From the Lectionary for 28 December 2025 (Christmas 1A)

Matthew 2:13-23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”

Hebrews 2:17-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

~

"In Matthew, Jesus is the new and more powerful non-violent Moses. Moses' birth was also contested and empire his enemy. At the time of Moses' birth the Hebrew women were to abandon their male babies lest the birth of more little boys, who could grow into warriors, threaten the king. [...] In Matthew the new Moses miraculously escapes death at the hands of empire by going to Egypt. Being in Egypt, he is set to come out of Egypt and save all people just like Moses saved the Hebrews. [...]

"After King Herod died, an angel from the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. “Get up,” the angel said, and “take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead.” I love the phrase “get up”; take action, get a move on, get going, it's time to go forward in a new way. These are significant times! Do you believe that? The New Year has arrived, the Christmas break is over. It's time to move back to Israel and reclaim the journey toward wholeness there. The gospel of the non-violent Jesus has been hidden in Egypt and it's time for it to return to its homeland.

[...]

"We end with Joseph and the Holy Family beginning anew in Nazareth. We too are beginning anew; a new year [...] And like Joseph and his family, we are not alone. We journey forth with each other and with the Spirit from God telling us we are non-violently loved and that we can nonviolently love wherever we are. We know we are part of the biggest movement in history that, in the end, will show love as the driver and maintainer of the whole universe."

- Tom Truby, from a sermon delivered on January 1, 2017 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Christmas1-2017-Get-Up-and-Embrace-the-Future-Unafraid.pdf)

~

"[T]he Bible's sense of Christmas is well-anchored in our human reality of pain and suffering, so that it can truly bring us Good News. Our second lesson from Hebrews is a good example. [...] Jesus came into the flesh, not to gloss over reality with fantasy, not even the fantasy world of holiday cheer, but to share in the very things that make up our realities. It says that “he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might pioneer for us a perfect way of salvation through the sufferings of our human reality.” Not around them, or over them. But through them. That's the Good News for us this morning, even in the face of our normal, non-holiday reality. The Good News is that God helps us to face that reality. We don't have to try to run away or escape it.

"No, the gospel stories of Jesus' birth never wander far from that reality. In this age, our culture has built up whole fantasy world stories to surround Christmas, but that's not what the gospel stories of Jesus' birth are like. Luke's story of Christmas is the most pastoral and peaceful. Yet even there the cold reality is that there was no room for Mary and Joseph under a roof, so Jesus was born in a barn. And as Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus for his naming, the prophet Simeon tells them, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)

[...]

"Matthew expresses the theme of rejection directly with a story. Three traveling magi welcomed the prospect of a new king, but local King Herod didn't think much of it. He responded with the kind of violence we'd rather not think about, the kind of violence we'd like to forget with our holiday cheer. Jesus is saved at this point of Matthew's story. But for what? We know the ending: eventually the powers and authorities will get their wish and kill Jesus. At the beginning of Matthew's story, it is not yet time.

"But the troubling part is that, in the meantime, scores of other little children are slaughtered by Herod. Isn't that the same kind of reality we go back to this week, the kind of world we live in? We celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace at Christmas, but this week we return to a world of terrible violence, where innocent children suffer and are killed everyday. This is the point of the sermon were I am tempted to find a nice story that will help us to feel better and to make things alright. But there isn't such nice stories, are there? I may search all my sermon resources, and I don't think I'm going to find such a story. I search my own personal story, and I know so. Because I know too many people who suffered terribly as children, who were abused and neglected. And there aren't any nice stories that magically make it alright. There isn't enough holiday cheer to cover over the reality.

"No, there is only one story I know that can begin to make things alright. It is this story of a baby born in a barn, who escaped death at the hands of the authorities as a child, but who did not do so as an adult. No, he knowingly went to his death for me and for you. And it is only the fact that God raised him up from death, that I can begin to have any hope at all. Because that resurrection is the promise that God does ultimately save us from this world of suffering and pain. God does ultimately rescue us from the hands of those who would do us harm.

"I say that it only begins to make things better, because two thousand years later, there are children still being sacrificed to madmen the likes of Herod. But this is because God has chosen a whole new way of living to win us salvation. This new way does not run away from the violence but faces it. Neither does God resort to the old way of doing things, which is to fight force with force. God will not stop the madness by getting caught up in the same madness. No, God gives us a totally new way to live. God neither runs away from the madness, nor gets caught up in it, but stands there in the face of it and continues to love. Love. Instead God came into the midst of the madness, and through a suffering love has begun to pioneer a new way for us. Jesus was the pioneer of that perfect way.

