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

Luke 16:19-31 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

~

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

[...]

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

Amos 8:4-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

~

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

~

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

~

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

From the Lectionary for 7 September 2025 (Proper 18C)

Luke 14:25-33 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now large crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

~

"The Greek word for “possessions” in vs. 33 is an interesting one. It is a participial noun 'ta hyparchonta', from the verb 'hyparcho', which is a compound word from the words hypo, “under,” archo, “to begin” (the noun 'arche' can also indicate power). It's not even listed in Kittel's TDNT, but the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker lexicon has its most common meaning as: exist (really), be present, be at one's disposal. Things which are at one's disposal are one's possessions or means. BAGD also indicates that in Homeric Greek this word is often used as a substitute for 'einai' (inf.), the “to be” verb. I take it that this “really exist” is an intensive form of “to be.”

- Exegetical note by Paul Nuechterlein on the Girardian Lectionary page for this Sunday (link below)

~

"We could phrase this [...] by saying that the problem is not possessions but possessiveness. God gives us parents, children, siblings, and friends as gifts. Likewise we should give each ourselves as gifts to other people. The things we use in the world are likewise gifts from God and should be treated accordingly.

"The problem comes when we prefer to take other people and things rather than receive them. In such cases, the intensity of love we feel for others is actually possessiveness rather than love. We are told to “hate” parents, children, siblings, and friends so as not to be possessive of them."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from a blog post titled “God's Kingdom as Gift” (https://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/gods-kingdom-as-gift/)

~

"So he's setting this out and then he says: So, therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your - the Greek word here is - I'm just going to get this right - hyparchousin - which can mean possessions but it actually means more: it means 'your being', 'your essence', any advantage you might have, your profit. So it means anything that profiteth, to use nice Jacobite language.

"So therefore none of you can become disciples if you do not give up anything that might give you an advantage: your very being, your possessions - everything. He's saying that the greatest strength, the strength of the Lord and his anointed, the one who is actually going to be able to fulfil the building of the new tower, is the one who is treated as nought by family, friends and children, and has lost all the things that hold him or her in being.

"This is a tremendously, as you can imagine, difficult teaching, saying: If you want to follow me, it's not a question of ‘I demand that you engage in pseudo-masochistic exercises’; it's that any leverage that gives you being now is going to get in the way of your being weak enough to conquer all these forces."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYIvDVIem8I)

~

"[A] huge part of what Jesus came to do is to show us who God really is, which is ultimately Good News. But it is also challenging as hell, because we evolved with our own ideas of who god is. And they are surprisingly difficult to let go of. Today's challenging Gospel Reading gives us a big clue as to why.

"First, there's that matter of giving up possessions. Our usual human gods are the ones who bless us with good things when we are good and curse us with the loss or absence of good things when we are bad. These gods make sense of the world for us in terms of how we set things up, namely, as rewarding what's deemed as good behavior and punishing what's deemed as bad behavior. When we are deserving, God blesses us with good possessions. That's how our entire society is constructed, right? Working hard and getting what we deserve.

"Second, there's the matter of hating family. The blessing and curse thing works not only for individuals, but also for groups of people, for communities. God blesses or punishes us as a family, or tribe, or nation. God is our God, on our side. We count on our God to keep us safe against our enemies. In an us-and-them world, it is good to have God on our side. “God bless America!” Right?

"Does this God sound familiar? The God who is on our side and blesses us with good things, many possessions? [...] But I have come to believe that Jesus came to divest us of that human-made God and show us who God really is, and it's not that God.

"First, the true God of Jesus is the God of everyone, the God of the whole creation, so there is no us-and-them. There is only us. That's why Jesus said outrageous things like, “Love your enemies.” Because there is no us and them, there is only us. The true God is not the god behind any of the divisions we humans create. The true God is the one behind the oneness of everything, the God bringing all things into harmony through love. So we need to let go of all ideas tied to us-and-them thinking, including our family as separate from anyone else's family. We need to let go of mother and father, sisters and brothers, and receive all human beings as part of God's family, our family.

