From the Lectionary for 25 January 2026 (Epiphany 3A)

Matthew 4:12-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
    on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness
    have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
    light has dawned.”

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, people possessed by demons or having epilepsy or afflicted with paralysis, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

~

"So it's a very interesting beginning, the universality of the mission does seem to start very early on in Matthew's Gospel, and we'll see how that works itself out over time as we as we get on. But anyhow, here at the very beginning [...] of his ministry Jesus is kind of marking his territory. Once John is arrested he moves into place and starts. And he starts by saying the same thing as John: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

"And then he already begins to create the sign of the Kingdom that is coming and in the face of which, therefore, people are going to be able to repent. Because, of course, it's always God showing God's self first that enables repentance, rather than a moral instruction followed by something nice. The indicative always comes before the imperative in practice, even though in rhetoric sometimes it's the other way around. That's central to Matthew, as it is to all the Gospels and to any understanding of grace. A powerful beginning, with Matthew setting up quite clearly how he is going to be tackling these things from now on: first teaching and then signs."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mao7mtdLLQ)

~

"In Mt. 4:17, Jesus says:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repenting does not mean to make a laundry list of our little sins and try to stop doing them. Repenting means to turn around, to switch our minds and our hearts, to see life in a new way. This is the fundamental thrust of the Kingdom. But what specs can we get from the blueprint?

[...]

"What does the Kingdom of God, founded on the foolishness of the cross look like? The blueprint we have in these readings doesn’t look like much, but then a crucified criminal in Roman times doesn’t look like much either. When we read just a bit further in Matthew, we enter the real-life rooms of the Kingdom outlined in the blueprint. We find many rooms, many mansions, all of which offer contagious possibilities such as being blessed for being poor or for being a peacemaker, or turning the other cheek or walking the extra mile, and then finding in these weaknesses the rock that supports the house of faith we are building against the storm of Rome and Assyria and the power brokers of our time."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “Blueprint of the Kingdom.” (http://andrewmarrosb.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/blueprint-of-the-kingdom/)

~

"Repentance is about where we place our bodies…and where we place our bodies is always close to Jesus. And Jesus' body is always close to the vulnerable, the oppressed, those in anguish. Matthew's story about Jesus and the Kindom of God, about repentance and transformation, is about where we place our bodies. “Immediately, they left.” [v.22] Their leaving is a bodied movement. It's a change in the location of their bodies. It's a change in their focus and attention. It's a physical, visible change in the placement of their bodies and lives.

"And it is also a spiritual and internal change and transformation. The verb translated “they left” is the same Greek verb we encountered two weeks ago: aphemi. To let go, to release, to forgive. Jesus, the light shining in the darkness, is inviting us to keep our bodies close to his body. But more than just our bodies, in order for the light to shine in the darkness, we let God's Spirit breathe our repentance.

"The Spirit of God is the life and breath of our transformation. It is the Breath of God breathing in us that makes it possible to live letting go, releasing, forgiving. We listen and watch Jesus with Andrew and Peter and James and John. And everywhere they went, Light shone on those where were in anguish. And there was no gloom. The Light of the world, the Light of Christ, was being embodied.

[...]

"There is darkness. There is anguish. And we may we be foolish enough to trust the Light of the world. May we be foolish enough to follow the Light. May we be foolish enough to embody the Light... in all places... with all bodies."

- Suella Gerber, from sermon delivered on 22 Jan, 2017 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gerber-012217-sermon.pdf)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog post and Suella Gerber sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany3a/]

From the Lectionary for 18 January 2026 (Epiphany 2A)

John 1:29-34 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One[a].”

[a] Other ancient authorities read “the Son of God”

~

"'Lamb of God' is a sacrificial term but when applied to Jesus its sacrificial meaning is radically changed. No longer does it mean that the lamb bears the death God inflicts on sinners as punishment, instead of us sinners who actually deserve it. It is not sacrifice as substitution, him instead of me, but sacrifice as self-giving, all I have and am for you, O God. Sacrifice as utter self-giving, that is the true meaning of sacrifice as defined by Jesus through his death.

