From the Lectionary for 28 May 2023 (Pentecost Sunday, Year A)

Acts 2:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

John 20:19-23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

"Again is this sense of ... undoing of the notion of the Holy Place in the temple, where of course Jews were frightened to go in, as well they should be. No one was allowed in except the High Priest, and the High Priest only with extreme precautions. But so here we have this inversion: in an ordinary house where the disciples are hiding. And guess what? This house turns into the Holy Place in the temple, because “Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'” In other words, the first thing to notice about them is: they're frightened, they're ashamed, they are kind of failures, they've been following someone who turned out to have been killed, they don't know what's going on, they're hiding. The very first sign of his presence is peace.

...

"A second time he says: “Peace be with you.” In other words, his whole appearance, this is the definitive theophany for the Most High in the whole of the scriptures. And unlike all the others, it's not frightening. This is if you like the great shock of the New Testament, that when God finally does turn up, God is not frightening.

...

"When he had said this, he breathed into them. And I changed the translation. The translation said, “breathed on them,” but it's the same verb as was used in Genesis when our Lord breathes into Adam's nostrils to give him life, exactly the same verb. So it seems to me better that it be translated “breathed into” here because that's what he's doing: he's creating the new Adam. And says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Which means, strangely: now be insiders in the life of God.

"“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” And of course, alas because we tend to be moralists and so on and so forth, this very easily becomes a matter of priests forgiving other people's sins and so on and so forth. It means so much more than that. This is a new creation we're talking about. What it means is that we are being invited to be insiders in God's opening up of creation, making it a much much bigger, healthier space. And he's giving the power for this to happen to *us*. In other words, this is going to be a human endeavour. Now it says: you know, in as far as you open it up, in as far as you let go of the things that bind down and open it up - in other words, forgive sins and they'll be forgiven; those you don't, they won't.

"In other words, there's no extra outside, you know, deus ex machina [ie. God coming out of the sky] figure coming to sort things out. No, it's up to you. I have done the whole of this so as to make you insiders in the creative act of God, as humans - with your intelligences, with your foibles, with your failures. It is you who are going be able to do this. This is one of the most astounding things that anybody could possibly have heard: that God would turn up and say: now be participators in the inside of my life, and you are going to be, if you like, its bearers. I want you to take charge of opening up creation.

"Please understand that this is not creation in some, let's say, historical sense of something that happened a long time ago. He is saying: no, that which is real, that which is of God, that which is truthful, it's actually a reality we're talking about. You are opening up reality. You're going to be conscious participants on the inside of opening up reality. And this is going to be a human-centered exercise. That's what I find astounding about this.

"We think of the Holy Spirit, we listen to the imagery from Luke, we read the passage here and the sense that we are being with something incredibly gentle, a breath into us. Of course, you're welcome to the more pictorial imagery of Luke, but ultimately it's the same thing: this incredible gentle breath within us which turns us into insiders, into the life of God. And means that at this very very intimate personal level, we are being invited as an act of extreme gentleness, intimate gentleness, to be co-discoverers of the real, the truth, of the trust. What actually the life of God is really like, life of God and reality, everything that is real. It is the Creator Spirit who is making us as part of reality, open up part of reality.

"So much going on here. I just wanted to leave you with this sense of this act of intimate trust that we've been invited to take part in. And as we sit with this to discover what it is to be living inside this new in-between, this life in which we are being made together, intimate participants, sharers, builders-up of each other, openers-up of life for each other."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Pentecost Sunday Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_oJDmT09E)

From the Lectionary for 21 May 2023 (Easter 7A)

John 17:1-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

~

"The original Reformation was all about discovering God anew as a God of grace. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Five hundred years of subsequent history has shown those efforts to have largely failed. A God of grace must be a God who is completely nonviolent, and a God who produces true Oneness. As John puts it, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The Reformation never came close to achieving this pinnacle of a nonviolent God. Reformation churches soon promulgated wars and various forms of violence, using God to justify it. It produced the same old kind of oneness based on Us-against-Them ... now formulated as Protestants vs. Catholics.

"Theologically, Protestantism landed squarely with the ultimate dualistic god, who instead of “creating one new humanity in place of the two” (the clear results of a gracious God proclaimed in Eph. 2), proclaims a god who eternally divides humanity into two — believers and unbelievers, the saved and the damned, those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. Instead of seeing in the Crucified God a gracious God who is launching a renewal of creation and healing of humanity, Protestant theology landed with its abhorrent penal substitutionary atonement theory of a wrathful God who sacrifices the Son in order to save a few believing souls for heaven. After a century of World Wars, it’s no wonder that people are fleeing churches in rapidly increasing numbers.

...

"In John 17, Jesus prays “that they may be one as we are one.” Do we realize how much the true God, whose Oneness offers gracious healing to all our human divisions, requires atheism toward all our well-entrenched gods of dualism? To me this is the fundamental issue of coming to true “faith” — faithfulness to Jesus’s Father, the nonviolent God of love. It begs for an anthropology that helps us to more full understand how humanity has become entrenched in experiences of dualistic gods.

...

