, but I would also argue that this passage, therefore, leaves our image of the Divine as cryptic which also allows for an expansive and inclusive imaging that embraces the rich diversity of everyone. Jesus’ Jewish tradition would have given him sufficient grounds to have addressed his prayer in much more inclusive ways.

So why does this prayer in Matthew begin with “Father”?

We cannot ignore the reality that, like many of the cultures around it, Jesus’ culture was deeply patriarchal. Householders were almost exclusively men. Householders were “fathers.” In rare exceptions, widowed women might become householders. 

But there are some hints of another worldview in the rest of the prayer. It is a deeply economic prayer. Of all the things Jesus could teach his followers to pray for, he teaches them here to pray for enough bread for today, for all indebtedness to be forgiven in Jubilee fashion, and for liberation from evil as a violation from Israel’s covenant with YHWH. I believe, given the other content of this prayer, that deliverance from temptation to evil could have been a direct reference to the way the rich were exploiting the poor in violation of the economic teachings of the Torah. 

 “However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.” (Deuteronomy 15:4-5)

But back to our quest for understanding this prayer’s address, “Our Father.” Given that this prayer is grounded in economic realities, and in the Jewish patriarchal family the father was the householder, the one responsible for ensuring no one in the family had too much while others  didn’t have enough, John Dominic Crossan offers this fitting and possible explanation:

“[The prayer’s] vision derives from the common experience of a well-run home, household, or family farm. If you walked into one, how would you judge the householder? Are the fields well tended? Are the animals properly provisioned? Are the buildings adequately maintained? Are the children and dependents well fed, clothed, and sheltered? Are the sick given special care? Are responsibilities and returns apportioned fairly? Do all have enough? Especially that: Do all have enough? Or, to the contrary, do some have far too little while others have far too much?

“It is that vision of the well-run household, of the home fairly, equitably, and justly administered, that the biblical tradition applies to God. God is the Householder of the world house, and all those preceding questions must be repeated on a global and cosmic scale. Do all God’s children have enough? If not—and the biblical answer is “not”—how must things change here below so that all God’s people have a fair, equitable, and just proportion of God’s world? The Lord’s Prayer proclaims that necessary change as both revolutionary manifesto and hymn of hope. Do not, by the way, let anyone tell you that is Liberalism, Socialism, or Communism. It is—if you need an -ism—Godism, Householdism or, best of all, Enoughism. We sometimes name that biblical vision of God’s World-Household as Egalitarianism but, actually, Enoughism would be a more accurate description.” (John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, p. 3).

Given the cultural context as well as the content fo the rest of the prayer, it could be synonymous to pray, “Our Householder in Heaven.” And Jesus’ point is that the will of the World Householder is that everyone have enough.  Within a Jewish worldview, the responsibility for carrying out that will has been delegated to humans. We have to ask ourselves what kind of world have we made with this responsibility. Jesus is calling for a community of people (the Kingdom) to come into being where the distributively just will of the World Householder is actually carried out. This is a prayer, within the contradiction of a patriarchal culture, that calls for an economic, distributive justice. How this prayer begins may still remain deeply problematic for many. But the prayer still offers us much. There is much to reclaim and to renew our hearts as we continue to work today toward a world that is safe, distributively just, and compassionate for everyone. 

The God who Jesus pictured for his listeners was a God who causes the sun and rain to fall on all indiscriminately. So if someone is going without, we have to look for the obstruction. It’s being “sent” to all, so who and what are preventing what we need for thriving from reaching all? As is often been stated, there is enough each day for every person’s need, but not for every person’s greed. In teaching this, Jesus was accessing his Jewish tradition:

“The poor and the oppressor have this in common: The LORD gives sight to the eyes of both.” (Proverbs 29:13)

“Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.” (Proverbs 30:8)

This distributive justice spoken of by Jesus also has its roots in the way the Hebrew prophets spoke truth to power.

 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)

Crossan again notes, “the primary meaning of ‘justice’ is not retributive, but distributive. To be just means to distribute everything fairly. The primary meaning of ‘justice’ is equitable distribution” (dIbid., p. 2). This was the great Hebrew hope of a distributive justice whose fruit would be peace.

“Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne 
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it 
with justice [distributive] and righteousness.” (Isaiah 9:7)

“The fruit of that righteousness [distributive] will be peace;
its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.” (Isaiah 32:17) 

Amos names the error of prioritizing religious ritual over concern for justice, especially justice for the vulnerable. Two weeks ago now, the same group of evangelicals that produced The Nashville Statement last year put out another ugly statement entitled The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. I’m not going to link to it. It reveals the drafters’ and signers’ gross ignorance of both the gospel and social justice.   How many times do we see Christians practicing extreme care for their religiosity, while either being totally ignorant of or even opposing people’s cry for justice? Gustavo Gutiérrez reminds us, “The kingdom and social injustice are incompatible” (A Theology of Liberation, 15th Anniversary Edition, p. 97). And if Amos were alive this week, he might have said, “I hate, I despise your endless religious statements that make you feel pious, protecting your phobias about those whose experiences in life are so different than your own. Away with your worthless statement and drafted expressions of bigotry. Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” 

Jesus begins his prayer in a way that would have been heard and understood by his original audience. He paints a picture of the human family where everyone has enough to not only survive, but also thrive. 

I believe prayer, meditation, contemplation, and practices like these shape those who practice them. Over the next few weeks as we continue to contemplate this famous prayer, my hope is that it will shape us, too, into people who work to transform our world into a safe, compassionate home for all, regardless of race, gender, religion, culture, ethnicity, education, economic status, sexuality, gender identity and expression, ability, or whatever —a safe home for all, where everyone has enough.

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’” (Matthew 6:9-13)

HeartGroup Application

There is a lot happening this week.  

Women all over the country are, again, hearing through our various news feeds and in private conversations family and friends the rhetoric of “boys will be boys,” “he was young,” “that was high school,” and more. Even before a hearing, the use of this rape culture rhetoric continues to perpetuate prioritizing violators over survivors. There is never an “okay” age for rape.  Teenage boys should not get a pass. To say they are not mature enough to understand consent is disturbing. As a father having discussions this week with both my son and my daughters, I’m deeply concerned about the messages being communicated to them right now. And as human being, I witness how these kinds of statements deeply impact the women in my life. I’m deeply concerned for what this continues to say to women, and survivors, and men.

  1. Take a moment this week in your HeartGroup to go around the room and affirm each of the women in your midst. Tell them that you value them. Be voices in their lives this week saying, “This is not okay.”
  2. If any would like to share, make time for the women in your HeartGroup to share how this week has impacted each of them. Listen to them. Let me repeat that. Men, listen to them.
  3. Lastly, put your feet in motion. What are some of the ways your group can engage the work of making our world a safer place for women? Create a list. Then pick something from the list and put it into practice the following week.

Thank you for checking in with us, this week. Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love, justice and compassion reigns. 

Another world is possible. 

And remember, this is the time of year when Renewed Heart Ministries needs your support.  If you have been blessed by our work, please consider making a one time contribution or becoming one of our monthly supporters.  Go to renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”  Any amount helps.  And thank you in advance for your support.

