From the Lectionary for 17 August 2025 (Proper 15C)

Luke 12:49-53 (English Standard Version)

“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

~

"There is [...] one saying of Jesus that switches the whole meaning of fire and it gives an indication of how he was changing [John the Baptist's] entire symbolic scheme [of the fire of judgment]. He said, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:49-50).

"The image of setting fire to the whole earth is very different from [John the Baptist's metaphor of] burning the separated chaff. It is also connected to a baptism that Jesus has yet to undergo, and so is diverse from John's meaning. John's promise of a baptism with “spirit and fire” refers to the final cataclysm of God's in-breaking in history. The water baptism at the Jordan that he offered stood as a powerful symbolic alternative to fire, the possibility of entering into a repentance and purification that pre-empted this fearsome eventuality.

"Jesus' putting together of “fire” and “baptism” in respect of something he had still to undergo suggests that he accepted John's symbols but at a deeper and decisive level he opted to bring the crisis down on himself in a totally exceptional sense. He would thereby release fire on earth, but in a transformed, generative sense. Here we have the absolutely characteristic gesture of Jesus that unites an apocalyptic viewpoint with something else, something that changes the orientation and content of apocalyptic itself."

- Anthony Bartlett, Virtually Christian, pp. 233-34

~

"[H]uman desire, rivalry, competition, which had previously been kept in some sort of check by a system of prohibitions, rituals, sacrifices and myths, lest human groups collapse in perpetual and irresoluble mutual vengeance, can no longer be controlled in this way. This is the sense in which Jesus' coming brings not peace to the earth, but a sword and division. All the sacred structures which hold groups together start to collapse, because desire has been unleashed.

"So the sacred bonds within families are weakened, different generations will be run by different worlds, give their loyalty to different and incompatible causes, the pattern of desire constantly shifting. All in fact will be afloat on a sea of wrath, because the traditional means to curb wrath, the creation by sacrifice of spaces of temporary peace within the group, has been undone forever.

"The only alternative is to undergo the forgiveness which comes from the lamb, and start to find oneself recreated from within by a peace which is not from this world, and involves learning how to resist the evil one by not resisting evil. This means: you effectively resist, have no part in, the structures and flows of desire which are synonymous with the prince of this world, that is to say with the world of wrath, only by refusing to acquire an identity over against evil-done-to you."

- James Alison, Broken Hearts and New Creations, pg. 44

~

In his video homily for this week, James Alison makes a number of interesting connections and observations that subvert to some extent the usual interpretation of this passage:

- the "fire" to be kindled can be linked to the tongues of flame on the people on the day of Pentecost (Act 2); this fire is destructive in regards to the human way of violence, but is also generative of God's way of forgiveness and peace, as suggested also in the passage quoted just above from "Virtually Christian";

- the Greek work translated as "distress" (v.50) has a root of 'hold fast' or 'press together' so can be thought of as holding back of emotion, feeling constrained or compelled; hence it is not necessarily a 'negative' emotion but can be seen as related to Hebrews 12:2, "for the sake of the joy that was set before him."

- what is interesting about the number 5 is that it is the lowest number which can be divided in more than one way *unevenly*, so it draws attention to the way society normally divides to create peace: 4 against 1, not 3 against 2; hence Jesus' prophecy can be seen, in a way (this is my own extrapolation), as a prediction of modern democracy, where peace in society is not reached by the mob in unifying against a 'scapegoat' other, or by the one dictator imposing his will by force on the many (1 against 4), but instead reached through acceptance of the decision of the majority (slim as it may be) - an 'uncomfortable' peace, if we can even call it that, as we know too well these days.

- the familial antagonisms mentioned are notable as being democratic, two-way, which subverts the hierarchical antagonisms spoken of in Micah 7:6 (which Jesus is clearly alluding to), where it is the son, daughter, daughter-in-law, who are condemned for opposition to their elders.

Alison concludes:

"So the notion here [from Jesus] is: “I came to bring fire, I wish it were all kindled. How tough it is to constrain what I want to give until it is completed.” And what he wants to give is going to look to some awfully like wrath, but in fact it's the possibility of living without wrath in the midst of a world that is going to become visibly or apparently more wrathful. But we're going to know where the source of peace and unity, real peace and real unity is.

"And the challenge for us - and that's going to be the challenge we see in the next couple of passages in Luke is going to be - how do we interpret which side to be on? How do we interpret where the path to looking for real unity, a real togetherness, respecting all the differences between fathers/sons, mothers/daughters, mothers and daughters in law - all those real differences that are shown up by collapses in culture, collapses in generation, impossibility to keep fake unity together.

"So that I think is this week's challenge to remember that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the most destabilizing entrance of the Spirit, of the Creator, into our midst. It leads to a constant world of re-signifying, of making all things new, of working out how, in whatever space of disaster or catastrophe we are, as fake unity collapses, we can begin to usher in the new world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmtBy0KnqGw)

[Source of quotes from Anthony Bartlett and James Alison's Broken Hearts and New Creations, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper15c/]

From the Lectionary for 10 August 2025 (Proper 14C)

Luke 12:32-48 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” And the Lord said, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. That slave who knew what his master wanted but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded."

~

"It is important to see that Jesus is not telling us to give up desires. The heavenly Abba has a profound Desire for a deep union of love with each of us, a union God would have us share with each other. If God is comprised of God's Desire, then it follows that we creatures are created with desires. What Jesus is doing here is redirecting our desires from the desires of rivalrous avarice towards God's Desire that is without rivalry. Isn't every fight, ultimately, over what we think we are entitled to as our inheritance? Yet aren't we all offered the whole world to be an inheritance rather than a bone for contention? Since these rivalrous desires embroil us with our rivals, the material inheritance we are fighting for is destroyed as if by moths. Of course, each rival blames the other for being the thief that has stolen the treasure.

"Jesus then shifts to an admonition to be ready for the Master's “return from the wedding banquet.” (Lk. 12: 36) If we servants are alert and ready to greet the master, the master will wait on us as Jesus waited on his disciples at the Last Supper. This little feast shared by master and servants is an image of the treasure our hearts should be set on. The progression of vignettes and admonitions throughout this chapter suggests that the best way to be prepared for God's coming is to set our hearts on treasure that moths cannot consume and thieves cannot steal. Fundamentally, being alert for the “master” consists of serving one another in the same way that the master serves us when he comes.

"The following little parable is comical and a bit threatening. The master who serves those who wait for him is transformed into a thief breaking into a house in the middle of the night. (vv. 39–40) If our hearts are not set on the treasure of serving one another, but instead we fight over our inheritance and try to gather it into bigger barns, then the God who serves us will be quite alien to us and will be perceived as a thief, a burglar. If our rivalry deepens as it does in the still more threatening parable that follows, so that our rivalry causes us to “beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk,” (vs. 45), then the gracious master will indeed rob us of our victims.

"God is both a burglar and a gracious master who serves. God only breaks in to take away all that draws our hearts away from God and from each other. What this burglar leaves in return is a treasure well worth setting our hearts on."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “The Burglar Who Serves.” (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-burglar-who-serves/)

~

"[W]e begin today's Gospel which starts: “Do not be afraid, little flock.” That's actually the only place where this phrase comes in any of the Gospels: little flock. It's this affectionate note. Jesus talking to his disciples here, that is this affectionate note, “For it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And I think that that's really what is behind the whole of this passage that's coming up, which can be a very very difficult passage. Because it's asking us to sink into something which isn't evident and which is really absolutely central to the Christian faith, which is the notion that underneath everything that is there is a good pleasure in doing things for us, that there is someone who wants our wellness, wants our flourishing, wants our happiness, our safety.

"“Your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In other words, there's a hugely powerful project going on, and we're already on the inside of it. It's as we're being given something and because we're being given something that we are then expected to behave in certain ways. This is incredibly difficult I think psychologically for any of us to get into because we are inclined to worry, we are inclined to strive after things and it's very very difficult to, what it says next: “Sell your possessions and give alms, make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven.” In other words, to treat anything that we have as something that is worth much more as we give it away. That our real treasure is what we've given away, and therefore is our contribution to other people rather than anything that we have. Psychologically that is incredibly difficult.

