Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
with my friend Ched Myers. This is a project
of BeatitudeCenter .org, where you can find many
other podcasts and regular Zoom programs on the
nonviolence of Jesus and practicing nonviolence
and working for a more just, more nonviolent
world. So let's begin, as usual, with a little
prayer. So I just invite you, wherever you are,
just to take a deep breath. and to relax and
recenter yourself. And together, let's turn and
enter into the presence of the God of peace who
loves you personally and infinitely and everyone
everywhere. And we welcome the risen nonviolent
Jesus here with us. Just take a moment to ask
for whatever grace you need to follow the nonviolent
Jesus more faithfully and do God's will. God
of peace, thank you for all the blessings of
life, love, and peace that you give us. Be with
us now as we reflect together on the life of
the nonviolent Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and
bless us, inspire us, disarm us, strengthen us,
and send us out. that we might do your will and
do our part to help end poverty, racism, greed,
injustice, war, nuclear weapons, and environmental
destruction. That we might be your beatitude
people, your holy peacemakers, and welcome your
reign of universal love, nonviolence, and peace
on earth. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, it's a
great blessing to welcome Ched Myers here today
to the podcast. to talk about his great new book
on the Gospel of Luke. Ched has published over
100 articles and 8 books, including his earth
-changing, shattering, challenging masterpiece,
The Binding the Strong Man, a political reading
of Mark's story of Jesus, which came out in 1988,
which was such a game -changer for me. Don't
listen to this, Chet. But I think Chet is the
greatest living scripture scholar in the world,
and that's the greatest. book on Scripture ever
written, and it certainly changed my life and
Daniel Berrigan's and many of our friends. An
activist and theologian, Chet and his partner,
Elaine Enns, are ecumenical Mennonites based
in Southern California, where they lead Bartimaeus
Cooperative Ministries. He has taught around
North America and brings a fresh scholarly political
reading to the Gospels. And so he's going to
be talking on his new book on Luke. So, Chet
Myers, welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast.
Thanks, Padre. It's an honor to be included in
the podcast and to talk about this book on the
first anniversary of its publication by Fortress
Press. Great, great. It's pretty fun. Well, a
big congratulations on the book, which is called
Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy, Luke's
Jesus and Sabbath Economics, which I encourage
everyone to get. It's out from Fortress Press.
And if you haven't got Binding the Strongman,
get that book, too. Before we get into the book
itself, Chet, why don't you just tell us a little
bit about your journey into the Gospels, because
you have such a passionate, lifelong study for
them, and you've brought everything together,
including literary analysis and a political reading
of the text from the perspective of the struggle
for justice and discernment. How did that happen,
Chet? Well, a little bit of personal background.
I grew up in middle class suburban Los Angeles.
My dad was a highly assimilated half Chicano
and lapsed Catholic. My mom, a highly WASP and
lapsed Protestant. So church wasn't a thing in
our household. But the Vietnam War ran right
through our home. And my older brother was deployed
there in 1969 while I was marching against the
war at age 14, neither of which made my two -time
veteran father happy. An existentially difficult
high school year abroad in Scandinavia opened
my rather depressed spirit to the gospel for
the first time, and I encountered it. Then I
came home and had to find a church, and the only
church I could find was a... Jesus -freak church.
But from what I was reading, as someone who'd
never read the Bible before, about loaves and
fishes, for example, the Bible was all about
justice, but that orientation found no hospitality
in the conservative Bible churches. So I doubt
my journey of faith would have continued had
I not found radical Christians while at Cal Berkeley.