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

Salvific Teachings: Womanism and the Gospel

Posted on by

Herb Montgomery | September 7, 2018

 

Picture portraying three Women of Color

Photo Credit: Eloise Ambursley on Unsplash

“Notice that in this passage, which is not at all unique to the gospels, the ‘gospel of God’ is the announcement of the arrival of the reign or kingdom of God, who desires a world that is a safe, distributively just, and compassionate home for everyone. This was indeed, good news to the oppressed, marginalized and exploited of Jesus’ time, and it’s good news in our time as well.”

 

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15)

This week we take our third and final look at Jesus’ crucifixion through the lens of the experiences of members of vulnerable communities who daily face marginalization, domination, exploitation and/or oppression. We are going to listen at the feet of one of the greatest womanist theologians of our time, Delores S. Williams.

 

Last week, we considered how many feminist theologians reject the sufferings of Jesus as redemptive because of the lethal fruit this interpretation of Jesus’ crucifixion has produced in the lives of women. Womanist theologians hav e the same concern.

 

“African-American Christian women can, through their religion and its leaders, be led passively to accept their own oppression and suffering — if the women are taught that suffering is redemptive.” (Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, p. 161)

 

Seeking an alternative source of redemption in Jesus other than his sufferings, Williams addresses one the most historically damaging interpretations of Jesus’ death: Substitution, or as Williams calls it “surrogacy.” It doesn’t matter whether a theology represents Jesus standing in the place of God or of people. To the degree that Jesus was a substitute, representative, or “surrogate” sufferer in one’s interpretation of Jesus’ cross, then to that same degree surrogacy takes on “the aura of the sacred” and is divinely validated as an acceptable way for people to relate to each other. After all, if Jesus or God both participated in surrogacy, surrogacy itself cannot be impugned without calling the morality or justice of both Jesus or God into question as well. That has a particular import for Black women, historically forced into surrogacy during and following the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. (For further discussion on the oppression of Black women specifically in the context of surrogacy see Sisters in the Wilderness; The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, p 40-60)

 

“In this sense Jesus represents the ultimate surrogate figure; he stands in the place of someone else: sinful humankind. Surrogacy, attached to this divine personage, thus takes on an aura of the sacred. It is therefore fitting and proper for black women to ask whether the image of a surrogate-God has salvific power for black women or whether this image supports and reinforces the exploitation that has accompanied their experience with surrogacy. If black women accept this idea of redemption, can they not also passively accept the exploitation that surrogacy brings?” (Delores S. Williams; Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, p. 127)

 

Some differentiate Jesus’ surrogacy for humanity from the historical surrogacy role of Black women under the subjugation of their oppressors by saying Jesus’ surrogacy was voluntary. Williams finds such rhetoric insufficient:

 

“After emancipation, the coercion associated with antebellum surrogacy was replaced by social pressures that influenced many black women to continue to fill some surrogacy roles. But there was an important difference between antebellum surrogacy and postbellum surrogacy. The difference was that black women, after emancipation, could exercise the choice of refusing the surrogate role, but social pressures often influenced the choices black women made as they adjusted to life in a free world. Thus postbellum surrogacy can be referred to as voluntary (though pressured) surrogacy.” (Ibid., p. 41)

 

Williams offers an alternative interpretation of Jesus as a source of redemption. Jesus, she explains, gave “humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life.” This is, by far, my favorite paragraph from Williams on this subject:

 

“Black women are intelligent people living in a technological world where nuclear bombs, defilement of the earth, racism, sexism, dope and economic injustices attest to the presence and power of evil in the world. Perhaps not many people today can believe that evil and sin were overcome by Jesus’ death on the cross; that is, that Jesus took human sin upon himself and therefore saved humankind. Rather, it seems more intelligent and more scriptural to understand that redemption had to do with God, through Jesus, giving humankind new vision to see the resources for positive, abundant relational life. Redemption had to do with God, through the ministerial vision, giving humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life. Hence, the kingdom of God theme in the ministerial vision of Jesus does not point to death; it is not something one has to die to reach. Rather, the kingdom of God is a metaphor of hope God gives those attempting to right the relations between self and self, between self and others, between self and God as prescribed in the sermon on the mount, in the golden rule and in the commandment to show love above all else.” (Ibid., pp. 130-131) 

 

Now, it is up to us whether or not we will follow Jesus and practice his vision, whether we will follow this “ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life.” If the world doesn’t seem that different after Jesus than it was before, then it’s not that Jesus’ teachings have been tried and found wanting. As Chesterton stated, they have “been found difficult and left untried” (What’s Wrong with the World, Part 1, Chapter 5).

 

To focus on Jesus’ Kingdom of God theme as “the gospel”, the good news, and the source of redemption holds the most weight in the gospels. The gospels do not define the good news as “Jesus died for you.” The good news of the gospels is, every time, the Kingdom among us.

 

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14-15)

 

Notice that in this passage, which is not at all unique to the gospels, the “gospel of God” is the announcement of the arrival of the reign or kingdom of God, who desires a world that is a safe, distributively just, and compassionate home for everyone. This was indeed, good news to the oppressed, marginalized and exploited of Jesus’ time, and it’s good news in our time as well.

Consider this statement in Luke’s gospel:

 

“ So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the gospel [euangelion] and healing people everywhere.” (Luke 9:6) 

 

What I love about this passage is that it tells us that followers of Jesus were t preaching the gospel far and wide, but Jesus had not yet died, much less been resurrected. What, then, were his followers telling people when they proclaimed the gospel? Whatever it was, their message was a gospel without a cross and without a resurrection. We have to let that confront us. 

 

According to Luke, it is possible to preach the gospel and never mention the cross or the resurrection. What were they sharing instead? They were announcing the kingdom and it was good news! The good news is always primarily about the kingdom, the new social vision for humanity that Jesus taught was possible here and now.

 

Consider  the book of Acts and take note of the gospel they were proclaiming:

 

“But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God . . .” (Acts 8:12)

 

“Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.” (Acts 19:8)

 

“Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.” (Acts 20:25)

 

“They arranged to meet Paul on a certain day, and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. He witnessed to them from morning till evening, explaining about the kingdom of God, and from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets he tried to persuade them about Jesus.” (Acts 28:23)

 

“For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance.” (Acts 28.30-31)

 

I believe Delores Williams is onto something significant.  Survival, liberation, redemption, salvation, and quality of life—in the Jesus story these are the themes that come through what Jesus called the kingdom or reign of God. Again, “The kingdom of God is a metaphor of hope God gives those attempting to right the relations between self and self, between self and others, between self and God as prescribed in the sermon on the mount, in the golden rule and in the commandment to show love above all else.” This is what is salvific about Jesus and his teachings.

 

Williams continues, “Humankind is, then, redeemed through Jesus’ ministerial vision of life and not through his death. There is nothing divine in the blood of the cross. God does not intend black women’s surrogacy experience. Neither can Christian faith affirm such an idea. Jesus did not come to be a surrogate. Jesus came for life, to show humans a perfect vision of ministerial relation that humans had very little knowledge of. As Christians, black women cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render their exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify the sin of defilement. (Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, p. 132)

 

As challenging as Williams’ words are to our traditional interpretations, they hold promise, too.y Consider again the book of Acts. Even after Jesus died, the gospel was primarily about the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus had died and was resurrected but the story of the gospel would not include his death  fin its proclamation of the kingdom, and the emphasis when Jesus’ life story was told was not on Jesus’ death but his resurrection. The good news, in other words, was not that Jesus had died, but that he was alive! The Romans couldn’t stop him, and  a rich man’s tomb couldn’t hold this prophet of the poor. He was still out there, still recruiting, still calling people to “follow me.” 

