From the Lectionary for 31 March 2024 (Easter Sunday, Year B)

Mark 16:1-8 (NRSV)

Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.

But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”

So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

~

"Mark’s conclusion where the three women who came to the grave run away in fear is so strong that it is enough to make us forget that it is preceded by a ringing proclamation that Jesus has been raised. He has already arrived in Galilee, where he is waiting for them and the disciples. When we remember this proclamation and let it sink in, we realize that this enigmatic ending is not pessimistic or skeptical about the risen life of Jesus, but it is pessimistic and skeptical about the ability of human beings to come to grips with Jesus’ risen life.

"Mark is not unique in saying that the women at the tomb were afraid when they found the tomb empty. All of the Gospel accounts say as much. In fact, the risen Jesus has to tell everyone who sees him not to be afraid once they recognize him (which they usually don’t at first.) What is unique to Mark is that he only says that the women were afraid as they ran off. Matthew, in contrast, says that the women left the tomb quickly with “fear and great joy.” (Mt. 28:8) Moreover, in Matthew, they did tell the disciples.

"What were they afraid of? What are we afraid of? Usually fear is our response to a threat. If I think a big dog might bite me, I am afraid of it. If someone aims a machine gun at me, I am afraid for my life. But what about Jesus, who never bit anybody or fired a machine gun? Well, we can be afraid of having our understanding of the world turned upside down so that it feels like the earthquake in Matthew, and that is precisely what the Resurrection does. With Easter well-integrated into our yearly cycle of Christian worship, it can seem to be business as usual, but that is an illusion. The great value of Mark’s blunt proclamation followed by women running off in fear is that it reminds us that the Resurrection is not business as usual; it is the bankruptcy of everything we thought kept us in the business of life.

"But the Resurrection is a good thing, isn’t it? What is there to be afraid of? If the Resurrection is just a happy ending to a story we celebrate and then move on to the business of living, then the Resurrection isn’t much to worry about. But then it isn’t much to celebrate, either. There are other excuses for having a party. The women ran away from the tomb, not to have a party, but to get away from what had just broken apart their lives as they understood them.

"Remember, in Mark’s Gospel, nobody understood Jesus. And the misunderstandings of him only got worse the more Jesus healed people and taught them, until the story ended with Jesus hanging on a cross. So, how could the women or the disciples understand what was happening to them when they were told that Jesus had been raised from the dead? Maybe the disciples, maybe even the women who remained faithful to the end in tending to Jesus’ body, were relieved that the man they did not understand was gone. At least they could understand grief and resentment over what had happened. But Jesus wasn’t gone. They were going to have to go back to Galilee, where the whole story of Mark’s Gospel started, and try again without the benefit of grief and resentment.

"Being sent back to the beginning suggests that God was giving them, and us, a second chance. They and we have the advantage of knowing the end of the story, and we can use that as a key to understanding what led up to it. We have learned that the world was broken apart by a God who would choose to die on a cross rather than start a violent revolution. But that God remains alive in the face of such an appalling event, and thus is a God who remains alive in the appalling events we face today. Worse than that, Jesus has broken the cycle of resentment and rage that, though painful, was tight and cozy and predictable. This means we have to redefine the ways we relate to one another. Worse yet, we are threatened with the challenge of life that just isn’t going to let up now that death is broken apart. Let us also go back to Galilee and see what else we can find."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, pp. 137-38

~

"Nothing in the phrasing of the texts of the New Testament is accidental, and it seems to me that in the story of Sarah we have the reference which gives the context for the Marcan account of the frightened women.[1] The stone put aside and the absence of the corpse were not in the first instance a motive for rejoicing, but for terror. Terror because what had happened was quite outside anything that could be expected. Beside this, the possibility of the birth of a child to an aged lady is a mere nothing. Terror because now there was no security, no rules, nothing normal could be trusted in. And worse, terror because everything difficult and frightening which Jesus had taught had to begin to come about: he went before them, as he had told them.

