From the Lectionary for 30 November 2025 (Advent 1A)

Isaiah 2:2-5 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In days to come
    the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
    and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
    Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
 He shall judge between the nations
    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
    come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!

Matthew 24:36-44 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

~

"One of the things I love about the liturgical life of the Church is the way that the Holy Spirit, quietly and gently, works on us. Through the texts and prayers set out for us each year in the lectionary the Spirit draws us ever more fully into the Presence. If we read the texts in a literalistic manner, it can sounds as though, week by week it is God who is undergoing change toward us. In fact, however, in the liturgy of the Presence it is we who are worked on through the scriptures and the prayers, we who get to be reconfigured and brought in to the life of the Changeless One.

"At Advent, it begins again: the cycle by which God breaks through the clutter of our lives to announce to us that the Presence is very near, irrupting into our midst, hauling us out of our myths, our half-truths and the ways we have settled for what is “religious” rather than what is holy, alive, and real. So, lest we be tempted to think that “Advent” is merely a religious warm-up for “Christmas”, let us see if we can allow ourselves to be brought near the cold-water spigot whose splashes can chasten us into reality.

"Someone wants to speak to us. Someone who is not on the same level as us at all. The “oomph” behind the “isness” of everything that is wants to invite us into the fulness of a project. Can that One get through? Who are they? Will we be able to hear them? How trained are our ears? The assumption at the beginning of each liturgical year is that this is going to be difficult: that we are half asleep, our ears dulled, and the voice of One who loves us is too radiant bright to be picked up on our defensive antennae. [...]

"The announcement with which we begin, from Isaiah, plays to our sense of the physically portentous. It gives us a mountain which is being lifted up. It plays to our sense of religious grandeur. For the mountain is Zion, where Jerusalem is built. And it plays to any apocalyptic sense we may have, for out of this physically and religiously charged place there is to emerge a teaching, and an instruction, which will also be a judgment, a criterion for all peoples. And this criterion, this instruction, this judge, sitting with authority, will be heeded by all nations, who will then enter into the ways of peace.

[...]

"[W]hat is the sense of the prophecy? We are used to two possibilities: on the one hand, prophecy being punctured by reality, and our settling for far, far less than our imaginations were excited into expecting; or on the other hand prophecies being fulfilled, and our being given a boost to our expectations and our sense of who we are and what we deserve.

"Advent, however, gives us neither of these. Or perhaps it would be better to say that we are given both. For what we are going to get used to hearing is the still small voice of punctured fulfilment. That is to say, our receiving far more than we imagined we might get from the prophecy, but our getting it through the process of the loss of fantasy. And this is what Our Lord warns his disciples about: the coming is not going to happen according to our measure, nor is it likely to be picked up by us. Only the spirit that is trained in punctured fulfilment is likely to get it.

"Jesus points it out very clearly: there is no human criterion at all that is capable of knowing how the Creator’s design to fulfil creation is going to look. Majority expectations are not safe, like those of Noah’s contemporaries. Who could tell that with Cain killing Abel in the field (one taken, the other left) judgment would begin? Or what the shape of that judgment would be? Or who could tell with the deaths of the firstborn of the Egyptian slave women working alongside their Hebrew counterparts at the grinding stone (Exodus 11,5) what sign from God was about to emerge?

"And yet, as our imagination of the One who is coming undergoes its inevitable puncturing, so that we can be awakened to One whose criteria are not our criteria, the promise will be fulfilled. The One who is coming will not preside over us, but will teach us to want peace from within, and to learn the habits that make it possible. The One who loves us will come as one we despise, and crucify. The definitive puncturing of our god-fantasies, and yet the Presence of one who is powerfully determined not to let us remain wedded to our self-destruction."

- James Alison, from "A Puncturing Fulfillment" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02ow1QEbeNZmRcaF4RLSYHmVeY3UDi2em9geJRtzvDH8D9C6r557nhk2ZwssSUV7A5l)

~

"I think that the whole point [of this teaching in this passage from Matthew's gospel] is: this is not obvious. You need to be on the inside of something and discern something. From the outside it is going to look odd - two in the field, one taken one left; two grinding meal together, one taking one left. What is it going to look like to be in a position to discriminate, in the good sense, to discern what's going on? Wherever there are two people, wherever normal-seeming things are in fact riven through by the hints of glory - or ruin.

