From the Lectionary for 28 April 2024 (Easter 5B)

John 15:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

~

"The image of the vine and the branches in John 15 gives us a powerful image of closeness both between ourselves and God and also with each other through our grounding in God.

"Each of us is a branch connected to the vine which is Jesus. Jesus is telling us that the desires of each and every one of us must be rooted in His Desire, which is the same Desire as that of his heavenly Father. Between Jesus and his Father, there is no rivalry and Jesus does not enter into rivalry with us. From our side it tends to be a different story. We experience rivalry so constantly that it is very hard to imagine a relationship without rivalry. Just note how political and social debates are saturated with it.

[...]

"We often think of union with God as individualistic but that is not so. On the contrary, union with the vine unites us with all of the other branches. This means we share our union with the vine with everybody else’s union with the vine. It is by being united to others through Christ that we have the ability, through grace, to act towards others in God’s Desire rather than through our rivalistic tendencies. Since there is no rivalry in Jesus, there is no way that Jesus would encourage rivalry with others who are connected to him. [...] God abides in us insofar as we love one another. If we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves off from other people and if we cut ourselves off from other people, we cut ourselves off from God.

"The image of the vine and the branches is, above all, Eucharistic. The Eucharist is a public event. The wine in the Eucharistic celebration is the blood of Jesus that he gave to heal all of us of our violent ways. The blood of Jesus on the altar shared with each of us makes present to us the death of Jesus at the hands of persecutory humans as it also makes present the risen life of Jesus. In exchange for the way we betray Jesus with our violence, we receive the gift of life through deep union with Jesus, a union like that of the branches to the vine. We associate blood with violence, such as with the term “bloodshed,” but blood is the life within us and it is life that the Risen Jesus gives us through his Blood. This is the wine, the blood, that flows from the vine to the branches to connect us to Christ and to each other."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "On Being Branches Connected to the Vine" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/04/26/on-being-branches-connected-to-the-vine/)

~

"I don't know whether you've ever seen a vine close up but the interesting thing about is the vine itself looks dead. It's gnarled and looks like a dead stick basically. Not so the branches. The branches are green and supple and come out of it and, obviously, the fruit. [..] But there's this strange juxtaposition of this apparently dead stick out of which comes so much life. And I think that's part of the image that Jesus is using here. He's talking about how he, the risen Lord, is the dead and alive one. He is the one who is apparently dead and in whose death we are buried so that we can become alive and become him. I think that that's what he's talking about. He's talking about how we can share his dead and alive quality and how sticking with that dead and alive quality, not running away from it, is what's going to allow us to be pruned and turned into bearers of fruit.

"One of the remarks that I wish I understood better and I raise it as a question more than anything else: “You've already been cleansed or pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” So that something about his speaking to us, what he spoke to his disciples before this, before the speech which is given during the Last Supper, something about the words which he speaks to us, they enable us to live in this dead and alive space without running away from it. And it's that that allows us to begin to yield fruit, because he's quite clear that what he wants is, as it were, for all his sap to rise through us. [He] talks about this at the end: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”

"So, abiding, dwelling, making our home in him - that's the sense, which means making a home out of his words, allowing his words to correct us, to nurture us, to nudge us. It's difficult to know exactly what's meant, but this dwelling with his words alters our pattern of desire, such that he is able to desire through us and that our desire is his desire. [...] That's the sense of us actually finding ourselves in a home in him, becoming a co-part of it 'sapped in' into the home, so that we're actually part of it, and it actually flows through us. That I think is part of the richness of what's going on here.

"[...] So this business of remaining in his word, it's a curious thing: how do we do that? What does it look like to find ourselves remaining in the word, allowing the sap to rise in us, allowing his words to nudge us, to correct us, to nurture us? That I think is part of what he's saying is going to be what our life is like from now on. It's going to be listening to the word, dwelling in the word, allowing ourselves to become his self by our imitation, by being taken over gently by his Spirit. And enabled to find ourselves actually wanting amazing things, much bigger things than we could have imagined, and getting them - bearing fruit.

"And this whole thing being on an adventure with a very careful, very caring, very wise vine grower who knows where to prune, who knows where to sift, who knows how to carry us through the times when we think that we're just bits of deadwood and no good at all, is aware that there's a season when the sap will come and we will turn into the fruit that we might fear that we were never going to see."

