From the Lectionary for 29 September 2024 (Proper 21B)

Mark 9:38-50 (NRSV)

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to [Gehenna], to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into [Gehenna]. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into [Gehenna], where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

~

"The extended warning against scandals (9:42-48) seems on the surface to be a stunningly sacrificial text. It commands one to cut off and throw away a hand, foot, or eye that causes one scandal, to expel the wrongdoer in sacrificial style. Cutting (apokoptō, 9:43 et passim) is the essential sacrificial act, and the skill of the sacrificial butcher is most evident in dismembering. Sacrifice is prescribed as the cure for scandal.

"A metaphorical rather than a literal sacrifice is being prescribed. The deconstruction of sacrifice has proceeded so far that the Gospel can use it as an image to convey the moral injunction to resist envy decisively. Scandal, as we have seen, is to love the thing one hates and hate the thing one loves. Scandal is envy, a desire to be like the other that is so intense that it would destroy the other if it cannot be like him, and also if it can. The injunctions to sever offending limbs are hyperbole expressing the urgency of the need to avoid the envy that comes from what one does (hand), where one goes (foot), and what one sees (eye), envy exemplified in the behavior of the disciples just narrated, in their wrangle about who is the greatest, and their attempt to keep the privilege of being Jesus’ agents for themselves.

"The sayings that close this section confirm the sacrificial metaphor. “For everything will be salted with fire” (9:49) is an allusion to the customs of salting the cereal sacrifice and offering salt with every sacrifice (Lev 2:13). The injunction, “Have salt in yourselves, and live in peace with one another” (9:50), applies this metaphor in a moral exhortation to behave so as to achieve the peace that the sacrifice achieved."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 108-109

~

"The call to amputate the offending hand, foot, and eye in verses 43-48 are by any account strange and troubling. Mark seems to be combining the Pauline metaphor of the community as “body” (see “hand, eye, foot” in 1 Corinthians 12:14-26) with the Pauline principle of not causing the “weaker member” to be scandalized (see Romans 14). But think of the modern analogy of the struggle against addiction. The process of recovery often feels like part of oneself (the addicted, codependent part) is being amputated. “Any struggle with addiction [...] involves deprivation,” writes Gerald May in Addiction and Grace. “Every false prop is vulnerable to relinquishment.” Such “amputation” is life-saving surgery on the cancer of our illusions and appetites.

"According to Mark, our greatest individual and social addiction is the will to dominate. Disciples are called to defect from what society may see as natural, such as all the ways “little ones” are routinely victimized by patterns of hierarchy and exclusion. But to do this is to be perceived as “defective” (like the amputee) by the dominant culture. These strange sayings, then, are arguing that it is better to be deformed than to conform to what oppresses more vulnerable members of the body politic.

"In a world of violence and institutionalized inequality, the choices are stark. We either embrace the “fire” of recovery (9:49) or live in the “hell” of addiction (9:48 alludes to the very last line in the book of Isaiah). Salt, used medicinally in antiquity, suggests that the goal is healing (9:49), which must include reconciliation within the community of faith (9:50)."

- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor, “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pg. 118

~

"[Jesus] uses the word “Gehenna” which strangely is translated as “hell” in all our modern translations, which I think is deeply unhelpful, because Gehenna referred to something really quite physical, which was the trash heap which was constantly burning outside of Jerusalem [...] in the valley. And the contrast was between that, the trash heap with the fire which never went out because it was ever-burning trash, and the Temple up on high with its sacrifices, with salt, where the sacrifices were good things. Except of course [...] what's being brought out is something even bigger than that - the sacrifices on high are to be the lives of the disciples.

"And it's at this point that we get the last two verses... “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” So he's saying everyone will be salted... the whole question is, which way is your salt going to work? Is it going to be the salt of Leviticus 2:13 with which all holy sacrifices were salted?

"In other words, are you going to be becoming the new Temple, the one that is coming down promised in Isaiah, the one for which *all* will be salted? And you will therefore show that by being able to give yourselves into the midst of a sacrificial world without being run by a sacrificial mentality, and therefore actually to be able to take part in the bringing into being of the new Creation.