"And so God also doesn't go around blessing some and cursing others. The promise to Abraham and Sarah right from the beginning is that their family was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1-3). It's supposed to be win-win, not win-lose. Again, Jesus makes this clear right from the start by beginning his ministry with the beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel: blessed are the poor, the meek, the grieving; and what we already heard from Luke's Gospel, a blessing to the poor, the sick, the oppressed.

"In short, Jesus is flipping things on us, declaring blessings for those in this world we usually count as cursed. Jesus is teaching us that God doesn't reward the good and punish the bad. We don't receive possessions because we deserve them; we receive them as gifts of God's graciousness. All of life is a gift! Not something to be possessed! So we also need to be able to let go of our possessions as possessions, and to receive them instead as gifts.

[...]

"I think coming to faith in God anew [...] is being able to experience one's possessions, even one's family, as pure gift. It is being able to survive death by being in oneness with all of life — and the ground of all life, God. Jesus, our big brother, came to help us grow-up into that life of grace, a way through the cross to resurrection. It is the experience of “eternal life” here and now because it is the experience of life as pure gift."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from a sermon by delivered on September 4, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper-18c-sermon-2016/)

[Source of Exegetical Note and links to Andrew Marr and Paul Nuechterlein sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper18c/]

From the Lectionary for 31 August 2025 (Proper 17C)

Luke 14:1, 7-14 (NRSV) Updated Edition)

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.

[...]

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

~

"In the story from Luke Jesus wants those present at the dinner to recognize their internal ranking system and its' inherit problems. His story takes the form of advice on where to sit when entering a wedding hall. Since it's so hard to know how others see you and so difficult to accurately rank yourself, take the lowest place and then let the host move you up if the host sees you ranked differently than you have ranked yourself. This is much better than starting too high and having the embarrassment of being asked to move to a lower place. Jesus assumes there will be ranking but suggests an attitude of humility wherein the host determines your place rather than you grasping for it.

"In other words, don't worry about ranking. Leave that to the host and just enjoy yourself at the banquet. You have a place and it will be the right one since it is granted you by the host who sees you clearly. When everyone in a group isn't worried about ranking and trusts the host, a spirit of peace, contentment and harmony settles over the group. Instead of grasping for rank and honor trust that you have a place already. The greatest danger to you and to others is the discord that grasping produces. People who grasp will be brought low because they will misuse any rank they are given. In this way of interpreting Jesus' story, it's clear that we all have a place in God's love."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 28th, 2016 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Proper17-2016-Its-All-About-Ranking-and-Rivalry.pdf)

~

"Disgrace is shame; our old old duo which we get throughout the Gospel - shame and glory. The two are poles within which Jesus is teaching and [in which] the whole of the [imitative] understanding of humanity functions - shame and glory. “‘Give this person your place,’ and then in shame you would start to take the lowest place” (v9) - you would probably fall through the hole in the floor and slink away. [...] So Jesus says: “When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you: friend move up higher. Then you will be honoured.” And again: what is the word for honoured? It's then you will have glory, then there will be to you glory in the face of all who are at the table with you.

"So shame, glory and he's teaching all this in this space which is a Pharisee's Sabbath party. In other words, he's turning this into a divine happening, in which the extremes of shame and glory are being taught about. And it's the judge who is present. Are they going to get that, in fact, the judge was present? It is actually showing them what shame and glory looked like. [...]

"And [then] we get a verse which is not in our reading, it's the next verse of the [Luke text], but which should be [part of the reading] because it's one of the dinner guests on hearing this said to him: “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” [...] And this person has understood what Jesus is about. Jesus is undoing the Levitical instructions as to who gets to eat in the holy place at the banquet in the resurrection of the righteous. He's undoing that now in real-time. [...] [H]e's showing the guests at apparently a relatively secular banquet what might be the sign of the kingdom, the breaking in of the real feast where not those who are 'free from blemish', [but] those who are cast out can, in fact, join in the banquet of heaven.