"“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” So the coming of the Son of Man, and the central message of this passage: keep awake, [...] stay awake. And I think that that's the difficult key that we're being asked to do in Advent, which is staying awake sufficiently to be able to discriminate, to discern what is going on in the midst of our world, so that when normal-seeming things are in fact shot through with heavenly decision-making processes. And in the midst of them the Lord is coming. And it's coming as a surprise, we do not know it so no complacency is possible [...]

"“But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.” [...] But Jesus has said just before, “You do not know on what day *your* lord is coming,” which suggests that it's not the negative thing that he's concerned about but rather the people who because we think of the Lord as on our side, think of him as our Lord and say, “Lord, Lord.” Because of that we assume that it's going to be coming in a way that will be easy for us to pick up, that we will be able to detect it, that it will, as it were, be obvious from our point of view because we know what's right and what's wrong. [But] the suggestion [is] that, actually, that's the most dangerous position to be in, because if we think we know then we're going to be greatly deceived. We have to really become aware of the possibility that the coming is happening in our midst in ways we don't know and which do not flatter our sense of belonging, our sense of what is good and bad, our sense of what is right and wrong.

[...]

"So this, at the beginning of Advent, my sisters and brothers, I suspect is what we're being asked to enter into: discernment [of] all the things that are going on, where we are with the relation to all of them, how much of it seems normal, how much of it seems scandalous and full of huge turbulence and uprisings and so on - the chapter immediately before this verse is precisely about those things. So the strange mixture of normal things going on while there are huge upheavals going on makes it very difficult for us to be, as it were, planted in both and yet still alive for the One who is coming in, still prepared for all the glory that is going to come in such [a] small form, is going to be so strange for us to learn and is going to take us into the kingdom."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for First Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-NWVUIo7Ro)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent1a/]

From the Lectionary for 23 November 2025 (Christ the King Sunday, Year C)

Jeremiah 23:5-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Luke 23:33-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

~

"As I have both studied and written about Jesus and the gospels, and as I have tried to lead and teach Christian communities that were doing their best to follow Jesus and order their lives by the gospels, I have had the increasing impression, over many years now, that most of the Western Christian tradition has simply forgotten what the gospels are really all about. Despite centuries of intense and heavy industry expended on the study of all sorts of features of the gospels, we have often managed to miss the main thing that they, all four of them, are most eager to tell us. I have therefore come to the conclusion that what we need is not just a bit of fine-tuning, an adjustment here and there. We need a fundamental rethink about what the gospels are trying to say, and hence about how best we should read them, together and individually. And - not least - about how we then might order our life and work in accordance with them.

"[...] The question, then, is not only: Can we learn to read the gospels better, more in tune with what their original writers intended? It is also: Can we discover, by doing this, a new vision for God's mission in the world, in and through Jesus, and then - now! - in and through his followers? And, in doing so, can we grow closer together in mission and life, in faith and hope, and even in love? Might a fresh reading of the gospels, in other words, clear the way for renewed efforts in mission and unity? Is that what it would look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven?

"That, after all, is the story all four gospels tell. [...] I am here dealing with the four that were recognized, from very early on, as part of the church’s “rule of life,” that is, part of the “canon”: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the story that the four evangelists tell is the story, as in my title, of “how God became king.”

"This, I discover, comes as a surprise to most people, and an unwelcome shock to some. It appears, as we say today, counterintuitive; that is, the claim that God has become king doesn’t seem to square with the world as we know it. “If God is really king, why is there still cancer? Why are there still tsunamis? Why are there still tyranny, genocide, child abuse, and massive economic corruption?”

"What’s more, as we shall see, some people, not least some Christians, appear allergic to the very idea of God becoming, or being, “king.” “Isn’t God as king triumphalist? Doesn’t that lead us toward that dreaded word “theocracy”? And isn’t that one of the problems of our day, not one of the solutions?”

"Questions like that are important. But even if the gospel writers had heard us asking them, they would not have backed off from the claim they were making."

