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A Safe, Compassionate, Just Home for Everyone
#1 Best Seller and New Release on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon.
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
Finding Jesus by Herb Montgomery the #1 Best Seller in its category.
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New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 50: Mark 1.9-15. Lectionary B, Lent 1
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 1, Episode 50: Mark 1.9-15. Lectionary B, Lent 1
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A Safe, Compassionate, Just Home for Everyone
Herb Montgomery | February 9, 2024
“The gospel has been twisted to be mostly religious in nature, but for the early Jesus followers, Jesus’ teachings were much more about how we choose to share space with one another here on earth.”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
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 1:9-15)
In our reading this week, we begin with Jesus traveling from the region of Galilee to the River Jordan to be baptized by John. Jesus heard something in John’s anti-establishment message and call to return to the Torah’s social justice principles that resonated with his own desire for Jewish renewal and his concern for how the Roman empire had coopted the Jewish Temple State and the scribal establishment in local synagogues. Scholars are torn as to whether Jesus actually began as a disciple of John’s, but his choice to be baptized by John affirmed that he resonated with John’s preaching enough to want to be baptized by John and be a part of John’s movement. We’ll see that this changes later, when John is imprisoned.
Mark’s language around John’s baptism of Jesus was also meant to remind Mark’s original audience of language in Isaiah. Whether we date Mark’s gospel to shortly before Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem or shortly afterward, liberation from Roman occupation and oppression was the prevailing impulse among Mark’s listeners. Getting to heaven was not on the hearts and minds of Mark’s listeners. Getting out from under the thumb of Rome was.
The language of the heavens being torn open harkens back to Isaiah 64:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways. (Isaiah 64:1-5)
The Spirit descending and declaring Jesus’s favor also harkens back to a passage in Isaiah:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations . . .
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth. (Isaiah 42:1-4)
It seems the writer of Mark intended to associate the desire for liberation from Rome with Isaiah’s language of establishing of justice on the earth among the nations. That’s why this week’s story attaches these references to Jesus’ baptism. In Jesus, the early followers of Jesus perceived teachings that would end oppression and establish justice for all.
After his baptism, Jesus immediately goes into the wilderness for forty days. Forty is a significant number in the Hebrew scriptures and other sacred Jewish literature.
One example is Moses’ forty days and nights of fasting as he received the Torah:
“Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.” (Exodus 34.28)
There are many more examples. Forty didn’t only refer to days and nights. The scriptures also named forty years, and measurements based on the number 40. The number 40 is used repeatedly in the Talmud and the history of the second Temple (see “The Number Forty”, The Jewish Encyclopedia)
But we shouldn’t gloss over Jesus’ time in the wilderness as narrative decoration. Jesus’ wilderness experience had special significance for his original Jewish followers. While in Mark, Jesus is tempted by the Satan (the Adversary), is among the wild animals, and is attended to by angels. Matthew and Luke later add that Jesus was fasting during this time, but Mark doesn’t elaborate on the temptations here. This version of the story doesn’t say there are three temptations. Nor does it detail them, as later version of the Jesus story do. What is also interesting is how Matthew and Luke overtly connect Jesus’ temptations with the language and liberation hopes of the apocalyptic book of Daniel chapter 7. Mark, the first gospel, begins this tradition much more subtly.
Ched Myers tells us that the book of Daniel was “a Jewish resistance tract written just before the Maccabean revolt during brutal persecutions under the Hellenistic ruler Antiochus Epiphanes IV . . . By Mark’s era it was well established as a discourse of political protest” (Binding the Strong Man, p. 101). He goes on to state the way apocalyptic literature was used in Mark’s culture was to “fire the socio-political imagination of the oppressed. First, in renewing old symbols and reappropriating Hebrew narratives of liberation, it functioned as a ‘remembering.’ Secondly, it promoted a ‘creative envisioning’ of a future in which God restored justice and full humanity to all.”
