From the Lectionary for 7 September 2025 (Proper 18C)

Luke 14:25-33 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now large crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

~

"The Greek word for “possessions” in vs. 33 is an interesting one. It is a participial noun 'ta hyparchonta', from the verb 'hyparcho', which is a compound word from the words hypo, “under,” archo, “to begin” (the noun 'arche' can also indicate power). It's not even listed in Kittel's TDNT, but the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker lexicon has its most common meaning as: exist (really), be present, be at one's disposal. Things which are at one's disposal are one's possessions or means. BAGD also indicates that in Homeric Greek this word is often used as a substitute for 'einai' (inf.), the “to be” verb. I take it that this “really exist” is an intensive form of “to be.”

- Exegetical note by Paul Nuechterlein on the Girardian Lectionary page for this Sunday (link below)

~

"We could phrase this [...] by saying that the problem is not possessions but possessiveness. God gives us parents, children, siblings, and friends as gifts. Likewise we should give each ourselves as gifts to other people. The things we use in the world are likewise gifts from God and should be treated accordingly.

"The problem comes when we prefer to take other people and things rather than receive them. In such cases, the intensity of love we feel for others is actually possessiveness rather than love. We are told to “hate” parents, children, siblings, and friends so as not to be possessive of them."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from a blog post titled “God's Kingdom as Gift” (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/gods-kingdom-as-gift/)

~

"So he's setting this out and then he says: So, therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your - the Greek word here is - I'm just going to get this right - hyparchousin - which can mean possessions but it actually means more: it means 'your being', 'your essence', any advantage you might have, your profit. So it means anything that profiteth, to use nice Jacobite language.

"So therefore none of you can become disciples if you do not give up anything that might give you an advantage: your very being, your possessions - everything. He's saying that the greatest strength, the strength of the Lord and his anointed, the one who is actually going to be able to fulfil the building of the new tower, is the one who is treated as nought by family, friends and children, and has lost all the things that hold him or her in being.

"This is a tremendously, as you can imagine, difficult teaching, saying: If you want to follow me, it's not a question of ‘I demand that you engage in pseudo-masochistic exercises’; it's that any leverage that gives you being now is going to get in the way of your being weak enough to conquer all these forces."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYIvDVIem8I)

~

"[A] huge part of what Jesus came to do is to show us who God really is, which is ultimately Good News. But it is also challenging as hell, because we evolved with our own ideas of who god is. And they are surprisingly difficult to let go of. Today's challenging Gospel Reading gives us a big clue as to why.

"First, there's that matter of giving up possessions. Our usual human gods are the ones who bless us with good things when we are good and curse us with the loss or absence of good things when we are bad. These gods make sense of the world for us in terms of how we set things up, namely, as rewarding what's deemed as good behavior and punishing what's deemed as bad behavior. When we are deserving, God blesses us with good possessions. That's how our entire society is constructed, right? Working hard and getting what we deserve.

"Second, there's the matter of hating family. The blessing and curse thing works not only for individuals, but also for groups of people, for communities. God blesses or punishes us as a family, or tribe, or nation. God is our God, on our side. We count on our God to keep us safe against our enemies. In an us-and-them world, it is good to have God on our side. “God bless America!” Right?

"Does this God sound familiar? The God who is on our side and blesses us with good things, many possessions? [...] But I have come to believe that Jesus came to divest us of that human-made God and show us who God really is, and it's not that God.

"First, the true God of Jesus is the God of everyone, the God of the whole creation, so there is no us-and-them. There is only us. That's why Jesus said outrageous things like, “Love your enemies.” Because there is no us and them, there is only us. The true God is not the god behind any of the divisions we humans create. The true God is the one behind the oneness of everything, the God bringing all things into harmony through love. So we need to let go of all ideas tied to us-and-them thinking, including our family as separate from anyone else's family. We need to let go of mother and father, sisters and brothers, and receive all human beings as part of God's family, our family.

"And so God also doesn't go around blessing some and cursing others. The promise to Abraham and Sarah right from the beginning is that their family was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1-3). It's supposed to be win-win, not win-lose. Again, Jesus makes this clear right from the start by beginning his ministry with the beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel: blessed are the poor, the meek, the grieving; and what we already heard from Luke's Gospel, a blessing to the poor, the sick, the oppressed.

"In short, Jesus is flipping things on us, declaring blessings for those in this world we usually count as cursed. Jesus is teaching us that God doesn't reward the good and punish the bad. We don't receive possessions because we deserve them; we receive them as gifts of God's graciousness. All of life is a gift! Not something to be possessed! So we also need to be able to let go of our possessions as possessions, and to receive them instead as gifts.

