From the Lectionary for 31 December 2023 (Christmas 1B)

Luke 2:22-40 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.

~

"I invite you to join me in the Temple. Let us imagine that we are there, ordinary inhabitants of Jerusalem, hanging around for evening prayer, or to meet friends, or whatever. It is just an ordinary day, not a major feast. The Temple is a big and imposing building with its series of courts; there are a variety of sacrifices going on at altars up in front of us, priests doing their stuff with impressive seriousness, other priest-like figures scurrying hither and thither looking as though they know what they are doing, temple guards standing on quite relaxed duty at the various entrances and exits. There are money-changing tables, booths for selling the various animals for sacrifice, and inevitably, a fair smattering of adolescent boys running here and there as messengers, carriers, pick-pockets and so forth.

"There is smoke, there is incense, and there are the smells and the background sounds of cattle, sheep and caged birds. In different places, there are people involved in prayer, by themselves, or in groups, some attending the sacrifices, others apparently making deals with the Almighty with much bobbing and bowing. Over all this, there presides the Holy of Holies. The veil is in place, and all that is going on is going on with some, but not too much, reference to the apparently indifferent gaze of the One who dwells there.

"Someone tugs your sleeve, and points to a small gathering which is happening just out of the corner of your eye. Nothing special. A couple with a baby come in for the rite of Purification. And who’s that coming up now? Oh, that’s old man Simeon – older than Methuselah! He looks so old that he might very well be the High Priest Simeon himself from three hundred years ago – one of the last decent High Priests in Jerusalem. In fact he probably is a real descendant of his. Funny to think that someone like him would be High Priest today if it hadn’t been for the various bits of skulduggery by which the current bunch had co-opted, bought and stolen their hold on office. Anyhow, the couple have got someone proper to do their rite for them. Old Simeon will take the thing seriously.

"Now watch out, crazy Anna has spotted them and is rushing up! Didn’t anyone warn them? She’s older than God and has been around the Temple since before time began. Actually, she’s a survivor from one of those tribes which went into the desert generations ago and didn’t go along with the whole return from Babylon and second Temple project; She thinks that if she stays here day and night, fasting and praying, then God will bring the first Temple back, Ark, Mercy Seat, Fire, Wisdom and all. She makes it clear that she considers the current priestly families to be little more than pretenders, – well she isn’t unique in thinking that, but she has the courage of her convictions, since she actually stays in the Temple to try to make it holy. Good luck to her, and to all whom she pesters!

"Ah, now the Evening Sacrifice is about to start up, let’s turn towards the Holy Place, the dwelling of the Most High, and get on with it. Curious though that as the couple are leaving with their child, both Simeon and Anna, normally a mixture of the cranky, the zealous and the infuriating, look suddenly peaceful, as though something had happened to them. Oh well, funny things go on in the Temple! Maybe they got given a bigger than usual tip for their services. Let’s press forward and join in the chanting which is starting up: “I will gaze on the Lord in the Sanctuary to see His strength and his glory”.

"Well, of course this is not the version of the story we hear in St Luke’s Gospel... My version is the majority report – what a normal passer-by would have noticed that day. We celebrate the minority report: for Luke, anything else that was going on in the Temple on that date was quite irrelevant. We get no mention of it, so we have to supply with our imagination. What we remember is that on that day, Malachi 3:1-4 was fulfilled. God suddenly came into his Temple. But he came in almost offstage, along with the Ark and the Seat of Wisdom who had borne him, and was noticed only by a couple of eccentrics who had been hoping for him in quite specific ways as fitting in with their expectations for how God would show himself to his people, to Jerusalem and to the Temple; expectations which were regarded as indecent pieces of folk-culture by the people who ran the show in the Temple.

"In other words, the shape of the arrival of God on the scene, the God to whose worship the Temple was dedicated, was that of a tiny offstage interruption, scarcely to be noticed. Not even enough for us to talk about the Temple authorities having been blindsided by God, since they remained unaware of what had happened. Only much later would it become clear how completely blindsided they had been.

...

"One of the tell-tale signs of ... the experience of undergoing “I AM” coming towards a human is that thereafter the human becomes aware of the universe tilted on a new axis. ... The centre of stability, of gravity, shifts from the world formed by the desires and struggles of humans, which is only an apparent centre of stability and gravity, and rests on something entirely outside the human world of perception and desire. What appears to be the most ethereal and least solid part of the universe comes to be the real centre of solidity and rooted-ness in being. Part of the authentic nature of the experience of undergoing [the true God] is this Copernican revolution out of human and cultural foundations and security into receiving a centre and a non-grasped-after solidity that was entirely outside of human control and from which all comes to be.