"And the notion of 'sin bearing' then has the force not of bearing a load of divine anger but rather of suffering the sharp points of our human violence against each other and thus against the God in whose image we are [...] [O]n the Cross the Lamb of God absorbs into himself all the force of our rivalry and hatred, all our mutual cruelty and contempt. That ability to “draw all men unto myself,” (John 12:32: “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself”), means not that he draws them as saints but as sinners, as violent competitors, who in the Cross may see what wrath they inflict on God and what love God renders in return.

"So this Lamb of God is not the sacrifice we bring to God but the sacrifice God brings to us! This is God's Lamb offered to us not our Lamb offered to God, instead of us. This is the sign and the substance of the fact that God gives and gives, to us who take and take, from him and from each other. This is a new covenant, that is a new way of being together, as givers, as imitators of the generous God whom Jesus described in his parabolic teaching and acted out dramatically in his life."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from a sermon on January 20, 2008 (source no longer available online)

~

"Let's look at this little phrase, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Please notice one thing which seems to me is very important and which time and time again people misquote. People say “Here's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Umm no, it says the *sin* of the world. It seems to be referring not so much to a collection of bad things as to the whole sphere of [...] a failing creation, that which other parts of the Hebrew scriptures refer to as vanity, the sense of everything grinding down. And indeed the whole purpose of the great Atonement Feast was to bring creation back to its fullness again, precisely taking away the vanity, the failed-ness, the pointing-towards-nothing of things.

"[John the Baptist is] talking, not about someone who's come here to pay a price for things, to tick off, but someone who's come to actually create what I would call an anthropological revolution, the possibility of the New Creation in which everything is able to flow back upwards towards God rather than being ground down into pointlessness, senselessness, going-nowhere-ness, not-being, creation somehow having not having lived up to the value of the glory of God which is what it was made to reflect.

"Anyway, an extremely rich phrase, “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And it does seem to be referring to the Atonement Lamb, because the Passover Lamb was not sin-related. The part of the Passover Lamb was to redeem the sons, the firstborns of Israel. [...] In John's gospel the Atonement Lamb and the Passover Lamb are brought together, but here it's very much the Atonement Lamb that's being mentioned.

[...]

"And then he ends, “And I myself have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” John's witness was what John was all about, preparing and being able to say, “This is the one, this is God's son.” The Son, the one who is going to perform the sacrifice not only with the water but the water and the blood - that's a phrase which we'll get later in John's gospel. In other words, here was the one who was going to do the two things: fulfill Exodus and the atonement, the water and the blood, the baptism and the sacrifice. Only the Son, the Davidic heir, the great High Priest, the One who is going to be able to renew creation from within, only he was to be able to do that."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G9xgCLsPDo)

[For further analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany2a/]

From the Lectionary for 11 January 2026 (Epiphany 1A - Baptism of Jesus)

Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Matthew 3:13-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

~

"As he was baptized, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”

"This proclamation refers to two key verses in the Hebrew Bible that tell us what baptism is all about. In Psalm 2, the king, the Messiah is singled out from the raging nations that are rising up against the Lord and his anointed. The inundation of baptism draws Jesus out of the inundation of the nations raging against one another. In Jesus, we too are drawn out of this inundation and so freed from raging against everybody else.

"But we are not freed from being the target of raging nations when they unite against the one who has been freed from their wrath. These baptismal words spoken to Jesus also refer to Isaiah 42:1, the first line of the first song of the Servant of Yahweh. Throughout these songs, the Servant has been called out of a violent society to become instead the victim of that society's violence.

"Unlike the Psalmist who threatens the raging nations with a rod of iron, (Ps. 2:9) the Servant does not retaliate in any way against the violence inflicted on him. In baptism, we too are overwhelmed by the Servant's suffering, but then we are also overwhelmed by God's vindication of the Servant."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God's Desire, pp. 189-90

~

"Now “all righteousness” means the whole of the prophets and the law. Remember in Matthew it's “the prophets and the law,” rather than “the law and the prophets” - Matthew understands that the law itself is prophetic, it's pointing towards a prophetic fulfillment, which is why Jesus is the prophetic fulfillment. And so here, “all righteousness” - that of the law and that of the prophets.