[...]

"I think coming to faith in God anew [...] is being able to experience one's possessions, even one's family, as pure gift. It is being able to survive death by being in oneness with all of life — and the ground of all life, God. Jesus, our big brother, came to help us grow-up into that life of grace, a way through the cross to resurrection. It is the experience of “eternal life” here and now because it is the experience of life as pure gift."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from a sermon by delivered on September 4, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper-18c-sermon-2016/)

[Source of Exegetical Note and links to Andrew Marr and Paul Nuechterlein sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper18c/]

From the Lectionary for 31 August 2025 (Proper 17C)

Luke 14:1, 7-14 (NRSV) Updated Edition)

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.

[...]

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

~

"In the story from Luke Jesus wants those present at the dinner to recognize their internal ranking system and its' inherit problems. His story takes the form of advice on where to sit when entering a wedding hall. Since it's so hard to know how others see you and so difficult to accurately rank yourself, take the lowest place and then let the host move you up if the host sees you ranked differently than you have ranked yourself. This is much better than starting too high and having the embarrassment of being asked to move to a lower place. Jesus assumes there will be ranking but suggests an attitude of humility wherein the host determines your place rather than you grasping for it.

"In other words, don't worry about ranking. Leave that to the host and just enjoy yourself at the banquet. You have a place and it will be the right one since it is granted you by the host who sees you clearly. When everyone in a group isn't worried about ranking and trusts the host, a spirit of peace, contentment and harmony settles over the group. Instead of grasping for rank and honor trust that you have a place already. The greatest danger to you and to others is the discord that grasping produces. People who grasp will be brought low because they will misuse any rank they are given. In this way of interpreting Jesus' story, it's clear that we all have a place in God's love."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 28th, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper17-2016-Its-All-About-Ranking-and-Rivalry.pdf)

~

"Disgrace is shame; our old old duo which we get throughout the Gospel - shame and glory. The two are poles within which Jesus is teaching and [in which] the whole of the [imitative] understanding of humanity functions - shame and glory. “‘Give this person your place,’ and then in shame you would start to take the lowest place” (v9) - you would probably fall through the hole in the floor and slink away. [...] So Jesus says: “When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you: friend move up higher. Then you will be honoured.” And again: what is the word for honoured? It's then you will have glory, then there will be to you glory in the face of all who are at the table with you.

"So shame, glory and he's teaching all this in this space which is a Pharisee's Sabbath party. In other words, he's turning this into a divine happening, in which the extremes of shame and glory are being taught about. And it's the judge who is present. Are they going to get that, in fact, the judge was present? It is actually showing them what shame and glory looked like. [...]

"And [then] we get a verse which is not in our reading, it's the next verse of the [Luke text], but which should be [part of the reading] because it's one of the dinner guests on hearing this said to him: “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” [...] And this person has understood what Jesus is about. Jesus is undoing the Levitical instructions as to who gets to eat in the holy place at the banquet in the resurrection of the righteous. He's undoing that now in real-time. [...] [H]e's showing the guests at apparently a relatively secular banquet what might be the sign of the kingdom, the breaking in of the real feast where not those who are 'free from blemish', [but] those who are cast out can, in fact, join in the banquet of heaven.

"And one of the dinner guests has understood this. [...] I just wanted to bring out that someone gets what Jesus is talking about, someone understands that he is fulfilling and moving beyond Leviticus in talking about the Lord who invites, who has no favourites, and who breaks through all our reciprocities which are built on favour and fear of vengeance."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7TXK3dmzQ)

~

"The problem which Jesus raises with his listeners is the same question as we have seen in other circumstances: on which ‘other’ do I depend to be noticed and told “I like you”? I think that there are two possibilities: I can depend entirely on my peers, in which case my goodness, my striving to do well, and the sort of life I lead will be a reflection of them, and I'll have to do everything to keep myself well-considered by them, receiving those whom they receive and excluding those whom they exclude, so as not to run the risk of finding myself the excluded one. Not only all these things, which might seem superficial, like the little games of hypocrisy which we all have to play to keep our social life going, but it is also the case, perhaps without my realizing it, that all my “I” is nothing other than a construction forged by the difficult game of keeping my reputation. There is no other “I” at the bottom of it all, behind the “I” which I am acquiring through the little manipulations by which I search to keep my reputation. My “I” and my way of being related to the “other” are the same thing.