- N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, pp. ix-x

~

"Christ is the royal man under the sign of the cross.  His whole life moved toward the cross as the enactment of reconciliation.  His cross was his coronation.  As the New Testament plainly reveals, we can know the royal man Jesus and ourselves in him, only as the one who was 'led by God' and 'harried by us' to his death.

"[...] [T]he royal man is a reflection of God in correspondence with his purpose and work. Here [Barth] has four points. (i) Jesus shares God's destiny in his disparagement, rejection, isolation, and concealment. (ii) He upturns all values by favoring the weak and humble, not the high and mighty. (iii) His approach to established orders is genuinely revolutionary, cutting across all parties and programs, both conservative and progressive. (iv) He lives his life for men as Savior, not against them as Judge."

- G. W. Bromiley, An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, pages 203, 201

~

"It's interesting that [in verse 35 the accusation] uses both of those: the Messiah of God, that's the anointed one, so that's the Davidic figure [...]; and the Chosen One. The chosen one was Israel rather than a particular figure. Saul is sometimes referred to as the Chosen One - the beginnings of the kingship of Israel. But “the chosen one,” this is a reference to Isaiah 28 where God is setting a foundation in Zion by placing a chosen stone, a precious one in his eyes.

"We'll see how important it comes to be because it's the distinction between precious and shame: the one that is chosen is the one that people think “yes, this is something being done for us”; and the other one is a shame, so they're saying it right, but they're saying it so as to shame him. We're going to see how important that dichotomy between the chosen one and the shamed one is, because everything in today's Gospel is around that fundamental dichotomy.

[...]

"I hadn't picked up the importance of the word “paradise” [v.43] until I looked up all the other times that the word paradise appears in the [...] Greek in the Septuagint. [...] And mostly it's meaning is “orchard.” Jesus is clearly making a reference to the tree as the Tree of Life, which is of course in Paradise in the garden, the orchard in Genesis and in Ezekiel. And then there is the curse of the tree [in Deut. 21:23].

"So the whole question is, are you part of the lynch mob, in which case there is a curse going on here, or do you recognize that this is the Tree of Life? There are two trees, or rather there are two people interpreting the tree in an entirely different way. And the one who recognizes that this one is entirely innocent, that the one who is being falsely accused is the source of Life, that one has perceived that what looked like a place of shame is in fact the precious place that has been put down as a new foundation [cf. Isaiah 28:16 - Therefore thus says the Lord God, “See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation” (NRSVUE)].

"In other words, all these references bring out the duality of what is going on here. On the one hand, something positive coming into being so that Jesus really is the principle of all the powers of the world, he really is going to be able to feed the people, he really is going to be the new Temple - those temptations which he'd overcome. And he is actually opening up the Tree of Life, making it possible to come into of the garden, the orchard, the beginning of New Creation.

"So that's how Luke shows both how our forgiveness works and at the same time how what is going on is vastly more powerful than an individual scene but a place where all the kings and princes of this world gather together look at the king as anointed and don't know what they see. It's Psalm 2 that is being re-enacted here beautifully at the centre of Luke's passion."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Christ the King 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_omW0f7KM)

[Source of N.T. Wright quote, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xrstking_c/]

From the Lectionary for 16 November 2025 (Proper 28C):

Luke 21:5-19 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

~

"The world Jesus paints describes those days when the sacrificial mechanism humans have depended on no longer works, when the temple’s pretty façade has fallen, and the stones of the building lie about all a kilter, in those days all hell will break lose. Everybody will be against their neighbor. It will be a time when you will be betrayed by your parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends. They will execute some of you. We may be entering those days.

"Because Jesus-followers won’t be pointing toward others with an accusing finger but rather pointing toward God who loves all and does not wish that any be sacrificed, they will be hated by everyone. A culture built on division and hatred will especially hate Jesus-followers because Jesus-followers give witness to the truth that all are of value and none expendable.

"After all of this Jesus still leaves us a word of comfort. He assures us that “Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost.” He tells us we will make it through whole. At the deepest level we will be in one piece. And more than that, “by holding fast, you will gain your lives.” Dear friends, we are in the process of gaining our lives."

