From the Lectionary for 28 January 2024 (Epiphany 4B)

1 Corinthians 8:6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Mark 1:21-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

~

"The presence of salvation showed itself especially in the fact that as Jesus proclaimed his message, something actually happened. The effect he had was entirely different from that of other teachers: “for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). His message of salvation became a healing and liberating force. The sick became healthy; the possessed became free, and people on the margins of society experienced his loving attention. It was not the abstract content of what he said, but the total event of teaching, preaching, healing, and caring which affected people."

- Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, pg. 32

~

"Well, what does “as one having authority” mean? It's an odd word because it doesn't appear very often in the Hebrew bible at all, this is a Greek word. And we tend to think of authority in two ways: someone speaks with authority, meaning someone has appointed them, they've said “I hereby name you to go and talk about... you are my authorized agent”; or we have a more charismatic sense of authority, someone speaks with a certain personal gravitas, interior quality, that makes you think they're worth taking seriously. That's the kind of thing we usually mean when we talk about someone who speaks with authority - knows what they're talking about, that sort of thing.

"Okay, well here this is where the passage from Deuteronomy, which is our first reading, is very helpful because authority seems to me actually something more than that in this sphere. ... “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it” [Deut 18: 22]. Now here's what's important about this. We're not talking about guesswork here... No, behind this is the notion that the word of the Lord is creative. It's the Creator who speaks, and if the Lord says something, that is part of bringing into being. The Creator speaks reality into being by his word. So if a prophet is speaking the word of the Lord, that thing will be. ... He's talking about someone whose word is part of the bringing into being of what is. That's the sense of authority that we're talking about here.

"So when people perceive that the one who is speaking is someone who is to do with the bringing into being of what is, they know that something different is amongst them. And that's going to be the key question: Is Jesus the one who is bringing all things into being? That's going to be the question throughout, and here we have if you like this first sense of something quite shocking about the one coming in.

...

"So, at the very beginning of Jesus's ministry, we have him coming in, enacting the new word, the new teaching, the Creator speaking and the power that is the power of the Most High to remove sources of impurity. That's what's going to be acted out, and we get the two responses to it: the people being amazed and curious of what this is; and the evil spirit having too quick an idea of what it is, not yet being ready to see the Holy One of God fulfilling his role so as actually then to destroy all sources of impurity and enable death itself to be conquered, which is going to be the route that he follows."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aYnIJJ-Iu0)

[Source of Raymund Schwager quote, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany4b/]

From the Lectionary for 21 January 2024 (Epiphany 3B)

Jonah 3:1-5 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

Mark 1:14-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

~

"So [Jesus] comes to this place and he proclaims the good news of God. Now this does not mean the good news 'according to God', it means the good news that *is* God. God as good news. This is, if you like, that which is going to take us, all of us, the rest of our lives to unpack: the good news that is God, that God is good news. What does this 'good news-ness' of God ... sound like, what does this look like? How is this lived by any of us? Well, one of the things about it is that the terminology 'the good news' comes from Isaiah. ... There are a number of references [in Isaiah] to ... 'the bearer of good news' and this is something that is absolutely central, because what Jesus is saying is [that it is] this Isaian vision of God as good news that is now being instantiated in your midst, and that I'm telling you about. This is now happening - the good news of God.

"Now, here our Jonah passage, our first reading is actually very helpful because it gives us, if you like, how not to do this. Jonah is a wonderful story because it's someone who is told to go and say something that he doesn't want to say. Why? In the book of Jonah God tells Jonah to go and preach conversion to the people of Nineveh and Jonah really doesn't want to go. Why? Because he knows that if God is sending him to preach the good news to enemy it really means that God likes the people of Nineveh and wants to be able to set them free from all the hardness of heart and difficulty and awfulness of their lives. And he, Jonah, doesn't like them, he really doesn't want the people [to repent], he longs for them to be punished. ... And as he arrives in Nineveh, preaching the word of God, he finds that they were already starting to repent, ... and it says “and they believed God.”

"And here's the thing: what the Hebrews understood and what's difficult for us to understand is that believing in God and being penitent amount to the same thing. Why? Because God likes us. This is the central thing which is difficult. If you like somebody, you long for them to be able to be penitent, you long for them to be able to have their hearts stretched open so they can become more. If you dislike somebody, what you want them to do is to close down evermore, to double down into their hardness of heart and become if you like more and more stuck in ruts that will lead to their self-destruction. If you like someone, they become penitent. If you like someone they're able to relax in your liking them and their hearts are able to be broken and become open and so be able to be stretched into ways of peace, things that are good for them and for each other. This was what Jonah knew: he knew that if God likes someone he helps make you penitent. ...

"So here Jesus is saying, “the good news of God.” The good news of God is: God likes you. He likes us. Therefore he's making it possible for us to become penitent. These two phrases he's saying: “the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.” So he's saying all of that Isaiah stuff about the good news coming in, all of that is being fulfilled. The text of Isaiah is absolutely fundamental ... in terms of the shape of God's good news coming into the world. Jesus is going to be constantly re-enacting and fulfilling Isaiah. ... “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.” So, the time when God is going to be able to reign, thus making it possible for us to live together. This is what is possible for somebody who likes us: humans being able to live peaceable together, collaborating, learning how to help each other. The one who makes that possible is the one who's bearing God's liking of us. That's good news.

