From the Lectionary for 23 March 2025 (Lent 3C)

Luke 13:1-9 (NRSV)

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

~

"There is something apparently callous about this. We react to bad news as to a form of emotional blackmail, obliging us to “feel” for the victims, and be outraged by someone who doesn't appear to feel. But not Jesus. His attentin is entirely concentrated on his interlocutors. It is not the events themselves which concern him, but their reaction to the events, and what that reaction says about whose power they are in. We can imagine the excitement of those telling him, wanting a pronouncement of appropriately apocalyptic tenor: the Galileans were not sacrificing at Jerusalem, probably at Gerizim. Maybe this was their punishment from God. But they are disappointed. Jesus completely de-sacralizes the event, removing any link between God and what has happened. Any link between morality and what has happened.

"If we are caught up in thinking like that, then we too are likely to act in ways moved by the apocalyptic other, the god of blood and sacrifice and murder, of morality linked to worldly outcome, and we will perish like them. To ram home his point, he chooses an example where there was no obvious moral agency, no wicked Pilate, no sacrifices of dubious validity: the collapse of a tower — maybe an architectural flaw, maybe a small earth tremor, the shifting of an underground stream, who knows. Once again, Jesus completely de-sacralizes the incident. It has nothing to do with God. But if we are caught up in the world of giving sacred meanings, then we will be caught up in the world of reciprocal violence, of good and bad measured over against other people, and we will likewise perish. Once again I stress: Jesus will not be drawn into adding to meaning. He merely asks those who come to him themselves to move out of the world of sacred-seeming meaning. What does it mean for us to learn to look at the world through those eyes?"

- James Alison, On Being Liked, pp. 8-9, (from chapter titled “Contemplation in a World of Violence”, an essay written in response to the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001)

~

"It is very difficult for us to imagine the huge change of perception underway here, but it could be described as the change from a perception of a god in which the deity has a double face, saying “yes, but...” or “yes, and no”, or “yes, if...”, to the perception according to which God only and unconditionally says “yes”. Another way of putting it is as a change from a god who is both good and bad, who loves and who punishes, to a perception of God who is only love, in whom there is no darkness at all. Jesus had begun to teach this to his disciples, but it had been incomprehensible to them until after the resurrection.

"Consider Jesus' teaching that God makes the sun to shine on good and bad alike, and causes the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. This has the effect of removing God completely from the sphere of reference of our human morality, excluding him from any participation in judging and condemning humans. The same thing happens in the parables: we are not to separate the wheat from the tares (Mt 13:24-30) in this life, because we cannot judge adequately, and God's judgement has nothing to do with our own. The same with the parable of the fish caught in the net (Mt 13:47-50). Exactly the same point occurs in Luke 13:1-5: there is no link between any type of physical happening, or accidental death, and God's action, but those who think that there is are trapped in an understanding of God which is meshed in by death, and they had better repent or they too will perish."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 42-43

~

"Jesus is the gardener: “Give it one more year.” He says this on the way to Jerusalem to die. The Lukan Jesus knows exactly why he's going. “Give me one more year and let me work the soil a bit and put some manure down.” [...] Jesus understands that the revelation can't happen this side of the cross, and so he begins to prepare his followers for the metanoia [repentance, a change of heart and mind] that will happen afterwards. “I’m just going to be working the soil right now so that next year...” — which is just another way of saying that a little while later it will bear fruit. The “it” that will bear fruit is the cross.

"We often think of Jesus as a teacher. But he's not primarily a teacher. He taught, but he's more than that. He's a revealer, the icon of the living God. He's working the soil so that metanoia can happen. Metanoia doesn't happen [only] because of teaching."

- from notes by Paul Nuechterlein on tape #8 of the “The Gospel of Luke” tape lecture series by Gil Bailie (posted on the Girardian Lectionary page for this Sunday, link below)

~

"So Jesus is talking here both about the gardener actually correcting the rather angry and wanting-to-speed-things-up landowner [as Levitic law proscribed waiting 4 years for the first bearing of fruit]. If you like, the voice of God here wanting mercy is not the owner but the worker. But [Jesus is] also saying, ‘listen, in the next year I'm going to be digging around it [the tree, representing Israel] and putting some manure in it’ - what a way to refer to his own forthcoming death and resurrection - ‘if it bears fruit next year’ - in other words, after all that's done - ‘well and good, but if not, cut it down’. In other words, he's saying the day of vengeance is not going to be a day of vengeance, it's postponed, it's going to be a day of potential mercy. Only after the potential mercy has started to come, to burst forth, let's see whether it is still standing or not, if it isn't, cut it down.