- Thomas L. Truby, from a sermon delivered on November 13, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper28-2016-Gaining-Our-Lives.pdf)

~

"In fact Jesus's so-called apocalyptic discourse is really a 'how not to be run by an apocalyptic imagination' discourse. It's how not to be fooled by this world of fascinating signs. [...] Please notice what Jesus is doing is he's trying to get people off fascination with charismatic people, fascination with the temple and the notion of God's anger associated with it. He's saying, “Pay no attention to such things, do not go after them.”

[...]

"What's wrong, if you like, with this world of signs and fascinations is, we look at a particular struggle or a particular upheaval and think about it in terms of it giving us meaning by there being the bad guy who [is] being destroyed, so we must be the good guy. And the trouble with that of course is that if you think that, you're failing to notice what is actually going on in your own group, you're still being run by the need to justify yourself over against another group.

"So each one of these [Nation w ill rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven] is not Jesus saying this is what's going to happen, he's saying these kind of quotes, these kind of attitudes to prophetic happenings, those are all the wrong way of looking at things, that's all something in the midst of which you must learn a certain indifference.

[...]

"The Ignatian understanding of indifference is: not allowing rivalry to push my buttons. That kind of indifference is what therefore enables us curiously to be creative and actually free in the midst of whatever is going on, and bearing witness to another reality, something that is not run by the violence of the scapegoating of this world.

[...]

"By your endurance, your patience, your perseverance, in other words by your standing in the midst of all this, not being run by it and so bearing witness to that which is being brought into being, you will gain your souls. That is what being brought into being as a son or a daughter of God looks like. It looks like being turned into a witness of another sign, a completely different sign. Instead of the world of temple, of violent sacred, fake goodness, of political and even of tribal and family violent construction of goodness, in the midst of all that, working through it all, not run by its meaning, being given the meaning that comes from God, that is the living of the Kingdom."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXni9LDFM9U)

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper28c/]

From the Lectionary for 9 November 2025 (Proper 27C)

Luke 20:27-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

~

"The Sadducees had couched their question ironically, within a familiar [1st century] backdrop. Jesus, in reply, gives as his example of the Scriptures and the power of God the story of Moses and the Bush from the book of Exodus, where God says to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Jesus' point is that for God who knows not death, those people, long dead in terms of the supposed historical chronology of Moses' life, were alive. If they were alive to God, contaminated as it were with God's utter aliveness, held in presence by one whose presence is beyond time, then they are alive. It's God's aliveness that counts in understanding all these things."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pg. 165

~

"So when, earlier, Jesus had said to the Sadducees that they didn't understand the power of God [...], now we begin to understand what this power might consist in. Jesus isn't talking about some special power to do something miraculous, like raising someone from the dead. Rather he's giving an indication of the sort of power which characterizes God, something of the quality of who God is. This ‘power’, this quality which God always is, is that of being completely and entirely alive, living without any reference to death.

"There is no death in God. God has nothing to do with death, and for that reason facts which are obvious to us, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob having been long dead at the time of Moses, simply do not exist for God. Let's put this another way: for us ‘being alive’ means ‘not being dead’; it's a reality which is circumscribed by its opposite. For God this is simply not the case. For God being alive has nothing to do with death, and cannot even be contrasted with death."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 38

~

"“Because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” [v.36] Now that simply sounds as though he's saying something, it doesn't actually sound like an argument. I think that it's worth trying to bring out some of the heft of what is behind that, because it's a difficult thing. He's suggesting that in this age marrying and giving marriage is for the production of offspring and that's perfectly fine, but the age to come, the resurrection, works on an entirely different principle. The resurrection is not something that happens to dead people. It's a form of being alive that God has already begun in some people before they are dead, and once they're dead they become alive in the resurrection. In other words, the driving force, if you like, between their being alive comes from God and that can start now.

"The same was hinted at when Jesus told the disciples to rejoice not that the evil spirits obeyed them but that their name was written in heaven. The notion of the name being written in heaven means that the driving force of who you are is something that is coming from elsewhere and turning you into a witness to it, rather than you being started from here and becoming a simple reproduction of a system going on indefinitely.