In 1976, I found the Catholic Worker Movement,
our mutual friend, Ladan Sheets, John Moses Ladan,
a blessed memory. He was a disciple of the Radical
Baptist Clarence Jordan. And I met Daniel Berrigan
for the first time on his tour of reading America
through the Book of Revelation during the Bicentennial
year. By the end of that year, I was hitchhiking
across the country at age 21 to spend the fall
at Jonah House, which John knows well and has
spoken a lot about, apprenticing with the great
Philip Berrigan and Liz McAllister. So really
from that point on, Padre, your journey and mine
have so many parallels as we immersed ourselves
in community and activism, struggling to integrate
insights of seminary, sanctuary, and street.
while walking the margins of our respective faith
traditions. And for both you and I, I think it's
fair to say Scripture all along the way has been
both grounding and guide. That's great. Thank
you for that, Jed. So in your new book, you read
the Gospel of Luke through the lens of... I don't
know if you invented this phrase, Sabbath economics.
And you've been teaching that for decades now.
So before we get into the book, tell our listeners
what you mean by Sabbath economics. Well, another
mutual friend and mother in the faith, Marie
Dennis, called me in 1998 amidst the growing
Jubilee 2000 international debt equity movement.
You remember that? And she asked if I would write
a short summary of how and why the biblical tradition
of jubilee debt release, land return, and liberation
from bondage might guide our activism on behalf
of the most highly indebted countries. So I published
this little booklet through Church of the Savior
called The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics,
which tried to overview themes of economic justice
in both testaments. And it turns out that this
thread runs a through line rooted in what I call
Israel's first catechism in the wilderness after
having been freed from imperial Egypt. That's,
of course, the story of the manna, which, as
it happens, is not a Sunday school miracle story,
but rather a concise set of instructions on how
free Israel might resist the economics of oppression.
that they'd taken the brunt of in Egypt. Those
instructions were threefold. First, those who
gather more of the divine gift of sustenance
must not take too much. And those who take little
must be guaranteed to have enough. The second
principle, the gifts of creation should not concentrate
through being stored up. but rather should circulate
to secure equity. And thirdly, once a week, all
production and consumption should cease in order
for the community to remember the first two principles,
which is how the Sabbath as a communal practice
is introduced in the Bible. Wow. Hence my term
Sabbath economics. And this theme is further
articulated through the rest of Torah, the prophets.
and the Second Testament. I mean, even Paul the
Apostle cites those Exodus 16 instructions in
his challenge to the Corinthians to resist reproducing
the economic disparities of the Roman Empire
in their Jesus communities. So this primal catechism,
as you and your listeners will recognize, cuts
diametrically against the grain. of the three
pillars of modern compulsive addictive capitalism.
Its infinite tolerance for both wealth and poverty,
its belief that accumulation is the key to security,
and its conviction that there are no limits to
work or consumption, all of which has led to
the twin crises today of socioeconomic disparity
and ecological overshoot. This little booklet
circulated widely for 25 years as a kind of a
thumbnail sketch. But in light of the intensification
of all matter of disparities and the increasing
hegemony of the billionaire class under Trump
in his first administration, it became clear
to me that it was time to take a deeper dive
into the Sabbath economics vision of Jesus. This
book. Great. So again, friends, the listeners,
I really encourage you to get Ched's new book,
Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy, and
his old book on Mark called Binding the Strongman.
Both books are packed with powerful insights
and books, you know, that I've been reading.
for decades. And they, as I said, they changed
Dan and Phil Berrigan's life and my life and
many of our friends. This is way too much to
talk about in a short podcast. So even in these
questions, wondering even where to begin with
this great book, what I decided was I would pick
a couple of the key passages that Ched talks
about and talk about them and get Ched to tell
us, to show you Ched unpacking some of the gospel.