"Or are you going to be part, if you like, of the non-salted, conspiracy-theory-mongering, victimary-thinking group who are in fact going down into the trash where there's a different salt of burning sacrifice, the wrong salt, the trash-heap salt? It is these two are being paralleled with each other.

"He said... “but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves.” So this is again, for those of us who love the thought of Rene Girard, this is this wonderful suggestion that it's the overcoming of victimary thinking in-between us that turns us into disciples. The work of the Holy Spirit is actually enabling us to become self-givers-away in the midst of victimary circumstances, rather than dwellers in victimhood and conspiracy.

"And therefore, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” He's saying that there are two patterns here: the pattern of the victimary heading to Gehenna, and the pattern the self-giving, avoiding [victimisation], having your desire purified so that you're no longer grabbing, grasping, planning deceit. And you are becoming the new Temple that is promised in Isaiah."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 26 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWOcRpum_CY)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Ched Myers quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper21b/]

From the Lectionary for 22 September 2024 (Proper 20B)

Mark 9:30-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

~

"So he's beginning to teach [his disciples] that the point of his going to his death is not, “I'm going to leave a vacuum and one of you is going to have to fill it, I wonder who is the greatest,” but it's “You're all going to have to undergo the way of death, dying to yourselves, so as to learn to be what I have been for others.”

"And then he takes a little child, remember, a 'non-person' - the ancient peoples did not have our sentimental ideas about childhood at all, children were non-persons. He takes a child and stands him... among them. So first of all he stands the child, which is the position of one who is going to speak, and then he embraces him, cuddles him in his arms, before them. Now, if what you were was the one who wanted to be greatest, what you were particularly keen on is who was the master's favourite, so here Jesus is actually using [imitative] desire to draw attention to his favourite - his favourite is a little child, it's not one of them, it's a little child - a non-person is his favourite. They are supposed to look at that and be very jealous that they are not being cuddled in Jesus's arms.

"Then he says to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” - it is by receiving a non-person that you receive me - “and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” - if you want to receive the Father then receive this non-person. In other words, this whole dynamic of the relationship between Father and Son is now to be between brother receiving non-person - that's how you enter into the life of the Father.

[...]

"[H]ere we have the unimportant one being placed before them in a position of speaking [ie. in the centre of the circle] and said that the [ones who] want to be great [...] have to occupy that position and learn to speak from that position [of the unimportant one, the non-person]. This is how we are going to learn to listen to Jesus and that means how we are going to learn to obey the Father. This is part of Jesus's teaching technique, attempting to produce a real change in the apostolic group's life so that by the time they get to the cross they might have the first idea of what he's been talking about."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 25 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F6ncp8fbIE)

~

"The poetics of place are essential in the communicative strategy of this determinative pericope. They take us to the sacred center and show us there that the Sacred has been dethroned by the Servant. Jesus and the disciples are in Capernaum, in a house, and Jesus takes his place as teacher by sitting down. The disciples have been engaged in the old argument of envy, about who is the greatest in their little universe (9:34). Jesus calls them into a circle around him (we infer the circle from the placing of the child “in the middle”), and teaches by word and deed. By word he says, “If anyone desires to be first he shall be the last of all and the servant of all” (9:35). Then he teaches by deed what it means to be the servant of all, first taking a child and placing it in their midst, and then taking it up in his arms, with the words, “Whoever receives one such little one in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me” (9:36-37).

"To receive rather than to expel is the mark of the new community of the kingdom. The message in the symbol of the child is that preeminent dignity in the kingdom goes to the one who is “last of all and the servant of all” (9:35). Jesus’ dramatic gesture of taking a child into his arms says that the greatest in the kingdom is the one who can receive those who have no power or prestige as if they were Jesus himself (9:37). This humility is clearly an antidote to the mimetic rivalry present in the disciples’ argument about who among them is the greatest.

