From the Lectionary for 28 April 2024 (Easter 5B)

John 15:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

~

"The image of the vine and the branches in John 15 gives us a powerful image of closeness both between ourselves and God and also with each other through our grounding in God.

"Each of us is a branch connected to the vine which is Jesus. Jesus is telling us that the desires of each and every one of us must be rooted in His Desire, which is the same Desire as that of his heavenly Father. Between Jesus and his Father, there is no rivalry and Jesus does not enter into rivalry with us. From our side it tends to be a different story. We experience rivalry so constantly that it is very hard to imagine a relationship without rivalry. Just note how political and social debates are saturated with it.

[...]

"We often think of union with God as individualistic but that is not so. On the contrary, union with the vine unites us with all of the other branches. This means we share our union with the vine with everybody else’s union with the vine. It is by being united to others through Christ that we have the ability, through grace, to act towards others in God’s Desire rather than through our rivalistic tendencies. Since there is no rivalry in Jesus, there is no way that Jesus would encourage rivalry with others who are connected to him. [...] God abides in us insofar as we love one another. If we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves off from other people and if we cut ourselves off from other people, we cut ourselves off from God.

"The image of the vine and the branches is, above all, Eucharistic. The Eucharist is a public event. The wine in the Eucharistic celebration is the blood of Jesus that he gave to heal all of us of our violent ways. The blood of Jesus on the altar shared with each of us makes present to us the death of Jesus at the hands of persecutory humans as it also makes present the risen life of Jesus. In exchange for the way we betray Jesus with our violence, we receive the gift of life through deep union with Jesus, a union like that of the branches to the vine. We associate blood with violence, such as with the term “bloodshed,” but blood is the life within us and it is life that the Risen Jesus gives us through his Blood. This is the wine, the blood, that flows from the vine to the branches to connect us to Christ and to each other."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "On Being Branches Connected to the Vine" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/04/26/on-being-branches-connected-to-the-vine/)

~

"I don't know whether you've ever seen a vine close up but the interesting thing about is the vine itself looks dead. It's gnarled and looks like a dead stick basically. Not so the branches. The branches are green and supple and come out of it and, obviously, the fruit. [..] But there's this strange juxtaposition of this apparently dead stick out of which comes so much life. And I think that's part of the image that Jesus is using here. He's talking about how he, the risen Lord, is the dead and alive one. He is the one who is apparently dead and in whose death we are buried so that we can become alive and become him. I think that that's what he's talking about. He's talking about how we can share his dead and alive quality and how sticking with that dead and alive quality, not running away from it, is what's going to allow us to be pruned and turned into bearers of fruit.

"One of the remarks that I wish I understood better and I raise it as a question more than anything else: “You've already been cleansed or pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” So that something about his speaking to us, what he spoke to his disciples before this, before the speech which is given during the Last Supper, something about the words which he speaks to us, they enable us to live in this dead and alive space without running away from it. And it's that that allows us to begin to yield fruit, because he's quite clear that what he wants is, as it were, for all his sap to rise through us. [He] talks about this at the end: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”

"So, abiding, dwelling, making our home in him - that's the sense, which means making a home out of his words, allowing his words to correct us, to nurture us, to nudge us. It's difficult to know exactly what's meant, but this dwelling with his words alters our pattern of desire, such that he is able to desire through us and that our desire is his desire. [...] That's the sense of us actually finding ourselves in a home in him, becoming a co-part of it 'sapped in' into the home, so that we're actually part of it, and it actually flows through us. That I think is part of the richness of what's going on here.

"[...] So this business of remaining in his word, it's a curious thing: how do we do that? What does it look like to find ourselves remaining in the word, allowing the sap to rise in us, allowing his words to nudge us, to correct us, to nurture us? That I think is part of what he's saying is going to be what our life is like from now on. It's going to be listening to the word, dwelling in the word, allowing ourselves to become his self by our imitation, by being taken over gently by his Spirit. And enabled to find ourselves actually wanting amazing things, much bigger things than we could have imagined, and getting them - bearing fruit.

