From the Lectionary for 27 April 2025 (Easter 2C)

John 20:19-23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

~

"I think it's significant that the Christian Good News begins with the resurrection of a human body. Raising Jesus on Easter is the promise that God is saving our bodies, too. It's not about God saving us from our bodies or from the world. It's about the saving of our bodies and of the world. In our Easter Gospel today, Jesus is sporting the first model of a resurrection body. It's different than his previous body: he suddenly appears in locked rooms, and his disciples don't recognize him at first. But his resurrection body also bears the characteristics of a body. You can touch it. It bears the marks of his wounds from being executed on a cross. Jesus' new body is the down payment on a New Creation — a saved body for a saved world.

"Today's Gospel uses Thomas to expresses our doubts about all this. Here's the question: what exactly is the nature of our doubts? Do we doubt that God can resurrect dead people with a new body? Perhaps that's part of it. But do we also doubt that God would want to raise dead people with new bodies? Isn't there at least a part of us that wonders why God would bother to save bodies? In the end, we often experience our bodies as our enemies — they fail us. They are the thing that holds us back from being truly free. Even for those who don't face a stroke or other affliction that diminishes the physical body, the natural aging process still creates problems for our bodies. As our minds and spirits mature and gain wisdom, our bodies gradually fail us.

"From early on in the church — beginning Easter evening with Thomas! — we've had serious doubts about why God would want to save our bodies. What's the point?! It's been part of our human experience that our bodies limit us, and it's our spirits that truly make us free and define us. So what's the point?

"Here's the point: God created us to be in relationship with the world and each other. Our bodies keep us bound to one another. True freedom is not being independent of others. True freedom is being dependent in ways that enhance one another and complete one another. Through our relationships, we become complete. There can be no human fulfillment, or “salvation,” that does not also fulfill others and the world around us. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” This is the interrelatedness of our bodies in the world, so that the Christian affirmation of resurrection of the body is the affirmation that you and I are created to be with and for each other.

[...]

"When Christians follow Thomas in doubting bodily resurrection, it continues to reinforce our culturally generated habits that imagine and treat the body only as an object. It prevents us from the full impact of the resurrection upon the world: that salvation is not salvation from the body and from the world, but of the body and of the world. Jesus confronts the doubt of Thomas with the marks of his living and dying for others on his body.

"What would it mean for us to respond with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” Would it be to affirm with a disciple like Martin Luther King, Jr. the interrelatedness of all us? [...] Believing in the resurrection of the body is to believe in the freedom that comes from being in relationship to all others, and to truly say to any child of God, “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.” Amen"

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on April 7, 2013 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter2c_2013_ser/)

~

"[R]esurrection language cannot simply be a “private language,” utterly unintelligible and inaccessible to those “outside.”  As all language is porous to the Other - language *is* this porosity - even the unique world of meaning that is the resurrection's will necessarily be exposed to and interact with other conceptual-linguistic horizons.

"If Jesus' resurrection is the condition of its own possibility, giving birth and providing structure to a world of imagination and praxis that cannot be ultimately derived from anything else, still it reaches out in hospitality to all else.  Resurrection faith is one of mission, of “being sent” into the world.  Christianity's prophetic potential demands the exercise of a public and critical role, allowing even its most unique doctrinal claims and practices to interact with and give shape to a broader public.

[...]

"Ultimately the resurrection narratives are commission narratives, narratives of sending and receiving, narratives that reveal the structure of being as “being given,” “being risen,” and “being sent.” ... [T]his shows just how intimately the church's identity is bound up with mission, how being reconciled and being-in-community is, for the New Testament, “being sent” in the world as an agent for justice, reconciliation, and peace.  Mission in proclamation and praxis is not a secondary movement of the church, coming as a consequence of an identity already established within itself, but as the very way that identity comes about."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 113-15

~

"So, [Jesus has] completed what the Father sent him to do. He occupied the space of death and of shame, fulfilled it completely. He has conquered it. He is now about to give the whole of that as Spirit to them so that they may live. He's fulfilled everything that he had to do, that's why this is his ascended self that is speaking.