...

"I [want] to make it clear that for us the first and root meaning of reconciliation is not an ethical demand. In the understanding of the Christian faith, it is first of all something which has triumphantly happened in a sphere more real than ours, and which is tilting our universe on a new axis, whether or not we understand it. This means that what we think of as real, as stable and as ordered is not so, and what is real and true and ordered and stable is not what is behind us, but what we can become as we learn to undergo being set free from our imprisonment in what we might call “social order lived defensively”.

...

"If you like, we are being shown that we start off from a skewed reality, that what we call normality is in fact out of kilter, and true reality is much more alive than anything we know; so much so that we need training and new hearts and new eyes to be able to glimpse it along with that gift of being able to relax into spaciousness and being held by a power greater and more trustable than our own, which we call the gift of faith.

"Well, this I hope gives us a slightly different perspective on how we might come to be involved in and practice reconciliation. Because it means that our starting place is not, in the case of any of us, that of good people who are going to do something good. Our starting place is that of people who are undergoing being forgiven, ... knowing that the reality we are leaving is futile, but not yet gifted with the heart and eyes of the diamond-bright aliveness that is coming to be.

"And this means that there is no beginning of reconciliation amongst us that is not the first inklings of a learning of an entirely new way of being together, by people who are accomplices in war and who are undergoing being forgiven as their necessary induction into the real. Forgiveness is not something which is in the first instance a moral imperative. Forgiveness is the shape of being inducted into the real in the case of all of us human creatures who, basically good, find ourselves inextricably caught up in an addiction to being less than ourselves.

...

"This is what is surprising: that we have no access to being created which doesn’t pass through our allowing ourselves to be reconciled. And being created is adventure, delight, and irresponsibility, since we aren’t in charge; it is lightness of spirit, undeserved security, luck and fortune. And along with this, as we allow ourselves to be stretched into this spaciousness, there comes a greatness of heart, a magnanimity that is playful, because trusting, since we have discovered, rather despite ourselves, that there is no greater victory than the mutual enrichment of those who are not frightened of losing themselves in the other, but who know that on the flourishing of the other depends their own capacity to be and to enjoy what they really are on their way to being, with all their heart."

- James Alison, "Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the Underside" (http://jamesalison.com/blindsided-by-god/)

[For analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/xmas1b/]

From the Lectionary for 24 December 2023 (Advent 4B)

Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

~

"The mystery is that Jesus did not come into the world to compete with Caesar Augustus the way he competed against Brutus and Mark Antony or David competed with Saul. Jesus came to preach and live a totally different way of living than the way of Empire, a way not based on violent competition but on mutual support. Rather than inflict violence in humanity’s never-ending civil war, Jesus took the whole violence of all empires in all times on himself in the place of all those who have been and ever will be victims of Empire."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), blog post from 21 Dec 2017 (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2017/12/22/the-throne-of-david-part-two/)

~

"When it we read on Christmas night the shepherds in the field being the first to hear and being told to go to see this sign given in the house of David, [we see that] God took the shepherd boy [David] and now he's going to come back announced and understood by shepherds. This is the lowliness of God, and God's, if you like, rejection of power ... [This is] the mystery of the coming in of the Lord, the Lord who is going to come in himself is going to be shown slowly and off stage, not in any of the expected places.

...

"There's this little phrase which I think we vastly underestimate: “But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” ... I want to bring out that the [Greek] word is actually a very very strong word, it means 'mega perturbed'. ... [T]ypically the place where [the word] 'troubled' comes up [elsewhere] is in relation to wrath. [For example] in 2nd Samuel there is a hymn which describes the earth being “troubled at the wrath of the Lord coming in,” the earth and the heavens actually being being perturbed in this way. It's the sign, it's how you react when wrath is upon you, that's the sense of trouble: what wrathful thing is going on here?

"You can imagine here is a young girl and the first reaction to the arrival of an angel is, “Wrath is upon me! How, oh what's going to go on, what's going to go on here?” So it says she tried to work out what on earth might be going on, this is a terrifying first reaction. So it's scarcely surprising, the very first thing that the angel has to say is “Do not be afraid!” And this is a vital part of the gospel. It's the difference between the expectation that the coming in of the Lord was going to be in some sense a wrathful coming in, a shaking of the earth in terror at the arrival of the lord, the king, and the angel saying, actually it's not going to be like that.

...

"Well, any normal maiden suddenly informed that she's going to bear a son will have had a good deal of reason to have been profoundly afraid of wrath. This is what happens if you are an unwed mother in an honor society, where these things can be taken to death very very quickly. This is it's extremely difficult for someone to learn that they're going to become, in the midst of all this potential for wrath, a positive vessel of God's favour and love.