"Why is there still violence? Because love refuses to violently snuff it out. Love only knows love. With this new option, one that will someday end the madness, there may even be more violence for a time. Matthew's story of Herod makes that clear. When those who stand for the old way of doing things like Herod, when they are confronted with this new possibility, they strike out with all that they can muster. But Christ-like love is the power of love that can stand tall in the face of it. And we who are called as disciples are called to follow in this new way of love. Perhaps the best news is that God, in becoming a human being, took on our human nature and has begun to transform it, baptize it, so that we are able to follow in the way of Christ.

"Let's close today with that last line of our second lesson: “Because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (Hebrews 2:18) Did you get that? Because Jesus fought off the temptation to do things the old way, to use force to fight force and violence and inflict pain on others, because he won out over that temptation, he is able to help us to do so, too. That is the Good News this morning. That you and I, in knowing that story of Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit of that same Jesus, that you and I can beat that temptation, too. We can become new creatures with a new way of life. We can begin to make a difference in this world.

"As we face a New Year, we do so again with the promise that we daily can become new creatures in Christ. The only resolution we need make this New Year is to truly be his disciples. For his is the way that goes through reality, the reality of suffering. Not around it, or over it, but through it. That's the Good News for us this morning as we head back to our post-holiday realities."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on December 30-31, 1995 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/xmas1a_ser_1995/)

[Source of links to Tom Truby and Paul Nuechterlein sermons, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/xmas1a/]

From the Lectionary for 25 December 2025 (Christmas Day, Year A)

Isaiah 9:2 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.

John 1:1-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

~

"The beginning of John's Gospel, even though in one sense it seems the furthest removed from what we're used to at Nativity, which is focusing down on the very practical issues of baby, manger, beasts, swaddling clothes, stars, shepherds - all those very particular human and animal things which attend a birth - and what we get in John's Gospel, if you like, seems so extra-planetary that we pass it off with something like dismay. [...] These 18 verses are some of the most remarkable words ever to have been written in any human language, it would be foolish to try and expatiate too wildly on them. What I would like to do is to say how much closer I think they are to more concrete, more human, more historical sense of a little baby in precarious situation in Bethlehem then perhaps we might give credit for.

[...]

"The beginning was the Criterion, was the Word, the beginning for us of creation. [...] In creation, you remember the Genesis narrative,  “And God said.” The creative Word, the Word that creates. So the Word was at the very beginning of all things, [the] Word was with God, and the Word was God. [It's saying] the creative thing is not simply an extra thing that God happens to do, it is God's criteria for God. We are actually learning something about who God is, when God makes God's Criterion available to us, in, and as, and through creation.

"We pair that off with the very end [of the passage], [...] “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” So the Criterion that was with God, and the Criterion was God, was in the beginning with God. So it turns out that the Criterion for everything being is a Son. That's in a sense the most extraordinary claim that's for us to understand and from which to get a glimpse of what's going on in the Christmas story. [...] [T]he criteria for bringing everything into being is that of a father's love for a son. The underpinning reality of everything that is, is this sort of affection. The very structure of reality is made available to us through this sort of love.

[...]

"“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Here's the suggestion that the very structuring force of reality, which is a loving structure, finally came into our midst as something that can enlighten us, light us up from within - was the light, was the source of our seeing - has come in and for those who receive him who believe in his name I believe that his name is the same as of the name he gives power to become children of God. [...] He's talking about people being brought into being so that we may actually participate on the inside of creation and discover what really is [...]

"The way that this was made available to us started - of course John doesn't say this, we only get this in Matthew and Luke - started with the bizarre, the bizarrely powerless-seeming sign of the babe born in Bethlehem. This was a wholly, fully human sign. It's us learning to detect the love of the only begotten son.

[...]

"With grace and truth, and through Jesus Christ, the sense of the tenderness and 'not out to get us' - the friendly quality, the backdrop to everything that there is, that this is a friendly gentle adventure - strangely it's that, if you like, the background colours to the Nativity picture, that are some of the most difficult things to get, the background colours which are of the whole of creation actually being vastly more friendly to us if only we could learn to find our way into being sons and daughters of God, those who are actually on the inside of creation. [...]

"So as you come to Christmas celebration this year, think not only of the 3D figures in the creche, what they say about God's power being shown forth in being disposed to be absolutely weak, in the middle of precarious situation, in the middle of people who are going to make his life difficult and ultimately kill him; but also the vast backdrop of the sheer friendliness of creation, that which we're becoming used to learning about and seeing ourselves as sons and daughters. This is, if you're like, not a moral thing but us being shown who God really is.