- James Alison, from video Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYk6IfBBPI)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter5b/]

From the Lectionary for 21 April 2024 (Easter 4B)

John 10:11-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

~

"[T]his Sunday we move on from the Easter Sunday evening meetings in the different Gospels, and we start to look at some of the great Johannine texts, the 'I  AM' texts. And what these enable us to do is to get some sense, to dwell, in the shape, the form, the feeling of the resurrection life. The Risen One's here in our midst. What does he feel like? What is it to be moved by him? What are we undergoing? In what way is the sap rising, as it were, amongst us? These images which Jesus used in his teaching are images of, by which, we can detect the presence of his risen life in us. That's the purpose of these texts being given to us in this Easter season.

"... [The Good Shepherd] is a slightly misleading image for us since we tend to think of shepherds principally as to do with people in the countryside looking after sheep. There are good reasons why we think that: because that's actually what shepherds are! But for anyone attuned to Israel's texts, a shepherd had a far greater significance than that. It referred to a royal leader, a king figure, a promised king leader who would keep people safe. This is the great promise of Ezekiel. But it's particularly the link with keeping people safe. Someone who is very free, very powerful and creates spaces of safety. That's the first thing that I want to bring out. We're talking about power and safety here. One of the things about the presence of the good shepherd in our midst is to enable us to feel that he has great power and this power is designed to make us very safe. That's absolutely central to what [is] going on.

[...]

"“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” And here this is one of the things I think that is difficult for us to dwell in: ... what's this quality of being known by the risen Jesus, knowing Jesus? Being known by one who has gone through death and therefore is able to look at us without being frightened of what's going to become of us, because he knows that he holds us in his hand and is able to take us to where is good for us. And our sense that we needn't be frightened of him because he's not a bully, he's not someone who's going to make us do impossible things to make him look good. There's no ulterior motive, if you like, in his knowing us and us knowing him. Which is one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit is not frightening. It enables us to relax into this very safe being known and being led.

"He says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me.“ I know my own and I know the Father. He's saying: “Actually yes that love with which I'm going to love you, that sense of being together with you - that's the same as the Father has with me. It's this shared love which includes, therefore, an immense fondness, an actual liking you as you are, wanting to take you somewhere good. And I'm not doing that out of some moralistic commandment. Actually, later on, I will refer to it as a command, but it's merely the fact that that's what my Father is and that's what the love between us looks like: the tenderness of active bringing into being.”

[...]

"“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” So he's showing us actually, yes that awful business of him being crucified, being murdered, being lynched, that looked awfully like other people doing something to him, but in the middle of it all there was this sovereign peace. It's that sovereign peace that he's sharing with us. It's that sovereign peace he wants to know you don't need to be frightened. There will be all these wolves, there'll be all these attacks, but I've opened up this space for you to be able to live without fear of that. Not to be run by it, not to be scattered by it, not to be grabbed by it.

"“I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” This if you like is the quiet and sensational power of the risen life. This is what we are being asked to allow to penetrate us during this Easter season. To sit in the space the world doesn't even know exists, a quiet, powerful space, following one who is powerfully and actively leading us beyond ourselves, taking us into new pastures, into new ways of living with other people who first we might not even think are like us. Who is making it possible for there to be new forms of unity and all out of this huge sovereign peacefulness. ...

"“I have received this command from my Father.” ... But notice the commandment is not a word. The commandment is a gesture, which includes the gesture of laying down his life and taking it up again, thus demonstrating the power of his Father's love and inviting us into doing exactly the same thing. Saying, this power is now available to you, therefore you will be able to do my commandment, which is love each other as I have loved you - in a later speech.

"But it's this making present of this coming-alongside gesture of sovereign power. And asking ourselves, praying, I think, during this Easter season, during this week: how is this coming through to me? How is this penetrating me? How am I being lifted up, enabled to receive the 'being taken up' from the One who was able to lay down? [And] understanding how gentle and yet how powerful this is."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaAxhh_6vv8)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter4b/]

From the Lectionary for 14 April 2024 (Easter 3B)

Luke 24:36-48 (NRSV)

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

~

"When Luke and John tell us that the risen Lord appeared with the visible wounds of his death, it wasn’t merely a way of identifying him as the same person, but a way of affirming that he was so much the same person, that, in the same way as that person was dead, so was he. But that death is nothing but a vacant form for God, something whose reality has been utterly emptied out, which can only be detected in the form of its traces in the human life story of someone who has overcome death.

"The marks, then, of Jesus’ death were something like trophies: it was his whole human life, including his death, which was made alive and presented before the disciples as a sign that he had in fact conquered death. This not only meant that he had personally conquered death, which he had manifestly done, but that, in addition, the whole mechanism by which death retains people in its thrall had been shown to be unnecessary.

