From the Lectionary for 20 July 2025 (Proper 11C)

Luke 10:38-42 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

~

"Those who interpret this story as contrasting the active and contemplative lives take Jesus' gentle reproach of Martha as indicating that she is distracted from him by her busywork. But if Jesus is not offended by Martha's attention to work instead of him since Jesus does not put himself in rivalry with such work, then the words mean something else. I suggest that Jesus is pointing out that Martha is not distracted from Jesus by her work; she is distracted from her work by resentment of her sister. Mary, for her (better) part shows no sign of being distracted by Martha.

[...]

"It isn't a matter of being active or contemplative; it's a matter of being focused on Jesus without resentment. [...] If we are focused on Jesus, we will be attentive to our neighbor without rivalry or resentment, which will set us at Jesus' feet."

-  Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "Mary and Martha at the Feet of Jesus" (http://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/mary-and-martha-at-the-feet-of-jesus/)

~

"Jesus [...] gently chides Martha to take the 'better part', the better course for steering clear of the unproductive way she has chosen. Martha should imitate Mary's focus on learning from Jesus, the way of steering clear of rivalries. He is the one person above all in whom our focus and fascination can begin to untangle us from our webs of rivalry. He is the one who came to do the desire of his Father without rivalry."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions on the Girardian Lectionary page for this week (link in comments below)

~

"[I]n the Greek it says “the better part” [v.42], the Aramaic [version of Luke] apparently is “a better part” and that's quite an important distinction. “Which will not be taken away from her.” Now again there appears to be a pun here, since part is portion or lot, it's the same word that was the Levitical lot for the sacrifice. But also it's a pun with the word for worrying, so 'maris' is a portion, and 'marimna' were all of the things that you're distracted about. [...]

"So it seems, and of course this is speculative, I'm relying on my old friend Duncan Duret and his extraordinary reading of this passage, that Jesus is effectively saying to Martha, “You want help with doing the waiting, but really I just want to wait upon you.” In other words, 'wait or to be waited upon' is more the is more the sense of Jesus' pun at this stage. He's saying that the whole point here is to allow yourself to be waited upon, not to do the waiting. And that of course fits in with other phrases in Luke's gospel where apparently the one who appears to be the guest who is in fact the host. So this is a typical entry of Jesus into a home and reversing the role of host and guest - it's the guest, the apparent guest, who is in fact the host. And this happens frequently and Jesus talks about this, that this is what will happen - the disciples are those who allow themselves to be waited on: the master comes in and sets them down at table then waits on them himself.

"So it's rather an odd thing because we're so used, if you like, to a pious version of this in which Mary is being told, 'yes it's right to sit around and do nothing' and Martha is being told, 'don't get worked up about house business and feeding me'. So we think, oh yes also contemplative is right, acting is less good. It actually appears that it's much more a question of, “I am the one who wants to feed you, are you going to allow yourself to be fed by me?” It's the reversal of positions that's the key thing here, and reversal of positions is particularly important from those who get disturbed about liturgical things, wanting to get everything right and making everything look classy and beautiful and brilliant, whereas the real question is not the classiness, the brilliance, the beauty, but whether the person concerned is being served. Because it's the host who wants to be the waiter, and that's the real way you show love and respect for the Word, allowing yourself to be waited upon and transformed into a sharer of the waiter's word, the waiter's richness, the food that the waiter is giving.

"So something like that seems to be what's going on. It says “Mary has chosen a better part,” talking about the portion, the different sorts of portion, the non-worried portion, which will not be taken away from her. And the 'not being taken away' makes perfect sense if one understands that she has become, if you like, a symptom of God's giving, of the Word's speaking. She's allowed herself to be taken up into the being served, which is how God wants us to grow.