"You get an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. And then this line which sounds very beautiful but is in fact terribly challenging: “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Well, this is a shocking Gospel message, particularly at a time when we're hearing about a financial recession, collapse going on all around us, prices going up, inflation etc etc. Worrying about our treasure here on earth is a full-time business for many of us. What on earth does it mean to have such confidence in what we are being given that we can happily give away and carry on giving away? And regard what we have given away and therefore no longer control as what our treasure is - something outside our control. That is incredibly difficult and yet that is the image of God which Jesus is giving us.

"But there is something being brought into being in the midst of us and it is brought into being in the degree to which we learn to give ourselves away, and that it's in the giving ourselves away that we have treasure. Oh so painful because where the tyre hits the road is always where I haven't got enough. How can I give away if I haven't got enough? And this seems an incredible challenge, an incredibly difficult challenge to that - to live, to dwell in the sense of an abundance that is prior to us, which is what faith is all about. Such that we are not frightened to give away.

[...]

"So I think [...] the notion of so much more being available to us that we can trust in what is being given to us, and that as we trust it we actually become someone. And as we become someone we can entrust more to others. And that this which is a gift, it's massively prior to us. It's what turns us into becoming capable of rejoicing.

"It does mean that we acquire responsibilities with it. It is as it were any failures can't be mitigated. And that is frankly very challenging. As someone who has often fallen asleep, and sometimes got drunk, I hope not beaten other servants but who could well be regarded as someone who's often asleep at the wheel. What does it look like to be alert, alive with our belt girdled and our lamp lit so as to be able to be ready for the service when the Lord comes? This I find a very very challenging Gospel."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5ddiEqx7Tk)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper14c/]

From the Lectionary for 3 August 2025 (Proper 13C)

Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

~

"In 1998, [before the Sunday of Proper 13C,] the big news story of the week involved a $295 million power ball lottery. We have these great conversations with ourselves about how we would use that money. We, of course, would give most of it away, wouldn't we? We fool ourselves about being beneficent, loving people by how we would reach out to others from our own little Paradises where we are in complete control.

"The fact that we have this habit of talking to ourselves about what we would do with such lottery winnings is a great clue that we are in the same boat as the rich fool, when we allow ourselves to play such games. How did we get into such a state?

"Genesis 2-3 shows us. First of all, it shows us that Paradise is living life in creative dialogue with the Creator. The man and woman walk and talk with God in the garden. But one of the creatures intervenes as a rival to God, and the man and woman listen to it instead, placing themselves in rivalry with God. We lose Paradise when our primary dialogue partners become other creatures or ourselves.

"But through Jesus Christ, right at the moment of death, the one thief [on the cross in Luke 23] opens his life to dialogue with God and is immediately in Paradise. Isn't this of what Paradise consists? Life in dialogue with God's desire?"

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions on the Luke 12:13-21 (link in comments below)

~

"I am attempting to describe for you the form taken in my life by the irruption of the extraordinary grace which I received [...] Of course, I am describing schematically something which was a non-schematic whole, and which I have taken several years to begin to understand. First there was the perception of the absolute non-involvement of God in all that violence, then the perception of my non-innocence, and of my idolatrous and violent manner of having been caught up in all that. And then, at root, what began this whole process of beginning to untie myself from the idols I had so assiduously cultivated, what I had never dared to imagine, the profound “Yes” of God, the “Yes” spoken to the [...] boy who had despaired of ever hearing it.

"And there, indeed, I found myself absolutely caught, because this “Yes” takes the form, not of a pretty consolation for a spoiled child. Rather, from the moment it reached me, the whole psychological and mental structure by which I had built myself up over all the previous years, began to enter into a complete collapse. For the whole structure was based on the presupposition of a “No” at the center of my being, and because of that, of the need to wage a violent war so as to cover up a fathomless hole. The “I”, the “self” of the child of God is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.

"A further point in this narrative, if you can bear it. In the months following this incident, I had to give a theology course. I called the course: “Fix your minds on the things that are above,” taken from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Ironically, I managed to give the whole course, which has even been published in book form, without tumbling to the significance of the verse which follows the one I had chosen: “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

"But it was exactly this that, at last, I was learning. The whole of my previous life had been marked by an absolute refusal to die. The absolute refusal to take on my baptismal commitment.

"Of course, because I was unable to imagine that my “self”, the “I” who will live forever, is hidden with Christ in God. And that was why I had to fight all those battles. The “I” who was present in all those battles was the old Adam, or Cain, a “self” incapable of understanding that it is not necessary to seek to shore up for itself a place on this earth, to found a safe space, to protect itself violently against violence. The “I” of the risen one only becomes present when, at last, the old “I” is put to death. [...]

"In its place, being something rather like a still small voice, something which I can in no way possess, nor grasp, is the “I” from which I now start to live. The “I” that is hidden with Christ in God, little by little, and somewhat tentatively, begins to build a new life story in the midst of the ruins of the previous collapse."

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp. 39-40

~

"[The 'rich fool' in the parable] by himself is in a purely solitary bubble, everything is concerned with his [soul/self], it's the only thing that matters. He doesn't seem to be aware that the land giving abundantly is already God giving abundantly. And if God gives abundantly, maybe what God is that he should be a good administrator and be able to give more things to the poor people so that they are able to get food at cheaper prices this year because of the abundance, that they should share in the abundance. But no, his thinking is entirely based on 'how is this going to work out for me?'

"And this brings us back to the question of the inheritance [at the beginning of the Luke passage]. The presupposition is, there is abundance, there *is* an inheritance, there is an abundance of harvest. What is it going to look like, not to have someone decide for us who to give what - that's a question of clash of rights and is impossible to work out, especially among brothers - [but] who is going to get with the program of sharing abundance? Who is going to, rather than storing up treasures for themselves, which leads to nothing at all, because their [life] can be required of them at any moment, who it is who are able to use what they have been given to spread God's generosity? That's the only question [...]

"So this is part of the transformation of desire which is so much part of St Luke's gospel. It suggests that there is always something prior to us, always an abundance. It's never self-starting, never starts with [myself], it's always 'someone has given something to me, how am I going to share it, how am I going to spread it out?' Being rich towards God means allowing myself to become the channel of God's riches to reach others."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2j-1uWX9K0)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's Faith Beyond Resentment, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday:https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper13c/]

From the Lectionary for 27 July 2025 (Proper 12C)

Luke 11:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, may your name be revered as holy.
    May your kingdom come.
    Give us each day our daily bread.
    And forgive us our sins,
        for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
    And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

~

"Prayer is a gift from a loving God who truly does care about what we desire and invites us to share those desires. God wants us to ask and promises to answer. The talking part of prayer is generally the easier part, however. Our desires - or what we think we desire - is usually up-front for us and easy to ask for. It's the listening part that is perhaps more difficult. What is God's answer? Even more pertinent ... : What is God's desire?

"Jesus taught us to pray ... : Our Father in heaven, may we get your name right, honoring your reputation. Your culture come. Your loving desire be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the bread we need today (not hoarding tomorrow's bread, too). Forgive us our sins so that we might give up our desires for vengeance and live in the light of forgiveness with others. Save us from the trials of being made the victim, and deliver us from such evils when they come upon us. Amen

"We imitate Christ in praying this prayer as the model prayer. But what I want to ask is: is prayer itself the central means by which we listen to God's desire and learn to model God? Was this the crux of Jesus' prayer life? And now we, his disciples, model his prayer life as the means by which we, too, can become obedient to God's desire?"

- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on Luke 11:1-13 (link in comments below)

~

"This week our Gospel continues directly on from last week. Last week, we had Martha and Mary, and here we have Jesus on prayer [...] Jesus was praying in a certain place and after he had finished one of his disciples said to him: Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. So it's interesting that Jesus was doing something by example, that he didn't start off by telling his disciples to pray. It was their desire to imitate him that led them to ask. And that's always the first thing we'll see with the prayer: his insistence is about asking. It's very very strong, even stronger in Luke's Gospel than it is in Matthew's. So the first thing is, his presence doing something produces in them a desire to be in some way like him and to do what he's doing. [...]

"So then Jesus does speak to them. And again, we're so used to thinking, 'this is Jesus teaching about prayer,' but what we fail to notice is that he says very little. It's very very scarce what he actually says about prayer. “When you pray, say: Father.” In Luke's Gospel, it isn't even 'Our Father who art in heaven,' as it says in Matthew. It is just: Father. In other words, the whole thing starts from the resting place, a place of complete confidence in one who is doing something, which brings something into being, from whom all desire can come. That's the starting place: a very simple word: Father.

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)

~

"[I]magine yourself as highly malleable, being stretched between two force fields, two patterns of desire. What the “Our Father” is doing is inducting you into a pattern of desire within which you may be found, one which will enable you to inhabit the “being stretched” which is how the desire of the Other other brings into being the daughter or son who is learning to pray.

[...]

"[Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.] So, may Your pattern of desire be achieved, here in our midst, amongst all these things that we are so often quick to reject, to despise, to tire of, be bored of, made to despair by. Your pattern of desire which already has and is a huge rejoicing and delight, a huge benevolence and peaceful longing, a real reality upon which our small reality rests, and from which it so often seeks to cut itself off, incapable of perceiving itself as the symptom of so much glory. May we be taken onto the inside of this pattern of desire.

[...]

"[Rescue us from evil.] The pattern of desire into which we are being inducted by the Lord's Prayer recognizes evil, but only as that from which people can be delivered. Rather than its being a thing in itself, it is only known in its being left behind to curve down on itself, never to be given oxygen by being dignified with a concentrated gaze. But the real force in the universe is not evil, but love, and love really does want to rescue us, to bring us out of our tendency to enclose ourselves in smaller and smaller spaces, to bring us into being."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, Essay 9: “Prayer,” pp. 427-33

~

"[T]he difference between a fish or something doing them good, or an egg, and those beasts is very very obvious. But in terms of our pattern of desire - are we so clear about that? Are we so clear that the Father is the sort of person who actually wants us to have good things? I think we sometimes think that maybe he's giving me a scorpion because it's good for me, or a snake because it'll whip me into action? Don't we moralize the bad image we have of the One who wants to give us? Then we find it really difficult to actually believe that God does want things that are good for us.

"So it's our insistence in actually learning to imagine the goodness that he wants for us, and carrying on wanting it, that is central to what God wants for us. This is why we must pray. And Jesus makes this point: “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children” - in other words, you know how to screw each other up, you know how to have dysfunctional family relations, you know all these things, and yet even you can distinguish between good gifts and bad gifts of your children - “how much more will the heavenly Father give Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

"Holy Spirit - what is that? This is the pattern of desire that is, if you like, opened up by the desirability of what is good that actually enables us to imitate what is going to do good for us, and which then strengthens our longing and our wanting so that we can carry on insisting until we are turned around and find ourselves actually possessed by what it is like to be God towards all things that are and discover ourselves, owning it, receiving it, having 'knocked' for it, finding it.

"So this element which St Luke gives that the heavenly Father is giving, not 'the good things' [as in Matthew 7:11] to those of who is asking, but gives Holy Spirit. Rather than as a compensation, think of it as that what is wanted is the pattern of desire. That's what Jesus asks us to receive through prayer: to learn and to enter into the pattern of desire which runs us in such a way that we will not be hurt, that we will not be subjected to cruel self-moralisations, that our longings will be satisfied and will be enabled to carry on wanting more and more because that is what the Creator longs to give us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2FBg0T8isE)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper12c/]

From the Lectionary for 20 July 2025 (Proper 11C)

Luke 10:38-42 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

~

"Those who interpret this story as contrasting the active and contemplative lives take Jesus' gentle reproach of Martha as indicating that she is distracted from him by her busywork. But if Jesus is not offended by Martha's attention to work instead of him since Jesus does not put himself in rivalry with such work, then the words mean something else. I suggest that Jesus is pointing out that Martha is not distracted from Jesus by her work; she is distracted from her work by resentment of her sister. Mary, for her (better) part shows no sign of being distracted by Martha.

[...]

"It isn't a matter of being active or contemplative; it's a matter of being focused on Jesus without resentment. [...] If we are focused on Jesus, we will be attentive to our neighbor without rivalry or resentment, which will set us at Jesus' feet."

-  Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "Mary and Martha at the Feet of Jesus" (http://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/mary-and-martha-at-the-feet-of-jesus/)

~

"Jesus [...] gently chides Martha to take the 'better part', the better course for steering clear of the unproductive way she has chosen. Martha should imitate Mary's focus on learning from Jesus, the way of steering clear of rivalries. He is the one person above all in whom our focus and fascination can begin to untangle us from our webs of rivalry. He is the one who came to do the desire of his Father without rivalry."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions on the Girardian Lectionary page for this week (link in comments below)

~

"[I]n the Greek it says “the better part” [v.42], the Aramaic [version of Luke] apparently is “a better part” and that's quite an important distinction. “Which will not be taken away from her.” Now again there appears to be a pun here, since part is portion or lot, it's the same word that was the Levitical lot for the sacrifice. But also it's a pun with the word for worrying, so 'maris' is a portion, and 'marimna' were all of the things that you're distracted about. [...]

"So it seems, and of course this is speculative, I'm relying on my old friend Duncan Duret and his extraordinary reading of this passage, that Jesus is effectively saying to Martha, “You want help with doing the waiting, but really I just want to wait upon you.” In other words, 'wait or to be waited upon' is more the is more the sense of Jesus' pun at this stage. He's saying that the whole point here is to allow yourself to be waited upon, not to do the waiting. And that of course fits in with other phrases in Luke's gospel where apparently the one who appears to be the guest who is in fact the host. So this is a typical entry of Jesus into a home and reversing the role of host and guest - it's the guest, the apparent guest, who is in fact the host. And this happens frequently and Jesus talks about this, that this is what will happen - the disciples are those who allow themselves to be waited on: the master comes in and sets them down at table then waits on them himself.

"So it's rather an odd thing because we're so used, if you like, to a pious version of this in which Mary is being told, 'yes it's right to sit around and do nothing' and Martha is being told, 'don't get worked up about house business and feeding me'. So we think, oh yes also contemplative is right, acting is less good. It actually appears that it's much more a question of, “I am the one who wants to feed you, are you going to allow yourself to be fed by me?” It's the reversal of positions that's the key thing here, and reversal of positions is particularly important from those who get disturbed about liturgical things, wanting to get everything right and making everything look classy and beautiful and brilliant, whereas the real question is not the classiness, the brilliance, the beauty, but whether the person concerned is being served. Because it's the host who wants to be the waiter, and that's the real way you show love and respect for the Word, allowing yourself to be waited upon and transformed into a sharer of the waiter's word, the waiter's richness, the food that the waiter is giving.

"So something like that seems to be what's going on. It says “Mary has chosen a better part,” talking about the portion, the different sorts of portion, the non-worried portion, which will not be taken away from her. And the 'not being taken away' makes perfect sense if one understands that she has become, if you like, a symptom of God's giving, of the Word's speaking. She's allowed herself to be taken up into the being served, which is how God wants us to grow.

"[This is] what I call the 'secondariness', that is the real sign of discipleship, when we're aware that we are secondary to someone doing something for us rather than being concerned about how we need to be in order to get something done for other people. This is, if you like, the rich account of Jesus teaching secondariness as being our portion and our lot, and the richness and creativity that comes from accepting secondariness."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZzzvs4gshU)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quote and link to Andrew Marr's blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper11c/]

From the Lectionary for 13 July 2025 (Proper 10C)

Colossians 1:9b-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

[W]e have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Luke 10:25-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

~

The key link between the two passages above is the word "inherit."  Is "to inherit eternal life" the same as "to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light?"  Do we think 'to inherit eternal life' is something restricted to the future, something that will only be given to us after we die?  It seems that Paul is suggesting in Colossians that it is something we participate in now, and (following George Macdonald and many others) I think a far better rendering in English of 'ζωή αιώνια' (zoe aionia) is "life eternal" ie. the life of God, which is that to which we are called, that shown to us most perfectly in the life of the One we follow.

