From the Lectionary for 31 December 2023 (Christmas 1B)

Luke 2:22-40 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.

~

"I invite you to join me in the Temple. Let us imagine that we are there, ordinary inhabitants of Jerusalem, hanging around for evening prayer, or to meet friends, or whatever. It is just an ordinary day, not a major feast. The Temple is a big and imposing building with its series of courts; there are a variety of sacrifices going on at altars up in front of us, priests doing their stuff with impressive seriousness, other priest-like figures scurrying hither and thither looking as though they know what they are doing, temple guards standing on quite relaxed duty at the various entrances and exits. There are money-changing tables, booths for selling the various animals for sacrifice, and inevitably, a fair smattering of adolescent boys running here and there as messengers, carriers, pick-pockets and so forth.

"There is smoke, there is incense, and there are the smells and the background sounds of cattle, sheep and caged birds. In different places, there are people involved in prayer, by themselves, or in groups, some attending the sacrifices, others apparently making deals with the Almighty with much bobbing and bowing. Over all this, there presides the Holy of Holies. The veil is in place, and all that is going on is going on with some, but not too much, reference to the apparently indifferent gaze of the One who dwells there.

"Someone tugs your sleeve, and points to a small gathering which is happening just out of the corner of your eye. Nothing special. A couple with a baby come in for the rite of Purification. And who’s that coming up now? Oh, that’s old man Simeon – older than Methuselah! He looks so old that he might very well be the High Priest Simeon himself from three hundred years ago – one of the last decent High Priests in Jerusalem. In fact he probably is a real descendant of his. Funny to think that someone like him would be High Priest today if it hadn’t been for the various bits of skulduggery by which the current bunch had co-opted, bought and stolen their hold on office. Anyhow, the couple have got someone proper to do their rite for them. Old Simeon will take the thing seriously.

"Now watch out, crazy Anna has spotted them and is rushing up! Didn’t anyone warn them? She’s older than God and has been around the Temple since before time began. Actually, she’s a survivor from one of those tribes which went into the desert generations ago and didn’t go along with the whole return from Babylon and second Temple project; She thinks that if she stays here day and night, fasting and praying, then God will bring the first Temple back, Ark, Mercy Seat, Fire, Wisdom and all. She makes it clear that she considers the current priestly families to be little more than pretenders, – well she isn’t unique in thinking that, but she has the courage of her convictions, since she actually stays in the Temple to try to make it holy. Good luck to her, and to all whom she pesters!

"Ah, now the Evening Sacrifice is about to start up, let’s turn towards the Holy Place, the dwelling of the Most High, and get on with it. Curious though that as the couple are leaving with their child, both Simeon and Anna, normally a mixture of the cranky, the zealous and the infuriating, look suddenly peaceful, as though something had happened to them. Oh well, funny things go on in the Temple! Maybe they got given a bigger than usual tip for their services. Let’s press forward and join in the chanting which is starting up: “I will gaze on the Lord in the Sanctuary to see His strength and his glory”.

"Well, of course this is not the version of the story we hear in St Luke’s Gospel... My version is the majority report – what a normal passer-by would have noticed that day. We celebrate the minority report: for Luke, anything else that was going on in the Temple on that date was quite irrelevant. We get no mention of it, so we have to supply with our imagination. What we remember is that on that day, Malachi 3:1-4 was fulfilled. God suddenly came into his Temple. But he came in almost offstage, along with the Ark and the Seat of Wisdom who had borne him, and was noticed only by a couple of eccentrics who had been hoping for him in quite specific ways as fitting in with their expectations for how God would show himself to his people, to Jerusalem and to the Temple; expectations which were regarded as indecent pieces of folk-culture by the people who ran the show in the Temple.

"In other words, the shape of the arrival of God on the scene, the God to whose worship the Temple was dedicated, was that of a tiny offstage interruption, scarcely to be noticed. Not even enough for us to talk about the Temple authorities having been blindsided by God, since they remained unaware of what had happened. Only much later would it become clear how completely blindsided they had been.

...

"One of the tell-tale signs of ... the experience of undergoing “I AM” coming towards a human is that thereafter the human becomes aware of the universe tilted on a new axis. ... The centre of stability, of gravity, shifts from the world formed by the desires and struggles of humans, which is only an apparent centre of stability and gravity, and rests on something entirely outside the human world of perception and desire. What appears to be the most ethereal and least solid part of the universe comes to be the real centre of solidity and rooted-ness in being. Part of the authentic nature of the experience of undergoing [the true God] is this Copernican revolution out of human and cultural foundations and security into receiving a centre and a non-grasped-after solidity that was entirely outside of human control and from which all comes to be.

...

"I [want] to make it clear that for us the first and root meaning of reconciliation is not an ethical demand. In the understanding of the Christian faith, it is first of all something which has triumphantly happened in a sphere more real than ours, and which is tilting our universe on a new axis, whether or not we understand it. This means that what we think of as real, as stable and as ordered is not so, and what is real and true and ordered and stable is not what is behind us, but what we can become as we learn to undergo being set free from our imprisonment in what we might call “social order lived defensively”.

...

"If you like, we are being shown that we start off from a skewed reality, that what we call normality is in fact out of kilter, and true reality is much more alive than anything we know; so much so that we need training and new hearts and new eyes to be able to glimpse it along with that gift of being able to relax into spaciousness and being held by a power greater and more trustable than our own, which we call the gift of faith.

"Well, this I hope gives us a slightly different perspective on how we might come to be involved in and practice reconciliation. Because it means that our starting place is not, in the case of any of us, that of good people who are going to do something good. Our starting place is that of people who are undergoing being forgiven, ... knowing that the reality we are leaving is futile, but not yet gifted with the heart and eyes of the diamond-bright aliveness that is coming to be.

"And this means that there is no beginning of reconciliation amongst us that is not the first inklings of a learning of an entirely new way of being together, by people who are accomplices in war and who are undergoing being forgiven as their necessary induction into the real. Forgiveness is not something which is in the first instance a moral imperative. Forgiveness is the shape of being inducted into the real in the case of all of us human creatures who, basically good, find ourselves inextricably caught up in an addiction to being less than ourselves.

...

"This is what is surprising: that we have no access to being created which doesn’t pass through our allowing ourselves to be reconciled. And being created is adventure, delight, and irresponsibility, since we aren’t in charge; it is lightness of spirit, undeserved security, luck and fortune. And along with this, as we allow ourselves to be stretched into this spaciousness, there comes a greatness of heart, a magnanimity that is playful, because trusting, since we have discovered, rather despite ourselves, that there is no greater victory than the mutual enrichment of those who are not frightened of losing themselves in the other, but who know that on the flourishing of the other depends their own capacity to be and to enjoy what they really are on their way to being, with all their heart."

- James Alison, "Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the Underside" (http://jamesalison.com/blindsided-by-god/)

[For analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/xmas1b/]

From the Lectionary for 24 December 2023 (Advent 4B)

Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

~

"The mystery is that Jesus did not come into the world to compete with Caesar Augustus the way he competed against Brutus and Mark Antony or David competed with Saul. Jesus came to preach and live a totally different way of living than the way of Empire, a way not based on violent competition but on mutual support. Rather than inflict violence in humanity’s never-ending civil war, Jesus took the whole violence of all empires in all times on himself in the place of all those who have been and ever will be victims of Empire."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), blog post from 21 Dec 2017 (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2017/12/22/the-throne-of-david-part-two/)

~

"When it we read on Christmas night the shepherds in the field being the first to hear and being told to go to see this sign given in the house of David, [we see that] God took the shepherd boy [David] and now he's going to come back announced and understood by shepherds. This is the lowliness of God, and God's, if you like, rejection of power ... [This is] the mystery of the coming in of the Lord, the Lord who is going to come in himself is going to be shown slowly and off stage, not in any of the expected places.

...

