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In this special episode, I interview Ched Myers about his new book, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy; Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics.

To order the book, go to Bookshop.org and search for Ched Myers. Through the end of July 2025, the promo code SOJO20 will reduce the price by 20%.

You can also use this link:

https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Ched+Myers

Description from Bookshop.org:

Myers brings a well-honed interpretive eye to a thematic study of Luke's Gospel. He reads synoptically the crisis of socioeconomic disparity in Jesus's world and ours, and proposes powerful analogies that can build social imagination and animate personal and political practices for systemic change and justiceamong communities of faith today.

There has been a revival of interest over the last half century in the Third Gospel's focus on issues of poverty and wealth. However, most exegetical or homiletic work by scholars and preachers of the Global North has been constrained by middle-class social assumptions, which inevitably domesticate Jesus's radical teaching and practice. To counter this, Myers argues that Luke's literary arc and individual representations are best interpreted through the lens of ""Sabbath Economics"" in the Hebrew Bible. He then brings socio-literary analysis and engaged commentary to bear on Luke's wise oldstories, correlating his narrative structures and symbols to systemic political and economic issues then and now.

Luke's unique material, and how he redacts Mark and Q, reveals his unequivocal critique of socioeconomic disparity. Myers closely examines footprints and ""demonstration projects"" of Sabbath Economics in the first half of Luke, then considers archetypal characters, somatic representations, and socially contrasting scenarios of rich and poor in the second half. His approach deploys sociological exegesis, literary analysis, and liberation hermeneutics to recover Luke's story of Jesus in its historical context and its relevance to ours.

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This is a sermon that I preached with a friend who is from Gaza.

The text that was read before the sermon is Psalm 22:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?..."

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This is a replay of Episode 31 with a brief new intro. 

Jesus tells a parable about a demon exorcism which results in a situation worse than the original demon possession. Those who read the Bible at surface level (and somehow don't seem to notice all the problems that presents) tend to read this passage literally, but Jesus is clearly speaking parabolically. This parable can be applied to  any situation in which a problem has been dealt with in a way that does not deal with the root cause and only kicks the can down the road. 

I didn't change anything in the original episode; I'm just suggesting that it is worth another hearing because it can be applied to our current situation.

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For many modern Christians, especially in the West, the miracles of the Bible are such an uncomfortable subject that we often pretend that they are not even there in the text. We ignore them. But they are key to understanding the message of the Gospel.

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What is the intersection between the "hidden things" and "secrets" of Matthew 13 and the recent conspiracy theories that have played significant role in U.S. politics?

If you need to review Matthew 13, click here.

If you want to watch clips of Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid, click here.

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Could the Gospel of Matthew have been written to address the aftermath of a genocide, much like the one happening in Gaza right now?

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I recommend to my listeners the amazing documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom. You can find it free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s

It centers on  the 21 months of nonviolent demonstrations by Gazans at the border with Israel in 2018-2019.

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The story of my short sojourn in Palestine 22 years ago and what I learned from the Palestinians. This is a slightly revised sermon that I delivered at Pasadena Mennonite Church in August of 2001.

My personal Facebook page is on the same account as the podcast page. It was hacked and then Facebook suspended it. I have alerted them to the hack and appealed the suspension, but as of this writing it is still suspended. A part of me suspects that this is just Facebook trying to silence those who speak out about the genocide in Gaza, something that I was doing extensively on my personal page. I'm probably wrong about that, but I'm taking this as an opportunity to speak out on this podcast and urge everyone to do whatever you can to stop the genocide in Gaza. What Hamas did was horrid, but it was not unprovoked. It was proceeded by more than 75 years of displacement, dispossession, and a slow ethnic cleaning of the Palestinian people. All people of faith and conscience need to join together to call for an end to the violence and an end to occupation!

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The Gospel overturns not just the order of society but our conception of God as well. When Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we should be shocked. We should not just gloss over the implications of such a statement in this story about God revealed in a human Palestinian Jewish peasant. It may be an earth shattering revelation about what "God" is really like and where "God" is found.