"And now, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In other words, “From now on, this movement is now horizontal. I'm going to push you out towards doing exactly what I've been doing.” And when he says this, he breathes on them and says to them, “Receive Holy Spirit.” Actually, the Greek is, 'he breathes into them,' because it's into the nostrils, it's the same verb for breathing into the nostrils of Adam from the book of Genesis. So this is the Lord creating by putting the Spirit of Life, that has now been made complete, into the disciples.

"“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” In other words, “All power on heaven and earth is now in your hands. I'm giving it to you. The Father gave it to me, and now I'm giving it to you. What you hold back will be held back. What you open up will be opened up.” In other words, “No more 'outside god' controlling things. I've brought God to be a 'within and alongside and inside' God, pushing you. All the same forces as have been within me will now be within you, and you will have the power to do all these things.”

"So this is the most sensational thing, this is the completion of creation by the Creator, having put, if you like, the capacity to open up creation into our hands and our lives. [...] I think that that's what we're going to be seeing in this Easter period, how the Lord comes to us and turns us into more than we can imagine, opening us up to begin to live with death as something that has been occupied, turned into [Jesus'] trophy."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday in Easter 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeVs0Dz-IfM)

[Source of link to Paul Nuechterlein sermon, and for further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter2c/]

From the Lectionary for 20 April 2025 (Easter Sunday, Year C)

1 Corinthians 15:19-26 (NRSV)

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

~

"I have argued [...] that the epistemological starting point for any understanding of Christianity is the presence to the disciples of the crucified-and-risen Lord. That is to say: the only reason there is any Christianity at all is because of the resurrection. Any doctrine that does not, therefore, ultimately flow from the resurrection, as a development of its content and consequences, must properly be questioned as to its starting point and as to its validity. [...]

"The resurrection of Jesus was not a miraculous event within a pre-existing framework of understanding of God, but the event by which God recast the possibility of human understanding of God. For this to happen God simultaneously made use of, and blew apart, the understanding of God that had developed over the centuries among the Jewish people. God did this in the person of Jesus, through his life and teaching, leading up to and including his death.

[...]

"The resurrection of Jesus, at the same time as it showed the unimagined strength of divine love for a particular human being, and therefore revealed the loving proximity of God, also marked a final and definitive sundering of God from any human representational capacity. Whereas before it could be understood that God did not die, nor change, nor have an end, this was always within a dialectical understanding of what does happen to humans. With the resurrection of Jesus from the dead there is suddenly no dialectical understanding of God available, because God has chosen his own terms on which to make himself known quite outside the possibility of human knowledge marked by death. The complete freedom and gratuity of God is learned only from the resurrection, not because it did not exist before, but because we could not know about or understand it while our understanding was shaped by the inevitability of death."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, pp 115-116

~

Luke 24:1-12 (NRSV)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

~

"They're being asked to re-signify the tomb as a place where he is not. He can only be found amongst the living. One of the things that cannot be remembered about him is the tomb. It makes no sense, that's part of this irruption of meaning, that we can't compare with anything else, that's how that's going on. “And then they remembered his words.” In other words, they began the process of re-signification. They are still completely baffled by it. Their memories are being altered so as to be able to begin to take on board what this might mean.

"All of this, I'm suggesting, Luke is very subtly, very deliberately, doing this. First of all there's a shift of memory. A little bit later we'll see in the Emmaus story we have a shift in narrative, where we have another account of them remembering things, and having their memory altered by Jesus interpreting them and giving them the interpretative key for what has happened, and then being recognized just at the last moment.

"And then the next day we'll have Jesus turning up, again initially unrecognized, and then gradually becoming physically present to them, although it didn't appear as he had appeared to them before because they weren't able to recognize him instantly. And then he was able to show him physicality.