~

"'Inheriting eternal life' is a more interesting phrase than it might seem to those of us whose first reaction is that it is a simply another way of saying 'what must I do to go to heaven?' Inheriting is what the ultimate insiders did (in those days, sons, but not daughters) and 'eternal life' was a way of referring to the life of God. So St Luke frames the parable [of the Good Samaritan] as a discussion of what it looks like to become an insider in the life of God.

[...]

"As death loses its power, so commitment to the flourishing of what is fragile and precarious becomes possible, and our relationship with time changes. I don't know about you, but pledging yourself in an open-ended manner to make good on the hospital expenses of a severely injured person without any guarantee of payback for yourself is mostly a terrifying possibility. What is to stop you being 'taken to the cleaners' for everything you've got?

"But what if time is not your enemy? If time is not your enemy, then what you achieve or don't achieve, whether you are 'taken to the cleaners' or not, is secondary, and whatever you have will be for the flourishing of the weak one for as long as it takes, since you know that you will be found there.

"Being on the inside of the life of God looks like being decanted, by a generosity you didn't know you had in you, into making a rash commitment which makes a nonsense of death, of worry, and of the panic of time, because you know that you want to be found in loving proximity to what is weak and being brought into being."

- James Alison, "Jesus the Forgiving Victim", pp 528; 549-50

~

"So notice that the question which Jesus answers is not actually the question which the lawyer asks him - the lawyer asked him “who is my neighbour” and Jesus puts the question at the end, “who turned out to be neighbourly towards someone.” In other words, the definition of neighbour is not best thought of as to whom am I limited, or to whom I'm obligated, as a minimum in order to be a decent person. It is better seen as, what is it like actually to create neighbourliness in an ongoing and sustained way for someone. That's what being a neighbour is. The neighbour starts from the other, not from you wondering you know how that other fits into your life. It's the other who alters your life that is the key thing.

"Now Jesus has answered the question about inheriting eternal life here and the really interesting thing is that the Samaritan, who's obviously the model for this one, he's been taken by surprise. He's come across somebody lying alone, he has been moved by him. He has given of himself in caring for him and he's prepared to give himself even more. He's so excited to be found to be doing these things and actually found something real in life, looking after this person and actually being prepared to run the risk of, you know, picking up the hospital bill at the end which could be very considerable. He's ready to give himself [like] that because he's discovered what it's like to share the life of God. It's better to give yourself away even if you don't really know where that will take you.

"That's what it looks like to inherit the life of God: creating neighbourliness, giving yourself away even in ways that you can't control, being prepared, as it were, to put yourself at risk in order to do that, [the Samaritan] has discovered what it is like to inherit eternal life. It means being on the inside of the life of God.

"So Jesus asks this question to the lawyer who says, and it's difficult to tell whether he's just being loyally exact or whether he doesn't want to say the word “the Samaritan,” because the lawyer answers when he's asked, ... “The one who showed him mercy, mercy not sacrifice. The one who showed him mercy, that was the one who created neighbourliness.”

"So yes, obviously the lawyer doesn't want to admit that it was one of 'them bastards' who's the good guy in this story, but the whole point of this story is that we have been able to retell it and retell it and retell it in every conceivable different generation, according to who [the] annoying irritating other to whom we cannot attribute good is, and we can imagine them learning to rescue us, creating neighbourliness for us and saying, ah that's eternal life.

"Which then may prepare us to be able to recognize others in situations of extremity, and so enter into eternal life. It's the surprise and the excitement and the joy of discovering the life of God in mercy and not in sacrifice."

- James Alison, from "Homily for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 С" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWerd_9ceMs)

[Source of quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper10c/]

From the Lectionary for 6 July 2025 (Proper 9C)

1 Corinthians 1:20-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)*

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Luke 10:1-11; 16-20 (NRSV Anglicised)

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’”

[...]

“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

~

"So yet again: when it said before he sent them to every place where he himself intended to go [10:1], perhaps this is more of the sense that they are if you like, the sacramental presence of himself. And in as far as the people, the local people receive them they are receiving him, and in as far as they are receiving him they are receiving God, because God has made himself known in this weak presence who will later reveal himself to be the crucified One.

"So after they've had this trip to the local places, the seventy returned with joy saying, “Lord, in your name” - in other words, you being there in person - “even the demons submit to us.” In other words, by entering these places with a weak presence, actually, they've been able to undo some of the terrible fake forms of power that had possessed and bound people, some of the terrible forms of vibration. It only needed people to be able to be present and weak without fearing being run out for demons and all the structures of possession which depend on throwing out in order to make good. They submitted to them. The power of God comes in weakness.

"And then Jesus says this wonderful line: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” This is a key verse in Luke which appears again in the Book of the Apocalypse in a slightly different form, the notion that Jesus is present as weak in the world as one about to occupy the place of shame of death, of violence, the one who's about to be thrown out. His strong occupation of that is the same thing as the de-transcendentalizing of evil. Evil ceases to be a celestial form, it now becomes an anthropological form, wriggling about on the earth whose structure and whose working is known. It can be defeated by people who are happy to remain weak because they know they are held by God, who are not tempted to react with violence and anger and strength, thinking that that makes them better warriors against this thing.

"So evil has lost its transcendence. “See, I've given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.” And this may refer to actual snakes and scorpions which do exist in that part of the world. It may also refer to the constellations which had names of snakes and scorpions and which were thought to be signs of the heavenly powers, of these semi-demonic powers that control things but in a closing-down way. So again Jesus is saying it's the actual whole power of transcendence, even the heavens, are of being undone because I can see that the power I have given you works.

"Jesus rejoices, they rejoice. Then he says, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this that the spirits submit to you” - in other words, it's not merely your achievements that are the key thing - “but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” And this is this wonderful sense proper to the Hebrew world that who you really are is being given to you from on high. It's being, as it were, unfurled in your life. And if you are able to occupy this space of weakness, of precariousness, it's because you're being held in place by heaven, your name has been written there, it is inscribed.

"This is part of the new reality that is coming in. You are going to be a sign of that new reality coming in. So the name being inscribed in heaven is not a reference to someone with a pen, it's a reference to the reality of your being, as it were, already held elsewhere and starting to unfold in this world as you make a witness to what it's really like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3acWt-Maa4)

~

"I think that “but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” and “consider your call” [1 Corinthians 1:26] mean the same thing: they are getting us to turn our imaginations towards the one who calls or who writes our names rather than to what we achieve. [...] What indeed does it say that I was called? Not about me, but about the one calling? What does it say of his spaciousness, his power, his gentleness, the security which he offers, that it becomes possible not to have to construct a story which makes clear sense, not because of a paucity of meaning, but because of an excess."

- James Alison, Undergoing God, pp 97-98

* Note that the 1 Corinthians passage is not part of the lectionary for this week, but I have included it because it is referenced in the quote above from Undergoing God, and also because of the link to Alison's mention of "weakness" in the homily.

[Source of quote from "Undergoing God" and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_9c/]

From the Lectionary for 29 June 2025 (Proper 8C)

Luke 9:51-62 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival, but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Galatians 5:1; 13-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. [...]

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

~

"Turning away from one's own culture, in itself, is negative. As long as it is negative, it is fueled by alienation and resentment, which leads to the seething irrational anger of the Underground Man as Dostoevsky calls him. Cutting oneself off from everybody is also a violent act, one that can lead to senseless violence as it does with the Underground Man who eventually attacks another person out of sheer spite. I myself was mired in such alienation and resentment for some years when the problems with my own culture became evident through the Viet Nam War, racist practices and other social ills. This attitude felt like freedom until I was freed by God from the resentment and discovered it had really been a prison.