"And this whole thing being on an adventure with a very careful, very caring, very wise vine grower who knows where to prune, who knows where to sift, who knows how to carry us through the times when we think that we're just bits of deadwood and no good at all, is aware that there's a season when the sap will come and we will turn into the fruit that we might fear that we were never going to see."

- James Alison, from video Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYk6IfBBPI)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter5b/]

From the Lectionary for 21 April 2024 (Easter 4B)

John 10:11-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

~

"[T]his Sunday we move on from the Easter Sunday evening meetings in the different Gospels, and we start to look at some of the great Johannine texts, the 'I  AM' texts. And what these enable us to do is to get some sense, to dwell, in the shape, the form, the feeling of the resurrection life. The Risen One's here in our midst. What does he feel like? What is it to be moved by him? What are we undergoing? In what way is the sap rising, as it were, amongst us? These images which Jesus used in his teaching are images of, by which, we can detect the presence of his risen life in us. That's the purpose of these texts being given to us in this Easter season.

"... [The Good Shepherd] is a slightly misleading image for us since we tend to think of shepherds principally as to do with people in the countryside looking after sheep. There are good reasons why we think that: because that's actually what shepherds are! But for anyone attuned to Israel's texts, a shepherd had a far greater significance than that. It referred to a royal leader, a king figure, a promised king leader who would keep people safe. This is the great promise of Ezekiel. But it's particularly the link with keeping people safe. Someone who is very free, very powerful and creates spaces of safety. That's the first thing that I want to bring out. We're talking about power and safety here. One of the things about the presence of the good shepherd in our midst is to enable us to feel that he has great power and this power is designed to make us very safe. That's absolutely central to what [is] going on.

[...]

"“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” And here this is one of the things I think that is difficult for us to dwell in: ... what's this quality of being known by the risen Jesus, knowing Jesus? Being known by one who has gone through death and therefore is able to look at us without being frightened of what's going to become of us, because he knows that he holds us in his hand and is able to take us to where is good for us. And our sense that we needn't be frightened of him because he's not a bully, he's not someone who's going to make us do impossible things to make him look good. There's no ulterior motive, if you like, in his knowing us and us knowing him. Which is one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit is not frightening. It enables us to relax into this very safe being known and being led.

"He says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me.“ I know my own and I know the Father. He's saying: “Actually yes that love with which I'm going to love you, that sense of being together with you - that's the same as the Father has with me. It's this shared love which includes, therefore, an immense fondness, an actual liking you as you are, wanting to take you somewhere good. And I'm not doing that out of some moralistic commandment. Actually, later on, I will refer to it as a command, but it's merely the fact that that's what my Father is and that's what the love between us looks like: the tenderness of active bringing into being.”

[...]

"“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” So he's showing us actually, yes that awful business of him being crucified, being murdered, being lynched, that looked awfully like other people doing something to him, but in the middle of it all there was this sovereign peace. It's that sovereign peace that he's sharing with us. It's that sovereign peace he wants to know you don't need to be frightened. There will be all these wolves, there'll be all these attacks, but I've opened up this space for you to be able to live without fear of that. Not to be run by it, not to be scattered by it, not to be grabbed by it.

"“I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” This if you like is the quiet and sensational power of the risen life. This is what we are being asked to allow to penetrate us during this Easter season. To sit in the space the world doesn't even know exists, a quiet, powerful space, following one who is powerfully and actively leading us beyond ourselves, taking us into new pastures, into new ways of living with other people who first we might not even think are like us. Who is making it possible for there to be new forms of unity and all out of this huge sovereign peacefulness. ...

"“I have received this command from my Father.” ... But notice the commandment is not a word. The commandment is a gesture, which includes the gesture of laying down his life and taking it up again, thus demonstrating the power of his Father's love and inviting us into doing exactly the same thing. Saying, this power is now available to you, therefore you will be able to do my commandment, which is love each other as I have loved you - in a later speech.

