From the Lectionary for 2 July 2023 (Proper 8A)

Matthew 10:37-42 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

~

"This is a text which at least some of us will have heard in a very nasty binary way in the past and I'm hoping to do something with that with you today. ... You will perhaps know people whose extremely religious parents have completely rejected their daughters or sons on discovering that they are gay or lesbian simply on the grounds that they are convinced that they need to do that to follow Jesus and that Jesus is ordering them to. And then you have this line, “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow it in my footsteps is not worthy of me.” Again this is a phrase that has been used to say to gay people: homosexuality is your cross you must take it up and follow my footsteps, meaning don't be who you are for Jesus sake. And then, even more tragically perhaps, “Anyone who finds his life will lose it anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it,” and unfortunately there are many high-ranking ecclesiastics who at some stage rather have decided that they were prepared to sacrifice who they really are on the altar of approval from other ecclesiastical higher-ups who'd done the same thing, and so they end up as people ... who have lost who they are...

"So, just to point out that the binary reading of this passage has had terrible consequences. So let's try to have a slightly less harmful look at it, and the first thing I want to point out is that what we have here is three lines concerning if you prefer someone over and above me, and then if you receive someone. So there are three 'if you prefer' and 'if you receive' and what I want to bring out is, I think, how all of these circle around the question of shame and dangerousness. ... [T]hese [are] instructions to the Twelve, to the Apostles, who are about to embark upon a life of extreme dangerousness which will lead to the martyrdom of most of them eventually. Jesus is preparing them for a life of dangerousness where they must be prepared to occupy the place of shame.

"So I would suggest that it's something more or less like this that is going on: preferring mother or father, or preferring son or daughter, means grasping onto the safe identity that is given by family structure, rather than realizing that every generation - particularly now in the modern world where the speed of the changing of the patterns of desire between generations is so much faster than in the ancient world - but that negotiating the change with the criterion other than holding on to the values of the previous generation or being eager simply to protect those of the younger generation, that the constant working through of what is really going on, what it really is to follow Jesus is going to work require constant working out of the in-between: how do I both love my intergenerational siblings - my parents - and my intergenerational siblings - my children - and what does it mean to run the risk of finding myself in a place of shame, disgrace and in actual physical danger by walking in [Jesus'] footsteps.

"This is not a question of cutting yourself off, this is a question of working through what it means, constantly working through what it means, always knowing that actually the more you grasp on something thinking that that's giving you a security, a goodness, the more dangerous that is, the more you are at risk of winning your life but actually losing yourself. Who we become is always through negotiating the in-betweens of what life in the Spirit looks like, finding ourselves being converted at every possible interstice of relationships. Very difficult, very painful, quite humiliating, and that which brings us to life.

"And then the flip side of that are the three 'anyone who welcomes' ... suggesting that here the positive side of this is going on. In the midst of what is apparently a very dangerous and shame-inspiring world, actually the one who is the fullness of glory, the one who opens us up to reality, will be received as we receive his representative Jesus in our midst. And those who receive us because they recognize that despite everything we are the bearers of something truthful, we are the bearers of something to do with life in the midst of all the closed-down, frightened, shame-rejecting structures of this world, in that degree they are receiving God through receiving us who have received Jesus. But that this is reality that is breaking through in the midst of that breakdown.

...

"In other words, Jesus is saying, "I am the in-between. As you renegotiate your in-between generationally you will come to me and the criteria will be: are you prepared to go to the place of dangerousness and follow me in what seems to be a shameful walk of abandonment and loss? In which case you will have life. Or are you going to hold on to the security and the rejection of all that? In which case you will hold on to your life and security and will never become who you really are.”

"And then he's also saying, “Receive me in the others and these are the signs that you're already on the inside. I am the in-between you and all those realities. I am the in-between.” It seems to me to be the definition of the Holy Spirit: the in-between. Jesus is preparing his disciples for when, through life in the Spirit, they will start to receive the in-between that comes from the company of prophets, just persons and disciples. Which means the enlivenment of being prepared to live in a place of shame and danger without being dominated by its fear, and so being brought to life in Christ.

"This is Jesus' instructions to his disciples, to his apostles, [and] this is his instruction to us. And I hope that we can learn to live this in-between with joy, without too much fear."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 13 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MA6cNLQ7CE)

From the Lectionary for 25 June 2023 (Proper 7A)

Matthew 10:26-33 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”

Romans 5:12-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— for sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.

Romans 6:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

~

"“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” In other words, don't be frightened of those who are out to get you, they will they won't it doesn't matter. What you really need to be afraid of is going along with them, believing it, allowing your soul to be destroyed as well, because then you're completely worthless, then you are cast into Gehenna.

...

"“So do not be afraid, you're of more value than many sparrows.” In other words, be able to trust the fact that you're loved and you'll be able to stand up to all this nonsense of those who are up to get you, those who make you frightened, those who seem to have locked you into a place of closed-ness where you can't get out. 

"And notice, this is not just something that's incidental to Christianity, this is what is absolutely the heart of Christianity: Jesus has come in our midst by going to his death, showing the lynch mechanism, the scapegoat mechanism, the human sacrificial mechanism up for what it is. He's in the midst of that, standing triumphant and saying: look it doesn't shut us down! Come and take part in the opening up with me.

"“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Learn to stand with the lynched one. It can't run them and it can't run you. If you're able to do that, you're automatically flying in heaven, you're no longer a caught sparrow being sold for a tuppence, you're a flying sparrow worth much much more. “But whoever denies me before others I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” That is, take part in the lynch mob, take part in that in the whispering, in the gossiping, in being the group that makes its goodness over against someone condemned, [and] you have taken part in the very reverse of what I'm all about. So no, stand free.

"That's the gracious gift even St Paul in the passage to the Romans [5:12-15] talks about, the same thing. The sin of Adam was one thing, some sort of disobedience to the law, but the free gift of the real Adam - the Adam of whom the first Adam was merely a type - the free gift is so much more than that. It was not really putting right a law, it was coming into our midst to undo the whole of the sacrificial mechanism by which we build ourselves up - including all its lies, its gossip, its fake accounts, its far too quick resolutions of things - to enable us to stand free and not to be frightened, to learn to speak freely, to think healthily and to be able to work out what this creation is that we are in and how we can best participate in it."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 12 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We1zx16qSKM)

~

"In Paul’s letters, the approach is not “do X, and then you will become Y,” it is rather, “Because you are finding yourselves X, so do Y.” ...

"The understanding is pretty clear: something happens that takes us somewhere quite new. As we find ourselves on the inside of the new life, allowing our imaginations to be rejigged, so the ways of behaving which flow from that new life become second nature to us, and we are able to ditch those which don’t flow from that new life. It is what we are becoming that is first, and the transformation of our behaviour which flows from that.

"This makes sense to me: it is as I discover myself on the inside of a new way of being that I discover the sense, and the richness, of different ways of behaving. And indeed, we find ourselves on the inside of discovering for ourselves quite why these new ways of behaving correspond to the richest and deepest loving intention for us of our Creator. In other words, there is something genuinely exciting about learning to be fascinated by a goodness we didn’t know.