"He said, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Everything that we learn about God is going to be learned through following the human life of Jesus, and it's going to show us that there is an extraordinary power in weakness, an extraordinary joy in our discovering our likeness with apparent others, and that all these actually tend to show a vastly richer project, adventure - a friendly adventure - which is creation. And that this is the constant backdrop to everything that is. Curiously it's the difficulty of receiving and living from that backdrop which is one of the real challenges of our lives and one of the real joys of Christmas."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for The Solemnity of the Nativity 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jx9ElzPlWo)

~

"Christmas is the gift that keeps on giving. The Word made flesh in Jesus Christ comes to be born in all people - through the Gospel of grace and truth - the gift of a common identity in a divided world - the gift of peace. This is the present we receive today. This is the gift that we receive in order to give away all year long - the Word made flesh - Jesus Christ - God’s peace to us."

- David Froemming, from sermon, “Christmas: God’s Peace.” (http://www.christlutheranlancaster.com/site/file.asp?sec_id=180019502&file_id=180425357&cpage=180096537&table=file_downloads)

~

"Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe"

- Bruce Cockburn, from song "Cry of a Tiny Babe"

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

From the Lectionary for 21 December 2025 (Advent 4A)

Matthew 1:18-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

~

"We are on the very brink of the Nativity. Our sense of the power of the One Coming in has been stretched, challenged, recast over the last three weeks. And now the reality of that power begins to dawn more clearly. And what is astonishing about it, is that unlike any power we know, this power is confident enough to be vulnerable. And that means confident enough in us to be vulnerable to us.

[...]

"[In Isaiah 7:10-16] Isaiah gives [King Ahaz] a sign [...] There is nothing outlandish about it. It doesn't appear to come from Heaven, nor to emerge from Sheol. It is quiet, gentle, ordinary-seeming. A maiden is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel. It would appear, at first glance to be totally natural, totally from this, human side of things, rather than emerging from something special, divine and portentous. Thus it seems not really to be a sign at all. And yet, it is in this sign of quietude, and confidence that God will reveal himself as the one who loves his people, and who will bring his kingdom to flourishing. It is the sort of sign which is not able to be perceived by those whose attention is fixed on current affairs, on power politics and on strategic calculations.

"Matthew has seen this in his Gospel. He has seen that Isaiah's promise of a sign relating to a kingdom flows into the much fuller sign which is happening now, quietly, and offstage. The fulness of the power pointed to by Isaiah was revealing itself in a gentleness made available under the most delicate of circumstances. For the maiden chosen to bear the son was not living in any well-protected enclave. On the contrary, the first thing which the power dared to do was to make itself visible as a provocation, inviting the maiden who was found to be with child to share the opprobrium of being a single mother in a society where such things might easily lead to death. She was to depend for her reputation, and maybe for her life, on the good will of an untested male who knew that he was not the father of the child.

"What sort of power is it that allows itself to be so vulnerable? It is prepared to trust itself to one of the most notoriously unreliable features of human existence. Not merely the pain and riskiness of human gestation and childbirth. But also the whole of human skittishness around male honour, and the potential for violence which goes with female dependency.

"Beyond even this, as Matthew makes clear, this power is prepared to allow itself to be vulnerable to that most dangerous of constructs: the Law. For Joseph was a righteous man, and as such would know well what Deuteronomy 22 prescribed for cases like this: death by stoning. That Joseph's righteousness already consisted in his being inclined to interpret that law in the most gentle way possible, seeking to obey it by “putting her away quietly” was not something automatic.

"Joseph decides to apply the law in this way, already a fragile act of interpretation, and one which it might not be at all easy to carry out in practice, since “secrets will out”. This decision was made just prior to the Lord inviting Joseph to consider another possible interpretation: that Mary's pregnancy was not in any way something which fell foul of the Law, coming instead from the Holy Spirit. Joseph is given a dream, and in the light of that he is invited to make an interpretation with enormous practical consequences.

"Again: quite how extraordinary is the power that is gentle and confident enough to be able to enter into the practical consequences of a human act of interpretation? For there is no sign that is not also a human act of interpretation. And there can be no riskier way than this to enter into the realm of signs. This pregnant woman is either an adulteress or a virgin blessed by God. What power is it that is prepared to trust that a human will choose the latter, infinitely less plausible interpretation, and then be so gracious as to cover over the vulnerability of his bride to be and allow the sign to flourish?