"The other possibility is that I receive my “I” from God, and here's the rub: God has an awful reputation. Which is nothing other than saying that God's reputation and the reputation of the victim are the same thing. That is what Jesus was suggesting: in order to receive your reputation, your being noticed and recognized, by God, you have to be prepared to lose the reputation which comes from the mutually reinforcing opinion and high regard of those who are bulwarks of public morality and goodness, and find it among those who are held as nothing, of no worth. That is also what Paul says to the Corinthians: God chose what is weak in this world to put to shame what is strong; God chose what is base and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Cor 1:27-28)

[...]

"[T]he order of this world has its own glory, which depends on mutually rivalistic imitation, and is a glory or reputation that is grasped and held onto with difficulty. Being enveloped in the order of this world prevents us from beginning to act in solidarity with those of poor repute, because if we do so we lose our reputation. But those whose minds are fixed on the things that are above, that is, those who have begun to receive their “I” from their non-rivalistic imitation of Jesus, already begin to derive their reputation from the Father and not from their peers. This they do in the degree to which, doubtless with much difficulty, they learn to give little importance to the reputation which people give them, and thus become free to associate with those who have no reputation, just like the one who was numbered among the transgressors.

"If they manage not to be ashamed of what the world treats as despicable, then, when the final revelation of the Son of man with angels appears, where it will be established beyond doubt who God really is, that is, the risen victim will be the central axis of all the life stories that are under construction; then, at that moment those who were little concerned about the loss of their reputation will receive an everlasting reputation: they will hear in the midst of a huge public what every little child wants to hear from its parents: “That’s right, little one, that’s what I wanted; I like what you’ve done.”"

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 180-183

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon and quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper17c/]

From the Lectionary for 24 August 2025 (Proper 16C)

Isaiah 58:9b-10; 13-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be like the noonday.
...
If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
    from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
    serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Luke 13:10-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

~

Exegetical notes (by Paul Neuchterlein, from the Girardian Lectionary page for this week - link in comments below):

1. “Eighteen,” the number of years the woman has been afflicted, mentioned twice, by Luke in vs. 11 and by Jesus in vs. 16. Numbers often provide background clues in ancient texts. In the James Alison essay “Inhabiting Texts and Being Discovered,” in Jesus the Forgiving Victim, he suggests a link to a story that would have been well-known to Jesus’ Jewish listeners: the story in Judges 3:12-25 of Ehud liberating the people of Israel from an eighteen year servitude under the Moabite king Eglon.

2. “Hypocrites” (hypocritēs in Greek, from the Greek words for “under” and “crisis”). This word is actually quite rare in Scripture, appearing only in the Synoptic Gospels (a favorite word especially of Mathew’s Jesus) and two places in the Book of Job. Once again, James Alison calls attention to the Joban texts as a likely background for Jesus’ use of the word. Particularly impressive in this context is the fact that the Job 36:5-12 passage talks about being bound in fetters and afflicted, much like Jesus sees this woman. Elihu is addressing Job about a God who answers the righteous who are afflicted, those who are “bound in fetters and caught in the cords of the afflicted.” But there are those who don’t hearken to God’s help that the Septuagint translates as the “godless (hypocritēs) in heart,” who hold onto their anger, and “they do not cry for help when he binds them.”

~

Another exegetical point is the connection between the Isaiah reading, "If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil" (58:9b), and v16 of the Luke passage: "a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years." Satan, or more correctly The Satan, is the accuser (the literal translation of "the satan", the inspiration of all who point the finger and speak evil of others.

Tom Truby highlights this dimension of the story:

"Could satan be a stand-in for the accusing community who says “You are just a woman. You were born to carry this burden. Don’t try to escape it.” Does this story have applications for any person or group of people our culture unfairly asks to carry our culture’s burdens: to be the ones in whom we store our resentment and who absorb our dysfunction?

"In this story from Luke Jesus comes along and sees a woman bent by her culture. He decides to set her free. Jesus has asked us to model ourselves after him. When we see someone bent, or perhaps a whole population bent, shaped by the weight they carry, even though it is not their burden, what should we do? Should we feel their plight and call out to them in identification? How can we place our hands on them so they can stand up and praise God?

