From the Lectionary for 15 March 2026 (Lent 4A)

Ephesians 5:1-2; 8-9; 13-14 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. [...] For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. [...] [E]verything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
    Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

~

John 9:1-41 (A Man Born Blind Receives Sight)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%209%3A1-41&version=NRSVUE

~

"In this story [...] we watch a revolution in the understanding of sin, and a revolution that takes place around the person of Jesus, but is actually worked out in the life of someone else. The structure of the story is the same as is to be found time and time again in John: that of an expulsion, or proto-lynching, one of the many that lead up to the definitive expulsion of the crucifixion, which is also the definitive remedy for all human order based on expulsion. The revolution in the concept of sin consists in the following: at the beginning of the tale, sin was considered in terms of some sort of defect that excludes the one bearing the defect. At the end of the tale sin is considered as the act of exclusion: the real blindness is the blindness which is not only present in those who exclude, but actually grows and intensifies during the act of exclusion.

[...]

"We can go further with this Johannine approach to sin. There are indications present in chapter 9 that more is intended in this story than a merely casual description of a particular incident regarding sin. The question of the sin as being related to the origins of humankind is hinted at in Jesus' use of clay in his restoration, or fulfilment, of creation, as well as in the insistence that the man was blind from birth. The relation of this story to something original is understood by the former blind man himself, who reckons that never (ek tou aiônos) has such a healing taken place. In the light of John's irony this means much more than that a particularly spectacular miracle has taken place, such as has never taken place before. It also suggests that there has been present a blindness from the beginning of the world that only now is being cured for the first time. Furthermore, when Jesus speaks, at the end, about judgment it is clear that he is not concerned with a particular local incident, but about a discernment relating to the whole world (kosmos). Here we have a highly subtle teaching about the whole world being blind from birth, from the beginning, and about Jesus, the light of the world coming to bring sight to the world, being rejected precisely by those who, though blind, claimed to be able to see."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 121, 122-3

~

"Last week we saw Jesus offering living water and we saw the effect on the Samaritan woman as she was turned herself into a bearer of Living Water. Today we have a look at Jesus as the Light of the World and as the Criterion for the world that, he's come as the Judgment, or the Criterion, for the world, by which we may know and see things. ... But if he was more than a prophet last time, here he is doing something even more striking because he is demonstrating that he is the Creator. And the relationship between Creator and humans that is central to John's Gospel, and to our understanding of the gospel, is beautifully brought out in this passage.

[...]

"He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes. Now apparently behind the Greek here there are Hebrew or Aramaic references to ground, Adam, earth [...] So what is he doing? He's fulfilling Adam, he's making Adam whole, the notion that as humans we are all in one way or another incomplete, and that what Jesus is doing, what the Creator does coming into our life, is not simply rescue us from, as it were, an evil creation but say, “No. Creation was wonderful but it somehow got trapped in something less than itself. I am here to make it whole.”

[...]

"“The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ So they're still used to him being a non-person in their midst, about whom people talk but who does not himself talk - he has no agency. But now he keeps saying, “I am the man.” But in Greek of course what he says is a phrase which usually only Jesus gets to say, he says 'egō eimi' - “I am.” The other person who gets to say 'egō eimi' is Jesus. When Jesus says “I am” it's a reference to the Lord, it is God, it's the Creator. So here we have the created one at last standing up and being a human being, able to be the image of 'I am'. We know that Jesus is 'I AM' in the big sense. [The man born blind] is what it looks like as a human to being gradually brought into agency and life.

[...]

"So Jesus, bringing to life as a disciple another sign of who he is, the Creator bringing the fullness of creation into the light in such a way that that creation becomes fully human, develops agency, and is able to recognize the Lord in what he makes. And at the same time those people who are frightened of loss of authority, prestige, power, ganging up against this person and actually becoming blind, not actually able to see the Creator in their midst.

"This is, if you like, a wonderful, dynamic account of the creation, because we normally think of creation as something separate from the cultural process of becoming fully ourselves. And yet, in the Christian understanding it's precisely the notion that we are all on our way to being fully created, but that our being fully created requires the work of the Lord, who requires us to be forgiven so that we can learn our way out of the entanglements of our blindness, our belonging to false structural forms of goodness over against despised others. So that eventually we can stand tall and say, “As an image of God, I am.”"

