From the Lectionary for 30 November 2025 (Advent 1A)

Isaiah 2:2-5 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In days to come
    the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
    and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
    Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
 He shall judge between the nations
    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
    neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
    come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!

Matthew 24:36-44 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

~

"One of the things I love about the liturgical life of the Church is the way that the Holy Spirit, quietly and gently, works on us. Through the texts and prayers set out for us each year in the lectionary the Spirit draws us ever more fully into the Presence. If we read the texts in a literalistic manner, it can sounds as though, week by week it is God who is undergoing change toward us. In fact, however, in the liturgy of the Presence it is we who are worked on through the scriptures and the prayers, we who get to be reconfigured and brought in to the life of the Changeless One.

"At Advent, it begins again: the cycle by which God breaks through the clutter of our lives to announce to us that the Presence is very near, irrupting into our midst, hauling us out of our myths, our half-truths and the ways we have settled for what is “religious” rather than what is holy, alive, and real. So, lest we be tempted to think that “Advent” is merely a religious warm-up for “Christmas”, let us see if we can allow ourselves to be brought near the cold-water spigot whose splashes can chasten us into reality.

"Someone wants to speak to us. Someone who is not on the same level as us at all. The “oomph” behind the “isness” of everything that is wants to invite us into the fulness of a project. Can that One get through? Who are they? Will we be able to hear them? How trained are our ears? The assumption at the beginning of each liturgical year is that this is going to be difficult: that we are half asleep, our ears dulled, and the voice of One who loves us is too radiant bright to be picked up on our defensive antennae. [...]

"The announcement with which we begin, from Isaiah, plays to our sense of the physically portentous. It gives us a mountain which is being lifted up. It plays to our sense of religious grandeur. For the mountain is Zion, where Jerusalem is built. And it plays to any apocalyptic sense we may have, for out of this physically and religiously charged place there is to emerge a teaching, and an instruction, which will also be a judgment, a criterion for all peoples. And this criterion, this instruction, this judge, sitting with authority, will be heeded by all nations, who will then enter into the ways of peace.

[...]

"[W]hat is the sense of the prophecy? We are used to two possibilities: on the one hand, prophecy being punctured by reality, and our settling for far, far less than our imaginations were excited into expecting; or on the other hand prophecies being fulfilled, and our being given a boost to our expectations and our sense of who we are and what we deserve.

"Advent, however, gives us neither of these. Or perhaps it would be better to say that we are given both. For what we are going to get used to hearing is the still small voice of punctured fulfilment. That is to say, our receiving far more than we imagined we might get from the prophecy, but our getting it through the process of the loss of fantasy. And this is what Our Lord warns his disciples about: the coming is not going to happen according to our measure, nor is it likely to be picked up by us. Only the spirit that is trained in punctured fulfilment is likely to get it.

"Jesus points it out very clearly: there is no human criterion at all that is capable of knowing how the Creator’s design to fulfil creation is going to look. Majority expectations are not safe, like those of Noah’s contemporaries. Who could tell that with Cain killing Abel in the field (one taken, the other left) judgment would begin? Or what the shape of that judgment would be? Or who could tell with the deaths of the firstborn of the Egyptian slave women working alongside their Hebrew counterparts at the grinding stone (Exodus 11,5) what sign from God was about to emerge?

"And yet, as our imagination of the One who is coming undergoes its inevitable puncturing, so that we can be awakened to One whose criteria are not our criteria, the promise will be fulfilled. The One who is coming will not preside over us, but will teach us to want peace from within, and to learn the habits that make it possible. The One who loves us will come as one we despise, and crucify. The definitive puncturing of our god-fantasies, and yet the Presence of one who is powerfully determined not to let us remain wedded to our self-destruction."

- James Alison, from "A Puncturing Fulfillment" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02ow1QEbeNZmRcaF4RLSYHmVeY3UDi2em9geJRtzvDH8D9C6r557nhk2ZwssSUV7A5l)

~

"I think that the whole point [of this teaching in this passage from Matthew's gospel] is: this is not obvious. You need to be on the inside of something and discern something. From the outside it is going to look odd - two in the field, one taken one left; two grinding meal together, one taking one left. What is it going to look like to be in a position to discriminate, in the good sense, to discern what's going on? Wherever there are two people, wherever normal-seeming things are in fact riven through by the hints of glory - or ruin.

"“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” So the coming of the Son of Man, and the central message of this passage: keep awake, [...] stay awake. And I think that that's the difficult key that we're being asked to do in Advent, which is staying awake sufficiently to be able to discriminate, to discern what is going on in the midst of our world, so that when normal-seeming things are in fact shot through with heavenly decision-making processes. And in the midst of them the Lord is coming. And it's coming as a surprise, we do not know it so no complacency is possible [...]

"“But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.” [...] But Jesus has said just before, “You do not know on what day *your* lord is coming,” which suggests that it's not the negative thing that he's concerned about but rather the people who because we think of the Lord as on our side, think of him as our Lord and say, “Lord, Lord.” Because of that we assume that it's going to be coming in a way that will be easy for us to pick up, that we will be able to detect it, that it will, as it were, be obvious from our point of view because we know what's right and what's wrong. [But] the suggestion [is] that, actually, that's the most dangerous position to be in, because if we think we know then we're going to be greatly deceived. We have to really become aware of the possibility that the coming is happening in our midst in ways we don't know and which do not flatter our sense of belonging, our sense of what is good and bad, our sense of what is right and wrong.

[...]

"So this, at the beginning of Advent, my sisters and brothers, I suspect is what we're being asked to enter into: discernment [of] all the things that are going on, where we are with the relation to all of them, how much of it seems normal, how much of it seems scandalous and full of huge turbulence and uprisings and so on - the chapter immediately before this verse is precisely about those things. So the strange mixture of normal things going on while there are huge upheavals going on makes it very difficult for us to be, as it were, planted in both and yet still alive for the One who is coming in, still prepared for all the glory that is going to come in such [a] small form, is going to be so strange for us to learn and is going to take us into the kingdom."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for First Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-NWVUIo7Ro)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent1a/]

From the Lectionary for 23 November 2025 (Christ the King Sunday, Year C)

Jeremiah 23:5-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Luke 23:33-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

~

"As I have both studied and written about Jesus and the gospels, and as I have tried to lead and teach Christian communities that were doing their best to follow Jesus and order their lives by the gospels, I have had the increasing impression, over many years now, that most of the Western Christian tradition has simply forgotten what the gospels are really all about. Despite centuries of intense and heavy industry expended on the study of all sorts of features of the gospels, we have often managed to miss the main thing that they, all four of them, are most eager to tell us. I have therefore come to the conclusion that what we need is not just a bit of fine-tuning, an adjustment here and there. We need a fundamental rethink about what the gospels are trying to say, and hence about how best we should read them, together and individually. And - not least - about how we then might order our life and work in accordance with them.

"[...] The question, then, is not only: Can we learn to read the gospels better, more in tune with what their original writers intended? It is also: Can we discover, by doing this, a new vision for God's mission in the world, in and through Jesus, and then - now! - in and through his followers? And, in doing so, can we grow closer together in mission and life, in faith and hope, and even in love? Might a fresh reading of the gospels, in other words, clear the way for renewed efforts in mission and unity? Is that what it would look like if we really believed that the living God was king on earth as in heaven?

"That, after all, is the story all four gospels tell. [...] I am here dealing with the four that were recognized, from very early on, as part of the church’s “rule of life,” that is, part of the “canon”: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the story that the four evangelists tell is the story, as in my title, of “how God became king.”

