From the Lectionary for 27 August 2023 (Proper 16A)

Romans 12:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

~

"In writing to the Romans, Paul admonishes them to follow Abraham out of the idolatrous empire in which they live: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12: 2) And what does this transformed people with renewed minds look like? Paul has just told the Romans that such people present their bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [their] spiritual worship.” (Rom. 12: 1)

"The imperial culture is all about using power to make sacrifices of others for the sake of the Empire. The culture of Christ is all about making a sacrifice of self as did Jesus, so as to make all of our lives an act of self-sacrificial worship. Although emperors always think more highly of themselves than they should, Paul warns us not to think more highly of ourselves than we should, “but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” (Rom. 12: 3) Paul then goes on the enumerate the measures of faith as a distribution of gifts of the Holy Spirit so that each of us makes our bodies living sacrifices of worship in various ways, making up the Body of Christ.

"Being transformed by the renewal of our minds entails a radical makeover. It’s not just a matter of changing one’s mind about what book to read next. Paul is writing about a radical turnaround in one’s attitude to power. The first step is to be very vigilant about the power we happen to have in relation to other people and how we use it. Even if some of us have rather little power we need to be acutely aware of how we use what little we have. Do we try to get an upper hand against other people one way or another rather than looking for ways we can lay down our selves in service to them?"

- Andrew Marr, from blog post titled "The Rock From Which We Are Hewn" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2020/08/20/the-rock-from-which-we-are-hewn)

~

"Romans 12:1-2 opens the ethical section of the letter by placing the image of sacrifice as a rubric over the discussion. It is, therefore, not substitutionary sacrifice that the image has in mind but rather self-dedication to God. Sacrifice is a metaphor for moral self-dedication and not a ruse for shifting responsibility on to a substitute. Thus the logic of substitution has been reversed, and instead of being a device for escaping responsibility, sacrifice is here a metaphor for the acceptance of responsibility before God. The metaphor is based on the “thanksgiving” element in sacrifice as an image of the moral dedication to God that acknowledges the creator as the “other” who constitutes the self by relationship.

"The noetic element is prominent in the passage — such self-sacrifice is reasonable (logikos) and renews the mind (anakainosis tou noos) — and this gives the following exhortation (Rom 12:3-8) — to maintain the proper order in the community — a moral rather than a sacral basis. In the realm of the ['religious'] Sacred, order is the effect of the filtered violence of ritual and prohibition; here it is to be the result of moral discernment by the renewed mind. Its mark is precisely the rational curb on rivalry by the responsible acceptance of the differentiated functions of an ordered society.

"In this Christian community the differentiation that is normally achieved by the threat of the vengeance of the god institutionalized in the law is to be achieved by rational self-restraint (phronein eis to sophronein — Rom 12:3). Therefore, not only the explicit image of sacrifice but also the deep logic of the passage attests the dialectical influence of the logic of the ['religious'] Sacred. The passage is in dialogue with sacrificial logic, correcting it in the light of the Cross, and redescribing sacrifice as self-sacrifice in thanksgiving, and order as the free acceptance of prudential constraints, rather than the fearful observance of divine sanctions."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, pp. 150-151

~

"As death loses its power, so commitment to the flourishing of what is fragile and precarious becomes possible, and our relationship with time changes. ... If time is not your enemy, then what you achieve or don’t achieve ... is secondary, and whatever you have will be for the flourishing of the weak one for as long as it takes, since you know that you will be *found there*. Being on the inside of the life of God looks like being decanted, by a generosity you didn’t know you had in you, into making a rash commitment which makes a nonsense of death, of worry, and of the panic of time, because you know that you want to be found in loving proximity to what is weak and being brought into being. Wanting to be found there is a huge statement of joy at the power and gentleness of One for whom it is the apparently weak and futile things that are going to be enabled to be brought into being. Being given the daring to be able to lose yourself in being found there is recognized as a privilege to be greeted with praise.