"It seems to me that here we have the most appropriate place from which to start our examination of hope. I want to focus on this because there is nothing pretty about Christian hope. Whatever Christian hope is, it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 161

[1] I owe this insight, as many others, to J. D. M. Derrett, who points it out (with acknowledgement of his own source) in the prologue to his work "The Victim: The Johannine Passion Narrative Re-examined" (Shipston-under-Stour: Drinkwater, 1993)

~

"“And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” quoting Sarah, who was afraid after she had heard the promise that she would become a mother. At first she laughed, then she was afraid. Because it meant that the world was opening up, something new was going to happen, there isn't an obvious way forward here. And this is what we celebrate on the Feast of the Resurrection, the arrival finally, in the midst of our history, as the completion of what Jesus had been about to do, as the opening up to us of a beginning, of a new beginning... the opening up of creation, the first day of creation. Such that we find ourselves on the inside of it, starting to make a sense that we aren't yet aware of, and which each of us has to find our way into and bring alive.

"And that's what's being a daughter or a son is, finding our way into this fullness of creation that has been opened up to us, in which all the usual storytelling signs have been turned on their head. That... is for me the genius of Marks' resurrection account. He knows that it's not an ending, it's not even a proper story, it's the condition of possibility of an unimagined story being birthed in our midst by one who has done something for us and is going to be alongside us and with us as we learn to take that forward."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Easter Sunday 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UnAEcdP2hg)

[Source of quotes from Andrew Marr and James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easterb/]

Good Friday 2024

John 19:17-18; 28-30 (NRSV)

And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.

...

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

~

"There’s nothing like a little redemptive violence to bring us all together. So is this the way God works? Is this God’s plan, to become a human being and die, so that God won’t have to kill us instead? Is it God’s prescription to have Jesus suffer for sins he did not commit so God can forgive the sins we do commit?

"That’s the wrong side of the razor’s edge. Jesus was already preaching the forgiveness of sins and forgiving sins before he died. He did not have to wait until after the resurrection to do that. Blood is not acceptable to God as a means of uniting human community or reconciling with God. Christ sheds his own blood to end that way of trying to mend our divisions.

"Jesus’ death isn’t necessary because God has to have innocent blood to solve the guilt equation. Redemptive violence is our equation. Jesus didn’t volunteer to get into God’s justice machine. God volunteered to get into ours. God used our own sin to save us."

- S. Mark Heim, Reflections on Mel Gibson's film “The Passion of the Christ” (no longer available online)

~

"The word sacrifice keeps on popping up in our Eucharistic praying. And some of you have let me know that you find those words difficult. And I want to say, for very good reason. Let me discuss with you a little bit about what is meant, and what is not meant, by the word ‘sacrifice’. 

...

"I’m going to use the example which my mentor, my guru, René Girard, always used when explaining the double meaning, perhaps – two possible sets of meanings behind the word ‘sacrifice’. He always used the story of king Solomon’s judgment of the two prostitutes. You remember the story: two prostitutes, both of them had daughters at the same time, they both lived together. During the night the daughter of one of them died, so the mum quickly swapped babies with the other one; and the other woman, when she woke up, found her baby dead but it wasn’t her baby. So they took the matter to the king for judgement. And the king said: bring me a sword, I will now cut it in half the baby so that you can each have half. Whereupon one of the two women said: that’s splendid, quite right, then we’re both in the same position. And the other one said: no, let the other woman have the baby, I would prefer that the baby lives than that I win.

"Of these two you could use the word ‘sacrifice’ perfectly easily: one woman was prepared to sacrifice the baby to be equal with the other woman, and one woman was prepared to sacrifice her right to the baby in order to allow the child to live. We use the word ‘sacrifice’ for both. But they’re obviously completely incommensurable in meaning, they’re not the same thing at all. One is involving killing something, and the other involves letting go of something, giving something away, for the sake of life.

"Now, it’s only conceivably in the second meaning that we can possibly refer to Jesus’s going up to death as a sacrifice. I should say that it was language with which he was familiar and he was perfectly happy to use. So we shouldn’t be too shy of it. But he was happy to use it precisely because he was bringing it to its fulfilment and actually exploding it from within, because rather than this being the account of us sacrificing someone to God, or – in some particularly terrible notions – God demanding that we sacrifice someone to God, as though God needed bloodlust satisfying or something like that.