"And this of course has been the whole burden of [what I want to share]: how it is that someone coming towards us, and into our midst, catches us by surprise and enables us to be turned into ourselves-for-each-other, something much richer and more zest-inspiring than we could guess while we thought we knew who we were."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 523-24

[Source of quote from James Alison's book Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_7a/]

From the Lectionary for 18 June 2023 (Proper 6A)

Exodus 19:2-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

They journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness; Israel camped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”

~

Most of the time when I have heard the words, "priestly kingdom and a holy nation" in a church context, it has had somewhat of a triumphalist tone, as in, "Isn't it wonderful that *we* are set apart for God, that *we* are the special ones!"  I think this response quite misses the point, especially in light of the beginning of the sentence: "Indeed, the whole earth is mine..."  The setting apart of Israel (in this passage) was not to emphasise how special or wonderful they were, but so that they would be a 'priestly kingdom' among the kingdoms of the world, not considering themselves somehow superior to 'the Gentiles', but to serve them.

~

Matthew 9:35-10:8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”

~

"Please notice that “heart of a shepherd” means being able to look at wolves in their sheepliness. It is not a question of us fearing that there are many people dressed as sheep who are, in fact, wolves, but, on the contrary, of being able creatively to imagine wolves as, in some, more or less well-hidden part of their lives, in fact, sheep, and to love them as such.

"Various times in the Gospel the word 'splangchnidzomai' crops up, which we usually translate as “moved with compassion.” Jesus was moved with compassion by this or that person or situation, or that the multitudes should be like sheep having no shepherd (Matt. 9:36). However the word is rather strong, and means a deep commotion of the entrails, a visceral commotion.

"This is what is so hard to imagine: as we become unhooked from our partisan loves, our searches, our clinging to reputation, with these formed in reaction to this situation or that, there begins to be formed in us that absolutely gratuitous visceral commotion, born outside all reaction, which the ancients called agape and which is nothing other than the inexplicable love which God has for us in our violence and our scandals. We begin to be able not only to know ourselves loved as human beings, but to be able to love other humans, to love the human race and condition."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 188

~

"The first thing we see about [Jesus] is that he's looking at them and he's gut-wrenched. He has an extraordinary sense of love for these people, he doesn't regard them as rioters or protestors or difficult people, people he needs to pacify in some way. No, he sees people who are harrased like sheep with a shepherd, and he longs for their building up and for their good.

"So his first reaction is not to send in some sort of force of order - judges, people who will sort them out, deal with their problems... and tell them to get on with it. No, it's very much more holistic than that. He seems to want to choose rather ordinary people to work in their midst alongside them, and his response, once he's been moved is to say, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” In other words, he's asking them to ask God for something. He wants the request to come from us. He can see what can be done, but it's not to be done from above, it's to be done by people from inside...

"Sending is when they become apostles, from the word 'apostela' meaning to send. He summons the twelve disciples and gives them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to cure every disease and every sickness. It's interesting his first reaction is not 'go out amongst them and sort them out, make them right, make them behave. No, it's an act of mercy, to see all the collapsed forms of in-between, what I call the in-between: the sick relationships - social, personal, interfamiliar, economic - all of the ways in which our in-betweens build us up and can imprison us. This is the world of evil spirits, of mental health problems, of profound psychic and psychosomatic sicknesses. This is people bent double, in ways that many many of us still are, and many many countries still are, by various forms of imprisonment tied into repetitive mechanisms of self-destructive behavior. All of this is part of us not flourishing.

"Again he sends people alongside them, people with ordinary names - we think of them as very important names because they are the Apostles, but these are ordinary people, this is Pete and Jim and Andy, Tom, and eventually of course the guy who will betray him: Judas. And so we're talking about a very low-key, very gentle sending into the midst of a group of people but who didn't know where they're going... All of these kinds of things he was seeing and then pointing people to go and move into that world...

"[H]e is wanting to build the humanity of the people not give them a specific religious instruction, so “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.” In other words, they are to be very very vulnerable but never transactional - there is to be no quid pro quo, no payment, because that would be just to take part in the sickness of the society.

"There's this completely gratuitous element of the sending which involves vulnerability. And if you are sent and gratuitous and vulnerable, then you run the risk of being assailed by the various demons and bad things in the society, because all that comes to someone who's weak. But if you're able to stand and speak, that's when the demons start to go away, that's when people start to be set free. If you don't play tit for tat with that then people begin to sense what humanity looks like.

"So I think that this is a wonderful wonderful gospel for us at this time, and I would ask you to pray that we be given that heart, that gut-wrenched heart which Jesus had, and that we learn how to ask the Lord to send more laborers into the harvest and that we may become those laborers ourselves."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 11 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVjyx4_oyTM)

[Source of quote from James Alison's book Raising Abel, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_6a/]

From the Lectionary for 11 June 2023 (Proper 5A)

Hosea 6:4-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
    What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
    like the dew that goes away early.
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
    I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
    and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Matthew 9:9-13 (NRSV Updated Edition)

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

~

"Why do churches, ostensibly following a Messiah who broke bread with 'tax collectors and sinners', so often retreat into practices of exclusion and the quarantine of gated communities?  Why is it so difficult to create missional churches?  In seeking answers to those questions I had been thinking a great deal about Jesus's response to the Pharisees in Matthew 9.  In defending his ministry of table fellowship - eating with 'tax collectors and sinners' - Jesus tells the Pharisees to go and learn what it means that God desires 'mercy, not sacrifice'.

...

"[The] antagonism between mercy and sacrifice is *psychological* in nature.  Our primitive understandings of both love and purity are regulated by psychological dynamics that are often incompatible.  Take, for example, a popular recommendation from my childhood years.  I was often told that I should 'hate the sin, but love the sinner'.  Theologically, to my young mind (and, apparently, to the adults who shared it with me), this formulation seemed clear and straightforward.  However, psychologically speaking, this recommendation was extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice.

"As any self-reflective person knows, empathy and moral outrage tend to function at cross-purposes.  In fact, some religious communities resist empathy, as any softness toward or solidarity with 'sinners' attenuates the moral fury the group can muster.  Conversely, it is extraordinarily difficult to 'love the sinner' - to respond to people tenderly, empathically, and mercifully - when you are full of moral anger over their behaviour.

...

"These psychological dynamics help illuminate the events in Matthew 9, the tension between mercy and sacrifice.  And it also explains why this tension will be a constant and consistent temptation in the life of the church.  In the actions of the Pharisees we see how the experience of purity (the sacrificial impulse) had come to replace morality (the mercy impulse)...

"[Although] the experience of purity helps us understand morality, the metaphorical connection between the two is so deep that the experience of physical purity can come to replace moral action.  And, given that the church is awash in purity metaphors, particularly those churches who privilege penal substitutionary thinking, there exists a constant danger that the church exchange the private *experience* of salvation, being washed in the blood of the Lamb, for passionate missional *engagement* with the world."

- Richard Beck, "Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality", pp 1-3, 46-47

~

"[I]t seems to me that the key instruction of the New Testament with relation to moral discourse, and it is a doubly sacred instruction, for it is one of the very few places where Jesus quotes the Hebrew Scriptures with absolute approval — and he quotes it twice. The key instruction for those of us who are trying to make use of the religious word in some moral sense, and there is no moral theology that is not that, is:

“But go and learn what it means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’” (Matt. 9:13; see also Matt. 12:7, both quoting Hos 6:6)

"Please notice that this is now no longer an instruction just for the Pharisees, but is, so to speak, the program-guide for whoever tries to do moral theology. Being good can never do without the effort to learn, step by step, and in real circumstances of life, how to separate religious and moral words from an expelling mechanism, ... so as to make of them words of mercy which absolve, which loose, which allow creation to be brought to completion. And this means that there is no access to goodness which does not pass through our own discovery of our complicity in hypocrisy, for it is only as we identify with the “righteous just” of the story that we realize how “good” their procedure was, how careful, scrupulous, law-abiding, they were, and thus, how catastrophic our goodness can be, if we don’t learn step by step how to get out of solidarity with the mechanism of the construction of the unity of the group by the exclusion of whoever is considered to be evil.