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday in Lent 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8-xp-uRnE0)

[Source of quote from James Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 4A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent4a/]

From the Lectionary for 8 March 2026 (Lent 3A)

John 4:5-42 (The Woman at the Well)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204%3A5-42&version=NRSVUE

~

Instead of presenting the whole passage here, below are comments on selected verses from James Alison's video "Homily for Third Sunday in Lent 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CxyCdRf0tM)

~

v 10: Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

JA: "Now this word gift, [...] it's the only time this word appears in this Gospel, in fact in any of the Gospels. The only other times this word appears in the New Testament [is] in the Acts of the Apostles and in some of Paul's Epistles, and there it almost invariably means the gift of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he's not talking about a passive gift at the same level as a drink of water might be. [...] He's talking about the gift of God, which of course she could not possibly have known about, and the gift of God is the self-giving of us, that which turns us into people who are capable of giving ourselves away, which is how we receive who we really are. And it's that which is this *making utterly alive of us* which is then brought out in the discussion about the well, but it's the notion that the gift of God is something which turns us into gifts that's what the gift of God is about.

"I think it's really quite important to remember that one of the moments when 'the gift of God' becomes, I feel, a matter of controversy is in the Acts of the Apostles, precisely when [...] Simon the Magician tries to buy the gift of God, and it's understood that really that is the ultimate way that you cannot have it. The gift of God is that which by nature turns you into giving yourself away, which is the richest thing you could possibly have, because as you give yourself away you're on the inside of God's self-giving, which means that you're held by the Creator and turned into an endless source of generosity for others. And this is what Jesus is attempting to offer, “If you knew the gift of God,” in other words, what it's like to be turned into this self-giving. And who it is who's asking you for this gift, precisely giving you the chance [of] getting involved in this self-giving of yourself away - you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. In other words I'm inducting you into a conversation which is going to end in you being able to give yourself away with living water."

~

vv. 17-18: The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

JA: "Why did Jesus say that? Well, the easy answer is to say, well he's detected that she had a, let's say, an interesting matrimonial history: one. Or two, that he's making reference to the fact that Samaria was considered a place that had been under the rule of five idolatrous kings, and was now under the rule of someone who was also an idolatrous king, so he's referring to Samaria's prophetic history, the history which would have been well known, and this would be a Jewish way of referring to Samaria and its past under the rule of these idolatrous kings, that's part of the history which you get in the in the Hebrew scriptures.

"But it appears to be a mixture of the two, so he's referring to her marital status which, let's remember, almost certainly means that she is a greatly mistreated woman, that if she is a person of unstable marital life it's almost certainly because she has been passed amongst people for their own advantage. So the notion that she's particularly bad a person makes no sense at all, she's a particularly vulnerable person which is why he's able to speak with her. He's speaking to a vulnerable bearer of her city's idolatry. As has been pointed out this makes her rather like the Gerasene demoniac who was clearly living out in himself the violences of his entirely pagan city. But here the woman is rational, she knows what's going on, she understands why she has to live in this precarious and humiliating situation. But she also understands that Jesus is not trying to get at her, he's talking about her town as well."

~

vv 23-24: “But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

JA: "So it's going to be this strange relationship between people in which we are enabled to turn each other into gifts by bearing witness to the gift that we are receiving that is going to make all the difference from here on out."

~

vv. 28-29: Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

JA: "So something about how she has felt spoken to that didn't shame her and that put her in the same place as the inhabitants of the city enabled her to talk to people without shame, and because of that she develops quite a power of invitation. She convokes other people of the Spirit, the gift has started to work itself out in her, she's being able to give herself away in the midst of others."

~

v. 42: They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.”

JA: "Her witness - she's been able to give herself away, she's not in control of it, she's been able to give herself away, and because of that it's become a multiplied and a fruitful thing. The gift that Jesus is bearing witness to, enabling others to bear witness to, and which is able to spread especially amongst the humiliated, the apparent heretics, those who are not caught up in bizarre discussions about laws and things like that [as in Jerusalem], that is where it flows easily. And the disciples need to be shown this to be able to learn that this is the way that the Lord enjoys sharing the harvest with reapers and laborers."

~

"The encounter is an interesting parallel to the story of Eve. In Genesis, the devil tempts the woman to eat forbidden fruit to gain divine knowledge. At the well, Jesus invites this Samaritan woman to drink God's water to gain spiritual wisdom. The entire story is a reversal of the one recounting the origin of sin; here, Jesus and the woman re-enact Eden with a different result. The woman's eyes are opened; she understands. Yet, instead of being run out of the garden by an angry god, she runs and tells her friends that she has met the One who is Living Water. She is not cursed. Rather, the woman is blessed and offers blessing. Water is present at creation, and it is here also, at the world's re-creation through Jesus."

- Diana Butler Bass, Grounded, pg. 76

~

"In John 4, Jesus meets a woman at a well. The conversation quickly turns to the question of Jesus's identity when she asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask of drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (4:9). Jesus speaks of water, wells, and worship, and then springs it on her that he is the Messiah. How does the woman respond? She drops her water jar, runs back to town, and tells everyone, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (4:29). In this story, questions of Jesus's identity and her identity thread together in mutual revelation. Knowing who Jesus is leads her to know who she is - and, instead of feeling shame about her mistakes, she feels new freedom to tell her story.