"It is little wonder that Paul in Galatians emphasizes that Jesus was born under the Law, for Jesus' vulnerability to the Law is the sign of the power of the one who was to fulfil the whole purpose of the Law. This is all about power, as is made magnificently clear in the Introduction to Romans. The fulfilment of all God's promises would come through someone who was of the now failed and insignificant line of David. This one would be declared, or ordained the High Priest of God, God's Son, YHWH himself, bearing the Name by his passing through death in the spirit of holiness.

"Vulnerability to mere flesh; vulnerability to the Law; vulnerability to death: these will be the signs of the power of the One coming in, of his confidence in us, in what we can become, and in what he can make of us."

- James Alison, from facebook post on 18 Dec 2019 (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid0yXSqGzq5YesYmeF4hEnFxCazGVKXoVfAkYknrRAqWvHYBhSXpUwJmDzYJ2GRqqi2l)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent4a/]

[I also highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for Fourth Sunday in Advent 2022 A" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whq4HhUxFhA]

From the Lectionary for 14 December 2025 (Advent 3A)

Matthew 11:2-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What, then, did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What, then, did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way before you.’

“Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

~

"With each Sunday of Advent, it is as though the Spirit brings us deeper into the Presence by bringing us closer to having our feet on the ground, closer to the present, and closer to our hearts. The Divine heart surgeon carries on reconfiguring our desires so that we can inhabit both the Presence and the present. For how else can we be made alive?

"And this means learning how to be stretched, how to long, how to hope, how to be vulnerable to failure. This is the route without undergoing which there is no Coming. For if we cannot be taken to the end of ourselves, stretched beyond our capacity to imagine a salvation, have our longing forged against the hard anvil of apparent impossibility, then we are still wanting something that is a continuation of our selves, and not the Other who is Coming in.

"There is scarcely a more poignant communication in the New Testament than John’s message from prison: “Art Thou the One who is to come, or wait we for another?” Here is a heart stretched towards a fulfilment that is not of his making, and in the face of which he is vulnerable to a sense of shame, loss and futility. Given what he is undergoing, how can he be sure that he was even pointing in the direction of God’s breaking in? Will this One vindicate him against the enemy who holds him in a dungeon? Even he runs the risk of being scandalized by Jesus.

"The presence of the One who is coming in had been vastly easier to talk about when its time was not yet at hand. And yet now, as it comes in, the presence is very unlike how John, as all the prophets before him, had imagined him. The Presence becomes much more difficult to identify as it draws closer to us in time and place. Shouldn’t the criteria be clearer? Shouldn’t it be more obvious that the One who comes in will recompense his faithful ones and wreak vengeance on evil doers?

"Our Lord replies in two ways. First he replies to John. [...] The signs being given are those of the Creator breaking in to fulfil his creation, which is what the promised redemption was all about. John’s heart, stretched beyond parchedness can rest on this knowledge – can be satisfied, for to the heart attuned to the One who is no part of the order of existing things, a prophet’s heart, a sign of the creative work of God being made manifest is already the greatest refreshment that can be given. It allows the heart to rest on the giver.

"And Our Lord even recognises for John that at the very end of being stretched towards the Other who is coming in, there does lie the risk of scandal. There lies the risk that we will interpret the One according to our own pattern of desire, make of him a resolution of our partisan needs, and so be scandalized into not recognising the real One who comes. If however we are not scandalised, we are set free, we no longer need fear the social other which surrounds us, because we are confident of being held in the regard of that power which is coming in, and which is more solid than any form of group bonding, cultural togetherness or inter-personal prestige.

"Here, at the very edge of the stretched fulfilment, it is as if Jesus knows that by asking people to let go of the very notion of vengeance, of divine retribution, he leaves them with two options – to trust in the goodness of the One coming in, or to be locked in scandal at the collapse of partisan goodness and the constant need to build it up again. This latter possibility is indeed the arrival of a new sort of wrath, but rather than being divine wrath, it is a purely human wrath, one no less powerful for that. A human wrath that is a being enclosed into a scandalised imagination in the face of a goodness far too gentle for it to behold.

"Our Lord then turns to those he was teaching, and comments on John: when the crowds went out to the desert to be baptised, was it just a celebrity show, a collective display of mourning? This week we have an ascetic celebrity. Next week we will have a Hollywood starlet? Yet the crowd fascination is just the same. Was this all there was to John? No indeed! He was indeed part of the solidity of God’s self manifestation, nothing futile about him. The crowd was right to pick up that there was something of God here. Just as John was stretched, even in his imprisonment, so he had been sent to stretch hearts and imaginations towards the fulfilment so that others might find themselves closer to being able to receive the One coming in.