But before we do that, let me ask you, Chet,
just briefly, if it's possible, a few main themes
and theses that you were trying to present to
us in your new major study of Luke. Yeah, that's
always a fair question. I have a cartoon up on
my desk that I look at every day of an interviewer
interviewing a professorial type with a huge
one -foot thick tome on his lap. And the interviewer
says, so in a few words, professor, tell us what
this book is about. And that's always a reminder
to me that long form is one thing, but it's good
to be concise. So the title, Healing Affluenza
Resisting Plutocracy, thus we call the book HARP
for short in -house here, it really tries to
place the goal of this project front and center,
recognizing the crisis we're facing. I proceed
in the conviction that both personal and political
toxic behavior are driven and sustained by dysfunctional
cultural stories, something that's become, I
think, an arguably acute under the MAGA regime,
and that only deeper, wiser, older narratives
can animate the hard work of personal and political
change. But the problem for us... is that the
teachings of Jesus concerning economics have
long been disappeared or domesticated by churches
riding shotgun with capitalist culture. So we
have considerable restorative and reconstructive
work to do. And Luke, long recognized but also
long avoided as the gospel with the clearest
critique of wealth and poverty, is the logical
place to begin. The problem is Luke and Acts
represents almost 30 % of the entire Second Testament.
So frankly, no scholars these days try to tackle
its whole corpus. So I took the approach of following
the Sabbath economics thread through this third
gospel, which turns out is more like its backbone.
So the book is divided into two halves, which
correspond with the two halves of Luke. The first
overviews keystone proclamations of Sabbath economics,
such as the Magnificat, or Jesus' temptation,
or his inaugural Nazareth sermon, the Beatitudes,
the anointing woman as a demonstration project
in Luke 7, the disciples' prayer, and so on.
The second half then traces six keystone stories
in which Jesus talks to or about rich men. uncompromising
encounters that form the spine of Luke's special
section in chapters 12 to 19, which is material
that is, for the most part, uniquely Lucan, only
found in Luke, thus giving us direct insight
into his core message, which in ancient evangel
is, I would argue, something whose time has come
again. Oh, wow, that's great. I'm just soaking
it all in. So, you know, though, I've traveled
all over the world, Chad, and I've been in 50
nations, some of the poorest places on the planet,
and things like, words like poverty, economic
disparity, I fear even affluenza. barely describe
the horrific systemic injustice that a small
number of billionaires and their corporations
and nations and militaries control the vast majority
of the world's wealth, wreak upon the vast sea
of billions of suffering human beings who struggle
to survive each day with next to nothing. I remember
the Jesuits, Ea Korea and El Salvador, who were
later killed, saying, You have no idea what it's
like to be alive on this planet, which is the
vast majority of people through history and around
the world today presume they're going to die
by the end of the day. That was what they were
trying to teach me, that you're not going to
survive this day. And so you're totally dependent
on God. And I was very moved as I started reading
your book that you open. write with the most
shocking statement in the New Testament, maybe
the whole Bible, which is Luke chapter 16, the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus. And because
you just get right to it, it's just in your face.
So I was wondering how to get around this. I
thought, well, if it's okay with you, I could
read a few of the bit of the story and then just
let you talk about that because it sums up your
whole message to us. Is that okay, Jed? Yeah,
go for it. Okay, so this, friends, is Luke 16.
I'm just reading from the gospel and asked Chet
Myers to respond. So it's the parable of the
poor man and the rich man. When the poor man
died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom
of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.