 

Notice the good news now emphasizes his resurrection over his death:

 

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:33)

 

“You crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” (Acts 2:22-24)

 

“This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” (Acts 2:32-33)

 

“You handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, but God raised from the dead.” (Acts 3:12-16)

 

 “. . . Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead.” (Acts 4:10-11)

 

“The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.” (Acts 5:30-32)

 

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day.” (Acts 10:36-43)

 

“Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . . And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus.” (Acts 13:35-38)

 

It is quite possible that atonement theories that focus on explaining how Jesus’ violent death saves us are trying to answer the wrong question. To use Williams’ phrase, a “more intelligent” question might be how do Jesus’ teachings save us? What does salvation mean for us here and now? Why did the proclamation that Jesus was alive inspire such hope among the  oppressed communities of Galilee and the surrounding areas in the 1st Century? However one interprets  the story of Jesus’ resurrection today, we cannot miss that it gave hope as good news to the early followers beyond hope for an afterlife. It gave them hope for this life. The reign of God had come near. The powers that be had tried to stop it, but failed. Another world is possible.

 

If what we learned last week holds any weight, if interpreting suffering as being redemptive is deeply damaging to marginalized and vulnerable communities, then this week we are being offered an alternative interpretation. tThe teachings of Jesus are salvific:  his vision for life and human community, his vision of distributive justice, the golden rule, our loving of one another as the interconnected begins that we are , his call to solidarity with those presently oppressed. These teachings and more point to a way that’s different from the course the status quo is presently pursuing. It’s a way or path to life. And it still calls to Jesus’ followers today.

 

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1.14-15)

 

A Special Request

 

This is the time of year when Renewed Heart Ministries needs your support the most.  If you have been blessed by our work, consider making a one time gift or becoming one of our monthly contributors.  Any amount is deeply appreciated. Your generosity enables our much needed work to continue. 

 

You can do so either online by clicking here: Donate 

 

Or you can mail your support to:

 

Renewed Heart Ministries

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Thanks in advance for your help.

 

And thank you for checking in with us, this week. Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love, justice and compassion reigns. 

 

Another world is possible. 

 

I love each of you dearly.

 

I’ll see you next week.

 

 

A Refusal to Let Go of Life

Posted on by

Herb Montgomery | August 31, 2018

Statue of crucifixion

Photo credit: Ricky Turner on Unsplash

“Jesus chose to live a life in opposition to unjust, oppressive cultures. Jesus did not choose the cross but chose integrity and faithfulness, refusing to change course because of threat.” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World?; Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p.27)

 “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” (Mark 8:34)

In our time, there are two ways to define the cross. One defines it as passive endurance of abuse and injustice, whereas the other defines it as not being cowed by a violent system that  those in power use to threaten people who stand up, resist, and push back against abuse or injustice. (See last week’s article, “The Violence Inherent In The System.”*)

But Jesus’s audience couldn’t miss the meaning in his call to take up one’s cross. Roman crosses had only one connotation: it was used on dissidents. To be passive was to avoid being put on a cross, but to stand against injustice would almost certainly land you on one. 

The cross therefore had a singular political meaning. Some scholars even see evidence that the phrase “take up one’s cross” was used as a rallying cry by Jewish insurgents, a group whose members were constantly  being crucified for their activity (see Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man, p. 245-246). Jesus called his followers to nonviolent resistance, yet also used this specific phrase. hHis priority value in his nonviolence was not passive, patient endurance, but noncooperation, resistance, and dissent. The difference may seem subtle but the results are anything but when one considers the fruit that these interpretations bear in the lives of communities who daily face oppression and injustice.

This week we’re listening to and learning from voices from another marginalized community: women. We are considering the crucifixion event in the closing scenes of the Jesus story from the perspectives of various first wave, feminist theologians and scholars. 

Let’s begin with a classic and favorite article of mine, For God So Loved the World? by Joan Carlson Brown & Rebecca Parker. If you have not read it in its entirety you can do so online. It offers much to contemplate in light of the distinctions we are making this week.

“It is not the acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not am I willing to suffer? but do I desire fully to live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering.” (in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 18, eds. Joanne Carlson Brown & Carole R. Bohn)

When Jesus called for his followers to be willing to take up their crosses, the political context of Roman crosses and their use means that Jesus wasn’t asking them to accept suffering. Rather, he was asking them if they desired “fully to live?” He was calling them to refuse to let go of their desire to live, to stand up to the injustice and join him. Whether Jesus spoke of a cross, or used the more veiled imagery of a “baptism” or drinking a “cup,” he never spoke of these experiences as something he was to do alone. In Mark’s gospel, each time he brings the subject up, he doesn’t preach his action substituting for the disciples’, but calls for their participation right alongside his own.  

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life [by being passive or silent] will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake [standing up to injustice and abuse], and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world [through their silence] and forfeit their life?’” (Mark 8:34-36; see also The Myth of Redemptive Suffering)

“But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ?’ They replied, ‘We are able .’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.’” (Mark 10:38-39)

As we saw last week, at this point in the gospels, Jesus is headed to Jerusalem to engage in a temple protest of dissent. He knows what the outcome may be, and he calls his followers to join him. His disciples understand Jesus’ call to participate with him. We know this because every time Jesus brings it up in Mark’s gospel, the disciples quickly change the subject (See Mark 8-10). Had they responded to Jesus positively rather than with denial, Calvary could have included thirteen more crosses in addition to Jesus’. 

This way of interpreting the Jesus story is important. Jesus taught resistance rather than passive acceptance of injustice. He taught self-affirmation rather than self-sacrifice. He taught speaking out rather than remaining silent. As feminist writers have pointed out, these distinctions are especially relevant for oppressed communities. Historically, Christian interpretations that describe Jesus’ teachings as sacrifice of one’s self, patient endurance of abuse, and silent passivity in the face of injustice have produced deeply harmful fruit for women. Consider the following critiques of traditional theology conducted from empowered social locations. Also take note that these comments come from theologians working from the margins.

“Women are acculturated to accept abuse. We come to believe that it is our place to suffer . . . Christianity has been a primary—in many women’s lives the primary—force in shaping our acceptance of abuse. The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive.” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World?; Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 1-2)

“Christian theology has long imposed upon women a norm of imitative self-sacrifice base on the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Powerlessness is equated with faithfulness. When the cross is also interpreted as the salvific work of an all-powerful paternal deity, women’s well-being is as secure as that of a child cowering before an abusive father.” (Elizabeth Bettenhausen, Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. xii; edited by Joanne Carlson Brown & Carole R. Bohn)

“The qualities that Christianity idealizes, especially for women, are also those of a victim: sacrificial love, passive acceptance of suffering, humility, meekness, etc. Since these are the qualities idealized in Jesus ‘who died for our sins,’ his functioning as a model reinforces the scapegoat syndrome for women.” (Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, p. 77)

These critiques may challenge some of your theologies very deeply. That’s okay. We each need to be willing to consider whether our beliefs are producing life-giving fruit or whether they produce oppression, violence, and injustice. As Jesus-followers, we are called to liberation and solidarity with our fellow humans, even when that challenges us to reassess some of our most deeply held ways of interpreting the Jesus story. Remember, our sacred stories are eternal.  Our interpretations of them are not. Our interpretations can change! We can make our interpretations give way to more life-giving interpretations. And, in the future, if we discover our new interpretations also do harm, we can process them again. The goal of the gospel is always life.