...

"[...] I’d like to underline this: what the Christian faith offers us in the moral sphere is not law, nor a way of shoring up the order or structure of the supposed goodness of this world, much less the demand that we sally forth on a crusade in favor of these things. It offers us something much more subtle. It offers us a mechanism for the subversion from within of all human goodness, including our own. This is the same thing as saying that the beginning of a Christian moral life is a stumbling into an awareness of our own complicity in hypocrisy, and a becoming aware of quite how violent that hypocrisy is.

"Starting from there we can begin to stretch out our hands to our brothers and sisters, neither more nor less hypocritical than ourselves, who are on the way to being expelled from the “synagogue” by an apparently united order, which has an excessive and militant certainty as to the evil of the other. Let us then go and learn what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’"

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp. 20, 26

[Source of James Alison quote, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_5a/]

From the Lectionary for 4 June 2023 (Trinity Sunday, Year A)

John 3:16-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“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. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

~

"Today is Trinity Sunday. It's the Sunday when after all the build-up of the whole of the Easter story, everything is then combined, if you like, into the doctrine of the Trinity: the understanding that God is Father, is Son and is the Holy Spirit. And all this is God. This is the proper combination of these two seasons. I'm a Trinity fan. And so I'm delighted with this. But I should also say the Trinity Sunday is the day when ... we say quite reasonably that we know nothing about God, quite rightly. ...

"The trouble about that is that it leads to two things: people either talking much about a mystery, which means ultimately, in the way they talk about it, something incomprehensible, which is not really worth talking about; or something so distant and mathematical and that it can be talked about as if one were discussing an extremely distant galaxy about which we know very little but from which we can make various deductions. I want to say: no, not going down that route. I love the doctrine of the Trinity because I think it's true, and I think it tells us something about being on the inside of God. So that's what I want to explore with you today: the doctrine of the Trinity, the joy, if you like, of the Trinity, being the fullness of the account of how we are insiders in God, God in whom we live and move and have our being. So nothing about intellectual construction up there.

"What I want to say ... first of all [is] that the notion of there being God at all rather than something about which we know refers to a certain sort of finding ourselves on the inside of something. It means that everything we know, everything we see, everything around us: that's all real, it exists, and there's an outside to it. That's what the word God means, basically: there's an outside to everything. The outside to everything that holds it all in being. It is a symptom, if you like, of God. ... [T]he doctrine of God means: there's an outside, we are not trapped. Everything that is is not some blind trap, some sort of plot against us, some source of ... bizarre cruelty. There's an outside to everything that is. That is what we mean when we say 'God'.

"And our only access of course to that is as insiders: we have no direct knowledge of the outside, merely that there is one. That's what belief in God means. It means: I'm on the inside of something that is held in being by something far bigger than I. In principle, I need not know anything about it. But I do because the same outside chose to come into our world as a human - to show us that there's an outside to being human, that being human isn't a trap, being human isn't simply a series of distempered fights, squabbles over who is stronger, putting of each other in places of shame so as to destroy each other, and survival of the fittest.

"Being human isn't that, being human is something much more than that. And there's an outside to our understanding of being human, therefore something about which we need not be afraid. Jesus is, if you like the instantiation of there being an outside to being human, that it is possible to live and to die as a human, not run by death and its consequences, not run by the need to protect yourself, to defend yourself, but able to give yourself. There an outside to being human.

"But even more than that: there's an outside to all the passions and desires, the contagions, the rivalries, which run us, everything which works in-between us. There's an outside to the desire. The outside to desires what we call the Holy Spirit. It means that all our passions, all the ways we run each other in more or less cruel and awful ways, ... there's an outside to that. That's not actually reality. The reality is when we are able to go beyond that, to be taken into what's real. So the outside of everything that is, the outside of what it is to be human, and the outside of every form of relationality and desire, reaches us, is available to us from within. This is the extraordinary power of the Gospel.

"The power of the Gospel is: this is not an exercise in power as the world understands it. Which is why St. John’s Gospel wonderfully today tells us, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” All this is an exercise of love. God wants to show how much he loves the human creation, how much he loves the way we can build each other up, how much he wants us to be set free from fear and condemnation, from the sense that everything is closing down, that we’re trapped in something. That anyone who believes in Him starts to be able to say, “Yes, there’s an outside. Because there’s an outside, I can be free, I can feel free, I needn’t be run by it.” That is what it is to become a son or daughter of God, filled with the Spirit, finding that God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as St Augustine says. He is able to move us from within, without displacing. Only the gentlest form of love can do that.

"So how do I bring this into a tiny little nutshell? God, the Creator of everything that is, not in rivalry with anything that is. But that makes it very easy for us to use and abuse the notion of God, unless God has a criterion for who God is. Well, God has a criterion for who God is, that criterion is Jesus. Jesus is God’s criterion for who God is. It’s how God lets us know who God is, what it looks like to live and die as God loves, as God is. It involves not hanging on - not hanging on to life, to possessions, riches, anything - but being able to give yourself away in love for other people. So that’s God’s criterion for God and we know that God’s criterion for God ended up crucified.

"So you might say, that’s nice enough, we’ve got God, we've got God’s criterion for God - alas no, as humans, ever since we stumbled into symbolicity there are no such things as simple facts. Everything has to be interpreted. It’s possible to look at Christ’s crucifixion and see it, as some people do, as a price paid to satisfy the vengeance of God, rather than seeing it as a sign of God’s love giving himself for us in the midst of our rage and violence. So a fact like the crucifixion without an interpretation doesn’t help us at all, because anyone can make an interpretation however they like, however perverse. So the Holy Spirit is God’s interpretation of God’s criterion of God.

"Please notice what we have: God, God’s criterion for God, and God’s interpretation of God’s criterion for God, each one of which is God. And the important thing is that each one of them: God, God’s criterion for God, and God’s interpretation of God’s criterion - are love. This is the astonishing thing, this is the Gospel: that there is an astounding power of love shown for us, just beyond, if you like, our grasp, but into which we are called. Which makes us capable of being participants in creation, in the opening up of reality. This is why, it seems to me, that the Doctrine of the Trinity is not an abstract statement. It’s what it looks like to live and move and have our being in the only God who is."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Trinity Sunday Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU5lEwrOEbk)

From the Lectionary for 28 May 2023 (Pentecost Sunday, Year A)

Acts 2:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

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.”

~

"Again is this sense of ... undoing of the notion of the Holy Place in the temple, where of course Jews were frightened to go in, as well they should be. No one was allowed in except the High Priest, and the High Priest only with extreme precautions. But so here we have this inversion: in an ordinary house where the disciples are hiding. And guess what? This house turns into the Holy Place in the temple, because “Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'” In other words, the first thing to notice about them is: they're frightened, they're ashamed, they are kind of failures, they've been following someone who turned out to have been killed, they don't know what's going on, they're hiding. The very first sign of his presence is peace.

...