"The poetics of place locate this act of inclusion at the center of space - in the town, in the house, in the circle, in the arms of Jesus. At the center, where in Sacred terms the holy absence skulks, sits Jesus with a child in his arms. The place at the center of the circle is the place of the victim during a stoning. Jesus and the child take that place. The gesture of taking the little one into his arms reverses the order of the Sacred. It dramatizes the inclusiveness of the new community by embracing rather than stoning or expelling the powerless one.

"By means of this symbol and these poetics of space, the Gospel tells us that the new community replaces the conspiracy of the Sacred by neutralizing the power of envy. In the conspiracy of the sacred mob, envy binds the members to one another in the scandalous bonds of rivalry and desire. No one can be found caring for the victim or siding with the weak, because that would be surrendering in the battle for prestige. The Gospel declares that such defeat is not loss but real preeminence in the order of the new community. The pericope of the child at the center is the summary symbol of the church as the nonsacrificial community."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pg. 108

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper20b/]

From the Lectionary for 15 September 2024 (Proper 19B)

Mark 8:27-38 (NRSV)

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

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.”

~

"What Jesus [says] is totally incomprehensible to them. “Then Jesus began to teach his disciples: ‘The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days, rise form the dead.’” Mark’s gospel then adds “He said this plainly.” He used common, matter-of-fact words to convey this so that they would know he was not speaking in metaphor or symbolic language. He meant exactly what he said. He himself had already accepted this as the only way forward. He would die to reveal the depth of human brokenness shown in the way we destroy each another. He is not placating an angry God, he is revealing the hidden root of violence in all human cultures and it isn’t pretty. His willingness to do this reveals a God of love far beyond their imaginations.

"Suddenly the disciples have been pulled back from visions of a Jewish Caesar, their ancient dream come true: retribution for all the abuse, taxation and humiliation they have suffered at the hands of Rome to the image of a vulnerable Messiah who dies at the hands of their own religious leaders and political enemies and then somehow rises from the dead. This is impossible, incomprehensible, and very alarming.

"Peter grabs hold of Jesus and scolds him in an attempt to set him straight. Jesus is saying things that frighten Peter. Jesus has just placed Peter’s identity, self-understanding and way of life under threat. He must get Jesus to reverse his position. You can’t be a Jewish Caesar this way! Jesus must now publicly offend Peter to snap him out of his fantasy and back into a reality Peter does not want to see. “Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, and sternly corrected Peter. “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”

"Peter is thinking the way we humans do. His categories are power, coercion and the peace that comes from the imposition of our will over those we consider wrong, dangerous or inferior. But this is not God’s way. [...] Everything in Peter wants to have power and not be vulnerable. If Peter wishes to follow Jesus he must deny in himself that need for power, dominance and the capacity to visit revenge on those he sees as opposing or oppressing him.

[...]

"Jesus calls us all into question when he asks, “Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives?” Will they give up violence? Will they give up the things that lead to violence? This is the center of Mark’s gospel, the heart of what Mark wants to tell us. It challenges us to the core and forces us to decide who we think Jesus is. Is he the Son of God who shows us the face of God? If we embrace him, we may struggle with shame for we know many will call us naïve, gullible and even weak. Embrace him anyway."

- Tom Truby, from sermon “A Love You Can’t Escape.” (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Truby-Proper19-2018-A-Love-You-Cant-Escape.pdf)

~

"Violent retributive people (and Christians who believe in a retributive god) cannot handle a message of complete and utter grace, of unconditional forgiveness nor are they truly able see themselves as weak and helpless before God. They believe God has blessed them because they are doing so well and those who aren’t doing as well have obviously (so they say) come under God’s judgment. Jesus speaks a word directly to this. In Matthew 7, Jesus even acknowledges those who will demonstrate great power in the miraculous, yet will fail come judgment precisely because they have not lived a life of forgiveness to others, because instead of being peacemakers they had become war mongers.

"What might a disciple [be ashamed of]? When push comes to shove a disciple might just back off this message of peace in order to save their skin. Jesus says if they do that, if they [are ashamed of] the True Human (“the son of the man”), [he will be ashamed of them] come the end. Why? Because Jesus cannot affirm a person of war; Jesus cannot affirm those who hold grudges, or those who seek legal recompense. This is not who he is, this is not who God is and this is not how God reigns. He must “deny” them.