"This, I think, is ... what St Paul would describe as “rightly reasoning worship” (Rom 12:1-2). That God is the One who brings into being what is not. And dwelling on the inside of the life of God means being prepared to lose sight of all the apparently important things that are and to give yourself away in extreme gentleness and tenderness towards that which is apparently not, and yet which is being brought into being out of the brink of nothingness by one not ashamed of mingling with the least important of all, one who has nowhere more important to be (1 Cor. 1.22-29)."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pg. 550

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog and quotes from Robert Hamerton-Kelly and James Alison, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper16a/]

From the Lectionary for 20 August 2023 (Proper 15A)

Matthew 15:21-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

~

"There are several clues to this reading. The first is seeing that Matthew might be doing something intentional here by changing Mark’s “Syro-Phoenician” woman to a “Canaanite” woman, which is an anachronistic term in the first century - like calling a modern Norwegian person a Viking. But “Canaanite” fits well to the time of Joshua and his conquest of the Promised Land. Is Matthew’s Jesus reconstituting that conquest?

"... [A] second important clue appears through what comes next in chapter 15 of Matthew’s story of Jesus: healing of Gentile crowds (Matthew tells us they are Gentiles by remarking that “they praised the God of Israel”; Matt. 15:31) and then a repeat of the miraculous feeding, this time with Gentiles. In the first feeding with Jews (14:13-21), there is a hint of reconstitution by the gathering of twelve baskets leftover, for the twelve tribes of Israel. In the second feeding with Gentiles (15:32-38), there are seven baskets leftover. If we look for a similar symbolism of reconstitution, we might look to the time of the “Canaanites.” As the people of Israel stand poised for conquest of that land, Moses says to them:

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” (Deut 7:1-2)

"In the first encounter with the seven nations of “Canaanites,” they are to show no mercy. But Matthew’s Jesus has come to teach them something different, to learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice” (with Matthew’s Jesus twice quoting Hosea 6:6 in Matt. 9:13 and 12:7). ...

"[T]he “Canaanite” woman ... seems to remind Jesus of what the promise to Abraham and Sarah is really all about. She doesn’t begrudge Jesus the fact of his mission with his own people who have lost their way (Jesus himself calling them “lost sheep”). But she knows that if he is successful with his own people in helping them to find their way again, that she will at least receive scraps from their table. For the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham and Sarah is not for Jews to be blessed for their own sake but that they might become a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1-3)."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from discussion on this passage on the Girardian Lectionary page (link below).

~

"And now i wonder whether Jesus isn't actually going to do something much smarter than seems to be the case. He listens to the woman shouting, he hasn't intervened, he hasn't made any determination on whether she's of the demonized or of the prophetic sort. He sees the disciples are fed up he sees they want to get rid of her, so he answers them something which is strange enough - he is playing to their feelings: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That, of course, is what he's been doing, he's been re-enacting Joshua in you know, [crossing] the sea, putting right the things that Joshua hadn't quite completed.

"So ... she's come up and knelt before him. Now please notice, she wasn't there when he told them, “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that was for ... the benefit of the disciples, and I suspect that it's at least as much how they are going to react to all this and what they are going to learn from this that this story is about. But she comes and she kneels before him. So what we're talking about is something very peaceful very respectful saying, “Lord, help me.” And it's a much simpler word: it's not to have mercy on me, which might be drama-queen, it's Lord help me - it's a very simple, very humble word.

"[Jesus] answers, and it's not clear that he's half saying this for the disciples and half saying this for her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house puppies.” The translations will always say “dog.” It's a very special word for little domestic dogs - house puppies. In other words, ... he's making a reference that she might get to the relationship between Israel and the nations. It's recognizing that they're not dogs, they're “house puppies.” They're insiders, there's a certain sense of being an insider, in being one of the nations whom Joshua allowed to stay. So he's saying something, yes to her, but very much in the hearing of his disciples.

"And this is where she gets it right with an extraordinary turnaround of what he's saying, and maybe, as I say, again this is as much for the benefit of the disciples as for anyone else. She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Actually, the word is not crumbs, it's swabs. We have napkins or serviettes with which we clean our mouths after being at a table. Not so in the ancient world, they would use swabs of bread to clean their mouth after eating, then throw the swabs on the floor. And of course the house puppies, the domestic dogs, would love that and would be very grateful. So she's referring not to accidental dropping but to deliberate discarding of something that's a sign of being satisfied and having come to the end of your meal, and therefore there is leftover for the dogs.

"And so she's saying she's taking the image of the house puppies and running with it, and she's running with it in a very elegant way - even the dogs eat the swabs, even the little house puppies eat the swabs that fall from their master's table. In other words, she reveals that she herself is very much on the prophetic side rather than the demonized side. She knows what she's asking, she's asking respectfully, and she's actually playing David back to David's son because she's almost quoting, certainly paraphrasing Psalm 17 [v 14], in the Septuagint version ... “Oh Lord from few things from earth separate them in their lives and with your hidden things their belly was filled they were fed with sons and they left the remains to their infants.” She's playing back: You are the Son of David, this is what David said, rather than treating us as enemies, as those who should be thrown out, you actually fill them. So fill me, let me be one of those who's being fulfilled, and my daughter as well.