"A second time he says: “Peace be with you.” In other words, his whole appearance, this is the definitive theophany for the Most High in the whole of the scriptures. And unlike all the others, it's not frightening. This is if you like the great shock of the New Testament, that when God finally does turn up, God is not frightening.

...

"When he had said this, he breathed into them. And I changed the translation. The translation said, “breathed on them,” but it's the same verb as was used in Genesis when our Lord breathes into Adam's nostrils to give him life, exactly the same verb. So it seems to me better that it be translated “breathed into” here because that's what he's doing: he's creating the new Adam. And says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Which means, strangely: now be insiders in the life of God.

"“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” And of course, alas because we tend to be moralists and so on and so forth, this very easily becomes a matter of priests forgiving other people's sins and so on and so forth. It means so much more than that. This is a new creation we're talking about. What it means is that we are being invited to be insiders in God's opening up of creation, making it a much much bigger, healthier space. And he's giving the power for this to happen to *us*. In other words, this is going to be a human endeavour. Now it says: you know, in as far as you open it up, in as far as you let go of the things that bind down and open it up - in other words, forgive sins and they'll be forgiven; those you don't, they won't.

"In other words, there's no extra outside, you know, deus ex machina [ie. God coming out of the sky] figure coming to sort things out. No, it's up to you. I have done the whole of this so as to make you insiders in the creative act of God, as humans - with your intelligences, with your foibles, with your failures. It is you who are going be able to do this. This is one of the most astounding things that anybody could possibly have heard: that God would turn up and say: now be participators in the inside of my life, and you are going to be, if you like, its bearers. I want you to take charge of opening up creation.

"Please understand that this is not creation in some, let's say, historical sense of something that happened a long time ago. He is saying: no, that which is real, that which is of God, that which is truthful, it's actually a reality we're talking about. You are opening up reality. You're going to be conscious participants on the inside of opening up reality. And this is going to be a human-centered exercise. That's what I find astounding about this.

"We think of the Holy Spirit, we listen to the imagery from Luke, we read the passage here and the sense that we are being with something incredibly gentle, a breath into us. Of course, you're welcome to the more pictorial imagery of Luke, but ultimately it's the same thing: this incredible gentle breath within us which turns us into insiders, into the life of God. And means that at this very very intimate personal level, we are being invited as an act of extreme gentleness, intimate gentleness, to be co-discoverers of the real, the truth, of the trust. What actually the life of God is really like, life of God and reality, everything that is real. It is the Creator Spirit who is making us as part of reality, open up part of reality.

"So much going on here. I just wanted to leave you with this sense of this act of intimate trust that we've been invited to take part in. And as we sit with this to discover what it is to be living inside this new in-between, this life in which we are being made together, intimate participants, sharers, builders-up of each other, openers-up of life for each other."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Pentecost Sunday Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_oJDmT09E)

From the Lectionary for 21 May 2023 (Easter 7A)

John 17:1-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

~

"The original Reformation was all about discovering God anew as a God of grace. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Five hundred years of subsequent history has shown those efforts to have largely failed. A God of grace must be a God who is completely nonviolent, and a God who produces true Oneness. As John puts it, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The Reformation never came close to achieving this pinnacle of a nonviolent God. Reformation churches soon promulgated wars and various forms of violence, using God to justify it. It produced the same old kind of oneness based on Us-against-Them ... now formulated as Protestants vs. Catholics.

"Theologically, Protestantism landed squarely with the ultimate dualistic god, who instead of “creating one new humanity in place of the two” (the clear results of a gracious God proclaimed in Eph. 2), proclaims a god who eternally divides humanity into two — believers and unbelievers, the saved and the damned, those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. Instead of seeing in the Crucified God a gracious God who is launching a renewal of creation and healing of humanity, Protestant theology landed with its abhorrent penal substitutionary atonement theory of a wrathful God who sacrifices the Son in order to save a few believing souls for heaven. After a century of World Wars, it’s no wonder that people are fleeing churches in rapidly increasing numbers.

...

"In John 17, Jesus prays “that they may be one as we are one.” Do we realize how much the true God, whose Oneness offers gracious healing to all our human divisions, requires atheism toward all our well-entrenched gods of dualism? To me this is the fundamental issue of coming to true “faith” — faithfulness to Jesus’s Father, the nonviolent God of love. It begs for an anthropology that helps us to more full understand how humanity has become entrenched in experiences of dualistic gods.

...

"Ever since our origins as a species our experience has been that the gods have taught us, commanded us, to think dualistically and to so order our communities and cultures. When the Human One comes along and prays, “May they be one as we are one,” it is not necessarily jolting yet. Our gods have always given Us oneness ... a blessed unity that we maintain against Them. In short, a false dualistic oneness.

"But what happens next after Jesus’s prayer makes all the difference in the world. The Human One lets himself be victim to our sacrifice and then is raised with the a message of forgiveness, not vengeance. He lets himself be pushed out as an outsider, one of Them, to begin breaking down the barriers of Us and Them. His Father and the Spirit of Truth represent a Oneness that transcends the dualisms. There is no longer Us and Them. There is only Us. This is a brand new Oneness. A wholly different God."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Opening Reflections on the Girardian Lectionary page for Easter 7A (link below)

~

"[...] Jesus' real concern is that people should know the Father, not him. At the same time he is aware that he is revealing the Father, and that it is only through him that a real knowledge of the Father is made available. That is: it is only in seeing the pattern of Jesus' life, lived with the intelligence of the victim, that it becomes possible to know the Father, who is revealed only in the casting out. Let me try to make that clearer. The whole process of Jesus life, leading up to and including his death, is what defines who the Father is. This is because the life is lived in obedient response to the Father's love, and is an exact imitation of the Father’s love lived out in the conditions of the human race. The imitation reveals the one imitated. It was Jesus' life and death that made possible the human discovery of who the Father really is.

"So, Jesus makes himself known, not as an end in himself, but strictly as the means of revealing the Father. His famous response to Philip in John 14 says exactly this: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” What Jesus is, he is as revealing the Father. Later on, this is made clearer still when Jesus says, “and this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.” (John 17.3)."

- James Alison, Knowing Jesus, pg. 109

~

"Again, what I want to bring out is this wonderful tabletop intimacy between Jesus talking to his Father in the presence of the disciples and sharing how they are all in this together. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them” [v.10] This is an amazing thing. Jesus is prepared to allow himself to be glorified in us, meaning we are going to become bearers of his glory, witnesses to what God is really all about, witnesses to what the real order of creation ... is, witnesses of course from the moment that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and the power of the realigned creation flows into us.

"... So he's praying that the Holy Spirit come down upon us all, so that we may be kept together in this project of being amazing. Given what fallible, screwed up people we are, [it's] amazing that we are being given the power and strength actually to become part of what the life of God really is, as shown by Jesus, which we find ourselves invited into. So much to think about, so much intimacy to begin to prepare for, as we wait for the Spirit to come upon us at Pentecost."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB1MBAHU928)

[Source of quotes by Paul J. Nuechterlein and from James Alison's Knowing Jesus, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter7a/]

From the Lectionary for 14 May 2023 (Easter 6A)

John 14:15-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

~

"Parakleitos, in Greek, is the exact equivalent of advocate or the Latin 'advocatus'. The Paraclete is called on behalf of the prisoner, the victim, to speak in his place and in his name, to act in his defense. The Paraclete is the universal advocate, the chief defender of all innocent victims, the destroyer of every representation of persecution. He is truly the spirit of truth that dissipates the fog of mythology."