"So Jesus is clearly both talking about what's going to happen immediately to him, and he's prophesying the response of his own people, the people of Israel, to the arrival of the day of vengeance, the day of mercy. Will it be that of learning what has happened and bearing fruit, or would it be a closing ranks in the old system and thus getting to be destroyed?

"I hope you can see that this is quite strong stuff in the midst of a genuinely violent world, and that [Jesus is] answering on the spot for people who have, if you like, quite a strong religious judgmental mentality. These things are not unknown to us. It's interesting for us to see how mercy breaks forth in the midst of our violence and our refusal to bear the fruit of the kingdom."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5qhkbzSvEQ)

[Source of James Alison book quotations, and for further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent3c/]

From the Lectionary for 16 March 2025 (Lent 2C)

Philippians 3:17-21 (NRSV)

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

~

"The context of this admonition is Paul's counting as loss his Jewish credentials and achievements — which he labels as “confidence in the flesh” — and then he owns a righteousness based on the faith of Jesus Christ, a righteousness which is from God based on faith (3:9). What Paul then desires, as mark of this righteousness, is to know the power of Jesus' resurrection and to share in Jesus' sufferings, thus “becoming like him in death” (3:10). These twin points of analogous experience are pursued further in vv. 11-16. Then follows this language of imitation and example in w.17-18.

"Clearly, given the preceding context of sharing in the sufferings of Christ and the immediately following reference to the cross of Christ, this use of imitation and example is oriented to the cross and suffering. It is also striking that Paul completes this thought by pointing to a heavenly reward for this kind of earthly life (vv. 20-21). He then addresses a conflict between two sisters in the community, Euodia and Syntyche, a manifestation of [imitative] rivalry in the sisterhood. He speaks highly of their contribution to the missionary enterprise and is confident that this conflict can and will be resolved.

Let the *same mind* be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him... (Phil. 2:5-11)

"Even though this text does not use either of the key terms, imitation or type, it clearly portrays the believers patterning their conduct after the suffering and obedience of Christ Jesus. [...] The context of this foundational confession on Jesus' self-emptying and humbling to the cross is Paul's admonition in vv. 3-4 to put away conduct that proceeds from [imitative] rivalry: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Then follows: “let the same mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.”"

- Willard Swartley, “Discipleship and Imitation of Jesus/Suffering Servant: The Mimesis of New Creation,” in Violence Renounced (Studies in Peace and Scripture),  pp. 225-226

~

"What does it mean to keep our gaze focused on God? What does it mean to live as a friend of the cross? (I'm using the “face of God” and the “cross” interchangeably.) What does it mean to live as an enemy of the cross? Sometimes when we talk about these things we use the vocabulary of ethics and morality. But doing so surely reduces and legalizes the Christian life to a right ethic, a right set of morals. So, in an attempt to capture the dynamic aliveness of following Jesus, I'm going to use the language of economics.[1]

"What does it mean to live as a friend of the cross? The capital of the cross is love, self-giving love. The economy of the cross is a gift economy. Love and mercy, grace and forgiveness are given as gifts. They can't be purchased, or earned, borrowed or deserved. They're already ours. They are already everybody's. And they are distributed in generous, abundant, even gratuitous measures.

"In God's economy, there are no assets to protect, no risks to be concerned about, nothing to be afraid of. Anyone can be a shareholder. In fact, everyone is a shareholder … we've only to claim our shares! In the economy of the cross, stocks never lose their value, and the market never crashes. It's a stable, secure economy. The Living God is always pouring love into it. God who is love is always generating more capital - more grace and mercy and beauty and forgivingness than we know what to do with!

"When we live as enemies of the cross, we participate in an economy of the belly, an economy of desire. This is an economy of scarcity. Its currency is fear. We invest in this economy, expecting dividends that will satisfy personal self-interests, dividends that will keep us safe and secure, investing in assurances that nothing bad should ever happen to us, dividends that will pay out what is rightfully ours, what we're entitled to get. In the economy of desire, there is never enough. When this is the currency that's making our living, we fear not having enough, not being enough, not knowing enough, not doing enough. In the economics of scarcity, competition and rivalry thrive. Others become threats to our wellbeing. This economy sees the world through eyes of scarcity and problems. And like everything else in this economy, hope and solutions are scarce.