"And one of the dinner guests has understood this. [...] I just wanted to bring out that someone gets what Jesus is talking about, someone understands that he is fulfilling and moving beyond Leviticus in talking about the Lord who invites, who has no favourites, and who breaks through all our reciprocities which are built on favour and fear of vengeance."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7TXK3dmzQ)

~

"The problem which Jesus raises with his listeners is the same question as we have seen in other circumstances: on which ‘other’ do I depend to be noticed and told “I like you”? I think that there are two possibilities: I can depend entirely on my peers, in which case my goodness, my striving to do well, and the sort of life I lead will be a reflection of them, and I'll have to do everything to keep myself well-considered by them, receiving those whom they receive and excluding those whom they exclude, so as not to run the risk of finding myself the excluded one. Not only all these things, which might seem superficial, like the little games of hypocrisy which we all have to play to keep our social life going, but it is also the case, perhaps without my realizing it, that all my “I” is nothing other than a construction forged by the difficult game of keeping my reputation. There is no other “I” at the bottom of it all, behind the “I” which I am acquiring through the little manipulations by which I search to keep my reputation. My “I” and my way of being related to the “other” are the same thing.

"The other possibility is that I receive my “I” from God, and here's the rub: God has an awful reputation. Which is nothing other than saying that God's reputation and the reputation of the victim are the same thing. That is what Jesus was suggesting: in order to receive your reputation, your being noticed and recognized, by God, you have to be prepared to lose the reputation which comes from the mutually reinforcing opinion and high regard of those who are bulwarks of public morality and goodness, and find it among those who are held as nothing, of no worth. That is also what Paul says to the Corinthians: God chose what is weak in this world to put to shame what is strong; God chose what is base and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Cor 1:27-28)

[...]

"[T]he order of this world has its own glory, which depends on mutually rivalistic imitation, and is a glory or reputation that is grasped and held onto with difficulty. Being enveloped in the order of this world prevents us from beginning to act in solidarity with those of poor repute, because if we do so we lose our reputation. But those whose minds are fixed on the things that are above, that is, those who have begun to receive their “I” from their non-rivalistic imitation of Jesus, already begin to derive their reputation from the Father and not from their peers. This they do in the degree to which, doubtless with much difficulty, they learn to give little importance to the reputation which people give them, and thus become free to associate with those who have no reputation, just like the one who was numbered among the transgressors.

"If they manage not to be ashamed of what the world treats as despicable, then, when the final revelation of the Son of man with angels appears, where it will be established beyond doubt who God really is, that is, the risen victim will be the central axis of all the life stories that are under construction; then, at that moment those who were little concerned about the loss of their reputation will receive an everlasting reputation: they will hear in the midst of a huge public what every little child wants to hear from its parents: “That’s right, little one, that’s what I wanted; I like what you’ve done.”"

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 180-183

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon and quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper17c/]

From the Lectionary for 24 August 2025 (Proper 16C)

Isaiah 58:9b-10; 13-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be like the noonday.
...
If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
    from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
    serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Luke 13:10-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

~

Exegetical notes (by Paul Neuchterlein, from the Girardian Lectionary page for this week - link in comments below):

1. “Eighteen,” the number of years the woman has been afflicted, mentioned twice, by Luke in vs. 11 and by Jesus in vs. 16. Numbers often provide background clues in ancient texts. In the James Alison essay “Inhabiting Texts and Being Discovered,” in Jesus the Forgiving Victim, he suggests a link to a story that would have been well-known to Jesus’ Jewish listeners: the story in Judges 3:12-25 of Ehud liberating the people of Israel from an eighteen year servitude under the Moabite king Eglon.

2. “Hypocrites” (hypocritēs in Greek, from the Greek words for “under” and “crisis”). This word is actually quite rare in Scripture, appearing only in the Synoptic Gospels (a favorite word especially of Mathew’s Jesus) and two places in the Book of Job. Once again, James Alison calls attention to the Joban texts as a likely background for Jesus’ use of the word. Particularly impressive in this context is the fact that the Job 36:5-12 passage talks about being bound in fetters and afflicted, much like Jesus sees this woman. Elihu is addressing Job about a God who answers the righteous who are afflicted, those who are “bound in fetters and caught in the cords of the afflicted.” But there are those who don’t hearken to God’s help that the Septuagint translates as the “godless (hypocritēs) in heart,” who hold onto their anger, and “they do not cry for help when he binds them.”

