From the Lectionary for 16 February 2025 (Epiphany 6C)

Luke 6:17-26 (NRSV)

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

~

"It's the Lukan version of the Sermon on the Mount, which is a revelation about how the world really works, and a presentation of the ethics that this new community will have to adopt. The ethics that exist have to do with the way the cultural structures are. The ethics that Jesus is pronouncing have to do with the way the world is. Matthew has a much more elaborate sermon, and it on the mount, the place of revelation and transcendence. Luke has the sermon on the level place, among the people, talking to them about how to live in this world."

- from notes by Paul Nuechterlein on Gil Bailie's, “The Gospel of Luke” lecture series, tape #4. 

~

"The second and third blessings are in the future tense, the first one is in the present tense: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Is there something more basic about the division between poor and rich which these beatitudes are immediately overturning? If we understand that God's kingdom, God's culture, is one not based on such divisions, then we are already blessed. We are already beginning to live in God's culture, even in the midst of those worldly cultures which continue to rely on a division between poor and rich. Our worldly cultures also rely on idolatrous gods who are seen as blessing the rich. This beatitude is obviously a direct challenge to those idols. The true God blesses the poor.

"I said that God's culture does not rely on divisions between rich and poor at all. So why does Jesus speak a woe to the rich? Does God bless the poor in exclusion to the rich? Does the true God simply play our same games but in reverse order? Is Jesus still presuming a culture that divides between poor and rich but simply turns the blessings and woes upside-down? I think that Christian liberation groups have often assumed the latter, and so have even gone along with a violent overthrow of the rich of this world, an attempt to turn upside-down this world's order. And God is seen as justifying their brand of justice and the sacred violence used to establish it. In other words, God does end up playing all our same games, including the violent ones.

"I feel it is crucial to let the Girardian anthropology give us another angle on this passage. God's cultural order does not depend on divisions between rich and poor. The miracle of the fishes and loaves are among those signs from Jesus that God is a God of abundance. There is enough for everyone. We don't have to presume a scarcity (which capitalism, for example, still does presume), which also presumes that some will be among the haves and some among the have nots.

"Then why the woes to this world's rich? In the present tense, they are the ones most likely to continue to live by this world's consolations. They already benefit from this world's cultural order and are not likely open to living by God's cultural order. An order based on anything other than the current system, which benefits them, will be viewed as woeful.

"Gil Bailie‘s noticing of Jesus turning his attention to his disciples is also important here. Luke's audience of disciples is generally agreed upon to have contained the greatest number of wealthy folks, compared to the audiences of the other gospel writers. It is not a coincidence, then, that Luke's gospel has by far the most challenges to disciples about material possessions. It would seem strange for Luke to direct a message to his wealthy congregants that describes some new order that ultimately leaves them woefully on the outside. It makes more sense that he would lift up a pen-ultimate reversing of this world's order as a needed challenge to coax such members into beginning to live in God's order today. Their wealth is a woeful stumbling block to their opening themselves to God's cultural order. If they ultimately end up on the outside in God's order, it will be because they have refused to come in.

[...]

"My question about the reversal indicated in these blessings and woes is whether they indicate a reversal within the human world order: those poor who are indebted to the wealthy become their rich creditors. Or does the apparent reversal represent the advent of God's world — in which case it isn't really a reversal within the human order. Rather, the poor are blessed because they are much more inclined to give up living in the human order in favor of God's order. Woe to the rich because they are more inclined to turn down the invitation.

"But if Luke's Jesus is simply giving us a reversal within the human ordering of things, then this really isn't such Good News, is it? [...] My point is that the Good News is not so much about a reversal as it is about the invitation to enter a whole new ball game in which we leave our score-keeping ways behind."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from 'Reflections and Questions' on the Luke text on the Girardian Lectionary page for this week (link below)

~

"This is going to be a constant in Jesus' teaching, the binary is arriving, the sword has come, the criterion is in your midst: the Son of Man. That is going to be the criterion from now on. And [...] if you're poor, if you're hungry now, if you weep now, and if you're in this position because people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man - in other words, because you have 'got with the program' of the realisation that the truth is going to be spoken from the victim, something which power never likes.

[...]