"Ever since our origins as a species our experience has been that the gods have taught us, commanded us, to think dualistically and to so order our communities and cultures. When the Human One comes along and prays, “May they be one as we are one,” it is not necessarily jolting yet. Our gods have always given Us oneness ... a blessed unity that we maintain against Them. In short, a false dualistic oneness.

"But what happens next after Jesus’s prayer makes all the difference in the world. The Human One lets himself be victim to our sacrifice and then is raised with the a message of forgiveness, not vengeance. He lets himself be pushed out as an outsider, one of Them, to begin breaking down the barriers of Us and Them. His Father and the Spirit of Truth represent a Oneness that transcends the dualisms. There is no longer Us and Them. There is only Us. This is a brand new Oneness. A wholly different God."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Opening Reflections on the Girardian Lectionary page for Easter 7A (link below)

~

"[...] Jesus' real concern is that people should know the Father, not him. At the same time he is aware that he is revealing the Father, and that it is only through him that a real knowledge of the Father is made available. That is: it is only in seeing the pattern of Jesus' life, lived with the intelligence of the victim, that it becomes possible to know the Father, who is revealed only in the casting out. Let me try to make that clearer. The whole process of Jesus life, leading up to and including his death, is what defines who the Father is. This is because the life is lived in obedient response to the Father's love, and is an exact imitation of the Father’s love lived out in the conditions of the human race. The imitation reveals the one imitated. It was Jesus' life and death that made possible the human discovery of who the Father really is.

"So, Jesus makes himself known, not as an end in himself, but strictly as the means of revealing the Father. His famous response to Philip in John 14 says exactly this: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” What Jesus is, he is as revealing the Father. Later on, this is made clearer still when Jesus says, “and this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.” (John 17.3)."

- James Alison, Knowing Jesus, pg. 109

~

"Again, what I want to bring out is this wonderful tabletop intimacy between Jesus talking to his Father in the presence of the disciples and sharing how they are all in this together. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them” [v.10] This is an amazing thing. Jesus is prepared to allow himself to be glorified in us, meaning we are going to become bearers of his glory, witnesses to what God is really all about, witnesses to what the real order of creation ... is, witnesses of course from the moment that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and the power of the realigned creation flows into us.

"... So he's praying that the Holy Spirit come down upon us all, so that we may be kept together in this project of being amazing. Given what fallible, screwed up people we are, [it's] amazing that we are being given the power and strength actually to become part of what the life of God really is, as shown by Jesus, which we find ourselves invited into. So much to think about, so much intimacy to begin to prepare for, as we wait for the Spirit to come upon us at Pentecost."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1MBAHU928)

[Source of quotes by Paul J. Nuechterlein and from James Alison's Knowing Jesus, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter7a/]

From the Lectionary for 14 May 2023 (Easter 6A)

John 14:15-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

~

"Parakleitos, in Greek, is the exact equivalent of advocate or the Latin 'advocatus'. The Paraclete is called on behalf of the prisoner, the victim, to speak in his place and in his name, to act in his defense. The Paraclete is the universal advocate, the chief defender of all innocent victims, the destroyer of every representation of persecution. He is truly the spirit of truth that dissipates the fog of mythology."

- René Girard, “History and the Paraclete,” chapter 15 from The Scapegoat, pg. 207

~

"In today's Gospel which is a direct continuation from last Sunday's, ... Jesus seems to talk about an advocate who is the Spirit of Truth. ... [H]ere's Jesus before he goes his death, explaining to his disciples what's going to happen. He's just told them, as he's told them last time, that because he's going to the Father - meaning: because he's going up to his death, they will be able to do greater things than he. So this is part of his unpacking of that: what is it that will enable them to do greater things than he.

...

"Strangely, the defense counselor is the Spirit of truth [vs 16,17]. Because Jesus has gone to his death, because he has occupied the place of death, of shame, of accusation, of lies, the one who is cast out falsely, what he's going to be able to provide to his disciples, which will enable them to keep his commandments and enabled them to love him, will be the Spirit of truth, which will appear as a defence counsellor. In other words, [the Spirit's] job will be to ward off the lies. It will be establishing the truth, meaning that Jesus' followers will start to be able to live as sons and daughters straightforwardly, becoming themselves in the midst of this very corrupt and violent world.

...

“You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” He will dwell in you. In other words, this Spirit, this angelic presence, is going to be inside us, turning us into Jesus. That's what's being promised. And this is going to happen in the same way that it transforms us into people who hold his commandments and are loved by him. Being loved by him, receiving the Spirit and becoming people who hold his commandments and therefore become witnesses to him - part of the same project.

...

“In a little while the world will no longer see me,”- he's about to be crucified - “but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” ... In other words, it's because I'm going to be in you that you are going to be able to share my life and see that I live. This is an entirely participatory understanding of God and of how we become God's daughters and sons.

...