"In Matthew’s gospel, the hyperbole used has to do with being shunted aside or “cast into fire.” Nobody on the Last Day wants to be the ones who have this happen to them. In order to convey the seriousness of his message Jesus uses standard apocalyptic metaphors of judgment. How serious is this business of peace, of forgiveness, of compassion? Very serious!!! None of this is marginal to the Christian life, indeed all of this is of the essence of the Christian life.

"[... T]his saying is not about one’s relation to God or one’s salvation but about the way one’s life will be judged as faithful to the message and whether or not one capitulates to the world’s message. Will you be a peacemaker or a warmonger? Will you hold grudges, and seek some sort of passive-aggressive retaliation or will you be a peacemaker? Does your social policy sweep aside the immigrant, the poor, the socially marginalized or do you seek active ways to care for those society would rather forget. When you stand before The True Human how will your humanity be judged?"

 - Michael Hardin, from FB post on Sep 12, 2024 on Matthew 10:33 “If you deny me, I will deny you.” I have substituted "ashamed" for "deny" in the original post to match the Markan version. Note that in the post Michael mentions and gives a possible explanation for this word difference between the two gospels. (https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/posts/pfbid0K7vDZ68YeayG7dg2Pkh38mLzNS2eRYHbadRN1qMEhrbFTHLezsCP6Mv1BK2WYRh1l)

~

"[...] Jesus now feels confident that now is the time to start to prepare people for the following, and it is *following* that is going to be the important thing, what later the author to the Colossians will call “walking in Christ.”

“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.” (v34-35)

"[This is the] central point where the shape of discipleship finally becomes clear. 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" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPJb8x4PU8Q)

[Source of link to Tom Truby sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper19b/]

[Note also that this is the same gospel text as for Lent 2B: https://daveroberts.blogspot.com/2024/02/from-lectionary-for-25-february-2024.html]

From the Lectionary for 8 September 2024 (Proper 18B)

Job 9:27-35 (NKJV)

“If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint,
    I will put off my sad face and wear a smile,’
I am afraid of all my sufferings;
    I know that You will not hold me innocent.
If I am condemned,
    Why then do I labor in vain?
If I wash myself with snow water,
    And cleanse my hands with soap,
Yet You will plunge me into the pit,
    And my own clothes will abhor me.
“For He is not a man, as I am,
    That I may answer Him,
    And that we should go to court together.
Nor is there any mediator between us,
    Who may lay his hand on us both.
Let Him take His rod away from me,
    And do not let dread of Him terrify me.
Then I would speak and not fear Him,
    But it is not so with me.”

Mark 7:31-37 (NRSV)

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

~

"So you have here the plea, as it were, of the demonized man put into the mouth of Job [from the passage quoted above]. But here we have present the Redeemer, the Mediator, who is going to touch him, who - in the words of this [passage] - who bends down to his face, [... who] is going to look up to heaven and groan because he's the Mediator, and then touch his face. And [the mute man is] going to be able to speak. So we have Jesus being the Mediator, but not as one of vengeance, as one who is doing in a sense the reverse of what is talked about in Job, but as the Mediator he is enabling the person to speak. It's a beautiful little enactment that we're getting here in Mark's Gospel.

[...]

"So let's remember what is it that has ears but cannot hear and a tongue but cannot speak. Well it's an idol. Jesus is in 'idol' territory. Psalm 135 has the famous quote about “with ears they cannot hear with tongue they cannot speak.” So here is someone who in pagan territory is semi-idolized, semi-turned into an idol, and how he's being brought to life, brought to the possibility of speaking. “And his tongue was loosened,” [literally] “the block was undone.” It's the loosing of the block, it's the same word as binding and loosing. Jesus is enacting [...] the binding and the loosing. Here he is binding the evil one and loosing the tongue. What does this mean? That whereas when he'd been doing the same amongst the people of Israel, he was talking about sins being forgiven and faith. Here it's about driving out demons because they're half demonized, but bringing to life because that's what undoing demons does.