"Whatever death is, it is not something which has to structure every human life from within (as in fact it does), but rather it is an empty shell, a bark without a bite. None of us has any reason to fear being dead, something which will unquestionably happen to all of us, since that state cannot separate us effectively from the real source of life. This can scarcely be said with more precision than it is by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews:

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Heb. 2:14-15)

"Now I insist on this, since it is the central pillar of the Catholic faith. From the presence to the disciples of the risen victim, the crucified one risen *as crucified*, the lamb triumphant *as slaughtered*, everything else flows. Without that insight, nothing unfolds, no clear perception of God, of grace, of eternal life, about what we must do, how we must live. This means that eschatology is an attempt to understand ever more fully the relationship between those empty marks of death which Jesus bore and the mysterious splendour of the human bodily life which enabled them to be seen.

"What type of life is it that is capable not of cancelling death out, which would be to stay on the same level as it, but to include it, making a trophy of it, allowing it to be something that can be shown to others so that they be not afraid? It is about this that I wish to speak."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 29-30

~

"Ultimately the resurrection narratives are commission narratives, narratives of sending and receiving, narratives that reveal the structure of being as “being given,” “being risen,” and “being sent.” Nearly every appearance story includes a word of command and commission. In Mark the women are commanded to “go, tell his disciples and Peter,” “so they went out” (16:7). In Matthew the eleven are told: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (28:19). And in Luke: “You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised . . . and, lifting up his hand, he blessed them” (24:49,50).

"The empty tomb narrative in John includes Jesus’ instructions to Mary Magdalene to “go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (20:17). As we saw above, her announcement to the disciples (“I have seen the Lord”) indicates a fundamental shift in her understanding, just as it did for the eleven. She has received a new self from the crucified-and-risen One who, in the midst of her grief and misunderstanding, calls her by name and directs her to the community of disciples who will embody him and extend his mission in the world: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20:21). To Peter, Jesus says “feed my sheep,” “follow me” (21:17, 19).

"This connection between resurrection and apostolic mission is immediately evident in Paul’s self-understanding as well: “Paul an apostle sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1). All of this shows just how intimately the church’s identity is bound up with mission, how being reconciled and being-in-community is, for the New Testament, “being sent” in the world as an agent for justice, reconciliation, and peace. Mission in proclamation and praxis is not a secondary movement of the church, coming as a consequence of an identity already established within itself, but as the very way that identity comes about."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 114-15

~

"So, ... we get the sense of the group working through what it is to become witness to this, that the Anointed One is to suffer, to rise from the dead, and the repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name. This, if you like, is what we are being turned into witnesses to. This is the purpose of having our minds opened. This is the purpose of him standing amongst us showing us his physicality. All of this is to make available for us as our doubting, troubled, questioning hearts deal with all this that one has come into our midst who was always going to come into our midst. It is he, he is doing these things, and he will take it forward and he's inviting us to undergo it beforehand so that we may be witnesses to it with him."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgLRd8akBk0)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel and Brian Robinette's Grammars of Resurrection, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter3b/]

From the Lectionary for 7 April 2024 (Easter 2B)

John 20:19-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

~

"This Sunday we look at a text which happened later that day and a week later in which also the note is of fear. The disciples find themselves in a room that is locked for fear of the Jews, that's the fear of the religious and political authorities of the time. One of the things I really like about this fantastic passage is that it's not a quick celebration. I don't know whether you're anything like me, but I'm a very slow reactor to things. And there is something, if you like, about happy Easter liturgies on Easter Sunday that I find very difficult to cope with because it's suggesting that it's possible to do a quick turnaround from having been sad and lost and baffled by the events of Good Friday to suddenly being happy and everything being okay. And I can't do that myself and I'm very glad to say that the Gospel text suggests that that wasn't really what happened either.

"So one of the first things I want to bring out about both last week's and this week's Gospel texts is how they presuppose that it takes time to sink into what is happening. And that seems to me to be so important I even noticed that in today's Gospel we get two mentions of the room in which the disciples are found a week apart. The first time it says locked for fear of the Jews and the second time it just says: locked. In other words, a week later there's still an element of fear things haven't been sorted out magically and I think that it's tremendously important for our understanding of the Resurrection and the presence of the Risen One in our lives that we recognize and be grateful for that - the slowness, the difficulty, the oddness of what's going on.

"So first of all, our Lord appears, ... Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you.” So that's the first thing: they are riled in one way or another and peace is going to be necessary for them to be able to get anything of what is going on. “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” In other words, he identifies himself as the one who is crucified and risen. In the Apocalypse [Revelation] of St John, this is the vision which is described as a Lamb standing as one slain. It is a vision which to us is simply baffling: you can't be both alive and dead, and yet here is the one standing as one slain. But he's clearly alive, he's clearly a dynamic and protagonistic presence amongst them.