"There's this little phrase which I think we vastly underestimate: “But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” ... I want to bring out that the [Greek] word is actually a very very strong word, it means 'mega perturbed'. ... [T]ypically the place where [the word] 'troubled' comes up [elsewhere] is in relation to wrath. [For example] in 2nd Samuel there is a hymn which describes the earth being “troubled at the wrath of the Lord coming in,” the earth and the heavens actually being being perturbed in this way. It's the sign, it's how you react when wrath is upon you, that's the sense of trouble: what wrathful thing is going on here?

"You can imagine here is a young girl and the first reaction to the arrival of an angel is, “Wrath is upon me! How, oh what's going to go on, what's going to go on here?” So it says she tried to work out what on earth might be going on, this is a terrifying first reaction. So it's scarcely surprising, the very first thing that the angel has to say is “Do not be afraid!” And this is a vital part of the gospel. It's the difference between the expectation that the coming in of the Lord was going to be in some sense a wrathful coming in, a shaking of the earth in terror at the arrival of the lord, the king, and the angel saying, actually it's not going to be like that.

...

"Well, any normal maiden suddenly informed that she's going to bear a son will have had a good deal of reason to have been profoundly afraid of wrath. This is what happens if you are an unwed mother in an honor society, where these things can be taken to death very very quickly. This is it's extremely difficult for someone to learn that they're going to become, in the midst of all this potential for wrath, a positive vessel of God's favour and love.

...

"Just a word here about Son, “It will be called the Son of the Most High,” because when we think of the word 'son' we also think of the word father or mother, two separate persons. There's the father and the mother and then there is the son. But in the understanding of God it's understood that the Son of God is God's self. The Son of God is God's self manifest in human form. We would say manifest as a human. In other words, it's not some distant relative of the Most High, it is the Most High in person, is what we would say. That is what is going to come here, that's what the birth of the Son means: it means the human manifestation in real presence of the self of the Most High.

...

"Mary answers quite sensibly, “How can this be since I do not know man.” She wants to understand what's going on here. And the reply is to say no you are about to become the holy place of God. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you." This is how the power of the Most High was over the tabernacle. [The angel is saying,] “You are about to become the Holy of Holies. You are effectively the Ark of the Covenant,” and that is exactly how Elizabeth her cousin would greet her when she went to visit a few days later.

"So this is what we're being prepared for: the coming into the world of the Son, God's very self, in the Holy Place. And the virgin being taught to discover this is who she is called to be."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuLnfMol90)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent4b/]

"It is difficult to accept change in our circumstances or our life. Moving, death, estrangement from those we previously loved and cherished, a new job, economic conditions, health issues, political situations, all of these and many more examples create fear and tension. We adapt quickly to the status quo and wish to remain there.

"Change is part of life, yet we seek ways to avoid it or ameliorate it or stop it from happening altogether. Those who study change and its effects have noted that too much change causes undue stress, but too little change also causes stress.

"We are made to change, created to experience change. The universe itself is constantly changing. In physics, quantum mechanics observes change taking place all the time at every level of the universe. People change too. We grow from infant to old age and note all the changes in between. As a species we have changed. We evolved from single celled organisms to become the dominant species on the planet. In short, life is all about change and adaptation.

"Theology too changes as does the church. Christianity is a religion of change. There has never been a period in the 2,000 years of church history where some change was not occurring. Dip into any century, era or epoch, and one finds some thinker, theologian, nun, monk, priest or lay person who is reconsidering the gospel.

"Yet is it not the case that Scripture says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)?  If Jesus does not change why is it that theology and church seem to constantly change?

"Like the speed of light in Einstein’s theory of relativity, Jesus has been Christianity’s single bearing, that which everything else could be measured against and by. Jesus is the singularity of all Christian reality. So why do we expect our theology to remain unchanging? Why do we seek some form of absolute, whether in a book or a creed or a dogma or a theology?

"Our problem is that we have failed to recognize that our understanding of Jesus is always changing. One cannot read the many studies of Jesus written in the past 300 years and not be aware of two tendencies. The first was pointed out by Albert Schweitzer: we have a tendency to make Jesus in our own cultural image. The ‘liberal lives of Jesus’ of 19th century German biblical scholarship all looked suspiciously like the bourgeois citizen with rarified ethical ideals.

"There is another tendency we have though when it comes to Jesus. We tend to subordinate Jesus to our vision or understanding of ‘God.’  We first define God, and then we fit Jesus into that understanding rather than the other way around. We no longer let Jesus change our view of God. When we do this we are fitting a large round peg in a tiny square hole. It just won’t work. Our theologies reflect this problem, and our lives reflect our theologies, our beliefs about God. So we tame Jesus, we domesticate him, we bring him into the orb of our religious paradigm and seek to absorb him, to make him harmless. This, I submit, is the biggest crisis that faces Christianity today.

"Christmas, therefore, is our antidote. Christmas is the time we stop all of our theological speculating and allow ourselves to STOP!  Stop trying to make Jesus fit into our world and recognize that God in Christ, by becoming flesh has fit us into God’s world. The old debates from the 16th-19th centuries about whether the finite could contain the infinite (finitum capax infiniti) are completely reversed for infinity has been revealed to contain the finite (infinitum capax finiti). The baby in the manger is the APOCALYPTIC recovery of the creation. The Christ-child is God’s rescue operation. This is where Word becomes flesh and all flesh is reconciled and transformed. From that day forth, flesh will no longer remain stuck in the status quo of its sin, its violence, its rivalrous behavior, its tendency to create dualisms, in groups and out groups, for in this child, all flesh is redeemed and transformed.

"Christmas is about change, the hope of change, the hope for change. This is why we have four weeks to prepare: for it is our GOD who is coming to us. And he shall be called ‘Emmanuel.’ This God comes to us, to be with us and for us, not against us and over us, but under us as a servant, with us as a friend, and in us as a beneficent transforming teacher and power. This is why we celebrate Jesus’ birth!"

- Michael Hardin, FB post from 19 Dec 2022

(https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/posts/pfbid02jExtow36ioeCuaZVTTpkssRmTC6EWvMSXEwzwhJLGJJybjo63G63RNUF4YDTJz6El)

From the Lectionary for 17 December 2023 (Advent 3B)

Isaiah 61: 1-2; 10-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
    to comfort all who mourn,
...

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
    my whole being shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to spring up before all the nations.

~

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

...

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

~

"The Christmas story we all know and love gives witness to the centrality of Jesus, the Christ.  Every year we put up the manger scene and combine aspects of the story taken from Matthew with dimensions from Luke and act them out in the Christmas pageant.  In this way, we know Jesus is important and the Son of God because of how he came to be born.

"But in Year B we have a problem.  Neither the Gospel of Mark nor the Gospel of John has a Christmas story.  How do we come to know who Jesus is when we can’t use the Christmas story to show his specialness?  Mark and John have no shepherds coming to see the child, no stars leading wise men from the east, no flight into Egypt to escape a jealous and ruthless ruler, no donkey carrying a pregnant teenage mother to a distant ancestral town, and no Joseph being turned away at the door of a crowded Inn.

"The Gospel of John has a different way of showing us who Jesus is.  The writer begins with the witness of one man.  I quote, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”  In the Gospel of John, the first witness to Jesus is John the Baptist and “he came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”  Instead of a mysterious star moving through the heavens and coming to rest over a cradle containing a baby, here we have John the Baptist pointing to Jesus himself as the light.  Two verses before this, in the prologue, using N.T. Wright’s translation, we read, “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  What an Advent message of hope!  “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

"I believe every word of that compound sentence.  Life was and is in him and this life was and is the light of the human race.  He is the light because he shows us the very character of God.  “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”  Contrary to much dark religion in many forms throughout the world, the God revealed by Jesus has no darkness at all.  He is full of life and there is no death in him.  None!"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, from a sermon delivered on December 11, 2011 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Advent3b-2011-Pointing-to-the-Light.doc)

~

"So first of all the place: you remember last time he was in the desert and he was baptizing and here it gets more specific, he was in the place called Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. So that indicates that he put himself outside the Promised Land so as to create a new way into the Promised Land. ... [W]hat's being called to mind is the place where Joshua led the people over the [Jordan]... And it's no wonder therefore that what John the Baptist is doing is clearly creating some sort of new movement, that it's got the authorities rattled.

