Romans 8:18-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labour, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
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Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
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"For me this is one of the wonderful parables where Jesus shows that he has what I call 'the intelligence of the victim'. That's to say he knows exactly how victimary thinking works, how it traps us, and how the Kingdom is getting us out of victimization and victimary thinking. First of all, as the tale is told, it describes [that] an enemy comes and sows these things which look just like the real thing. Now, first people's reaction is, 'Oh, I wonder who the enemy is. What should we do, how should we deal with the enemy?' The parable pays no attention to that at all. ... What is it that the enemy has done? The enemy has created a place where things that look like each other are potentially dangerous to each other.
"In other words, if you can create a situation where each of us thinks of ourselves as different from the other, and is on the watch out for how bad that other is, we will constantly be struggling with them. We will know that we are the good and the other bad, and we'll be out to fight them. [But] the more similar we are, the more we'll be inclined to be very careful lest we are destroying ourselves [as we are] destroying the others. In other words, Jesus is saying, “Yep, I can see exactly how fights work and quickly build up rivalry over against each other. This always leads to good versus bad, and you always pre-empt the real thing. The real thing is: be aware that you're all very very similar to each other. You've much much more in common than seems to be the case. Any clever enemy can cause you to fight amongst yourselves and therefore destroy all of you. But what it will look like to be the good fruit will be: the people who didn't judge the difference of the others, but saw themselves as the same as the others, will take time to work out what's going on, will start to bear good fruit over time and will be quite content for any verdict that needs to be made to be left in the hands of someone else.” This is the reverse of victimary thinking it takes a long time for us to stop being worried about who is casting the rivalry amongst us, and actually to get out of being rivals.
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"[W]hat matters [is] that every single one of the points is a way of distracting us from seeking resolution, meaning, who's good and who's bad. Now leave [them in] the hands of another who will do things in his own time in his own way. ... At the very end of Jesus's rather beautiful words, he says the Son of Man will send his angels and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin - that's all 'scandala', all stumbling blocks - and all evildoers. In other words, we have to watch out for 'scandala', the ways in which we obsessively depend on enemies, obstacles, in order to give ourselves identity. It's scandala which turn us into evildoers. And as we watch out for those, let our Lord weed out, as it were, the 'scandala' at the end. 'Now thrown in with the furnace of fire where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth' - that's all that is scandal is, it's locking yourself constantly into weeping and gnashing of teeth, it's something that goes on and on and on. That's what's terrible about obsessive things, you can't get rid of it.
"'But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father' is the quote from the prophet Daniel. These are people who will have been through the grind, who have allowed themselves to have their scandals undone. And as I hope and pray all of us are learning to become sons and daughters, seeing our similarity in our sisters and brothers who 'apparently' are so unlike us but who share with us all the senses of shame and flight from which our Lord came to set us free."
- James Alison, from video "Homily: Sunday 16 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tlm3-ZwzjM)
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"It is very difficult for us to imagine the huge change of perception underway here, but it could be described as the change from a perception of a god in which the deity has a double face, saying “yes, but…” or “yes, and no”, or “yes, if…”, to the perception according to which God only and unconditionally says “yes”. Another way of putting it is as a change from a god who is both good and bad, who loves and who punishes, to a perception of God who is only love, in whom there is no darkness at all. Jesus had begun to teach this to his disciples, but it had been incomprehensible to them until after the resurrection.
"Consider Jesus’ teaching that God makes the sun to shine on good and bad alike, and causes the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. This has the effect of removing God completely from the sphere of reference of our human morality, excluding him from any participation in judging and condemning humans. The same thing happens in the parables: we are not to separate the wheat from the tares (Matt 13:24-30) in this life, because we cannot judge adequately, and God’s judgement has nothing to do with our own."
- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 42-43
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"When we talk about what Jesus came to do, did and is doing in our midst, we are talking about what comes upon us as an alteration of the axis of Creation rather than as a resolution of a moral problem. Our being brought close into the life of God by Jesus living out being a forgiving victim in our midst has this as its effect: that we perceive simultaneously where we used to be heading, into an ever-shrinking world run by revenge, envy and death; and where we are instead finding ourselves drawn: into being forgiven, forgiving, and thus being opened up into true, insider knowledge of creation as it unfolds dynamically."
"I hope you can see the sense of living on the cusp of two realities: creation is referred to as something which has been opened up and which is drawing us in to it with great zest. And at the same time as something which turns out to have been spinning round and turning in on itself in futility, unaware of what it was destined to become. The axis-turning moment, which is the present moment, in which we are living, feels like an upheaval full of suffering, which is in fact an act of childbirth. Through it, the Creator, “I AM” is bringing into being secondary I AMs, sons and daughters, the “gods” we were promised we would be, as our very bodies are drawn into being insider sharers of the life of God."
- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pgs. 493, 502
[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel and Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper11a/]
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