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.

~

"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)

From the Lectionary for 8 October 2023 (Proper 22A)

Matthew 21:33-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
    and it is amazing in our eyes’?

“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

~

"Have you ever wondered why the owner of the vineyard sent his son at all? He had two groups of servants abused and even killed. Why risk your son? I would have sent an army! Wouldn’t you? Throw those bums out! Give ’em what’s coming to them! Jesus even gets the Jewish authorities to say that. He asks them what the owner of the vineyard should do, and they give the answer that all of us would give, based on our usual way of handling authority. ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death,’ they say. Right! You don’t pussy-foot around with petty dictators. You throw them out! You give them a taste of their own medicine!

"But notice that Jesus never gives this answer, nor supports it. Rather, he quotes Psalm 118: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.’ Yes, Lord, it is amazing. You didn’t send an army to crush the infidels; instead, you sent your son to die, and then raised him. You raised him up to new life to offer us the same new life. Help us to understand this kind of authority and power, one which gives life instead of taking it. Help us to live it."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, Wisconsin, October 5-6, 1996

~

"[T]he heavenly Father in his Easter “judgment” acted differently from the master of the vineyard in the parable. Even the murder of his son did not provoke in him a reaction of vengeful retribution, but he sent the risen one back with the message “Peace be with you!” (Luke 24:36; see also John 20:19, 26) to those disciples who at the critical moment had allowed themselves to be drawn into the camp of the opponents of the kingdom of God. The judge’s verdict at Easter was consequently not only a retrospective confirmation of the message of Jesus, but it also contained a completely new element, namely, forgiveness of those who had rejected the offer of pure forgiveness itself and persecuted the Son. Through the Easter message of peace there came a redoubling of that readiness to forgive expressed in the message of the basileia..."

- Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, pp. 135-136

~

"[T]he risen Christ did not come with vengeance against the evil workers in the vineyard. Instead, the risen Christ came in peace with forgiveness. Those experiencing oppression are often scandalized by the notion of forgiveness, but we see in the unforgiving attitude of the Jewish leaders who are the oppressors that forgiveness is even more scandalizing for them. We often overlook how easy it is to hold unforgiving grudges against those people whom we have wronged in some way. The reason that we blame our victims is because accepting forgiveness from the risen Christ implies acceptance of our own wrong doing. No matter how gentle the Lamb of God is, forgiveness is still an accusation, and accepting forgiveness can only be done in a spirit of penitence. Looked at this way, the gift of forgiveness is not necessarily easy to accept."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "Tending God’s Vineyard" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2017/10/06/tending-gods-vineyard/)

~

"[The priests and Pharisees] go along with the vengeful version of [the prophetic writing that the parable is most clearly referencing, The Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard, Isaiah 5:1-7], and with the obvious reading of the stupid tenants [who should have known that the owner would come and destroy them]. But this is the time when there's a pause, and then Jesus says to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?”

"Because of course, if he is the son and heir, and the God who has sent him, the one who set up Israel, is not this vengeful figure, then something entirely different is going on here. He is coming into their midst, allowing himself to be killed, knowing that it's only by occupying the space of death and enabling us to be moved out of that shame, that violence, that fear, that hatred - it's only by occupying that space that we'd actually be able to grow at all.

"If he's done that, then that's the gift that's the wonderful thing. And he's actually pleading on behalf of the wicked tenants, he's saying, “Yep, okay, they were going to do this, but for anyone who's able to accept this as a way of being forgiven that's how you're going to produce the fruits I'm actually giving you. I, the heir, I'm coming in as the one who you are going to kill so that you can have the vineyard. You will be able to produce its fruits. You won't owe any more tithes to the temple, you will be able to produce its fruits. You will be the temple. I will have been the priest, the altar, the sacrifice, all in one so that you can be the new temple.”

"In other words, he's doing something which the temple authorities seem to be unable to imagine..."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 27 in Ordinary Time Year A' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NoiFj8OUp8)

[Source of quote from Raymund Schwager and links to Paul Nuechterlein's sermon and Andrew Marr's blog post, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper22a/]

From the Lectionary for 1 October 2023 (Proper 21A)

Matthew 21:23-32 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him.”

~

"Okay so Jesus is doing something really very subtle, I think, here, because he's asking them to go back into their own experience of what it was like trying to interpret whether a sign is real. It's only in as far as they sit in that experience that they're going to be able to tell whether he Jesus is doing these things with divine authority. You need to go back and think how did we do this when it was John, and here I think there's a point which is in a sense difficult to bring out.

"When we hear the words, “Repent for the kingdom of God is close at hand,” if you're anything like me, we hear this in a 'bully headmaster' mode. In other words, someone is coming along and saying, “You're an awful bunch and unless you repent there is going to be a terrible wrath. It's going to be terrible punishment, but if you go along with what I say and repent then I'll consider to be kind to you.” That's the old moralistic, emotionally blackmailing form of relationship which many of us imagine to exist between God and ourselves.

"And yet, curiously it's that world that Jesus is going to undo, and knows he's undoing, and realizes that John was merely the first step in the undoing of that world. Because how about if “Repent for the kingdom of God is close at hand” is not the bullying word of a headmaster but much more like a friendly invitation to softening of hearts. Because the one who is going to make possible that softening of hearts is coming into your midst, and that's the condition of surviving and getting into the new world that's being born, is having a soft enough heart that you're able to reach out and live and share with other people. And as far as you're able to do that you're going to be on the inside of the new project.

"In as far as you choose not to repent and not to allow yourself to have your heart broken, to allow yourself to understand what you've been caught up in, in as far as you decide not to go that route, then you're exposing yourself to all the wrath that is in fact going to come as the world changes. The world changes precisely because once the kingdom of God has come into the midst of people, immediately all the rules and forms of goodness that used to hold people together - forms of sacrifice, temples, strict rules, all of those - start to be corroded, because we start to learn to live. Those of us who were previously ashamed, we learn to live, creating humanity amidst our shame.

"Those of us who are tax collectors or prostitutes, or the modern equivalents, or any of the equivalents of people who have been considered outsiders and therefore living in shame, once the good news has arrived that we can repent, that our hearts can be softened, we no longer need to be bound by our shame, and that therefore we can reach out and be human to each other. One of the spin-off effects of that is terrible wrath for people who don't get with the show, but it's not the terrible wrath of someone who's threatening in a headmasterly way, it's simply the effect of what happens once sinners are able to get into the kingdom.

"That, I think, is what's going on here. Jesus is saying to them: if you didn't really understand what John was opening up when the old headmaster voice thing was just about possible - and John himself was a bit surprised at the lack of vengeance in the one who was coming, in the one whom he later recognized as the Lamb of God - if John himself had to undergo the change in his understanding of what was coming into their midst, and he was the one who was from God, and you haven't even been able to recognize him, then how are you going to understand the one who is coming into your midst as the one who is going to undo all false goodness and open up the possibility of the kingdom of God being dwelt in by humans."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 26 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHpBJR_qlLI)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper21a/]