"In Galatians 5, Paul illustrates the culture Jesus is calling us from, what he calls the “works of the flesh,” as “licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy” and much, much more. It is precisely envy, quarrelling, strife and the like that makes human culture so violent that rejection from other humans leads to raining down fire in retaliation. No wonder some people turn away in disgust and resentment.

"But Jesus would have us turn away from the culture of death and violence, not to close in on ourselves in impotent fury, but to embrace humanity in a much deeper, much more inclusive way. Paul says that the fruits of the Spirit, the spirit that comes to save lives, not destroy them, are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.“ (Gal. 5:22–23) [...]

"Paul says this is crucifying the “flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) As Jesus shows at the end of the road to Jerusalem, kindness, generosity, gentleness and the like end up on the cross where the strife, jealousy and envy of the people is absorbed. Once we embrace this culture of love, what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the Beloved Community,” we embrace the culture we have renounced so as to bring it into the culture of the Spirit."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post “Holding Back the Fire - Embracing the Beloved Community.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/.../holding-back-the-fire.../)

~

"[T]his is the point of the gift of faith. It is the disposition produced in us by someone who really, really, wants us to be free, not bowed down or crippled. Someone who is prepared to go to great lengths to induct us into a habit, a disposition of being able to walk freely, not to be trapped by gods or frightened of death. 'For freedom he has set us free' is Paul's great cry in the epistle to the Galatians (5:1).

"Do you begin to get a sense of how strange it is that the gift of faith is what is absolutely central to Christianity, how absolutely it is linked to the notion of freedom? For just as a parent does not induct a child into the habit of walking so that the child will thereafter follow it around and do exactly what the parent does, so the Other other who produces in us the habitual disposition not to bow down to gods and not to be run by death doesn't do these things so that we will 'behave properly'.

"Rather the attitude of someone who seeks to give you faith is someone who is not in rivalry with you, is not concerned with the inevitable mistakes you will make, knows that perfectionism is the enemy of learning and of growth, and wants you to be able to discover for yourself what is good for you, where you will take it, what you will make of the adventure and the ride.

"So faith, the habitual disposition induced in us by the Other other, to allow ourselves to be relaxed about being stretched beyond our possibilities, turns out also to be something like a huge, happy, bracing challenge to freedom: 'For God's sake, stand up and be godless!'"

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 230-31

~

"[T]he suggestion is as [Jesus] turns his face to Jerusalem that this is going to be introducing a way of being the Holy Place, being utterly alive, being full of the prophetic spirit, that is beyond what could be imagined by Elijah or Moses or any of the prophets of old, and that this is what Jesus is inviting us into doing and we're going to see how that works throughout the next passages of Luke's Gospel and the rest of the year."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGABBn9FcKg)

[Source of quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_8c/]

From the Lectionary for 22 June 2025 (Proper 7C)

Galatians 3:26-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

[F]or in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Luke 8:26-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then they arrived at the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they became frightened. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

~

"The demoniac is a classic scapegoat figure. He dwells among the tombs and wanders the mountainsides wounding himself and howling. No chains can bind and no man subdue him. He is possessed by a legion of demons, and legion is the mob of his persecutors. He carries his persecutors inside himself in the classic mode of the victim who internalizes his tormentors. ...

"The demons recognize Jesus as their nemesis and try to persuade him not to expel them from the system of violence altogether, but merely to transfer them from one location to another. To do this would be to manage violence by means of violence within the closed sacrificial system. Jesus, however, removes them altogether by sending them into the swine, which, contrary to the demons' expectation, rush into the lake and drown. The herd of two thousand swine is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means that violence ceases when the mob disappears. The order of expectation is reversed and instead of the victim going over the cliff the mob goes over!

[...]

"When the swineherds report to the city and its environs, the populace comes out and begs Jesus to leave. The people do not want their scapegoats returned, and they do not want to see themselves as a swinish mob. They fear the revealer because he threatens the order of Gadarene complacency and deprives them of the comfort of the scapegoat. They do not want to break their conspiracy: rather, they want the scapegoat to remain in the shadows of the cemetery as a depository for their violence and a guarantee of their complacency. The fact that they had tried to chain him shows how much they needed him. They recognize the threat Jesus poses to the Sacred they inhabit, and they send him away. [...] Nevertheless, from now on they have in their midst a constant reminder of an alternative to the order of violence in the restored and reintegrated victim whom Jesus rescued from the mob in himself and the mob in the city of Gadara."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 93-94

~

"Imagine that you are in the world of the Gerasenes before Jesus comes along, whether as one of the townspeople or as a demoniac. You are not stupid, or primitive - whatever that means. You are just used to the daily run of your culture. You are used to negotiating living day in and day out within the strengths and limitations of your group. You share both adherence to, and scepticism about, its gods, its taboos, its sacred barriers. Like most people in most societies you both go along with and yet relativize, approve of and yet resent, the structures which give meaning to your life.

"Yet there is one thing you cannot do: whether you are a townsperson or the demoniac, you cannot imagine the innocence of the demoniac. The structure which holds everything together is relatively tolerant, as is the case in most human groups. It is fairly ready to turn a blind eye to a whole lot of failings, indeed has mechanisms for reincorporating those who fail. Yet there is one point where this apparently easy-going form of life is implacably totalitarian, where there is a definition of good and evil which cannot be overturned. It never crosses your mind to question it, and indeed it cannot really be talked about, since it is what allows other things to be talked about and given value.

"This immutable fact which the group's imagination cannot conceive in any other way is the definition of the demoniac as demoniac. Before the arrival of Jesus, whether you are a townsperson, or the demoniac, you are all fundamentally yet tacitly agreed on what holds the whole of your order together. You are a participant in a closed system. And of course participants in a closed system do not know that they are in a closed system. It is only the vantagepoint of a system that does not depend on a hidden but secretly-structuring scapegoat which enables us to detect other systems as closed. Before the arrival of Jesus on the shores of Gerasa, such a vantagepoint was not available to you.

"If someone had come along and said “Well, of course, your demoniac is really innocent, and all he’s doing is acting out what all of you are dumping on him,” you would resist this violently. It would be inconceivable to you that such a person was anything other than a troublemaker, someone who wanted to disturb order and subvert morality. The key word here is “inconceivable.” The notion is not one you could imagine, let alone tolerate. You would read the claim entirely from within your own group structure, and would reject it as impossible. So impossible that it could not really be talked about at all. In fact, you wouldn't need to talk about it. All you would need to do is point to the indisputable evidence of the evil and craziness of your demoniac. Something there is clearly wrong.

[...]

"Jesus did not come and give the Gerasenes a lecture on the structure of their society. He didn't argue with them about definitions. He didn't propose an alternative form of legislation. He did something much more three-dimensional. He empowered the demoniac to become a human being, sitting, clothed and in his right mind, going home to his friends.

"[I]f we have already begun to be overtaken by the power of the Creator, who is already beginning to humanize us, give us right minds, and enable us to be at home with our friends ... [this] is entirely dependent on something huge, quiet, and unimaginable already happening. Very God of Very God is already, even as we speak, “doing something new,” speaking to us in tones and at a depth which our former belonging could never reach, and in a way which our former groups can find nothing other than inconceivable and scandalous: calling us into peaceful and gratuitous human being."

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, ch. 6, “Clothed and in His Right Mind” (pp. 131-133)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly and James Alison quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_7c/]

[The gospel text in the Roman Catholic lectionary for this week is Luke 9:18-24 (Peter's declaration about Jesus and Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection). I highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" on this text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaKtl5GFS8]

From the Lectionary for 15 June 2025 (Trinity Sunday, Year C)

John 16:12-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

~

"In the light of the resurrection it gradually becomes possible to see that it was not that God was previously violent, now blessing, now cursing (Deut. 32:39), but had now brought all that ambivalence to an end. Rather, it became possible to see that that was all a human violence, with various degrees of projection onto God. God had been from the beginning, always, immutably, love, and that this love was made manifest in sending his Son into the midst of the violent humans, even into the midst of their persecutory projections of God, so that they might treat him as a human victim, and thus reveal the depth of the love of God, who was prepared to be a human victim simultaneously to show the depth of his love for humanity, and to reveal humanity as having been locked into the realm of the Father of lies [John 8:44].