"But it's this making present of this coming-alongside gesture of sovereign power. And asking ourselves, praying, I think, during this Easter season, during this week: how is this coming through to me? How is this penetrating me? How am I being lifted up, enabled to receive the 'being taken up' from the One who was able to lay down? [And] understanding how gentle and yet how powerful this is."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaAxhh_6vv8)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter4b/]

From the Lectionary for 14 April 2024 (Easter 3B)

Luke 24:36-48 (NRSV)

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

~

"When Luke and John tell us that the risen Lord appeared with the visible wounds of his death, it wasn’t merely a way of identifying him as the same person, but a way of affirming that he was so much the same person, that, in the same way as that person was dead, so was he. But that death is nothing but a vacant form for God, something whose reality has been utterly emptied out, which can only be detected in the form of its traces in the human life story of someone who has overcome death.

"The marks, then, of Jesus’ death were something like trophies: it was his whole human life, including his death, which was made alive and presented before the disciples as a sign that he had in fact conquered death. This not only meant that he had personally conquered death, which he had manifestly done, but that, in addition, the whole mechanism by which death retains people in its thrall had been shown to be unnecessary.

"Whatever death is, it is not something which has to structure every human life from within (as in fact it does), but rather it is an empty shell, a bark without a bite. None of us has any reason to fear being dead, something which will unquestionably happen to all of us, since that state cannot separate us effectively from the real source of life. This can scarcely be said with more precision than it is by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews:

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Heb. 2:14-15)

"Now I insist on this, since it is the central pillar of the Catholic faith. From the presence to the disciples of the risen victim, the crucified one risen *as crucified*, the lamb triumphant *as slaughtered*, everything else flows. Without that insight, nothing unfolds, no clear perception of God, of grace, of eternal life, about what we must do, how we must live. This means that eschatology is an attempt to understand ever more fully the relationship between those empty marks of death which Jesus bore and the mysterious splendour of the human bodily life which enabled them to be seen.

"What type of life is it that is capable not of cancelling death out, which would be to stay on the same level as it, but to include it, making a trophy of it, allowing it to be something that can be shown to others so that they be not afraid? It is about this that I wish to speak."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 29-30

~

"Ultimately the resurrection narratives are commission narratives, narratives of sending and receiving, narratives that reveal the structure of being as “being given,” “being risen,” and “being sent.” Nearly every appearance story includes a word of command and commission. In Mark the women are commanded to “go, tell his disciples and Peter,” “so they went out” (16:7). In Matthew the eleven are told: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (28:19). And in Luke: “You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised . . . and, lifting up his hand, he blessed them” (24:49,50).

"The empty tomb narrative in John includes Jesus’ instructions to Mary Magdalene to “go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (20:17). As we saw above, her announcement to the disciples (“I have seen the Lord”) indicates a fundamental shift in her understanding, just as it did for the eleven. She has received a new self from the crucified-and-risen One who, in the midst of her grief and misunderstanding, calls her by name and directs her to the community of disciples who will embody him and extend his mission in the world: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20:21). To Peter, Jesus says “feed my sheep,” “follow me” (21:17, 19).

"This connection between resurrection and apostolic mission is immediately evident in Paul’s self-understanding as well: “Paul an apostle sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1). All of this shows just how intimately the church’s identity is bound up with mission, how being reconciled and being-in-community is, for the New Testament, “being sent” in the world as an agent for justice, reconciliation, and peace. Mission in proclamation and praxis is not a secondary movement of the church, coming as a consequence of an identity already established within itself, but as the very way that identity comes about."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 114-15

~

"So, ... we get the sense of the group working through what it is to become witness to this, that the Anointed One is to suffer, to rise from the dead, and the repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name. This, if you like, is what we are being turned into witnesses to. This is the purpose of having our minds opened. This is the purpose of him standing amongst us showing us his physicality. All of this is to make available for us as our doubting, troubled, questioning hearts deal with all this that one has come into our midst who was always going to come into our midst. It is he, he is doing these things, and he will take it forward and he's inviting us to undergo it beforehand so that we may be witnesses to it with him."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgLRd8akBk0)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel and Brian Robinette's Grammars of Resurrection, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter3b/]

From the Lectionary for 7 April 2024 (Easter 2B)