"Jesus must have said all of this in such a clear way that all of them saw the connections. With things suddenly clarified, the opponents of Jesus felt ashamed—as they should. But they too are forgiven. Even as all of this happens, Jesus is on his way to the cross to make human forgiveness explicit. In exposing the mechanism by which their little village works they have been given a great gift; for though their leaders may not know it, they too are in bondage. They are in bondage to their need to keep their sister bent and to hide that from themselves. It keeps them from claiming their humanity as a forgiven people able to praise God."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 25, 2019 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Truby-Proper16-2019-The-Dark-Cloud-of-Human-Ignorance-and-Self-deceit-Cleared-for-a-Moment.pdf)

~

James Alison's essay “Inhabiting Texts and Being Discovered,” is specifically on this passage. With the two passages from the Hebrew Scriptures mentioned in the Exegetical Notes above in mind, Alison concludes:

"[Jesus] comes into the synagogue, which is supposed to be the gathering of Israel, and what does he find? Israel bound down in affliction, symbolized by this woman here with her eighteen years of suffering. But unlike the Israel of old, is anybody crying out to the Lord for delivery? Not a bit of it! In fact the synagogue leader is behaving much more like Eglon than like Ehud. Both he and those present have become godless in heart, hypocrites, since rather than cry out and actually long for help, they would rather sit complacently gnawing over their own affliction.

"But this is not what the real Israel is about at all! The real Israel cried out to YHWH for delivery, and in the absence of that, well then, YHWH comes into their midst to give the afflicted their right. “If they are bound in fetters, and caught in the cords of affliction, he declares to them their work … that they are behaving arrogantly.” [Job 36:8-9] So please notice that Jesus is even now enacting in their midst what YHWH does, rebuking them for their arrogance and their weddedness to resentment which leads them to fail to cry out. But he is also delivering the afflicted by her affliction, and opening the ears of all of them through her adversity. […]

"The overall dynamic is then of YHWH visiting his people in the midst of a synagogue meeting, so as to bring out what real Israel is really all about, as full of power and excitement as the sagas of old, showing them in three dimensions what it really is to be a child of Abraham. You can begin to get a sense then of how a synagogue full of people suddenly found itself hoicked out of its ordinary routine. All of its participants find themselves occupying different places within the stories, brought, if they could accept being urged to cry out more, to a real sense of what all the glories of Israel were really all about.

"These people were undergoing a visitation from YHWH, so no wonder they rejoiced “at all the glorious things that were done by him.” On the other hand, those for whom synagogue has become a Moabite cult, in which, as it says in the Book of Job, resentful people go down to their graves in shame because they don’t cry out, then, well, “his adversaries were put to shame.”"

- James Alison, "Jesus the Forgiving Victim", pp. 369-71

[Source of exegetical notes by Paul Neuchterlein, link to Thomas Truby sermon and quote from 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/proper16c/]

From the Lectionary for 17 August 2025 (Proper 15C)

Luke 12:49-53 (English Standard Version)

“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

~

"There is [...] one saying of Jesus that switches the whole meaning of fire and it gives an indication of how he was changing [John the Baptist's] entire symbolic scheme [of the fire of judgment]. He said, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:49-50).

"The image of setting fire to the whole earth is very different from [John the Baptist's metaphor of] burning the separated chaff. It is also connected to a baptism that Jesus has yet to undergo, and so is diverse from John's meaning. John's promise of a baptism with “spirit and fire” refers to the final cataclysm of God's in-breaking in history. The water baptism at the Jordan that he offered stood as a powerful symbolic alternative to fire, the possibility of entering into a repentance and purification that pre-empted this fearsome eventuality.

"Jesus' putting together of “fire” and “baptism” in respect of something he had still to undergo suggests that he accepted John's symbols but at a deeper and decisive level he opted to bring the crisis down on himself in a totally exceptional sense. He would thereby release fire on earth, but in a transformed, generative sense. Here we have the absolutely characteristic gesture of Jesus that unites an apocalyptic viewpoint with something else, something that changes the orientation and content of apocalyptic itself."

- Anthony Bartlett, Virtually Christian, pp. 233-34

~

"[H]uman desire, rivalry, competition, which had previously been kept in some sort of check by a system of prohibitions, rituals, sacrifices and myths, lest human groups collapse in perpetual and irresoluble mutual vengeance, can no longer be controlled in this way. This is the sense in which Jesus' coming brings not peace to the earth, but a sword and division. All the sacred structures which hold groups together start to collapse, because desire has been unleashed.

"So the sacred bonds within families are weakened, different generations will be run by different worlds, give their loyalty to different and incompatible causes, the pattern of desire constantly shifting. All in fact will be afloat on a sea of wrath, because the traditional means to curb wrath, the creation by sacrifice of spaces of temporary peace within the group, has been undone forever.