"The process we have seen in the Pauline writings and in the Johannine epistles is then the definitive demystification of God and human beings, such that it becomes possible to look again at the crucifixion and the resurrection and develop a perception of God only as derived from that event. So it becomes possible to see the crucifixion as the meeting point between, on the one hand, a human act of violence, and, on the other hand, the love of the Father, who sends his Son into humanity as an act of love, the Son who gives himself freely to being victimized by human beings as part of his imitative love of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is the inner dynamic of the relationship between the two of them.

"Jesus on the Cross gives up his Spirit to the Father. The Father at the resurrection gives back the Spirit to the Son, and the two of them are then able to give this same Spirit, the Spirit of the crucified-and-risen victim to humans as induction into a new way of being human - becoming children of God (John 1:11-12), quite outside the violence of the “world.”

"The understanding of God as Trinity then is the understanding that the Cross of Christ, made alive in the resurrection, was in fact a relational reality - a reality of giving and of self-giving that was saving as revealing, and revealing as saving."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 108-109

~

"The Church [...] didn't preach the Trinity just to solve a mathematical puzzle; the Church preached the Trinity because that seemed to be the best, maybe the only way, to preach salvation. [...] The Trinity [...] is not a mathematical puzzle but a story of sin and forgiveness. In spite of some outbursts of anger [as the Jewish people understood it], Yahweh claimed to be a God who was 'hesed', a Hebrew word meaning full of loving kindness and mercy. The attitude of the Pharisees towards the paralytic [Mk. 2:5] and the Sinful Woman [Lk. 7: 47] suggests that they thought forgiveness should stay up in the heavens where it belonged and not get mixed up with humans on the earth. In our angrier moments we tend to feel the same way.

"But Yahweh's 'hesed' did get mixed up with humanity: first in the person of Jesus and then in the disciples through the Gift of the Holy Spirit. So it is that we humans are given the Gift, not only of having our sins forgiven, but we have the Gift of forgiving the sins of other people. Note that it isn't we who forgive, but it is God who forgives through us. That is, the divine act of forgiveness that came to the earth in the person of Jesus has, like the Holy Spirit, spread throughout the whole world.

"Forgiveness is the air we breathe. Unfortunately, just as we can pollute the air, we can pollute the breath of the Holy Spirit through our own wrath. But fortunately, there is no getting rid of God's 'hesed'. It is all around us and we can breathe it any time we wish. And when we wish it and breathe in the Spirt, we share the life of the Holy Trinity with other people and so help them share the same forgiving life."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "The Breath of the Trinity" (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/the-breath-of-the-trinity/)

~

"What I hope I will be doing with you today is to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is far from being some kind of immensely complicated intellectual abstraction, [but] is an account of how God is close to us.

[...]

"God's interpretation of what God was doing in coming amongst us [is] an interpretation of love. God has shown us that God's creating everything, bringing everything into being, had a criterion: human flourishing. And furthermore, that that was a plan, a project with, if you like, intelligence, that shows the glory of God. And that God's interpretive intelligence is given us in the Holy Spirit so that we can begin to interpret reality and come to discover what really is as we follow the example and life of Jesus, learning to give ourselves away, learning not to grasp onto fake meaning holding back the possibility of learning what really is, but being found ourselves on the inside of the adventure of creation as daughters and sons of God.

[...]

“All that the Father has is mine.” [v. 15]

"[Here] Jesus is referring to God as the Father already personalising the great Impersonal Other, but saying that the entire meaning of God is available in [him, Jesus]. There are no extra bits of God floating around out there that I am not bearing witness to. [...] There are several different ways in which in different gospels that same reality is referred to. The Father is not an extra person outside, observing with a different set of emotional reactions, a differing set of qualities. No, literally everything that is in the Father becomes visible in the Son: the Son is the criterion of the Father, the image of the Father, the icon of the Father, the way, the humanly available way.

“All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

"In other words, God's interpretation [the Spirit] of God's criterion [Jesus] for God is going to be what's operative amongst you now, building you up into an intelligence of all the things that I, Jesus, am showing you, taking exactly from what I've been doing - my words, my actions - so that you will understand that I wasn't paying the price for some terrible vengeance, but so you will see that literally everything that I was doing was the image of the Father: creating, breathing into being.

"Even creating, this is an important point: Jesus is not simply the Saviour, Jesus is the Creator. The Father gives us the entire criterion for God's creation in Jesus. Jesus is the criterion for creation. Which means that his going up to his death and his breathing out the Spirit is the closest analogy we get to what creation looks like. The words Jesus uses are “the birth-pangs,” in other words a terribly terribly dangerous moment whereby a woman puts her life and health extraordinarily at risk in order to bring a child into the world. He's saying, if you want to know what creation looks like, that's the nearest analogy - it is someone being prepared to die in order to breath out their spirit to that everyone else can be brought to life.

"That's the nearest analogy to creation we have, it's a picture, not of a hugely, massively powerful Maker from outside, but of someone who's prepared entirely generously to do something that's going to be independent of them, and then enable people to begin to flourish freely inside [it], so as to come to discover who they are. It is this fantastic picture of the relationship, the sheer friendliness, the warmth, the spaciousness, of the love that is opening up what can seem to us a frightening, terrifying, vengeful and violent world - and is. But God is not associated with any of those things, but that there is this huge interpretation of love trying to well through us, so that we are able to participate in it with peace and with joy."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Trinity Sunday 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBJnCuSW2s)

[Source of the quote from "The Joy of Being Wrong" and link to Andrew Marr's blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/trinityc/]

From the Lectionary for 8 June 2025 (Pentecost - Year C)

John 20:19-23 (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.”

Romans 8:14-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

~

"What I'd like to do is to take a step back before looking at the texts and just comment something about the coming of the Holy Spirit. Very often in our basic understanding of Christianity, we have something like the Holy Spirit coming as a ... consolation prize given that Jesus isn't here. Which is exactly not how Jesus saw it. Jesus saw that what he was doing was setting something up so that we could have something much much more than him being here, at least being here in the flesh, in the form of which he was historically. That what he had done was to make possible the giving to us the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit is how God is now able to get through to us, inside us, between us completely. The gift is more than the giver, that's something which Jesus keeps trying to say: because I have gone to [the Father] you will be able to do more than me.

"Once we begin to understand Jesus's purpose if you like, his project as having been not so much to “pay for our sins” quote-unquote, as though that were you know a 'bill settlement' issue, but as making available to us the source of life, living fountains of a desire vastly greater and richer than that of which we are capable, that opens us up into the possibility of becoming new creatures together, that gives us a new way of being human. Once you understand that that's what he was about, all that he says and does makes more sense, his anxiety to get it done makes more sense. What Jesus was trying to do was make it possible for us to be given the Holy Spirit. He instantiating it, and the Father giving it; he breathing it out, the Father pouring it upon us.

"So what we celebrate today, if you like, is that enormous gift having become possible for humans. And I want to stress that because sometimes Pentecost is celebrated as if it's the birthday of the Church, ... though actually probably the Church's birthday was better considered to be Good Friday, but there we are - that's just my little opinion. But the real problem with thinking about it as the birthday of the Church is that it tends to make the Holy Spirit a 'churchy' thing, whereas the whole point of the Holy Spirit is that it's how God's act of communication goes worldwide. God begins to be able to spread out, the Holy One comes out of the Temple and goes worldwide.