"The currency of the cross is love, generosity, gift. Its dividends are transformation, freedom of being and freedom of expression, and sanctuary in the very heart of God. As Jesus journeyed to the cross, he freely exchanged in the currency of love, lavishly giving and receiving gifts. He wasn't selling insurance or solutions to personal or societal problems. He saw and named brokenness, personal and communal brokenness. But instead of telling people how to fix their problems, he opened hearts and spaces for God's love to transform bodies and lives. He opened eyes to see the beauty of God's face. And when individuals saw the face of God, they saw their own reflections; they saw themselves as beloved daughters, beloved sons of God. Jesus told people new stories about themselves, and in doing so, he gifted them with hope, with new, life-saving and life-giving possibilities for their future.

"In the economy of the belly, the economy of fear and scarcity and problems, the cross is interpreted as a solution—the cross fixes the problem of human sin. Except it doesn't. The cross as a fix-it solution didn't … and it still hasn't … fixed the problem of human violence. It hasn't shut down the economics of scarcity and fear and rivalry. Rather, the cross exposes human violence … and into that violence, God's gift economy flows.

"The cross, instead of a solution, is an opening into hope, into a new future. When we watch Jesus on the cross, he's still indiscriminately handing out gifts of love and mercy and forgiveness. And the gifts are generous, gratuitous even. This is what God's economy looks like! We can be sure that Jesus is keeping his eyes fixed on the face of YHWH, trusting God's beauty, trusting God's aliveness and love, knowing that even as he is being killed, even then he is being sheltered by eternal and endless love, knowing that he will see the beauty of God in the land of the living.

"Back to Paul's invitation to imitation. It may seem odd or uncomfortable for us to think about imitating someone or something, even if it is God's economy. Imitation doesn't take thinking or understanding; it's rote. But the thing is, the economy of desire is so pervasive that we who want and intend to follow Jesus, without meaning to we find ourselves living as enemies of the cross. Everywhere we look, our eyes land on the economics of scarcity and fear and problems and unwittingly, unknowingly we find ourselves imitating the economy of desire.

"That's why we imitate God's economy. We simply practice, every day, every moment, exchanging gifts of love and mercy, generous and abundant gifts of grace and beauty. We see the brokenness of the world around us, not as problems to be fixed, but as hearts and spaces for God's economy to flow, for God's gifts of love and mercy to be distributed, freely shared, generously exchanged.

"And so, as we journey to the cross, let us imitate God's economy. As we are “marching in the light of God,” let us practice generous and abundant gifting. May we keep our eyes fixed on God's face, on the beauty and sweetness that is God."

Suella Gerber, from 2016 sermon "Journeying to the cross … in Sabbath" (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gerber-Lent2C-2-21-16.pdf)

[1] Peter Block’s, Community, the Structure of Belonging, inspired this conversation of economy.

[Source of Willard Swartley quotation and link to Suella Gerber sermon, and for further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent2c/]

[The Gospel text for Lent 2C in the Roman Catholic lectionary is Luke 9:28-36 (The Transfiguration), which was the text 2 weeks ago (Transfiguration Sunday) in the Revised Common Lectionary. See my post for that week: https://daveroberts.blogspot.com/2025/03/from-lectionary-for-2-march-2025.html]

From the Lectionary for 9 March 2025 (Lent 1C)

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
    and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to protect you,’

and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

~

"Now Luke had given comparatively little details about what was going on in the baptism other than that this was Jesus receiving the Spirit of Sonship. It was being shown to everybody that he was the Son. And here he has been reenacting the 40 days [/years] of Moses in the desert, and here we have the devil [...] and what the devil does and the form of his temptation is the little word “if”. He tries to get Jesus to doubt that he really is the Son of God, and therefore to attempt to prove it by himself by reacting to the temptation would be doing something to show that he is something. And if you do something to show that you are something it means you don't really believe you are. That's the temptation.

[...]

"Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. In an “instant”. The Greek word is 'stigma', which is the same word which you have with stigmata - a hole in the hand was the word used for tattooing, a little puncture in the skin, little puncture, an instant puncture of time. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and [...] here we have, if you like, the temptation of kingship. [...]

"Jesus again answers, this time from the compilation of texts in Deuteronomy, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” And please notice it's this question of time, the way in which a moment of time is shown to Jesus. And what Jesus is doing is slowly enacting the response to worshiping the Lord your God and serve only him over time. Because in just the same way as Jesus is not going to produce miraculous bread a la Moses he is in fact going to become the Bread, so here he's not going to quickly sing the devil's tune better than the devil, he's going to worship the Lord your God and undo the whole of the power of the devil over time. But it's going to be not in a puncture mark of time, that's the only thing the devil has got - clever ideas, puncture marks in time - it's the lived life over time which is going to undo the whole mechanism by which the devil keeps us in fear.

[...]