"This, I discover, comes as a surprise to most people, and an unwelcome shock to some. It appears, as we say today, counterintuitive; that is, the claim that God has become king doesn’t seem to square with the world as we know it. “If God is really king, why is there still cancer? Why are there still tsunamis? Why are there still tyranny, genocide, child abuse, and massive economic corruption?”

"What’s more, as we shall see, some people, not least some Christians, appear allergic to the very idea of God becoming, or being, “king.” “Isn’t God as king triumphalist? Doesn’t that lead us toward that dreaded word “theocracy”? And isn’t that one of the problems of our day, not one of the solutions?”

"Questions like that are important. But even if the gospel writers had heard us asking them, they would not have backed off from the claim they were making."

- N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, pp. ix-x

~

"Christ is the royal man under the sign of the cross.  His whole life moved toward the cross as the enactment of reconciliation.  His cross was his coronation.  As the New Testament plainly reveals, we can know the royal man Jesus and ourselves in him, only as the one who was 'led by God' and 'harried by us' to his death.

"[...] [T]he royal man is a reflection of God in correspondence with his purpose and work. Here [Barth] has four points. (i) Jesus shares God's destiny in his disparagement, rejection, isolation, and concealment. (ii) He upturns all values by favoring the weak and humble, not the high and mighty. (iii) His approach to established orders is genuinely revolutionary, cutting across all parties and programs, both conservative and progressive. (iv) He lives his life for men as Savior, not against them as Judge."

- G. W. Bromiley, An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, pages 203, 201

~

"It's interesting that [in verse 35 the accusation] uses both of those: the Messiah of God, that's the anointed one, so that's the Davidic figure [...]; and the Chosen One. The chosen one was Israel rather than a particular figure. Saul is sometimes referred to as the Chosen One - the beginnings of the kingship of Israel. But “the chosen one,” this is a reference to Isaiah 28 where God is setting a foundation in Zion by placing a chosen stone, a precious one in his eyes.

"We'll see how important it comes to be because it's the distinction between precious and shame: the one that is chosen is the one that people think “yes, this is something being done for us”; and the other one is a shame, so they're saying it right, but they're saying it so as to shame him. We're going to see how important that dichotomy between the chosen one and the shamed one is, because everything in today's Gospel is around that fundamental dichotomy.

[...]

"I hadn't picked up the importance of the word “paradise” [v.43] until I looked up all the other times that the word paradise appears in the [...] Greek in the Septuagint. [...] And mostly it's meaning is “orchard.” Jesus is clearly making a reference to the tree as the Tree of Life, which is of course in Paradise in the garden, the orchard in Genesis and in Ezekiel. And then there is the curse of the tree [in Deut. 21:23].

"So the whole question is, are you part of the lynch mob, in which case there is a curse going on here, or do you recognize that this is the Tree of Life? There are two trees, or rather there are two people interpreting the tree in an entirely different way. And the one who recognizes that this one is entirely innocent, that the one who is being falsely accused is the source of Life, that one has perceived that what looked like a place of shame is in fact the precious place that has been put down as a new foundation [cf. Isaiah 28:16 - Therefore thus says the Lord God, “See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation” (NRSVUE)].

"In other words, all these references bring out the duality of what is going on here. On the one hand, something positive coming into being so that Jesus really is the principle of all the powers of the world, he really is going to be able to feed the people, he really is going to be the new Temple - those temptations which he'd overcome. And he is actually opening up the Tree of Life, making it possible to come into of the garden, the orchard, the beginning of New Creation.

"So that's how Luke shows both how our forgiveness works and at the same time how what is going on is vastly more powerful than an individual scene but a place where all the kings and princes of this world gather together look at the king as anointed and don't know what they see. It's Psalm 2 that is being re-enacted here beautifully at the centre of Luke's passion."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Christ the King 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_omW0f7KM)

[Source of N.T. Wright quote, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xrstking_c/]

From the Lectionary for 16 November 2025 (Proper 28C):

Luke 21:5-19 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

~

"The world Jesus paints describes those days when the sacrificial mechanism humans have depended on no longer works, when the temple’s pretty façade has fallen, and the stones of the building lie about all a kilter, in those days all hell will break lose. Everybody will be against their neighbor. It will be a time when you will be betrayed by your parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends. They will execute some of you. We may be entering those days.

"Because Jesus-followers won’t be pointing toward others with an accusing finger but rather pointing toward God who loves all and does not wish that any be sacrificed, they will be hated by everyone. A culture built on division and hatred will especially hate Jesus-followers because Jesus-followers give witness to the truth that all are of value and none expendable.

"After all of this Jesus still leaves us a word of comfort. He assures us that “Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost.” He tells us we will make it through whole. At the deepest level we will be in one piece. And more than that, “by holding fast, you will gain your lives.” Dear friends, we are in the process of gaining our lives."

- Thomas L. Truby, from a sermon delivered on November 13, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper28-2016-Gaining-Our-Lives.pdf)

~

"In fact Jesus's so-called apocalyptic discourse is really a 'how not to be run by an apocalyptic imagination' discourse. It's how not to be fooled by this world of fascinating signs. [...] Please notice what Jesus is doing is he's trying to get people off fascination with charismatic people, fascination with the temple and the notion of God's anger associated with it. He's saying, “Pay no attention to such things, do not go after them.”

[...]

"What's wrong, if you like, with this world of signs and fascinations is, we look at a particular struggle or a particular upheaval and think about it in terms of it giving us meaning by there being the bad guy who [is] being destroyed, so we must be the good guy. And the trouble with that of course is that if you think that, you're failing to notice what is actually going on in your own group, you're still being run by the need to justify yourself over against another group.

"So each one of these [Nation w ill rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven] is not Jesus saying this is what's going to happen, he's saying these kind of quotes, these kind of attitudes to prophetic happenings, those are all the wrong way of looking at things, that's all something in the midst of which you must learn a certain indifference.

[...]

"The Ignatian understanding of indifference is: not allowing rivalry to push my buttons. That kind of indifference is what therefore enables us curiously to be creative and actually free in the midst of whatever is going on, and bearing witness to another reality, something that is not run by the violence of the scapegoating of this world.

[...]

"By your endurance, your patience, your perseverance, in other words by your standing in the midst of all this, not being run by it and so bearing witness to that which is being brought into being, you will gain your souls. That is what being brought into being as a son or a daughter of God looks like. It looks like being turned into a witness of another sign, a completely different sign. Instead of the world of temple, of violent sacred, fake goodness, of political and even of tribal and family violent construction of goodness, in the midst of all that, working through it all, not run by its meaning, being given the meaning that comes from God, that is the living of the Kingdom."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXni9LDFM9U)

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper28c/]

From the Lectionary for 9 November 2025 (Proper 27C)

Luke 20:27-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.”

~

"The Sadducees had couched their question ironically, within a familiar [1st century] backdrop. Jesus, in reply, gives as his example of the Scriptures and the power of God the story of Moses and the Bush from the book of Exodus, where God says to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Jesus' point is that for God who knows not death, those people, long dead in terms of the supposed historical chronology of Moses' life, were alive. If they were alive to God, contaminated as it were with God's utter aliveness, held in presence by one whose presence is beyond time, then they are alive. It's God's aliveness that counts in understanding all these things."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pg. 165

~

"So when, earlier, Jesus had said to the Sadducees that they didn't understand the power of God [...], now we begin to understand what this power might consist in. Jesus isn't talking about some special power to do something miraculous, like raising someone from the dead. Rather he's giving an indication of the sort of power which characterizes God, something of the quality of who God is. This ‘power’, this quality which God always is, is that of being completely and entirely alive, living without any reference to death.