"The only alternative is to undergo the forgiveness which comes from the lamb, and start to find oneself recreated from within by a peace which is not from this world, and involves learning how to resist the evil one by not resisting evil. This means: you effectively resist, have no part in, the structures and flows of desire which are synonymous with the prince of this world, that is to say with the world of wrath, only by refusing to acquire an identity over against evil-done-to you."

- James Alison, Broken Hearts and New Creations, pg. 44

~

In his video homily for this week, James Alison makes a number of interesting connections and observations that subvert to some extent the usual interpretation of this passage:

- the "fire" to be kindled can be linked to the tongues of flame on the people on the day of Pentecost (Act 2); this fire is destructive in regards to the human way of violence, but is also generative of God's way of forgiveness and peace, as suggested also in the passage quoted just above from "Virtually Christian";

- the Greek work translated as "distress" (v.50) has a root of 'hold fast' or 'press together' so can be thought of as holding back of emotion, feeling constrained or compelled; hence it is not necessarily a 'negative' emotion but can be seen as related to Hebrews 12:2, "for the sake of the joy that was set before him."

- what is interesting about the number 5 is that it is the lowest number which can be divided in more than one way *unevenly*, so it draws attention to the way society normally divides to create peace: 4 against 1, not 3 against 2; hence Jesus' prophecy can be seen, in a way (this is my own extrapolation), as a prediction of modern democracy, where peace in society is not reached by the mob in unifying against a 'scapegoat' other, or by the one dictator imposing his will by force on the many (1 against 4), but instead reached through acceptance of the decision of the majority (slim as it may be) - an 'uncomfortable' peace, if we can even call it that, as we know too well these days.

- the familial antagonisms mentioned are notable as being democratic, two-way, which subverts the hierarchical antagonisms spoken of in Micah 7:6 (which Jesus is clearly alluding to), where it is the son, daughter, daughter-in-law, who are condemned for opposition to their elders.

Alison concludes:

"So the notion here [from Jesus] is: “I came to bring fire, I wish it were all kindled. How tough it is to constrain what I want to give until it is completed.” And what he wants to give is going to look to some awfully like wrath, but in fact it's the possibility of living without wrath in the midst of a world that is going to become visibly or apparently more wrathful. But we're going to know where the source of peace and unity, real peace and real unity is.

"And the challenge for us - and that's going to be the challenge we see in the next couple of passages in Luke is going to be - how do we interpret which side to be on? How do we interpret where the path to looking for real unity, a real togetherness, respecting all the differences between fathers/sons, mothers/daughters, mothers and daughters in law - all those real differences that are shown up by collapses in culture, collapses in generation, impossibility to keep fake unity together.

"So that I think is this week's challenge to remember that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the most destabilizing entrance of the Spirit, of the Creator, into our midst. It leads to a constant world of re-signifying, of making all things new, of working out how, in whatever space of disaster or catastrophe we are, as fake unity collapses, we can begin to usher in the new world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmtBy0KnqGw)

[Source of quotes from Anthony Bartlett and James Alison's Broken Hearts and New Creations, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper15c/]

From the Lectionary for 10 August 2025 (Proper 14C)

Luke 12:32-48 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” And the Lord said, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. That slave who knew what his master wanted but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded."

~

"It is important to see that Jesus is not telling us to give up desires. The heavenly Abba has a profound Desire for a deep union of love with each of us, a union God would have us share with each other. If God is comprised of God's Desire, then it follows that we creatures are created with desires. What Jesus is doing here is redirecting our desires from the desires of rivalrous avarice towards God's Desire that is without rivalry. Isn't every fight, ultimately, over what we think we are entitled to as our inheritance? Yet aren't we all offered the whole world to be an inheritance rather than a bone for contention? Since these rivalrous desires embroil us with our rivals, the material inheritance we are fighting for is destroyed as if by moths. Of course, each rival blames the other for being the thief that has stolen the treasure.

"Jesus then shifts to an admonition to be ready for the Master's “return from the wedding banquet.” (Lk. 12: 36) If we servants are alert and ready to greet the master, the master will wait on us as Jesus waited on his disciples at the Last Supper. This little feast shared by master and servants is an image of the treasure our hearts should be set on. The progression of vignettes and admonitions throughout this chapter suggests that the best way to be prepared for God's coming is to set our hearts on treasure that moths cannot consume and thieves cannot steal. Fundamentally, being alert for the “master” consists of serving one another in the same way that the master serves us when he comes.