I want to take a moment now to caution some of our followers interested in specific atonement theories. As we read critiques from the margins, we cannot pride ourselves in the fact that we don’t subscribe to more violent interpretations of Jesus’ crucifixion such as penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). Two popular, classical replacements for PSA are the Moral Influence theory and Christus Victor. Consider that even these two alternatives are not immune to the critiques we are considering this week from our sister theologians.

First,  consider the interpretation of Jesus’ death as redemptive through moral influence.

“The problem with this theology is that it asks people to suffer for the sake of helping evildoers see their evil ways. It puts concern for the evildoers ahead of concern for the victim of evil. It makes victims the servants of the evildoers’ salvation.” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World?; Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. 20.)

Next consider the interpretation of Jesus’ death as redemptive in the context of the Christus Victor narrative.

“The believer whose thoughts and feelings have been shaped by a tradition that teaches or ritualizes in liturgy the Christus Victor view may interpret her or his suffering in this light. In response to suffering it will be said, Be patient, something good will come of this.” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World?; Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p.6 )

Whatever we choose to believe about Jesus’ crucifixion, I believe we must stay grounded in the insights we discussed last week. The cross was the response of those in power to Jesus as he refused to be silent in the face of injustice he saw committed against the vulnerable. He acted for justice and was kille. Remember these wise words from both Brown and Parker:

“Jesus chose to live a life in opposition to unjust, oppressive cultures. Jesus did not choose the cross but chose integrity and faithfulness, refusing to change course because of threat.” (Brown and Parker, For God So Loved the World?; Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p.27)

I want to close this week with Elizabeth Bettenhausen’s story of a classroom exercise of changing the genders of the Jesus story. Reading her experience forever changed my own reading of the Jesus story. I’ll share it here with you.

“Several years ago I asked a group of seminarians to choose New Testament stories about Jesus and rewrite them imagining that Jesus had been female. The following recreation of the passion story of Luke 22.54-65 was one woman’s knowing by heart.

‘They arrested the Christ woman and led her away to the Council for questioning. Some of her followers straggled along to find out what was to become of her. There were seven women and two men followers. (The men followers were there mainly to keep watch over their sisters.) Someone from among the crowd asked a question of a man follower, ‘Haven’t I seen you with this woman? Who is she, and what is your relationship with her?’ He replied defensively, ‘She is a prostitute, she has had many men. I have seen her with many!’ The men who were guarding the Christ [woman] slapped her around and made fun of her. They told her to use magic powers to stop them. They blindfolded her and each them in turn raped her and afterward jeered, ‘Now, prophetess, who was in you? Which one of us? Tell us that!’ They continued to insult her. (Kandice Joyce)

After this story was read aloud, a silence surrounded the class and made us shiver. Ever since, I have wondered would women ever imagine forming a religion around the rape of a woman? Would we ever conjure gang-rape as a salvific event for other women? What sort of god would such an event reveal?” (Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, p. xi-xii, edited by Joanne Carlson Brown & Carole R. Bohn)

Kandice Joyce correctly perceives the intensity of rape and the shock of using it in this way as analogous to the intensity of execution by crucifixion and the way the Romans used it in their day. All of these women scholars are calling us to embrace the reality in both our lives and in our interpretations of our sacred stories that suffering is never redemptive. Suffering, even Jesus’s, cannot be redeemed. “The cross is a sign of tragedy. God’s grief is revealed there and everywhere and every time life is thwarted by violence” (Brown and Parker). But violent theologies have had devastating effects on the ives of vulnerable people,  specifically women. The reality is that victimization never leads to triumph, regardless of what our fairytales and interpretations of sacred stories tell us, and victimization, even when survived, can lead to even greater pain if not rejected or stood up to. When we fail to refuse abuse, abuse kills a person’s sense of power, worth, and dignity. Lastly, passive, patient endurance of abuse can lead to actual death.

It is not hyperbole to say that how we choose to interpret Jesus’ words has life or death importance.

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” (Mark 8:34)

HeartGroup Application

This past week, Jamel Myles, a nine year old boy in the fourth grade at Joe Shoemaker Elementary School in Denver, Colorado committed suicide as a result of being bullied by his classmates for coming out as gay.  I have a 10 year old son who is in fifth grade. This story hits home for me.  I can’t imagine my life without my son.  Leia Pierce, Jamel’s mother spoke out, “We have to stop bullying and teach people it’s OK to love each other. … We have to stop hating each other for differences, differences that make us equal and unique.” (For more of Jamel’s story see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/us/jamel-myles-suicide-denver.html) 

1. This week in your HeartGroup, share some ways that your experience in Heartgroup has challenged you to see our human differences as the rich and diverse variety within a humanity that bears the image of the Divine rather than “less than.” How have you encountered experiences of life that are different than your own?  How have these encounters helped you to move beyond fear and insecurity in relation to those who are different than you?

2.  As a group, list some ways that you can actively lean into the beautiful experiences of seeing each person as made in the image of God, a testament of the rich diversity seen in humanity, and actively move further toward a more meaningful, nonhomogenous, yet coherent view of our world and the life we, together as human siblings, live in it?  How can you more deeply love one another as yourselves?

3. Pick something from that list this week, and do it.

Thank you for checking in with us, this week. Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love, justice and compassion reigns. 

Another world is possible. 

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”

The Violence Inherent in the System

Posted on by

by Herb Montgomery | August 24, 2018

Mosaic of Jesus carrying a cross

“Those who read the Jesus story from within communities of people facing marginalization regularly see in Jesus’ crucifixion a deep solidarity with those on the margins in Jesus’ day and also those in that same ‘class’ today. Jesus and the God Jesus preached are on the side of those who are being marginalized.”

“They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles.’” (Mark 10:32-33)

In our last eSight/podcast (Jesus From The Edges), we focused on the importance of listening to the theologies that arise from the experiences of communities of people who daily bump up against oppression, marginalized, and/or subjugation. These sources are contrasted with theologies that come out of a more privileged social location in our society. 

As womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant writes, “Liberation theologies including Christian feminists, charge that the experience out of which Christian theology has emerged is not universal experience but the experience of the dominant culture . . . liberationists therefore, propose that theology must emerge out of particular experiences of the oppressed people of God” (White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus, p. 1, 10). 

James Cone also writes, ““Few, if any, of the early Church Fathers grounded their christological arguments in the concrete history of Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently, little is said about the significance of his ministry to the poor as a definition of his person. The Nicene Fathers showed little interest in the christological significance of Jesus’ deeds for the humiliated, because most of the discussion took place in the social context of the Church’s position as the favored religion of the Roman State” (God of the Oppressed, p. 107). 

From my own experience I know that those on the margins of society see things in the Jesus story that those more centered in society simply miss. This doesn’t mean that some people have no blind spots. We all have blind spots. But in learning to listen to one another, especially the voices of those rarely given the mic, we discover our own blind spots and can move toward a path of compassion and justice for everyone. 

Given this reality, I would like to spend the next few eSights/podcasts contemplating the closing events of the Jesus story through the lens of the experiences of oppressed communities and the life actions these insights call us to engage. 