"There is no death in God. God has nothing to do with death, and for that reason facts which are obvious to us, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob having been long dead at the time of Moses, simply do not exist for God. Let's put this another way: for us ‘being alive’ means ‘not being dead’; it's a reality which is circumscribed by its opposite. For God this is simply not the case. For God being alive has nothing to do with death, and cannot even be contrasted with death."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 38

~

"“Because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” [v.36] Now that simply sounds as though he's saying something, it doesn't actually sound like an argument. I think that it's worth trying to bring out some of the heft of what is behind that, because it's a difficult thing. He's suggesting that in this age marrying and giving marriage is for the production of offspring and that's perfectly fine, but the age to come, the resurrection, works on an entirely different principle. The resurrection is not something that happens to dead people. It's a form of being alive that God has already begun in some people before they are dead, and once they're dead they become alive in the resurrection. In other words, the driving force, if you like, between their being alive comes from God and that can start now.

"The same was hinted at when Jesus told the disciples to rejoice not that the evil spirits obeyed them but that their name was written in heaven. The notion of the name being written in heaven means that the driving force of who you are is something that is coming from elsewhere and turning you into a witness to it, rather than you being started from here and becoming a simple reproduction of a system going on indefinitely.

"So it's the driving points that are different. So having suggested that what's important here is not whether your driving point is the reproductive one but whether your driving point is the one from heaven who has as it were brought you into being and turned you into a witness to it's presence in the world during your life. In which case your marital status is neither here nor there, it's part of your relationship to other people that has reproduced God's original Adam and or Eve as one person. You're going back to a zero point, an Omega point before creation, that's what's being brought into being.

[...]

"In other words, the resurrection is God's life, it's the utter livingness the effervescence of Life of God which here on Earth turns people into Sons and Daughters, inviting them to share in God's life. It's a logical thing, it's not to do with “Am I Immortal?” It's “Is my name written in heaven?” In which case I am being brought into Life by the utterly living effervescent God.

"I want to bring this up because it's important for us. So many of us have an understanding of immortality, the resurrection, eternal life, as things which start from here: “Is there something Immortal in me and am I going to last forever?” Whereas it's quite clear from Jesus's understanding that none of this starts from here. The whole point of God is that the utter effervescence and aliveness of God - everything starts from there. And we are, if you like, dialogically called into it. We are being created, started from above, given a name from above, so that our flesh becomes the life of a son and daughter of God in the midst of this age but not run by this age.

"That's his picture: we are started from elsewhere. And this elsewhere is utterly alive, which is why we don't need to be frightened of death and its consequences. The starting, being started, from elsewhere, so difficult for modern individualists to understand, and something which of course was disconcerting to people who want a very stable social order, one above all where unhelpful things like hope are not encouraged lest it leads to uprisings and changes to the social order, which of course carried on happening in the immediate aftermath of Jesus's life, as we all know, with relation to Jerusalem and the Romans. But the utterly alive Life Of God, starting us from elsewhere, is what we are being summoned into."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLXqZiV7o4w)

[Source of quotes from Jesus the Forgiving Victim and Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper27c/]

From the Lectionary for 2 November 2025 (Proper 26C)

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

~

"That Jesus had discerned the social matrix of Jericho rightly was immediately manifest when Jesus called out to the tax collector and invited himself to that man's house. St. Luke says that “all who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”’ (Lk. 19:7) Here is another example of Luke's astute anthropological insight. It isn't just the Pharisees and scribes who grumble about Zacchaeus. Everybody grumbles about him. Like Simon when confronted with the Woman Who Was a Sinner (Lk. 7:36-50), the people of Jericho were thinking that if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of man this was who was sitting up in a tree - that he was a sinner. One doesn't have to be a demonically possessed man or a sinful woman to be a communal scapegoat. A rich man who is a traitor to his people can hold the same position. And deserve it. After all, he was treading down the downtrodden. For scapegoating others, he deserved to be scapegoated. [...] The challenge of this story [...] is not limited to the possible conversion of one person. It extends to the possible conversion of the whole community."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God's Desire, pp. 101-03

~

"This is Jesus' simple message: Holiness is no longer to be found through separation from or exclusion of, but in fact, the radical inclusion (read “forgiveness”) of the supposedly contaminating element. Any exclusionary system only lays the solid foundation for violence in thought, word and deed. So he has to lead us on a new path: “He will give the people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:77) and inclusion of the enemy (Matthew 5:44), and even departure from what we think is ourself (Mark 8:34-38).

"My lifetime of studying Jesus would lead me to summarize all of his teaching inside of two prime ideas: forgiveness and inclusion. Don't believe me; just go through the Gospels, story by story. It is rather self-evident. Forgiveness and inclusion are Jesus' “great themes.” They are the practical name of love, and without forgiveness and inclusivity love is largely a sentimental valentine. They are also the two practices that most undercut human violence."

- Richard Rohr, Things Hidden, pp. 150-51

~

"[...] Zacchaeus is no longer cowed, no longer hiding, no longer small, no longer run by the way he was tied in to the crowd before. Luke emphasizes the physical gesture: Zacchaeus stands tall, and immediately sets about reconstructing a whole new way of being together with his fellow citizens, not concerned with his goodness or badness, happy to work through the details of accusations of impropriety, about which the murmuring crowd will have had more than a thing or two to say, but more than that, completely concerned with his new way of belonging to Israel.

[...]

"Luke ends by pointing up something which [is] also clear in the Emmaus passage [in Luke 24]. There the two travellers thought they were the hosts and Jesus their guest, only to find that he was hosting them, and had been the protagonist of the story of which they had thought themselves knowledgeable, all along. Part of what the presence of Jesus in the midst of people feels like is just this curious inversion of perspective, and of protagonism.

"At the beginning of our story here, it is Zacchaeus who seeks to see who Jesus is, working around all the complexities of his relationship with the crowd so as to get a glimpse. But from the moment that Jesus looks up at him, calls him by name and tells him he must spend the night in his house, it is clear that the whole protagonism has been inverted. Not only is it, once again, the apparent guest who is the real host. But all along, it was the regard of Another other that was deliberately seeking out this particular person, Zacchaeus.

"Zacchaeus' seeking of Jesus had been real, if still embryonic; it was the seeking of someone who was tied up in a very complex pattern of desire. Perhaps the beginning of Zacchaeus' being found lay in the fact that, as part of his lostness, he had had to begin to uncouple himself from the immediacy of crowd desire, just so as to be able to get a look at Jesus. Even that uncoupling, leading to his moment of unexpected vulnerability, is part of the process of his receiving the regard which recreated him, is part of what being sought and found by Another other looks like."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 377-79

~

"“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” And so here you have the reference back to what happens in the beginning of the [story] with Zacchaeus seeking out but Jesus seeing him. And all along the sensation that we may think that we're seeking out but we are being sought out, and that is the way how grace works, how forgiveness works. And forgiveness reaches us and has as its fruit the breaking open of heart and the giving away of things, that's how forgiveness produces penitence in us and shows us to be Sons and Daughters of Abraham."

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

[Source of quotes from Andrew Marr, Richard Rohr 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/proper26c/]

From the Lectionary for 26 October 2025 (Proper 25C)

Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

~

"The Law, which should have served to teach us that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ ([Rom. 3:]23), frequently serves as a way of our dividing the world into good and bad, of our separating it into those who follow the Law and those who do not. The person who, owing to his observance of the Law, is in a position to judge others as bad (that is, considers himself made righteous by the Law) reveals that the Law does not get to the heart of man. Such a person has his identity, his ‘me,’ still constituted on the basis of victimizing, of expelling, of separation. Being convinced of the right-ness (and righteousness) of his position, it is very much more difficult for him to receive the dependence on what is other than him of the constitution of his ‘me,’ and thus have his ‘me’ transformed, have it healed from its dependence on persecution."