"It’s exactly the reverse: God gave himself up to us. We are the angry divinity, if you like, in the picture. And God is giving himself up into our midst, into the midst of violent and sinful humans, precisely so that we can be utterly amazed by the generosity, by the power, by the forgiveness in that act. And so we realize we never need to perform any kind of sacrificial logic ever again. That self-giving up into the midst of us, so as to enable us to live free from the world of sacrifice. That’s what’s called the one true sacrifice.

"... [T]he self-giving of God up to us sinful humans, so that we may be amazed, forgiven, loved, reached at our most violent, and enabled to understand how much we are being let off – that’s the sense, if you like, of the word sacrifice, the same sense as the good mother in the Wisdom of Solomon. The good mother was opening up the possibility for the baby to live. Well, Jesus is opening up the possibility for us to live.

"Now, one might say: well, that’s just what Jesus was doing, what about what we’re doing? Well, our way of sharing in what Jesus was doing is by giving thanks, that’s what the Eucharist is. We start to give thanks and we find ourselves able to share inside that self-giving. Someone who is giving himself to us and enabling us to turn into givers of ourselves away to others, which is why I use the word ‘sacrifice’ very happily when I pray. I’m thinking not of anything that I’m doing; I am thinking of what is being done for me, and with what joy I am going to be turned into someone capable of doing that for others."

- James Alison, from video "Meditation on Sacrifice Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uFK91bdZxw)

[Source of S. Mark Heim quote, and for discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/goodfriday/]

From the Lectionary for 24 March 2024 (Palm Sunday, Year B)

Mark 15:1-15, 21-26, 33-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He answered him, “You say so.” Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.

Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them, and after flogging Jesus he handed him over to be crucified.

...

They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”

...

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Philippians 2:5-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

~

"The hymn in Philippians is... relating [the ancient rite of Atonement (Leviticus 16)] to Jesus' life: especially his road from the Mount of Transfiguration to the Garden of Gethsemani and then to Calvary. Thus, the death on the Cross is seen as being in reality that for which the Temple rite had been a mere dress rehearsal. And, entirely in line with this imagery, Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension, his 'anastasis', is read in this hymn as the successful conclusion of the rite, where, in the setting of the Temple Court, the High Priest 'became' the Name, and was worshipped as such by all present. Only here, it is not a rite, but the real thing, and the power of the allusion is that God, El Elyon, is giving to Jesus the Name that is above every other name - in other words, YHWH.

"So, from now on, the artist formerly known as YHWH is to be known by the name Jesus, because Jesus has successfully and completely instantiated YHWH in materiality and history, such that Creation has now been definitively altered from within.

"The result is that, whereas in the rite of Atonement every knee would bow down in worship at the pronouncing of the Name, and whereas in the Prophet Isaiah it is to YHWH that every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear [Isa. 45:23], it is now established that Jesus the Anointed One is YHWH to the glory of El Elyon, or 'Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father', as our accustomed translation reads.

"It appears, then, that Paul is urging the recipients of his letter who find themselves in conflict with those who frighten them, those who do not accept that Jesus is the Christ, that, in the midst of the conflict, they are to act out the same priestly pattern which we have just seen illustrated, and with which they would have been familiar, giving themselves without fear or self-aggrandisement towards the altar of sacrifice just as Jesus did on his way to being given the Name."

- James Alison, Broken Hearts and New Creations, pp 220-21

~

"[W]e have Mark showing two things happening deliberately, or rather one thing, but with two, if you like, visible names. And the visible names are, on the one hand, Messiah, and on the other hand, King. The question, if you like, that was raised by Jesus coming into Jerusalem in the way he did, fulfilling the Davidic promises was: Are you the son of the Most High? Are you the Anointed One? And of course, it's how Jesus bears witness to that that is going to be key to what goes on in this period.

"So in front of the Jewish authorities that's the question: Are you the Messiah? Are you the Promised One? And of course Jesus answers that in a way that is unmistakably positive. And then there is the question of whether he's a king. With the Romans playing games with the Jews talking about the King of the Jews, rather than the appropriate Jewish title, which would have been 'the King of Israel'. So there's an element of mockery going on by Pilate of the Jews, and the question which the chief priest has asked Jesus on the cross: Are you the Messiah? If you are the king of Israel, come down. That's the bringing together of those two.