"[This is] what I call the 'secondariness', that is the real sign of discipleship, when we're aware that we are secondary to someone doing something for us rather than being concerned about how we need to be in order to get something done for other people. This is, if you like, the rich account of Jesus teaching secondariness as being our portion and our lot, and the richness and creativity that comes from accepting secondariness."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZzzvs4gshU)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote and link to Andrew Marr's blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper11c/]

From the Lectionary for 13 July 2025 (Proper 10C)

Colossians 1:9b-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

[W]e have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Luke 10:25-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

~

The key link between the two passages above is the word "inherit."  Is "to inherit eternal life" the same as "to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light?"  Do we think 'to inherit eternal life' is something restricted to the future, something that will only be given to us after we die?  It seems that Paul is suggesting in Colossians that it is something we participate in now, and (following George Macdonald and many others) I think a far better rendering in English of 'ζωή αιώνια' (zoe aionia) is "life eternal" ie. the life of God, which is that to which we are called, that shown to us most perfectly in the life of the One we follow.

~

"'Inheriting eternal life' is a more interesting phrase than it might seem to those of us whose first reaction is that it is a simply another way of saying 'what must I do to go to heaven?' Inheriting is what the ultimate insiders did (in those days, sons, but not daughters) and 'eternal life' was a way of referring to the life of God. So St Luke frames the parable [of the Good Samaritan] as a discussion of what it looks like to become an insider in the life of God.

[...]

"As death loses its power, so commitment to the flourishing of what is fragile and precarious becomes possible, and our relationship with time changes. I don't know about you, but pledging yourself in an open-ended manner to make good on the hospital expenses of a severely injured person without any guarantee of payback for yourself is mostly a terrifying possibility. What is to stop you being 'taken to the cleaners' for everything you've got?

"But what if time is not your enemy? If time is not your enemy, then what you achieve or don't achieve, whether you are 'taken to the cleaners' or not, is secondary, and whatever you have will be for the flourishing of the weak one for as long as it takes, since you know that you will be found there.

"Being on the inside of the life of God looks like being decanted, by a generosity you didn't know you had in you, into making a rash commitment which makes a nonsense of death, of worry, and of the panic of time, because you know that you want to be found in loving proximity to what is weak and being brought into being."

- James Alison, "Jesus the Forgiving Victim", pp 528; 549-50

~

"So notice that the question which Jesus answers is not actually the question which the lawyer asks him - the lawyer asked him “who is my neighbour” and Jesus puts the question at the end, “who turned out to be neighbourly towards someone.” In other words, the definition of neighbour is not best thought of as to whom am I limited, or to whom I'm obligated, as a minimum in order to be a decent person. It is better seen as, what is it like actually to create neighbourliness in an ongoing and sustained way for someone. That's what being a neighbour is. The neighbour starts from the other, not from you wondering you know how that other fits into your life. It's the other who alters your life that is the key thing.

"Now Jesus has answered the question about inheriting eternal life here and the really interesting thing is that the Samaritan, who's obviously the model for this one, he's been taken by surprise. He's come across somebody lying alone, he has been moved by him. He has given of himself in caring for him and he's prepared to give himself even more. He's so excited to be found to be doing these things and actually found something real in life, looking after this person and actually being prepared to run the risk of, you know, picking up the hospital bill at the end which could be very considerable. He's ready to give himself [like] that because he's discovered what it's like to share the life of God. It's better to give yourself away even if you don't really know where that will take you.

"That's what it looks like to inherit the life of God: creating neighbourliness, giving yourself away even in ways that you can't control, being prepared, as it were, to put yourself at risk in order to do that, [the Samaritan] has discovered what it is like to inherit eternal life. It means being on the inside of the life of God.

"So Jesus asks this question to the lawyer who says, and it's difficult to tell whether he's just being loyally exact or whether he doesn't want to say the word “the Samaritan,” because the lawyer answers when he's asked, ... “The one who showed him mercy, mercy not sacrifice. The one who showed him mercy, that was the one who created neighbourliness.”

"So yes, obviously the lawyer doesn't want to admit that it was one of 'them bastards' who's the good guy in this story, but the whole point of this story is that we have been able to retell it and retell it and retell it in every conceivable different generation, according to who [the] annoying irritating other to whom we cannot attribute good is, and we can imagine them learning to rescue us, creating neighbourliness for us and saying, ah that's eternal life.