John 20:19-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

~

"This Sunday we look at a text which happened later that day and a week later in which also the note is of fear. The disciples find themselves in a room that is locked for fear of the Jews, that's the fear of the religious and political authorities of the time. One of the things I really like about this fantastic passage is that it's not a quick celebration. I don't know whether you're anything like me, but I'm a very slow reactor to things. And there is something, if you like, about happy Easter liturgies on Easter Sunday that I find very difficult to cope with because it's suggesting that it's possible to do a quick turnaround from having been sad and lost and baffled by the events of Good Friday to suddenly being happy and everything being okay. And I can't do that myself and I'm very glad to say that the Gospel text suggests that that wasn't really what happened either.

"So one of the first things I want to bring out about both last week's and this week's Gospel texts is how they presuppose that it takes time to sink into what is happening. And that seems to me to be so important I even noticed that in today's Gospel we get two mentions of the room in which the disciples are found a week apart. The first time it says locked for fear of the Jews and the second time it just says: locked. In other words, a week later there's still an element of fear things haven't been sorted out magically and I think that it's tremendously important for our understanding of the Resurrection and the presence of the Risen One in our lives that we recognize and be grateful for that - the slowness, the difficulty, the oddness of what's going on.

"So first of all, our Lord appears, ... Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you.” So that's the first thing: they are riled in one way or another and peace is going to be necessary for them to be able to get anything of what is going on. “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” In other words, he identifies himself as the one who is crucified and risen. In the Apocalypse [Revelation] of St John, this is the vision which is described as a Lamb standing as one slain. It is a vision which to us is simply baffling: you can't be both alive and dead, and yet here is the one standing as one slain. But he's clearly alive, he's clearly a dynamic and protagonistic presence amongst them.

"[...] And then he says this: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This I think takes us way, way back. It suggests that the one coming into their midst is not one who has just turned up, as it were, as we might turn up to a friend's house in the midst of a party and surprise them. The suggestion is: “As the Father has sent me so I send you. I am coming into your midst from a very very far away place. I don't mean physically far away, I don't even mean chronologically far away. I mean, the place from which I'm coming to you is nowhere within your expectations. And I am going to be making you the bearers, the vanguards, the ones who are taking forward this coming in from a very very far away, very very distant, very very different place. You are going to be becoming something quite different from what you could possibly have imagined. It's going to be utterly remarkable. And this is an important thing: who you are going to become now, you are going to be the ones who are going to control this.”

"Because when he'd said this, that the Father sent me, so he breathed into them. Breathed on them, breathed into them - the same verb in Greek, it's the same verb as in Genesis where the Lord breathes into Adam. So here is the act of Recreation, it's that far back that is being brought into them now. Now what creation is and has always really been about is being brought to life in their midst through them.

"He says to them: “Receive Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Again this is the Creator Spirit, the protagonist, the one that had hovered over the waters in the beginning coming into their midst, and now coming into them, which is to say, into us, to turn us into the protagonists of creation. And the radicality of this, it's very difficult to grasp because effectively he's saying: “Let go of any notion of outside God, rescuer God, deus ex machina God. From now on God the creator, the full force of the creation is going to be available to you, in you and amongst you. And in as far as you take the ride, in as far as you allow yourselves to be swept up in this, it'll be opened up. And in as far as you don't, it won't. Your ability to forgive each other is going to be the same thing as your ability to open up creation for each other and to be opened up for each other. In other words, this whole exercise has been an extraordinary entrusting by God of Godself and God's project into your hands. And it's going to take you on journeys, it's going to take you into forms of becoming that you could not possibly imagine. And yet, that is what I have been doing for you, that's what I've been doing in your midst.”

"And then we have this wonderful memory of Thomas who is called the Twin, one of the twelve who was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We've seen the Lord.” He said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” In other words, reasonably enough, he's stuck in the identity that he was, he needs a push, he needs a boost. What they have told him is about seeing someone. They can't yet communicate what this means. So he's reasonably gone off. He's in the emotional equivalent of a locked place.

