From the Lectionary for 25 February 2024 (Lent 2B)

Mark 8:31-38 (NRSV)

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

~

"Vv. 35-37, “life” is a translation of psychē, which can be translated as “soul” or “self,” but is translated as “life” in all four instances in these verses. How do these verses relate to Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”? What if we used “self” in translating these verses?

“For those who want to save their self will lose it, and those who lose their self for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their self? Indeed, what can they give in return for their self?”

"I am reminded of a scene near the beginning of the movie Gandhi, where Gandhi is trying to help others understand nonviolent resistance:

“I am asking you to fight. To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow. But we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice. And it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then, they have my dead body. Not my obedience.”"

- Paul Nuechterlein, Exegetical Note from the Girardian Lectionary page (link below)

~

"Peter, like most of Christendom after him, refuses to accept this clear revisioning of the meaning of Messiah. . . . The problem is that Peter remains loyal to the traditional Messianic script that affirms the “myth of redemptive violence,” in which the hero prevails over the enemy through superior and “righteous” force. With this oldest lie Satan rules history, as nations and peoples invoke God while they destroy their enemies through “just wars” and crusades. Against this is pitted the Human One’s strategy of nonviolence, which understands that the enemy is violence itself.

...

"The cross was not a religious icon in first-century Palestine, nor was “taking up the cross” a metaphor for personal anguish. Crucifixion had only one connotation: It was the vicious form of capital punishment reserved by imperial Rome for political dissidents. Crosses were a common sight when Mark wrote, since there was a Jewish insurrection under way. In contrast to Judean nationalists who were recruiting patriots to “take up the sword” against Rome, Mark’s Jesus invited disciples to “take up the cross.”

"The rhetoric of “self-denial,” in turn, should be understood not in terms of private asceticism but in the context of a political trial. Under interrogation by state security forces, admitting allegiance to “Yahweh’s sovereignty” would result in charges of subversion in a world where Caesar alone claimed lordship. Self-denial is about costly political choices."

- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor; “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pp. 101-2

~

"This is a powerful congregation. We have power by virtue of our education, our relative wealth in the world, our privilege in society, our voice. It can be very tempting - all too tempting - to seek nothing more than charity. Charity is a start, but it can take us to a dangerous place in which we release some portion of our resources in order to get more power. We maintain a death grip on the unjust privilege that makes us wealthy, that gives us the illusion of control, and then we give away just enough to feel generous without seriously compromising our privilege.

"The way of the Cross - Jesus’ way of life - calls us to let go of that. Jesus’ way calls us to be honest about the power we have - both the worldly power we’ve got because of our skin color, our gender, our social class, our education, our birth in the most powerful nation in the world, and the spiritual power we have as a community upon which God has breathed the Spirit - and then to let all of that pour out - “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24) - to empower the poor.

"We are called not only to make sure that the most marginalized have a place at the table, but also to recognize whose table it is. The table around which we gather belongs to Jesus the Christ, who saw, as Peter in this Sunday’s gospel did not, that true power is made perfect in self-giving love, that the way of abundant life leads to the Cross. And the symbol of humanity’s brokenness, of power corrupted to become domination, becomes a sign of peace, and freedom, and life."

- Sarah Dylan Breuer, from a sermon for Lent 2B (https://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2006/03/second_sunday_i.html)

~

"[This is] the central point where the shape of discipleship finally becomes clear [in Mark's Gospel], and what we're going to see from now on is Jesus will now turn his face back to Jerusalem and start heading there. The second half of the Gospel is this long way of the cross, which is designed to teach and prepare the group of disciples to bear witness to how Jesus did it so that they, after the resurrection, would be able to bear witness to us and enable us to enter into that following."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 24th in Ordinary Time 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPJb8x4PU8Q)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein and Ched Myers quotes and link to Sarah Dylan Breuer blog, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent2b/]

From the Lectionary for 18 February 2024 (Lent 1B)

1 Peter 3:18-22 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

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 on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

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.”