One of these insights has impacted my own theology for the better, has been life giving, and borne healthy fruit for me. That insight is the interpretation of Jesus death that holds that the crucifixion was not for the purpose of satisfying divine wrath, honor, or justice, but instead was an act of injustice, an expression of the violence inherent in unjust political, social, economic, and religious systems.

To the best of our knowledge, the earliest version of the Jesus story is the gospel of Mark. Three times in  that gospel, Jesus reveals that he understands that his actions in Jerusalem will lead to his arrest and crucifixion by the Romans (see Mark 8:31-34; Mark 9:30-32; and Mark 10:32-34). 

Mark’s point is that  the crucifixion was a direct response to the political, social, economic, and religious actions Jesus took in the Temple in Jerusalem, the heart of the Temple State.

“In Jesus’ first-century world, crucifixion was the brutal tool of social-political power. It was reserved for slaves, enemy soldiers, and those held in the highest contempt and lowest regard in society. To be crucified was, for the most part, an indication of how worthless and devalued an individual was in the eyes of established power. At the same time, it indicated how much of a threat that person was believed to pose. Crucifixion was reserved for those who threatened the “peace” of the day. It was a torturous death that was also meant to send a message: disrupt the Roman order in any way [and] this too will happen to you. As there is a lynched class of people, there was, without doubt, a crucified class of people. The crucified class in the first-century Roman world was the same as the lynched class today. It consisted of those who were castigated and demonized as well as those who defied the status quo. Crucifixion was a stand-your-ground type of punishment for the treasonous offense of violating the rule of Roman ‘law and order.’” (Kelly Brown Douglas. Stand Your Ground; Black Bodies and the Justice of God, p. 171)

When one interprets what we call Jesus’ “triumphal entry” as climaxing in his temple protest, it makes a lot of sense to understand the cross as the response of the powers in control at that time. “Crucifixion was and remains a political and military punishment . . . Among the Romans it was inflicted above all on the lower classes, i.e., slaves, violent criminals, and the unruly elements in rebellious provinces, not least Judea . . . These were primarily people who on the whole had no rights, in other words, groups whose development had to be suppressed by all possible means to safeguard law and order in the state ” (Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, p. 87, emphasis added).

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t die so that people can go to heaven when they die. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus dies because he stood up to the status quo. One’s social location enables one to either see the relevance of this story detail or miss the point entirely. James Cone makes the same point in his classic book A Black Theology of Liberation: 

“What is most ironic is that the white lynchers of blacks in America were not regarded as criminals; like Jesus, blacks were the criminals and insurrectionists. The lynchers were the ‘good citizens’ who often did not even bother to hide their identities. They claimed to be acting as citizens and Christians as they crucified blacks in the same manner as the Romans lynched Jesus . . . White theologians in the past century have written thousands of books about Jesus’ cross without remarking on the analogy between the crucifixion of Jesus and the lynching of black people.” (James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p. 158-159)  

Yet for Cone, his own experience as a Black man in America enabled him to see the cross as a violent act of injustice by an oppressive system. Seeing Jesus’ crucifixion in this light helped him to make sense of his own experience and to stand up to the injustice he faced. “The cross helped me to deal with the brutal legacy of the lynching tree, and the lynching tree helped me to understand the tragic meaning of the cross . . . I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.” (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Introduction)

In Mark’s gospel, we read: 

“When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethpage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

‘Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” (Mark 11:1-11)

This was a planned demonstration by Jesus. Echoing Zechariah 9:9, Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem that day was to culminate in a dramatic Temple protest. Yet according to Mark, there was one flaw in his plan. When he finally arrived at the Temple, it was already “late in the day” and the majority of people had returned home. For a demonstration or protest to have effect, it must have witnesses. So what does Jesus do? He returns with the twelve and spends the night in Bethany, most likely at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and delays the final act of his demonstration for the following day.

“On the following day . . . they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.” (Mark 11.12 -16) 

Notice that these two events were supposed to be connected. They were not to happen separately but together. Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey and then overturning the tables in protest against how the poor were being exploited by the Temple state was intended to be one  action, not two.

Nevertheless, Jesus’ action on that second day was enough to threaten the powers, and before the end of the week, he was arrested by the “police” (Luke 22:52, CSB) and  hanging on a Roman cross. 

What does the cross say first to those facing marginalization within their larger society? 

Those who read the Jesus story from within communities of people facing marginalization regularly see in Jesus’ crucifixion a deep solidarity with those on the margins in Jesus’ day and also those in that same “class” today. Jesus and the God Jesus preached are on the side of those who are being marginalized:

 “That Jesus was crucified affirms his absolute identification with the Trayvons, the Jordans, the Renishas, the Jonathans, and all the other victims of the stand-your-ground-culture war. Jesus’ identification with the lynched/crucified class is not accidental. It is intentional. It did not begin with his death on the cross. In fact, that Jesus was crucified signals his prior bond with the ‘crucified class’ of his day. (Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground; Black Bodies and the Justice of God, p. 171)

“The cross places God in the midst of crucified people, in the midst of people who are hung, shot, burned, and tortured.” (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 26)

What, then, is our first takeaway from looking at Jesus’ crucifixion through the lens of the experiences of those who belong to oppressed communities? That Jesus ended up on a Roman cross tells us that Jesus and Jesus’ God stood with those being marginalized over against the violence inherent in the system. Today, when we stand alongside those who are being marginalized, who face the violence inherent in our system, we are standing with that same Jesus and his God. We’ll consider another insight next week. For this week, contemplating this much is enough. 

“They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles.” (Mark 10.32-33)

HeartGroup Application

  1. What does standing up to injustice look like for you? Share with your group.
  2. As a group, choose and read about an injustice that doesn’t apply to you. Make sure that what you read is by a member of the affected community and directly impacted by the injustice.
  3. How does what you’ve read impact you? What would it look like to stand up to this injustice alongside those impacted? Consider, as a follower of Jesus, doing so.

I’m so glad you checked in with us, this week. Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love, justice, and compassion reigns. 

Another world is possible. 

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”

JESUS FROM THE EDGES

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Herb Montgomery | August 10, 2018

“These societal structures all function based on the variables of race, gender, sexuality, gender identity and expression, current economic status, ability, age, education, ethnicity, religion, criminal record, and more . . . What does it mean for a Jesus follower to take seriously Jesus’ solidarity with those relegated to the margins and/or undersides of his society?”

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call [those you call] righteous, but [those you call] sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

In previous series, we have discussed how people in Jesus’ society used the labels of “righteous” or “sinner”  to politically, socially, economically, and religiously gain power and privilege for themselves or to marginalize and exploit those who were vulnerable. (You can review this in The Lost Coin and Solidarity with the Crucified Community.) This week I want to build on this idea.

In that society, how well a person conformed to popular interpretations of the Torah determined where they fell on al spectrum between righteous/sinner or clean/unclean. The more righteous or “pure” one was deemed to be, the more their society centered them. They were more privileged. They had power. They were the elite. 

Two groups in the Sanhedrin that competed for power were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees interpreted the Torah more conservatively than the Pharisees. This made conforming to their interpretation much more difficult. In many cases, their definition of “righteous” was only viable for those who had the economic means to conform, i.e. those with money who could afford to live the way the Sadducees deemed pure. This ensured that the Sadducees remained in power under the guise of fidelity to the Torah. 