"So a huge process has been going on, and Luke shows the steps of it: shifting of memory away from the tomb to the living as part of a narrative, then the narrative getting more filled out so words start to come into play leading to recognition, and then finally physical presence and recognition.

"In other words, St Luke is absolutely aware that the construction of a witness to the resurrection is a slow difficult process, in which people have to work through things before they are actually able to see. This is something which, you know, confirmation bias studies show, we cannot see things that are not within our ken to know about. It's only much much much much much later, after a good deal of working out, that we start to see things that were not expected, that are not part of anything we can understand. This is what is understood by Luke: the resurrection produced a huge shift of where to look, of how to remember, of ability to talk and ability to perceive presence. All of this was something completely new beginning.

"And this I think is the real shock of the resurrection. It's not and never was the happy ending to a story whose outlines we know. It is, on the contrary, the astounding beginning to a story which we can only just begin to imagine and tell, as we enter into the process to becoming the witnesses to what has been from the beginning, and was only deliberately, slowly, with great anguish and suffering, brought into our world by what Jesus went through.

"Part of what he was doing with his life and his passion was revealing the resurrection, revealing the effervescent, deathless creativity of God as something beyond our ken, but as something which we can, with enormous subtlety, difficulty, and through a process of learning, be pressed into becoming witnesses of.

"I hope that as the Easter season develops, we will be able to look at some more of of how this works, this irruption of the beginning into the midst of an enfeebled storytelling capacity that shifts understanding memory and storytelling completely."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Easter Day 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM8v6w5useI)

[Source of quote from "The Joy of Being Wrong," and for further discussion and reflection: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter_c/]

Good Friday 2025

Romans 3:21-26 (NRSV Updated Edition)

But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to demonstrate at the present time his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus.

~

"[W]hat I'd like to look at this year is I suppose that which is most difficult to understand about what we're celebrating today on Good Friday. And it becomes difficult because we see the violence the hatred around us and we may believe in God, we may even believe in God being all-powerful, but can we really believe that God could possibly like us, be fond of us? What on earth is it to believe, in the midst of all this horror, that it is people, just like us, who are doing the things that are being done? That we are just like they with all their murderous lust, with all  our cowardly venality, or vice versa? How much we are part of the same human race? And what on earth could it possibly mean that God could actually love us?

"We find it easy to love those who are on our side, but it's a militant kind of love. It's a shame-hiding kind of love. But loving those who are on the other side, seeing them as somehow like us, is tremendously difficult. And how could God possibly love us? It's not the existence of God but the love of God that is a really difficult thing to believe. And I think that it's in the light of that that we celebrate the Passion each year.

"I'd like to point out something which I picked up more this year when reading John's passion. I had the privilege of  being asked to read it for the Sisters of Zion a week or so ago. And while preparing that I noticed, much more than I ever had, something rather extraordinary about that reading of the Passion, which is there's something very open and  straightforward about what Jesus is doing. And he's walking through a muddle, a minefield of muddles, of easily whipped up hatefulness on the part of religious authorities, of easily played political bargaining on the part of civil authorities, but with neither side really knowing what they were doing. Them thinking they were doing one thing but in fact, ending up doing another. That was a battle of interpretations amongst them. The religious authorities needed the Roman authorities to do something for them because it would upset their religious celebration if they were to do it religiously. And the Romans, the civil authority, could see that there was something fishy going on, but ultimately, as all civil authorities, were frightened of the mob and so gave way to something which it knew was extra-legal, and then use it as a way to try and make the Jewish authorities look silly by putting an inscription on the cross.

"This constant information game, this attempt to try and explain oneself away while one was doing something, thinking almost achieved something, but, in fact, doing something quite else. And throughout the middle of this muddle of meaning, a muddle of fake meaning, Jesus slowly, deliberately, almost monosyllabically walking through it. And at every step of the way changing the meaning from within: the meaning of what it is to be a king, the meaning of what it is to be the scapegoat, the meaning of what it is to be a victim, the meaning of power, the meaning of knowledge - each one of these Jesus is slowly, deliberately changing on his way to death. He's indicating that there is now another source of meaning which is going to show up all those things for what they really are.