"And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and it says: “and he spoke plainly.” It's the word 'orthōs'. It's a beautiful little hint because in the book of Deuteronomy, this is chapter 18, the Lord speaks to Moses [and] tells him that the people are right, they speak rightly to him, they speak right - 'orthōs'. And then [God] says, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from one their own people, I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet who shall speak to them everything that I command.” In other words, this semi-idol [in Mark's Gospel] who has been brought to life bears witness to the fact that this is the prophet whom God had promised to Moses.

[...]

"“They were astounded beyond measure.” [v37]. So this is the fulfilment of the Isaianic prophecies about the wilderness bursting into life, into flower, into song, into dance at the arrival of the Lord. The one who is hidden is coming into their midst: “He has done everything well.” They don't realise it but they're announcing that the one who has done everything well, the one who made all things and saw that they were good, the Creator, is alive. “[H]e even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” In other words idols [which are deaf and mute] are a thing of the past, humans who are bound down to idols are being turned into daughters and sons of God. And so Jesus continues with his 'more than Joshua, greater than Moses', the Lord coming into the midst of his people to reveal who He is."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 23rd in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hJqucPRYi8)

~

"Note that [the man] could not hear and he could not speak. Does this tell us something? Perhaps he is a wise man in this regard, compared to those who jabber on even though they cannot or will not hear, let alone listen. This man at least inhibited his tongue because he could not listen (We are told that he had a speech impediment; I take this as an instance of what used to be called “hysterical” afflictions; he knows he is cut off from one side of the dialogue and so he inhibits the other. He is “tongue-tied,” and the text tells us that his tongue was “set free” when his hearing was restored). In any case Jesus gives him back both powers, and he does it in the most physical way.

[...]

"Let us reflect. We are interested in the world of the spirit, whose essence is hearing and speaking, not in the realm of the body. We wish to escape into a world beyond empirical verification or falsification, from the place of action to the place of ideas, from events to words, and to make the narrative a symbolic presentation of states of mind; but the physicality of the contact with Jesus, the event nature of the restoration of hearing and speaking, means that we cannot. We cannot avoid the “event” nature of this restoration of spirit. We do not work our way out of spiritual deafness and dumbness by strenuous thought and rigorous argument, but rather we come to Jesus and ask for him to heal us. He puts his hand in our ears and his spittle on our tongues, his bodily substance and his bodily fluid on us, and we speak and hear again. That means that we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we take the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and in that event he opens our ears and frees tongue-tied speech.

[...]

"[O]ur faith is not a pattern of ideas, or a chain of proofs, but rather a series of historical events. Events in the flesh entail events in the spirit, and for this reason the Word became flesh (John 1:14) and not simply more words. It was to put an end to speculation and calculation, an end to idle words, that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth; we beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the father.” Notice how strikingly John says that we beheld the glory in the flesh, not in the mind or in a vision or pattern of words. So our miracle story is part of the great narrative of the incarnation of God, telling us that God is not ashamed of our flesh, and we shall find him there when we allow him to unstop our ears are untie our tongues."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from a sermon delivered on September 10, 2006 (source no longer available online)

[Note that the Job passage quoted is not from the lectionary, but is included for the reference in James Alison's homily. For extensive analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper18b/]

From the Lectionary for 1 September 2024 (Proper 17B)

Mark 7:1-8, 14-23 (NRSV)

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

...

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

~

"Jesus is telling us that just as foods do not make us unclean, other people do not make us unclean either. It is what we do with the desires of other people that make us clean or unclean. We can indeed be corrupted by bad company but if we spew out the envy and slander and pride we ingested from others back at them, or, more likely, at others with fewer defences, then we ourselves are bad company threatening to corrupt others.