"So it's the driving points that are different. So having suggested that what's important here is not whether your driving point is the reproductive one but whether your driving point is the one from heaven who has as it were brought you into being and turned you into a witness to it's presence in the world during your life. In which case your marital status is neither here nor there, it's part of your relationship to other people that has reproduced God's original Adam and or Eve as one person. You're going back to a zero point, an Omega point before creation, that's what's being brought into being.

[...]

"In other words, the resurrection is God's life, it's the utter livingness the effervescence of Life of God which here on Earth turns people into Sons and Daughters, inviting them to share in God's life. It's a logical thing, it's not to do with “Am I Immortal?” It's “Is my name written in heaven?” In which case I am being brought into Life by the utterly living effervescent God.

"I want to bring this up because it's important for us. So many of us have an understanding of immortality, the resurrection, eternal life, as things which start from here: “Is there something Immortal in me and am I going to last forever?” Whereas it's quite clear from Jesus's understanding that none of this starts from here. The whole point of God is that the utter effervescence and aliveness of God - everything starts from there. And we are, if you like, dialogically called into it. We are being created, started from above, given a name from above, so that our flesh becomes the life of a son and daughter of God in the midst of this age but not run by this age.

"That's his picture: we are started from elsewhere. And this elsewhere is utterly alive, which is why we don't need to be frightened of death and its consequences. The starting, being started, from elsewhere, so difficult for modern individualists to understand, and something which of course was disconcerting to people who want a very stable social order, one above all where unhelpful things like hope are not encouraged lest it leads to uprisings and changes to the social order, which of course carried on happening in the immediate aftermath of Jesus's life, as we all know, with relation to Jerusalem and the Romans. But the utterly alive Life Of God, starting us from elsewhere, is what we are being summoned into."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLXqZiV7o4w)

[Source of quotes from Jesus the Forgiving Victim and Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper27c/]

From the Lectionary for 2 November 2025 (Proper 26C)

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

~

"That Jesus had discerned the social matrix of Jericho rightly was immediately manifest when Jesus called out to the tax collector and invited himself to that man's house. St. Luke says that “all who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”’ (Lk. 19:7) Here is another example of Luke's astute anthropological insight. It isn't just the Pharisees and scribes who grumble about Zacchaeus. Everybody grumbles about him. Like Simon when confronted with the Woman Who Was a Sinner (Lk. 7:36-50), the people of Jericho were thinking that if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of man this was who was sitting up in a tree - that he was a sinner. One doesn't have to be a demonically possessed man or a sinful woman to be a communal scapegoat. A rich man who is a traitor to his people can hold the same position. And deserve it. After all, he was treading down the downtrodden. For scapegoating others, he deserved to be scapegoated. [...] The challenge of this story [...] is not limited to the possible conversion of one person. It extends to the possible conversion of the whole community."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God's Desire, pp. 101-03

~

"This is Jesus' simple message: Holiness is no longer to be found through separation from or exclusion of, but in fact, the radical inclusion (read “forgiveness”) of the supposedly contaminating element. Any exclusionary system only lays the solid foundation for violence in thought, word and deed. So he has to lead us on a new path: “He will give the people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:77) and inclusion of the enemy (Matthew 5:44), and even departure from what we think is ourself (Mark 8:34-38).

"My lifetime of studying Jesus would lead me to summarize all of his teaching inside of two prime ideas: forgiveness and inclusion. Don't believe me; just go through the Gospels, story by story. It is rather self-evident. Forgiveness and inclusion are Jesus' “great themes.” They are the practical name of love, and without forgiveness and inclusivity love is largely a sentimental valentine. They are also the two practices that most undercut human violence."

- Richard Rohr, Things Hidden, pp. 150-51

~

"[...] Zacchaeus is no longer cowed, no longer hiding, no longer small, no longer run by the way he was tied in to the crowd before. Luke emphasizes the physical gesture: Zacchaeus stands tall, and immediately sets about reconstructing a whole new way of being together with his fellow citizens, not concerned with his goodness or badness, happy to work through the details of accusations of impropriety, about which the murmuring crowd will have had more than a thing or two to say, but more than that, completely concerned with his new way of belonging to Israel.

[...]

"Luke ends by pointing up something which [is] also clear in the Emmaus passage [in Luke 24]. There the two travellers thought they were the hosts and Jesus their guest, only to find that he was hosting them, and had been the protagonist of the story of which they had thought themselves knowledgeable, all along. Part of what the presence of Jesus in the midst of people feels like is just this curious inversion of perspective, and of protagonism.