"[T]he interesting thing is that here Jesus is talking to a mixed national crowd and he's not trying to specify, if you like, the ethnic inheritance of the prophets. In fact, the suggestion is rather that this dynamic - “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man” - that is something which is available everywhere, and that's what happens to true prophets anywhere. And if you are rich and full and laughing now, then you're the kind of person who people will speak well of, and that's not [just] true of a Jewish or Hebrew culture, that's true of all cultures. In other words, the flattery of falsehood, 'spin' if you like, to stay in with the powerful, is the way of the world.

"So Jesus is announcing very very strongly here that the dynamic, the center of what is coming up on people is going to be very drastic. It's going to make a very strong alteration to how the order of things works. At the center is the realisation that this word is spoken from beneath.

[...]

"So the Lukan journey continues, which is strangely secularizing, strangely international. [It is] apparently rather binary, but not because it's trying to lock people into things here and now [...] but because it's aware of the dynamic of desire which works either towards building you up so that you are receiving who you are from your name in heaven, or for the one who is grinding people down into death and violence."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLMudK4siKU)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein comments, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany6c/]

From the Lectionary for 9 February 2025 (Epiphany 5C)

Isaiah 6:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

Luke 5:1-11 (NRSV)

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

~

"[In verse 8,] Luke throws what some commentators say is a mistake, because he refers to Peter as Simon Peter. And Jesus hasn't yet called him Peter. That happens a few chapters later in Luke's Gospel. In the other places, Luke has quite correctly referred to him as Simon but here he says, “But when Simon Peter saw it he fell down at Jesus and he's saying, ‘Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’”

"Now I don't think it's a mistake at all. I think that Luke is showing the vocation of Simon, and the process of him becoming Peter at its starting place. And its starting place is a vision, very much like the Isaiah vision, which is the text we have in our first reading, and it's the important text for this passage, in which Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up. And he says, “I am undone, I am cut, I am a man with unclean lips.” So he explains his unworthiness, and that he is told: go and preach, go and preach.

"This is where Peter comes into being, this is the beginning of the formation of the oracle, and it's the first sign we get of that Isaiah text in Luke-Acts. That is our text, the vision of the Holy One with the fire in the Holy Place and the shock of the sinful prophet as it were. That is going to come up again very much in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles where the Lord is high and lifted up and the smoke later fills the house. It's where the fullness of this vision is enacted amongst the apostolic group: that's what Pentecost is all about.

[...]

"[Jesus is] saying, “Listen, there's much much more where that comes from. I'm giving you something attractive so that you can see you're going to be able to do what is your work, but do it more fully. It's not [that] I'm saying you do something completely different, I'm sending you to do something that is more of what you do best, that's the work of the fisher of people.”

"And strangely this must have had a huge impact on them, the realisation that they had seen a sign of the Lord who was showing them something that was going to happen, which both fit into what they were doing best but was offering them so much more than they could imagine, that they left everything and followed him. So the first hint that Peter's vocation is going to point to something oracular, far greater than he, and amazingly, through the sign of the fish, he and his partner's starting to move into it.

[...]

"The 'away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man' is not anything to do with wallowing in sin. I hope that one of the things we are being taught by the Holy Spirit as we are nourished by the Word is the distance between who we are and the holiness of what we're being given. Not so as to make us ashamed or distraught or crushed or annihilated, but I think that there's something completely authentic in the realisation that we really aren't up to talking about these things - they are so much more alive, exciting, dynamic than what we can say [...]

“Away from me, I am a sinful man. But on the other hand, no, please not away from me. As a sinful man, enable me to show the respectful love of your Word, your teaching, and the life you offer.”

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9djTq9R964I)

[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany5c/]

From the Lectionary for 2 February 2025 (Epiphany 4C)

1 Corinthians 13 (NRSV)

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

~

"[...] St Paul simply takes it for granted that “being known” is what underlies all our knowing, and that we do not yet know properly because our “being known” is still to some extent veiled from us in a world run by rivalry and death. And this “being known” is in fact the reception of a loving regard towards which we, like so many heliotropes, find ourselves empowered to stretch in faith and hope.

"No wonder love is the greatest of these three, because it is the coming towards us of what really and inalterably is, the regard which creates, while faith and hope are the given response from within us to what is; the given response which love calls forth, while we are “on the way.” Faith and hope are a relaxing into our being uncovered, discovered, as someone loved. But they are relaxing into love's discovery of us."

- James Alison, On Being Liked, pg. 133 (after quoting 1 Cor. 13:11-13)

~

"It is as we begin to get a sense of what it is like to be loved from that space of God's giving that we begin to be empowered, and impelled, to open it up for others.