"Before the gospel tells us about the authorities [being] rattled, it specifies very exactly what John is, and the terms are more meaningful than they might seem: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness to the light.” In the prologue to St. John's gospel we hear about the light was before all things, who is coming into the world.

"Now please remember, the light was the first day of creation. The one who comes in bearing light is the Creator. So to bear witness to the light is very much standing outside if you like the normal historical form of witnessing. He's bearing witness to someone who has been coming in from Creation, the very Son of God, the promised Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, coming into the world. This is the light. So to bear witness to the light means something quite specific.

"Remember that in the Genesis account light and darkness were separated, but here it's light that comes before darkness and the darkness cannot hide it. So [John is] bearing witness to something that is from the beginning, that is from creation, so that all might believe through him. So, in other words, he's bearing witness to the creative light that's coming into the world, and everyone is going to be enlightened by it, or it should be possible for everyone to be enlightened by. He himself was not the light, he makes this quite clear, but he came to testify to the light.

...

"Now, I didn't realize this until recently, but [“I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.”] is apparently a reference to the Levirate law: if a married man died without having offspring his wife was married to his brother so that he could produce offspring for his brother via her. And if he refused to do so, the one who would take up the charge would untie the thong of his sandal. ... So what's John saying here? It's the one who's coming after me, although theoretically I get to marry the person first, it's the one who's coming after me who is the real bridegroom.

"In other words, this is a hidden reference to the coming in of the bridegroom, this bridegroom figure we will see, that it's the bridegroom and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All is being set up to announce the coming in of the one who will open the marriage supper of the Lamb, which is, if you like, the central image of the one coming in that we are going to rejoice in, starting with the hidden birth, the silence surrounding all things before the light comes into the world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_6ED0MSuIo)

[Source of link to Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby sermon, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent3b/]

From the Lectionary for 10 December 2023 (Advent 2B)

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

...

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
    and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

~

Mark 1:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.[1]

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight,’ ”

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

[1] The NRSV Update Edition does not include "Son of God" in the main text but notes that "other ancient authorities add" it. I have included it as it is mentioned by James Alison in his video homily, see below.

~

"It's worthwhile thinking that part of the preparing the way is helping us prepare our imaginations for how that's going to look like that's what we celebrate in Advent. If you're like, allowing our imaginations to be prepared so that we may see the one who is coming in, so we may see the Holy One of God, the one who John the Baptist will later recognize as the Lamb of God, coming in.

...

"So “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Not the good news concerning Jesus Christ, not the good news about Jesus Christ, not the good news preached by Jesus Christ, but the good news that *is* Jesus Christ. That's the meaning of the genitive, and I get the “of” is the good news that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God - immediately there is given that title, a high priestly title, to tell us something about the coming in that's going to happen.

...

"So let's hold on tightly to these things: John symbolizing the Patriarchs; Elijah because of the leather belt; Samson because of the honey; the flight from Egypt because of the locusts; and really challenging the Temple establishment. So next Sunday we'll see how the temple authorities react to this and we'll be able to be taken further into our imagination of the one who is coming in."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJQ6j2qbOIk)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent2b/]

From the Lectionary for 3 December 2023 (Advent 1B)

Mark 13:33-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

~

"[In the discourse starting at Mark 13:3, Jesus has] explained all the forms of, if you like, chaos and catastrophe that are going to be the new normal in the wake of his performing the definitive sacrifice that brings the temple to an end, brings the sacrificial world to an end, [when] there'll be nothing to solve the problems of human violence. [The disciples are] going to be carrying on, and it's going to be very very difficult for them not to be distracted by all these fake sources of meaning, very difficult for them not to be distracted from the presence of the One who is coming, the coming in of the Son of Man.

"So he's preparing them for living in that time. ... In our time, just as for them, so for us, the the threat of being distracted by so much violence, so much fake meaning, being jostled about giving us a sense that something great is about to happen, or not, and yet all of that distracts us from having our eyes trained on the One who is coming in.

...

"First of all was the word going [(v. 34), then] “You do not know when the master will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” Now of course very beautifully Jesus sets up those four times which are going to be very specifically the times at which [the disciples] to whom he is talking does not see the coming of the master in his going, because in the evening Jesus hands himself over to them in the form of the Last Supper, setting up the Eucharist; at midnight while they're all asleep in the garden of Gethsemane ... while they are asleep suddenly Judas arrives and Jesus is handed over, it's the second handing over; then at cockcrow Peter hands over Jesus, Peter betrays Jesus, he denies him in the courtyard of the High Priest; and at dawn the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to the Romans.

"So every single one of the moments of the Son of Man coming, looking in fact exactly like he's going, but a particular sort of going, the sort of going that is a handing over and going out of being: a 'self-giving up out of being'; a 'violent being taken out of being'; a 'being betrayed out of being', a 'being dismissed as part of political convenience going out of being'. In every single one of those the coming looks like a going.

"And guess what? This happens in the few days immediately after Jesus has explained this to those [disciples] which is why it's tremendously important that he then says, “What i say to you I say to all: keep awake.” Why? Because these [disciples] get it wrong! This is the wonderful thing about the gospel - Jesus is setting up his disciples to get it wrong, to fail to perceive the coming. Why? So that they can then bear witness to us of what it looks like to be a failure, so that little by little we may all learn to get it right through failing. This is the wonder of the gospel: it's mercy for screw-ups not correctness for those who want to be right. This is what's being offered here: how we are going to be able, despite our failures, to come back time and again to having our eyes trained on the coming, to be able to see one going out of being.

"So think of what we're celebrating in the Mass as being a calling to mind this glorious failure. Jesus actually is setting up the watchmen to have failed at the very first go, so that we are able to bear witness to that - they're able to bear witness to us and we are then able to continue to bear witness as we gradually with great difficulty learn to be able to see the coming of the Son of Man in his going.

...

"So that is what is going on in Advent: this extraordinary shape of the mercy of God coming into our midst. We're being trained to observe it, to observe and to be taken on board by it, so that we can become living representatives of it. That means working through a whole lot of our projections of anger, of vengeance, of punishment, onto God, because our expectation is of someone who comes in to sort things out... [in] a rough way, [to] punish people. But in fact the one who comes is going to constantly surprise by the failure to be part of vengeance. That is going to be, if you like, the most difficult thing for us to perceive, that's the thing that's most completely going to fox us. So that we receive the mercy at this time of Advent of learning once again that the one who comes, comes in gentleness and precariousness. So that we can perceive his coming and his giving of himself away."

- James Alison, "Homily for the First Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YATO41e51_c)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent1b/]

From the Lectionary for 26 November 2023 (Christ the King Sunday, Year A)

Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”

~

"It is evident that Jesus did not simply accept the social duality of his time, the division between good and evil, pure and impure, Jews and non-Jews. In fact, his practice and his teaching add up to a powerful subversion of this duality. Neither did he accept the cosmic duality, as can be seen in his announcing the coming about now of the Kingdom of God, and, for example, in his teaching his disciples to ask, in their prayer to God: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

...

"There is then a good prima facie reason for thinking that the subversion of the apocalyptic imagination by what I have called Jesus’ eschatological imagination is something proper to Jesus rather than something invented by a disconcerted early community in the face of the indefinite postponement of the Day. This prima facie evidence deepens somewhat when we discover that at the root of the subversion which Jesus was making of these dualities, the criterion of the victim is to be found.