"At the beginning of our story here, it is Zacchaeus who seeks to see who Jesus is, working around all the complexities of his relationship with the crowd so as to get a glimpse. But from the moment that Jesus looks up at him, calls him by name and tells him he must spend the night in his house, it is clear that the whole protagonism has been inverted. Not only is it, once again, the apparent guest who is the real host. But all along, it was the regard of Another other that was deliberately seeking out this particular person, Zacchaeus.

"Zacchaeus' seeking of Jesus had been real, if still embryonic; it was the seeking of someone who was tied up in a very complex pattern of desire. Perhaps the beginning of Zacchaeus' being found lay in the fact that, as part of his lostness, he had had to begin to uncouple himself from the immediacy of crowd desire, just so as to be able to get a look at Jesus. Even that uncoupling, leading to his moment of unexpected vulnerability, is part of the process of his receiving the regard which recreated him, is part of what being sought and found by Another other looks like."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 377-79

~

"“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” And so here you have the reference back to what happens in the beginning of the [story] with Zacchaeus seeking out but Jesus seeing him. And all along the sensation that we may think that we're seeking out but we are being sought out, and that is the way how grace works, how forgiveness works. And forgiveness reaches us and has as its fruit the breaking open of heart and the giving away of things, that's how forgiveness produces penitence in us and shows us to be Sons and Daughters of Abraham."

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

[Source of quotes from Andrew Marr, Richard Rohr and James Alison's Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper26c/]

From the Lectionary for 26 October 2025 (Proper 25C)

Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

~

"The Law, which should have served to teach us that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ ([Rom. 3:]23), frequently serves as a way of our dividing the world into good and bad, of our separating it into those who follow the Law and those who do not. The person who, owing to his observance of the Law, is in a position to judge others as bad (that is, considers himself made righteous by the Law) reveals that the Law does not get to the heart of man. Such a person has his identity, his ‘me,’ still constituted on the basis of victimizing, of expelling, of separation. Being convinced of the right-ness (and righteousness) of his position, it is very much more difficult for him to receive the dependence on what is other than him of the constitution of his ‘me,’ and thus have his ‘me’ transformed, have it healed from its dependence on persecution."

-  James Alison, from “Justification and the Constitution of Consciousness: A New Look at Romans and Galatians,” in New Blackfriars, Vol. 71 No. 834 (Jan 1990), pp 17-27

~

"This Pharisee has God wrong. God is not about who is better than, smarter than, prettier than, richer than, holier than. God does not discriminate, God does not compare us with one another. The Pharisee was bound by his dedication to the Torah, and that would be a beautiful thing but his hermeneutic suffered. He had God wrong. The God who blesses the religious person is a God who can be manipulated. A God who recognizes the selfish perceptions of our zeal would have to be a god of wrath and violence and justice and judgement. In short, if God is like the Pharisee thinks God is, most of us are in some deep doo-doo, as we fall far short of this one's righteousness. [...]

"The prayer of the publican is well known, he seeks forgiveness. This is the God who answers, this is the One revealed in the character of Jesus. The publican is not expressing some poor old “woe is me” syndrome; he simply and honestly acknowledges himself for how he acts. He sins, therefore he is a sinner in need of mercy and healing."

- Michael Hardin (source no longer available online)

~

"[L]et's go back to the first verse of our Gospel for the day, which is the most difficult verse, [...] “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

"Because how much of Christianity today is exactly this, it's self-justification by faith on the Evangelical side and self-justification by Church on the Catholic side. Because I am right, because I have been saved by Jesus I can judge all the other people because the Bible gives me permission to do so. Or, because I am right, because I'm a Catholic and I [am] on the inside of the church, I can judge all the people whom the church disapproves of.

"And please remember, there is no such thing as these two being separated. If you trust in yourself, that you are righteous, then automatically you're defining yourself over against others with contempt. You may not realize it but that's how we get a fake identity. How do we get a fake identity? Over against others.