-  James Alison, from “Justification and the Constitution of Consciousness: A New Look at Romans and Galatians,” in New Blackfriars, Vol. 71 No. 834 (Jan 1990), pp 17-27

~

"This Pharisee has God wrong. God is not about who is better than, smarter than, prettier than, richer than, holier than. God does not discriminate, God does not compare us with one another. The Pharisee was bound by his dedication to the Torah, and that would be a beautiful thing but his hermeneutic suffered. He had God wrong. The God who blesses the religious person is a God who can be manipulated. A God who recognizes the selfish perceptions of our zeal would have to be a god of wrath and violence and justice and judgement. In short, if God is like the Pharisee thinks God is, most of us are in some deep doo-doo, as we fall far short of this one's righteousness. [...]

"The prayer of the publican is well known, he seeks forgiveness. This is the God who answers, this is the One revealed in the character of Jesus. The publican is not expressing some poor old “woe is me” syndrome; he simply and honestly acknowledges himself for how he acts. He sins, therefore he is a sinner in need of mercy and healing."

- Michael Hardin (source no longer available online)

~

"[L]et's go back to the first verse of our Gospel for the day, which is the most difficult verse, [...] “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

"Because how much of Christianity today is exactly this, it's self-justification by faith on the Evangelical side and self-justification by Church on the Catholic side. Because I am right, because I have been saved by Jesus I can judge all the other people because the Bible gives me permission to do so. Or, because I am right, because I'm a Catholic and I [am] on the inside of the church, I can judge all the people whom the church disapproves of.

"And please remember, there is no such thing as these two being separated. If you trust in yourself, that you are righteous, then automatically you're defining yourself over against others with contempt. You may not realize it but that's how we get a fake identity. How do we get a fake identity? Over against others.

"Once you start to realize that you are like others then you lose that fake goodness and you find yourself coming awfully close to the position whereby you realize, “Oh my God, I am a sinner, have mercy on me.” And it's one, and I know this is no longer popular because pop psychology keeps on telling people to forget about sin and so on so forth, it's one of the reasons why the term sinner is such a good thing. To be able to say, genuinely - not out of, you know, formulating - “I am a sinner,” and for that to be a sign of having been relaxed into not having to define yourself over against others, that is an extraordinary blessing and is the sign indeed of being made right with God.

"God is forgiving us by revealing to us that we are sinners, and that's okay. Being a sinner is not the problem. Fake virtue is far more terrifying than sin, people who consider themselves righteous and simultaneously regard others with contempt.

"What must it look like in our midst for us to encourage a return of Christianity that understands this, that being able to dwell in shame tenderly and so know ourselves as sinners and therefore find ourselves being realigned to God is the norm, rather than creating a structure of security for ourselves which depends on wicked others whom we can despise."

- James Alison from video Homily for Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhqElGzx1VA)

[Source of quotes from Michael Hardin and James Alison's Blackfriars essay, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper25c/]

From the Lectionary for 19 October 2025 (Proper 24C)

Luke 18:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

~

"[T]he question we have to ask is what is Jesus doing? Is Jesus comparing us to the widow? That as human beings who experience injustice, is the unjust judge to be compared with God? Is there a 'how much more' [...] argument kind of here, how if the judge is like this, how much more will God be?

"But I want to come to the two questions that are asked [by Jesus] here. The Lord says, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.” Now notice he does not say here "what the widow says.” The emphasis for Jesus in this text is not on the widow or her persistence [...] Here, this is a judge who has no honor. He doesn't care, but he gives in.

"And then Jesus asks this strange question focused on the judge. “Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night.” If you're part of the audience, your answer to that question is going to be “Yes!” Because you have in your tradition texts that move in that direction. And I want to give you one text in particular that is noted by the scholars on the parables and that comes from the book of Sirach chapter 35 [...] So if you have an Apocrypha, you'll want to go to the book of Sirach 35:14-21. Listen very carefully to this text:

“Do not offer the judge a bribe. He will not accept it. And do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice, for the Lord is judge and with him there is no partiality. He will not show partiality to the poor, but he will listen to the prayer of one who is wronged. He will not ignore the supplication of the orphan or the widow when she pours out her complaint. Do not the tears of the widow run down her cheek as she cries out against the one who causes them to fall? The one whose service is pleasing to the Lord will be accepted and his prayer will reach to the clouds. The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds and it will not rest until it reaches its goal. It will not desist until the Most High responds and does justice for the righteous and executes judgment. Indeed, the Lord will not delay and like a warrior will not be patient until he crushes the loins of the unmerciful and repays vengeance [...] on the nations until he destroys the multitudes of the insolent, breaks the scepters of the unrighteous, repays mortals according to their deeds and the works of all according to their thoughts, until he judges the case of his people and makes them rejoice in his mercy.”

"Here's the takeaways from this and a couple of them are linguistic. Notice here what the unrighteous judge says. “And will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night?” Right out of this passage in Sirach is the language of a widow. Right out of the language of this passage are those who cry day and night. Right out of this passage is the question of will the Lord respond? And the answer is indeed the Lord will not delay. Okay, same phrase that's used here. And notice this “will he delay long over them?” It's the same in Greek here in Luke as it is over in the Sirach text on the phrase, “and like a warrior will not be patient until he crushes the loins of the merciful.” So in other words, anybody hearing Jesus doing this parable is going to have in the back of their mind this little story or text from Sirach, ok, it certainly would have been a popular text amongst the poor. And the question is, “will not God vindicate his elect who cry out to him day and night?” He doesn't say, “And will the father not vindicate?” He doesn't use "the Father” here, he uses the god concept.

"And the vindication is to be of his elect. Now, what kind of language is this business of elect? Who are the elect? We don't see Jesus talking much about the elect. And in fact, we see him doing quite the opposite in just the previous chapter before this. Is it not the case that the rich man who sat who's had the poor man at his gate, did he not count on his election? Is it not the case that the the Pharisees will say we have as our father Abraham? Are they not counting on their election? Was it not John the Baptist who when confronted with the doctrine of election said God can turn these stones into sons and daughters of God? So there's a critique of the notion of national election here that runs through the Jesus tradition. And so it seems odd to me that Jesus is now going to use a term like the elect with reference to his own.

"So what I did was what I always do. I thought this was curious because the commentators aren't helpful. Most of them want to turn this parable into almost the opposite of what it's doing, I think. First of all, when it comes to the noun 'ecletos', the elect. Okay, we rarely find it in the gospels. In fact, it's found more often in Matthew, but only from chapters 20 on, 20, 22, and 24 - eschatological texts. Oh, election, eschatological text. We ought to automatically be thinking of the Pharisees who were apocalyptic. Qumran, the elect community, they were apocalyptic. First Enoch which talks all about the elect. Okay. So election is a category from apocalyptic literature. Good. We can establish that at least. Mark 13 is the only place where elect is used (in Mark) and that's the little apocalypse. Okay. And then only here in Luke 18 and then again in Luke 23 where it is stated this is the elect Christ of God. After that it's used twice in Romans, once in Colossians, three times in the pastoral epistles and one two three four times in first Peter, once in the book of Revelation. It's not a common term.

"First of all, it's not a common term. That ought to tell you something right away about Calvinism, which puts the doctrine of election right at the top of the system. Double election. Okay, we have a problem here. When we major in the minors, when we take things that aren't significant and we make them significant, we make them bigger than they are within our theological model. That's the first takeaway.