"Jesus offers a prophetic criterion in terms of ethical demands that are capable of being carried out as the basis of his subversion of these dualities: the social duality is redefined in terms of the victim, so that the victim is the criterion for if one is a sheep or a goat (Matt. 25), or if one is a neighbor (Luke 10); it is victims and those who live precariously who are to be at the centre of the new victim people, to whom belongs the kingdom of God which is arriving (Matt. 5-6). No one can be surprised that this insistence, more in the line of the prophetic imagination than the apocalyptic, comes also to be subversive of the cosmic and temporal dualities. It is thus that the forgiving victim, the crucified and risen one, comes to be, himself, the presence of the kingdom in the here and now."

- James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, pp. 125-26

~

"So, with Matthew, apocalyptic language and all, we see that his three final parables have to do strictly with how to live in the time of Abel: first, being alert means preparing yourself patiently for the duration; secondly, the patient construction of the kingdom means having your imagination fixed on the abundant generosity of the One Who empowers and gives growth; and thirdly, what is demanded is a non-scandalized living out which is flexible enough to be able to recognize those whom the world is throwing out, and then a stretching out of the hand so as to create with them the kingdom of heaven. All of this is a making explicit of the eschatological imagination through the subversion from within of the apocalyptic imagination."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 158

~

"Today's gospel is the last of Matthew's parables, the great parable sometimes referred to as 'The Last Judgment' but really more properly referred to as 'The Separation of the Sheep and the Goats'. Just to give us a bit of context you remember that after Jesus gave his apocalyptic discourse to the disciples, the one in which he told them all about how the world would change after his going, and how they were to notice and survive that change, he gave the three parables as ways of allowing them to inhabit this time that was opening up. The first was that of the bridesmaids with their lamps and that was to do with training the eyes to see the coming. The second was the servants with the talents and that was to do with having your imagination built up so as to be a healthy creative partner in building up creation, including yourself, in this difficult time. And the third that of the separation of the sheep and goats, which as we will see is really about the revelation of the reality of what really is all along.

"Just to take us back to the end of that apocalyptic discourse [in Matthew 24], one of the things which Jesus does there is talk about the coming of the Son of Man in language which he will take up again in [this] parable. ... Now every one of those elements was fulfilled at Jesus' crucifixion. That's the sign of the Son of Man coming; that's the moment at which the angels go out to the four corners of the earth to start bringing in the heavens; that is when the true nature of reality is revealed and the beginnings of the collecting ends of the tribes from all nations come.

"What does that mean? It means that the criteria for what it is to be of God starts to be revealed. The criteria of God is the forgiving lamb standing as one slain [Revelation 5:6]. It is the Lord giving himself up to death in our midst. Any of those who perceive it find themselves on the inside of this process which will be taken to all the nations of the world. And eventually that will all become visible, if you like, the criterion will make itself known throughout the world. And at that stage it will be possible to see what has really been going on all along. So this, the parable of the separation, is if you like a confirmation of that. It's making that more of a three-dimensional understanding.

"Let's let's see where it starts. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him.” Okay, so the coming of the Son of Man, that was on the cross. And all his angels with him means that after the Word has been spread throughout the world, after the criterion, the lightning has lit up the reality of creation. And so he's going to come in his glory, which means that what looked like a place of shame and death will start finally to have its full sense and reality made available, that it was the culmination of creation, the opening up of the possibility of the new creation.

"“Then he will sit on the throne of his glory.” In the other gospels this is worked towards with the language of ascension. The ascension was the enthronement of the most high. In other words, the becoming a king, that was the end of the rite that started with atonement.

"So all the nations will be gathered before him, he will have become king over all, he will be, if you like, the criteria the principle of discrimination, of discernment, to use a less frightening word than judgment. And he will separate people from one another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Now please notice he's separating things that are from things that are. He's not engaging in a moralistic analysis of whether this person is this or that. So there are sheep and there are goats, people have become who they are during the course of their life. Which is why the language of judgment, which we suppose is someone saying something about you, is not helpful here because it's far more a recognition of who you have become. If you have become a sheep then you will be recognized as a sheep; if you have become a goat then you will be recognized as a goat.

"“Then the king will say to those at his right hand,” and here ... it's the only place in the parable where he's referred to as king. It was the Son of Man coming in glory, that's the Crucified One, and the ascended is the king. In other words, all power all authority over heaven on earth has been given to him. The enthronement has been completed and now the reality of what has been going on all along is finally shown - not something extrinsic to that reality, but the reality itself is being shown.

"“Then the king will say to those his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’” Now please notice that language gets passed over very quickly in most of our readings, but it's hugely important if we understand that what Jesus is talking about is how he is revealing the real axis of creation. His enthronement is the culmination of creation as it was always meant to be, not the failed futile closed down version in which we were all somewhat entrapped until his coming, but the fulfilled, real, entirely alive version that has been made possible by him coming into the world, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. In other words, this language is the language of the real axis of creation, if you like, what creation is really about the real structure of creation being made available and visible.

"He said, 'some of you are those who have in fact found yourself on the inside of the making fully alive of the axis of reality, of creation, this is not a moralistic extra thing. No, you've actually discovered yourselves on the inside of this project from the beginning'. ... He returns to the [language from the] beginning of the Sermon on the Mount to refer precisely to people in situations of precariousness. That is how he has been present: he has impressed himself into the lives of those who then went on to live precariously, thus bearing witness to the real truth of what is going on and how creation is to be brought into being. ...

"Having become as it were elements of the new creation pressed through into our time, that's what it looks like to be him. He gave us his body to make his body present in the world in all these sorts of ways. And it's as we go through the grind, becoming radiant, bringing that into being, that we become the least of his family, we become him. And rather than this being an exclusionary tactic, anybody who gets with the dynamic actually becomes part of that whether or not they know that that's what they're doing. Anyone who finds themselves caught up in what we would call the contagion of the Holy Spirit so that actually we enter into the dynamic of being able to give our lives away in the midst of mourning, prison, violence, hatred, all of the sickness - all of those things - find ourselves actually being turned into radiant signs of the coming in of something more. All of us are in fact already on the inside of what is true. We are being brought into complete being.

...

"The notion of two things going on at the same time, the bringing into being of creation happens in the midst of the grinding down of futility, and those who are strong, who consider their values to be those of power and domination are those who have not got with the axis of what it was all about at all. It's not that they're being judged extrinsically by somebody saying, 'oh let me tot up your offenses', here it's that they've missed the whole point of creation. They haven't been on the inside of what's been going on at all, so they are simply blocked off definitively. And the promise of eternal punishment, apparently the word behind that is not so much a question of the length of time as a question of definitiveness. In other words, that whole world of futility of which you have made yourselves part will simply be definitively blotted out, come to an end.

"What I want to bring out here is that what's being revealed is the coming to life of what really is. This is Jesus, not as an extrinsic judge, but as the internal criterion for reality. This is absolutely central to the Gospel and something which we forget at our peril. We're talking about the Word, through Whom all things were made, coming into our midst and making it possible for us to become children of God (in St. John's language, but that's what's going on here). He's talking about how reality, the reality opened up by him, can press us into becoming signs of Him, and it's that transformation of the shame of death and the revelation of glory, our route through into radiance, losing ourselves out of love and carelessness into the coming in of the kingdom. It's that that is what blessedness looks like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6mCawuI2Bc)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/xrstkinga/]

From the Lectionary for 19 November 2023 (Proper 28A)

Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. At once the one who had received the five talents went off and traded with them and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

~

In his video homily on today's parable (link below), James Alison points out a number of pertinent points about the context and concepts in this parable: eg. according to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, 100% increase was the expected return in these kinds of situations (of course almost all journeys in ancient times took "a long time"), so the first two 'slaves' were just doing what was expected, nothing more nor less; also that a 'talent' was around 30 kilograms (not grams) of gold, which at time of writing would have a value of over (AU)$92 million. So it was not a measly amount given to the third 'slave' that he could not have done much with anyway.