"A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them, although the doors were shut - the same verb [locked] as before. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you,” so the same making himself known through the presence of peace. Then he takes Thomas exactly at where he was in his stuckness. And this is if you like the affection of our Lord, ... he reaches him where he is and starts to move him on. But he also gives Thomas the task by making Thomas mirror him by putting his hands in his wounds, standing close up to him and becoming his mirror. He says, “Okay you're going to become me and you've been able to believe because you've seen me, but blessed are those who have not seen and have yet come to believe.

"And this, if you like, is the element that I want to bring out. This is, if you like, the slow train running beneath all this, is that the risen Lord coming into our midst as a friendly gesture, as a peaceful appearance. But what is really going on is the possibility of God having floated Godself into our midst, by faith, enabling us actually to become convinced of his presence, and able therefore, without anyone with whom we're in rivalry, of starting to have all our stuckness - our being locked in frightened places - changed, altered from within, so that we are no longer run by fear, by loss, by stuckness, and are actually able to start to move each other into the new creation.

"This for me is part of what John does by giving us Pentecost on the same day as the Resurrection. He's showing how the fullness of what the Lord gives is this extraordinary act of gentle opening up of creation which takes us at exactly where we are: frightened, lost, stuck, not heroic, not successful. In the Catholic liturgy, this Sunday is called Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy. And it seems to me that there is something here about, if you like, the power and the strength of what Jesus is breathing into us. The power and the strength of it is the kind of mercy that undoes our need to be successful, our need to win, that sets us very very gently free to start to be able to bear witness to it.

"And being able to bear witness to it doesn't look like suddenly becoming heroic and suddenly becoming successful. It looks like becoming alive in the midst of failure, and not a success, and not being heroic, and yet knowing we are loved. That the one who has come into our midst didn't do it to turn us into superheroes, that the one coming into our midst did it to show us that we are loved, that it is weak, fallible, not particularly heroic strugglers, people who need to be set free from our fears of freezing, our sense of loss - that all of that is what very slowly the Risen One is producing in our midst, floating us, if you like, off the seabed which we've got stuck on, and enabling us to be bearers of life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vad8tc86PM)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter2b/]

From the Lectionary for 31 March 2024 (Easter Sunday, Year B)

Mark 16:1-8 (NRSV)

Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.

But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”

So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

~

"Mark’s conclusion where the three women who came to the grave run away in fear is so strong that it is enough to make us forget that it is preceded by a ringing proclamation that Jesus has been raised. He has already arrived in Galilee, where he is waiting for them and the disciples. When we remember this proclamation and let it sink in, we realize that this enigmatic ending is not pessimistic or skeptical about the risen life of Jesus, but it is pessimistic and skeptical about the ability of human beings to come to grips with Jesus’ risen life.

"Mark is not unique in saying that the women at the tomb were afraid when they found the tomb empty. All of the Gospel accounts say as much. In fact, the risen Jesus has to tell everyone who sees him not to be afraid once they recognize him (which they usually don’t at first.) What is unique to Mark is that he only says that the women were afraid as they ran off. Matthew, in contrast, says that the women left the tomb quickly with “fear and great joy.” (Mt. 28:8) Moreover, in Matthew, they did tell the disciples.

"What were they afraid of? What are we afraid of? Usually fear is our response to a threat. If I think a big dog might bite me, I am afraid of it. If someone aims a machine gun at me, I am afraid for my life. But what about Jesus, who never bit anybody or fired a machine gun? Well, we can be afraid of having our understanding of the world turned upside down so that it feels like the earthquake in Matthew, and that is precisely what the Resurrection does. With Easter well-integrated into our yearly cycle of Christian worship, it can seem to be business as usual, but that is an illusion. The great value of Mark’s blunt proclamation followed by women running off in fear is that it reminds us that the Resurrection is not business as usual; it is the bankruptcy of everything we thought kept us in the business of life.

"But the Resurrection is a good thing, isn’t it? What is there to be afraid of? If the Resurrection is just a happy ending to a story we celebrate and then move on to the business of living, then the Resurrection isn’t much to worry about. But then it isn’t much to celebrate, either. There are other excuses for having a party. The women ran away from the tomb, not to have a party, but to get away from what had just broken apart their lives as they understood them.