"And the fulfilling all righteousness is going to include Jesus occupying the space, the place, of death. Why? Because only thus can the Holy Spirit be given. Remember that in the Torah, the whole point of the Holy Place in the Temple is that it is kept from death, nothing to do with death can ever be in it. God is, as it were, allergic to death - quite rightly, God is the Ever-living One, the Almighty One. But the notion of God's deathlessness is seen as something that it needs protecting against by us, it's in rivalry with our lives. But Jesus has come here so as to occupy the place of death, as the opposite, [...] which is what's going to enable the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Life, to be given to us, so that we can begin to live as if death were not.

"And that is how, thanks to Jesus fulfilling the law, by going through even what the law prescribes - the death - that he is going to be able to fulfill all righteousness. So [...] what Jesus is going to do [...] is to actually perform the definitive final sacrifice, whereby God as Son comes in and offers himself a sacrifice to us, occupying the space of death so that we may be set free from it forever. [...]

"[W]hen Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water - and the word “coming up” is the standard word referring to ordination of priests at the time, and the understanding is that once you had been baptized or washed as a priest you had been through death so now you were able to stand in the Holy Place, and the Holy Place was understood to be the place of abundant life, God's effervescent life [...] - but here, the “coming up” is the coming up of the great High Priest - “Suddenly the heavens were opened to him,” meaning exactly that. As he was ordained he was automatically in the Holy Place, the Holy Place was opened to him. In other words, it had started to come about on Earth, that which had been before the foundation of the world was now being made available on Earth.

"“And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” So, in the New Testament we move gradually backwards to the beginning of Creation, not only all the prophetic uses of water, but now back to Noah who, when the whole world was being destroyed by God's wrath in Genesis, sent out the bird. The first time it came back, the second time it didn't come back because it had settled. So here the Spirit of God settling on him like a bird.

"But even more than that, the Spirit of God  - he doesn't say the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God like a dove was the spirit that hovered over the waters [at] the beginning of Genesis [...] this is the bird, the Spirit, that hovered over the waters before Creation which is alighting on him. In other words, at last the Creator has come amongst us as human and is going to fulfill Creation in going to his death as great High Priest, so as to open up for us the possibility of entering into the fullness of creation. All of that is foreseen here.

"And the voice from Heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” [...] In other words, this was done for other people to hear. Jesus is doing something deliberately for us, to make clear the sense of what he's going to do. [...] It's also a reference to [...] God's way of referring to Isaac as Abraham's beloved son, because the same word which is translated as “only begotten” in Hebrew is often translated [also] as beloved. So here is God's promise that God will fulfill: God will provide the sacrifice. God is not going to sacrifice - that's something we do - but God's going to provide so as to undo our sacrificial world from within by undoing death.

"“With whom I am well pleased.” In other words, this is part of [...] not only looking at things and seeing that it's good, but being well pleased. This is the fullness of humanity coming into being, to open up Creation and the Kingdom of Heaven for us.

"So we get this wonderful rich scene in St. Matthew's gospel of the Creator coming in as human to occupy death and open up creation, something that John the Baptist had understood was more powerful than he, but not in a comparative sense - something way beyond what he could have imagined. And something entirely without vengeance or violence, which is going to be for so many people the great stumbling block."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRCb70Nrwg)

~

"The crucial center of God's justice is the nonviolent power of love. It is the power which saves humankind and creation from human violence. Until everything is centered on the nonviolence of God, our messaging of the Gospel of New Creation will fall short of the mark of faithfulness to God. Jesus the Messiah is the one who can bring us into that full and true faithfulness.

"Being baptized into the historical events of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, is having one's humanity made new in identity with the project of New Creation that these events launch. Circling back: at the center of faithfulness to this project is faith in the nonviolent God and the divine nonviolent power of love."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments: Preaching the Gospel of New Creation" on the lectionary page for Epiphany 1A (link in 1st comment below)

[Source of Andrew Marr and Paul Nuechterlein quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany1a/]

From the Lectionary for 4 January 2026 (Christmas 2ABC)

John 1:1-18 (NRSV)

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

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

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

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

~

"It is difficult to capture the linguistic connotations of the term ‘logos’ in John 1. Scholars have long debated its background [...] It is a term used in Greek philosophy to refer to ‘the structuring principle of reality.’

[...]