"So Jesus is very struck about this, he makes no secret at all that one of the 'house puppies' has spoken up and is beginning to break through, hopefully in the presence of the disciples so they'll get this and they'll remember that he came to the house of Israel, [but] the house of Israel has house puppies also. Israel's 'house puppies' are beginning to come in. It's for the disciples not to have a 'get rid of these people, yeah sort them out and get rid of them' attitude. They're going to have to learn to discover that there are many people like the Syro-Phoenician woman who are going to become insiders in the house of God, because they know who it is who is amongst us and who it is who is setting us free from our co-dependencies, our demonized relationships, our inability to be good and holy by purity and by ritual. In the midst of all of this our Lord is allowing us to be filled and to go away free and whole.."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 20 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBGFTXHTr3c)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper15a/]

From the Lectionary for 13 August 2023 (Proper 14A)

Matthew 14:22-33 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Immediately he made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

~

"Our gospel today continues directly on from last Sunday's gospel where if you remember Jesus was re-enacting the manna and quails in the desert, he was re-enacting Moses, feeding the people but being much more than Moses, being the sign of what Moses had been pointing to. And we continue in exactly the same vein today, but now we move from Moses to Joshua.

"It's all in very fast motion. Today's gospel begins, “Immediately.” Jesus is in a hurry to get his disciples into the Promised Land that they should understand that that's what the purpose of the journey of the People of God through the wilderness was, was to get to the Promised Land. So he makes the disciples immediately, before he even sends the crowds away, makes them get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side. In other words, he's sending 'Joshua and his troops' on ahead into the Promised Land, actually the troops representing the 12 tribes on ahead into the Promised Land.

...

"When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified saying, “It is a ghost!” In other words, their first reaction is to misapprehend what's going on here, because the one walking across the sea is Joshua, who led the people of Israel and the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan dry-footed. ... Here we have Joshua and the Ark itself re-performing the miracle - one greater than Joshua, one who actually is the Ark - re-performing the miracle of the walking across the Jordan. But they of course slightly misget it, think it's a ghost. They are not quite aware that they are re-enacting the second part of the move to the Promised Land.

"And they cried out in fear but immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” This is wonderful, he's quoting something from Isaiah here, ... Isaiah 43, “Do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you.” So this is the Lord confirming to the people who are making the trek into the Promised Land, this is what's going ahead.

...

"Peter kind of half gets the idea right, he half realizes that this is a Joshua thing and therefore he who's the leader ought to be kind of Joshua too, so he wants to see whether he can walk across the river of Jordan dry-footed as well. So he says, if you command me to come to you on the water, saying, yeah I get it, I want to be I want to be your Joshua... All this is entirely unnecessary, Peter's doing this is just, if you like, a fit of enthusiasm which requires him to get out of the boat which is perfectly safely going across the storm. ...

"Our Lord reaches out to him, catches him, saying to him, “You have little faith right now,” and the funny thing is that we all resist, [we] all assume that that means, “Why did you doubt in your walking when you walked on the water?” But maybe it means something richer? “Why did you doubt that I was coming to you in the boat, that the Ark would cross, that the Lord would be with you in the boat as I was before, last time we had this story. You didn't need to get out, I am coming into the boat. The Ark is going in the midst of the people, and I am more than the Ark, I am more than Joshua, and you are going to get to the other side safely and fully. ...

"Again this wonderful realization that it is the Lord, the Lord whose ways are through the waters - this is a quote from Psalm 77: “Your way was through the sea, your path through the mighty waters, yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” And here by the hand of Joshua all of this is brought beautifully to life.

"In Psalm 107, which is actually obviously being quoted here since it actually has the sense of crying out, the disciples crying out to the Lord in their distress. “And bringing them out of their distresses, he makes the storm calm so the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desire haven.”