"The following little parable is comical and a bit threatening. The master who serves those who wait for him is transformed into a thief breaking into a house in the middle of the night. (vv. 39–40) If our hearts are not set on the treasure of serving one another, but instead we fight over our inheritance and try to gather it into bigger barns, then the God who serves us will be quite alien to us and will be perceived as a thief, a burglar. If our rivalry deepens as it does in the still more threatening parable that follows, so that our rivalry causes us to “beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk,” (vs. 45), then the gracious master will indeed rob us of our victims.

"God is both a burglar and a gracious master who serves. God only breaks in to take away all that draws our hearts away from God and from each other. What this burglar leaves in return is a treasure well worth setting our hearts on."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “The Burglar Who Serves.” (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-burglar-who-serves/)

~

"[W]e begin today's Gospel which starts: “Do not be afraid, little flock.” That's actually the only place where this phrase comes in any of the Gospels: little flock. It's this affectionate note. Jesus talking to his disciples here, that is this affectionate note, “For it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And I think that that's really what is behind the whole of this passage that's coming up, which can be a very very difficult passage. Because it's asking us to sink into something which isn't evident and which is really absolutely central to the Christian faith, which is the notion that underneath everything that is there is a good pleasure in doing things for us, that there is someone who wants our wellness, wants our flourishing, wants our happiness, our safety.

"“Your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In other words, there's a hugely powerful project going on, and we're already on the inside of it. It's as we're being given something and because we're being given something that we are then expected to behave in certain ways. This is incredibly difficult I think psychologically for any of us to get into because we are inclined to worry, we are inclined to strive after things and it's very very difficult to, what it says next: “Sell your possessions and give alms, make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven.” In other words, to treat anything that we have as something that is worth much more as we give it away. That our real treasure is what we've given away, and therefore is our contribution to other people rather than anything that we have. Psychologically that is incredibly difficult.

"You get an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. And then this line which sounds very beautiful but is in fact terribly challenging: “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Well, this is a shocking Gospel message, particularly at a time when we're hearing about a financial recession, collapse going on all around us, prices going up, inflation etc etc. Worrying about our treasure here on earth is a full-time business for many of us. What on earth does it mean to have such confidence in what we are being given that we can happily give away and carry on giving away? And regard what we have given away and therefore no longer control as what our treasure is - something outside our control. That is incredibly difficult and yet that is the image of God which Jesus is giving us.

"But there is something being brought into being in the midst of us and it is brought into being in the degree to which we learn to give ourselves away, and that it's in the giving ourselves away that we have treasure. Oh so painful because where the tyre hits the road is always where I haven't got enough. How can I give away if I haven't got enough? And this seems an incredible challenge, an incredibly difficult challenge to that - to live, to dwell in the sense of an abundance that is prior to us, which is what faith is all about. Such that we are not frightened to give away.

[...]

"So I think [...] the notion of so much more being available to us that we can trust in what is being given to us, and that as we trust it we actually become someone. And as we become someone we can entrust more to others. And that this which is a gift, it's massively prior to us. It's what turns us into becoming capable of rejoicing.

"It does mean that we acquire responsibilities with it. It is as it were any failures can't be mitigated. And that is frankly very challenging. As someone who has often fallen asleep, and sometimes got drunk, I hope not beaten other servants but who could well be regarded as someone who's often asleep at the wheel. What does it look like to be alert, alive with our belt girdled and our lamp lit so as to be able to be ready for the service when the Lord comes? This I find a very very challenging Gospel."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5ddiEqx7Tk)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper14c/]

From the Lectionary for 3 August 2025 (Proper 13C)

Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

~

"In 1998, [before the Sunday of Proper 13C,] the big news story of the week involved a $295 million power ball lottery. We have these great conversations with ourselves about how we would use that money. We, of course, would give most of it away, wouldn't we? We fool ourselves about being beneficent, loving people by how we would reach out to others from our own little Paradises where we are in complete control.

"The fact that we have this habit of talking to ourselves about what we would do with such lottery winnings is a great clue that we are in the same boat as the rich fool, when we allow ourselves to play such games. How did we get into such a state?

"Genesis 2-3 shows us. First of all, it shows us that Paradise is living life in creative dialogue with the Creator. The man and woman walk and talk with God in the garden. But one of the creatures intervenes as a rival to God, and the man and woman listen to it instead, placing themselves in rivalry with God. We lose Paradise when our primary dialogue partners become other creatures or ourselves.