"And then he says, “Repent and believe in the good news.” ... The one who's going to make it possible for you to be able to do this is coming in. That in fact is what he, the Son, is going to be doing, [he] is going to make penitence possible for us. That's the whole point of him coming in and going up to his death - not to judge us, but to make it possible for us to see the kind of things we're doing and be forgiven from it, so that we can learn to collaborate without destroying each other. This is the program of someone who likes us: repent and believe the good news. What's the good news? The good news is God, the utterly Living One, the One who is not out to get us, not trying to punish us, not come to judge us, has come to make it possible for us to learn how to live together, for God's kingship to be brought alive amongst us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHWh3-VO1Q)

~

"Let me in conclusion revert to the simple narrative mode of the Gospel. Jesus is the human face of God and he calls us to live with him and allow that cohabitation to reform our social selves into our true selves. Repentance is the leaving behind of the old self; belief is the entrustment to Jesus. Repent, believe and follow me – the old, traditional and true moment of our Christian Gospel.

"This all stands to reason. Many of us know with vivid certainty how the people we loved and lived with made us who we are; more precisely perhaps, not so much that we loved them but that they loved us, loved and continue to love us. I am convinced that the heart of the divine creative grace is the marvellous experience that somebody loves me. I am loved into being. Who can’t see that the saddest most destructive people are those who have never been loved?

"Where can I be sure to find such love to make me me? Use your imagination, meditate on the Gospel, and be with Jesus. Imaginatively being in relationship with him will activate your receptors of his life-giving love. “Jesus loves me, this I know, Because the Bible tells me so.” This is the truth about leadership, and discipleship; all unspoiled human existence, and good citizenship too, must be and is a friendship of love."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on January 25, 2009 (source no longer available online)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany3b/]

From the Lectionary for 14 January 2024 (Epiphany 2B)

John 1:35-51 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

~

"The willingness to look and to see stands at the center of this morning’s story... “Come and see.” ... In fact, it’s shocking to realize all the imagery in the Bible having to do with God not being able to get us to look and really see, to listen and really hear. ... The greatest of [the Hebrew] prophets was Isaiah. And it is the following passage from Isaiah which is quoted as a central piece in all four gospels (Mt. 13:14-15; Mk. 4:12; Lk. 8:10; Jn. 12:40). Isaiah tells the story of his own calling as a prophet, and says,

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” (Isa 6:8-10 NRSV)

"Wow! Isn’t this a strange and shocking passage? It’s as if Isaiah came to see his whole ministry as one that was impossible for people to really see and hear and understand.

"Yet Jesus, too, quotes this passage in all four gospels as a way to say the same thing: that he came to give us a message from God that is nearly impossible for us to hear and see and understand. We look, but what do we see? We listen, but what do we hear? The gospels show how Jesus’ own disciples had a difficult time seeing and hearing; they wouldn’t really start to see and hear until after Jesus rose on Easter and came back to them and graciously forgive them for not hearing and seeing and understanding. Thank God for that forgiveness! And thank God that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them, or we might never have begun to understand!

"So what is it that is so hard for us to hear and see and understand? It has not only taken Jesus’ resurrection to get us disciples to hear and see, but it has continued to take the work of the Holy Spirit through the ages for a few people here and there, to help us to see and hear and understand.

"In this morning’s gospel John begins a theme that is carried throughout his gospel. Jesus says that Nathaniel will come to see even greater things. Later, Jesus will tell his disciples, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12 NRSV) Greater things than Jesus! Because Jesus also promises them the Holy Spirit."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on January 18-19, 1997 (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany2b_1997_ser/)

~

"What I wanted to bring out in this particular Gospel is the intimacy of all this, that what we have in the prologue to John's Gospel and in the feast of the Baptism are these incredibly rich and powerful signs - the Holy One of God, the Lamb of God - coming in, being present, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Lord here, the one who is in fact going to open up the new creation. And yet, what we actually see is all that conducted in this series of very small, very intimate interpersonal relationships with named others, not very significant named others, but real human named others.

"This is not about an idea... let alone an ideology that's being talked about. This is a series of relationships that are being opened up by this presence amongst us, the Holy One of God come down to our level to bring about the fulfilment of creation. And it's at our level, the Holy Spirit has come down, and now seek the Lord while he may be found - when Jesus turns and says, "What do you seek?" [v38] - seek the Lord while he may be found, there's something of the contingency of time.

"And it's this which we're being asked to share in, in ordinary time, to realise that the Lord who may be found can be sought now, can and does speak our names to us and allow us actually to become much more than we could imagine, as we become part of his manifestation into being of the new creation."