"So please notice what we're having here is the second part of the trek into the Promised Land, the Lord showing that there is one more than Joshua and that even the manner of following and being the new people doesn't even need a leader, a 'Joshua' style leader. He will be in their midst, all together, and will be carrying them across himself."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 19 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spx7AtFj8Us)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper14a/]

From the Lectionary for 6 August 2023 (Proper 13A)

Isaiah 55:1-3a (NRSV Updated Edition)

Hear, everyone who thirsts;
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
    and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
    listen, so that you may live.

Matthew 14:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Romans 8:35,37-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

~

"[W]hat does it mean to be looked at through eyes that only know abundance, for whom scarcity is simply not a reality, for whom there is always more? Think of the rupture this produces in my patterns of desire! “If you want more, there won’t be enough to go round,” or “There’s no free meal at the end of the universe,” or “Grab what you can before it all runs out,” or just the gloomy depressed “euugh” of disappointment with things, life, and so on not matching up to expectation, the way of being in the world and perceiving everything which the ancient Hebrews referred to as vanity, or futility.

"What does it look like to spend time in the regard of One for whom it is not, as the whole of our capitalist system presupposes, scarcity that leads to abundance by promoting rivalry, which we then bless and call competition? Rather it is a hugely leisured creative abundance that is the underlying reality, and an endless magis, “more,” is always on the way.

"What does it look like to spend time in the regard of one for whom daring and adventure, not fear and caution, underlie the whole project of creation, for whom everything that is is open-ended and pointing to more than itself, and for whom we are invited to share in the Other’s excitement and thrill, to want and to achieve crazy and unimaginable things?

"What is it like to sit in a regard which is bellowing at us “something out of nothing, something out of nothing”? Our pattern of desire says “Unnhh, nothing comes from nothing” and feels sorry for itself. Yet the heart of the difference between atheism and belief in God-who-is-not-one-of-the-gods is not an ideology, but a pattern of desire which thrills to “something out of nothing.”

...

"Well, these terms - deathlessness, abundance, daring and something out of nothing - are just a few of the sorts of phrase by which the Scriptures attempt to nudge our imagination into spending time undergoing a regard that is not the regard of the social other, one which has a wish, a longing, a heart that is for us, much more for us than we are for ourselves, one which we can trust to have our long-term interests at heart."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, p. 422-24

~

"Again here is the difference with the Mosaic story [of the quails in the wilderness] - in the Moses story the quails come, people can't get enough of them ... and a huge number of people die of excess quail eating - but here there is no excess eating, everyone is satisfied and there's a huge amount of fragments left over. And the fragments are collected up in twelve baskets, giving a sign obviously of the twelve tribes of Israel that have been fed by the real Moses, the one who has come to put right what Moses was never quite able to to get right. We'll see that compared a little bit later, Jesus walks across the sea either like Moses or across the Jordan like Joshua, and then we'll get another feeding but this time with the numbers indicating Gentiles.

"So what's going on here? Well the first thing of course is that faced with people in a place of hunger, people who are hungry for a sign, people who hadn't really understood Jesus's teaching in parables, he enacts a sign. He's not only generous in healing the sick but he enacts the sign of Moses, saying. 'Yes, I am the one who is going to bring to fulfilment what Moses was unable to do'. Because of that, he does show the abundance, the utter abundance, of God - nothing is held back. And the prophetic passage that's being fulfilled is exactly the one which we have in our first reading [Isaiah 55:1-3]. ...

"This is, if you like, the definition of something for nothing, something out of nothing, pure abundance, something that can be relied upon. But there's something that goes along with this. In the Isaiah passage it's not only, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread or labour for that which doesn't satisfy?” [but also] “Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; listen so that you may live.” This is a continuous element of Jesus's teaching: not by bread alone but by the word that comes from the mouth of God.

"So every activity becomes a sign of a much richer lesson. Are we going to be able to find ourselves not satisfied with physical feeling alone but beginning to allow ourselves to be satisfied by the sheer abundance and generosity of God - by, if you like, a changing of our mind that comes through listening such that we're able to rest peacefully with each other and with God. This of course will later become a prophecy of the Eucharist and that's how it will be understood over time but for the moment it's this extraordinary sense of there being a richness in the teaching that is even greater than the abundance of the food...

"[A]t the bottom of all this there is an abyssal love, a longing for us in our precariousness, in our weakness, a longing for us to receive a fullness - a fullness that is both physical and of understanding of heart, such that we can learn to rejoice and discover ourselves the loved children of God, who as Paul says, nothing can separate us from."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 18 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxnN89m16Uk)

[Source of quote from James Alison's 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/proper13a/]