"And in the midst of all this, Jesus actually enacting and being the promised priestly king figure, the priest who is performing the sacrifice of the atonement in which he himself is the priest, the sacrifice, the victim, the altar and the king who is being raised up, enthroned, ascended. These two things are happening simultaneously and Jesus is doing them.

...

"And this ends with a centurion saying, “Truly this man was God's son,” when Jesus dies. A little hint of what's going on there: this is at last Adam being recognized, the real Adam having done the real Adam thing. And this is hinted at so subtly by Mark. First of all, it said that it's taken to the place of Golgotha, the place of the skull. This was mythically the place where Adam's skull was buried.

"And then in the kerfuffle with Pilate, there's the question of whether Barabbas or he should be executed. Barabbas, the 'son of the father' [the literal translation of 'bar-abbas'] who was a thief, someone who'd taken something inappropriately. That's the old Adam. Or Jesus, the 'son of the Father' who is going to show what it is to be the man, what it is to be the human being, Adam. And so Jesus, going to the cross, and actually living out the real Adam in his ultimate possibility. ...

"In other words Jesus was doing all this because he believed in the possibility of humans becoming something, of us actually being able to make something of this extraordinary adventure of being human. That in the midst of our lives - our fake news, our fake accounts of things, our insurrections, our robberies, all of that - in the midst of all that he believes in us, that it's actually worth doing something for us, to make it possible for us to become human and sons of God. That is an extraordinary act of love."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Palm Sunday, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4__8DrQRu8)

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

From the Lectionary for 17 March 2024 (Lent 5B)

John 12:20-33 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

~

"After his Gethsemane-like words in John, Jesus says: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John goes on to say: “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (Jn. 12: 32-33). I agree with the many scholars who take this verse and similar ones in John as conflating the cross and resurrection. John abounds in word plays and here John gives us a double meaning to “lifted up.” Jesus was lifted up on the cross and he was lifted up in the resurrection.

"This conflation has the danger of minimizing the reality of Jesus’ death, making it a quick and easy passage to the resurrected life. However, I see a strong tension in the way that John makes the expression “lifted up” do double duty. After being lifted up on the cross, the crucifixion remains an enduring reality even after Jesus is lifted in the resurrection. That is, it is not only the Resurrection but the crucifixion that draws people to Jesus.

"John gives a powerful stress on the victimization of Jesus as the focal point when Jesus says: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” (Jn. 12: 31) The crucifixion judges the persecutors and the resurrection drives out the persecutory mechanism that has ruled the world. It is because, as the author of Hebrews said, Jesus ‘learned obedience through what he suffered,” (Heb. 5) that he has the power to draw us to him. That is to say, the conflation can work both ways. It seems to dilute the experience of Jesus’ death but it also retains the painful death in the glory of the resurrection. This conflation shows how vital both elements are. Jesus was raised up on the cross as a victim of grave social injustice. God raised Jesus to vindicate Jesus and to demonstrate that the crucifixion, a disgrace in the eyes of the persecutors, was in truth the glory of God."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), "On Being Lifted up for Us" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/.../16/on-being-lifted-up-for-us/)

~

"The Glory of Jesus, which is the Glory of God, is the weakness of a young man in the hands of his torturers, a seed dying alone and thus sowing the seeds of myriads of followers and disciples who shall love him and bear the fruits of his love through all time and in every place. His self-giving love and his humble spirit of non-resistance have turned out to be the strongest enduring protest against the violence of this world and the strongest demonstration of the power of love.

[...]

"The message is that the Cross and the Resurrection are inseparable, two sides of one coin, the same things but clearly different life and death – no life without death and no death without life. When John says of the Logos in the first chapter of the Gospel that “we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth (1:14),” the Glory of which he speaks is the Glory of the Cross, and this is the Glory of the expelled Logos of John 1:11, the logos whom the world that he created refuses to receive. The Glory of God in John is the Glory of the expelled Logos, the crucified savior.

"Therefore, the Glory of the Resurrection always remains the Glory of the Cross- the risen one still bears the marks of the cross, of the five wounds or stigmata, in his hands and feet and side respectively. He does not negate or expel the consequences of the world’s violence, but he transforms them, he suffuses the violence that is death with the peace that is life, and he does this by sinking into the darkness under the surface and bearing much fruit."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Glory of the Cross, April 12, 2009 (no longer available online)

~

"He's starting to explain the sense of his forthcoming death and glorification which are to be the same thing [in] John's Gospel - rigorously the same thing. And he then explains what this is going to be like: “those who love their life, lose it and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” I'm going to suggest a very slight variation on translation, just to bring out the sense of what's going on: “those who hold at nought their life in this age, or in this cultural package, will keep it for the age that is coming in - the age of the life of God.”

