We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our…
Not Spiritualizing the Material
Thank You!
We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your invaluable role in the Renewed Heart Ministry community and for your dedication to our mission of fostering love, justice, compassion, and healing. Your support is the bedrock of our work. Your support empowers us to do what we do. At a time when ministries like ours are being asked to achieve more with fewer resources, your support is incredibly important, and we want to simply say thank you. Whether in our larger society or within our local faith communities, Renewed Heart Ministries remains committed to advocating for change, working towards a world that is inclusive, just, and safe for everyone, and being a source of love in our world. From all of us here at Renewed Heart Ministries, thank you for your generous support. We deeply appreciate each and every one of our supporters.
If you’d like to join them in supporting our work, please go to renewedheartministries.com and click on “Donate.”
Herb Montgomery, August 3, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our gospel reading from this lectionary this weekend is from the gospel of John:
Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:24-35)
The gospel of John, the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, became a text during the second generation of Jesus followers who honored John’s apostleship. This makes it the latest gospel to be written in our scriptural canon. The Johannine community was not distanced from the original Jesus movement’s Jewish roots but the social location of the Jesus movement and Jesus followers had largely changed. Early Jesus followers were largely illiterate and practiced an oral tradition. Being able to read and even write was a privilege that only belonged to the wealthy. So the fact that the Jesus story began being put into written form tells us that wealthy Jesus followers had joined the movement. Many still only heard that story read to them each weekend, but that fact that a house church movement possessed people who could both write down the Jesus story and read it to the congregation demonstrated that the community was changing.
One of the many unique elements we encounter in the gospel of John and not in the other three gospels, is its tendency to convert material things into spiritual ones, and to then emphasize the spiritual as so much more important. This tendency is why so many Jesus scholars associate John’s gospel with early Christian gnosticism. (The patristic church father Iraneaus also associated the gospel of John with the gnostics in his Against Heresies.)
Being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good means being focused on eternal bliss and the afterlife to the exclusion of being engaged, right now, in what people are materially experiencing in their concrete lives. It means being focused on saving souls while ignoring the suffering bodies. Over and over again in Christian history, this has produced destructive and death dealing fruit.
In one of James Cone’s final books, he warns of emphasizing the spiritual over the material.
And yet the Christian gospel is more than a transcendent reality, more than “going to heaven when I die, to shout salvation as I fly.” It is also an immanent reality—a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst, “building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side.” The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bee Jenkins’s claims that “Jesus won’t fail you” was made in the heat of the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi, and such faith gave her strength and courage to fight for justice against overwhelming odds. Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for “pie in the sky.” (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 155)
In the gospel of John, we encounter a version of the Jesus story where Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
We need to hold this in tension with the versions of Jesus we encounter in the other canonical gospels. In those gospels we encounter a Jesus who wants his followers to work for and pray for our material world to match the heavenly world:
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)
We encounter a Jesus who holds up the material, concrete, and not spiritualized liberation that people were experiencing as a result of his work and that testified of his legitimacy:
“The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matthew 11:5)
Our daily bread wasn’t spiritualized. That every person would be able to have and eat their actual, material, daily bread was something his followers were to work and pray for:
“Give us today our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)
Not spiritualizing but alleviating people’s material suffering was also lifted up as the litmus test in these gospels’ descriptions of a final judgement:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me . . . for whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:34-40)
Caring about our and others’ material needs, especially others who were oppressed, was rooted in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets:
“If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:10)
Again, the picture of a God who was concerned with supplying people’s material needs rather than spiritualizing them away is rooted in the soil of the Jewish wisdom that the Jesus movement grew out of:
“He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.” (Psalm 146:7)
And when we consider the early Jesus movement located in Jerusalem as contrasted with the Jesus moment of the Johannine community two generations later, we see resource-sharing, mutual aid, as well as hunger and poverty elimination as a central characteristic of how the early movement followed Jesus:
“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 4:33-35)
Outside of the gospels, my favorite New Testament book is the book of James. Here too we see the material contrasted with the spiritual. But James explains that if we focus on the spiritual to the exclusion of the material, it makes our focus on spiritual realities absolutely no good.
“Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16)
What can we take away from this? Today, some Christians contrast saving souls with the work of social justice. There is no reason to pit the saving of souls against social justice work. Saving bodies is just as much a part of the Jesus tradition as savings souls is. In fact, in the synoptic gospels, social justice is a requirement for genuinely following Jesus. How is social justice still a requirement for you?
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How is social justice engagement a part of your Jesus following? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts.
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You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 23: John 6.24-35. Lectionary B, Proper 13
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out at:
https://youtu.be/bE8gDo-xEVk?si=wIN4tbmpOquEAfKM
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 1 Episode 16: Not Spiritualizing the Material
John 6:24-35
“There is no reason to pit the saving of souls against social justice work. Saving bodies is just as much a part of the Jesus tradition as savings souls is. In fact, in the synoptic gospels, social justice engagement is a requirement for genuinely following Jesus.”
Available on all major podcast carriers,
Or at this link:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/not-spiritualizing-the-material
Now Available on Audible!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon
Available now on Audible!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
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