"Yet, and here Jesus is adamant. There is a difference not only in degree, but in kind, between the imagination of John, stretched as it was, concerning the things of God, and the imagination of those who are to find themselves ushered into the Presence, one where human violence has been taken inside himself by the one undergoing the sacrifice, and where there is no violence coming out at all.

"[...] It is easier now for us than for the stretched prophets, for, if only we would remember it, we have seen what John did not live to see: the full purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. Not as add-on qualities but as the full purpose of the Lord. The One coming in wants to show us that there is no violence in him at all.

"Did I say that makes it easier? What is it like to be stretched out in a wrathful world in expectation of the arrival of an incommensurable power who is not wrathful at all?"

- James Alison, from "A Stretching Fulfilment" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02jEPbChUdUmBwb3zhpmSAzSiof9kgb8LrBeBhPxDepiTHWQwtqN5wmhj5ZGBn6Z8gl)

~

"Remember that Jesus caused scandal to those who are too good rather than those who are too bad, to those who wanted to sort things out quickly rather than for those who are weak, too weak to do anything. The scandal of Jesus is the scandal of the one who is non-violent and who is going to make a God entirely available as one in whom there is no violence. And now we're on the threshold of beginning to sense what strange potential scandal is coming into our midst as the apocalyptic noise begins to diminish and our Saviour's birth draws nearer."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dYXcF3ZXpQ)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent3a/]

From the Lectionary for 7 December 2025 (Advent 2A)

Matthew 3:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight.’”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

~

"How is the Presence working on us? Once again the liturgy gives us three different prods into life. And as the sound of portentous thunder diminishes, without disappearing yet, so we start to find ourselves being trained towards perceiving a somewhat different shape to the One who comes than our fantasies and our fears had constructed for us.

"A hypnotist summons a temporary new conscious self into being, by getting us to concentrate on something outside ourselves while, below the level of that of which we are conscious, the set of relationships which cause us to think and perceive as we do are worked on. In liturgy, the jostling together of the different voices from Scripture while we are summoned into concentrating on One who is coming, enables us to continue our journey of re-birth. Our new self is quickened into existence as the Spirit awakens in us someone who we didn’t know we were, but who turns out to be more ourselves than we thought we knew. So the jostling and the puncturing continue apace.

[...]

"[We] have John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, pointing to the fulfilment of his own work. And yet he too is out of focus. He knows that only a change of heart and mind will enable people to begin to perceive the shape of the One who is to come, for with our current mindsets we cannot imagine the shape of the Presence. He also knows that between his preparation of people, and the shape of the Presence to come there is an incommensurable distance. Yet even he who was of priestly family can scarcely understand that his rite of public penance and purification would also be the rite of ordination of the Great High Priest who was to come, and thereafter of all of us who are to have our access to the Holy of Holies laid open by his Sacrifice.

"Why his hostility to the many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism? He knows how dangerous apparent goodness is, that is all our grasped goodness, and the sense of entitlement which comes with it. He was aware of how dangerous to such goodness was the One who is to come, but [...] he seems unable to grasp that the One who is coming will turn out indeed to be the bearer of all that dangerousness, only because of the fear and resentment of those in whose midst he will be. Not because there is any violence or vengeance in himself.

"We have not yet undergone the extraordinary shift in perception and imagination which comes upon us when we understand that in the One who comes, there is no violence at all, no vengeance, no desire for retribution, only a longing for us to be fully alive. And that all our fears, our desires for revenge, our stumbling blocks, which we so easily project onto God, are ours, ours alone, and able to be undone, let go, forgiven, by the One who is coming in."

- James Alison, from "Reflections on Advent: A Jostling Fulfilment (Second Sunday of Advent)" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02aMpottGmS3WZK3xzHUHhr8m3ffNuq5tySGxjX1PUyf6sjo8dVt8XiNdpzHncWXH9l)

~

"So here we have John coming in, indicating, if you like, the threatening nature of what's going on, and people knowing that they must do something to change, and already there being all sorts of political [and] religious reaction of the sort to which we're entirely accustomed. As we live this, how do we hear this? What would it be like for someone to come and occupy one of our liminal spaces, someone who has proved themselves capable of speaking wise words, [...] someone who has, let's say, acquired credibility, so that they're not perceived as enacting cheap cosplay but are actually able to say a word?

"What would it look like for us to feel moved by that person, to say, 'gosh, yes, there's a point there, something must be happening'? [...] What would it be like to hear the words and start to repent? What would it look like, then, to start being discerning [about] what the one coming in is bringing? How will we know? How will we be able to follow? How will we recognize and be recognized? That's how our Advent journey is developing."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWtQvHN1g4o)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent2a/]

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/]