"Which then may prepare us to be able to recognize others in situations of extremity, and so enter into eternal life. It's the surprise and the excitement and the joy of discovering the life of God in mercy and not in sacrifice."

- James Alison, from "Homily for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 С" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWerd_9ceMs)

[Source of quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper10c/]

From the Lectionary for 6 July 2025 (Proper 9C)

1 Corinthians 1:20-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)*

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Luke 10:1-11; 16-20 (NRSV Anglicised)

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’”

[...]

“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

~

"So yet again: when it said before he sent them to every place where he himself intended to go [10:1], perhaps this is more of the sense that they are if you like, the sacramental presence of himself. And in as far as the people, the local people receive them they are receiving him, and in as far as they are receiving him they are receiving God, because God has made himself known in this weak presence who will later reveal himself to be the crucified One.

"So after they've had this trip to the local places, the seventy returned with joy saying, “Lord, in your name” - in other words, you being there in person - “even the demons submit to us.” In other words, by entering these places with a weak presence, actually, they've been able to undo some of the terrible fake forms of power that had possessed and bound people, some of the terrible forms of vibration. It only needed people to be able to be present and weak without fearing being run out for demons and all the structures of possession which depend on throwing out in order to make good. They submitted to them. The power of God comes in weakness.

"And then Jesus says this wonderful line: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” This is a key verse in Luke which appears again in the Book of the Apocalypse in a slightly different form, the notion that Jesus is present as weak in the world as one about to occupy the place of shame of death, of violence, the one who's about to be thrown out. His strong occupation of that is the same thing as the de-transcendentalizing of evil. Evil ceases to be a celestial form, it now becomes an anthropological form, wriggling about on the earth whose structure and whose working is known. It can be defeated by people who are happy to remain weak because they know they are held by God, who are not tempted to react with violence and anger and strength, thinking that that makes them better warriors against this thing.

"So evil has lost its transcendence. “See, I've given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.” And this may refer to actual snakes and scorpions which do exist in that part of the world. It may also refer to the constellations which had names of snakes and scorpions and which were thought to be signs of the heavenly powers, of these semi-demonic powers that control things but in a closing-down way. So again Jesus is saying it's the actual whole power of transcendence, even the heavens, are of being undone because I can see that the power I have given you works.

"Jesus rejoices, they rejoice. Then he says, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this that the spirits submit to you” - in other words, it's not merely your achievements that are the key thing - “but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” And this is this wonderful sense proper to the Hebrew world that who you really are is being given to you from on high. It's being, as it were, unfurled in your life. And if you are able to occupy this space of weakness, of precariousness, it's because you're being held in place by heaven, your name has been written there, it is inscribed.

"This is part of the new reality that is coming in. You are going to be a sign of that new reality coming in. So the name being inscribed in heaven is not a reference to someone with a pen, it's a reference to the reality of your being, as it were, already held elsewhere and starting to unfold in this world as you make a witness to what it's really like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3acWt-Maa4)

~

"I think that “but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” and “consider your call” [1 Corinthians 1:26] mean the same thing: they are getting us to turn our imaginations towards the one who calls or who writes our names rather than to what we achieve. [...] What indeed does it say that I was called? Not about me, but about the one calling? What does it say of his spaciousness, his power, his gentleness, the security which he offers, that it becomes possible not to have to construct a story which makes clear sense, not because of a paucity of meaning, but because of an excess."

- James Alison, Undergoing God, pp 97-98

* Note that the 1 Corinthians passage is not part of the lectionary for this week, but I have included it because it is referenced in the quote above from Undergoing God, and also because of the link to Alison's mention of "weakness" in the homily.

[Source of quote from "Undergoing God" and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_9c/]

From the Lectionary for 29 June 2025 (Proper 8C)

Luke 9:51-62 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival, but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Galatians 5:1; 13-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. [...]

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

~

"Turning away from one's own culture, in itself, is negative. As long as it is negative, it is fueled by alienation and resentment, which leads to the seething irrational anger of the Underground Man as Dostoevsky calls him. Cutting oneself off from everybody is also a violent act, one that can lead to senseless violence as it does with the Underground Man who eventually attacks another person out of sheer spite. I myself was mired in such alienation and resentment for some years when the problems with my own culture became evident through the Viet Nam War, racist practices and other social ills. This attitude felt like freedom until I was freed by God from the resentment and discovered it had really been a prison.