In addition, the language (in the Greek) which the third servant uses is quite proud, even arrogant, and dismissive. It is not the language of a humble servant, but of someone who has a very dim view of the master and is not afraid to tell him so.

One other thought I had is that the 'master' doesn't take the one talent back, but gives it away (to the servant with 10 talents), which gives the lie to the servant's belief that he reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter. The 'master' in this parable is, I think, not at all interested in getting more for himself, but in promoting the flourishing of his servants.

I don't read this as a story of an exploitative overlord who is trying to economically exploit his underlings. To me, apart from anything else, that interpretation doesn't fit in the overall context of, as James Alison puts it at the beginning of his homily, "Matthew's three final parables concerning how to live in the apocalyptic time, in the time in between the Lord's death and his coming - this time in which all the forms of order and the structure of the world will have shifted, nothing will be clear - and how we train our imaginations. ... It's going to be about growth, the possibility of growing and becoming in the time of the bridegroom's absence."

~

"The problem of the servant who received one talent and went and buried it is not its lack of yield, but how he imagined that his master would treat him: ‘Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed: and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo there thou hast that is thine.’ In this case it is Luke who makes the situation more explicit; this, I think, because the manoeuvre is less common in his Gospel, while for Matthew it is typical of his way of speaking. In Luke the master says: ‘Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant...’ And that is exactly what happens. Once again it is the subject’s imagination of his master that is absolutely determinant of his behaviour. One who imagines his master as free, audacious, generous, and so on, takes risks, and himself enters into a fruitfulness that is ever richer and more effervescently creative; while one whose imagination is bound by the supposed hardness of the master lives in function of that binding of the imagination, and remains tied, hand and foot, in a continuous, and may be even an eternal, frustration."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 153-154

~

"So what's going on here? I think that the notion of the kind of partnership that we're invited into is being opened up. Our first reading [Proverbs 31], which is the reading about the fruitful wife, if we stop and think about it, not, if you like, as somewhat patronizing attitude towards women but rather an expression of what a fruitful partner looks like, I think that that's bringing us actually very close to the attitude of the master going away saying, ‘I want a fruitful partnership with you. I'm actually setting you up to be partners. I want to see you flourish, this is what your flourishing will look like. See how much you can dare, see what you can take, get away with, run away with. See how much you can make out of this, that's the kind of thing I want you to understand, that I'm actually with you. Things that look impossible aren't, things that look difficult aren't.’

"And that has been for me the really tough thing to learn. I assumed as, you know, as a gay man, that I was out of being useful. I had no family base, no church base, no commercial base. It seemed quite literally as though I was being asked to come with something out of nothing. And yet, it has been my joy and my discovery that I'm called to be a partner, and that it's the partnership that is the flourishing."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 33 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGptQAGEKzU)

[Source of quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper28a/]

From the Lectionary for 12 November 2023 (Proper 27A)

Matthew 25:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them,  but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut. Later the other young women came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

~

"The structure of this portion of Matthew’s Gospel is: (1) a series of prophecies in Matthew 24:1-31; (2) a series of parables on being prepared and awake in Matthew 24:32-25:30; and (3) the prophecy of the Son of Man Judging the Nations in Matthew 25:31-46. Clearly, I’m advocating to not read 25:31-46 as the last in a series of parables, the so-called “Parable of the Sheep and Goats,” but instead to see it as the climaxing prophecy in Matthew’s emphasis on the fulfillment of prophecy that leads into the Passion.

"Once seeing that context in Matthew, the importance of this parable is more clearly subordinated to the prophecies. Its purpose is to provide another example of how time can run-out and bring consequences if not prepared. The purpose of prophecy itself is to show the current path one is on, and where it leads, in order that one might act and choose a different path. Prophecy is not fortune-telling. It is not meant to lock a person or nation into a foregone fate. It is aimed at urging that person or nation to steer clear of a negative fate by choosing another path in the present. The parables in-between Matthew’s prophecies — of which the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids is the fourth of five — are designed to underscore the urgency, giving us pictures of folks who ran out of time to choose another path and so suffer the consequences.

...

"A properly Jewish-Christian sense of urgency seeks to be part of God’s healing and transforming this world in the here-and-now. The urgency of discipleship is to follow Jesus in nonviolent resistance to the hellish forces in this world — a commitment to stand against the hell of human violence without adding further to the hell. It leads to a costly grace by following Jesus’ willingness to suffer the violence, absorbing it rather than perpetuating it."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments" on the Girardian Lectionary page for this Sunday (link below)

~

"Jesus had been previously talking to the priests and the scribes and then more laterally he was talking to the Pharisees, but in each case he was speaking the words that shall never pass away. Since that gospel he's left the temple and he addressed his disciples and others about what we would now call the inner workings of what it's going to be like to living religiously after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem. In other words, the beginnings of the structure of church, and in particular how to be extremely suspicious of fake religious leadership.

"A huge amount of what he's talking about there is to warn us about the kind of forms of hypocrisy and violence that we will see exercised in God's name in our midst, and how to see through them. Then he moves on with his disciples and starts to speak to them privately. He gives them the apocalyptic discourse telling them about the collapse of the temple, the terrible things that are to come, and how they are not to lose their heads in the midst of all those things but they are to learn how to be vigilant, to stay awake. And what we're going to get for the next three Sundays are the parables about vigilance, how it is that we are to have our eyes trained to see the one coming in.

...

"First thing to notice, the bridesmaids know that a wedding is coming, all ten of them. It's not as though some of them weren't really bridesmaids and didn't know this was a wedding. No, they're all aware that a wedding is coming, the only question is when, what's it going to look like.

"They all have lamps because they'll need to see - the understanding is that the ability to see what's going on is going to be necessary. ... Part of the role of wisdom is to come into people so that they can see. Wisdom isn't, if you like, a form of extra intelligence. Wisdom is the creative force that adjusts us from within towards being perceivers of and participants in reality, the reality of the creation that is emerging before us. So these lamps and wisdom, that's very much part of the same thing."

"So here we have the bridesmaids who know this is a wedding. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. Okay, Jesus is immediately taking us back to the difference between the foolish and the wise builders from the Sermon on the Mount - we're going to see that the passage from the Sermon on the Mount is much referenced today because if you remember there it was the foolish who built the house upon the sand and the wise who built the house upon the rock. It is of course much more difficult to build a house upon a rock, it takes time, excavation hard work, but the results are more solid. So here the notion of having oil for the lamp would have been understood immediately as the way in which you seek constantly to acquire wisdom, so as to be able to see. You go to see wisdom and wisdom gives itself to you.

"... At midnight there was a shout, “Look here is the bridegroom, come out to meet him.” Okay, the shout is at midnight. Matthew is a genius. Not long after the disciples have heard this, one of them will have particular reason to have remembered this teaching, because as we'll see he is going to be involved in becoming the illustration for us of the working out of this teaching.

"When the cry came at midnight a few days later they were in the Garden of Gethsemane and the bridegroom arrived. The arrival of the bridegroom looked like the handing over of Jesus to his death. Remember that, we're going to come back to that in just a second. So all the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. Remember that, as in Gethsemane all the disciples were asleep, they all got up.

"All the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out.” They were not able to see in the midst of the chaos and the confusion that occurs when the marriage arrives, the bridegroom arrives. For the marriage, when the handing over comes, it's always going to be a time of confusion and darkness. “But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’” The kind of light that is necessary to deal with the coming of the bridegroom, in the midst of the cares and confusion, seeing the arrival of the Lamb who is handing himself over to the marriage feast of the Lamb, that can only be acquired personally, by having gone through, having trained your eyes through it so that you're not thrown by the first signs of the winds of confusion.