The second group, the Pharisees , was much more liberal in interpreting the Torah. This made them much more popular with the masses. Under the Pharisees’ teaching, it was easier to be righteous and avoid being labeled a sinner and thus marginalized. The Pharisees were the popular interpreters of the “teachings of Moses.” Being favored by the majority of the people gave them social power, yet they also preserved their position as the ones who set the standard of “clean” and “unclean.” 

This was a social, political, economic and religious system that produced winners and losers. In this context, an itinerant Jewish teacher from Galilee named Jesus emerged. He stood apart from both schools of interpretation and came preaching a gospel where the “kingdom” belonged to those left out of both the Sadducees’ and Pharisees’ determination of who was righteous. With this in mind, read carefully the following passages. 

Luke 5:30—“But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’”

Matthew 9:13—“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Luke 14:13—“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind . . .”

Matthew 11:19—“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”

Mark 2:15-16—“While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Luke 19:7—“All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Today in the U.S., our system creates winners and losers, too. Politically, we also have two parties that compete for popular approval while gaining power in a system that still privileges the elites. Economically, our system produces enormous wealth disparity, with those who “have not” being the natural result of creating those who “have.” Socially and religiously, we have complex systems that create an us versus them worldview and label those who are in and those who are out. 

These societal structures all function based on the variables of race, gender, sexuality, gender identity and expression, current economic status, ability, age, education, ethnicity, religion, criminal record, and more. Our interconnectedness, our part-of-one-another is continually ignored. Rather than seeing every person’s differences as a testament to the rich variety we possess as a human family, we use these differences to “other” in ways that label some as “righteous” and others as “sinner.” Those of us whose differences place them in a minority category are still members of the human race, and still part of us.

What does it mean for a Jesus follower to take seriously Jesus’ solidarity with those relegated to the margins and/or undersides of his society? How can we live out that kind of solidarity in our context today? What does it mean to stand and work alongside those who are pushed to the edges of our society?

In the 1960s and 1970s, Christians developed a keen awareness of Jesus’ solidarity with those labeled as outsiders, oppressed, marginalized and/or exploited. This emergence was global. In South America, Latin Liberation theology was born. In North America, other liberation theologies, such as Black Liberation theology, Feminist theology, Amerindian theology, womanist theology, and queer theology arose. In the east, Asian theologies of liberation were born. Gustavo Gutierrez comments on the importance of this rising consciousness.

“Black, Hispanic, and Amerindian theologies in the United States, theologies arising in the complex contexts of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific, and the especially fruitful thinking of those who have adopted the feminist perspective—all these have meant that for the first time in many centuries theology is being done outside the customary European and North American centers. The result in the so-called First World has been a new kind of dialogue between traditional thinking and new thinking. In addition, outside the Christian sphere efforts are underway to develop liberation theologies from Jewish and Muslim perspectives.  We are thus in the presence of a complex phenomenon developing on every side and representing a great treasure for the Christian churches and for their dialogue with other religions. The clarification I mentioned earlier is thus not limited to the Latin American context but affects a process and a search that are being conducted on a very broad front today. These considerations should not make us forget, however, that we are not dealing here solely with an intellectual pursuit. Behind liberation theology are Christian communities, religious groups, and peoples, who are becoming increasingly conscious that the oppression and neglect from which they suffer are incompatible with their faith in Jesus Christ (or, speaking more generally, with their religious faith). These concrete, real-life movements are what give this theology its distinctive character; in liberation theology, faith and life are inseparable. This unity accounts for its prophetic vigor and its potentialities. (Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation [15th Anniversary Edition])

Womanist scholar and theologian Jacquelyn Grant comments, “Theology as developed in Europe and America is limited when it approaches the majority of human beings…  nns Liberation theologies including Christian feminists, charge that the experience out of which Christian theology has emerged is not universal experience but the experience of the dominant culture . . . liberationists therefore, propose that theology must emerge out of particular experiences of the oppressed people of God.” (in White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus, pp. 1, 10)

Making space for these voices and attending to their insights is so very important. Here at Renewed Heart Ministries we believe that the teachings of Jesus —a 1st Century Jewish prophet of the poor from Galilee—can still speak into and inform our work of survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation today. For that to be life giving, we must consider those teachings through the lens of the experiences of the people Jesus would have been addressing if he were walking among us today. As Ched Myers states in Binding the Strong Man, “The fact remains that those on the peripheries will have ‘eyes to see’ many things that those at the center do not.” 

From the experiences of those now in a social location similar to the social location of those Jesus taught  we can see how those teachings help us in our work of making our world a safe, just, compassionate home for everyone. As someone who has been engaged in ministry for over twenty years, these perspectives, voices, stories of people fighting to reclaim their humanity in the context of their faith traditions have been the key to helping me rediscover and reclaim my own humanity as well. I resonate deeply with the words of Aboriginal elder Lilla Watson, “If you have come to help me, please go home. But if you have come because your liberation is somehow bound with mine, then we may work together.”  I don’t work alongside communities working for survival and liberation out of charity. It is beside them that I rediscover my own humanity, too.

If one is new to these perspectives, where does one start? One place to begin is by exposing yourself to the writings and works of those who belong to these communities. An easy way to do this is to follow our yearly reading course at RHM. We announce each month’s book at the beginning of each month. You can sign up to be notified of each month’s book by signing up for our weekly news and eSights emails here. The point is not so much where one begins as it is to simply begin. One resource will lead you to another, and over time, you’ll see the difference these voices make to you.

Jesus did not call those who the status quo places “first.” He instead stood alongside those his culture relegated to “last” place (see Matthew 20:8-16). He came not calling the insiders, but the people those in power had labeled as “sinners.” 

What does it look like for us to do the same in our time?

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call [those you call] righteous, but [those you call] sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

HeartGroup Application 

  1. Pick a book from our book list at RHM that you as a group can read and discus together. 
  2. Read a chapter a week and determine a time each week you can meeting to discuss together what you have read.
  3. Discuss how you can put what you’ve read each week into practice and do so.

I’m so glad you checked in with us, this week. Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns. 

Another world is possible. 

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.com and click “donate.”

Who are the Poor in Spirit?

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Herb Montgomery | August 3, 2018

“The system is intended to break their spirit once and for all, to make them give up and simply cycle through the judicial system indefinitely. Jesus’ vision for human society was that his kingdom would belong to those presently trodden and excluded, those whose spirit has been broken, who don’t have the will to even keep trying.”

 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18; cf. Isaiah 61:1-3)

Luke’s gospel sums up Jesus’ itinerant teaching ministry with  Isaiah’s words of solidarity and liberation for poor, formerly incarcerated, oppressed, indebted, vulnerable, and marginalized people. The Jewish and Christian sacred texts contain passages of liberation and of oppression. You’ll find texts that liberate women from patriarchy and that teach patriarchy itself. You’ll find passages of liberation from slavery (Deuteronomy 23.15) as well as endorsing and approving of slavery. You’ll find passages that teach xenophobic genocide and those that promote care of and generosity toward the “stranger” or “foreigner.” You’ll find passages that describe  wealth as a great blessing and those that praise liberating the exploited poor from the wealthy. And you’ll find texts that teach inclusion and acceptance of the LGBTQ community and those that teach their exclusion. 

Whatever you’re looking for in the scriptures, you can find. .The gospel writers also had those options when they picked passages from the Torah, the Songs, and the Prophets. Luke’s gospel chose a passage from the Prophets that speaks liberation for those who were oppressed by people in positions of power and privilege.