"And, of course, the ultimate source of meaning, which is going to change is that given by death, which is the source of so much meaning for us. It's what enables our stories to have good ends or bad ends. It's what enables us to make ourselves good or bad by contrast with people. It dominates our lives in ways which Jesus is saying, "I have come to undo the domination that this fact and this understanding of fact has in your lives. I have come to make possible radically new meaning in your midst." And the radically new meaning is shown by my loving you. Loving you who are involved in all this. Not loving other people, so I'm paying some sort of price to you who I really hate, but loving you in the midst of whom I am walking to my death. And that it's as that new meaning starts to come alive that I will be glorified.

"Jesus's talk of being glorified in John's Gospel is always related to his being lifted up on the cross. That is the moment of God's glory when God shows us what God is really like. God really likes us. He likes us who are traitors, who  are cowards, who are murderers, who are liars, who are constantly seeking our own  advantage in the midst of whatever situation goes on. For some reason, which seems impossible for us to imagine, he has huge tenderness for this ghastly human horror show into which we fall so easily. And he walks through, deliberately, an absolutely archetypical structuring of that violence, that horror show, blind collusion between religious and state authorities to try to make themselves good at the expense of each other - just the  sort of political shenanigans we all know, [...] desperate attempts to get shards of meaning here and there.

"And in the midst, slowly, carefully, deliberately walking through it - serves to say, 'I love you, I'm making available to you what you are inclined to do, not so as to judge you, but so that you can see that I actually love you, that I'm not the sort of god you think I am, not the sort of god that your projections have come up with. I actually love you, have an intense, passionate, visceral fondness for you, long to see what this human adventure can become. Which is why I can walk through this same passion [...] in every instance of your wars and your hatred. Because the meaning of it all is love.

"And here I'd like to bring St Paul, a text that's not normally read at the Passion time, [...] St Paul in Romans 3: “But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the law and the prophets. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” What does that mean? He says: “Apart from the law.” The law gave us some idea of what God's holiness might look like. But now what God really looks like has been shown to us 3D. Jesus has shown that he comes into the midst of our violence, our place of hatred, our place of shame, occupies it himself out of love for us; that there is no over-against in God, there is only a *for*.

"That *for us* is the righteousness of God. It's God's alignment with creation and everything that is, that he's inviting us to take part in. It is that goodness, that tenderness, that inability to be knocked off course by our violence, our  hatred, our fear - that's what's made available in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

"What does having faith mean? It means: “Oh my god, we are loved so much not in spite of what we do, but even in the midst of what we do.” And as we begin to become aware of that love, so we're able to let go of all our fake meanings and fake forms of being. That's what living by faith means. We're able to be nudged into imagining the other as ourselves when that seems impossible.

"And Paul continues, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Right, left, Russians, Ukrainians, good, bad - they are now justified by his grace as a gift. That's what we're celebrating today: the One who walked in our midst to death as a free gift to show us what love looks like.

"“They are now justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood effective through faith.” In other words, the whole purpose of the passion is Jesus walking through this, so that God can make something visible. God has put him forward as a sacrifice to us, if you like, him acting out that.

"And then Paul's conclusion from this: “He did this to show his righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had  passed over the sins previously committed.” In other words, Jesus coming amongst us, walking through one of our death plots, was deliberate. He wanted to make available to us what sort of god God is. How utterly unlike anything that we can imagine, how full of tenderness and compassion. In his divine forbearing he passed over the sins previously committed. He was not up to get us, didn't come among us as a stern judge longing to rub our noses in the sort of weak, violent, fallible, confused humans that we are.