"And that, I think is actually the really difficult part of Christian morality: not what we do, but perceiving what has been done for us, becoming attentive to the one who is speaking us into being. This is because it is so much more difficult for us to allow ourselves to undergo something, to appreciate what we are finding ourselves on the inside of, and to allow ourselves to be stretched by it towards others, than it is to say “I haven’t got the time for all that ‘being loved’ stuff - just tell me what to do.”

"Yet this sinking into appreciation of being loved is no merely passive exercise. In fact it is usually through little acts of being stretched out towards others that we find ourselves becoming more aware of being loved, and the two moments, activity and undergoing, then enrich and inform each other.

"In any case, I would like to offer you an exercise to enable you to sit over time in a sense of being on the receiving end of being loved [...] [T]he famous passage from 1 Corinthians about love [...] has acquired very particular associations for us owing to its use in weddings. So it tends to get linked to a particular account of love, and a particular moment of love, neither of which are bad things. But the passage is much richer than that. [...] [R]ead this passage not, if you like, as a piece of abstract moralism defining what love is, but as an invitation to dwell in what it looks like to be undergoing the presence of One who loves you. In other words, everything we've seen about Jesus the forgiving victim coming towards us, and our sitting in his regard."

[...]

"This, all this, language of Paul's, is filling out dimensions of the regard of the Forgiving Victim in our midst. This is the space which Jesus has opened up for us so as to show us how God looks at us. It is as we find ourselves being looked at in this way, as we sink in to allowing this regard to tell us who we are, that we find ourselves impelled from within, contagiously, to do the same for others."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 556-57, 561

[Source of the quotes, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany4c/]

I also highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" which is focused on the Gospel reading (Luke 4:21-30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLyod15Cik

From the Lectionary for 26 January 2025 (Epiphany 3C)

Luke 4:14-21 (NRSV)

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

~

"The Isaiah passage is one excerpt from a long recitation of the blessings that will accrue to the Jews when God vindicates them finally and forever. The original passage included the announcement of “the vengeance of our God,” which pointedly Luke leaves out of his quotation. Even in the final judgment of God upon the nations there is for Luke's Jesus no vengeance, but for the Jews who wrote these self aggrandizing “prophesies” the riches, freedom, miraculous medical care and terminal unburdening were for them, and the divine revenge was for the Gentiles. All those who had treated the Jews badly would feel the cold steel of God's vengeance, while the Jews felt the warm embrace of his vindication.

"Not so for the Jesus of St Luke! He quotes from these prophesies to change their purport from ethnic to ecumenical, and before that more subtle move, to banish flatly and firmly, any hint of revenge in the dealings of God. Indeed, there is not even a whisper of revenge in this Gospel passage because Luke leaves out the line about vengeance altogether! This fact is of major importance: no vengeance in or from God! No divine keeping score so God can fit his revenge to our crimes!"

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on January 24, 2010 (source no longer available online)

~

"More and more of us have begun to see what was incredibly obvious all along, if it weren't for our thorough Greco-Roman “civilizing” (or mind control): that the good news proclaimed by Jesus Christ wasn't primarily a way of integrating Plato and Aristotle, spirit and matter, perfect being and fallen becoming, or even law and grace - even though, in a sense, it does all these things. More essentially, it was a fulfillment of the three prime narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures.

"First, to accept the free gift of being “born again” into “life of the ages” or “life abundant” meant participation in a new Genesis, a new creation, interrupting the downward death spiral of violence and counterviolence and joining an upward, regenerative movement.

"Second, to follow Jesus meant embarking on a new Exodus, passing through the waters once again (this time, baptism instead of the Red Sea), eating a new Passover meal (the Eucharist), and experiencing liberation from the principalities and powers that oppress and enslave.

"Third, to enter or receive the “kingdom of God” meant becoming a citizen of a new kingdom, the peaceable kingdom imagined by the prophets and inaugurated in Christ, learning its ways (as a disciple) and demonstrating in word and deed its presence and availability to all (as an apostle).

"In this way, the most striking single element of Jesus's proclamation of the kingdom may have been “The time has come!” The kingdom of God is not a distant reality to wait for someday, Jesus proclaims; the kingdom is at hand, within reach, near, here, now (Mark 1:15).