"Second takeaway is that with regard to the elect, I want to ask the question, is Jesus countering or critiquing this apocalyptic tradition? Where as if I perceive that I'm part of this elect nation and if this elect nation is praying day and night, will not God come and deal with with the issues? And while I think that the crowd is going to be saying, “Yes, God will indeed vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night.” And then when Jesus says, “Will he delay long over them?” they would they would say no. But remember the delay long over them in the Sirach text is that he will not delay long until he crushes the loins of the of the unmerciful and repays vengeance on the nations.

"Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night? Won't God do that? Isn't that the way God works? Will he delay long over them? And they're going, “Yes.” And then Jesus says, “I'm going to tell you something. He'll vindicate them speedily. But,” - and there's a very strong adversity here, 'plēn' - “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find 'pistus' on earth?” What is 'pistus'? As we've already seen in the Gospel tradition, as we explained in four lectures at the very beginning of our Unsystematic Theology, 'pistus' is trust. Jesus invites us to trust the Father.

"Okay. Does the woman trust the judge? No. The judge is not like the Father. That that much is clear. Or I should say the Father is not like the judge. Okay. The judge capitulates and gives in because of this woman's nagging of him. And Jesus is is inviting us, as Luke says right at the beginning, that we always ought to pray and never lose heart because we don't perceive God to be like this judge. We know that God is faithful. We know that God vindicates his children. We know this. He did it with Jesus. Many of us have have bits and pieces of our own stories where that's taken place. [...] The Father does that. [But] what the Father is looking for is 'pistis', is trust. We don't have to push God for vengeance. That's what's being sought here, vindication or vengeance, [...] 'make this other person pay' kind of logic. That's not part of the kingdom, as we've seen over and over about forgiveness and the lack of transactional thinking in that's not part of the kingdom as we've seen over and over about forgiveness and the lack of transactional thinking in Jesus teaching.

"So that's why number one, the emphasis is not on the widow and she's persistent and gets her way and therefore Christians who are struggling can pray and pray and pray it up and pray it up and whatever [...] And it is also the case that in the Gospel of Matthew - and whether this is Matthean redaction or not in the Sermon on the Mount, don't know, don't care right now - Matthew's Jesus says, when you pray, don't babble on and on and on like the Gentiles. And the Lord's Prayer itself as a prayer is very short.

"Prayer is not meant to be something we sit and do for hours and days at a time as a religious exercise, my friends. Prayer, I would say - this is not in the text - are those conversations that arise from our heart to the Father. [...] God is not like the unjust judge."

- Michael Hardin, from video "Luke 18" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54U0ojrAr4o)

[For alternative analyses and discussions on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflect.../year-c/proper24c/]

[I also recommend James Alison's video homily for this passage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3iWK46e_HI]

From the Lectionary for 12 October 2025 (Proper 23C)

Luke 17:11-19 (NRSV Updated Edition)

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus's feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

~

"[T]he main word that Luke uses to indicate the healing in vs. 14 & 17 is 'katharizo', “cleanse,” “make clean.” In between, in vs. 15, the major witnesses use the word 'iaomai'. But there are several ancient texts that keep it consistent at this point using the word katharizo. The significance of the word choices is that Luke's Jesus changes to a very different word for the final pronouncement, saying to the Samaritan leper in 17:19 (NRSV), “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” “Well” is the translation of the Greek word sozo, “save,” “rescue.” Especially if we take the lesser textual witnesses, Luke changes from “made clean” to “saved.” Has there been a double healing for the Samaritan? Does 'sozo' indicate a healing, a salvation, for the Samaritan that goes beyond the initial cleansing enjoyed by all ten lepers?"

- Paul Nuechterlein, from Exegetical Notes on Luke 17:11-19 on the Girardian lectionary page for this Sunday (link in comments below)

~

"Not only do we have a group of marginalized lepers, but that group also has its singular marginalized person, the Samaritan. Shall we suppose that the disease of leprosy so united the lepers that they no longer were engaged by the victimage mechanism? Shall we suppose that the nine Jewish lepers did not in some fashion ostracize the Samaritan within their little circle? Would their leprosy have overcome the hundreds of years of social animosity that they carried with them in their worldviews? No. This seems to be implied by Jesus' reference to the Samaritan as an 'allogenes', a foreigner. The Samaritan, in other words, is the victim par excellence in the story, he is the victim of the victims, yet it is this most marginalized one who truly sees (not at all an unfamiliar theme in the gospels).

"When all were healed and only one returned thanking God, where did the other nine go? They made a beeline back to the social matrix from which they had been thrust, back to families they may have missed, back to the world of social respectability. They made straight for the religious dimension of the sacral mechanism, the priest, who would declare them socially acceptable. They failed to see that God, in cleansing them, had already accepted not only them, but also their fellow leper, the Samaritan.

"A new sociality had been given in the miracle that they failed to grasp and so they took this gift from God and walked right back to the system that had previously extruded them without seeing or understanding that something indeed was “bent” about the system. Nor, as mentioned, did they see a new thing had occurred in their midst, the healing of a division that went back hundreds of years. Jesus brings healing to each of us and all of us in order that we might be one in Him. Do we see any clearer than the nine?"

- Michael Hardin (source not currently available online)

~

"One turned back. He saw what had happened and turned back. Could it be that becoming whole is seeing the blessing and feeling moved to thank the One who has blessed you? It's a new way of seeing that shifts the focus and one of the ten got it.

"This former leper sees that what has happened is something different. The others returned to a world based on boundaries that separate good from bad, well from sick, and the “in” from the “out”. But in coming back, this one left that world and entered a new and exciting world where all exist by grace and none are excluded. It's a new world.

"Our text says, “He fell on his face at Jesus' feet and thanked him.” His falling down before Jesus was a result of his new way of seeing. From his position he looks up to Jesus and sees everything with Jesus in the foreground. This is the perspective that gets it right. Paul said, “For me to live is Christ.” One former leper sees that Jesus brings a new way of living, a way where we each dwell in the sea of grace.

"When we see everything with Jesus in the foreground we discover that God is nothing but forgiveness, gentleness, blessing, benevolence, compassion, and tenderness. Our response to all of this, once we get it, can only be gratitude and openness to life!"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, from a sermon on October 9, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper23-2016-One-Embraced-a-New-Way-of-Living.pdf)

~

"Being cleansed was a cultic matter, but this one shows that it is more than being cleansed. He has actually recovered his soul, his sense of being human. [...] And Jesus is observing this, observing that the ones who fit back into the system - well, they've been cleansed. But this one, he's seen something more than that. By his attitude, you can tell that his whole life has begun in a completely new and rich way.

"This I think is very much in line with Jesus [...] commenting about the woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried it with her hair, “I tell you, this woman, [...] you can tell that she has been forgiven because she has loved so much,” rather than, “Now she'll be forgiven, then she will be able to love.” Jesus is noticing something with delight, seeing someone come to life because their wholeheartedness has taken them way beyond what might have happened.

"This I think is something of what grace, the Gospel of Grace, is about: Jesus taking delight in us finding ourselves taken far beyond simple, perfunctory, thank-yous, and actually being able to live with enormous gratitude as we find ourselves brought to life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYu-Gl8IU0k)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein and Michael Hardin quotes and link to Thomas & Laura Truby sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper23c/]

From the Lectionary for 5 October 2025 (Proper 22C)

Luke 17:1-10 (New American Standard Bible)

Now He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to one through whom they come! It is better for him if a millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea, than that he may cause one of these little ones to sin. Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” But the Lord said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you.