"In Galatians 5, Paul illustrates the culture Jesus is calling us from, what he calls the “works of the flesh,” as “licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy” and much, much more. It is precisely envy, quarrelling, strife and the like that makes human culture so violent that rejection from other humans leads to raining down fire in retaliation. No wonder some people turn away in disgust and resentment.

"But Jesus would have us turn away from the culture of death and violence, not to close in on ourselves in impotent fury, but to embrace humanity in a much deeper, much more inclusive way. Paul says that the fruits of the Spirit, the spirit that comes to save lives, not destroy them, are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.“ (Gal. 5:22–23) [...]

"Paul says this is crucifying the “flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) As Jesus shows at the end of the road to Jerusalem, kindness, generosity, gentleness and the like end up on the cross where the strife, jealousy and envy of the people is absorbed. Once we embrace this culture of love, what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the Beloved Community,” we embrace the culture we have renounced so as to bring it into the culture of the Spirit."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post “Holding Back the Fire - Embracing the Beloved Community.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/.../holding-back-the-fire.../)

~

"[T]his is the point of the gift of faith. It is the disposition produced in us by someone who really, really, wants us to be free, not bowed down or crippled. Someone who is prepared to go to great lengths to induct us into a habit, a disposition of being able to walk freely, not to be trapped by gods or frightened of death. 'For freedom he has set us free' is Paul's great cry in the epistle to the Galatians (5:1).

"Do you begin to get a sense of how strange it is that the gift of faith is what is absolutely central to Christianity, how absolutely it is linked to the notion of freedom? For just as a parent does not induct a child into the habit of walking so that the child will thereafter follow it around and do exactly what the parent does, so the Other other who produces in us the habitual disposition not to bow down to gods and not to be run by death doesn't do these things so that we will 'behave properly'.

"Rather the attitude of someone who seeks to give you faith is someone who is not in rivalry with you, is not concerned with the inevitable mistakes you will make, knows that perfectionism is the enemy of learning and of growth, and wants you to be able to discover for yourself what is good for you, where you will take it, what you will make of the adventure and the ride.

"So faith, the habitual disposition induced in us by the Other other, to allow ourselves to be relaxed about being stretched beyond our possibilities, turns out also to be something like a huge, happy, bracing challenge to freedom: 'For God's sake, stand up and be godless!'"

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 230-31

~

"[T]he suggestion is as [Jesus] turns his face to Jerusalem that this is going to be introducing a way of being the Holy Place, being utterly alive, being full of the prophetic spirit, that is beyond what could be imagined by Elijah or Moses or any of the prophets of old, and that this is what Jesus is inviting us into doing and we're going to see how that works throughout the next passages of Luke's Gospel and the rest of the year."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGABBn9FcKg)

[Source of quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_8c/]

From the Lectionary for 22 June 2025 (Proper 7C)

Galatians 3:26-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

[F]or in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Luke 8:26-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then they arrived at the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they became frightened. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

~

"The demoniac is a classic scapegoat figure. He dwells among the tombs and wanders the mountainsides wounding himself and howling. No chains can bind and no man subdue him. He is possessed by a legion of demons, and legion is the mob of his persecutors. He carries his persecutors inside himself in the classic mode of the victim who internalizes his tormentors. ...

"The demons recognize Jesus as their nemesis and try to persuade him not to expel them from the system of violence altogether, but merely to transfer them from one location to another. To do this would be to manage violence by means of violence within the closed sacrificial system. Jesus, however, removes them altogether by sending them into the swine, which, contrary to the demons' expectation, rush into the lake and drown. The herd of two thousand swine is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means that violence ceases when the mob disappears. The order of expectation is reversed and instead of the victim going over the cliff the mob goes over!

[...]