...

"Just a word here about Son, “It will be called the Son of the Most High,” because when we think of the word 'son' we also think of the word father or mother, two separate persons. There's the father and the mother and then there is the son. But in the understanding of God it's understood that the Son of God is God's self. The Son of God is God's self manifest in human form. We would say manifest as a human. In other words, it's not some distant relative of the Most High, it is the Most High in person, is what we would say. That is what is going to come here, that's what the birth of the Son means: it means the human manifestation in real presence of the self of the Most High.

...

"Mary answers quite sensibly, “How can this be since I do not know man.” She wants to understand what's going on here. And the reply is to say no you are about to become the holy place of God. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you." This is how the power of the Most High was over the tabernacle. [The angel is saying,] “You are about to become the Holy of Holies. You are effectively the Ark of the Covenant,” and that is exactly how Elizabeth her cousin would greet her when she went to visit a few days later.

"So this is what we're being prepared for: the coming into the world of the Son, God's very self, in the Holy Place. And the virgin being taught to discover this is who she is called to be."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuLnfMol90)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent4b/]

"It is difficult to accept change in our circumstances or our life. Moving, death, estrangement from those we previously loved and cherished, a new job, economic conditions, health issues, political situations, all of these and many more examples create fear and tension. We adapt quickly to the status quo and wish to remain there.

"Change is part of life, yet we seek ways to avoid it or ameliorate it or stop it from happening altogether. Those who study change and its effects have noted that too much change causes undue stress, but too little change also causes stress.

"We are made to change, created to experience change. The universe itself is constantly changing. In physics, quantum mechanics observes change taking place all the time at every level of the universe. People change too. We grow from infant to old age and note all the changes in between. As a species we have changed. We evolved from single celled organisms to become the dominant species on the planet. In short, life is all about change and adaptation.

"Theology too changes as does the church. Christianity is a religion of change. There has never been a period in the 2,000 years of church history where some change was not occurring. Dip into any century, era or epoch, and one finds some thinker, theologian, nun, monk, priest or lay person who is reconsidering the gospel.

"Yet is it not the case that Scripture says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)?  If Jesus does not change why is it that theology and church seem to constantly change?

"Like the speed of light in Einstein’s theory of relativity, Jesus has been Christianity’s single bearing, that which everything else could be measured against and by. Jesus is the singularity of all Christian reality. So why do we expect our theology to remain unchanging? Why do we seek some form of absolute, whether in a book or a creed or a dogma or a theology?

"Our problem is that we have failed to recognize that our understanding of Jesus is always changing. One cannot read the many studies of Jesus written in the past 300 years and not be aware of two tendencies. The first was pointed out by Albert Schweitzer: we have a tendency to make Jesus in our own cultural image. The ‘liberal lives of Jesus’ of 19th century German biblical scholarship all looked suspiciously like the bourgeois citizen with rarified ethical ideals.

"There is another tendency we have though when it comes to Jesus. We tend to subordinate Jesus to our vision or understanding of ‘God.’  We first define God, and then we fit Jesus into that understanding rather than the other way around. We no longer let Jesus change our view of God. When we do this we are fitting a large round peg in a tiny square hole. It just won’t work. Our theologies reflect this problem, and our lives reflect our theologies, our beliefs about God. So we tame Jesus, we domesticate him, we bring him into the orb of our religious paradigm and seek to absorb him, to make him harmless. This, I submit, is the biggest crisis that faces Christianity today.

"Christmas, therefore, is our antidote. Christmas is the time we stop all of our theological speculating and allow ourselves to STOP!  Stop trying to make Jesus fit into our world and recognize that God in Christ, by becoming flesh has fit us into God’s world. The old debates from the 16th-19th centuries about whether the finite could contain the infinite (finitum capax infiniti) are completely reversed for infinity has been revealed to contain the finite (infinitum capax finiti). The baby in the manger is the APOCALYPTIC recovery of the creation. The Christ-child is God’s rescue operation. This is where Word becomes flesh and all flesh is reconciled and transformed. From that day forth, flesh will no longer remain stuck in the status quo of its sin, its violence, its rivalrous behavior, its tendency to create dualisms, in groups and out groups, for in this child, all flesh is redeemed and transformed.

"Christmas is about change, the hope of change, the hope for change. This is why we have four weeks to prepare: for it is our GOD who is coming to us. And he shall be called ‘Emmanuel.’ This God comes to us, to be with us and for us, not against us and over us, but under us as a servant, with us as a friend, and in us as a beneficent transforming teacher and power. This is why we celebrate Jesus’ birth!"