“Now which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him after he comes in from the field, ‘Come immediately and recline at the table to eat’? On the contrary, will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink’? He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too, when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”

~

"“Increase our faith!” cry out the disciples. What do we think they were asking for? What do we think of when we hear the word faith? Do we think they're asking to believe harder? That faith is mostly about believing a certain way? In our age of science, believing is a lesser form of knowing. We pose faith against scientific knowing in such a way that faith seems to be losing out [...]

“Increase our faithfulness!” cry out the disciples. “Faithfulness” is a better translation than “faith” of the original biblical word. “Increase our faithfulness!” cry out the disciples. And now what are we talking about? We're talking about human relationships, aren't we? We're talking about a relationship kind of knowing instead of a scientific knowing. [...] We don't need more faith, which in the terms of today's scientific knowledge, seems like a lacking of that knowledge. We need more faithfulness to each other as human beings that we might live together in peace.

[...]

“Increase our faithfulness!” cry out the disciples. We have talked about this faith in terms of relationships instead of believing, a love-kind of knowing instead of a scientific kind of knowing. But there is a more specific context that we should attend to. The disciples cry out for increased faithfulness right after Jesus has given them a challenging picture of forgiveness. [...] Now we can see why the disciples ask Jesus for greater faithfulness. It takes great faithfulness to keep forgiving someone who keeps hurting you!

"[...] [F]orgiveness is a very complicated business! And these few words from Jesus about forgiveness evoke the disciples' response for Jesus to help us with our faithfulness. We need his power of faithfulness to even begin to forgive others as he forgives us."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered on October 3, 2010 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper22c_2010_ser/)

~

"[The] paragraph begins with Jesus' ominous warning against being occasions of stumbling (scandals) for any of Jesus' “little ones.” Unlike the parallels in the other synoptic Gospels, however, this warning is quickly followed by an admonition to rebuke those who cause stumbling but then to forgive them if they are penitent, even if it is seven times a day, which is a lot of forgiving.

"So, the disciples aren't having a problem believing in the Nicene Creed. They are having a problem accepting this demand to be forgiving on such an incredible scale. After all, if one repents seven times a day, how serious is the repentance? Forgiving like that often requires the patience of a saint and not even many of the saints I know anything about are as patient as that. [...]

"Unlike the parallels in Matthew and Mark, [where] faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move this mountain, perhaps the Temple Mount and its sacrificial system, from here to there. But mulberry trees have nothing to do with sacrifice. So why a mulberry tree in this version? [...] Mulberry trees [...] have complex root systems that spread out a large distance just under the surface and they also send sinker roots deep into the soil. [...]

"We see the mulberry tree as an image of the intractability of the occasions for stumbling that we encounter on a daily basis. The image also stands for the tangle of our anger and frustration over being asked to forgive those who keep making us stumble over and over again. The close coupling of Jesus' admonitions here suggests that all of us cause others to stumble about as much as we have occasion to forgive others for making us stumble. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to pull us out this tangle of scandal and stumbling and yet we have trouble having as much faith as that!

"A brief parable follows. We are apt to think the master treating his slaves so harshly stands for God, but Jesus is asking: Whom among you would say to his slave to come sit down for dinner after a hard day's work? The implication is that we are the ones who would like to have the power to order people about like that. But is that faithfulness to Christ? Looks more like a cause of stumbling to me. Jesus then shifts to the perspective of the slave who must not presume to be worthy of any reward, just as slaves were so considered in his time. In a similar parable in Luke 12, Jesus says that the master is the one who will wait on those slaves who eagerly await his return.

"In daily life, we often feel that we are slaves of those who cause trouble and so demand much attention and energy on our part and yet are the last to express any gratitude for what we do for them. We tend to resent such slavery and take refuge in vengeful anger and maybe some grudging forgiveness that makes us feel superior. But Jesus places himself in the position of the slave to those who stumble and make others stumble, so that is where we will find Jesus if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled "Increasing Faith in Forgiveness" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2016/10/01/increasing-faith-in-forgiveness/)

~

"In this story from Luke, all of this happens before the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. [...] Jesus will enact the very thing he tells his disciples they must do. At the crucifixion Jesus himself becomes the servant of God who forgives us and in that shows us the way of forgiveness. He provides a most powerful example of what we are to do in our lives in all ways. Here is a leader who sets an example and asks us to do as he has done."

- Tom Truby, from a sermon by titled “The Power of Forgiveness” (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper22-2016-The-Power-of-Forgiveness.pdf)

~

"[T]hat's actually how you will find yourselves living the other half of the story, that the One will come into your midst and come to your table and will serve you, those two mentions of serving the Lord and what place you are in it coming together. [...] I think that this is Jesus actually nudging people into having a bit of a bigger imagination about what it looks like to serve and not to be too important, and to remember that their work is not over until they have served the Lord."

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

[Source of links to Paul Nuechterlein and Tom Truby sermons and Andrew Marr blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper22c/]

From the Lectionary for 28 September 2025 (Proper 21C)

Luke 16:19-31 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

~

"If we were to use a modern tale that fits, I would suggest Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It helps to bring out the fictional aspect of the parable. Because Dickens told this moving tale, we don't now believe in ghosts, nor that they forge chains in life by neglect of the poor. Because Jesus tells this parable, though, many people somehow come to believe that he is giving us a true picture of the afterlife. No, just as for Dickens, Jesus tells us a story of the future afterlife not to give us a true picture of that life but rather to move us to different choices in the present life."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from 'Reflections and Questions' on Luke 16:19-31 (link in comments below)

~

"It is very like a well-known folk tale in the ancient world; Jesus was by no means the first to tell of how wealth and poverty might be reversed in the future life. In fact, stories like this were so well known that we can see how Jesus has changed the pattern that people would expect. In the usual story, when someone asks permission to send a message back to the people who are still alive on earth, the permission is granted. Here, it isn't; and the sharp ending of the story points beyond itself to all sorts of questions that Jesus' hearers, and Luke's readers, were urged to face.

"The parable is not primarily a moral tale about riches and poverty - though, in this chapter, it should be heard in that way as well. If that's all it was, some might say that it was better to let the poor stay poor, since they will have a good time in the future life. That sort of argument has been used too often by the careless rich for us to want anything to do with it. No; there is something more going on here. The story, after all, doesn't add anything new to the general folk belief about fortunes being reversed in a future life. If it's a parable, that means once again that we should take it as picture-language about something that was going on in Jesus' own work.

"The ending gives us a clue, picking up where, a chapter earlier, the story of the father and his two sons had ended. ‘Neither will they be convinced, even if someone were to rise from the dead'; ‘this your brother was dead, and is alive again.’ The older brother in the earlier story is very like the rich man in this: both want to keep the poor, ragged brother or neighbour out of sight and out of mind. Jesus, we recall, has been criticized for welcoming outcasts and sinners; now it appears that what he's doing is putting into practice in the present world what, it was widely believed, would happen in the future one. ‘On earth as it is in heaven’ remains his watchword. The age to come must be anticipated in the present."

- N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, pp. 200-01

~

"...[T]he divide between Lazarus and the Rich Man remains the final motif. “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” The essential point is that the rich man is the one who creates the divide, so that those on Abraham's side of the chasm who “might want to pass” (i.e. act out of compassion) in fact cannot. The text clearly implies that the rich and privileged, those with status, create the divide, not God. Thus the parable is not a picture of medieval hell but of humanly created alienation and its suffering. Again the way to the kingdom is through our relationships with others, forgiveness, and care for the poor. What we do in this world constructs the way we relate to God's kingdom."