"So this is now a universal and a cosmic difference that is made. If you like, we who have the privilege of being baptized Christians and having received the Holy Spirit, have the privilege of being on the inside of something that is for humans. If, and it's always an if, the Church manages to be a sign of the reconciled humanity, of God's children coming together as one in answer to Jesus prayer, that sign is a wonderful thing, that sign is the presence of the Holy Spirit ushering in the Kingdom. But it's doing it constantly all over the place and not necessarily where we're looking for it! That's another thing which we get from John: no one knows where the Spirit comes from, where the wind blows, where the Spirit flows. It's constantly going ahead of us, it's constantly surprising us.

"And I think that that's a very very important part of understanding: this gift is something not that we can think of as something which we possess and can give to other people but which is something which with luck possesses us and is impelling us to new places, new positions, new openings-up, new freshenings of life and belonging. All of these things are what the Holy Spirit is about.

"Having said that, let's look quickly at the texts because you'll see something I hope about what I'm trying to stress there. John's text is the text we had at the very beginning of Easter. It's the text where Jesus appears in the upper room on the evening of the first day of the week, and the doors are locked. So remember, I told you before, this, if you like, ironizes the holy place in the Temple into which Jewish people quite rightly were feared to go because only the high priest could go. But here we have an ordinary house, people in it locked for fear of the Jews. It's a bit of irony there because this is in fact now a secular place in which the Holy One of God is appearing.

"And the first thing he comes and says is: “Peace be with you.” He gives peace twice thus fulfilling what Jesus had talked about earlier in John's Gospel. “After he said this he showed them his hand and his side.” So he indicates how the peace comes: it is the greeting of peace, then he's showing them what he's done to bring them peace. He's identified who he is - the one who was cast out. And it's from the cast out one that peace comes - not vengeance, not anger, [but] peace. All the great requital for passages in Isaiah have been fulfilled, but not as vengeance, as the gift of peace. And then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. In other words, peace and joy. Joy is the realization of something that has been done for us beyond our imagination and is coming upon us. Peace and joy - these are going to be the absolute keynotes of the Holy Spirit.

"Then Jesus says to them ... “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In other words, up till now, his Father has sent him - all that he has been done has been, if you like, the iconic reflection of his Father, he has been the image, the only image. What God looks like is determined by what Jesus has done. In other words, it's become entirely a horizontal form of belonging, a form of recognition. We recognize the Father in what the Son does. The Son is equal to the Father. It's not a question of looking up, it's a question of looking sideways. And now that same package he is giving to them.

"[... Then he] breathes into them and, as I've said time and time again, it's the same verb as in Genesis 'breathing' into Adam's nostrils - this is the beginning of a new creation, starting new humanity. This is not only to do with the particular people there, it's to do with a new Adam, the possibility of becoming a new human and of creation being opened up again. And, this is the amazing thing: this power which has come from on high through him, by his breath, through that which he has achieved, this power is now ours. And that that's not simply... a 'canonical' thing, it's an actual thing.

"And he says: if you forgive the sins of any, they have forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Let's try and de-moralize that for a bit. That's not merely a question of setting up people who can give up absolution and confession. That's one way of organizing the reception of that, but it's certainly not limiting it. No, it's saying: in as far as you forgive other people creation will be opened up, and as far as you don't, it will remain closed down. There will be no more 'deus ex machina', no more God from outside. God is now at your level, you are within God, and God is within you. It's going to work at your level. It's up to you to take this forward. Where are you going to go?

"And its power comes through forgiveness, through letting go. It's a power that seems weak. But is the strongest thing, because it's as you let go that you will come to discover what is, rather than remaining locked in confirmation bias, in violent patterns of identification and projection. It's as you're able to forgive and let go, that you will discover who others really are, who you really are, and will be able to open up the universe.

[...]

"So this is the power that we've been given. Let's think about this over the next few weeks because this notion of God having become alive sideways amongst us, at the horizontal level, enabling us to discover from within where this peace, where this joy comes from, and how it empowers us to go forth, not just in little ecclesial huddles but as people who speak and witness to something greater than us in the whole world, so that creation can start to begin to bear witness to the glory of its Creator."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Pentecost Sunday 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8DVVuJBasQ)

[Note that John 20:19-23 is the Roman Catholic lectionary Gospel text for Pentecost C - the "Revised Common Lectionary" text is John 14:8-17. For analysis and discussion on this and the other lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/pentecostc/]

From the Lectionary for 1 June 2025 (Easter 7C)

John 17:20-26 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

~

"In his prayer in the garden (John 17) Jesus anticipates that his disciples will share in the divine life. “That they may be in us, just as you are in me and I am in you, Father.” This subjectivity is the appropriation of the life we know from the Gospel tradition, now enfleshed in our very own existence. If in the Gospels we may speak of the objective Life of Jesus (the “so-called” historical Jesus), so by the gift of the Spirit we may also speak of the subjective life of Jesus in us (the Present Christ or the 'Christus Praesens'). The life we now live is lived in Jesus. He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:1-9).

"Where the vine ends and the branches begin is not possible to tell. So it is with us. This is the secret of Christian existence. We are not merged with Jesus so that we may confuse our identity with him, anymore than he is merged with the Father and so loses his identity. To suggest such is to end in a metaphysical miasma and psychological grandiosity. Rather, inasmuch as we imitate Jesus by living in love, as he imitated his Abba and lived in love, we become like him."

- Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life, pg. 269

~

"[T]hrough the Trinity we transcend us-them, in-out thinking. Imprisoned in our old familiar dualistic thinking, we were always dividing the world into mine and yours, one and other, same and different, better and worse. In the Trinity, we move beyond that dualism so that mine and yours are reconciled into ours. One and other are transformed into one another. Same and different are harmonized without being homogenized or colonized. Us and them are united without loss of identity and without dividing walls of hostility. To put it in philosophical terms, dualism doesn't regress to monism. It is transcended.

"The healing teaching of Trinity also helps us transcend top-down or hierarchical understandings of God. If God's Father-ness elevates and includes Son-ness in full equality, do you see what that means? If God's Son-ness doesn't grasp at equality, but rather mirrors the Father's self-giving and self-emptying love, do you see what that means? If the Spirit is not subordinated as an inferior but is honored and welcomed as equal, do you see what that means? God is characterized by equality, empathy, and generosity rather than subordination, patriarchy, and hierarchy."

- Brian McLaren, We Make the Road By Walking, pp. 228-29

~

"No doubt you're aware that many traditional Christians today consider the concept of universal anything — including salvation — heresy. Many do not even like the United Nations. And many Catholics and Orthodox Christians use the lines of ethnicity to determine who's in and who's out. I find these convictions quite strange for a religion that believes that “one God created all things.” Surely God is at least as big and mysterious as what we now know the shape of the universe to be - a universe that is expanding at ever faster speeds, just like the evolution of consciousness that has been proceeding for centuries. How can anyone read the whole or even a small part of John 17 and think either Christ or Jesus is about anything other than unity and union? “Father, may they all be one...”"

- Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, pg. 49

~

In his video homily for this Sunday (link below), James Alison explains how the phrase “before the foundation of the world” refers to the Holy Place (Holy of Holies) in the Jewish temple, as it was thought of as being outside of Creation (both space and time), where YHWH dwells.  This links to the following from his book Jesus the Forgiving Victim, (Essay 6, “Undergoing Atonement: The Reverse Flow Sacrifice.”):

"[T]here is the High Priest, in the Holy Place, with us outside, and he is being ministered to by Angels, he is communing with the Angels who were with YHWH at the beginning of creation. He is spending time in prayer, for it is during this period that he will expect to become interpenetrated by YHWH whom he is going to incarnate for the rest of the rite. So he will pray to become one with God, and that God will become one with him, so that he can perform the sacrifice and glorify God by making God's people one. This is what At-one-ment is all about. Experts in these matters have long known that in John 17, where Jesus engages in a long prayer concerning the Father being in him, and he in the Father, and him praying that his disciples may be made one, we have the essence of the High Priestly prayer in the Atonement rite. So we can imagine the ancient High Priest praying in these terms, and becoming interpenetrated by YHWH." (pp. 247-48)

In the homily, Alison proceeds:

"[H]ere we have one of the things that Jesus is repeating from the Atonement rite, “at-one-ment” rite, which is the time when everything becomes one. The prophet Zechariah even says, “On that day God will be One.” There is the sense that creation is a dispersed reality that hasn't yet achieved One-ness, and that the power of the Creator tends to making things one.