~

"The Gospel account is very interesting: “And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.” “Cast” Jesus out into the wilderness. So again we have the Spirit doing things which we don't normally associate with the Spirit. But here, what is the Spirit doing? The Spirit is causing Jesus to re-enact Adam. Adam was cast out, driven out - the Greek verb is almost exactly the same - of the garden, after he'd failed the testing from Satan. He failed. But here Jesus is driven out, so he undergoes the expulsion first and then he's going to live into the period of the garden so as to become Adam, and he's going to be getting right what Adam got wrong. That's very much what's in the background here, a little hint of that. And what is ... the link between this wilderness and the expulsion? Well, the wilderness is the route back and it's the place of sifting so that the one coming back can be sifted through from all the things that caused them to be remained outside.

...

"So here, what we have, is Jesus going through the being sifted on behalf of all of us, on behalf of Adam, on behalf of the people of Israel, on behalf of the whole of humanity along with Noah - is going through all of this being sifted so that he is able not just to receive the Word but to be the Word, which is what he is to be. He is to be the Word, and it's him going to be speaking that into being, and revealing through the whole of his life, being shown that he is the Holy One of God, the actual internal logic and structure of creation. That's what hinted at in these stories.

"St Peter talks about this in the same way... He refers to [the flood] as a prefiguration of our baptism. Remember that baptism means undergoing the wrath, death in advance so as to be able to live freely and openly as part of a son or daughter, alive in an entirely peaceful, an entirely violence-free creation, one brought into being with that promise of the covenant of peace for humans, for animals, learning how to live together as God's image which was what God commanded Noah to do.

"So, lets just think a little bit about this sifting, because sifting, if you like, is the work of Lent for us...  It's a question of working through all the ways in which we are involved in fight or flight, shame, gossip, violence, throwing out the good one, not trusting the goodness that is before us but complaining and wanting to shrink back into lesser selves. And Lord alone knows how each of us has a history of this, a history of not having been able to stand up and become the human being we are called to be.

"This I think is what Lent is about: us accompanying our Lord as he goes through the sifting that will enable him to become the true Adam, the first High Priest, the one who shares his priesthood and thus his good conscience with us, so that we may have the conscience of sons and daughters of God, being able to step out of the violence, the corruption, the hatred, the depression, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of loss - all the ways in which those things grinds us down - and start to become, instead, the bearers of the Word, the livers of the Word, the reflectors, if you like, the witnesses, of the true dynamic of creation made utterly alive."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the First Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1yAfj-O8mU)

[For discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent1b/]

From the Lectionary for 11 February 2024 (Transfiguration Sunday, Year B)

Mark 9:2-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling bright, such as no one on earth could brighten them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing clearly the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

~

"What is the glory of the Lord?  Is it that Jesus is hugely powerful and could destroy us all if he wanted?  This is how many Christians portray him—like Superman shed of his Clark Kent glasses, business suit and paten leather shoes.  Suddenly he is sporting red and blue tights with a cape and mask and we can see his muscles rippling as he soars through the air faster than a speeding bullet.

"I think Mark is giving us a hint when he tells us that Jesus takes them up the mountain six days after he announced his coming suffering, death and resurrection.  Six days is incomplete and calls for a seventh to complete it.  It’s like saying “Puff the Magic Dragon that lived by the____.  If you know the song you have to say “sea” to complete it.  The same is true of the glory of the Lord.  It starts on the mount of Transfiguration but it reaches its completion and finality somewhere else.  And that place is the hill of Golgotha on the far side of Lent.  Just before Lent begins we go to a high mountain and see Jesus’ glory as he is about to go into the valley of Lent before again ascending on a cross on the other side.  The Cross is where the glory of the Lord is fully seen and finally completed.  The Cross is Jesus’ glory!

"But here is the question.  Was Jesus glorifying himself when he went to the cross?  Was it some sort of slam dunk that had everyone enthralled?  I don’t think so.  When we put Jesus in this context suddenly we see the glory of Jesus not as self promotion but self-giving.  He went to the cross to show us where we are stuck and what we must do to become unstuck.  He did this because he loved us.  He died to teach us to stop killing.

"Now we see that the dazzling one dazzles with his infinite capacity to love us.  We have begun to grasp that there is nothing we can do to prevent him from loving us.  Even if we murder him, he still forgives us and loves us.  This is a white whiter than any bleach on earth can make pure white.  It goes beyond anything we humans know or can do.  His tenderness is absolute and his non-violence has no limit.  This is his glory. His glory finds its completion on the Cross.  The transfigured glory of Jesus is his limitless self-giving.