"As the ‘structuring principle of reality’ it is more than ‘speech’, more than ‘power’, more than ‘thought’, more than ‘act’. It is all of the above and more. Friedrich Nietzsche, that great critic of Christianity proposed that the ‘Logos’ is ‘Nonsense’. I want to suggest that this is an insight worth pursuing. For what happens to this Logos is two fold nonsense: this Logos is rejected (1:11) and ‘becomes flesh’.

"Why is this logos rejected? Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher had identified that which structured reality as ‘polemos’ (violence or war). This is an insight about the way we humans structure reality long before [Rene] Girard discovered the power of violence to shape the way we do this thing called humanity, culture, history and religion. Violence is that which structures our reality!

"The nonviolent Logos, Jesus Christ, the Logos who structures reality in forgiveness will never make sense to a reality structured on violence. This is why so many people, especially Christians, cannot make sense of a nonviolent Jesus or a nonviolent God. We have made God into our own image, rivalrous, violent and retributive. A God who freely forgives apart from sacrifice, apart from blood, is a god who does not fit into this world's (kosmos) way of thinking, therefore this kind of a God is sheer nonsense."

- Michael Hardin (from FB post)

~

"[T]he notion that [creation is] something good is because the One who is bringing it into being allows hints to those of us who are on the inside of what the Creator is really all about, the creation created through wisdom [...] [T]he principle of wisdom is precisely that it's making a live creation, holding it all together in such a way that it shows off of itself the glory of God. It gives off, points up to, gives away the glory of God. If you like, that creation, the wisdom, comes into our midst to open our eyes, to make it possible to be on the inside and actually see something clearly for what it is.

"And in the back of this, [...] part of the deep sense of this is that everything that is, there's a rationale to it, there's a logic to it. Reality is not simply a chaotic and random series of events and things. This is what the creation means, that there is a there's a rationale, an inner structure of reality which, when it's brought alive and we're unable to share with it, opens us up to what's going on, the possibility of us being participants and insiders in this, in creation. The world creation means God's rational dynamic product which is functional, which is for something, and inside which we are and can grow.

"So when we [...] get to St John's Gospel, we have these extraordinary phrases: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” So for “Word” - an act of communication - understand the logical structure, the structure of reality. That's what is coming into the world, the logical structural reality is actually going to enter into creation, to open us up actually to be able to come to life, to become fully alive in creation, to become sons and daughters of God.

"So this baby who is born is not just a baby, he's the beginning of the manifestation in our midst of the dynamic structuring reality of everything that is. If you like, the plan, the form of communication, all of that is being made alive so that it speaks to us and so that if we accept it we can be included in it, so that we can actually become Children of God. [...] We actually get to be the heirs of creation, creation fully alive its entire dynamic, fully revealed. We get to be participants in it.

"In other words - this is something which is less fashionable than it should be in Christian circles - is that Jesus is actually bringing about the reality of what is. That's part of what this birth is, it's the beginning of it becoming available and clear to us, the reality of what is. And as John says, the reality turns out to be  something much, much better than had been hoped for.

[...]

"What's being brought out is how the one came in, making it possible for people to receive him and therefore to become children of God, which meant that he became available as a sacrifice of forgiveness. Those who were able to receive this actually found that forgiveness turns out to be the structuring dynamic. There's not as it were a law and then something to be forgiven. There is the structuring dynamic of everything that is, that is in fact opened out by forgiveness. It is this that we're invited to participate in.

"[The author of the 4th Gospel] is saying here that this is the one that's coming in, this is the one that John the Baptist pointed to. What we're seeing here is not merely a baby, it's the baby who is going to grow into a man, we are going to be able to see him and he is going to become the way, the structuring principle of reality opens us up to it and to being participants in it. This is the greatest thing that could possibly ever have happened [...]

"[The author says], ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.’ This was the Lord, understood to be the begotten, not created, Son of God, who had come into our midst, thanks to the Virgin who became the Holy Place. That was how the ‘shekinah’, the Most High, tabernacled in our midst. And this is how the whole fullness of God became revealed to us, shown to us, but not, if you like, simply something for us to see, but for us to become participants in the making finally alive and full of creation.

"So this is if you like the richness of the Christmas story, the fullness of the invitation that's going on here, and the source of endless joy and the opening up of our imaginations."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for The Second Sunday of Christmas" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upVCydSEUcE)

[For further analysis and discussion on this week's lectionary text: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas2abc/]