- René Girard, “History and the Paraclete,” chapter 15 from The Scapegoat, pg. 207

~

"In today's Gospel which is a direct continuation from last Sunday's, ... Jesus seems to talk about an advocate who is the Spirit of Truth. ... [H]ere's Jesus before he goes his death, explaining to his disciples what's going to happen. He's just told them, as he's told them last time, that because he's going to the Father - meaning: because he's going up to his death, they will be able to do greater things than he. So this is part of his unpacking of that: what is it that will enable them to do greater things than he.

...

"Strangely, the defense counselor is the Spirit of truth [vs 16,17]. Because Jesus has gone to his death, because he has occupied the place of death, of shame, of accusation, of lies, the one who is cast out falsely, what he's going to be able to provide to his disciples, which will enable them to keep his commandments and enabled them to love him, will be the Spirit of truth, which will appear as a defence counsellor. In other words, [the Spirit's] job will be to ward off the lies. It will be establishing the truth, meaning that Jesus' followers will start to be able to live as sons and daughters straightforwardly, becoming themselves in the midst of this very corrupt and violent world.

...

“You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” He will dwell in you. In other words, this Spirit, this angelic presence, is going to be inside us, turning us into Jesus. That's what's being promised. And this is going to happen in the same way that it transforms us into people who hold his commandments and are loved by him. Being loved by him, receiving the Spirit and becoming people who hold his commandments and therefore become witnesses to him - part of the same project.

...

“In a little while the world will no longer see me,”- he's about to be crucified - “but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” ... In other words, it's because I'm going to be in you that you are going to be able to share my life and see that I live. This is an entirely participatory understanding of God and of how we become God's daughters and sons.

...

“They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.“ 'Emphanisō' - I will reveal myself in them or into them, I will 'in-reveal' myself to them, rather suggesting that this spilling out of the Lord's affection and love is not only going to be a series of apparitions, which happened after the resurrection, but much more of the way in which he's going to show himself in us, so that we are able to become the manifestations, the hints of the spilling over of the love of God that makes us not orphans or servants, but friends, sons and daughters, heirs, insiders; those who are working through with the Spirit, the defence of truth that enables creation to open up in the midst of the vanity-stricken and futility-run world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n3IP6_OgYw)

[Source of quote from René Girard's "The Scapegoat", and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter6a/]

From the Lectionary for 7 May 2023 (Easter 5A)

 John 14:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

~

"Christians are saying something essential when they assert that God has been revealed in the figure of Jesus. God is known, no longer unknown, no longer hidden, no longer mysterious. God is fully present in Jesus, not partially present, but fully, completely present as Colossians 2:9 asserts, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” In the fourth century Athanasius, the great proponent of Nicene orthodoxy put it this way: the only difference between the Father and the Son are the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son.’

"A large swath of American Christianity derives its understanding of the character of God by taking all references in the Bible to God and seeking then to delineate certain major characteristics of God. [...M]any popular Christian confessions have a doctrine of God that is like Samsonite luggage: unzip your doctrine of God, put in all of the adjectives and nouns you want, zip it back up and then you have a doctrine of God. This is opposite of the way the early church came to frame its doctrine of God. The early Christians urged people to unzip their theologies, empty out their suitcase and replace it with one article: the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was (and is) the name by whom God is known."

- Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life, pg. 94

~

"To me, the dynamic core of this passage leaps out here in verse 9, not back in verse 6: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Here the irony becomes nearly unbearable (to me at least), as we contrast this statement with the conventional interpretation of verse 6. Jesus says in verse 9 that the invisible God has been made visible in his life. “If you want to know what God is like,” Jesus says, “look at me, my life, my way, my deeds, my character.” And what has that character been? One of exclusion, rejection, constriction, elitism, favoritism, and condemnation? Of course not! Jesus’s way has been compassion, healing, acceptance, forgiveness, inclusion, and love from beginning to end — whether with a visiting-by-night Pharisee, a Samaritan woman, a paralyzed man, a woman caught in adultery, or a man born blind.

"But our conventional interpretation of verse 6 seems to say, “Forget all that. Forget everything you’ve seen in me, the way I’ve lived and treated people, the way I’ve accepted prostitutes and tax collectors, the way I’ve welcomed outsiders and rejects. Forget all that. Believe, instead, that God will reject everyone except people who share your doctrinal viewpoints about me, because I won’t let anyone get to the Father unless they get by me first by joining my new religion.” It makes me want to cry, or groan, or scream.

“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus says, but our conventional interpretation of John 14:6 turns this all upside down: “Reinterpret me in light of your old tribal, chauvinistic, exclusive, elitist views of God and religion. In place of circumcision and dietary laws to exclude the outsiders, now substitute mental markers or belief markers about me.” Once this alternative understanding hits you, once you see it, it’s truly heart-breaking that John 14:6 can be used the way it so commonly is."

- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 223-24

~

"And Phillip ... says to him, “Lord show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.” So the more mystical Greek cultured disciple, ... and Jesus again brings him straight down to earth in a very straightforward way, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?'” In other words, Philip is talking as though the Father is someone else, someone outside, that there is a 'big God' out there who is somehow independent from Jesus. And Jesus is saying, “No. No longer any 'big God' out there. The only access to the Father is through me.

"In other words, it's as you learn to give yourselves into the midst of death, giving yourselves away for others, doing what [Jesus does]. As you are able to stand up for the truth in the midst of all the turbulences of life and not be run by it and not be frightened by it. As you're able to become aware that you are receiving life already in the midst of all this. In that degree you've known the Father already, it is [Jesus]. The only access you have to the Father is in [Jesus]. There is no other 'extra' out there, if there were we would be what is called a 'bi-theistic' religion, a 'duo-theistic' religion, instead of a monotheistic one, but we aren't.

"The wholeness of the Father is revealed in Jesus, there's no extra. And Jesus is pointing this out, “Don't get distracted, it's all at this level, it's by allowing yourselves to be turned into a new brotherhood, sibling-hood, of equals that you are going to discover what it is to share the Father. In other words, it's by becoming me that you're going to discover the Father.

...

"“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” And I think this is one of the most wonderful things, it shows that Jesus is doing exactly what [he's] saying, “Yes I'm going to an occupy that space of death to detoxify it, to remove it's shames so as to make possible for you to be no longer run by fear of it. And because I'm going to do that, it will become possible for you to do greater and more extraordinary and more wonderful things than I. I have opened up the space and you'll be able to occupy it, and because you occupy it you'll be able to run with it and make new things open up, new ways of being, that will be far greater than what I have actually done here.”

"In other words, Jesus knows perfectly well this is not really about him, this is about him losing himself so as to become us, and in doing so opening up the possibility for us to become something so much more than we could imagine. So I ask you to share this joy, the joy of the discovery of the risen Lord in this Easter season, coming back to us and just reminding us what he has been opening up for us, and how much freedom we have to move forward in new and interesting ways."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLES8KoZhI8)

[Source of quote from Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christianity", and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter5a/]

From the Lectionary for 30 April 2023 (Easter 4A)

1 Peter 2:24-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

John 10:1-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

~

"The text says, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.” In Jerusalem the gate through which the sheep were driven when they were to be sacrificed was the Sheep Gate and it had a gatekeeper. When the priests were ready for more sheep the gatekeeper would open the gate and the sheep would be driven in.