"Remember, in Mark’s Gospel, nobody understood Jesus. And the misunderstandings of him only got worse the more Jesus healed people and taught them, until the story ended with Jesus hanging on a cross. So, how could the women or the disciples understand what was happening to them when they were told that Jesus had been raised from the dead? Maybe the disciples, maybe even the women who remained faithful to the end in tending to Jesus’ body, were relieved that the man they did not understand was gone. At least they could understand grief and resentment over what had happened. But Jesus wasn’t gone. They were going to have to go back to Galilee, where the whole story of Mark’s Gospel started, and try again without the benefit of grief and resentment.

"Being sent back to the beginning suggests that God was giving them, and us, a second chance. They and we have the advantage of knowing the end of the story, and we can use that as a key to understanding what led up to it. We have learned that the world was broken apart by a God who would choose to die on a cross rather than start a violent revolution. But that God remains alive in the face of such an appalling event, and thus is a God who remains alive in the appalling events we face today. Worse than that, Jesus has broken the cycle of resentment and rage that, though painful, was tight and cozy and predictable. This means we have to redefine the ways we relate to one another. Worse yet, we are threatened with the challenge of life that just isn’t going to let up now that death is broken apart. Let us also go back to Galilee and see what else we can find."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, pp. 137-38

~

"Nothing in the phrasing of the texts of the New Testament is accidental, and it seems to me that in the story of Sarah we have the reference which gives the context for the Marcan account of the frightened women.[1] The stone put aside and the absence of the corpse were not in the first instance a motive for rejoicing, but for terror. Terror because what had happened was quite outside anything that could be expected. Beside this, the possibility of the birth of a child to an aged lady is a mere nothing. Terror because now there was no security, no rules, nothing normal could be trusted in. And worse, terror because everything difficult and frightening which Jesus had taught had to begin to come about: he went before them, as he had told them.

"It seems to me that here we have the most appropriate place from which to start our examination of hope. I want to focus on this because there is nothing pretty about Christian hope. Whatever Christian hope is, it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 161

[1] I owe this insight, as many others, to J. D. M. Derrett, who points it out (with acknowledgement of his own source) in the prologue to his work "The Victim: The Johannine Passion Narrative Re-examined" (Shipston-under-Stour: Drinkwater, 1993)

~

"“And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” quoting Sarah, who was afraid after she had heard the promise that she would become a mother. At first she laughed, then she was afraid. Because it meant that the world was opening up, something new was going to happen, there isn't an obvious way forward here. And this is what we celebrate on the Feast of the Resurrection, the arrival finally, in the midst of our history, as the completion of what Jesus had been about to do, as the opening up to us of a beginning, of a new beginning... the opening up of creation, the first day of creation. Such that we find ourselves on the inside of it, starting to make a sense that we aren't yet aware of, and which each of us has to find our way into and bring alive.

"And that's what's being a daughter or a son is, finding our way into this fullness of creation that has been opened up to us, in which all the usual storytelling signs have been turned on their head. That... is for me the genius of Marks' resurrection account. He knows that it's not an ending, it's not even a proper story, it's the condition of possibility of an unimagined story being birthed in our midst by one who has done something for us and is going to be alongside us and with us as we learn to take that forward."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Easter Sunday 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UnAEcdP2hg)

[Source of quotes from Andrew Marr and James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easterb/]

Good Friday 2024

John 19:17-18; 28-30 (NRSV)

And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.

...

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

~

"There’s nothing like a little redemptive violence to bring us all together. So is this the way God works? Is this God’s plan, to become a human being and die, so that God won’t have to kill us instead? Is it God’s prescription to have Jesus suffer for sins he did not commit so God can forgive the sins we do commit?

"That’s the wrong side of the razor’s edge. Jesus was already preaching the forgiveness of sins and forgiving sins before he died. He did not have to wait until after the resurrection to do that. Blood is not acceptable to God as a means of uniting human community or reconciling with God. Christ sheds his own blood to end that way of trying to mend our divisions.