Both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels include variations of these words: 

“Looking at his disciples, he said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.’” (Luke 6:20-26)

In these words, we see Jesus’ solidarity with and liberation of those on the undersides and margins of his society’s status quo. Jesus came to call for change,  changes that would be a “blessing” for those the present structures had caused to be poor, to weep, and to go hungry. These changes would also mean “woe” for those designing and benefiting from those structures. 

Matthew’s version of these words is a little broader. In Matthew, Jesus called for changes for the meek rather than the assertive person, the pure in heart rather than those corrupted by greed, the peacemakers rather than peacekeepers, those hungering and thirsting for the Hebrew prophets’ distributive justice (righteousness) rather than those alleviating guilt with charity, and the merciful rather than the merciless. The one group that stands out to me as I reread this passage is the group that Jesus said would be blessed by the changes he called for in our world—the poor in spirit.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5.3)

I was recently revisiting Michelle Alexander’s masterpiece, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. One section describes the permanent consequences of a person being branded a “felon” after they have served their sentence. From not being allowed to find housing or employment to having your right to vote and serve on a jury forever taken away, these are experiences that break people’s spirits.

Here are just three of the stories that Alexander shares:

Clinton Drake (Veteran)

“I put my life on the line for this country. To me, not voting is not right; it led to a lot of frustration, a lot of anger. My son’s in Iraq. In the army just like I was. My oldest son, he fought in the first Persian Gulf conflict. He was in the Marines. This is my baby son over there right now. But I’m not able to vote. They say I owe $900 in fines. To me, that’s a poll tax. You’ve got to pay to vote. It’s “restitution,” they say. I came off parole on October 13, 1999, but I’m still not allowed to vote. Last time I voted was in ’88. Bush versus Dukakis. Bush won. I voted for Dukakis. If it was up to me, I’d vote his son out this time too. I know a lot of friends got the same cases like I got, not able to vote. A lot of guys doing the same things like I was doing. Just marijuana. They treat marijuana in Alabama like you committed treason or something. I was on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma. I was fifteen years old. At eighteen, I was in Vietnam fighting for my country. And now? Unemployed and they won’t allow me to vote.” (The New Jim Crow; pp. 159-160)

Unnamed Woman:

“When I leave here it will be very difficult for me in the sense that I’m a felon. That I will always be a felon . . . for me to leave here, it will affect my job, it will affect my education . . . custody [of my children], it can affect child support, it can affect everywhere—family, friends, housing. . . People that are convicted of drug crimes can’t even get housing anymore. . . Yes, I did my prison time. How long are you going to punish me as a result of it? And not only on paper, I’m only on paper for ten months when I leave here, that’s all the parole I have. But, that parole isn’t going to be anything. It’s the housing, it’s the credit re-establishing. . . . I mean even to go into the school, to work with my child’s class—and I’m not a sex offender—but all I need is one parent who says, ‘Isn’t she a felon? I don’t want her with my child.’” (The New Jim Crow; pp. 162-163)

Willie Johnson:

“My felony conviction has been like a mental punishment, because of all the obstacles. . . Every time I go to put in a [job] application—I have had three companies hire me and tell me to come to work the next day. But then the day before they will call and tell me don’t come in—because you have a felony. And that is what is devastating because you think you are about to go to work and they call you and say because of your felony we can’t hire [you]. I have run into this at least a dozen times. Two times I got very depressed and sad because I couldn’t take care of myself as a man. It was like I wanted to give up—because in society nobody wants to give us a helping hand. Right now I am considered homeless. I have never been homeless until I left the penitentiary, and now I know what it feels to be homeless. If it was not for my family I would be in the streets sleeping in the cold. . . . We [black men] have three strikes against us: 1) because we are black, and 2) because we are a black male, and the final strike is a felony. These are the greatest three strikes that a black man has against him in this country. I have friends who don’t have a felony—and have a hard time getting a job. But if a black man can’t find a job to take care of himself—he is ashamed that he can’t take care of his children.” (The New Jim Crow; pp. 163-164)

These stories add new meaning to Jesus saying he had been sent “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,” including people labeled as “felons.”

The opposite of being “poor in spirit” is being “strong in spirit” (see Luke 1:80). This society rewards those who, in addition to being privileged in other ways, are also strong in spirit. They have drive. They have fight. They compete. And they keep going till they win. The stories that Michelle Alexander tells are stories of those who, no matter how hard they try, can’t even survive. The system is intended to break their spirit once and for all, to make them give up and simply cycle through the judicial system indefinitely. Jesus’ vision for human society was that his kingdom would belong to those presently trodden and excluded, those whose spirit has been broken, who don’t have the will to even keep trying. Jesus cast a vision for a world not of charity that leaves the unjust structures in place, but where all oppression, injustice, and violence toward the vulnerable has been put right. 

What does a world look like where people aren’t in need of continual charity or relief and live instead in a just society?

What does a world look like where people who are presently broken and downtrodden are instead given what they need to thrive?

What does a world look like where people who are vulnerable and pushed to the margins by those at the center are instead cared about and cared for?

I believe we have to start with that vision. I’m not preaching utopia. Utopia movements have backfired too many times in the past with very destructive results. But we have at least to begin with the discussion of what a utopia would even look like if we are going to push our present reality in a more just, safe, compassionate direction. We can argue about whether or not a utopia is possible, but as my friend Ash-lee Woodard Henderson of the Highlander Center shared with me recently, “Discovering what our utopias even look like is very often the first step in discovering what we need to be working on in our work of shaping a better world.” 

It was to this work of shaping a better world that I believe Jesus called his disciples. And it’s really only this kind of discipleship that holds any real interest for me. I’ll close with the words of Sam Wells:

“The traditional way of understanding discipleship as one of taking people out of the world because it is a hostile place, promising them a better place in God’s heavenly kingdom, has been radically transformed by this insight. Jesus call us rather to change the world in such a way that it will cease to be the hostile place it is, as we construct the way for God’s reign on earth . . . The one thing everyone seems to agree on today is that there’s plenty wrong with the world. There are only two responses to this—either go and put it right yourself, or, if you can’t, make life pretty uncomfortable for those who can until they do. When we take stock of our relationship with the powerful, we ask ourselves, ‘Does the shape of my life reflect my longing to see God set people free, and do I challenge those who keep others in slavery?” (Sam Wells in Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus by Ched Myers)

Here’s to the work of shaping a world that we may be able to look at one day and say:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom…” (Matthew 5:3)

HeartGroup Application

This week, Ron Dellums passed away.  If you are unaware of who he was, here is a link to his wikipedia page: Ron Dellums 

With Mr. Dellums’ death, I’m reminded once again of the work those who have gone before us dedicated their lives to, their importance to us, and our importance to them. It is important that we continue their work of justice, peace and humanity toward all.  They took up the work from those who came before them, and we must continue the work, taking it as far as we can during the time we, together, have.

In honor of Ron Dellums, have your HeartGroup take a few moments and watch an interview with Ron from 2015 and discuss your responses with the group.

You can find the interview here.  It begins at minute marker 26:18.

What it would look like for your HeartGroup to lean more deeply into a dedication to challenging all forms of injustice. Pick something from your discussion and put it into practice, this week. 

Thanks for checking in with us. 

Wherever you are today, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation.

Another world is possible. 

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

To support these podcasts and weekly eSight articles, go to www.renewedheartministries.comand click “donate.”