"But through Jesus Christ, right at the moment of death, the one thief [on the cross in Luke 23] opens his life to dialogue with God and is immediately in Paradise. Isn't this of what Paradise consists? Life in dialogue with God's desire?"

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions on the Luke 12:13-21 (link in comments below)

~

"I am attempting to describe for you the form taken in my life by the irruption of the extraordinary grace which I received [...] Of course, I am describing schematically something which was a non-schematic whole, and which I have taken several years to begin to understand. First there was the perception of the absolute non-involvement of God in all that violence, then the perception of my non-innocence, and of my idolatrous and violent manner of having been caught up in all that. And then, at root, what began this whole process of beginning to untie myself from the idols I had so assiduously cultivated, what I had never dared to imagine, the profound “Yes” of God, the “Yes” spoken to the [...] boy who had despaired of ever hearing it.

"And there, indeed, I found myself absolutely caught, because this “Yes” takes the form, not of a pretty consolation for a spoiled child. Rather, from the moment it reached me, the whole psychological and mental structure by which I had built myself up over all the previous years, began to enter into a complete collapse. For the whole structure was based on the presupposition of a “No” at the center of my being, and because of that, of the need to wage a violent war so as to cover up a fathomless hole. The “I”, the “self” of the child of God is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.

"A further point in this narrative, if you can bear it. In the months following this incident, I had to give a theology course. I called the course: “Fix your minds on the things that are above,” taken from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Ironically, I managed to give the whole course, which has even been published in book form, without tumbling to the significance of the verse which follows the one I had chosen: “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

"But it was exactly this that, at last, I was learning. The whole of my previous life had been marked by an absolute refusal to die. The absolute refusal to take on my baptismal commitment.

"Of course, because I was unable to imagine that my “self”, the “I” who will live forever, is hidden with Christ in God. And that was why I had to fight all those battles. The “I” who was present in all those battles was the old Adam, or Cain, a “self” incapable of understanding that it is not necessary to seek to shore up for itself a place on this earth, to found a safe space, to protect itself violently against violence. The “I” of the risen one only becomes present when, at last, the old “I” is put to death. [...]

"In its place, being something rather like a still small voice, something which I can in no way possess, nor grasp, is the “I” from which I now start to live. The “I” that is hidden with Christ in God, little by little, and somewhat tentatively, begins to build a new life story in the midst of the ruins of the previous collapse."

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp. 39-40

~

"[The 'rich fool' in the parable] by himself is in a purely solitary bubble, everything is concerned with his [soul/self], it's the only thing that matters. He doesn't seem to be aware that the land giving abundantly is already God giving abundantly. And if God gives abundantly, maybe what God is that he should be a good administrator and be able to give more things to the poor people so that they are able to get food at cheaper prices this year because of the abundance, that they should share in the abundance. But no, his thinking is entirely based on 'how is this going to work out for me?'

"And this brings us back to the question of the inheritance [at the beginning of the Luke passage]. The presupposition is, there is abundance, there *is* an inheritance, there is an abundance of harvest. What is it going to look like, not to have someone decide for us who to give what - that's a question of clash of rights and is impossible to work out, especially among brothers - [but] who is going to get with the program of sharing abundance? Who is going to, rather than storing up treasures for themselves, which leads to nothing at all, because their [life] can be required of them at any moment, who it is who are able to use what they have been given to spread God's generosity? That's the only question [...]

"So this is part of the transformation of desire which is so much part of St Luke's gospel. It suggests that there is always something prior to us, always an abundance. It's never self-starting, never starts with [myself], it's always 'someone has given something to me, how am I going to share it, how am I going to spread it out?' Being rich towards God means allowing myself to become the channel of God's riches to reach others."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2j-1uWX9K0)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's Faith Beyond Resentment, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday:https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper13c/]

From the Lectionary for 27 July 2025 (Proper 12C)

Luke 11:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, may your name be revered as holy.
    May your kingdom come.
    Give us each day our daily bread.
    And forgive us our sins,
        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
    And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

~

"Prayer is a gift from a loving God who truly does care about what we desire and invites us to share those desires. God wants us to ask and promises to answer. The talking part of prayer is generally the easier part, however. Our desires - or what we think we desire - is usually up-front for us and easy to ask for. It's the listening part that is perhaps more difficult. What is God's answer? Even more pertinent ... : What is God's desire?