"And then Paul ends: “It was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” The whole purpose of this exercise, of God walking through this space of meaning change for us, was to prove to us that he is good, tender, loving, not at all the image we had for him; that he does actually love us and is fond of us even in our shitstorm; he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. He says: yes I know you're like this, I know this is what you're involved in, I know this sort of who you are. I actually love you as such people. You don't need to carry on this sacrificial living anymore which screws you up, giving you fake goodness, fake knowledge, fake access to belonging with each other. You don't need to do that any longer as you come to see who I am, what my love for you is like. As you understand that love, so you will be able to be realigned with the order of creation.

"For me, that is the great gift and task of these days - allowing ourselves to be convinced of the love for us that is shown in Good Friday; and giving us the mental space to imagine what it is like and what it is going to be like - living together, working things out together in fondness and not in enmity hereafter."

- James Alison, from video "Meditation for Good Friday (2022)" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZGRBb7O_AI)

[For further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for Good Friday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/goodfriday/]

From the Lectionary for 13 April 2025 (Passion/Palm Sunday, Year C)

The Gospel reading for this Sunday is "Luke's Passion" in it's entirety: Luke 22:14-23:56.

(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A14-23%3A56&version=NRSVUE)

~

"Jesus entered Jerusalem to the acclaim of crowds strewing branches before him and proclaiming him the king. A few days later, the same crowd gathered before Pilate to cry out for Jesus' crucifixion. What happened?

"[...] One can't help but suspect that people are crying out because everybody else is crying out, no matter what the outcry is about. Advertising usually does not advertise the product but its alleged popularity. Political campaigns do the same thing. What would happen if people stopped to listen to what people were actually saying instead of crying out what they think everybody else is crying out?

"It so happens that the Gospels do precisely this. The suggestion that the Gospels are Passion narratives with long introductions gives short shrift to what the Gospels are about. What these “long introductions” do is tell us at great length what Jesus actually said and what he taught. They also tell us what Jesus did before he was nailed to the cross, i.e. he healed people and cast out demons and he unilaterally forgave sins. These “long introductions” also tell us why the power brokers in Judea and Jerusalem wanted Jesus dead. By reading these “long introductions” to the Passion narrative, we are drawn away from crying out what everybody else is crying out and waving signs that only proclaim what the current fashion is believed to be.

"Instead, we are drawn into a very different social mimetic process, a process that builds up mutual respect between people, seeing people as they really are and as they really can become when they receive the unilateral forgiveness that Jesus gives them, a social process of not retaliating for wrongs done, a socially mimetic process of forgiving debts, of sharing what we can, of offering healing to others.

"It is instructive that the [Roman Catholic] Palm Sunday liturgy begins with everybody playing the part of the crowd welcoming Jesus with palms and then, a bit later, we hold these palms while acting the part of the crowd in crying out for Jesus' death during the reading or chanting of the Passion. What we need to do afterward is return to the “long introductions” to see what the fuss was about and hopefully, hear the cock crow as did Peter."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “Crying Out with Palm Branches in Our Hands.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2013/03/22/crying-out-with-palm-branches-in-our-hands/)

~

"In the Gospel Passion stories, it is the unity of an otherwise diverse crowd that is most telling. In Luke's Gospel, Pilate sends Jesus to the Jewish king Herod, and Herod sends him back, to which Luke observes, “That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12).” Do you see? This story is about the coming together of a crowd. We can be behaving like enemies toward each other, when all of a sudden a common enemy comes along and we are friends. [...]

"The Christian Gospel, as we said, isn't about this group or that group needing forgiveness. It's not about this person or that person needing forgiveness. It's about all of us needing forgiveness for our way of gaining a relative peace against common enemies. [...] That's why it took the Lamb of God to give himself up to our sacrificial slaughters. It literally took the Lamb of God to take away the Sin (and it is singular in John 1:29) of the world, that song we sing as we come to Holy Communion because our Risen Lord is our means of Holy Communion.