- Michael Hardin, FB post from 19 Dec 2022

(https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/posts/pfbid02jExtow36ioeCuaZVTTpkssRmTC6EWvMSXEwzwhJLGJJybjo63G63RNUF4YDTJz6El)

From the Lectionary for 17 December 2023 (Advent 3B)

Isaiah 61: 1-2; 10-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
    to comfort all who mourn,
...

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
    my whole being shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to spring up before all the nations.

~

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

...

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

~

"The Christmas story we all know and love gives witness to the centrality of Jesus, the Christ.  Every year we put up the manger scene and combine aspects of the story taken from Matthew with dimensions from Luke and act them out in the Christmas pageant.  In this way, we know Jesus is important and the Son of God because of how he came to be born.

"But in Year B we have a problem.  Neither the Gospel of Mark nor the Gospel of John has a Christmas story.  How do we come to know who Jesus is when we can’t use the Christmas story to show his specialness?  Mark and John have no shepherds coming to see the child, no stars leading wise men from the east, no flight into Egypt to escape a jealous and ruthless ruler, no donkey carrying a pregnant teenage mother to a distant ancestral town, and no Joseph being turned away at the door of a crowded Inn.

"The Gospel of John has a different way of showing us who Jesus is.  The writer begins with the witness of one man.  I quote, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”  In the Gospel of John, the first witness to Jesus is John the Baptist and “he came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”  Instead of a mysterious star moving through the heavens and coming to rest over a cradle containing a baby, here we have John the Baptist pointing to Jesus himself as the light.  Two verses before this, in the prologue, using N.T. Wright’s translation, we read, “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  What an Advent message of hope!  “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

"I believe every word of that compound sentence.  Life was and is in him and this life was and is the light of the human race.  He is the light because he shows us the very character of God.  “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”  Contrary to much dark religion in many forms throughout the world, the God revealed by Jesus has no darkness at all.  He is full of life and there is no death in him.  None!"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, from a sermon delivered on December 11, 2011 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Advent3b-2011-Pointing-to-the-Light.doc)

~

"So first of all the place: you remember last time he was in the desert and he was baptizing and here it gets more specific, he was in the place called Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. So that indicates that he put himself outside the Promised Land so as to create a new way into the Promised Land. ... [W]hat's being called to mind is the place where Joshua led the people over the [Jordan]... And it's no wonder therefore that what John the Baptist is doing is clearly creating some sort of new movement, that it's got the authorities rattled.

"Before the gospel tells us about the authorities [being] rattled, it specifies very exactly what John is, and the terms are more meaningful than they might seem: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness to the light.” In the prologue to St. John's gospel we hear about the light was before all things, who is coming into the world.

"Now please remember, the light was the first day of creation. The one who comes in bearing light is the Creator. So to bear witness to the light is very much standing outside if you like the normal historical form of witnessing. He's bearing witness to someone who has been coming in from Creation, the very Son of God, the promised Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, coming into the world. This is the light. So to bear witness to the light means something quite specific.

"Remember that in the Genesis account light and darkness were separated, but here it's light that comes before darkness and the darkness cannot hide it. So [John is] bearing witness to something that is from the beginning, that is from creation, so that all might believe through him. So, in other words, he's bearing witness to the creative light that's coming into the world, and everyone is going to be enlightened by it, or it should be possible for everyone to be enlightened by. He himself was not the light, he makes this quite clear, but he came to testify to the light.

...

"Now, I didn't realize this until recently, but [“I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.”] is apparently a reference to the Levirate law: if a married man died without having offspring his wife was married to his brother so that he could produce offspring for his brother via her. And if he refused to do so, the one who would take up the charge would untie the thong of his sandal. ... So what's John saying here? It's the one who's coming after me, although theoretically I get to marry the person first, it's the one who's coming after me who is the real bridegroom.

"In other words, this is a hidden reference to the coming in of the bridegroom, this bridegroom figure we will see, that it's the bridegroom and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All is being set up to announce the coming in of the one who will open the marriage supper of the Lamb, which is, if you like, the central image of the one coming in that we are going to rejoice in, starting with the hidden birth, the silence surrounding all things before the light comes into the world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_6ED0MSuIo)

[Source of link to Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby sermon, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent3b/]

From the Lectionary for 10 December 2023 (Advent 2B)

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

...

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
    and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

~

Mark 1:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.[1]

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight,’ ”

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

[1] The NRSV Update Edition does not include "Son of God" in the main text but notes that "other ancient authorities add" it. I have included it as it is mentioned by James Alison in his video homily, see below.