"Everyone agrees the poor and downtrodden should be helped someday, oppression and exploitation should be stopped someday, the planet should be healed someday, we should study war no more someday. But for Jesus, the dream of Isaiah and the other prophets - of a time when good news would come to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed, and the indebted - was not five hundred or a thousand years in the future: the dream was being fulfilled today (Luke 4:18-21)."

- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 139-40

~

"So what do we have here? We have captives, or those amongst the captives from Judah, watching very very closely at the one who has returned to finish the work of the house of the Lord. You can see how very carefully Luke is framing this reading. Luke is giving a filled-out account of what Mark had said when he announced [...] at the  beginning of [his] Gospel was: “the time is fulfilled.” That's what is being described in this scene. He's talking about the word, the word from Isaiah, the word from Ezra - all of that about the coming in of the one who is going to build up the house of the Lord - that is what's being fulfilled in their sight.

"So what is it like to listen to the Lord? It's like sitting under a huge act of communication which very subtly comes amongst us, showing what it's going to do by fulfilling something even though the fulfilment is in some ways  an excess of what was described before. But the fulfilment is going to happen in very small, precise things that St Luke is now going to show us. This I think is part of the joy of reading Luke. He is a very very rich painter - people have sometimes said they thought he must have been a painter because of the ways that rather than just give the words he gives very rich images to allow us to imagine what it was like to undergo this.

"So we have one sitting in the synagogue fulfilling the promises [...] and all of this is to do with the building up to the completion of the house of the Lord, which is what Jesus is now beginning."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRBuBmN5BE)

[Source of Brian McLaren quote and link to Robert Hamerton-Kelly sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany3c/]

From the Lectionary for 19 January 2025 (Epiphany 2C)

John 2:1-11 (NRSV)

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

~

"[W]hen there was no more wine for the wedding guests, the mother of Jesus takes action. Notice that John doesn't call her Mary. He only refers to her as “the mother of Jesus.” At some point during the feasting and celebrating, Jesus' mother brings this information about the wine running out to Jesus. He answers her with, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

"His response seems troubling, doesn't it? It sounds cold and harsh. Some translations add “dear woman” to try to soften it. It sounds as though he's treating her like a silly woman who should be minding her own business. But the way we hear his response has surely been shaped by societal and cultural views that diminish women.

"The word “concern” isn't from the Greek. That's supplied by translators. What if Jesus is actually asking his mother, “Is this for you and me?” What if Jesus is seeking his mother's counsel? Maybe he really wants her guidance here and is looking to her. Even if Jesus is saying No, she isn't taking No for an answer! She acts anyway. Since the time Jesus, the Word of God, was in her womb, she's been waiting and listening for God's time. And now she recognizes the quickening in her body. She knows that Jesus' hour has come; the hour is now. And with full and absolute trust, as soon as his mother acts, Jesus participates.

[...]

"And now we go back to the exchange between Jesus and his mother, when he calls her “Woman.” Why does he do that? Part of what makes that interaction sound harsh and cold is that “woman” doesn't recognize the warmth of the familial relationship. Why not call her mother? To answer this question, we need to remember that John begins his Gospel with the end in sight. So when we look, after this wedding, we don't see Jesus' mother again until Jesus is on the cross. There on the cross, Jesus has another exchange with his mother. Ch 19 v 26, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

"When we remember that John is telling a creation story, then “woman” refers to the first woman. John is likening the mother of Jesus to Eve, the mother of humanity, the mother of life. So, as John is telling the story, Jesus is relating to Mary not as his mother, but as Eve, woman. And on the cross, his death gives birth to a new humanity. Jesus' death is part of the creation story, the completion of the creation story. He has given birth to a new way of being human. Here, at his end, the woman is his mother. Here, as a new humanity has been birthed, the woman becomes the mother of the disciples, of us.

[...]

"Following Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. also had the end in sight. The Beloved Community that he saw is the new humanity of love. In a speech at a victory rally, after a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery's buses, King said,

“the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men [and women].”

"So today we celebrate the miracle that turned water into wine, the miracle that continues to turn the waters of our empty humanity into wine, giving birth to the beloved community. May we continue to give ourselves, our bodied vessels, to be filled with the wine of God's love, participants in the “exuberant gladness of the new age.”"

- Suella Gerber, from "Celebrating, feasting, delighting: Epiphany 2C, John 2:1-11"(https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gerber-Epiphany2C-1-17-16.pdf)

~

"Throughout these pages there have been two imaginative poles, two principal images, which have given us hints for the understanding of something of 'the things that are above' on which we are to fix our minds: the vision of the open heaven with the risen victim — the slaughtered lamb standing or seated at the right hand of God — and the wedding banquet.