- Anthony Bartlett, Seven Stories, pp. 90-91

~

"What I'd like to do is to bring out something very surprising about these three parables, which is how much they have in common and how much perhaps they were originally intended to be read together. It's one of the things I think we'll notice as we work through today's [reading] is to see how how often it refers back to things in the previous two parables, that's the one usually called The Prodigal Son and the one usually called The Unjust Steward. And curiously, one of the hidden but real presences there is the notion of stewardship. Just last Sunday remember the whole question was how did the steward exercise his stewardship. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the first son having managed to [...] squander his inheritance and then sought to come back on the same terms of reference as if he were a hard servant, so being like a steward, whereas the eldest son had acted like a steward rather than like a son, didn't seem to have realized that everything that he had was his. And as we'll see today a rather surprising steward turns up in in this week's in this week's gospel.

[...]

"Now we're used to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, so we're used to the name Lazarus, but if we were to listen to the story in Hebrew or Aramaic he would be called Eliezar. [...] It says he was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. Why? Well, because Eliezar was Abraham's steward. In [Genesis 15] Abraham, before he gets any children, he complained to God saying listen I've got no one to leave my household to except my steward Eliezar, he's the nearest thing to an heir, a descendant, I've got so everything's going to be his. And God says, don't worry you'll get a descendants. [...] And then of course also the steward is sent out again to help Isaac get a wife. [...] So Abraham's steward [is] an angelic figure and indeed was taken to be a such in Jewish popular tales of the time. [...] So strangely what we have here is there has been an angel at the rich man's door without him being aware of it, and has been carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.

[...]

"I think there's something even more subtle going on here. The sign, something happening, a dead man being raised, does not help you interpret the prophets and the law. Eliezar, as the poor man, that angelic presence, was already a hint of how you need to interpret the prophets and the law, from the position of the cast-out one. And of course it's only when Jesus is himself cast out and rises from the dead that he becomes, not simply, if you like, the fact of someone having risen, thereby shocking people into behaving, but actually the living interpretative principle of the law and the prophets, by which it might become possible for them to learn how to notice and respect and love the Lazaruses, the stewards of the Lord, who are sent and given to us as reminders of how real communication is created in this life when we learn to reach outside and beyond ourselves, and allow ourselves to be formed and transformed by the victims, the marginalized, the precarious in our midst."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6X-D8UUyGs)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein, N.T. Wright and Anthony Bartlett quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper21c/]

From the Lectionary for 21 September 2025 (Proper 20C)

Amos 8:4-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Hear this, you who trample on the needy,
    and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, “When will the new moon be over
    so that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
    so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier
    and practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals
    and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

~

"Speaking to the Jewish leaders in Luke 15, Jesus uses unconventional figures to stretch their imagination toward forgiveness. Speaking to his disciples in Luke 16, Jesus now chooses more conventional characters who continue to live by the rules of debt-keeping according to ‘this present age.’ The rich man is not a stand-in for God, as the Prodigal Father is in Luke 15. No, this parable now plops us in the too-familiar setting of oppressive economics that yields a divide between rich and poor, and a few mid-level managers (stewards) in-between.

"We are not given the details, but this particular manager is not performing up to par and so he's fired, commanded to give a final accounting of his job-results. It is under these standard conditions of injustice - the conditions of this age - that the manager awakes to the light of debt-forgiving as alternative to the conventional world of debt-keeping. About to be demoted to the status of the oppressed, he at least acts to make friends among the oppressed. Even his master can see the wisdom of this and commends him. With nothing more to lose, the manager has made gains within his new community among the poor workers of the master's land."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Opening Comments on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 20C (link in comments below)

~

"It is crucial, I believe, how one translates 'adikias' in vv. 8 & 9 - translated as “dishonest” in the NRSV and “unjust” (v. 8), “unrighteous” (v. 9) in the KJV. And it is used to modify a different noun in each verse. NRSV: “dishonest manager” in v. 8, and “dishonest wealth” in v. 9 KJV: “unjust steward” in v. 8, and “the mammon of unrighteousness” in v. 9 (which reflects the genitive construction in the Greek; more below).

"Many commentators in the English language go consistently with “dishonest” and base their arguments around that rendering. But there are potentially misleading aspects to not noting the possible variances in translating adikias - the singularity, in fact, of translating it as “dishonest.”

"First, I think it is important to know that the word in these verses is related to the crucial NT word group around the root dik: dikaioō, to justify, make right; dikaiosunē, righteousness, justice; dikaiōsis, justification, vindication. [...] I would argue that translating adikias as “unjust” or “unrighteous” is a choice more consistent with the rest of the NT.

[...]

"Let’s be honest: “dishonest” has very different connotations than “unjust.” “Honesty” is a very different thing than “justice.” For me, “dishonest” reflects primarily on the trustworthiness of individuals, whereas “unjust” is often used of systemic fairness. This makes a bigger difference in vs. 9 when paired with “mammon.” “Dishonest mammon” would generally involve a dishonest person. A dishonest person taints the wealth. “Unjust mammon,” on the other hand, could involve a person who seeks justice, but the wealth involved is still trapped in systemic injustice, tainted by the system."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Exegetical Note #3 on Luke 16:1-13, on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 20C (link in comments below)

~

In his video homily for this week's lectionary (excerpt and link below), James Alison argues that the main context for this parable is usury, which was against Jewish law but which many lenders of goods found ways around to extract interest.  In particular, apparently the "going rate" in the time of Jesus for lending of olive oil was 100% interest (hence a loan of 50 jugs would require repayment of 100), and the rate for wheat was 25% (hence a loan of 80 containers would require repayment of 100).  If this is the case, what the 'shrewd' manager has done for the debtors is just to remove from their bill the 'unjust' interest they were being charged.

~

"Now again the phrase “dishonest wealth,” it's quite quite technical, dishonest wealth refers to that bit of the wealth which was dishonestly acquired, in other words the extra 25% in the case of the wheat or the extra 100% in the case of the oil. That was the dishonest bit. So [Jesus is] saying, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth: if you've got something that is dishonest, use it to make friends. That's the recommendation. If something has come to you dishonestly, you can't use it for yourself because that would be to confirm its dishonesty, you would be entering into the dishonesty of the thing. But you can use that which is of morally dubious status to do things for other people. And that's a way of making things good. [...]

"“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” Now, interestingly, our dishonest servant turns out to have been faithful in his dishonesty. [...] Remember this. The next line then says, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you true riches?” Remember our servant was faithful with the dishonest wealth, he took the dishonest wealth and made things right with God by not charging usury, gave his boss a good reputation, and made friends. [...]

"“And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another who will give you what is your own?” Okay, now that comes back to all of us. Anything that we have is what we have been given. If we make things dishonestly, then, with just the little things that we can add on, then we'll be dishonest with everything. But if, starting with something which 'someone' has given us, like a rich master, we are then able to turn potentially dishonest things into something honest, we will be able to be given much much more.

"“If you have not been faithful with what belongs to another who will give you what is your own?” In other words, the notion is that we start having to learn how to be really shrewd in working out how not to be exploitative but how to make sense of what has been given to us, in order to put us in the position of receiving more. The more we give away the more we'll get, this is absolutely the pattern of desire which comes through in Luke's gospel.

"“No slave can serve two masters, he will either hate the one and love the other or will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” In other words the law of God, remember, is against usury, it's greatly in favor of generosity. And here the words love and hate in the first verse and then it says devoted and despise. Actually the word for devoted is “cleave” and the word for despise is the word used very frequently of those who reject God. So these are the words referring “cleave to God” or “despising God.” So what is he saying here? He's saying the true Master the one who gives you absolutely everything, is God, and if you cleave to him you will find out ways of making things which are apparently dishonest into honest things, which can do you good. Or you'll find yourself actually being really interested only in the financial outcome, in which case you will pursue dishonesty and you will make yourself dishonest.