Horsley writes, “Emperors were not divine . . . The apocalyptic imagination thus had a strengthening effect on people’s ability to endure, and even a motivating effect toward resistance and revolt.” (Jesus and Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine, p. 144)
Howard Kee, writing of the disproportionate interest by Mark’s gospel in the book of Daniel states,
“Daniel alone among all of the Old Testament books is quoted from every chapter; it is of the highest level of significance for the New Testament as a whole as a result of its overwhelming importance for Mark.” (Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel, p. 45)
The wild animals and angels in this week’s story would have brought to mind the liberation of the people from oppressive world empires in Daniel Chapter 7:
“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)
Speaking of one of the wild animals’ little horns, Daniel writes,
“‘But the court will sit, and his [the oppressor’s] power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His [the son of man’s] kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.’” (Daniel 7:26-27, italics added.)
Matthew and Luke later expand this liberation theme by referencing Daniel’s visions in one of three temptations the Satan brought to Jesus:
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [Daniel 7’s Wild Animals] and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’” (Matthew 4:8-9)
“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” (Luke 4:5-7)
In Mark’s version of the wilderness temptations, these connections to Daniel 7 and liberation from empires are much more subtle.
But John’s imprisonment brings us out of the wilderness. As I shared a few weeks ago, Herod, Rome’s agent in region, was deeply threatened by John’s justice preaching and the large crowds that were starting to follow him. Josephus writes,
“John was a good man who had admonished the Jews to practice virtue and to treat each other justly, with due respect to God, and to join in the practice of baptism. John’s view was that correct behavior was a necessary preliminary to baptism, if baptism was to be acceptable to God. Baptism was not to gain pardon for sins committed but for the purification of the body, which had already been consecrated by righteousness. Herod became alarmed at the crowds that gathered around John, who aroused them to fever pitch with his sermons. Eloquence that had such a powerful effect on people might lead to sedition, since it seemed that the people were prepared to do everything he recommended.” (Josephus, History of the Jews, 18:116-119)
Once John is arrested, Jesus begins his own preaching of the gospel of the arrival of God’s just world named in Mark as “the kingdom.” Remember the gospel was a term used in the Roman empire (see The Gospel Jesus Taught). Myers explains:
“Roman propaganda focused on eulogizing Caesar as the ‘divine man.’ This ideological strategy is well documented in coins of the period, and of course in the later emperor cults of Asia Minor. The ascension to power of a new ruler was cause for ‘glad tidings,’ and celebrations and sacrifices always followed . . . [Deification of the emperor] gives euangelion [Rome’s gospel] its significance and power . . . Because the emperor is more than a common man, his ordinances are glad messages and his commands are sacred writings . . . He proclaims euangelia [gospel, glad tidings] through his appearance . . . the first euangelium is the news of his birth. As one ancient inscription puts it, ‘The birthday of the god was for the world the beginning of the joyful messages which have got forth because of him.’” (Binding the Strong Man, p. 123)
The gospel was a term from the Roman Empire. Once one begins to delve into Roman Caesar worship, it becomes beautifully obvious how Mark’s gospel was juxtaposing Jesus with Caesar and offering Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom as resistance, an alternative to the gospel of Rome, the peace of a just world contrasted with the pax Romana.
Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom was much more concerned with our concrete realities in this life than the afterlife. The socio-political and economic implications of Jesus’ gospel are profound and often overlooked. The kingdom has been twisted today to be mostly religious in nature, but for the early Jesus followers, Jesus gospel was political. By “political,” I mean how we choose to share space together here on earth.
Jesus was announcing a just world that had “come near.” It had arrived and Jesus traversed the margins and edges of his society inviting all to be a part of it. Jesus’ just world expressed a profound concern for justice, compassion and the well-being of those the present system marginalized. His gospel still calls us to that today.
Jesus’ gospel calls us to a more socially compassionate, socially just expression of Christianity. His gospel still has the power to radically impact how we choose to practice our Christianity today. Are we so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good? Or do we perceive in the Jesus story a life-giving path that informs us to take up the work of making our world a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the Jesus story shape your own work in making our world a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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