~

"It's worthwhile thinking that part of the preparing the way is helping us prepare our imaginations for how that's going to look like that's what we celebrate in Advent. If you're like, allowing our imaginations to be prepared so that we may see the one who is coming in, so we may see the Holy One of God, the one who John the Baptist will later recognize as the Lamb of God, coming in.

...

"So “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Not the good news concerning Jesus Christ, not the good news about Jesus Christ, not the good news preached by Jesus Christ, but the good news that *is* Jesus Christ. That's the meaning of the genitive, and I get the “of” is the good news that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God - immediately there is given that title, a high priestly title, to tell us something about the coming in that's going to happen.

...

"So let's hold on tightly to these things: John symbolizing the Patriarchs; Elijah because of the leather belt; Samson because of the honey; the flight from Egypt because of the locusts; and really challenging the Temple establishment. So next Sunday we'll see how the temple authorities react to this and we'll be able to be taken further into our imagination of the one who is coming in."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJQ6j2qbOIk)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent2b/]

From the Lectionary for 3 December 2023 (Advent 1B)

Mark 13:33-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

~

"[In the discourse starting at Mark 13:3, Jesus has] explained all the forms of, if you like, chaos and catastrophe that are going to be the new normal in the wake of his performing the definitive sacrifice that brings the temple to an end, brings the sacrificial world to an end, [when] there'll be nothing to solve the problems of human violence. [The disciples are] going to be carrying on, and it's going to be very very difficult for them not to be distracted by all these fake sources of meaning, very difficult for them not to be distracted from the presence of the One who is coming, the coming in of the Son of Man.

"So he's preparing them for living in that time. ... In our time, just as for them, so for us, the the threat of being distracted by so much violence, so much fake meaning, being jostled about giving us a sense that something great is about to happen, or not, and yet all of that distracts us from having our eyes trained on the One who is coming in.

...

"First of all was the word going [(v. 34), then] “You do not know when the master will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” Now of course very beautifully Jesus sets up those four times which are going to be very specifically the times at which [the disciples] to whom he is talking does not see the coming of the master in his going, because in the evening Jesus hands himself over to them in the form of the Last Supper, setting up the Eucharist; at midnight while they're all asleep in the garden of Gethsemane ... while they are asleep suddenly Judas arrives and Jesus is handed over, it's the second handing over; then at cockcrow Peter hands over Jesus, Peter betrays Jesus, he denies him in the courtyard of the High Priest; and at dawn the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to the Romans.

"So every single one of the moments of the Son of Man coming, looking in fact exactly like he's going, but a particular sort of going, the sort of going that is a handing over and going out of being: a 'self-giving up out of being'; a 'violent being taken out of being'; a 'being betrayed out of being', a 'being dismissed as part of political convenience going out of being'. In every single one of those the coming looks like a going.

"And guess what? This happens in the few days immediately after Jesus has explained this to those [disciples] which is why it's tremendously important that he then says, “What i say to you I say to all: keep awake.” Why? Because these [disciples] get it wrong! This is the wonderful thing about the gospel - Jesus is setting up his disciples to get it wrong, to fail to perceive the coming. Why? So that they can then bear witness to us of what it looks like to be a failure, so that little by little we may all learn to get it right through failing. This is the wonder of the gospel: it's mercy for screw-ups not correctness for those who want to be right. This is what's being offered here: how we are going to be able, despite our failures, to come back time and again to having our eyes trained on the coming, to be able to see one going out of being.

"So think of what we're celebrating in the Mass as being a calling to mind this glorious failure. Jesus actually is setting up the watchmen to have failed at the very first go, so that we are able to bear witness to that - they're able to bear witness to us and we are then able to continue to bear witness as we gradually with great difficulty learn to be able to see the coming of the Son of Man in his going.

...

"So that is what is going on in Advent: this extraordinary shape of the mercy of God coming into our midst. We're being trained to observe it, to observe and to be taken on board by it, so that we can become living representatives of it. That means working through a whole lot of our projections of anger, of vengeance, of punishment, onto God, because our expectation is of someone who comes in to sort things out... [in] a rough way, [to] punish people. But in fact the one who comes is going to constantly surprise by the failure to be part of vengeance. That is going to be, if you like, the most difficult thing for us to perceive, that's the thing that's most completely going to fox us. So that we receive the mercy at this time of Advent of learning once again that the one who comes, comes in gentleness and precariousness. So that we can perceive his coming and his giving of himself away."

- James Alison, "Homily for the First Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YATO41e51_c)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent1b/]