"Jesus’ death isn’t necessary because God has to have innocent blood to solve the guilt equation. Redemptive violence is our equation. Jesus didn’t volunteer to get into God’s justice machine. God volunteered to get into ours. God used our own sin to save us."

- S. Mark Heim, Reflections on Mel Gibson's film “The Passion of the Christ” (no longer available online)

~

"The word sacrifice keeps on popping up in our Eucharistic praying. And some of you have let me know that you find those words difficult. And I want to say, for very good reason. Let me discuss with you a little bit about what is meant, and what is not meant, by the word ‘sacrifice’. 

...

"I’m going to use the example which my mentor, my guru, René Girard, always used when explaining the double meaning, perhaps – two possible sets of meanings behind the word ‘sacrifice’. He always used the story of king Solomon’s judgment of the two prostitutes. You remember the story: two prostitutes, both of them had daughters at the same time, they both lived together. During the night the daughter of one of them died, so the mum quickly swapped babies with the other one; and the other woman, when she woke up, found her baby dead but it wasn’t her baby. So they took the matter to the king for judgement. And the king said: bring me a sword, I will now cut it in half the baby so that you can each have half. Whereupon one of the two women said: that’s splendid, quite right, then we’re both in the same position. And the other one said: no, let the other woman have the baby, I would prefer that the baby lives than that I win.

"Of these two you could use the word ‘sacrifice’ perfectly easily: one woman was prepared to sacrifice the baby to be equal with the other woman, and one woman was prepared to sacrifice her right to the baby in order to allow the child to live. We use the word ‘sacrifice’ for both. But they’re obviously completely incommensurable in meaning, they’re not the same thing at all. One is involving killing something, and the other involves letting go of something, giving something away, for the sake of life.

"Now, it’s only conceivably in the second meaning that we can possibly refer to Jesus’s going up to death as a sacrifice. I should say that it was language with which he was familiar and he was perfectly happy to use. So we shouldn’t be too shy of it. But he was happy to use it precisely because he was bringing it to its fulfilment and actually exploding it from within, because rather than this being the account of us sacrificing someone to God, or – in some particularly terrible notions – God demanding that we sacrifice someone to God, as though God needed bloodlust satisfying or something like that.

"It’s exactly the reverse: God gave himself up to us. We are the angry divinity, if you like, in the picture. And God is giving himself up into our midst, into the midst of violent and sinful humans, precisely so that we can be utterly amazed by the generosity, by the power, by the forgiveness in that act. And so we realize we never need to perform any kind of sacrificial logic ever again. That self-giving up into the midst of us, so as to enable us to live free from the world of sacrifice. That’s what’s called the one true sacrifice.

"... [T]he self-giving of God up to us sinful humans, so that we may be amazed, forgiven, loved, reached at our most violent, and enabled to understand how much we are being let off – that’s the sense, if you like, of the word sacrifice, the same sense as the good mother in the Wisdom of Solomon. The good mother was opening up the possibility for the baby to live. Well, Jesus is opening up the possibility for us to live.

"Now, one might say: well, that’s just what Jesus was doing, what about what we’re doing? Well, our way of sharing in what Jesus was doing is by giving thanks, that’s what the Eucharist is. We start to give thanks and we find ourselves able to share inside that self-giving. Someone who is giving himself to us and enabling us to turn into givers of ourselves away to others, which is why I use the word ‘sacrifice’ very happily when I pray. I’m thinking not of anything that I’m doing; I am thinking of what is being done for me, and with what joy I am going to be turned into someone capable of doing that for others."

- James Alison, from video "Meditation on Sacrifice Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uFK91bdZxw)

[Source of S. Mark Heim quote, and for discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/goodfriday/]

From the Lectionary for 24 March 2024 (Palm Sunday, Year B)

Mark 15:1-15, 21-26, 33-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He answered him, “You say so.” Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.

Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them, and after flogging Jesus he handed him over to be crucified.

...

They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”

...