"”And whoever serves me must follow me and where I am, there will my servant be also.” He's actually talking about what life is going to be like when he is lifted up, both when he's dead and when he's resurrected, when God's name is glorified and people start to become aware that this is how you serve God. He's talking about what it's going to be like to live in the church: it's going to look like being able to give yourself away out of love so as to be able to receive who you are from God. This is going to be the dynamic.

"That's the dynamic of the seed being thrown into the ground so that it yields much fruit, and this is the dynamic into which we will be involved as we do what he does. Us finding ourselves doing it is, in fact, him doing it. He will be present doing it, and that's why “where I am there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.” Time and time again he's doing this. Basically he's saying, “You are going to be me. I'm going to become who I am through you becoming who you are.” That's how his gift works.

[...]

"So then Jesus says: “Now is the judgment of this world,” - now is the crisis, now is the judgment, the turning point, the discernment point of the world - “Now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” And this again appears to be what happens in Leviticus at the rite of atonement: the one standing in for the prince of the angels is cast out, is driven out - the driving out of Azazel, the goat standing in for Azazel. And he's saying that here, this is the pivotal point of creation, the crisis, the judgment, the turning point. This is what's going to happen: I'm going to go to my death, I'm going to offer my death and it's going to be the turning point for the holy creation. After it, the one who orders this cosmos, this cultural world as we know it, will be driven out.

"“And I when I'm lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself.” In other words, whereas before people being together has been made possible by all forms of hatred [against 'the other'] and scapegoating, throwing people out, now I will be able to draw all people to myself: Gentiles, Jews, all people. There will no longer [be] false 'ins and outs', goodness over against others. This is part of what the great sacrifice that I'm to accomplish will achieve.

"[...] This is the end of [Jesus's] public ministry in [the Gospel of] John, where he announces and explains by what kind of death he is about to die. Now he will go into private and discuss things only with his disciples, preparing them intimately for what is to happen, allowing them to become insiders into what he is about. And that of course is what our Lenten journey is, allowing our Lord to turn us into insiders into what he is doing for us, and what he is empowering us to do for others."

- James Alison, Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElO4Mx1shcA)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog and Robert Hamerton-Kelly sermon, and for reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent5b/]

From the Lectionary for 10 March 2024 (Lent 4B)

John 3:14-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

~

"It’s the little words which always take you by surprise. For example, think of the word “so”. We are used to the Greek word [houtōs] being translated “so” when it appears in the phrase “For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life”. The “so” sounds as if it is intensifying the desire, as if it were a psychological description of the depths to which the One who loves is moved ...

"However, [houtōs] can be translated another way, and despite my doubts about whether this translation will have the same public reception, it seems to me to be closer to the mark. This translation treats the word not as a way of making the love intense, but of demonstrating what it looks like: ‘For it was in this way, you see, that God loved the world: that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life’ ...

"With this translation we have no access to a psychological movement in God, seen as underlying the action of giving his only Son. Rather everything that act of love means is made visible in what follows. It is as if we were to paraphrase the verse as follows: “Do you want to know how it became manifest in the world that God loves it? Well, like this: in God’s giving of his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.”

...

"In the first reading we don’t actually learn much about God, other than that God has emotions like ours; and that an example, perhaps an especially outstanding example, of God’s emotive quality would be this act of love. In the second reading, our whole understanding of God, which we have to prune of all our projections concerning God’s emotions or subjectivity, gets to be reconfigured starting only from what God has done. That is to say, it is what has been done which comes to be the criterion for who God is, causing us, bit by bit, completely to revise any other perception we might have of God. It is not a presupposition about God which gets to dictate how we are to understand what has happened."

- James Alison, Broken Hearts and News Creations, pp. 125-127

~

"The second expression that has routinely been misunderstood in this connection is “eternal life.” Here again the widespread and long-lasting assumption that the gospels are there to tell us “how to go to heaven” has determined how people “hear” this phrase.