...

"We know about this!  We are discovering it!  Our love may not be as deep as Jesus’ but we follow him by going as deep as we can.  We know it is sacrificial self-giving that counters and subverts the violent god of this world.  We have learned this from Jesus who modeled it on the Cross and lived it in the world.  When the cloud overshadows the three disciples, the voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, sermon from February 19, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Transfiguration-Listen-to-Him-2012.doc)

~

"Now we come to, really, the center at the middle of Mark's Gospel, Jesus' transfiguration. And we get a key word - beloved - which had also last come just before Jesus went out into the wilderness. At Jesus baptism, he heard a voice which said, “You are my beloved son” - agapetos. And here on the Mount of Transfiguration that is going to be the key word, beloved.

...

"So, then a cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud there comes a voice: “This is my son, the beloved.” - agapetos - “Listen to him.” Okay, so here we have curiously the center of what is expected to be shown to them, this strange mystery of dying and rising, which is what this is supposed to be about, which is what they hadn't understood before and still won't get to understand, and which God is trying to get through to them is about to come into their midst.

"And there's no question  that it refers to the Genesis [story of the command to sacrifice Isaac]. It refers to “your son, your beloved son.” (Gen. 22:2)  Now let's just remember something about the Genesis text... The Genesis text, the sacrifice of Isaac, is a terrible, scandalous text as we have it now, and it requires us to do a good deal of hard work to be able to imagine it as what it actually was, which was deliberately and from the beginning a prophetic text, undoing the world of child sacrifice.

"In it, immediately Abraham is taken out as a test. He sees from afar the place where the sacrifice is going to be. And the place where the sacrifice is going to be here is also going to be the place on which Solomon is going to found the temple. In other words, what does he see in the distance? He sees in the distance the place where a temple based on the sacrifice of lambs instead of humans is going to be set up. In other words, the place where Moses's redemptive lamb religion is going to replace the older religion, in which some people at least thought they were justified in sacrificing their firstborn.

"When Isaac, reasonably enough, noticing that there isn't a victim as he's taken up the hill asks his dad what's going to happen, Abraham says, “God will himself provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son.” God is a third person it's referred to as Elohim. But all of this, of course, is before the Moses revolution in which God is “I AM.” And it's an angel from I AM who, theoretically,  Abraham has never heard of, it says in the book of Exodus quite clearly: by my name, I AM, I did not  prefer to refer to myself to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, I had other names for them. But I AM speaks as it were from Moses's future into Abraham's past and countermands the sacrifice.

"And remember that the very same phrase that I've just recited for you: “God will provide, God himself will provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son,” if it's I AM who's saying that, then it is I AM will provide Myself for sacrifice, the lamb, my son. In other words, it's a prophecy of the One who is going to give himself up as an act of self-providing so that we never have to be involved in the world of sacrifices again. So there's already the hint of that in the I AM, God undoing the Elohim God's instruction.

"And of course, this is part of what is being fulfilled and Jesus is actually the acting out of God giving himself as a lamb, his Son himself to be the sacrifice. This is what Jesus is saying. He's saying, “Yes this is what's going to happen, this is going to be a gift for you. And what your life is going to look like is entering into that  gift, that's what's going to be made possible. Now, how could they have understood this? How can we understand this? it's immensely difficult to understand  that God gave himself a sacrifice to us, undoing our need for sacrifices in order to establish our stability our security and all that. Not because God needed sacrifice, but because we need sacrifices, such is our fear and our dangerousness to each other. And that he's entering into that space to take us out of it, and to enable us.

"“Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” Okay, so the vision that's attempted to complexify what they were about to see vanishes. Now they're left just with a human being - Jesus. “And as they were coming down the mountain he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” In other words: don't attempt to explain all this until this actually happened, then you can find yourselves on the inside. ...

"All of this is about rising from the dead. What [the disciples are] being asked to do, what we're being asked to do, ... is to enter into the dynamic and wonder what it is that God is bringing us to life, what that's going to look like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLRs17xyFqA)

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

From the Lectionary for 4 February 2024 (Epiphany 5B)

Isaiah 40:27-31 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint
    and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted,
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.

Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

~

"[...] God is outside the system. ... This God is the creator “of the ends of the earth.” [Is. 40:28] Not only that, but God “gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless” (Is. 40: 29). Far from creating servants, God serves the creatures God has made and God serves most especially the powerless, like a rabble of slaves in Egypt and an exiled people in Babylon. ...

"This vision of God as one who serves is embodied in Jesus as presented by Mark. Coming from outside the human system of violence, Jesus exorcises those who are possessed by their violent culture. Jesus serves Peter’s mother-in-law by healing her of a fever, thus allowing her to imitate Jesus by serving him, the disciples, and her family. Meanwhile, Jesus goes on to serve the many people who come to be healed of sickness and violence. ...

"Both Isaiah and Mark are showing us that creation is not a one-shot deal. Creation is a continuous process. God renews the strength of those who wait on God so that we can “mount up with wings like eagles.” Jesus uses the same creative power to heal sicknesses and drive away the violence that possesses us.

"The question then is: Will we allow Jesus to bring us out of the exile into which violent human culture has captured us so that we can return to the world God created from the beginning—outside the System—or will we prefer to stay in exile?"

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "Above the Circle of the Earth" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/02/08/above-the-circle-of-the-earth/)

~

"I'd like to bring out and emphasize something which I've mentioned before but which is going to be increasingly important. Mark's gospel presupposes always a spiral reading, and I mean that in [the following] sense. At face value, we are having an account of what happened in Jesus's public life at the very beginning of his ministry before people knew who he was, and a number of significant elements are being shown which were memories of people from the time when they didn't understand who he was, and yet every single one of these is being told by people who knew who he was because they had lived through to the end of the story. So in fact, they always describe these initial moments as if they were, in fact, the things that happened after Jesus had fulfilled his mission.

"So you get this double vision, if you like, that every single passage of Mark, it's something that happened initially and yet it's also something that happened after Jesus's death and resurrection. And we're expected always to notice these two things happening together: the Holy One of God was misrecognized by the unclean spirit [in last week's reading, Mark 1:24], but that's in fact who he was, and what he was doing after his resurrection is being shown lived out here. Which is why at the very end of the Gospel the angel tells the lost and muddled disciples to go back to Galilee where he would show them everything and that's exactly what we're doing here: we're part of the going back to Galilee of the disciples after the resurrection seeing what he's doing so that we know what to do. That's how Mark's Gospel works."

...

"Just in case there's any doubt about this, here we have the resurrection scene suddenly in Galilee: “In the morning while it was still very dark he got up” - 'anastasis' - he “resurrected.” So remember, this is the equivalent of the end, of when the Sabbath comes to an end, the first morning [of the resurrection], when in the Gospel this was the time when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, but he's up already, he's got up. “.. and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed.“ And Mark is no fool: with what verb does he pray? Well, with exactly the same verb as he prayed in Gethsemane in Mark's Gospel. In other words, all of the later events are being concentrated here.

"“And Simon and his companions hunted for him.“ Where have they taken, where has he gone? The same response that the disciples had after the resurrection. “When they found him they said to him everyone is searching for you.“ So the question is: where is he, where is he to be found? Remember [after the resurrection (Mark 16:7)] they have been told by the angel to go back to Galilee. “And he answered: let us go on to the neighboring towns.“ - let's go on, in other words, this is the continuation - “so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.“ What did he come out to do? He came to make repentance possible because the kingdom of heaven had drawn near and what we get is him announcing that at the very beginning of his ministry and the disciples coming back and understanding that that is exactly what it is now their job to do with him: pronouncing his name now. That's what he came out to do ...

"“And he went through Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” In other words, the Holy One of God is making the full holiness of the synagogue and thus the temple alive but also healing the profane - that world where demons, people are bound down by spirits that dehumanize, so both the holiness of God and the humanizing bringing into being of Creation is going on at the same time. What do we do when we preach the Gospel?  We go back to Galilee, and watch and learn and pray to be taken into the same Spirit, so that we may discover what is really holy, and we may bring each other to life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi548DJahSo)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr blog, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany5b/]