And from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off. with
Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, Father
Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip
the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
for I am suffering torment in these flames. And
Abraham replied, My child, remember that you
received what was good during your lifetime,
while Lazarus received what was bad, but now
he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you, a great chasm is
established to prevent anyone from crossing,
who might wish to go from our side to yours,
or from your side to ours. And he said, Well,
then I beg you, Father, send him to my father's
house, for I have five brothers, so that they
might so that he might warn them, lest they too
come to this place of torment. And Abraham replied,
They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen
to them. He said, Oh no, Father Abraham, but
if someone from the dead goes to them, they will
repent. And Abraham said, If they will not listen
to Moses and the prophets, neither will they
be persuaded if someone should rise from the
dead. Yeah, that story is truly a text of terror
for those of us who enjoy raising class privileges
in the global economy. And it is, if you had
to take any text from Luke as the molten core
of the Sabbath economics message of the third
gospel, this would be it, which is why the church
has gotten very adept at. uh avoiding it altogether
or if necessary spiritualizing it beyond recognition
um so yeah i i'd love to make a few comments
but what i want to do first um is draw your attention
you know this is the non -violent jesus podcast
and um the biggest single core root issue of
violence, historically and globally, is economic
disparity. It is the gulf, the cruel gulf, between
the haves and the have -nots, the have -too -muches
and the have -not -enoughs. And as I do in the
book, I want to draw the attention of your audience
to the single most helpful and articulate platform
for analyzing this kind of disparity and you
find that at inequality .org of united for a
fair economy chuck collins is the animator of
inequality .org he's a regular blogger on it
he just has a gift for concisely mapping the
systemic issues that are at stake He wrote the
foreword for HAARP. This fall, he published a
book called Burned by Billionaires, How Concentrated
Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Our
Planet. And I just want to commend that to your
audience. I consider it the companion volume
to this Luke book, and Chuck and I have done
some webinars together. Because concentrations
of wealth underlie every form of violence. And
so I'd even encourage you, John, to invite Chuck,
who's a deeply Catholic activist you probably
know him, to join you on the Jesus Podcast. So
as for the parable, it really lies right at the
center of the series of rich man's stories. that
I focus on in the second half of this book. It's
like a fulcrum to the narrative as a whole or
a summary statement. And frankly, its edge is
pretty straightforward, which is why it is so
rigorously avoided in our churches. What the
preface to the story that John didn't read, of
course, is that here's this guy, Lazarus, who
lives and dies. literally at the doorstep of
this rich man's mansion. And when they both die,
the story pretty matter -of -factly says no burial
for Lazarus, typical of poor people, probably
thrown in a trash heap somewhere, but directly
into the bosom of Abraham. Rock my soul in the
bosom of Abraham. You know, that old spiritual,
that's not about us. That's about the cast -off,
the ignored, the invisibilized poor. The rich
man, after his burial, which no doubt was full
of pomp and circumstance, wakes up on the other
side of a gulf. And that's really the key to
this story. This story is... A restorative justice
story. My partner Elaine is a long time restorative
justice practitioner and at the core of restorative
justice is perpetrators understanding the harm
that they have done to victims. It's victims
speaking their truth and this plutocrat finds
himself On the other side of a gulf, again, but
it's switched. He never saw Lazarus, even though
Lazarus was mere yards away from him on the other
side of his portico. Here, now, he's having to
face the truth of that gulf from its other side,
which is the only way most of us awaken. to the
cruelty of the gulfs that we build. John read
the verses in which this plutocrat amazingly
continues to live in his entitled fantasy by
boldly screaming at Abraham from the other side
of the gulf and demanding that Abraham dispatch
Lazarus like an errand boy. to help him out.
So that shows that conversion is still a little
far away. That sequence, ironic sequence, culminates
with him demanding that Father Abraham, the great
ancestor, dispatch someone who rises from the
dead to speak to his own kin to warn them um
to which um after enduring this plutocrats repeated
insistence on the continuing entitlement of him
and his family old abe replies sharply well they
got the same bible we do moses and the prophets
time to read it and of course he says no no we
we need uh The rich man named Divus in the tradition
insists on special treatment on some sort of
get out of jail free card. If someone from the
dead goes to them, they'll repent. And Abraham
says, actually, brother, if they don't listen
to Muslim prophets and the prophets, they will
not be persuaded, even if someone should rise.
Now, this is an astonishing assertion from the
elder one, especially for a Christian audience
for whom resurrection is this miracle that resolves
everything. It's kind of the happy ending. But
Abraham is clear. It's all there in the book.