"Indeed, the word “eternity” in modern English and American has regularly been used not only to point to a “heavenly” destination, but to say something specific about it, namely, that it will be somehow outside time and probably outside space and matter as well. A disembodied, timeless eternity! That is Plato, not the Bible - and it’s a measure of how far Western Christianity has drifted from its moorings that it seldom even realizes the fact.

"Anyway, granted this assumption, when we find the Greek phrase zoe aionios in the gospels (and indeed in the New Testament letters), and when it is regularly translated as “eternal life” or “everlasting life,” people have naturally assumed that this concept of “eternity” is the right way to understand it. “God so loved the world,” reads the famous text in the King James Version of John 3:16, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” There we are, think average Christian readers. This is the biblical promise of a timeless heavenly bliss.

"But it isn’t. In the many places where the phrase zoe aionios appears in the gospels, and in Paul’s letters for that matter, it refers to one aspect of an ancient Jewish belief about how time was divided up. In this viewpoint, there were two “aions” (we sometimes use the word “eon” in that sense): the “Present age,” 'ha-olam hazeh' in Hebrew, and the “age to come,” 'ha-olam ha-ba'. The “age to come,” many ancient Jews believed, would arrive one day to bring God’s justice, peace, and healing to the world as it groaned and toiled within the “present age.”

"You can see Paul, for instance, referring to this idea in Galatians 1:4, where he speaks of Jesus giving himself for our sins “to rescue us from the present evil age.” In other words, Jesus has inaugurated, ushered in, the “age to come.” But there is no sense that this “age to come” is “eternal” in the sense of being outside space, time, and matter. Far from it. The ancient Jews were creational monotheists. For them, God’s great future purpose was not to rescue people out of the world, but to rescue the world itself, people included, from its present state of corruption and decay.

"If we reframe our thinking within this setting, the phrase zoe aionios will refer to “the life of the age,” in other words, “the life of the age to come.” When in Luke the rich young ruler asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (18:18, NRSV), he isn’t asking how to go to heaven when he dies. He is asking about the new world that God is going to usher in, the new era of justice, peace, and freedom God has promised his people. And he is asking, in particular, how he can be sure that when God does all this, he will be part of those who inherit the new world, who share its life. This is why, in my own new translation of the New Testament, Luke 18:18 reads, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit the life of the age to come?” Likewise, John 3:16 ends not with “have everlasting life” (KJV), but “share in the life of God’s new age.”"

- N. T. Wright, How God Became King, pp. 44-45

~

While I cannot disagree with Wright's scholarship, I think the analysis above leaves out an important aspect of 'aionios' ("eternal"), which is that it is not just a temporal (if not chronological) description, but also qualitative. In other words, it is not just life "of age to come" but there is also the sense of the divine: it is the life of God, or as George Macdonald puts it, "life eternal".

I would also like to highlight the connection in this passage between this concept, "life eternal", the life of God, with the concept of 'salvation'. To me, they are the same thing: to be saved is to partake of the life of God, life eternal, starting now (though in such a small way).  As it says in 1 John 4:9 (a re-wording of John 3:16): God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. (NRSV)

~

"[Jesus] starts by appealing to Moses, explaining what he's talking about with relation to Moses: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Okay, this is very odd. It's an odd little incident in the book of Numbers 21 where, after Aaron has died, just as he's about to die, he's stripped of his priestly garments and then left to die, his son is vested and then the priesthood starts up again. Israel carries on its trek but they fall into a fit of complaining, the Lord gets annoyed with them and he sends poisonous snakes amongst them. ... So the people in the desert were dying of the bites of these poisonous serpents ... and Moses, showing how things were going to be, made a bronze serpent, lifted it up, exalted it. In other words, from the same thing that caused the poison, he made the remedy.

"This is an absolute standard trope, something which we know ourselves. What is a vaccine, but a little bit of what causes this trouble [applied] in such a way that we protect ourselves against it, the poison turned into a remedy. The same word, 'pharmakos', can both mean poison and remedy in Greek. So this is standard, but Jesus is bringing out something rather remarkable here because he says: okay, what Moses did was he took the poisonous reality ... and he offered up something better than that, [a] serpent made of bronze, and ... when they looked at it and exalted it they lived.