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Philippians 2:5-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

~

"The hymn in Philippians is... relating [the ancient rite of Atonement (Leviticus 16)] to Jesus' life: especially his road from the Mount of Transfiguration to the Garden of Gethsemani and then to Calvary. Thus, the death on the Cross is seen as being in reality that for which the Temple rite had been a mere dress rehearsal. And, entirely in line with this imagery, Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension, his 'anastasis', is read in this hymn as the successful conclusion of the rite, where, in the setting of the Temple Court, the High Priest 'became' the Name, and was worshipped as such by all present. Only here, it is not a rite, but the real thing, and the power of the allusion is that God, El Elyon, is giving to Jesus the Name that is above every other name - in other words, YHWH.

"So, from now on, the artist formerly known as YHWH is to be known by the name Jesus, because Jesus has successfully and completely instantiated YHWH in materiality and history, such that Creation has now been definitively altered from within.

"The result is that, whereas in the rite of Atonement every knee would bow down in worship at the pronouncing of the Name, and whereas in the Prophet Isaiah it is to YHWH that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear [Isa. 45:23], it is now established that Jesus the Anointed One is YHWH to the glory of El Elyon, or 'Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father', as our accustomed translation reads.

"It appears, then, that Paul is urging the recipients of his letter who find themselves in conflict with those who frighten them, those who do not accept that Jesus is the Christ, that, in the midst of the conflict, they are to act out the same priestly pattern which we have just seen illustrated, and with which they would have been familiar, giving themselves without fear or self-aggrandisement towards the altar of sacrifice just as Jesus did on his way to being given the Name."

- James Alison, Broken Hearts and New Creations, pp 220-21

~

"[W]e have Mark showing two things happening deliberately, or rather one thing, but with two, if you like, visible names. And the visible names are, on the one hand, Messiah, and on the other hand, King. The question, if you like, that was raised by Jesus coming into Jerusalem in the way he did, fulfilling the Davidic promises was: Are you the son of the Most High? Are you the Anointed One? And of course, it's how Jesus bears witness to that that is going to be key to what goes on in this period.

"So in front of the Jewish authorities that's the question: Are you the Messiah? Are you the Promised One? And of course Jesus answers that in a way that is unmistakably positive. And then there is the question of whether he's a king. With the Romans playing games with the Jews talking about the King of the Jews, rather than the appropriate Jewish title, which would have been 'the King of Israel'. So there's an element of mockery going on by Pilate of the Jews, and the question which the chief priest has asked Jesus on the cross: Are you the Messiah? If you are the king of Israel, come down. That's the bringing together of those two.

"And in the midst of all this, Jesus actually enacting and being the promised priestly king figure, the priest who is performing the sacrifice of the atonement in which he himself is the priest, the sacrifice, the victim, the altar and the king who is being raised up, enthroned, ascended. These two things are happening simultaneously and Jesus is doing them.

...

"And this ends with a centurion saying, “Truly this man was God's son,” when Jesus dies. A little hint of what's going on there: this is at last Adam being recognized, the real Adam having done the real Adam thing. And this is hinted at so subtly by Mark. First of all, it said that it's taken to the place of Golgotha, the place of the skull. This was mythically the place where Adam's skull was buried.

"And then in the kerfuffle with Pilate, there's the question of whether Barabbas or he should be executed. Barabbas, the 'son of the father' [the literal translation of 'bar-abbas'] who was a thief, someone who'd taken something inappropriately. That's the old Adam. Or Jesus, the 'son of the Father' who is going to show what it is to be the man, what it is to be the human being, Adam. And so Jesus, going to the cross, and actually living out the real Adam in his ultimate possibility. ...

"In other words Jesus was doing all this because he believed in the possibility of humans becoming something, of us actually being able to make something of this extraordinary adventure of being human. That in the midst of our lives - our fake news, our fake accounts of things, our insurrections, our robberies, all of that - in the midst of all that he believes in us, that it's actually worth doing something for us, to make it possible for us to become human and sons of God. That is an extraordinary act of love."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Palm Sunday, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4__8DrQRu8)

[For further discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/passionb/]