"Once you start to realize that you are like others then you lose that fake goodness and you find yourself coming awfully close to the position whereby you realize, “Oh my God, I am a sinner, have mercy on me.” And it's one, and I know this is no longer popular because pop psychology keeps on telling people to forget about sin and so on so forth, it's one of the reasons why the term sinner is such a good thing. To be able to say, genuinely - not out of, you know, formulating - “I am a sinner,” and for that to be a sign of having been relaxed into not having to define yourself over against others, that is an extraordinary blessing and is the sign indeed of being made right with God.

"God is forgiving us by revealing to us that we are sinners, and that's okay. Being a sinner is not the problem. Fake virtue is far more terrifying than sin, people who consider themselves righteous and simultaneously regard others with contempt.

"What must it look like in our midst for us to encourage a return of Christianity that understands this, that being able to dwell in shame tenderly and so know ourselves as sinners and therefore find ourselves being realigned to God is the norm, rather than creating a structure of security for ourselves which depends on wicked others whom we can despise."

- James Alison from video Homily for Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhqElGzx1VA)

[Source of quotes from Michael Hardin and James Alison's Blackfriars essay, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper25c/]

From the Lectionary for 19 October 2025 (Proper 24C)

Luke 18:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

~

"[T]he question we have to ask is what is Jesus doing? Is Jesus comparing us to the widow? That as human beings who experience injustice, is the unjust judge to be compared with God? Is there a 'how much more' [...] argument kind of here, how if the judge is like this, how much more will God be?

"But I want to come to the two questions that are asked [by Jesus] here. The Lord says, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.” Now notice he does not say here "what the widow says.” The emphasis for Jesus in this text is not on the widow or her persistence [...] Here, this is a judge who has no honor. He doesn't care, but he gives in.

"And then Jesus asks this strange question focused on the judge. “Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night.” If you're part of the audience, your answer to that question is going to be “Yes!” Because you have in your tradition texts that move in that direction. And I want to give you one text in particular that is noted by the scholars on the parables and that comes from the book of Sirach chapter 35 [...] So if you have an Apocrypha, you'll want to go to the book of Sirach 35:14-21. Listen very carefully to this text:

“Do not offer the judge a bribe. He will not accept it. And do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice, for the Lord is judge and with him there is no partiality. He will not show partiality to the poor, but he will listen to the prayer of one who is wronged. He will not ignore the supplication of the orphan or the widow when she pours out her complaint. Do not the tears of the widow run down her cheek as she cries out against the one who causes them to fall? The one whose service is pleasing to the Lord will be accepted and his prayer will reach to the clouds. The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds and it will not rest until it reaches its goal. It will not desist until the Most High responds and does justice for the righteous and executes judgment. Indeed, the Lord will not delay and like a warrior will not be patient until he crushes the loins of the unmerciful and repays vengeance [...] on the nations until he destroys the multitudes of the insolent, breaks the scepters of the unrighteous, repays mortals according to their deeds and the works of all according to their thoughts, until he judges the case of his people and makes them rejoice in his mercy.”

"Here's the takeaways from this and a couple of them are linguistic. Notice here what the unrighteous judge says. “And will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night?” Right out of this passage in Sirach is the language of a widow. Right out of the language of this passage are those who cry day and night. Right out of this passage is the question of will the Lord respond? And the answer is indeed the Lord will not delay. Okay, same phrase that's used here. And notice this “will he delay long over them?” It's the same in Greek here in Luke as it is over in the Sirach text on the phrase, “and like a warrior will not be patient until he crushes the loins of the merciful.” So in other words, anybody hearing Jesus doing this parable is going to have in the back of their mind this little story or text from Sirach, ok, it certainly would have been a popular text amongst the poor. And the question is, “will not God vindicate his elect who cry out to him day and night?” He doesn't say, “And will the father not vindicate?” He doesn't use "the Father” here, he uses the god concept.

"And the vindication is to be of his elect. Now, what kind of language is this business of elect? Who are the elect? We don't see Jesus talking much about the elect. And in fact, we see him doing quite the opposite in just the previous chapter before this. Is it not the case that the rich man who sat who's had the poor man at his gate, did he not count on his election? Is it not the case that the the Pharisees will say we have as our father Abraham? Are they not counting on their election? Was it not John the Baptist who when confronted with the doctrine of election said God can turn these stones into sons and daughters of God? So there's a critique of the notion of national election here that runs through the Jesus tradition. And so it seems odd to me that Jesus is now going to use a term like the elect with reference to his own.