"In fact these two images permeate the whole apostolic witness: shortly after John the Baptist points Jesus out as the Lamb of God, and shortly after Nathanael is promised that he will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man, Jesus works his first sign, in Cana of Galilee. The sign is that the bridegroom of Israel has arrived, and the one who was an abandoned and repudiated woman is beginning to be able to enjoy a wedding banquet where flow a wine and a rejoicing quite unthinkably greater than that imagined by those who had made the wedding preparations.

[...]

"The two images flow into one alone: the wedding banquet of the lamb. And this confluence of images has as its effect precisely that we should learn to imagine the things that are above, that we should allow ourselves to be nurtured by this imagination which will empower us to re-create that wedding banquet... This is a story which we construct in hope, and by which we construct hope, creating belief, in the midst of the crushing darkness of the dominion of death. That is, the apostolic witness itself shows clearly that the inner dynamic which runs through it reaches maturity precisely in this fusion of images which come together to form a single vision of heaven."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp 189-190

~

"The whole movement of the Bible is toward ever-greater Incarnation and embodiment, until the mystery of mutual indwelling is finally experienced and enjoyed even here in this world and this life. It then becomes the banquet that we call eternal life or heaven. For Christians, Jesus, the Christ, is the ultimate symbol of this divine goal, pattern and embodiment: “When Christ is revealed, and he is your life, you will be revealed in all your glory with him” (Colossians 3:4). Henceforth we know our true and lasting life in the new “force field” that Paul calls the Body of Christ and not in individual or private perfection. It becomes more important to be connected than to be privately correct.

"Paul's notion of the body of Christ has a material and cosmic character to it, and begins in this world (which is why we believe in the resurrection of the body and not just the soul). Yes, there is “a new heaven” but there is also “a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). What more fitting meaning could the “Second Coming of Christ” have except that humanity becomes “a beautiful bride all dressed for her husband?” (Revelation 21:3). Union is finally enjoyed, and God's win-win story line has achieved its full purpose. What a hopeful end to history! What an apokatastasis, or “universal restoration” (Revelation 3:21)! What a victory for God — and for humanity!"

- Richard Rohr, Things Hidden, pp. 211-12

[Source of James Alison and Richard Rohr quotes and link to Suella Gerber sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany2c/]

I also highly recommend James Alison's video for this day in the lectionary: "Homily for Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vexfI5Tjz8

From the Lectionary for 12 January 2025 (The Baptism of our Lord, Year C)

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (NRSV)

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

[...]

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”[a]

[a] Other ancient authorities read, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”

~

"The Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in the “bodily form of a dove” and the voice from Heaven proclaiming Jesus to be God's son, “the beloved,” (Lk. 3:21–22) could not be a greater contrast to John's closing words that the one who is “more powerful” was going to bring a winnowing fork to baptize by burning the chaff with “unquenchable fire.” John's water baptism was a rite of purification and he expected the one who was coming to bring fire to do a more powerful job of purifying. But instead Jesus' first act of preaching was to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Lk. 4:16–19) Quite a different approach than John's! Jesus was going for transformation, not purification.

"We celebrate our own baptism on this day as we follow Jesus to the river Jordan, see the dove for ourselves and listen to the voice from Heaven proclaim us sons and daughters of God. Our baptism, too, is a call to spread God's love and favor to others. We are used to living in a culture built on wrath and disfavor, where we bind and oppress captives rather than free them. The call of baptism is a constant call to leave this culture of wrath to journey towards a culture of love and the freeing of captives."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "Celebrating our Baptism" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2019/01/10/celebrating-our-baptism/)

~

"John the Baptist knows there is One coming whose power resides beyond his imagining. Someone approaches so outside John's reach that he feels unworthy of touching him, unworthy even of untying his thong. John, stumbling for words, uses the language of separation and combustion because it is the only language he knows. He does not know about forgiveness and being loved toward a renewal of heart. John the Baptist only knows about repenting, self-denial and hair shirts. He eats grasshoppers and honey that he got stung getting to. He is a severe man, like [an] old threshing machine; gobbling up, separating and spewing out. Jesus, the One greater who is coming, will offer a different way.