"In other words, it's what's coming upon you that is really the question of your riches, not what you start with. What you start with of course is that which enables you to open up to what is coming upon you. If what is coming upon you is from God then you'll be able to grow in generosity. If what is coming upon you is for money then you will be a slave to it and it will run your life. That seems to me to be what is being said in today's Gospel."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH22kSULodE)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper20c/]

From the Lectionary for 14 September 2025 (Proper 19C)

Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

[Note: The Roman Catholic lectionary for Proper 19C includes verses 11-32, the so-called "Parable of the Prodigal Son."]

~

"I'd like to submit to you today that that is always the most essential act of repentance: namely, that we would change our minds about who God is. This is the first step, the key, to total repentance. In order to have one's whole life changed, I think that the first step is always to first have our minds changed about who God is.

"We need to know to the bottom of our hearts that the true God has always been a merciful God. It is we human beings who make God out to be someone else, to be a punishing, wrathful, violent God. It is we who are wrong about God and need to change our minds. Isn't that the very heart of the Christian Gospel? That through Jesus Christ we most truly get to see who God is?"

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered on 30 September 1995 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper19c_1995_ser/)

~

"The first thing is Luke frames them very clearly. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying: this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So that's the background: Jesus is talking to a mixed group as so often of those who are normally regarded as bad, and maybe for good reasons, and those who think of themselves at least and maybe are officially appointed to be good and sometimes for good reasons.

"But what he's wanting to do in his answers is to completely alter the nature of their conversation about good and bad, and introduce something entirely different - the note of joy which is at the heart of the Gospel. Because each one of these three parables ends with the demand for a party, and ends with the demand for joy because anything to do with God ultimately is to do with joy."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (link below)

~

"A man with 100 -1 sheep cannot rest before he has restored the number to 100; the woman with 10 -1 coins is compelled to search until they are ten again; the man who had 2-1 sons cannot find joy until the missing one returns and they are two again. What is it, the meaning of this riddle?

"Clearly the numbers are important; each riddle puts them first, “There was a man who had 100 sheep” (vs. 4), a “woman who had ten coins” (vs. 8), “a man who had two sons” (vs. 11). Is this a clue? Yes it is! The riddle invites us to think about sets that are broken: the set of 100 is now 99, the set of 10 is nine and the set of 2 is 1. In each case there is something missing and the hole it leaves cries out to be filled.

[...]

"It now occurs to me that the Hebrew word “shalom” which is still the accepted greeting in Hebrew, cognate with the Arabic “salaam,” means “wholeness” before it comes to mean “peace.” This discloses that peace in our tradition means communal wholeness, and when I greet you with “shalom” I am saying, “I recognize you as part of the whole to which we both belong, and so there should be no rivalry between us. The Hebrew for “righteousness” (tzedakah) is another word for the state of “shalom,” that is, having been reintegrated after having been expelled. The “righteous” person is one who is in good standing with the community. The duty of the judge is to find ways to bring someone who, because of his deeds, has expelled himself from the community, back in.

"The Apostle Paul calls the work of God in Christ the “justification of sinners,” which means the restoring of those cast out, to standing in the community. For this reason he can say that those who believe in Christ and thus allow him to rectify (justify) their good standing in the human community, beyond the distinctions of religion, class and gender, are all one in their common humanity. Thus the healing of the violence-wracked world goes through the expelled and then reintegrated scapegoat – the social outcasts, the scoundrel sons, the smelly goats and the politely unacceptable. These are the ones God's kingdom desires most. [...]

"Note that the reintegration takes place before the outcasts are worthy of being welcomed back. Repentance is the decision to return, like the lost son, in order to be changed and restored by membership in the group. One does not change so as to re-enter the group; one re-enters the group in order to change. This is the very meaning of grace- the acceptance of the unacceptable. If it were otherwise it would not be grace but justice, not a gift but just desserts."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on September 12, 2010 (source no longer available online)

~

"One does not change so as to re-enter the group; one re-enters the group in order to change." I would like to add that when one who is lost or outcast re-enters or is welcomed back into, the group, the group also changes. In Marilynne Robinson's novel Home, the returned 'prodigal son' sadly does not get the full, unequivocal, unconditional welcome of his father. And one of the main reasons for this, I think, is that the father, and to a large extent the rest of the family and their home community, are not willing to accept the unconventional and unsettling reality of the son. They are not willing to expand their horizons and to say that this one, too, is one of us, and belongs with us, because to do so would mean admitting that the 'us' as we define it is incomplete, limited, imperfect. The 'us' cannot truly receive the prodigal without a transformed vision and enactment of 'belonging'.

~

"[The] two small parables act as a very well-coded introduction to the longer one, and by well-coded I mean they're saying something about God as well because each one of the images is quite familiar to Jesus's audience. First of all the shepherd of Israel to whom many of the psalms are addressed, or "shepherd of Israel, hear us". Here is the shepherd of Israel saying what the activity of the shepherd of Israel looks like. The activity of the shepherd of Israel looks like going and finding a reason for rejoicing.

"And in the second story, we have the business of the ten silver coins. The most common reason why a woman might have ten silver coins is the dowry, it would be the sign of her ability to get married or indeed to have been married; [incorporated as] either as a bracelet or as a necklace, it would be a very important part of her life. It wasn't simply a that she was a numismatist and collected coins - no, these were a significant part of her bridal meaning. So what's happening? She's lost part of her bridal meaning and she goes and looks and finds it and rejoices. But what sort of rejoicing is this? - Israel the bride is rejoicing because the possibility of marriage comes alive again - the promise of marriage comes to fruition with Israel as the bride of God.

"And that's when we turn to the third of the parables - the one with only two people who might be lost or found: from 99 to 1, to 9 to 1, to one to one - two. And this is the key thing. And who is the representative figure for God here? Well, it's the one who I refer to as the self-effacing father because now that Jesus is coming down from mighty images to images of one to one, he brings out something astounding that rather than God being the judge between people who are good and bad, that God is a self-effacing father who never puts himself at a level above the two brothers. In fact, [he] effaces himself in the presence of the brothers so as to make it possible, if at all possible, for them to come together in common rejoicing.

[...]

"[T]he father says to [the older brother]: child - 'teknon' - you are always with me. He uses the word 'teknon', not son, as in our translation; it's a tender word but it's not the same as son, I think probably because it refers to the whole of Israel. And, “all that is mine is yours.” In other words, when we divided the property at the beginning I gave one-third to your brother and two-thirds to you, it's been yours all along. We've had it together, it's been yours to give and use. Your brother used it [dissolutely], you have used it in a withholding way. And you've used that to project yourself as better than your brother. But all that is mine is yours. “But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours” - [he] doesn't refer to him as my son - “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life. He was lost and has been found.”

"The great rejoicing. The self-effacing father doesn't want to get in the picture at all. His rejoicing consists in brothers separated by views of superiority, jealousy, moral differences, getting over all that, and coming to meet each other and rejoice. And what are we asked to do but to understand from Jesus that God is a great rejoicing. If only we can imagine that we can let go of our self-importance, our fear, our need to jump through hoops, and all that other stuff, and start to enter into the great rejoicing."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myI3tJbCbvw)

[Source of link to Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper19c/]

[Luke 15:11-32 (the so-called "Parable of the Prodigal Son") is also in the lectionary for Lent 4C (which I missed this year due to illness). I recommend James Alison's video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWg-SNJX9I)]