“They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.“ 'Emphanisō' - I will reveal myself in them or into them, I will 'in-reveal' myself to them, rather suggesting that this spilling out of the Lord's affection and love is not only going to be a series of apparitions, which happened after the resurrection, but much more of the way in which he's going to show himself in us, so that we are able to become the manifestations, the hints of the spilling over of the love of God that makes us not orphans or servants, but friends, sons and daughters, heirs, insiders; those who are working through with the Spirit, the defence of truth that enables creation to open up in the midst of the vanity-stricken and futility-run world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n3IP6_OgYw)

[Source of quote from René Girard's "The Scapegoat", and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter6a/]

From the Lectionary for 7 May 2023 (Easter 5A)

 John 14:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

~

"Christians are saying something essential when they assert that God has been revealed in the figure of Jesus. God is known, no longer unknown, no longer hidden, no longer mysterious. God is fully present in Jesus, not partially present, but fully, completely present as Colossians 2:9 asserts, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” In the fourth century Athanasius, the great proponent of Nicene orthodoxy put it this way: the only difference between the Father and the Son are the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son.’

"A large swath of American Christianity derives its understanding of the character of God by taking all references in the Bible to God and seeking then to delineate certain major characteristics of God. [...M]any popular Christian confessions have a doctrine of God that is like Samsonite luggage: unzip your doctrine of God, put in all of the adjectives and nouns you want, zip it back up and then you have a doctrine of God. This is opposite of the way the early church came to frame its doctrine of God. The early Christians urged people to unzip their theologies, empty out their suitcase and replace it with one article: the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was (and is) the name by whom God is known."

- Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life, pg. 94

~

"To me, the dynamic core of this passage leaps out here in verse 9, not back in verse 6: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Here the irony becomes nearly unbearable (to me at least), as we contrast this statement with the conventional interpretation of verse 6. Jesus says in verse 9 that the invisible God has been made visible in his life. “If you want to know what God is like,” Jesus says, “look at me, my life, my way, my deeds, my character.” And what has that character been? One of exclusion, rejection, constriction, elitism, favoritism, and condemnation? Of course not! Jesus’s way has been compassion, healing, acceptance, forgiveness, inclusion, and love from beginning to end — whether with a visiting-by-night Pharisee, a Samaritan woman, a paralyzed man, a woman caught in adultery, or a man born blind.

"But our conventional interpretation of verse 6 seems to say, “Forget all that. Forget everything you’ve seen in me, the way I’ve lived and treated people, the way I’ve accepted prostitutes and tax collectors, the way I’ve welcomed outsiders and rejects. Forget all that. Believe, instead, that God will reject everyone except people who share your doctrinal viewpoints about me, because I won’t let anyone get to the Father unless they get by me first by joining my new religion.” It makes me want to cry, or groan, or scream.

“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus says, but our conventional interpretation of John 14:6 turns this all upside down: “Reinterpret me in light of your old tribal, chauvinistic, exclusive, elitist views of God and religion. In place of circumcision and dietary laws to exclude the outsiders, now substitute mental markers or belief markers about me.” Once this alternative understanding hits you, once you see it, it’s truly heart-breaking that John 14:6 can be used the way it so commonly is."

- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 223-24

~

"And Phillip ... says to him, “Lord show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.” So the more mystical Greek cultured disciple, ... and Jesus again brings him straight down to earth in a very straightforward way, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?'” In other words, Philip is talking as though the Father is someone else, someone outside, that there is a 'big God' out there who is somehow independent from Jesus. And Jesus is saying, “No. No longer any 'big God' out there. The only access to the Father is through me.

"In other words, it's as you learn to give yourselves into the midst of death, giving yourselves away for others, doing what [Jesus does]. As you are able to stand up for the truth in the midst of all the turbulences of life and not be run by it and not be frightened by it. As you're able to become aware that you are receiving life already in the midst of all this. In that degree you've known the Father already, it is [Jesus]. The only access you have to the Father is in [Jesus]. There is no other 'extra' out there, if there were we would be what is called a 'bi-theistic' religion, a 'duo-theistic' religion, instead of a monotheistic one, but we aren't.

"The wholeness of the Father is revealed in Jesus, there's no extra. And Jesus is pointing this out, “Don't get distracted, it's all at this level, it's by allowing yourselves to be turned into a new brotherhood, sibling-hood, of equals that you are going to discover what it is to share the Father. In other words, it's by becoming me that you're going to discover the Father.

...

"“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” And I think this is one of the most wonderful things, it shows that Jesus is doing exactly what [he's] saying, “Yes I'm going to an occupy that space of death to detoxify it, to remove it's shames so as to make possible for you to be no longer run by fear of it. And because I'm going to do that, it will become possible for you to do greater and more extraordinary and more wonderful things than I. I have opened up the space and you'll be able to occupy it, and because you occupy it you'll be able to run with it and make new things open up, new ways of being, that will be far greater than what I have actually done here.”

"In other words, Jesus knows perfectly well this is not really about him, this is about him losing himself so as to become us, and in doing so opening up the possibility for us to become something so much more than we could imagine. So I ask you to share this joy, the joy of the discovery of the risen Lord in this Easter season, coming back to us and just reminding us what he has been opening up for us, and how much freedom we have to move forward in new and interesting ways."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLES8KoZhI8)

[Source of quote from Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christianity", and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter5a/]