"In other words, our way of communion, our way of having peace since the beginning of human societies, doesn't have to be our way of communion any longer. In the Lamb of God and his forgiveness we have a new source of peace for a Holy Communion, a new way of coming together as human beings which doesn't have to be over against anyone else. [...] We have all been baptized into that Holy Communion. We come here again this morning to be fed and nourished in it, a new way of peace. So that when we leave here this morning we might serve him the Lamb of God and truly be witnesses to that new way of peace in this world, that Holy Communion, that holy way of coming together as God's children, all of God's children."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on April 13, 2003 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/passionb_2003_ser/)

~

"That's what's happening here today in the triumphal entry narrative: Jesus comes in on a colt, trying to signal that he's not like Caesar, and the mob still treats him like he is. You see, the mob doesn't get it, the crowd doesn't get it. They still don't get it. [...] Why? Why can't they see what's right in front of them, a king on a [donkey] colt? [...] They wanted him to come in, they wanted him to save the day, they wanted a 'deus ex machina', they wanted a god out of the sky, they wanted a thunderbolt, they wanted a Zeus! They wanted a Rambo Jesus like you get in the conservative churches with their militarism. Any they wanted a Che Guevera Jesus like you get in the liberal churches with their progressive so-called politics.

"But none of them, none of them, want a God who will die. Because when the god dies, well, that's the end of the story. There's no more free lunch. Nobody wants that, but that's what's coming. And this is what they cannot see. They cannot see this, why? Because they're a mob. All they have done is imitated each other's desires. All this 'happy clappy' stuff you see - joy, joy to the world, and all this stuff that's going on with the triumphal entry narrative - it's the same thing you see at a football stadium, it's the same thing you see at a rock concert, it's the same thing you see at a Macy's day parade in New York City. It's just a group phenomenon. [...]

"What is it they cannot see? Here's their king riding on a colt, getting ready to go down in flames, in infamy, and they can't see it yet. And what they don't see is that within a week they will be shouting “Crucify him!” Same crowd, same mob, same set of disciples will abandon, betray and deny Jesus. Just like we would today, just like we still do.

"[...] Every one of us has a Caesar, alright, nobody doesn't have a Caesar. We all have Caesars, we all use Caesar's coins, so we're all bound to Caesar. Caesar runs a debt economy, that's how Caesar works. Now, the Gospel's about forgiveness of debts. The whole Gospel is infused with forgiveness of debts. The Jubilee is about forgiveness of debts. What the human species needs is forgiveness of their debts, and that's what's accomplished on the Cross. God has forgiven all debts. There are no debts in the Kingdom of God. You owe God nothing, I owe God nothing. Nothing can be owed to God because God doesn't require anything. In the same way, on this planet where God reigns, debts are forgiven. Sin is forgiven, and debts are forgiven.

"[...] Jesus understood [this]. He took all societal debt to the Cross, and cancelled it. It's over. Which means we neither owe God, nor do we owe each other. When we give, remember Jesus said, “Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” [...] Forget that you even gave, don't be comparing yourself out there. Forgive debts. If people owe you, forgive them. That's how the world's going to turn, folks, into something positive."

- Michael Hardin, from FB video (https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/videos/290303259782889)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog post and Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/passion_c/]

From the Lectionary for 6 April 2025 (Lent 5C)

Philippians 3:7-9 (NRSV)

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes [through the faith of Christ]*, the righteousness from God based on faith.

* Greek "dia pisteos christou". The above translation (given in a footnote in the NRSV) is, in my opinion, far preferable (and, as I understand, a better rendering of the Greek) than the 'standard' rendering: "through faith in Christ"

John 12:1-8 (NRSV)

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

~

"St. Paul proclaimed [a] great new thing accomplished by God: the death and resurrection of Jesus. In comparison with this, Paul declared everything else, most especially his accomplishments, as rubbish (to use a polite term). All Paul wanted was “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil. 3: 10–3)

"This may seem to be a different thing, even a radically different thing than the earlier “new” things God had done. What is particularly new is that instead of delivering victims and outcasts by mighty acts, God in Jesus Christ died on the cross, thus becoming a victim. In doing this, God subverted the power of oppressors from within their system. Rather than inflict violence on them such as drowning Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea or sending the Persians against Babylon, God in Jesus Christ died at the hands of his oppressors. It is out of this death that a new life was inaugurated by God when Jesus rose as the forgiving victim.