"So that's what's going to happen with [Jesus], in other words, he's saying: what I do may look like a priestly sacrifice, and of course, in one way it is, but it's exactly the reverse of that: it's the remedy to the whole of the sacrificial world which tends to bite and destroy people. I'm going to be doing the exact reverse, enabling people to live by that, which seemed to be that which killed them. That's going to be the sign. So the Son of man must be lifted up in the same way, so this priestly anointed figure is going to be lifted up, and people are going to be able to live through that, they're going to be able to say: oh yes he's done this for us, therefore, no one is against us, therefore, we don't need to sacrifice anymore, therefore, we don't need to drive our goodness over against other people anymore, therefore, we don't need laws to live by. We can work out what is true because we can trust that the Creator will make these things available for us. So that's all being hinted at in Jesus' answers to Nicodemus.

...

"Now notice what Jesus is doing: he's talking outside the Temple and to the representative of Moses. He's talking about the relationship between behaviour, which means commandments, and God. He's indicating that actually there is going to be a criterion that's present. The criterion is the self-giving Son, the self-giving Lamb who looks like the poison of sacrifice [but] in fact is undoing the whole world of sacrifice from within. And that this is something which Moses after all understood, Jesus is suggesting, hence his lifting up of the serpent not as a form of judgment but as a form of bringing to life.

"So we see Jesus having explained himself in the Temple, now explaining himself with relation to the Law and showing how he's undoing something from within, so as to make something, a new way of life, possible for us. In fact, this is how he was undoing the old Temple, which is going to be destroyed, and offering something completely different instead: the way of being that brings people to life so they can share the life of God [zoe aionios, "life eternal"] starting even now."

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

[Source of quotes from N. T. Wright and James Alison's Broken Hearts and News Creations, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent4b/]

From the Lectionary for 3 March 2024 (Lent 3B)

John 2:13-22 (NRSV)

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

~

"It is Lent three on our journey to Holy week and the gospel text has switched from St. Mark to the Gospel of John. In John’s gospel the cleansing of the temple occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than the end. In the other three gospels the ruckus at temple is the turning point where the temple authorities decide Jesus must be killed and it is very near the end of his ministry and close to the Crucifixion. He is threatening the Temple authority’s power by declaring them unnecessary. How is he doing this? He is saying God loves all people, has no wrath toward them and therefore does not need or want them to sacrifice animals, birds, their children nor any other creature to appease him. He didn’t need to be appeased. If this was true, if Jesus was right, or if the people began believing Jesus, the Temple would be unnecessary and it’s priests and administrators out of business.

...

"[Anthony Bartlett] writes: “What renders the Temple redundant is forgiveness: if we humans forgive, i.e. respond nonviolently, then necessarily there will be no need for Temple and we will be one with the forgiveness/nonviolence of the Father. Forgiveness deconstructs and replaces sacrifice.” [Seven Stories: How to Study and Teach the Nonviolent Bible, pg. 189]

...

"The sixth story of the seven that Tony says shaped how human’s think was entitled “The Temple and its Deconstruction.” Our lectionary passage from John traces the way Jesus announced the deconstruction, the taking apart of the Temple, and all other sacrificial institutions. ‘Temple’ is a worldwide human institution that produces the ‘holy’ through killing/sacrifice. I want to use Tony’s words to try to explain what Jesus was doing when he disrupted the temple:

“John’s description highlights both the expulsion of the animals and the money changers. What is going on? In both cases Jesus is bringing the actual operation of the Temple to a halt. Jesus is not simply ‘clearing’ the Temple, or ‘cleansing’ it, he is rendering sacrifice impossible. If there are no animals, there are no sacrifices. If there is no money to buy the animals, again no sacrifice.” [Seven Stories, pg. 187]

"Do you see how far this is from an angry Jesus losing his temper? This is something way, way bigger than that. From the beginning we have made God in our own image and made him angry because we have been angry. We were rivalrous and jealous toward each other and projected that onto God. Since we feel that way toward others surely God feels that way for us. Since we have seen God as wrathful and envious of us, we have attempted to appease God so that God will be good to us and let us live. The Temple is the institution that carries out this transaction. People used their scarce and hard earned money to buy cattle, sheep and doves that would then be slaughtered and burned on the altar so that the one who bought these creatures would be safe from misfortune or disease caused by an angry God who hadn’t been paid off. But if God is not angry, and maybe even forgiving, this is not necessary.