"When the swineherds report to the city and its environs, the populace comes out and begs Jesus to leave. The people do not want their scapegoats returned, and they do not want to see themselves as a swinish mob. They fear the revealer because he threatens the order of Gadarene complacency and deprives them of the comfort of the scapegoat. They do not want to break their conspiracy: rather, they want the scapegoat to remain in the shadows of the cemetery as a depository for their violence and a guarantee of their complacency. The fact that they had tried to chain him shows how much they needed him. They recognize the threat Jesus poses to the Sacred they inhabit, and they send him away. [...] Nevertheless, from now on they have in their midst a constant reminder of an alternative to the order of violence in the restored and reintegrated victim whom Jesus rescued from the mob in himself and the mob in the city of Gadara."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 93-94

~

"Imagine that you are in the world of the Gerasenes before Jesus comes along, whether as one of the townspeople or as a demoniac. You are not stupid, or primitive - whatever that means. You are just used to the daily run of your culture. You are used to negotiating living day in and day out within the strengths and limitations of your group. You share both adherence to, and scepticism about, its gods, its taboos, its sacred barriers. Like most people in most societies you both go along with and yet relativize, approve of and yet resent, the structures which give meaning to your life.

"Yet there is one thing you cannot do: whether you are a townsperson or the demoniac, you cannot imagine the innocence of the demoniac. The structure which holds everything together is relatively tolerant, as is the case in most human groups. It is fairly ready to turn a blind eye to a whole lot of failings, indeed has mechanisms for reincorporating those who fail. Yet there is one point where this apparently easy-going form of life is implacably totalitarian, where there is a definition of good and evil which cannot be overturned. It never crosses your mind to question it, and indeed it cannot really be talked about, since it is what allows other things to be talked about and given value.

"This immutable fact which the group's imagination cannot conceive in any other way is the definition of the demoniac as demoniac. Before the arrival of Jesus, whether you are a townsperson, or the demoniac, you are all fundamentally yet tacitly agreed on what holds the whole of your order together. You are a participant in a closed system. And of course participants in a closed system do not know that they are in a closed system. It is only the vantagepoint of a system that does not depend on a hidden but secretly-structuring scapegoat which enables us to detect other systems as closed. Before the arrival of Jesus on the shores of Gerasa, such a vantagepoint was not available to you.

"If someone had come along and said “Well, of course, your demoniac is really innocent, and all he’s doing is acting out what all of you are dumping on him,” you would resist this violently. It would be inconceivable to you that such a person was anything other than a troublemaker, someone who wanted to disturb order and subvert morality. The key word here is “inconceivable.” The notion is not one you could imagine, let alone tolerate. You would read the claim entirely from within your own group structure, and would reject it as impossible. So impossible that it could not really be talked about at all. In fact, you wouldn't need to talk about it. All you would need to do is point to the indisputable evidence of the evil and craziness of your demoniac. Something there is clearly wrong.

[...]

"Jesus did not come and give the Gerasenes a lecture on the structure of their society. He didn't argue with them about definitions. He didn't propose an alternative form of legislation. He did something much more three-dimensional. He empowered the demoniac to become a human being, sitting, clothed and in his right mind, going home to his friends.

"[I]f we have already begun to be overtaken by the power of the Creator, who is already beginning to humanize us, give us right minds, and enable us to be at home with our friends ... [this] is entirely dependent on something huge, quiet, and unimaginable already happening. Very God of Very God is already, even as we speak, “doing something new,” speaking to us in tones and at a depth which our former belonging could never reach, and in a way which our former groups can find nothing other than inconceivable and scandalous: calling us into peaceful and gratuitous human being."

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, ch. 6, “Clothed and in His Right Mind” (pp. 131-133)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly and James Alison quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_7c/]

[The gospel text in the Roman Catholic lectionary for this week is Luke 9:18-24 (Peter's declaration about Jesus and Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection). I highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" on this text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaKtl5GFS8]

From the Lectionary for 15 June 2025 (Trinity Sunday, Year C)

John 16:12-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

~

"In the light of the resurrection it gradually becomes possible to see that it was not that God was previously violent, now blessing, now cursing (Deut. 32:39), but had now brought all that ambivalence to an end. Rather, it became possible to see that that was all a human violence, with various degrees of projection onto God. God had been from the beginning, always, immutably, love, and that this love was made manifest in sending his Son into the midst of the violent humans, even into the midst of their persecutory projections of God, so that they might treat him as a human victim, and thus reveal the depth of the love of God, who was prepared to be a human victim simultaneously to show the depth of his love for humanity, and to reveal humanity as having been locked into the realm of the Father of lies [John 8:44].