"There are times, not least in Romans 5, when Paul proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus in cosmic terms, but here in Philippians, he proclaims it in personal terms. The great new thing God had accomplished is inside of him. God's solidarity with victims in Christ has completely overtaken everything else in Paul. Paul himself will prefer to be a victim rather than an oppressor or a mighty avenger who destroys armies. Christ Jesus has made Paul “his own.” (Phil. 3: 12)

"A woman pouring ointment all over Jesus to prepare him for his upcoming burial (Jn. 12: 7) may seem an eccentric act but hardly a significant one, hardly a great new thing done by God. But up to that time, how often had any person done such an act of outpouring generosity, giving everything she had in doing it? This looks like God in Jesus Christ completely making this woman, Mary, his own just as much as God in Jesus Christ made Paul his own. This is indeed a great new thing accomplished by God. Will we ourselves be part of this great new thing?"

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "A God Who Does the Same Great New Thing" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2019/04/05/a-god-who-does-the-same-great-new-thing/)

~

"The parable of the Prodigal Father [Luke 15, last week's Lectionary Gospel text] tells of the extravagant love of our heavenly father. Isaiah 43 [this week's Old Testament reading] proclaims God's extravagant gesture of bringing God's people through a desert overflowing with water. In Philippians, Paul insists that the cross and resurrection are so extravagant that all of his human qualifications are reduced to rubbish. Mary of Bethany shows the same extravagance, an extravagance that makes us uncomfortable to this day. This is the extravagance that embraces the cross and Jesus' resurrected life..."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "A Scandalous Woman as Extravagant as Jesus" (http://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/a-scandalous-woman-as-extravagant-as-jesus/)

~

"Why did she do it? What did she mean by it? It was a lavish gesture of unreserved devotion. She threw aside all caution and practicality in an extravagant, outrageous social act. It's like the prodigal's father who threw aside his dignity and ran to meet his returning son: kissing and hugging him and later begging his elder son to come to the party. The father pours out his extravagant love on both his sons like Mary pours perfume on Jesus' feet. Soon Jesus will pour himself out at our feet, the feet of the human species — God dying at the hand of human wrath, a complete reversal to the usual human projection that God is wrathful and demands blood.

"With the reversal of meaning we begin to understand the fifth chapter of the Book of Revelation where the writer, John of Patmos, hears myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then John of Patmos says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, ‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” All the creatures in the world are singing in praise and gratitude to Jesus, the Lamb of God sacrificed to human wrath. All the creatures know that God is so strong God will die to our rivalry with him rather than engage us in an over-against fashion.

"Mary, intuitively seeing more deeply than the disciples who still hope to find themselves on the inside of a new empire, gives expression to a powerful impulse arising within her. She sees the Lamb and understands the power of his vulnerability. She can't find words to say it and so pours a fortune in purest nard on his feet. Its fragrance fills the house like the voices of Revelation fill Heaven.

"Paul writes: “I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but what I lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him. In Christ I have a righteousness that is not my own and that does not come from the Law but rather from the faithfulness of Christ.” Like Paul, Mary senses the faithfulness of Christ and pours herself out in gratitude. She spreads the scent of his love with her hair."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on April 7th, 2019 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Truby-Lent5-2019-The-Scent-of-Love.pdf)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog posts and Thomas L. Truby sermon, and for further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent5c/]

[In the Roman Catholic lectionary, the Gospel text for Lent 5C is John 8:1-11 ("The Woman Caught in Adultery"). I highly recommend James Alison's discussion of this text in his video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSsjP5V5gU)]