"And so it goes throughout the Gospels. Almost everyone leaves Jesus's company saying: “He made me whole!” “I have been healed!” “I'm not a prostitute, a sinner, an outcast, or a leper. I now know who I really am!” “I may be a Samaritan, but I can still know God.” “I am loved!” “I am accepted as I am!” Being “in” Jesus, in his presence or in conversation with him, pushes the other person beyond social roles and masks to deeper awareness of “Who am I?” transforming the question from an external one to a relational one that might be better rendered “Whose am I?”

"Thus, the biblical query “Who am I in God?” is a starting point of Christian spirituality. Why do Christians pray? Christians do not pray to have wishes granted; rather, Christians pray to find themselves in God and that they might be more aware of their motives and actions. Why do Christians worship? Christians do not worship to be entertained; rather, Christians listen to sermons, sing, and partake of bread and wine in community to be in Jesus's presence and come to know themselves better. Why do Christians serve others? Christians do not act charitably to earn heavenly credit; rather, Christians find Jesus in their neighbors and such proximity enables greater insight to live fully in the world. Christians practice seeking Jesus in their lives because when they find themselves in God, pretence slips away to reveal the truest dimensions of selfhood and gives individuals the power to act in transforming ways."

- Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion, pp. 186-87

[Source of Diana Butler Bass quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 3A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent3a/]

From the Lectionary for 1 March 2026 (Lent 2A)

John 3:1-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

~

"[I]f you're a Pharisee what you're really interested in is the Law and the Text. The temple was important but it was less important and especially not the elements of it from the old Temple which were to do with mystical things, to do with Heaven and the Son of God being born in the Holy of Holies. And there were remnants of those texts still in the holy scriptures, they hadn't yet been edited out completely - they were edited out shortly afterwards. Now we have to read the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures in order to understand what's being referred to because the Hebrew version was edited afterwards so that there are certain parts that were in the Bible at the time Jesus was alive and are no longer in the Hebrew Bible.

"But Jesus says, effectively he's saying, okay you are part of the Mosaic order the order that is to do with law and security and the temple but in fact no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above - he's referring to the birth of the Son of God in the Holy place. In other words, the ancient sacrificial structure of the temple was so that God could come through and make God's self visible and known through God's sons, the first son being the High Priest, the Melchizedek priestly figure. And the prophecy was that the Melchizedek priest would come and would do the sacrifice. So Jesus is saying you have like a two dimensional view of all this but remember that there actually a three-dimensional reality in the center of the temple which is the coming of the Son and the performing of the sacrifice in the midst out of love for people.

[...]

"Now Nicodemus, from the Deuteronomistic world - the text, history, one thing after another, if you like what I call the two-dimensional understanding - says, “How can anyone be born after having grown old. Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?” But Jesus of course is living in the world, if you like, of the first Temple. He has been baptized, which has meant him coming up out of the waters and the Spirit coming upon him and the words to do with the birth of the Son of God in the Holy of Holies having been heard, Psalm 110. That's the world in which Jesus lives, so he's well aware that the ancient world in which the one who was going to come into the temple was this Son of Man figure who was both earthly and heavenly at the same time. That's what had happened to him he had undergone this, he'd seen what had happened, he'd borne witness to it. And remember that after that had happened to him John the Baptist bore witness to him and the next time Jesus came by, John said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” meaning this is the one who is going to be the Son, the Priest of the sacrifice at the end of the time in the temple. But that required a much more ancient understanding than the authorities of Nicodemus generation wanted.

"So Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit” - he describes what had happened at his baptism, and what happens at all our baptisms - “What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Now flesh in John's gospel doesn't only mean simply [...] 'meat', it refers to the structure of the world that's not run by Spirit, the world, if you like, run by memetic desire - violence closed down on itself unable to break out, of trying to resolve all its problems by shortcuts, sacrifices, casting people out, all that sort of thing - that's the world of flesh. And the world of Spirit is the reverse of that, the Spirit of God coming in at an absolutely earthly level, taking hold of our lives and turning us into people who begin to open up that world. Spirit, if you like, is as worldly just a different sort of world.

[...]

"This is what enables us to be born from above because we understand that the heavenly reality is vastly bigger and not on the same level as the earthly reality, it's able to undo it from within through the Spirit. So this is what he's saying to Nicodemus: this is not a two-dimensional thing, this is a three-dimensional thing. This is what's happening. It's not that I'm just the teacher you say, but I'm the One coming in.