Sabbath economics. Don't miss it. This unsettling
thread, it should be unsettling to us, is poignantly
picked back up again at the end of Luke's story,
in which on the Emmaus Road, the brutalized but
risen one, not once but twice, convenes his beleaguered
disciples to hold a Bible study in Moses and
the prophets. That's the only way, he says, you
will understand what has happened on this cross
and what needs to happen going forward. So more
than any other aspect of Luke, this thread of
the absolute necessity of biblical literacy,
if we Christians are going to follow the way,
I take this thread as a commissioning. to dive
deeply into our scriptures, to exhume their message
of Sabbath economics. And it all arises from
that story that you put your finger on, John.
Thanks, Jed. It's so powerful to hear you talk
about this. And friends, again, I urge you to
get the book and listen to Jed's YouTube videos
and wherever you can find him. So, Jed, we have
to at least talk about one other. mythic, critical
text, Luke 4 in Luke's gospel, which is central
to your book and to the story and life. My take,
Chad, and I read about this in my recent book,
The Gospel of Peace, which is a commentary on
the synoptics, is that Luke's Jesus launches
in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke chapter 4,
a permanent grassroots nonviolent revolution.
for justice for the poor, liberation of the oppressed,
wealth redistribution, and total social equality
that continues today. It's a permanent revolution.
And it's like his campaign platform speech, or
it's announcing, I'm beginning this campaign
that'll never end. You refer to Luke 4. where
Jesus, of course, reads from Isaiah 61 in many
ways and says similar things, like as a manifesto,
as a key to understanding all of Luke. So, again,
I'd like to propose, because it's so critical,
with your permission to read just a little bit
of Luke 4 and then ask you to reflect on it.
Okay, Chet? Yes, sir. So, here goes. He came
to Nazareth, where he had grown up. and went
according to his custom into the synagogue on
the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and was
handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled
the scroll and found the passage where it was
written, quote, The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings
to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty
to the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind. to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim
a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the
scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and
sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue
looked intently at him, and he said to them,
Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in
your hearing. Jed, I think that's the most daring,
bold sentence ever said in human history. Today,
it's fulfilled. It's just such a fabulous text.
And of course, you and I both like to note that
this was history's shortest homily. Let us long
-winded preachers take note. But I love it because
it starts out like a normal day. You know, hometown,
going to church like everybody does. You read
the text. You sit down. But everything goes to
hell with this one line today. This text. comes
alive literally in your ears as you are hearing
it. And, you know, he's saying something very
radical, and that suddenly upends the normalcy
of the day. But it's actually the praxis that
comes from his declaration. that this story lives
again. So Jesus is doing, he's practicing the
art of recontextualizing sacred texts, saying
we read this now, we read this here. This is
what it means to embrace and embody this text
here and now. Well, as long as you keep it in
theory. Like in this text, the crowd begins commending
Jesus' eloquence and short -windedness until
he brings it inconveniently home. He recontextualizes
this text here and now. And he does so by arguing
that Isaiah 61 applies to the marginalized. In
so doing, sharply challenging his Jewish audiences.
consciousness of entitlement. We should think
of white privilege today. How does he do this?
He does this by exercising biblical literacy
and imagination. He reminds them of Elijah's
widow of Zarephath, a foreigner. He reminds them
of Elisha's healing of an enemy general in order
to make clear that God prioritizes outsiders,
ethnic, economic, and otherwise. And so at the
very outset of this story, Luke is signaling
that his gospel is going to be an exercise in
rereading the scriptures into one's context with
an edge and with consequence, because as your
audience knows, This little homily ends up with
a mob trying to throw Jesus off of a cliff. I
opened the book with a little model about what
it means to read contextually and recontextually
as a discipline of a nonviolent church bringing
these texts alive. And this is a great story
in that work. Wow, Chad, thanks so much. Just
so provocative and wonderful. Well, I have about
20 more questions and we have about five more
minutes, but who cares? I got to ask you this
about the resurrection because you drop these
nonviolent bombshells left and right. In your
book, and you've already mentioned Emmaus, so
that's why I'm going to ask you. You lament how
the resurrection has been tamed and watered down,
let's say, by the culture of death or plutocracy.