"... Later the other bridesmaids came also saying “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” Now beautifully, only a few days later Peter tries to get in to the High Priest's courtyard while Jesus is being tried. Three times he denies, and one of those he denies it with an oath saying “I do not know the man.” Please remember this phrase, the 'I do not know you'. ... Here of course is the irony, because the one who casts out, or on the side of the casting out, is the one who is in fact cast out. The one who has recognized the one who is being cast out and followed them into the banquet, that is the one whom the Lord knows. Beautifully set up here, we have Peter immediately failing the test of the parable, for which thank heavens, because it means we know that we can get it wrong and come again. This is one of the wonderful things of the Petrine witness, it's about being wrong and coming again and not being let down.

"... What I'd like to suggest is ... that Jesus is preparing his disciples for being awake. Being awake means constantly learning how to train your eyes on the moment when the Lord arrives. And the Lord arrives in one being cast out, and it's in our reaching out to and accompanying that person that we find ourselves going into the wedding feast. ... You know that the one is coming when you see the 'being handed over', you see the ones being cast out, and I think that this is one of the extraordinary things for which our Lord is preparing us, that after the time of the collapse of the temple - when finally the sacrificial system was undone, when the fakeness, if you like, of ordinary human sacrificial systems was finally revealed to be what it was - after that nothing will ever be clear again in the same way.

"Our learning what is good, how to be on the side of the good, how to allow ourselves to be made good, all of that is going to be shown as we find ourselves all through the process of learning to see the one who is being handed over, the one who is being cast out. And it's as our eyes are trained to that, that we are finding ourselves on the inside of the light of the Gospel.

"It's actually a thrilling reality rather than a morbid one, it's incredibly alive-making, but it's lifelong, there's no amount of, “Well I guess I know what this is about so I'll just hang around and then I'll be able to make the right decision at the moment I'm sure.“ No, we won't. It's only as we allow ourselves to be trained constantly into seeing the one who's being carried away that we will be able to see the one who is arriving in the midst of all the chaos, confusion - all the fake goodness, all the growling sacred noises, all of that which Jesus has exposed for us - it's only in the midst of all that that we'll be able to see.

"I always remember the tale of Andreas Schmidt, I think that's his name, who was a low-ranking German soldier who became aware that part of his job was to escort trains with Jewish passengers bound for 'reestablishment' in Eastern Europe, and after a fairly short time he became aware of what they were really for. And, unlike all the others in his platoon, for some reason he saw what was going on and he knew that it was better to be dead than to be taking part in that. He saw the arrival of the bridegroom. And he spent the next three months trying to hide Jewish people, hiding them in the forest. He was eventually caught by the Gestapo and killed. And who is greater in the Kingdom of Heaven than he, because his eyes were trained and he saw the arrival of the bridegroom, and he went in to the wedding feast. This I think is what we're being invited to do."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 32 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IT0fLg_udk)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper27a/]

From the Lectionary for 5 November 2023 (All Saints Day, Year A)

Revelation 7:9-10, 13-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”
...

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

1 John 3:1-3 (NRSV Updated Edition)

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Matthew 5:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

~

"There is good prima facie reason... to think that the subversion of the apocalyptic imagination by what I have called Jesus' “eschatological” imagination is something proper to Jesus rather than something invented by a bewildered primitive community in the face of the indefinite postponement of the Day. The prima facie evidence deepens somewhat when we discover that at the root of Jesus' subversion of these dualities we always find what I have earlier called the intelligence of the victim.

"Jesus provides a prophetic criterion in terms of realizable ethical demands at the base of his subversion of these dualities; the social duality is recast in terms of the victim, so that the victim becomes the criterion for whether one is a sheep or a goat (Matt. 25) or for being a neighbour (the Good Samaritan, Luke 10); it is victims and the precariously placed who are to be at the center of the new victim people of whom the kingdom of God that is coming into being (the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5-6).

"It can scarcely be surprising that this insistence, more in the line of the prophetic imagination than in that of the apocalyptic imagination, comes to be also subversive of the temporal and cosmic dualities. Thus the crucified and risen forgiving victim becomes himself the presence of the kingdom in the here and now. It is this that is being claimed in the “realized eschatology” of John [eg. John 3:14-15, where it is in the exaltation of the Son of man on the Cross that 'eschatologically' irrupts into human history]: that the victim is the judge as victim and that passing into eternal life is related precisely to the criterion of the victim.

"The same is shown in the heavenly liturgy of the Apocalypse: the central criterion, around which the eternal liturgy revolves, and thus the principle of continuity between this life and the next, is the slaughtered lamb, the heavenly victim."

James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pg. 217

~

"[All Saints] is a wonderful feast for us to celebrate [on the website] Praying Eucharistically, because whereas every time we pray eucharistically we are making ourselves present to the great rejoicing that is in heaven just there, and make ourselves aware of how that great rejoicing is trying to reach out to us and envelope us, today we celebrate that even more richly because we remember all the brothers and sisters from generations past and present who are already taking part in that great rejoicing and reaching out to us to help us be enveloped, if you like, in that great rejoicing. So it's an even richer sharing in the presence today than normally.

"Before I look at the Gospel texts I'd like to just point out how the two readings which lead up to it, which are so beautifully chosen to fit in with the feast, give us a really key hint to how to read this particular text from St Matthew. The first is from the Book of the Apocalypse we get the vision of those around the throne of the Lamb standing as one slain. First of all, the witnesses from the people of Israel, and then a crowd far greater than can possibly be counted throughout the whole world, out of every tribe, nation, tongue, language, etc etc. In other words, it's really universal, this is something that is true about being human. And then the question of who are these, and the response from the elder: they are these who've come out of the great ordeal, they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Something about the presence of us in heaven is as of people who have come through a great ordeal, have been ground through the mill, being taken through the wringer, if you like. That's how great rejoicing comes into our lives, through this process.

"And in the Epistle from St John as well, we become aware of how it's a process starting from where we are but we don't know who we are to become. We know that as we are taken into purity of heart we will find ourselves like Christ. Again going through a process, not an easy process, but a process authentic, one that brings us into being.

"Okay, having started with that, having started with washing our clothes, if you like, in the blood of the Lamb, let's look at the Lamb speaking these things in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, Matthew is of course extremely savvy. He has Jesus go up a hill. Moses went up a hill, but Moses went up a hill to talk to God and so that God would remain hidden from the people. Jesus goes up the hill and obviously, he turns around and sits down and speaks. And interestingly, the Greek doesn't say “he began to speak,” as our translation does. The Greek says: “and he opened his mouth and taught them” - “opening his mouth he taught them.” In other words, they could see his face. That's already a comment on the difference between the Mosaic teaching, a difference which he'll continue when he says later on “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” Here is the face that can be seen, not like in Deuteronomy where we were told, “You heard the voice but you did not see the form, you did not see the visage.” Here they are seeing the face and the face is speaking to them, not from above in some distant hidden place, but as a teacher at their level, very slightly raised so as to be able to be heard for purely practical reasons.

"So the really interesting thing about this, I want to suggest, is that he's not dictating  norms, he's describing a process of insiderness. He's speaking from inside, showing the kind of insiderness that he is opening up and inviting us to discover ourselves inside this. I just I bring this up because it raises questions about the words which we tend to translate either “happy” or “blessed”. We don't have much other choice in English when translating these words, and yet if you say, “Happy are the poor in heart” or “Happy are the meek” it seems to suggest for most of us a kind of an emotional state, and of course most of those who mourn aren't, as it happens, happy; those of us who are undergoing persecution aren't actually happy while that's going on. And if you say “blessed” it sounds as though it's a pious wish about something very much in the sky, 'pie in the sky', some kind of, “Oh yes it's very blessed to do those things.”