"Jesus does not separate. Jesus reconciles. He joins together. Jesus teaches tough forgiveness and strong compassion. For Jesus, the wheat and the tares grow together undisturbed. For Jesus the tool of choice is not the pitchfork that casts aside and clears the floor, exposing the grain. No, his tool is the cross where he becomes the chaff and allows himself to be burned in the flames of our violence. This is the thing that John can neither see nor imagine. Jesus allows our violence to consume him and then while he is being consumed he forgives us and God vindicates him by raising him from the dead. And strangely, it is Jesus' forgiving of us that begins the process of burning away our violence. In an about face that stuns us, violence itself is discovered to be the chaff. It is the useless thing that must be destroyed and Jesus does it by allowing himself to be destroyed by it while forgiving us for it.

"John predicted the one coming would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of gentleness, forgiveness, non-violence, enemy love, non-retaliation and radical inclusion. And the promised fire turns out to be Jesus' willingness to endure our fire so that we could see what we do when we separate ourselves and cast out those we consider trash or on the opposite side of our process. [...] John's angry and unquenchable fire, his hot burning of all chaff, turns out to be quite quenchable when doused by the water's of God's forgiveness poured upon us in baptism.

"This is the real meaning of baptism. Baptism announces and confirms our participation in a new identity. We are children of God and nurtured by that connection. We are not rivals grasping against each other for some limited commodity that must be obtained before the other gets it. In baptism we are sealed into a new understanding of humanness. We are freed to be for each other and lose our fear of final exclusion. In baptism Jesus immerses us in his gentleness and invites us to become like him. It's always a process of growth toward gentleness and away from violence and rivalry. Philippians 4:4 says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

"John baptized with water that for him symbolized the need to remove something that he thought had contaminated us. But Jesus baptizes with the Spirit, a spirit like himself, full of gentleness and non-retaliation. It is a new thing that gets added to us and gradually changes us from the inside out. He infuses us with a love that radiates toward our enemies and evolves into an inner peace deeper than the world can know. If we are the threshing machine, and I think we are, we find ourselves transmuting into something quite different. This is the new thing John can point toward but not imagine.

"In a more modern metaphor, baptism is a kind of access code, but much more, that allows us to download new software for humanness.  The full meaning of the download takes a life-time to discover and leads us away from rivalry and violence and toward gentleness and peace.  May we live our baptism and discover its’ astounding depth more and more as we move through our lives."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on January 13, 2013 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Baptism-of-the-Lord-2013-The-New-Thing-John-Can-Point-Toward-but-Not-Imagine.doc)

~

"So, something very striking about the mystery of today's feast, it's one of the key moments, the beginning of something. The Holy Spirit has now come upon him in a particular form, the dove (which some took to be a sign of an animal that would give itself in sacrifice), [and] following, the promise of begetting. And the Spirit will leave him when he dies on the Cross, he will breathe the Spirit out. That which was hovering over the waters [Genesis 1:2] has come upon him, and when he breathes out on the Cross, that's when the Spirit, if you like, goes back to God, creation having been completed. That's going to be Luke's vision. [...] and Luke is the one who gives us [the] most account of the Holy Spirit in historical operation because, of course, Luke gives us the Acts of the Apostles as well.

"So here we have the fullness of the begetting come amongst us, as the One who is the Creator begins to live out the mission of setting in motion the New Creation into which we are to be involved. This is why people refer to him being baptized as in a sense the beginning of him making it possible for us to be baptized. [...] [T]he waters, if you like, are now going to be formed into a creation which is including us, [and] is also benevolent, it's not something that's frightening against us, it's not part of a wrath or a fear. It's going to be worked through from within and given to us by the One who is then going to show us how to live in it ourselves, to be born again, to be begotten of the Spirit, to be begotten from above."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Baptism of the Lord 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGzT4HYyCfU)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog and Thomas Truby sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany1c/]

From the Lectionary for 5 January 2025 (Christmas 2ABC)

John 1:1-18 (NRSV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

~

"It is difficult to capture the linguistic connotations of the term ‘logos’ in John 1. Scholars have long debated its background [...] It is a term used in Greek philosophy to refer to ‘the structuring principle of reality.’

[...]

"As the ‘structuring principle of reality’ it is more than ‘speech’, more than ‘power’, more than ‘thought’, more than ‘act’. It is all of the above and more. Friedrich Nietzsche, that great critic of Christianity proposed that the ‘Logos’ is ‘Nonsense’. I want to suggest that this is an insight worth pursuing. For what happens to this Logos is twofold nonsense: this Logos is rejected (1:11) and ‘becomes flesh’.