And in particular, in the mythic story of Luke
24, where the risen Jesus meets the two downtrodden
disciples leaving Jerusalem, walking out to Emmaus.
So this, friends, is a quote from Ched in his
new book. Quote. The fact that the Emmaus episode
has been so thoroughly sentimentalized in contemporary
middle -class North American Christianity is
perhaps the most telling indication of the continuing
hegemony of triumphalist resurrection theologies
and supremacist political ideologies. The Easter
story often degenerates into a happily ever after
fairy tale. Commercialized civil religion Exhibits
an evil genius for further domesticating Easter
by chocolate coating it, the Easter bunny industrial
complex, or whitewashing it through artistic
renderings that bleach the risen Christ into
an unbearable whiteness of being. Wow, Jed. I
know this is ridiculous, but tell us briefly
about your take on the Emmaus story and the politics
of resurrection. You know, it's one of the ways
in which we really see Luke. The Mass Road story
is completely Luke and you don't find it anywhere
else. That's why I actually begin the book with
a meditation on this epilogue to Luke's gospel.
And I do so because it so clearly exhibits resurrection
faith. as the practice of biblical literacy.
But, you know, all anybody has to do is just
Google or some other less controversial search
engine classical religious art about the resurrection,
and you'll see what I mean about the way that
it is glorified and sentimentalized. But in this
story, actually, Jesus points his disciples,
and by implication, the reader, to examine his
wounds. And, you know, these are not arthroscopic
surgical wounds, right? He just got beat up and
strung on a cross. And, you know, it's gruesome.
It was gruesome, as torture today is gruesome.
And he's saying, okay. check out these wounds.
It's really me. And you can't understand that
the risen one is still the crucified one until
you reckon with my somatic trauma. And so there's
the famous story about the touching of the wounds,
after which Jesus resumes his Bible study to
help his disciples make sense of that. So this
is very specifically a pushback against the religious
impulse to take this story out of the world and
situate it in a glorious other world. So not
only is biblical literacy at the core of this
story, but also this encounter with somatic trauma,
which means It's not enough just to read our
Bible. We also have to be in relationship with
the somatic trauma within ourselves and around
us in our society if we're going to follow this
Jesus. And this is the way that Luke ends his
story. I just think it's an amazing commissioning
to... to discipline our theological and political
imaginations, to focus on prophetic narrative
and to focus on those who are sustaining somatic
trauma right now as we speak. Chad, thank you
so much for that. And we're really out of time.
So might you come back some other day and we'll
keep the conversation going on the Gospels. Would
love to do that. Okay. So we're at the end. Is
there anything else you'd like to say to your
listeners, or particularly any kind of word of
encouragement about following Luke's Jesus and
the work of justice, disarmament, and peace?
Yeah, the book ends with some appendices for
how we might proclaim this gospel, particularly
during the year C lectionary, but all the time.
And another appendix that talks about resources
for those who would embrace Sabbath economics
personally and politically. I want to note two
in particular. One is the Faith and Money Network
in Washington, D .C. that helps people work on
their household economics in a Sabbath economics
framework. And the other is the amazing Francesco
Collective, Catholic investment group that helps
people deal with their surplus. And of course,
I want to mention again, inequality .org so that
we can always remain clear. You can find Healing
Afterlens at my page on bookshop .org. And you
can find us at Bartimaeus at bcmonline .org.
And so grateful for this time. And we just hope
that this tome can be a bit of a resource as
we follow the nonviolent Jesus together in hard
times. Well, thank you so much, Chet Myers, for
everything, for speaking with me today about
your great new book. And please, friends, go
and get it, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy
on Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics. Maybe
Chet might come back and speak on Mark someday.
Binding the Strongman. Thank you for listening
to the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. And you can
hear more podcasts and find other upcoming Zoom
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