Another World is Possible (Part 3)

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by Herb Montgomery | July 27, 2018 

Hands offering bread

“The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” — Gustavo Gutiérrez; The Power of the Poor in History

“Jesus looked at him and loved him. ’One thing you lack ,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me .’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God !’ The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’” (Mark 10:21-24)

This week we’ll wrap up our series with this section of Mark’s gospel. Jesus is inviting a wealthy inquisitor to join him in practicing Jesus’ preferential option for the poor. 

I’m also reminded of a discussion I had years ago with a pastor while I was visiting his church. He confronted me with my concern for the poor, and said that the “rich need the gospel, too.” He felt that plenty of churches in his area practiced charity (not justice, mind you, but charity) for the poor, but he believed he was called to lead his church to minister to the spiritual needs of the wealthy. 

As he continued to explain why didn’t focus on poverty, a poverty I believe is created by the current social order, my mind wandered to our passage this week. Let’s take a closer look at it. 

The first thing we see in this passage is Jesus’ love for this man. Jesus doesn’t hate the wealthy. No. Mark’s Jesus loves both the rich and the poor. The system that creates wealth disparity, with concentration of riches on one side of the spectrum and poverty on the other, dehumanizes both the rich and the poor. It dehumanizes both differently, but both ends of the spectrum are dehumanizing. Whereas poverty steals a person’s humanity, wealth can cause people to lose their connection with and become isolated from their own humanity and forget their interconnectedness with the humanity of others.

In this context, Jesus’ love for this rich young man speaks to me. Jesus loves him and thus seeks to reconnect him with the humanity of “the poor” and thus his own humanity as well. Wealth redistribution is rooted in regaining our humanity no matter which section of the wealth/poverty spectrum you find yourself on. 

I agreed with my pastor friend that Jesus loves the rich, too. Because he loves them, he calls them to join him in his service to the poor. Jesus didn’t minister to the wealthy and the poor differently. He practiced a preferential option for the poor and called the wealthy to join him. Jesus didn’t minister to the wealthy by ignoring the poor. Jesus ministered to the rich young man by calling him to “Go, sell everything” he had “and give [it] to the poor.” 

Jesus ministered to the rich of his own society by calling them out of a system that created gross wealth disparity and into a system that redistributed wealth, that recognized the humanity of everyone, and that distributed justice to ensure everyone had the means they needed to survive and thrive. 

My pastor friend argued that this was only counsel for the young man in the story. Certainly Jesus saw the unique needs of that specific young man. But in Luke and Acts, this was not a unique teaching but one that Jesus gave to his entire audience in mass:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:32-34, emphasis added.)

In Acts, believed to have been written by the same author(s) as Luke, the very first thing followers of Jesus are characterized by is these kinds of actions:

“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” (Acts 2:40-45, emphasis added.)

The entire community practiced this preferential option for the poor to the extent that wealth disparity was replaced with a distributive justice and there were no more poor among them. 

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:32-35, emphasis added.)

But like the young man in the story above, my pastor friend choose to go a different route.

I have often quoted this passage from James Robinson’s volume, The Gospel of Jesus: A Historical Search for the Original Good News:

“[Jesus’] basic issue, still basic today, is that most people have solved the human dilemma for themselves at the expense of everyone else, putting them down so as to stay afloat themselves. This vicious, antisocial way of coping with the necessities of life only escalates the dilemma for the rest of society . . . I am hungry because you hoard food. You are cold because I hoard clothing. Our dilemma is that we all hoard supplies in our backpacks and put our trust in our wallets! Such “security” should be replaced by God reigning, which means both what I trust God to do (to activate you to share food with me) and what I hear God telling me to do (to share clothes with you). We should not carry money while bypassing the poor or wear a backpack with extra clothes and food while ignoring the cold and hungry lying in the gutter. This is why the beggars, the hungry, the depressed are fortunate: God, that is, those in whom God rules, those who hearken to God, will care for them. The needy are called upon to trust that God’s reigning is there for them (“Theirs is the kingdom of God”) . . . Jesus’ message was simple, for he wanted to cut straight through to the point: trust God to look out for you by providing people who will care for you, and listen to him when he calls on you to provide for them.” (Kindle Edition, Location 117)

After the wealthy young man departs, the story shifts to Jesus’ interchange with his disciples.: 

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! … Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The idea that Jerusalem had a very narrow “needle gate” and that merchants had to unload their camels and have their camels kneel to pass through that gate is fiction made up in the 15th century. We know of no narrow gates in Jerusalem and none named the “needle gate” in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, or Galilee.

On interpreting this passage, I land instead with scholars like Stant Litore who suggest that Jesus said it is easier to thread one of the big ropes used by the fishing community, which many in his audience were from, through the eye of a sewing needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. In Aramaic, the words for rope and camel have the same spelling. Aramaic did not use vowels, so these words would have been pronounced differently but written the same way. 

In Greek, too, specifically the common Koine Greek of working and poor people, the words for rope and camel are also very similar. The difference is in a single vowel: kamélos (camel) and kamilos (rope), but the prounuciation is the same. The meaning of the phrase remains the same: It is impossible for either a camel or a large fishing rope to be threaded through a small sewing needle. 

Jesus isn’t making it hard for rich people to “enter” his kingdom of resource sharing, mutual aid, cooperation, and a just distribution of the resources needed for survival and thriving. Instead he’s simply being honest about how difficult it is for people with accumulated wealth to embrace this world. A rope (or camel) won’t fit through the eye of a needle. And for the rich to enter Jesus new human society, here and now, they must be willing to let go of their wealth and embrace a distributive justice where everyone has enough.

Again, Jesus isn’t picking on the rich. He’s simply saying that in his vision for human society there’s no longer a wide chasm between the rich and poor. His vision is a society where everyone has enough to thrive. No more rich. No more poor. The sun shines and the rain falls indiscriminately on all.

Today we live in a world where the few who are on top are striving to maintain their position of control. But if one looks, on the horizon, a new day is coming. Will that new day bring a world that is safe, just, and compassionate for everyone regardless of their race, gender, orientation, gender identity and expression, current economic status, ability, age, and education? It’s up to us. We can make it that way, if we choose to.

Another world is not only possible, it’s coming. Change is coming. Let’s make the choices that ensure that that change is for the better.

“Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack ,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me .’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God !’ The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’” (Mark 10:21-24)

HeartGroup Application

As of yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court deadline, over 900 parents are still separated from their children. Here are three ways your HeartGroup can do something.

  1. If you live in a boarder state, you can volunteer at an organization that is engaging the work of helping families that have been separated. If a protest is happening in your area, you can show up and participate.
  2. If these are not an option, you can donate to organizations who are involved and need your support. One such organization (which I know some fo the ones who are involved) is the New Sanctuary Coalition. This is a coalition comprised of Auburn Theological Seminary, Central Synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim, HIAS, Immigrant Families Together, International Rescue Committee, New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, and Union for Reform Judaism. You can support their work to help reunite families by going to https://newsanctuarycoalition.nationbuilder.com/family_reunification
  3. Lastly, contact your local elected representatives. It is important that we continue to express our outrage against the current policies. Let them know.

Thanks for checking in with us this week. 

Wherever you are this week, right where you are, keep living in love, survival, resistance, liberation, reparation, and transformation. Together we can make our world a safe, just, compassionate home for us all. 

Another world is possible. 

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.

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