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

Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

...

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

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

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

~

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

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 158

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew 25:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

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

...

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

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

~

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew 5:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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