"In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And here it seems the figure of speech suggests the gatekeeper opens the gate for the Lamb of God to go into the sacrificial chambers. Suddenly the metaphor has changed and for a moment the shepherd becomes the lamb. Could this be how we know his voice?  He is the one willing to die as an act of communication and forgiveness that shows us what we do to each other in our distorted quest for peace.

"This is the gentle voice; forgiving, merciful, long suffering and self-sacrificial that is like the perfect mother we all wish for in the recesses of our hearts. We will follow this voice. It has no harsh overtones. This voice will save us from our own destructive quest for an inner peace at the expense of our neighbor and in its place shows us a love so deep and complete that no one is forsaken."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on May 11th, 2014 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Easter4-2014-Mothers-Day-This-Abundant-Life.doc)

~

"There are several rather extraordinary features of John’s Good Shepherd text, which I suspect can only be brought to life by the eucharistic Christ. Jesus says that he is the door — and of course it is the purpose of the door that it defines what is in and what is out. But he is a very special sort of door, because it is by entering through him, which means following him through a certain sort of death, that the sheep will be able to go in and out and find pasture. Now what is extraordinary about this is the freedom involved. The Good Shepherd enables people to go in and out and find pasture — it is a strange sort of door which does not seek to define people, but gives access to a temporary shelter which exists for the benefit of the sheep without wishing to confine the sheep therein.

"There is no definitive inside and outside for the Good Shepherd, there are places of shelter and of feeding, different places to which the door gives access, and which presuppose movement, non-fixity, and confidence in being neither in nor out. It is assumed that the best feeding place might not be one that seems to be “in,” yet the good shepherd is able to make that place available to his sheep.

...

"The sheep hear the voice of the good shepherd, and he calls them by name and leads them out. The sheep are ones who have entered by the door. That is, they have learned that it is only by undergoing a certain sort of death, which we celebrate in baptism, that they are able to become part of the fold. ... Those who have died can hear the voice of the one who died, because they are able to recognise the true voice of God, who knows not death, and who calls into being, and loves. Other voices are not to be followed, because they show themselves not to be of God since they are scandalised by death.

...

"The sheep who have learned not to be scandalised by death can go in and out, and in their very doing so, have become themselves shepherds, leaders in tranquil imitation of other sheep, co-creators of a great rejoicing. We can hear the voice of such shepherds if we are on our way to becoming such shepherds ourselves. For the one who went before us did so not so as to be superior to and apart from us, but so as to be himself in each of us, each one called by name."

- James Alison, from "The Good Shepherd", lecture delivered in Santiago de Chile, October 1999 (http://girardianlectionary.net/learn/alison-good-shepherd/)

~

"[H]e calls us by name. In his calling us we discover who we are and we can walk freely and without fear. This I think is part of the continuation of the message we've been getting over these Easter weeks - of the oddness of the voice of the One who speaks to us, the oddness of the one who spoke to Mary Magdalene, who spoke to Thomas, who spoke to the disciples at Emmaus. And now rather than speaking to us from a position of great haughtiness or great apparent leadership, he's speaking to us as one who has been through death, is not frightened by it, is not scandalized by it, and knows that as we are able to relax into hearing his voice, so we will be able to live abundantly."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter 2020 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHkEqYwK91Y)

[Source of links to Thomas L. Truby sermon and James Alison lecture: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter4a]

From the Lectionary for Easter Sunday 2023 (Easter A)

Acts 10:34-43 (NRSV Updated Edition*)

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition*)

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

~

"New Creation offers a hope which can guide us into an even greater payoff for the challenging days ahead. Yes, resurrection brings comfort in the face of enormous loss and grief. But it also brings us the healing Spirit whose work can move us forward in the new Way of being human. ... We are bold to follow our Risen Lord who in his earthly life “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Through the Spirit of Easter which looses a virus of love, God is with us through this valley of shadows."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from "Opening Comments" on the Girardian Lectionary page for Easter A (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter-a/)

~

"So ... we come to the moral details of the life of Resurrection. Already we have see them; the faith, hope, and love of the Christian ecstasies are the moral demands of our faith, but now we see clearly that before they are demands they are gifts. What need we to add? Only this: Christ rose not as a Jew nor a Gentile, not as a man nor a woman, not as a free citizen nor as a slave, not as an intellectual nor as a nincompoop; Christ rose as a human being, and the transformation he wrought takes all the human race into a new world of simple, shared humanity.

"This simple, shared humanity is what we all crave because it brings everything we ever thought or knew we wanted or needed: peace, justice, joy, respect, healing, and helping; beauty, delight, fullness of being and a good death. We see in the rising Jesus that that there really is a power of creative life to do all this for us. Why then should we let the limits of our minds, the paucity of our expectations, the cowardice of our ambition, the fear of our peers, cause us to deprive ourselves of the life that flows like clear, cool water from the transformed body of Jesus? Why should we not call upon him in faith and draw near to him in love, and enter there the house of hope.

"As a planet we are approaching a point of “singularity;” there are three conceivable kinds of singularity, a bad one, an ambiguous one and a good one, and each one is already underway. The bad one is the triumph of the decay already underway in the environment, melting icecaps, choking cities, poisoned water. The ambiguous one is the Kurzweilian transformation by human ingenuity bringing forth machines that are more human and more devious that our humanity ever could be... and displacing us.

"The good moment is the moment of the Resurrection of Jesus, when the power that created the universe recreated it from within, from its most precious point, the point of perfect humanity, and is abroad in the world as faith hope and love. If you wish to save the environment, to enhance the human future this is the power you need. It is the “good singularity” where the miracle of new creation occurs.

"So, you are concerned about the human future, you care about the planet? Worship Jesus in faith hope and love! Only then will you become an effective conduit of transforming creativity; without this power of life to battle the death star you will go down railing and regretting; with it you will see the triumph of our God who did not create this world for death but for life, to fail but to succeed, to mourn but to rejoice."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from a sermon titled "The Good Singularity", March 23, 2008 (source no longer available)

* Source of Bible quotes: https://www.biblegateway.com/

surprised by hope

i recently finished reading surprised by hope by british (anglican) new testament scholar n.t. wright, and thought i'd write a bit of a review...

the overall subject of the book is the resurrection of jesus and what that event means for us now and for the future. a lot of the book is dedicated to eschatology, where wright's primary motivation is to address the muddled and vague thinking of many christians concerning what will happen to us after we die. one of his main bug-bears is the ubiquitous phrase "going to heaven when you die," both because it is a slogan that everybody just seems to accept without thinking very much about it, as well because of it's implication that our eternity will be spent in some dis-embodied spirit form floating around a totally "spiritual" heaven. he rightly calls this latter idea gnostic dualistic clap-trap (my paraphrase). while he does believe in some kind of "interim" existence in "heaven" (which i personally am not convinced about), he asserts that the resurrection of jesus points to a final destiny for all of us of a physical (though transformed) body in a physical (though transformed) universe.