"Why is this logos rejected? Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher had identified that which structured reality as ‘polemos’ (violence or war). This is an insight about the way we humans structure reality long before [Rene] Girard discovered the power of violence to shape the way we do this thing called humanity, culture, history and religion. Violence is that which structures our reality!

"The nonviolent Logos, Jesus Christ, the Logos who structures reality in forgiveness will never make sense to a reality structured on violence. This is why so many people, especially Christians, cannot make sense of a nonviolent Jesus or a nonviolent God. We have made God into our own image: rivalrous, violent and retributive. A God who freely forgives apart from sacrifice, apart from blood, is a god who does not fit into this world’s (kosmos) way of thinking, therefore this kind of a God is sheer nonsense.

[...]

"This Christmas let us experience the SHOCK AND AWE of the evangelic message; let us stand stupefied before the absolute NONSENSE of the gospel of forgiveness. Let us come to the cradle of Bethlehem not with songs but with confusion, then perhaps we might just see how it is that this baby, this Jesus, is truly Emmanuel, God with us!"

- Michael Hardin (from facebook post on 14 December 2013)

~

"[T]he notion that [creation is] something good is because the One who is bringing it into being allows hints to those of us who are on the inside of what the Creator is really all about, the creation created through wisdom [...] [T]he principle of wisdom is precisely that it's making a live creation, holding it all together in such a way that it shows off of itself the glory of God. It gives off, points up to, gives away the glory of God. If you like, that creation, the wisdom, comes into our midst to open our eyes, to make it possible to be on the inside and actually see something clearly for what it is.

"And in the back of this, [...] part of the deep sense of this is that everything that is, there's a rationale to it, there's a logic to it. Reality is not simply a chaotic and random series of events and things. This is what the creation means, that there is a there's a rationale, an inner structure of reality which, when it's brought alive and we're unable to share with it, opens us up to what's going on, the possibility of us being participants and insiders in this, in creation. The world creation means God's rational dynamic product which is functional, which is for something, and inside which we are and can grow.

"So when we [...] get to St John's Gospel, we have these extraordinary phrases: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” So for “Word” - an act of communication - understand the logical structure, the structure of reality. That's what is coming into the world, the logical structural reality is actually going to enter into creation, to open us up actually to be able to come to life, to become fully alive in creation, to become sons and daughters of God.

"So this baby who is born is not just a baby, he's the beginning of the manifestation in our midst of the dynamic structuring reality of everything that is. If you like, the plan, the form of communication, all of that is being made alive so that it speaks to us and so that if we accept it we can be included in it, so that we can actually become Children of God. [...] We actually get to be the heirs of creation, creation fully alive its entire dynamic, fully revealed. We get to be participants in it.

"In other words, this is something which is less fashionable than it should be in Christian circles, is that Jesus is actually bringing about the reality of what is. That's part of what this birth is, it's the beginning of it becoming available and clear to us, the reality of what is. And as John says, the reality turns out to be  something much, much better than had been hoped for.

[...]

"What's being brought out is how the one came in, making it possible for people to receive him and therefore to become children of God, which meant that he became available as a sacrifice of forgiveness. Those who were able to receive this actually found that forgiveness turns out to be the structuring dynamic. There's not as it were a law and then something to be forgiven. There is the structuring dynamic of everything that is, that is in fact opened out by forgiveness. It is this that we're invited to participate in.

"John is saying here that this is the one that's coming in, this is the one that John the Baptist pointed to. What we're seeing here is not merely a baby, it's the baby who is going to grow into a man, we are going to be able to see him and he is going to become the way, the structuring principle of reality opens us up to it and to being participants in it. This is the greatest thing that could possibly ever have happened.

"[John says], “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” This was the Lord, understood to be the begotten, not created, Son of God, who had come into our midst, thanks to the Virgin who became the holy place. That was how the ‘shekinah’, the Most High, tabernacled in our midst. And this is how the whole fullness of God became revealed to us, shown to us, but not, if you like, simply something for us to see, but for us to become participants in the making finally alive and full of creation.

"So this is if you like the richness of the Christmas story, the fullness of the invitation that's going on here, and the source of endless joy and the opening up of our imaginations."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for The Second Sunday of Christmas" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upVCydSEUcE)

[For further analysis and discussion on this week's lectionary text: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas2abc/]