"I'd like to suggest to you a different word, a word which is not at all I should say an attempt to offer an alternative translation. This is definitely a paraphrase, but it's a word which combines happiness without making that an emotional state, and blessedness without making that a distant title, and that's the word “radiant”. “Radiant are the poor in spirit or the poor in heart,“ “Radiant are the meek,” radiant. If you translate that it's worthwhile going through the list yourselves: try the word radiant.

"Why? Because the suggestion precisely is that our Lord is talking about the sort of radiance that is the process of working through these things. And let's remember that each of these beatitudes is a sign of a particular sort of precariousness, it's one element of going through the grind... Radiance is to be found in the process of transfiguring every human pattern of desire from a position of precariousness into a sign of glory, a sign of being possessed by God's visibility. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” is the central one of these of the beatitudes, that's the process. Pure of heart is not the purity of saving yourself from impure things, it's acquiring in the midst of the mill, in the midst of the wringer, a singleness of heart that is able to see God. That's 'look towards God and be radiant' - this is not looking towards God in the sanctuary of the temple, this is as you go through the wringer and find yourself given singleness of heart so you see God."

"Let me make a suggestion here about making this personal. Part of the joy of this feast is taking a little time to stop and think, not of the canonized saints we may have known in our lifetimes, which will inevitably be few, but of the signs that we're aware that there is much sanctity around us, that there have been glimpses of this hard-won radiance in our lives, in other people we've met and who have gone, as we say, to their reward, and that we were aware that something shocking, by comparison with the order of this world, was already radiant in them. We remember with joy and with gratitude those people, and ask that those signs be multiplied in your lives. ... These are the gifts of the saints which are being poured out to encourage, to help, to nourish us on our way."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Solemnity of All Saints" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1_Vy-mUFZo)

[Source of quote from Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/allsaints_a/]

From the Lectionary for 29 October 2023 (Proper 25A)

Matthew 22:34-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

~

"Matthew sets up this passage right at the beginning of Jesus’s teaching ministry. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). What follows are six antitheses explaining his fulfillment of the law, ending with: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:43-45a, 48). I believe that “perfect” — teleios in the Greek, having the sense of completion or meeting a goal — refers back to the fulfillment of the law spoken of in 5:17. The law is fulfilled in the perfection of God’s love that reaches out even to enemies. It is the only perfect kind of love that would empower a person to live into the kingdom of heaven by suffering the violence of one’s enemies.

"One further comment on love in Matthew’s Gospel. I believe it is the measure by which not just individuals but nations are judged. In five weeks we will conclude the Year of Matthew’s Gospel with the end of Jesus’s teaching in Matt 25:31-46. This passage is tragically misread in the context of seeing salvation as individuals going to heaven when they die. In that context, each person is judged by whether they acted in loving service to the least of Jesus’s family. I will argue ... that this is a colossal misreading that ignores what Jesus tells us the passage is about: a judging of the nations. It’s the nations which are sorted as sheep and goats based on whether their politics and economics address the needs of the Jesus’s most vulnerable brothers and sisters — our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. Nations which fail to do so will end up on the scrapheap of history like most others before. In short, the measure of whether a nation succeeds or not — the measure of fulfilling its systems of law — is love."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Opening Comments on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 25A (link in comments below)

~

"What [Jesus] does here is he establishes once again a definitive and unbreakable answer forever: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all with all your strength. He's quoting here from the Book of Deuteronomy, possibly with a reference to the book of Joshua, [chapter] 22, where this is explained in similar terms, and then he's adding to that a commandment from the book of Leviticus, [chapter 19, about love of neighbour. And he's saying that they are similar, that's the key phrase. They cannot be separated: love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable. There is no such thing as loving God if you do not love your neighbour; in as far as you love your neighbour you love God.

"This is an anthropological revolution. Whereas in the previous two answers [in Matthew 22] he'd shown the complete lack of rivalry of God with any form of human worldliness, if you like, whether of power or of marital history, here he brings together God and the human to say that there will henceforth be no difference. In as far as you do it to God, you do it to your neighbour, in as far as you do it to your neighbour, you do it to God. Which he will then explicate more in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, but here he's setting for once and for all time the word that shall never pass away, that any form of dealing with God that does not adhere strictly to the consequences for humans is a fake form of dealing with God. You love God in as far as you love humans; if you say you love God but yet hate your brother you lie, as St John would say later.

"So this is the establishment, and it's an establishment not of something, if you like, that is simply a legal answer... What Jesus is doing is so much more than giving a legal answer; he's revealing the heart of God. The heart of God is passionate about the precarious, the weak, the outsider, the resident, the stranger, the person whom you might ignore. [God is] passionate in love for those people, and it's only as you learn, as I learn, as we learn as humans, to reach out constantly to ever-increasing, if you like, degrees of who is our neighbour that we achieve the heart of God, that we receive the heart of God in us and spread it to others. It's this longing that is at the heart of this, the love of God and of neighbour.

"It's interesting that both here and in Mark's Gospel Jesus just gives the answer: the love of God with love of neighbour. It's only in St. Luke that, if you like, the necessary question is put by the lawyer - which is, “Who is my neighbour?” - inviting Jesus to take it further, which he then does bringing out that it's not only the close neighbour, the insider, but it's the outsider neighbour whom you have to treat as well. In other words, the tendency of this is universal. Ultimately what Jesus is inducting us into is an understanding of being human, such that there should never be an outside other to us, never should be someone who dwells in shame, someone who dwells in precariousness, that God's project of love is towards all of those.

"There is nothing that can ever undo that teaching of God himself in God's temple as a human being saying it is only in as far as you love your neighbour as yourself that you love God. So let's rejoice! For me this Gospel is a matter of rejoicing, it's not so much a question of a legal answer, it's the definitive establishment on earth of an unbreakable principle. We're invited into this adventure of love of God and love of neighbour - how far can we take it?"

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 30 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxrcrbzS7mE)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper25a/]

From the Lectionary for 22 October 2023 (Proper 24A)

Matthew 22:15-22 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.

~

Exegetical Notes

1. v 16, “for you do not regard people with partiality.” The Greek is, 'ou gar blepeis eis prosōpon anthrōpōn', which more literally translates as, “for you do not look upon the face of a man.” The phrase means what the NRSV indicates, but the literal translation is interesting since the episode involves the face of the emperor on a coin.

2. v 17, kēnson, more specifically, a “census tax” paid directly to the emperor, not an ordinary tax. The more general Greek word for “tax” is phoros (used in Luke’s version of this story, Luke 20:22). The census tax might have been more controversial to students of Torah because it’s paid to the emperor using coins with his image on it. Ordinary taxes are covered in the Torah as a common part of life.

3. v 20, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” Why translate eikōn as “head” rather than “image”? Yes, it was probably just the emperor’s head on the coin, but it causes the reader in English to miss the vital connection that I believe Jesus wants us to make: God makes each one of us in God’s image. This coin may bear Caesar’s image, but you and I bear God’s image.

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 24A (link in comments below)

~

"The biblical position represented by Jesus’s famous response in this passage holds human law as separate from God’s sovereignty but doesn’t vacate that sovereignty by too radical of a separation. God’s law, especially as fully revealed in the love of Jesus the Messiah, remains as a prophetic critique of human law. This becomes even more crucial in the fulfillment of prophecy that Jesus brought about: that the fallenness of human law is finally fully revealed as under the power of the sin...

"That’s why the movement of secularism is actually a consequence of the Gospel in the West. Secularism is the corrected worldview which separates everything human from theological justification. Human law is simply human; human politics are simply human; etc. But secularism goes too far to the other extreme from the biblical middle ground if it completely removes all that’s human from any possibility of critique from a transcendent perspective. This is tricky business, because any reassertion of theological perspective that lacks humility can easily collapse back into a false theological justification of the human.

"And that’s why prophetic critique can be more effective if it is offered in terms of anthropological hypothesis - which is once again a benefit of Mimetic Theory. A Christian prophetic stance against the status quo doesn’t have to settle for an authority based solely on, “Because God says so.” Rather, it can offer an analysis of what it means to be more truly human from the perspective of Jesus the Messiah, an hypothesis that becomes part of the conversation on matters of best politics, economics, ethics, and so forth.

"‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’ can thus be understood as an anthropological hypothesis. Jesus asks whose image (eikon) is on the coin. This recalls the Imago Dei, being made in the image of God (Gen 1:26). Yes, it’s a theological statement. But even more so it’s an anthropological statement. In a secular age, the emphasis is on the latter such that it becomes a proposal for understanding what it means to be truly human, or human-at-our-best. It is the ongoing conversation of what it takes to fully flourish as individuals and as a species."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments" on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 24A (link in comments below)

~

"[Jesus is] teaching them about God and God's complete unrivaled being, in the presence of whom idols are as nothing - rulers are not in any sort of rivalry with God - and that therefore the question of what is good is going to have to be worked out by them in obedience, but also aware that following God's commands could put them into trouble eventually. This is the complete response that he's given them with a rabbinical authority.

"So it's then that they say when they heard this they were amazed and they left him and went away. In other words, not only did he sidestep their trap, actually he spoke straight into the midst of what they were asking and actually gave them an answer. I suggested that this wasn't a text about the separation between church and state, and it isn't. It's a text about the unrivaled power of God to do everything. But part of its effect, and one of the reasons why that reply lingers through the ages, and should linger through the ages, ... is that it has set us up in a world which is actually part of the Christian understanding of things, whereby we have learnt to de-divinize all forms of earthly power.

"There is nothing sacred in any of our legal systems. There is nothing sacred in any of our constitutions. They are all to be worked through at a human level, treated as just the human things that they are. In obedience, as far as we can be obedient to them, but then changing them when they need to be changed because they don't reflect the wisdom that shines and brings things into being, which is the command of God.

"In other words, part of the amazing secularization, if you like, of law, which has been one of the results of Christianity, [is that] we do not think of God fundamentally as a lawgiver. The commandments, our oath to God, God's command, is given us in the person of Jesus going up to his death and revealing what is at the base of so much civil and religious law - various forms of scapegoating, vengeance and oppression. [Those things] of course [are] the reverse of the command of God, and our task is always to work, with great freedom and sometimes at great risk, to make sure that our laws are obey-able by those who are seeking to obey our oath to God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 29 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogfiOoBjvvg)

~

1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 (NRSV Updated Edition)

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

"The Spirit is not some amorphous entity that brings ecstatic experience in order to ground faith. Rather, the experience of the Spirit is given for the benefit of the community. Thus one’s experiences of the Risen Christ are not to be seen as ego boosts, as though those who have them are better than those who don’t. The work of the Spirit creates conformation to Christ where experience of the divine, in ecstatic praise, harsh persecution, or the mundane task of labor, all contribute to the formation of the believer into Christ’s image, who is the Image of God."

- Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life (2nd Ed), pg. 258

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quotes, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper24a/]

From the Lectionary for 15 October 2023 (Proper 23A)

Matthew 22:1-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

~

This is a difficult parable, and has been used both as justification for exclusion by Christian groups of those who they believe are not "wearing the right wedding robe," and well as a supporting text for the belief in the eternal conscious torment view of hell in a dualistic afterlife configuration.  I disagree with both of these readings, but, largely I think due to the long history of those interpretations, it is very hard not to read this parable within a dualistic/moralistic framework.

The context of the parable is very important, as it is a continuation of the narrative in Matthew 21 in which Jesus is trying to get the temple priests and Pharisees to change their way of thinking about God and what God wants for God's people, which started with Jesus being questioned about where his authority comes from.

As James Alison points out in his video homily on this passage (see below), there are a number of references in this parable to the immediately preceding 'Parable of the Wicked Tenants' (Matt. 21:33-46): there is a king and a son; the king sends out his servants twice at the beginning of the parable, but both times does not get the hoped-for response, and the second time, as in the previous parable, there is violence against the kings' servants; the king also responds to this in the way his interlocutors had suggested earlier, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death...”  The interesting inversion is that in "The Wicked Tenants" it is the king dealing with the "tenants" on their own territory, as it were, but in "The Wedding Banquet" the king is inviting them into his 'territory'.

The vital clue in interpreting this parable, according to James Alison, is a play on words, or possible two meanings, of an Aramaic word, "mil-lehamma" (that's probably not 100% right, but it's something like that), which can mean "go to war" or "go to feast [literally bread]."  There is a clear basis for this interpretation in the fact that the things the people give excuses for not coming to the banquet closely match the things that men of Israel can be excused for not going to war as presented in Deuteronomy 20.  The parable then becomes a story of people who think that God is calling them to "holy" war, when in fact God is calling them, and all people, to a feast.

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"Jesus is playing with how the call of the wedding and the call to a holy war could be exactly the same thing, and which one you think you're in is going to be tremendously important. ... The chief priests and scribes seemed to have thought of themselves [involved in a holy war] when they regarded the proper response to the killing of the son [in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants] being an act of vengeance. ... But you have to decide what you're which one you're involved in when you come to the reality of the Son coming in, you're going to have to decide whether you're part of a holy war, in which case you're tied up in vengeance, or whether you're being called into the wedding banquet, in which case it's going to be plentifulness, entirely unmerited plentifulness, from here on out.

"Let's have a look at the passage from Zephaniah which is going to be key to this. Here is Zephaniah 1:7-9. “Be silent before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is at hand. The Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests, and on the day of the Lord's sacrifice I will punish the officials and the king's sons and and all who dress themselves in foreign attire on that day. I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill their master's house with violence and fraud.” Now I hope you can see that this is tough stuff for the chief priests and Pharisees, chief priests and scribes, to be hearing in the temple.

"This is how he says it: the king came in to see the guests he noted a man there who was not wearing a robe (so here we have someone in foreign attire) and he said to him friend (the Greek ... means companion and the interesting thing is that it can be either a military companion or a banqueting companion, this is part of the key distinction: are you part of a holy war or are you part of a guest feasting?) how did you get in here without a wedding robe? And he was speechless (you see it in Zephaniah, it says “Be silent before the Lord God,” and remember what Jesus had been doing was putting the chief priests and the scribes in a position where they needed to say by what authority he was doing these things if they wanted to get him to speak but they wouldn't; they were tongue-tied, they were bound by fear) ... so the king said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into outer darkness where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In other words, if you are self-bound into your fear and scandal at the coming in, you will remain bound and scandalized. That's not how you come into the feast.

"Then he says, for many are called but few are chosen, and that's an Aramaicism, Hebrew-ism if you like, for a way of saying being called and being chosen are not the same thing. And he's going back to the account of the two sons who were called at different times, one said yes and didn't, the other said no and did. In other words, the being called is one thing, the finding ourselves chosen, that's actually finding yourselves invited into the wedding banquet. For those who know themselves invited, this is something that is free and wonderful and they know that they're a part of it, they would never be inclined to take revenge. On the contrary, this is what is being set up for them.

"I hope you can see that what Jesus has been doing here has been continuing if you like the previous parable. The murderous tenants have killed the son, the son's wedding banquet is now being opened up by the same king who was the absent landlord before. The previous tenants are now the guests, but they seem to think that they have been called to a war and for that reason they've engaged in perfectly good delaying tactics for not going to war because that's what the book of Deuteronomy allows them to do. They failed to see that they're actually [invited to take part] in a wedding banquet. They can't imagine that this is what is being called, so they've rejected the invitations. And all the others are now being called, all those who didn't think of themselves as having been worthy to be called into the banquet and now are, good and bad alike. Then we get the inspection where the state of stunned silence, scandalized silence, of the ones who were not prepared to decide whether they were there as soldiers in a war, thinking the whole thing was about vengeance, or guests at a wedding banquet who were being taken into the kingdom of God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 28 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdFbR4hpDXU)