"[...] And then he says this: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This I think takes us way, way back. It suggests that the one coming into their midst is not one who has just turned up, as it were, as we might turn up to a friend's house in the midst of a party and surprise them. The suggestion is: “As the Father has sent me so I send you. I am coming into your midst from a very very far away place. I don't mean physically far away, I don't even mean chronologically far away. I mean, the place from which I'm coming to you is nowhere within your expectations. And I am going to be making you the bearers, the vanguards, the ones who are taking forward this coming in from a very very far away, very very distant, very very different place. You are going to be becoming something quite different from what you could possibly have imagined. It's going to be utterly remarkable. And this is an important thing: who you are going to become now, you are going to be the ones who are going to control this.”

"Because when he'd said this, that the Father sent me, so he breathed into them. Breathed on them, breathed into them - the same verb in Greek, it's the same verb as in Genesis where the Lord breathes into Adam. So here is the act of Recreation, it's that far back that is being brought into them now. Now what creation is and has always really been about is being brought to life in their midst through them.

"He says to them: “Receive Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Again this is the Creator Spirit, the protagonist, the one that had hovered over the waters in the beginning coming into their midst, and now coming into them, which is to say, into us, to turn us into the protagonists of creation. And the radicality of this, it's very difficult to grasp because effectively he's saying: “Let go of any notion of outside God, rescuer God, deus ex machina God. From now on God the creator, the full force of the creation is going to be available to you, in you and amongst you. And in as far as you take the ride, in as far as you allow yourselves to be swept up in this, it'll be opened up. And in as far as you don't, it won't. Your ability to forgive each other is going to be the same thing as your ability to open up creation for each other and to be opened up for each other. In other words, this whole exercise has been an extraordinary entrusting by God of Godself and God's project into your hands. And it's going to take you on journeys, it's going to take you into forms of becoming that you could not possibly imagine. And yet, that is what I have been doing for you, that's what I've been doing in your midst.”

"And then we have this wonderful memory of Thomas who is called the Twin, one of the twelve who was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We've seen the Lord.” He said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” In other words, reasonably enough, he's stuck in the identity that he was, he needs a push, he needs a boost. What they have told him is about seeing someone. They can't yet communicate what this means. So he's reasonably gone off. He's in the emotional equivalent of a locked place.

"A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them, although the doors were shut - the same verb [locked] as before. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you,” so the same making himself known through the presence of peace. Then he takes Thomas exactly at where he was in his stuckness. And this is if you like the affection of our Lord, ... he reaches him where he is and starts to move him on. But he also gives Thomas the task by making Thomas mirror him by putting his hands in his wounds, standing close up to him and becoming his mirror. He says, “Okay you're going to become me and you've been able to believe because you've seen me, but blessed are those who have not seen and have yet come to believe.

"And this, if you like, is the element that I want to bring out. This is, if you like, the slow train running beneath all this, is that the risen Lord coming into our midst as a friendly gesture, as a peaceful appearance. But what is really going on is the possibility of God having floated Godself into our midst, by faith, enabling us actually to become convinced of his presence, and able therefore, without anyone with whom we're in rivalry, of starting to have all our stuckness - our being locked in frightened places - changed, altered from within, so that we are no longer run by fear, by loss, by stuckness, and are actually able to start to move each other into the new creation.

"This for me is part of what John does by giving us Pentecost on the same day as the Resurrection. He's showing how the fullness of what the Lord gives is this extraordinary act of gentle opening up of creation which takes us at exactly where we are: frightened, lost, stuck, not heroic, not successful. In the Catholic liturgy, this Sunday is called Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy. And it seems to me that there is something here about, if you like, the power and the strength of what Jesus is breathing into us. The power and the strength of it is the kind of mercy that undoes our need to be successful, our need to win, that sets us very very gently free to start to be able to bear witness to it.

"And being able to bear witness to it doesn't look like suddenly becoming heroic and suddenly becoming successful. It looks like becoming alive in the midst of failure, and not a success, and not being heroic, and yet knowing we are loved. That the one who has come into our midst didn't do it to turn us into superheroes, that the one coming into our midst did it to show us that we are loved, that it is weak, fallible, not particularly heroic strugglers, people who need to be set free from our fears of freezing, our sense of loss - that all of that is what very slowly the Risen One is producing in our midst, floating us, if you like, off the seabed which we've got stuck on, and enabling us to be bearers of life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vad8tc86PM)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter2b/]