"The process we have seen in the Pauline writings and in the Johannine epistles is then the definitive demystification of God and human beings, such that it becomes possible to look again at the crucifixion and the resurrection and develop a perception of God only as derived from that event. So it becomes possible to see the crucifixion as the meeting point between, on the one hand, a human act of violence, and, on the other hand, the love of the Father, who sends his Son into humanity as an act of love, the Son who gives himself freely to being victimized by human beings as part of his imitative love of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is the inner dynamic of the relationship between the two of them.

"Jesus on the Cross gives up his Spirit to the Father. The Father at the resurrection gives back the Spirit to the Son, and the two of them are then able to give this same Spirit, the Spirit of the crucified-and-risen victim to humans as induction into a new way of being human - becoming children of God (John 1:11-12), quite outside the violence of the “world.”

"The understanding of God as Trinity then is the understanding that the Cross of Christ, made alive in the resurrection, was in fact a relational reality - a reality of giving and of self-giving that was saving as revealing, and revealing as saving."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 108-109

~

"The Church [...] didn't preach the Trinity just to solve a mathematical puzzle; the Church preached the Trinity because that seemed to be the best, maybe the only way, to preach salvation. [...] The Trinity [...] is not a mathematical puzzle but a story of sin and forgiveness. In spite of some outbursts of anger [as the Jewish people understood it], Yahweh claimed to be a God who was 'hesed', a Hebrew word meaning full of loving kindness and mercy. The attitude of the Pharisees towards the paralytic [Mk. 2:5] and the Sinful Woman [Lk. 7: 47] suggests that they thought forgiveness should stay up in the heavens where it belonged and not get mixed up with humans on the earth. In our angrier moments we tend to feel the same way.

"But Yahweh's 'hesed' did get mixed up with humanity: first in the person of Jesus and then in the disciples through the Gift of the Holy Spirit. So it is that we humans are given the Gift, not only of having our sins forgiven, but we have the Gift of forgiving the sins of other people. Note that it isn't we who forgive, but it is God who forgives through us. That is, the divine act of forgiveness that came to the earth in the person of Jesus has, like the Holy Spirit, spread throughout the whole world.

"Forgiveness is the air we breathe. Unfortunately, just as we can pollute the air, we can pollute the breath of the Holy Spirit through our own wrath. But fortunately, there is no getting rid of God's 'hesed'. It is all around us and we can breathe it any time we wish. And when we wish it and breathe in the Spirt, we share the life of the Holy Trinity with other people and so help them share the same forgiving life."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "The Breath of the Trinity" (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/the-breath-of-the-trinity/)

~

"What I hope I will be doing with you today is to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is far from being some kind of immensely complicated intellectual abstraction, [but] is an account of how God is close to us.

[...]

"God's interpretation of what God was doing in coming amongst us [is] an interpretation of love. God has shown us that God's creating everything, bringing everything into being, had a criterion: human flourishing. And furthermore, that that was a plan, a project with, if you like, intelligence, that shows the glory of God. And that God's interpretive intelligence is given us in the Holy Spirit so that we can begin to interpret reality and come to discover what really is as we follow the example and life of Jesus, learning to give ourselves away, learning not to grasp onto fake meaning holding back the possibility of learning what really is, but being found ourselves on the inside of the adventure of creation as daughters and sons of God.

[...]

“All that the Father has is mine.” [v. 15]

"[Here] Jesus is referring to God as the Father already personalising the great Impersonal Other, but saying that the entire meaning of God is available in [him, Jesus]. There are no extra bits of God floating around out there that I am not bearing witness to. [...] There are several different ways in which in different gospels that same reality is referred to. The Father is not an extra person outside, observing with a different set of emotional reactions, a differing set of qualities. No, literally everything that is in the Father becomes visible in the Son: the Son is the criterion of the Father, the image of the Father, the icon of the Father, the way, the humanly available way.