"Jesus plugs up the machinery of sacrifice. He doesn’t cleanse it as though once cleansed it can be used again. He is not clearing the Temple as though the problem had been its overcrowding with commercial interests and animal dung. He is telling the world the Temple has seen its day and Jesus is its replacement.

“The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

"Jesus is the new temple. Instead of allowing us to believe God wrathful and in need of being paid off to placate his wrath (like being shaken down by the Mafia), Jesus undercuts the whole thing by showing us God is not only not wrathful but nonviolent, one who not only loves us when we behave but forgives us when we misbehave. The forgiving body of Jesus whom God raised up in three days is the new temple. With Jesus being raised in three days, relationship is restored all around and none are lost. The human and the divine are on the same page and there is no gap between them that needs to be appeased. As Tony says, “forgiveness deconstructs and replaces sacrifice.” This new temple is not separate from the world but fills it completely. No one is excluded. There is no inner and outer chamber. Jesus as Temple is for all people. This temple doesn’t take life, it gives it."

- Thomas L. Truby, from "The Temple Becomes a Person," sermon delivered on March 4, 2018 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Truby-Lent3-2018-The-Temple-Becomes-a-Person.pdf)

~

"So the Jews - that's the Temple authorities - said to him, the translation here says, “What sign can you show us for doing this.” Interestingly, [in the Greek] ... it's not saying, “Okay, you've done this, now give us a sign." It's saying, “What is the sign that you are showing us that you are doing these things.” They want him to interpret for them what he's been doing. What he's been doing is fairly obviously a bringing together of a series of Messianic fulfilment prophecies and naturally they want to know how that goes. It's not a stupid question. ... Their first reaction, the first direction is: Hmm, we know what this means and wonder who he thinks he is who's doing these things, or what account he gives of what he's doing. In other words, there is both wisdom and cynicism and suspicion and all of these things at once in their reaction.

"And Jesus says to them, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Now again our translations mislead: in the beginning of this [passage], it says he comes into the Temple, and ... the word Temple there, 'heeron', refers to, if you like, the Temple compound: the whole of the gated area that included the places of slaughter, the places for meeting, the Portico of Solomon and also the actual rather small Temple building ... But here Jesus answers: destroy this Temple - this 'naós', that means, that's referring only to the small bit, the nave, the sanctuary if you like - and in three days I will raise it up.

"Now, this perhaps gives us a hint of why when he was addressing the people earlier he was particularly annoyed with those who were selling the doves, because if you remember at his baptism the Holy Spirit had come upon him like a dove indicating that he was now the sanctuary, the place of piety, the real place where God's piety would be shown and worshipped. And that he had specifically rejected those who were selling the doves - the kind of piety that could be bought and that was especially the kind of piety that was made available to the poor - in other words it exploited the poor - that gave them access to this sanctuary, he was particularly annoyed with that. ... In other words, abusing the poor for the sanctuary of the Lord. And of course, what he is and who he is speaking is the sanctuary of the Lord.

"So he's saying, “Destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will build it up.” Actually, he says, “raise it up,” he uses the language of resurrection rather than actual physical building unlike in the synoptic Gospels where it's the physical building that he uses. ... And then it says but he was speaking of the Temple, the sanctuary, of his body. He's fulfilling what is said in Psalm 40, “You have said holocaust and sacrifice I do not want, and so I said here am I in my body.” He's speaking of the Temple of his body.

"“After he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this.” In other words, they didn't understand the sign any more than the Jewish authorities. “And they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” What scripture? I put it to that the scripture is the one that his disciples remembered: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” In other words, they are realising that what he is doing, the whole of his project has been the coming in of the zealous God who loves people for a thousand generations, and that his coming in is actually going to consume him literally, in the sense in which a holocaust or a sacrifice was consumed. And that was how he was going to rebuild the house, by becoming the Temple, the sacrifice, the altar, the victim, the priest and enabling all of us to share in that. We are going to find ourselves living in the Temple made without hands."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2jCGnIhzXc)

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent3b/]