"And then he says the lines which we know and which are so famous even though usually mistranslated. The usual translation is, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” But the translation is slightly wrong because it makes it sound as though “for God *so* loved the world” as though it was an emotional thing. But actually it means “For God loved the world in this way,” this is a demonstrative: for God loved the world in this way. What was the form it took? Well that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life. So he's talking about, not the intensity of God's love, but the shape of God's love. The shape of God's love is [...] going to be God having come into the midst of us who are inclined to perish and get involved in every sort of violence with and against each other and he's going to offer himself into our midst so that in fact by believing in that love we can give up that. We can, believing in him, receive eternal life. That's what the center of all this is about. [...]

"Now Nicodemus must have been baffled, he had the two-dimensional approach, it was the words, it was the text - that sacrifice stuff yeah it had to happen but not really very important. Whereas Jesus is saying, no the real thing is going to take the form of what happened in the temple - he didn't explain it will actually happen outside the temple, on the city dump, but it will be the same thing as what was being enacted in the temple - and for those who understand the depth of my love, of God's love for you in empowering me to come and do this, to give myself to you."

- James Alison, from video "RCL Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnShOBp15g)

~

I think that the English translation "believe" in John 3 of the Greek word 'pistis' is misleading and unhelpful, especially in modern times where belief for Christians is so closely identified with intellectual assent to certain propositions about Jesus and God. Michael Hardin offers the following reframing of 'reason' and trust:

"The Gospel has broken into [the intellectual maze of 'reason'], it's given us a different frame of knowing, a different way of knowing, a different form of knowledge. [..'] It's a knowledge that is not simply limited to the social construct [in our minds], to the way we perceive ourselves, the way we perceive others, the way others perceive us, the way others perceive themselves, and everything in between about perception and knowledge and reality.

"The Gospel invites us to take a completely different orientation. It invites us to begin with 'pistis' - trust - and [...] this particular trust is cruciform in its very character. It's the trusting of the Father in spite of what is perceived. It is trusting that God will raise you from the dead as you hang on a cross. It's trusting the Father loves you that much, and cares for you that much. That's pistis.

"You see, it begins there, without that there is no proper conversion, there's no proper re-orientation. It's only from that point that one is able to look at all reality and all life in a completely different frame - through the lens of the forgiving victim, through the lens of the Father who loves, through the lens of the Spirit who brings about this inner crucifixion, or, to use the old reformed term, mortification of the flesh. Well, we need the mortification of the mind.

"Now [...] I'm not about being irrational. [...] I'm talking about the way we approach the whole phenomenon of the intellect and knowledge. Because the one thing we followers of Jesus are not, is we are not Gnostic. We do not believe in secret knowledge. We do not believe there's a certain knowledge limited to a very select few, that if you know this you can somehow be free. [...] That's an illusion, a total illusion."

- Michael Hardin, from video "Michael's Musings" posted on in July 2018

~

"Interestingly, John almost never uses the term “kingdom of God” (which is at the heart of Jesus' message for Matthew, Mark, and Luke). There are two exceptions, both of which occur in this unique conversation [with Nicodemus in John 3]. Instead, John normally translates 'kingdom of God' into another phrase ['zoé aionios'] that is notoriously hard to render in English. Most commonly, John's translation of Jesus' original phrase is rendered “eternal life” in English. Unfortunately, the phrase eternal life is often misinterpreted to mean “life in heaven after you die” - as are “kingdom of God” and its synonym, “kingdom of heaven” - so I think we need to find a better rendering.

"If 'eternal life' doesn't mean 'life after death', what does it mean? Later in John's Gospel, Jesus reduces the phrase simply to 'life', or 'life to the full'. Near the end of John's account, Jesus makes a particularly fascinating statement in a prayer, and it is as close as we get to a definition: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [God has] sent” (John 17:3). So here, 'eternal life' means knowing, and knowing means an interactive relationship. In other words, “This is eternal life, to have an interactive relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ, his messenger.” Interestingly, that's what a kingdom is too: an interactive relationship one has with a king, the king's other subjects, and so on.

"The Greek phrase John uses for 'eternal life' [zoé aionios] literally means 'life of the ages', as opposed, I think we could say, to 'life as people are living it these days'. So John's related phrases - 'eternal life', 'life to the full', and simply 'life' - give us a unique angle on what Jesus meant by “kingdom of God”: a life that is radically different from the way people are living these days, a life that is full and overflowing, a higher life that is centered in an interactive relationship with God and with Jesus. Let's render it simply 'an extraordinary life to the full centered in a relationship with God.'"

- Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, pp. 36-37

[Source of Brian McLaren quote, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 2A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent2a/]