“All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

"In other words, God's interpretation [the Spirit] of God's criterion [Jesus] for God is going to be what's operative amongst you now, building you up into an intelligence of all the things that I, Jesus, am showing you, taking exactly from what I've been doing - my words, my actions - so that you will understand that I wasn't paying the price for some terrible vengeance, but so you will see that literally everything that I was doing was the image of the Father: creating, breathing into being.

"Even creating, this is an important point: Jesus is not simply the Saviour, Jesus is the Creator. The Father gives us the entire criterion for God's creation in Jesus. Jesus is the criterion for creation. Which means that his going up to his death and his breathing out the Spirit is the closest analogy we get to what creation looks like. The words Jesus uses are “the birth-pangs,” in other words a terribly terribly dangerous moment whereby a woman puts her life and health extraordinarily at risk in order to bring a child into the world. He's saying, if you want to know what creation looks like, that's the nearest analogy - it is someone being prepared to die in order to breath out their spirit to that everyone else can be brought to life.

"That's the nearest analogy to creation we have, it's a picture, not of a hugely, massively powerful Maker from outside, but of someone who's prepared entirely generously to do something that's going to be independent of them, and then enable people to begin to flourish freely inside [it], so as to come to discover who they are. It is this fantastic picture of the relationship, the sheer friendliness, the warmth, the spaciousness, of the love that is opening up what can seem to us a frightening, terrifying, vengeful and violent world - and is. But God is not associated with any of those things, but that there is this huge interpretation of love trying to well through us, so that we are able to participate in it with peace and with joy."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Trinity Sunday 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBJnCuSW2s)

[Source of the quote from "The Joy of Being Wrong" and link to Andrew Marr's blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/trinityc/]

From the Lectionary for 8 June 2025 (Pentecost - Year C)

John 20:19-23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Romans 8:14-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

~

"What I'd like to do is to take a step back before looking at the texts and just comment something about the coming of the Holy Spirit. Very often in our basic understanding of Christianity, we have something like the Holy Spirit coming as a ... consolation prize given that Jesus isn't here. Which is exactly not how Jesus saw it. Jesus saw that what he was doing was setting something up so that we could have something much much more than him being here, at least being here in the flesh, in the form of which he was historically. That what he had done was to make possible the giving to us the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit is how God is now able to get through to us, inside us, between us completely. The gift is more than the giver, that's something which Jesus keeps trying to say: because I have gone to [the Father] you will be able to do more than me.

"Once we begin to understand Jesus's purpose if you like, his project as having been not so much to “pay for our sins” quote-unquote, as though that were you know a 'bill settlement' issue, but as making available to us the source of life, living fountains of a desire vastly greater and richer than that of which we are capable, that opens us up into the possibility of becoming new creatures together, that gives us a new way of being human. Once you understand that that's what he was about, all that he says and does makes more sense, his anxiety to get it done makes more sense. What Jesus was trying to do was make it possible for us to be given the Holy Spirit. He instantiating it, and the Father giving it; he breathing it out, the Father pouring it upon us.

"So what we celebrate today, if you like, is that enormous gift having become possible for humans. And I want to stress that because sometimes Pentecost is celebrated as if it's the birthday of the Church, ... though actually probably the Church's birthday was better considered to be Good Friday, but there we are - that's just my little opinion. But the real problem with thinking about it as the birthday of the Church is that it tends to make the Holy Spirit a 'churchy' thing, whereas the whole point of the Holy Spirit is that it's how God's act of communication goes worldwide. God begins to be able to spread out, the Holy One comes out of the Temple and goes worldwide.

"So this is now a universal and a cosmic difference that is made. If you like, we who have the privilege of being baptized Christians and having received the Holy Spirit, have the privilege of being on the inside of something that is for humans. If, and it's always an if, the Church manages to be a sign of the reconciled humanity, of God's children coming together as one in answer to Jesus prayer, that sign is a wonderful thing, that sign is the presence of the Holy Spirit ushering in the Kingdom. But it's doing it constantly all over the place and not necessarily where we're looking for it! That's another thing which we get from John: no one knows where the Spirit comes from, where the wind blows, where the Spirit flows. It's constantly going ahead of us, it's constantly surprising us.