"So what I did was what I always do. I thought this was curious because the commentators aren't helpful. Most of them want to turn this parable into almost the opposite of what it's doing, I think. First of all, when it comes to the noun 'ecletos', the elect. Okay, we rarely find it in the gospels. In fact, it's found more often in Matthew, but only from chapters 20 on, 20, 22, and 24 - eschatological texts. Oh, election, eschatological text. We ought to automatically be thinking of the Pharisees who were apocalyptic. Qumran, the elect community, they were apocalyptic. First Enoch which talks all about the elect. Okay. So election is a category from apocalyptic literature. Good. We can establish that at least. Mark 13 is the only place where elect is used (in Mark) and that's the little apocalypse. Okay. And then only here in Luke 18 and then again in Luke 23 where it is stated this is the elect Christ of God. After that it's used twice in Romans, once in Colossians, three times in the pastoral epistles and one two three four times in first Peter, once in the book of Revelation. It's not a common term.

"First of all, it's not a common term. That ought to tell you something right away about Calvinism, which puts the doctrine of election right at the top of the system. Double election. Okay, we have a problem here. When we major in the minors, when we take things that aren't significant and we make them significant, we make them bigger than they are within our theological model. That's the first takeaway.

"Second takeaway is that with regard to the elect, I want to ask the question, is Jesus countering or critiquing this apocalyptic tradition? Where as if I perceive that I'm part of this elect nation and if this elect nation is praying day and night, will not God come and deal with with the issues? And while I think that the crowd is going to be saying, “Yes, God will indeed vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night.” And then when Jesus says, “Will he delay long over them?” they would they would say no. But remember the delay long over them in the Sirach text is that he will not delay long until he crushes the loins of the of the unmerciful and repays vengeance on the nations.

"Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night? Won't God do that? Isn't that the way God works? Will he delay long over them? And they're going, “Yes.” And then Jesus says, “I'm going to tell you something. He'll vindicate them speedily. But,” - and there's a very strong adversity here, 'plēn' - “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find 'pistus' on earth?” What is 'pistus'? As we've already seen in the Gospel tradition, as we explained in four lectures at the very beginning of our Unsystematic Theology, 'pistus' is trust. Jesus invites us to trust the Father.

"Okay. Does the woman trust the judge? No. The judge is not like the Father. That that much is clear. Or I should say the Father is not like the judge. Okay. The judge capitulates and gives in because of this woman's nagging of him. And Jesus is is inviting us, as Luke says right at the beginning, that we always ought to pray and never lose heart because we don't perceive God to be like this judge. We know that God is faithful. We know that God vindicates his children. We know this. He did it with Jesus. Many of us have have bits and pieces of our own stories where that's taken place. [...] The Father does that. [But] what the Father is looking for is 'pistis', is trust. We don't have to push God for vengeance. That's what's being sought here, vindication or vengeance, [...] 'make this other person pay' kind of logic. That's not part of the kingdom, as we've seen over and over about forgiveness and the lack of transactional thinking in that's not part of the kingdom as we've seen over and over about forgiveness and the lack of transactional thinking in Jesus teaching.

"So that's why number one, the emphasis is not on the widow and she's persistent and gets her way and therefore Christians who are struggling can pray and pray and pray it up and pray it up and whatever [...] And it is also the case that in the Gospel of Matthew - and whether this is Matthean redaction or not in the Sermon on the Mount, don't know, don't care right now - Matthew's Jesus says, when you pray, don't babble on and on and on like the Gentiles. And the Lord's Prayer itself as a prayer is very short.

"Prayer is not meant to be something we sit and do for hours and days at a time as a religious exercise, my friends. Prayer, I would say - this is not in the text - are those conversations that arise from our heart to the Father. [...] God is not like the unjust judge."

- Michael Hardin, from video "Luke 18" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54U0ojrAr4o)

[For alternative analyses and discussions on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflect.../year-c/proper24c/]

[I also recommend James Alison's video homily for this passage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3iWK46e_HI]