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/]

From the Lectionary for 6 July 2025 (Proper 9C)

1 Corinthians 1:20-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)*

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Luke 10:1-11; 16-20 (NRSV Anglicised)

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’”

[...]

“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

~

"So yet again: when it said before he sent them to every place where he himself intended to go [10:1], perhaps this is more of the sense that they are if you like, the sacramental presence of himself. And in as far as the people, the local people receive them they are receiving him, and in as far as they are receiving him they are receiving God, because God has made himself known in this weak presence who will later reveal himself to be the crucified One.

"So after they've had this trip to the local places, the seventy returned with joy saying, “Lord, in your name” - in other words, you being there in person - “even the demons submit to us.” In other words, by entering these places with a weak presence, actually, they've been able to undo some of the terrible fake forms of power that had possessed and bound people, some of the terrible forms of vibration. It only needed people to be able to be present and weak without fearing being run out for demons and all the structures of possession which depend on throwing out in order to make good. They submitted to them. The power of God comes in weakness.

"And then Jesus says this wonderful line: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” This is a key verse in Luke which appears again in the Book of the Apocalypse in a slightly different form, the notion that Jesus is present as weak in the world as one about to occupy the place of shame of death, of violence, the one who's about to be thrown out. His strong occupation of that is the same thing as the de-transcendentalizing of evil. Evil ceases to be a celestial form, it now becomes an anthropological form, wriggling about on the earth whose structure and whose working is known. It can be defeated by people who are happy to remain weak because they know they are held by God, who are not tempted to react with violence and anger and strength, thinking that that makes them better warriors against this thing.

"So evil has lost its transcendence. “See, I've given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.” And this may refer to actual snakes and scorpions which do exist in that part of the world. It may also refer to the constellations which had names of snakes and scorpions and which were thought to be signs of the heavenly powers, of these semi-demonic powers that control things but in a closing-down way. So again Jesus is saying it's the actual whole power of transcendence, even the heavens, are of being undone because I can see that the power I have given you works.

"Jesus rejoices, they rejoice. Then he says, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this that the spirits submit to you” - in other words, it's not merely your achievements that are the key thing - “but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” And this is this wonderful sense proper to the Hebrew world that who you really are is being given to you from on high. It's being, as it were, unfurled in your life. And if you are able to occupy this space of weakness, of precariousness, it's because you're being held in place by heaven, your name has been written there, it is inscribed.

"This is part of the new reality that is coming in. You are going to be a sign of that new reality coming in. So the name being inscribed in heaven is not a reference to someone with a pen, it's a reference to the reality of your being, as it were, already held elsewhere and starting to unfold in this world as you make a witness to what it's really like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3acWt-Maa4)

~

"I think that “but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” and “consider your call” [1 Corinthians 1:26] mean the same thing: they are getting us to turn our imaginations towards the one who calls or who writes our names rather than to what we achieve. [...] What indeed does it say that I was called? Not about me, but about the one calling? What does it say of his spaciousness, his power, his gentleness, the security which he offers, that it becomes possible not to have to construct a story which makes clear sense, not because of a paucity of meaning, but because of an excess."

- James Alison, Undergoing God, pp 97-98

* Note that the 1 Corinthians passage is not part of the lectionary for this week, but I have included it because it is referenced in the quote above from Undergoing God, and also because of the link to Alison's mention of "weakness" in the homily.

[Source of quote from "Undergoing God" and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_9c/]