"Then the devil took him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple. So after the prophetic and the royal [tests] now we have the priestly, [the] pinnacle of the temple. [...] So the devil knows that Jesus is the Son and is the great High Priest who is going to perform the great atonement and that the Psalm [the devil quotes] does refer to him. But what the devil wants to get him to do is to anticipate it, see if [he] can get him to do the atonement too quickly, because then it will simply be something which he's done to show who he is and not the real thing. [...]

"Jesus answered him and said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Here he's quoting directly Deuteronomy 6:16 [...] and Jesus is not saying 'do not put the Lord your God to the test' to the devil, he's saying it to himself - I am not going to put the Lord your God - my Lord my god - to the test, which would be performing something that obliges God to do something so as to show who God is - that was what was the temptation. He's saying no, he will perform the atonement, he will become and show himself as the Priest just as the King and as the Prophet in due time, when he has lived through everything and it is the right moment.

"“When the devil had finished every test” - so this was the three principal ones, maybe there were others, we don't know - “he departed from him until an opportune time.” It's a very subtle little reminder that this whole thing is about time. The temptations in Luke, it's all about the difference between satanic time and the time of the one who comes in to give himself wholly and fully and without protesting, under obedience, who will then eventually live out the atonement.

[...]

"So Jesus resisting, resisting having to demonstrate what he is, because he knows that his being given Sonship, and his being the Son, is the same thing. But it happens over time, and it doesn't allow him to be bounced into doing spectacular tricks to demonstrate, for his own self-satisfaction, who he is. The only reason for doing these things is for other people, and that does not mean showing off for your own purposes.

"So here we have this wonderful beginning to Jesus's ministry, as he shows that the Son of Man is going to become who he is over time, that the something about the weakness and the historical journey that is not accidental to, but absolutely essential to what he is about to do. And that doing that richly and in our midst, and overcoming our fears and our shame and our feeling of inadequacy, that we too are enabled, not to fear that sonship is something we have to grasp onto, desperately trying to prove it to others, but to allow ourselves to be loved into being, starting from where we are, so that we may give ourselves, starting from where we are, and actually show what sonship, daughterhood, looks like over time."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the First Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgimWHTeX7Y)

[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent1c/]

From the Lectionary for 2 March 2025 (Transfiguration Sunday, Year C)

Luke 9:28-36 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

~

"Here is this wonderful moment, “the cloud came and overshadowed them.” This is exactly the word that is used at the very end of the book of Exodus, when the cloud overshadows the tabernacle. But there Moses can't go in. Moses can't go in when the cloud overshadows the tabernacle, he can only go in when it's lifted up and gone away. But here the cloud came and overshadowed them and they were terrified *as they entered the cloud*. In other words, with Jesus they are on the inside of the glory now. This is no longer something being waited or awaited from afar, something held off by death.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

"Again, what happens at the fullness of theophany, what we'd seen already indicated at the baptism and thereafter, which is, God is going to speak only at the fraternal level, only at the level of a human among humans. No top-down God, now only sideways God. This is one of the great confirmations: this glory, this being with Jesus in the glory, is something which is going to come down upon everybody at Pentecost, we are going to be inside it. And it's going to work sideways, horizontally, not vertically as heretofore. The voice speaks, the 'bath qol', the “daughter of the voice” as in the Hebrew tradition, but it says, “This is the one, this is my Son, listen to him. He's the one I've chosen. All his words will be my words.”

"“When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.” Well of course one wonders why not, one wonders whether it was because they couldn't really imagine there, weren't words for it, they were being given bits of a vision of what was going on around them that was far too great for them to be able to work out what was going on. Which is why they were planned witnesses. Which is why also they saw the next moment of the theophany at Gethsemane, and why thereafter they were witnesses when it came to choosing who to fulfill the role of the missing member of The Twelve. Jesus setting people up so that they could actually have an idea of the grandeur of what had been spoken amongst them, of what it was going to look like: God fulfilling his promise to Abraham. And that this, this that they had seen, this was what all the weight of glory looked like in their midst.

"And I think that this is a wonderful thing for us in our Lenten journey [Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday], because often in lent we just get little hints of what is being done for us, just occasionally, we can't put it together. And i think that that's right. I think that our experience is closer to that of the disciples, the apostles, then we may think, that Luke is so good at giving us scenes that we think, “Oh it must have been a very spectacular thing,” but what he's doing is showing how something that can be described as very spectacular, if you unpick every detail turns into something which is actually the sort of thing that we are on the inside of as we prepare to see his glory."

- James Alison's, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT5toq6NsYU)

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

[Note that Transfiguration is celebrated on the Second Sunday in Lent in the Roman Catholic liturgical year. I highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" which looks at Luke 6: 39-45 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWdRkUs5ZY4]