"Jesus taught us to pray ... : Our Father in heaven, may we get your name right, honoring your reputation. Your culture come. Your loving desire be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the bread we need today (not hoarding tomorrow's bread, too). Forgive us our sins so that we might give up our desires for vengeance and live in the light of forgiveness with others. Save us from the trials of being made the victim, and deliver us from such evils when they come upon us. Amen

"We imitate Christ in praying this prayer as the model prayer. But what I want to ask is: is prayer itself the central means by which we listen to God's desire and learn to model God? Was this the crux of Jesus' prayer life? And now we, his disciples, model his prayer life as the means by which we, too, can become obedient to God's desire?"

- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on Luke 11:1-13 (link in comments below)

~

"This week our Gospel continues directly on from last week. Last week, we had Martha and Mary, and here we have Jesus on prayer [...] Jesus was praying in a certain place and after he had finished one of his disciples said to him: Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. So it's interesting that Jesus was doing something by example, that he didn't start off by telling his disciples to pray. It was their desire to imitate him that led them to ask. And that's always the first thing we'll see with the prayer: his insistence is about asking. It's very very strong, even stronger in Luke's Gospel than it is in Matthew's. So the first thing is, his presence doing something produces in them a desire to be in some way like him and to do what he's doing. [...]

"So then Jesus does speak to them. And again, we're so used to thinking, 'this is Jesus teaching about prayer,' but what we fail to notice is that he says very little. It's very very scarce what he actually says about prayer. “When you pray, say: Father.” In Luke's Gospel, it isn't even 'Our Father who art in heaven,' as it says in Matthew. It is just: Father. In other words, the whole thing starts from the resting place, a place of complete confidence in one who is doing something, which brings something into being, from whom all desire can come. That's the starting place: a very simple word: Father.

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)

~

"[I]magine yourself as highly malleable, being stretched between two force fields, two patterns of desire. What the “Our Father” is doing is inducting you into a pattern of desire within which you may be found, one which will enable you to inhabit the “being stretched” which is how the desire of the Other other brings into being the daughter or son who is learning to pray.

[...]

"[Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.] So, may Your pattern of desire be achieved, here in our midst, amongst all these things that we are so often quick to reject, to despise, to tire of, be bored of, made to despair by. Your pattern of desire which already has and is a huge rejoicing and delight, a huge benevolence and peaceful longing, a real reality upon which our small reality rests, and from which it so often seeks to cut itself off, incapable of perceiving itself as the symptom of so much glory. May we be taken onto the inside of this pattern of desire.

[...]

"[Rescue us from evil.] The pattern of desire into which we are being inducted by the Lord's Prayer recognizes evil, but only as that from which people can be delivered. Rather than its being a thing in itself, it is only known in its being left behind to curve down on itself, never to be given oxygen by being dignified with a concentrated gaze. But the real force in the universe is not evil, but love, and love really does want to rescue us, to bring us out of our tendency to enclose ourselves in smaller and smaller spaces, to bring us into being."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, Essay 9: “Prayer,” pp. 427-33

~

"[T]he difference between a fish or something doing them good, or an egg, and those beasts is very very obvious. But in terms of our pattern of desire - are we so clear about that? Are we so clear that the Father is the sort of person who actually wants us to have good things? I think we sometimes think that maybe he's giving me a scorpion because it's good for me, or a snake because it'll whip me into action? Don't we moralize the bad image we have of the One who wants to give us? Then we find it really difficult to actually believe that God does want things that are good for us.

"So it's our insistence in actually learning to imagine the goodness that he wants for us, and carrying on wanting it, that is central to what God wants for us. This is why we must pray. And Jesus makes this point: “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children” - in other words, you know how to screw each other up, you know how to have dysfunctional family relations, you know all these things, and yet even you can distinguish between good gifts and bad gifts of your children - “how much more will the heavenly Father give Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

"Holy Spirit - what is that? This is the pattern of desire that is, if you like, opened up by the desirability of what is good that actually enables us to imitate what is going to do good for us, and which then strengthens our longing and our wanting so that we can carry on insisting until we are turned around and find ourselves actually possessed by what it is like to be God towards all things that are and discover ourselves, owning it, receiving it, having 'knocked' for it, finding it.

"So this element which St Luke gives that the heavenly Father is giving, not 'the good things' [as in Matthew 7:11] to those of who is asking, but gives Holy Spirit. Rather than as a compensation, think of it as that what is wanted is the pattern of desire. That's what Jesus asks us to receive through prayer: to learn and to enter into the pattern of desire which runs us in such a way that we will not be hurt, that we will not be subjected to cruel self-moralisations, that our longings will be satisfied and will be enabled to carry on wanting more and more because that is what the Creator longs to give us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein 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/proper12c/]