"And that can be quite a frightening thing for us. “One” can be a way of making everyone fit into the same 'little hut' - can be a reductive thing. But it's quite obvious that Jesus's understanding of the way in which God makes them one is an ever-greater, it's one in the non-mathematical sense. [It] is of so much diversity that harmoniously works together that we are able to rejoice in being brought into it. That the Father is in Jesus, the Spirit which is being given is in both of them and is shared with us so that we find ourselves actually coming alive in them. It's “being inhabited” by something. It imagines us as malleable, not as individuals with individual spirits but as malleable inter-dividuals ... who are able to be possessed by evil desires and spirits coming from others, but also able to be inhabited, indwelt, by The Spirit which is making us, with all our distractions and separations, revenges and rivalries, is turning into One.

[...]

"[T]he whole of this is to produce people that are able to bear witness to love. That's how we know that it is of God. Titles, authority, none of those things are at the beginning of a hint of as much importance as this: are we in any sense at all dilators, symptoms, of God's love? Or are we people who think that the love is only for me and not something that I receive from others and I'm able to share with others?

[...]

"From generation to generation we are in the same place, this upper room which is also the Holy of Holies, with the Holy One who is giving himself so that we can learn always to detect where he is. He's going to look different, our imitation of it is going to be flexible, from generation to generation, but this is the witness that we're going to bear. ... [And] this plan precedes everything. This is not a reactive plan, this project of opening up creation through including us and bringing us into the possibility of discovering what is true, how things really are, what the way that the whole pattern of creation really works is. Being on the inside of that, that is what he wanted from the word go.

[...]

"The whole purpose of this was to enter that place so as to reveal what the heart of the Creator of all things is, in such a way that we might be contaminated by it ... that it may be contagious among us, so that we too can start to bear witness to what really is.

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventh Sunday in Easter 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exYAhK2EVqE)

[Source of book quotes from Michael Hardin, Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr and James Alison, and for further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter7c/]

From the Lectionary for 25 May 2025 (Easter 6C)

John 14:23-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur you may believe.

~

"Our passage doesn't give us a key element that makes it comprehensible, I'm afraid, which is that the immediately before our passage the verse before our passage has one of Jesus's disciples, Judas, but not Judas Iscariot, saying to him: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” And it's that question that Jesus is answering when he says: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” That's rather odd because the question is, 'how is that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world.' And the Greek is *to* us, but Jesus's answer is not, “I will reveal myself *to* you,” but “I will reveal myself *in* you.” Effectively, you will have become me, you'll know it and you will be living my life, it will be within you.

"“Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” This can be read in a moralistic way as if you're saying: if you love me then you will do this, and then my Father will come, but I really don't think that's the meaning. [...] I think that it's in [a] demonstrative sense that Jesus is saying, “This is what's going to happen: in the process of loving me, you will find yourself keeping my word, that's what loving me looks like - keeping my word, and at the same time you'll find that my Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our home with you.” In other words, Jesus will be revealing himself in us as we go through the process of hearing his word, allowing ourselves to be inhabited, indwelt by the relationship between him and the Father. He's, of course, preparing us for the giving of the Holy Spirit. And that I think is a very important point: he's talking about a process of indwelling.

"One of the things that has been going on in John's Gospel as in all the others is our being taken out of top-down God, being-outside God, and into sideways-and-within God. And here this is explaining: yup, you will become a dwelling, the Father and I will dwell in you. It's as your relationship is changed with others around you, you will be loving me, you will be becoming like me in terms of self-giving towards others, and your relationship with others has changed. And that's the sign that my Father and I are dwelling within you. Instead of there being a 'they' who is outside you, who is a wicked and frightening they, who's trying to control you, and an I who is a cowering individualist I who is frightened and constantly in a tug of war; on the contrary: the Father who is pure generosity and love will be turning your I, who is Jesus, into a receiver of grace and one capable of giving themselves away. That's what this is going to look like, and this is a process. And in that Jesus will be revealing himself in us.

"So he's answering Judas not-the-Iscariot's question in a really quite particular way, which is hugely important for any of us to understand. This is the shape of what it's going to look like to know Jesus, to be known by Jesus, to find ourselves becoming Christ."

- James Alison, from "Homily for Sixth Sunday in Easter 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSbKzMnQ7Rg)

~

"[I]t is not Jesus and the Father all by themselves who are bringing about the possibility of the fruition of creation, as were by some sort of extrinsic divine fiat. What Jesus is creatively bringing into being is the human possibility of humans themselves becoming sharers in the bringing to fruition of creation. Thus, when Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, ho who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12), he is indicating that his going to the Father (ie. his self-giving up to death) is creative of the possibility of those believing in him (and thus believing through him in the nondefinitive nature of death, and in the deathless nature of God) themselves becoming creative participants in creation.

[...]

"By the disciples' loving imitation of Jesus' self-giving, they will creatively make present Jesus' sonship, and thus the diving paternity, in the world which does not know it. Here John engages in an extraordinary repetition of the word 'monē', dwelling [or home], which had appeared before in verse 2, in a way which is completely in line with the “de-sacralization” of this passage and its interpretation as opening up human creation of filiation, and thus of paternity, in the world. Where in 14:2 Jesus had announced that in his Father's house there are many 'monai', mansions, here we are told that it is by a person's loving imitation of Jesus' self-giving that the Father will turn this person into a 'monē', where it is the Father and Jesus who dwell in the person who is creating divine paternity and filiation, and not alone the man who moves to a diving dwelling. So the Father's house now appears to consist in the creation of many dwellings among human beings.

"This brings out the sense in which the Parakletos [Advocate] who will come will be sent in Jesus’ name (Jn 14:7). That is, he will bring into creative presence the person of Jesus through the loving imitation of his disciples. It is not that the Holy Spirit is simply a substitute presence, acting instead of Jesus, but rather it is by Jesus going to his death (and, by giving up his Spirit bringing to completion his creative work - “It is accomplished,” tetelestai - 19:30) that all Jesus’ creative activity will be made alive in the creative activity of his disciples.

"The memory of Jesus here [(he will “remind you of all that I have said to you”)] is thus not in the first place the cure for the absence of the teacher, but the bringing to mind, and thus to the possibility of creative practice, in dependence on Jesus, of Jesus’ creative activity. This is the sense of the peace which Jesus leaves with his disciples: not the peace which is the result of the suppression of conflict, or the resolution of conflict, such as is practiced by the mechanism of expulsion of the world, but the creative peace that brings into being the primordial peace of the Creator from the beginning."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 188-190

~

"In a telling inversion of the resurrection-exaltation sequence we find in the synoptic gospels, John presents Easter as the self-revelation of the *already* exalted Christ to his disciples. Jesus has already returned to the Father in glory upon his death. Now he returns in a risen body to his disciples in order to make possible for them participation in divine life. [...] There are thus two distinct, but related, moments in the paschal event according to John. The first is Jesus' glorification on the cross and his being “lifted up” to the Father. The second is the exalted Jesus' return to his disciples and the formation of a community that embodies the risen Christ in the world.

"If this interpretation is correct, [...] the resurrection narratives should not be thought of as tenuously related to a self-contained movement of descent and ascent that completes its cycle at the moment of Jesus' death. If Jesus' death does in fact coincide with his “going to the Father” (14:28; 16:10, 16), the resurrection remains absolutely central in John because it is that which allows *us* to participate in divine life.

"The resurrection of Jesus is his return to us as the possibility of our union with God, for our participation in the very life of God here and now. The Easter event opens up for us eternal life, a reality that is not just in our future but one that qualitatively transforms the life we are presently living."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pg. 327

[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter6c/]