~

Another exegetical point is the connection between the Isaiah reading, "If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil" (58:9b), and v16 of the Luke passage: "a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years." Satan, or more correctly The Satan, is the accuser (the literal translation of "the satan", the inspiration of all who point the finger and speak evil of others.

Tom Truby highlights this dimension of the story:

"Could satan be a stand-in for the accusing community who says “You are just a woman. You were born to carry this burden. Don’t try to escape it.” Does this story have applications for any person or group of people our culture unfairly asks to carry our culture’s burdens: to be the ones in whom we store our resentment and who absorb our dysfunction?

"In this story from Luke Jesus comes along and sees a woman bent by her culture. He decides to set her free. Jesus has asked us to model ourselves after him. When we see someone bent, or perhaps a whole population bent, shaped by the weight they carry, even though it is not their burden, what should we do? Should we feel their plight and call out to them in identification? How can we place our hands on them so they can stand up and praise God?

"Jesus must have said all of this in such a clear way that all of them saw the connections. With things suddenly clarified, the opponents of Jesus felt ashamed—as they should. But they too are forgiven. Even as all of this happens, Jesus is on his way to the cross to make human forgiveness explicit. In exposing the mechanism by which their little village works they have been given a great gift; for though their leaders may not know it, they too are in bondage. They are in bondage to their need to keep their sister bent and to hide that from themselves. It keeps them from claiming their humanity as a forgiven people able to praise God."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 25, 2019 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Truby-Proper16-2019-The-Dark-Cloud-of-Human-Ignorance-and-Self-deceit-Cleared-for-a-Moment.pdf)

~

James Alison's essay “Inhabiting Texts and Being Discovered,” is specifically on this passage. With the two passages from the Hebrew Scriptures mentioned in the Exegetical Notes above in mind, Alison concludes:

"[Jesus] comes into the synagogue, which is supposed to be the gathering of Israel, and what does he find? Israel bound down in affliction, symbolized by this woman here with her eighteen years of suffering. But unlike the Israel of old, is anybody crying out to the Lord for delivery? Not a bit of it! In fact the synagogue leader is behaving much more like Eglon than like Ehud. Both he and those present have become godless in heart, hypocrites, since rather than cry out and actually long for help, they would rather sit complacently gnawing over their own affliction.

"But this is not what the real Israel is about at all! The real Israel cried out to YHWH for delivery, and in the absence of that, well then, YHWH comes into their midst to give the afflicted their right. “If they are bound in fetters, and caught in the cords of affliction, he declares to them their work … that they are behaving arrogantly.” [Job 36:8-9] So please notice that Jesus is even now enacting in their midst what YHWH does, rebuking them for their arrogance and their weddedness to resentment which leads them to fail to cry out. But he is also delivering the afflicted by her affliction, and opening the ears of all of them through her adversity. […]

"The overall dynamic is then of YHWH visiting his people in the midst of a synagogue meeting, so as to bring out what real Israel is really all about, as full of power and excitement as the sagas of old, showing them in three dimensions what it really is to be a child of Abraham. You can begin to get a sense then of how a synagogue full of people suddenly found itself hoicked out of its ordinary routine. All of its participants find themselves occupying different places within the stories, brought, if they could accept being urged to cry out more, to a real sense of what all the glories of Israel were really all about.

"These people were undergoing a visitation from YHWH, so no wonder they rejoiced “at all the glorious things that were done by him.” On the other hand, those for whom synagogue has become a Moabite cult, in which, as it says in the Book of Job, resentful people go down to their graves in shame because they don’t cry out, then, well, “his adversaries were put to shame.”"

- James Alison, "Jesus the Forgiving Victim", pp. 369-71

[Source of exegetical notes by Paul Neuchterlein, link to Thomas Truby sermon and quote from 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/proper16c/]

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

Luke 12:49-53 (English Standard Version)

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

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

Alison concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 12:32-48 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 11:1-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

[...]

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

[...]

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 10:38-42 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

~

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

[...]

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

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

~

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 10:25-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

~

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

~

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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