"This gives us another angle on Jesus’ famous warning that if we judge, we will be judged, because when we judge, we see the speck in the eye of the other but don’t see the log in our own. (Mt. 7: 1-5) We think that any envy, deceit or licentiousness we experience in ourselves comes from the other, and maybe we do catch these traits from another, like catching a virus. But a virus caught from another only hurts us if our own bodies react in destructive ways to make us sick. Likewise, the envy, deceit and licentiousness of another only make us sick if allow them to flare up inside of us. If we then expel them in the direction of others, they become the victims of what has come out of us. Even when defiling desires really are coming out of other people, our own defiling desires in response only magnify the impurity in the social atmosphere. That is, the uncleanness is neither in ourselves nor in the other. Defilement occurs only in relationships built upon projecting and expelling the perceived defilement of others."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post titled "What Really Makes Us Unclean?" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/08/26/what-really-makes-us-unclean/)

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"[T]he fall into sin [is] something that happens in the relationships between people. In this respect it is akin to gravity. In the Aristotelian physics, the property of falling to the earth was an inherent quality in each object as part of its Final Cause given to it by God. In the Newtonian physics, gravity becomes a forcefield that isn’t strictly inner or outer but resides in the relationships between objects. It surrounds them.

"I think that [...] the source of sin lies neither strictly in the objects of desire (e.g., alcohol, pornography, guns, etc.) nor in the persons themselves. It lies in the fallen nature of the relationships of desire between people. It lies in the fact that we model one another’s desires rather than God’s loving desire for all of Creation. And so we have [imitatively] fallen into desiring that is rivalrous, covetous, conflictual; and we can’t get out on our own. It takes the incarnation of the One who came to perfectly model the desire of his heavenly Father."

"Most important is that [this understanding] gives us a picture of original sin that requires outside, gracious intervention, yet is not inherent to us. Original sin is not something internal, not something we are born with; rather, as we proclaim in our Lutheran Book of Worship baptismal liturgy (p. 121: “We are born children of a fallen humanity”), it is something we are born into (like we are born into the forcefield of the earth’s gravity). The [imitative] nature of desire accounts for how it can be hopelessly fallen, save for a divine intervention into the fallenness...

"We have no models of a non-rivalrous desire until Christ enters the picture. In the special (Trinitarian!) relationship that Jesus had with his heavenly Father, we finally have a human (peer) model for us of non-rivalrous desire. Jesus perfectly acted according to his Father’s will without becoming his rival. Through the Holy Spirit this same non-rivalrous desire can be mediated to us, redeeming us from the fallen desiring of the “original sin” which has otherwise been [imitatively] passed on through the ages."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions section on this passage on the Girardian Lectionary page (link in comment below)

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"So here we get the understanding that what we have in today's Gospel is the explanation which Jesus gave the disciples over time, including after his resurrection, as to what this might mean, and how it was that Christianity became the form of Judaism that prioritizes the desire of the heart as being what is absolutely central above all things. Any other things that you may hold on to, they might be fine, they might not be fine, but the really important thing is the desire of the heart.

"Jesus then gives a list of twelve of these forms of disordered desire which make us genuinely unclean. He starts with evil intentions, these englobe all the things that he's going to talk about, all the twelve that are to follow, suggesting that he is talking about something with a determinative, a conscious quality about it, that form of wrongdoing. Then he starts with fornication, strangely enough, and probably that means idolatry, idolatry coming before theft and murder. The reason I say it's probably idolatry is that to use fornication to refer to idolatry was standard in the Jewish world at the time. And the sexual elements that we associate with fornication come in adultery and licentiousness later in the list, so it's reasonable to assume that he's not simply repeating himself here, he's talking about different things and starting as a good Jew would with idolatry as being the source of all other evils. So, idolatry, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and folly - the different ways in which our heart, our pattern of desire can take us away from God.

"And of course it's going to be the working out of that after the resurrection, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, starting with what Jesus taught about that which is inside coming out may defile rather than which is outside coming in, which is to be the whole basis of how we learn to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. Following our origin of Spirit, [we discover] how to become holy bodies by working through the patterns of desire such that the Holy One may live in our hearts."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 22nd in Ordinary Time, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss2VBOjnvN0)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote and link to Andrew Marr blog, and for extensive analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper17b/]