"And I think that that's a very very important part of understanding: this gift is something not that we can think of as something which we possess and can give to other people but which is something which with luck possesses us and is impelling us to new places, new positions, new openings-up, new freshenings of life and belonging. All of these things are what the Holy Spirit is about.

"Having said that, let's look quickly at the texts because you'll see something I hope about what I'm trying to stress there. John's text is the text we had at the very beginning of Easter. It's the text where Jesus appears in the upper room on the evening of the first day of the week, and the doors are locked. So remember, I told you before, this, if you like, ironizes the holy place in the Temple into which Jewish people quite rightly were feared to go because only the high priest could go. But here we have an ordinary house, people in it locked for fear of the Jews. It's a bit of irony there because this is in fact now a secular place in which the Holy One of God is appearing.

"And the first thing he comes and says is: “Peace be with you.” He gives peace twice thus fulfilling what Jesus had talked about earlier in John's Gospel. “After he said this he showed them his hand and his side.” So he indicates how the peace comes: it is the greeting of peace, then he's showing them what he's done to bring them peace. He's identified who he is - the one who was cast out. And it's from the cast out one that peace comes - not vengeance, not anger, [but] peace. All the great requital for passages in Isaiah have been fulfilled, but not as vengeance, as the gift of peace. And then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. In other words, peace and joy. Joy is the realization of something that has been done for us beyond our imagination and is coming upon us. Peace and joy - these are going to be the absolute keynotes of the Holy Spirit.

"Then Jesus says to them ... “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In other words, up till now, his Father has sent him - all that he has been done has been, if you like, the iconic reflection of his Father, he has been the image, the only image. What God looks like is determined by what Jesus has done. In other words, it's become entirely a horizontal form of belonging, a form of recognition. We recognize the Father in what the Son does. The Son is equal to the Father. It's not a question of looking up, it's a question of looking sideways. And now that same package he is giving to them.

"[... Then he] breathes into them and, as I've said time and time again, it's the same verb as in Genesis 'breathing' into Adam's nostrils - this is the beginning of a new creation, starting new humanity. This is not only to do with the particular people there, it's to do with a new Adam, the possibility of becoming a new human and of creation being opened up again. And, this is the amazing thing: this power which has come from on high through him, by his breath, through that which he has achieved, this power is now ours. And that that's not simply... a 'canonical' thing, it's an actual thing.

"And he says: if you forgive the sins of any, they have forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Let's try and de-moralize that for a bit. That's not merely a question of setting up people who can give up absolution and confession. That's one way of organizing the reception of that, but it's certainly not limiting it. No, it's saying: in as far as you forgive other people creation will be opened up, and as far as you don't, it will remain closed down. There will be no more 'deus ex machina', no more God from outside. God is now at your level, you are within God, and God is within you. It's going to work at your level. It's up to you to take this forward. Where are you going to go?

"And its power comes through forgiveness, through letting go. It's a power that seems weak. But is the strongest thing, because it's as you let go that you will come to discover what is, rather than remaining locked in confirmation bias, in violent patterns of identification and projection. It's as you're able to forgive and let go, that you will discover who others really are, who you really are, and will be able to open up the universe.

[...]

"So this is the power that we've been given. Let's think about this over the next few weeks because this notion of God having become alive sideways amongst us, at the horizontal level, enabling us to discover from within where this peace, where this joy comes from, and how it empowers us to go forth, not just in little ecclesial huddles but as people who speak and witness to something greater than us in the whole world, so that creation can start to begin to bear witness to the glory of its Creator."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Pentecost Sunday 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8DVVuJBasQ)

[Note that John 20:19-23 is the Roman Catholic lectionary Gospel text for Pentecost C - the "Revised Common Lectionary" text is John 14:8-17. For analysis and discussion on this and the other lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/pentecostc/]