- James Alison, from "Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk3ShKH9yRs)

[Source of link to Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany2b/]

From the Lectionary for 7 January 2024 (Epiphany 1B):

Mark 1:4-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

~

"[H]ere we are back to St Mark's Gospel, that incredibly parsimonious word by word detailed account of what's going on, with the hints given to us so we can understand something much much bigger than what appears on the page. Remember we saw the first half of this [passage] in Advent, when we looked at John the Baptist and what he was preaching and announcing. So here he is, he proclaims, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

"Now here's the interesting thing: John sees some sort of continuity between what he himself is announcing and the one who is to fulfil that, so he uses this term, “the one who is more powerful than I.” There's a slight ironic use here by Mark because in fact, the one who is coming is not more powerful than he; it is the Powerful One, the Mighty One. That is the irony that's at work here. John seems to be thinking that it's something that is in some way in continuity with what he's doing, and it is, but so much out of the league, if you like, of what he was about, it's something so much vaster than what he could imagine that is going to happen.

"So he says, “I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Again, it's not at all clear what he meant but what we then get in the baptism of Jesus is the stunning arrival, completely beyond expectation, of the Holy One of God, the Mighty One, the One whom John was pointing to even if stuttering towards a reality that was vastly greater than he could imagine.

...

"[I]t was in the Jordan, so that was the first water symbol that we hear, ... “And just as he was coming up out of the water.” This verb, 'coming up', ... it's a technical term: the priests, in order to be ordained, 'came up' out of the water. That was part of their ordination rite before they were anointed. They're coming up, then the anointing for the ordination. Right here we have the great High Priest, the Holy One of God coming up out of the water. In other words, the real thing is enacting the meaning of priesthood. All priests were understood thereafter to have been resurrected, in fact our word resurrection comes from the Greek 'anastasis' which was the sharing in the opening up of heaven that comes after you have 'come up' out of the water. That was what being a priest was, which is why all Christians by baptism are priests: we share in the open heaven that is possible, ... because we share in the identity of the great High Priest. So that's what's going on just coming up out of the water...

"And he says, and “he saw the heavens torn apart,” ripped open. And this word is very important, it's a 'schizo' in Greek - it's where we get schizophrenic or schizoid - ripped apart, torn, split. And it's a very very key word because it appears in Mark here and at the moment Jesus dies on the cross, when he breathes out his breath and the veil of the temple which was the symbolization of the beginning of materiality was ripped open. In other words, we are starting here outside creation, and what Jesus is doing is coming into creation, fulfilling it, so that finally creation will be definitively fulfilled in his death on the cross when he breathes out his spirit, in other words when he gives the Holy Spirit. There is being set up here, if you like, the entire pattern of what he's about to do. ...

"The word torn apart comes in two absolutely key passages in the Hebrew scriptures one which will have been called mind instantly by us here was when the Israelites were escaping from Egypt, Moses had held out his hand over the sea, a wind from God blew over it and God split the sea, he 'schizo'ed the sea, [and] the spitting of the waters was what enabled the people to pass over. And it was perfectly clear that the mixture, the relationship of the wind to the water, the wind or breath, the spirit, to the water, and the splitting hearken back to Genesis where if you remember the Spirit floated over, hovered over in a 'windy-like' way, the waters. So this is creation language, and the fulfillment of creation language.

"So he saw the Spirit descending like a dove on him, but what's the spirit descending like a dove doing? Well, it brings to mind the hovering, it also brings to mind the waters of Noah. The hovering of the Spirit before creation also brings to mind Noah, where the waters were finally pacified, the terrors of the deep were pacified, after the flood, and the dove was able to settle. So here is the sign in fact that the fulfillment of creation is about to be inaugurated, that it will be safe, that the waters will have no more power, waters of death and destruction (because that's what they signified), the waters of chaos, they will have no more power.

"The one that was hovering over in the beginning is now coming in to creation as the Holy One of God. Jesus will be born, if you like, of the Holy Spirit, which is one of the ways that people refer to him in some of the Patristic texts, but the point is that who he is as the Incarnate Son, as we'll see in just a second, who he is is the Holy One of God who is going to make available the Holy Spirit for all of us. He is going to turn that which was hovering over creation, it's now come into creation, so that the whole principle of creation is going to be able to lived out in human form, and be able to be given to us so that we are no longer run by death, despair, sin, violence, and those things. This is the beginning of that. Here is the Spirit coming in, it's coming in like a dove that was fluttering, that has now found peace. And the fullness and the peacefulness of creation is about to be opened up.

...

"And then [God] says, “with you I am well pleased.” ... [in other words] “my pleasure rests on you, I look at you and, mmm.” This is creation language, this is God who created everything, ... and when he created humans he looked at it and he was very pleased, he saw it was very good. So this is a hint that here we have finally, at last, the definitive Adam, not the confused Adam which we know and are, but the firstborn of all creation, of the Son come into our midst. What we're seeing in Mark's Gospel, in this tiny incredibly compact passage, is the Holy One of God come into our midst in order to live out and make possible the giving to us of the Holy Spirit so that we can be opened out into becoming the new creation."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmiEYDzXDq0)

[For analysis and discussion of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflect.../year-b/epiphany1b/]