wright belongs in the "earth renewal" camp, in other words he doesn't believe the present "heavens and earth" will be destroyed and new ones made, but that god will renew and transform the earth and the whole universe in an act of re-creation which is presaged in and promised by the resurrection of jesus. while he doesn't really address the counter-argument to this in verses such as 2 peter 3:10 and 12, he believes that the resurrection of jesus into a physical body which "belongs" to this universe (visible to the disciples, able to eat), though obviously with extra dimensions (able to travel through walls, able to disappear, able to fly?!?), is an affirmation from god that this present universe will not be done away with entirely. with the possibly problematic exception of the 2 peter 3 verses, a good argument can be made that the nt passages referring to the end times can be interpreted this way, eg. the metaphor of creation "groaning as if in childbirth" (romans 8:22) suggests that something new will come out of what is already here, not that all will be destroyed and a completely new thing created from scratch. wright's belief is that at the end of the present age, "heaven" will be revealed and will come down and be united with the earth, and that god's children with jesus as king will go about setting all things to right (you'll have to read the book for more detail on what he thinks this will look like).

the primary strength of the book, however, in my opinion, is in the last part, where wright elucidates on how the resurrection of jesus and the future which is promised by the resurrection should impact on and guide what we as christians do in this present life. i totally agree with him that a lot, if not most, of the theology and eschatology that is taught in protestant churches around the world have the effect (inadvertent or not) of basically nullifying any significance for the christian life, because the only really important thing is that you are "saved", and when you die you will be "perfected" anyway so why make much of an effort now. so discipleship is reduced to fitting into the behavioural norms of whatever group you happen to be a part of, with or without the extra pressure (often conveyed by guilt-tripping) of doing what you can to "save the lost". while wright states clearly that nothing we do can enhance our salvation, he highlights the verses (eg. 1 cor 15:58 "...knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain") which suggest that there is a lasting significance to what we do now (though he admits he "has no idea" exactly how this works). for me this makes more sense within an "earth renewal" framework, because there is some continuity between this world and the future perfected world. wright classifies this work of "building the kingdom" which we are to be participating in under the headings Justice, Beauty and Evangelism. i appreciate his inclusion in this of efforts for sustaining and enhancing the natural world, as well as artistic endeavours of every kind, as long as they are positive - pointers to beauty, hope and joy, not to ugliness, destruction and despair.

my main criticism of the book is wright's vague and unsatisfying description of the atonement, the necessary pre-cursor to the resurrection of jesus, which actually gives shape to what we have been saved from and saved to. he seems unwilling to commit fully to the "penal substitution" model and hints at leaning towards "christus victor", but is equally unwilling to disavow penal substitution, perhaps in fear of losing the large american market (yes, cynical I know), or maybe because he rightly perceives that christus victor does not tell the whole story and he thinks penal substitution is the only other option. In my view, if it was coupled with a girardian account of the atonement, and thus a more satisfying and meaningful understanding of what is wrong with the world and what god has and is doing about it in jesus, wright's description of the resurrection and it's meaning for our present life and the mission we have in the world would gain magnitudes of impact and power.

overall, i would recommend the book, as it does a good job of clearing up the muddled thinking of many/most christians about what lies ahead for us and for the world. more significantly, though, the book provides motivation and inspiration to seek active and positive endeavours for furthering the kingdom of god right here and now, each with our individual talents. To see god's mission for the world as making it the best it can be in justice and beauty, though this will never be fully realised in the present age, allows us to locate ourselves as being part of the latest chapter of the story of the bible. this gives a purpose and meaning to our lives that is hard to find with the old cliched slogans and formulations. the resurrection of jesus is a sure promise from god that he will accomplish His purpose, giving us a hope for the future that is indeed surprising.

fundamental re-thinking

my parents were moving house last year and a book on the 'take or throw?' pile caught my eye so I claimed it and just finished reading it recently.

the book is Protestant Christianity: Interpreted Through It's Development by John Dillenberger and Claude Welch (Charles Scripner & Sons, New York, originally published 1954).  i found it a very good read, especially because I knew very little about the details of the reformation and the subsequent theological, doctrinal and denominational developments and changes in protestantism.

what caught my eye especially was how similar previous centuries have been to our own in regards to (self-appointed) doctrinal purists (aka fundamentalists) going toe-to-toe with what would now be called 'liberal christians'.  i suppose it's inevitable for there to be a pendulum-swing aspect to any long-lasting 'movement' involving human beings, and i acknowledge the sincerity and even appropriateness of many of the pushes for change through the history of protestantism, but at the same time i'm discouraged at how little the thinking of protestant (especially evangelical) christianity has progressed, especially in the last 100 - 150 years.  consider the contemporary appropriateness of dillenberger and welch's summation of the fundamentalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century:

"... fundamentalism was from the beginning a lost cause, theologically speaking.  It was an intellectual rearguard action.  It was not simply an attempt to be faithful to the Christian tradition; it was an effort, in the face of the perplexities and shifting currents of a changing world, to fix Christianity in the mold of a particular doctrinal complex and world view.  The doctrinal complex to which fundamentalism clung so tenaciously was not that of a the ancient church, nor of the Reformation, nor of the Protestant development in general.  It was essentially akin to the hardened framework of Lutheran and especially Calvinistic scholasticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Only in the scholasticism had the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture been carried to such extremes; and in such doctrines as the atonement and the deity of Christ, fundamentalism (often unconsciously) assumed that the Protestant scholastics spoke for the entire tradition.  Moreover, in it's insistence that doctrine is irreformable, fundamentalism took over the seventeenth-century view of the relation of Christian faith to science and philosophy.  In it's own day, that view represented a significant attempt to bring religious, philosophical and scientific thought into harmony; but the effort to perpetuate that adjustment in the world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not only hopeless but violated the intent of scholasticism itself.

"At root, fundamentalism has been seeking to preserve a kind of certainty in a world of apparent confusion and flux - a kind of certainty which was simply no longer possible.  The movement was part of a general resistance to social change.  This was particularly evident in fundamentalism's commitment to legalistic views of personal morality (mostly of the nineteenth-century pattern) and it's hostility to the "social gospel." ... the extreme social conservatism was often paralleled by a suspicion of modern education because of it's "scientific, sceptical and secular influences."  Here, too, was an attempt to hold on to the familiar, the simple and safe patterns, in the face of new and bewildering problems which the old patterns were not designed to meet.

"Insofar as fundamentalism has been committed to this sort of program, it is hard to see how the movement can claim the allegiance of thoughtful persons."  (pg 230-231)

do the contemporary fundamentalist movements (neo-calvinism, et al) "claim the allegiance of thoughtful persons"?  the answer would have to be affirmative, but it seems to me that those people are only thoughtful within a tightly constrained and pre-determined system.  it is this general assumption that the inherited formulation of the fundamentals of the christian faith are set in stone that is the most discouraging thing of all to me, since it is exactly the intellectual weaknesses and inconsistencies of these doctrinal formulations which are repelling thoughtful people from the faith throughout the world.

but there are trickles of hope, especially, in my view, in the growing interest, even among protestants, in the ideas of rene girard and those who have expanded on girard's work such as james alison.  just yesterday i came across a conversation on religion, violence and (girard's) mimetic theory between james alison and american emerging church leader brian mclaren.  in his personal introduction at the beginning of the conversation, mclaren tells this anecdote:

"I would hesitate to mention this person’s name except that he recently passed away and so I don’t think he’d mind me mentioning his name. But a very respected Evangelical leader and scholar. I know there are a lot of almost cartoonish figures in the Evangelical world, but this was a sagely gentleman named Dallas Willard. Some of you may know his name. And Dallas and I became friends, and we were at an event together – in fact, we were kind of in a panel, something like this – and one of the questions to Dallas was, “What parts of our theology do you think we need to rethink as Evangelicals?” And Dallas, without a split second hesitation said, “Doctrine of scripture, doctrine of heaven and hell, and doctrine of atonement.” Well, I was not surprised that he said doctrine of scripture. That was one that I knew we needed to rethink. Doctrine of heaven and hell, I was not surprised he said that. I was very surprised he said doctrine of atonement because I hadn’t really thought about that doctrine yet. In Evangelical Christianity atonement is a very central and somewhat complicated formula that is very deeply involved with violence."

there is not much more fundamental than the "doctrine of scripture, doctrine of heaven and hell, and doctrine of atonement."  if even evangelical leaders such as dallas willard are calling for re-thinking of these things, there is indeed hope...

the rainbow spectrum

a while ago my wife and i were talking with a friend about the dsm v and the fact we can all find ourselves in it without too much searching.  i think its pretty well accepted these days that almost all the so-called pathologies or mental disorders are not binary phenomena but spectra.  in other words, its not a case of having the condition/disorder/whatever or not, but of a progressive line or spectrum, from mild to severe, along which we all sit somewhere, and along which we no doubt move one way or the other during the course of our lives.  so you could perhaps say that each person's personality is the intersection point of his or her position on all the different spectra.  i happen to be more towards the 'severe' end of both the obsessive compulsive spectrum and the autism spectrum (the two are probably related) than the 'average' person, but i'm able to function relatively successfully in society and am fairly confident i would be considered by most to be within the 'normal' range (though tending towards the fringes).

all well and good and non-controversial, but it got me to thinking about another phenomenon which we tend to think of as binary but which i wonder might actually be a spectrum: sexual orientation.  in other words, i wonder if people aren't either absolutely heterosexual or homosexual, but are all somewhere along a line between the two.

no doubt this idea will not be greeted with much enthusiasm, especially by those who identify as heterosexual, because to accept it is to agree that you are at least a little bit homosexual (similarly, those who identify as gay may not like the idea that they are to some degree heterosexual).  but i think it makes some sense, and provides a solution for a number of questions around sexual orientation.  for example, the spectrum idea would account for those who identify as bi-sexual as being near the middle of the 'sexual orientation' spectrum.  similarly, people who identify as heterosexual but are comfortable with engaging in threesomes involving another of their own gender would be closer to the middle of the spectrum than those who can't abide the thought of being naked in bed with anyone sharing the same kind of genitals as themselves.

more importantly, however, i think this 'sexual orientation spectrum' idea provides an explanation for the phenomenon of homophobia.  this is of course the psychological term for those who exhibit fear of or anger towards homosexuals.  but what exactly is the fear?  it can't be a sense of any physical threat posed by homosexuals, since they are very small in number compared to society at large, and have, for the most part, far less tendency towards violence.  so it must be some kind of internal threat that is being felt, a fear maybe that if you gets too close to a gay person the 'gayness' will somehow rub off, or that if you were propositioned by a gay person, somehow you wouldn't be able to refuse (similar to the fear of heights, which is not so much a fear of being far above the ground but of not being able to stop oneself from falling/jumping).  but why would a person have this fear if they didn't subconsciously (or even consciously) suspect that they have some tendency towards homosexuality - in other words, that they are somewhere towards the homosexual side of the sexual orientation spectrum (though of course never thought of in those terms).  to suspect that you have some level of homosexual attraction would quite naturally cause a great deal of insecurity as to your whole identity, based on the assumption that sexual orientation is a binary thing.  however, if sexuality was understood as a spectrum along which everyone has a naturally different place, it stands to reason that having some level of same sex attraction would no longer cause anxiety, but would even be expected.

i'm very aware that relating same-sex orientation to what many consider to be psychological 'defects' raises a host of issues, and probably will not be greeted kindly by either 'side'.  the first answer i would give is that i don't consider the kind of psychological spectra i'm talking about (eg. autism or ocd), as defects in any objective or fundamental sense.  people at the more extreme ends of these spectra do find life in 'normal' society more difficult, but that's not because they are 'defective' but because society isn't structured to make life easy for them.  in the same way, society historically, and still now in many parts of the world, has not been structured to make life easy for homosexuals, but has by and large considered them defective, and worthy of judgement and exclusion if not worse.

the other main issue, as i see it, raised by relating sexual orientation to psychological conditions, is the question of what determines a person's sexual orientation.  i think it's fairly well established that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to some people being further towards the extremes of psychological spectra such as autism than others.  so is it also true that where one sits on the 'sexual orientation' spectrum is determined by both nature and nurture?  obviously sexual orientation isn't a physical of physiological characteristic such as a measurable difference in a particular gland or organ in the body, or even of macro-level brain structure.  nor is it a chromosomal abnormality such as down syndrome.  the only other credible option is that it arises from a combination of the neural wiring and chemical composition of part, or connected parts, of the brain.  as such it must necessarily have a genetic basis but also be susceptible to environmental influences in the same way as psychological conditions such as autism.

i suppose what I'm trying to get at is that i don't think the 'sexuality spectrum' idea, or relating sexual orientation to certain psychological conditions that appear as spectra, should be an offense to either those who identify as homosexual or those who have some degree of autism (or ocd or whatever).  there just happens to be natural variability in the human make-up, due in large part to the enormous complexity of the human brain.  and so it is simply wrong to consider one's own make-up to be superior in a moral sense to anybody else's, or to judge others for what they are, or to try to 'normalise' them.

in conclusion, i must say that i am encouraged by the general lessening of the heat surrounding discussion of gay issues that seems to be happening (in australia at least).  the sexual revolution that in a significant way enabled the acceptance of gay people as equal and normal human beings has had a mixed impact to this point overall, as it seems all steps towards freedom must.  the battle of the sexes is still raging, men still need to protect their fragile egos by dominating and objectifying women, women still seek control by alternately hiding and showing off their bodies.  but the growing acceptance of homosexuality may be an indication that we are inching towards greater security as individuals in our own sexuality, which may (or may not) include an acceptance of a degree of homo-/hetero-sexual tendencies in ourselves (depending on our primary orientation), and i believe this can only be a positive thing for society and the world as a whole.

rhythm of conversation

i've just spent a bit of time going through some old un-published drafts, and found these excellent quotes about paul's conception of christian life from mark strom's great book Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community:

"The coherence Paul saw in Christ did not single out any one exegetical procedure for using the Old Testament. Nor did it predispose him to any one way of dealing with Graeco-Roman cultures. Nor again did it imply any single path of Christian experience. The imitation of the dying and rising of Christ was not an alternative moral code. Imitation required new wisdom about one's actions and choices. There was no single formula for working out the implications of weakness-strength, foolishness-wisdom, poor-rich, slave-free and suffering-joy in any new context. Paul framed each pair to provoke conversations about what it might mean to imitate Christ. They were not a means of securing conformity to new ideals for behavior.

"This point is crucial to understanding the rhythm of Paul's conversation. He was not interested in uniformity of behavior. Paul's own life embodied the dynamic transformations that he believed the Spirit sought to bring about within the ekklesiai. His teaching was provocative, not legislative. It avoided the pettiness of religious and legal controversies (cf. 2 Tim 2:14-26; Tit 3:9). Nor did he prescribe any single pattern for the gathering. His advice left room for spontaneity and diversity (1 Cor 14:26-33). Clearly, Paul did not proceed from the coherence of Christ to reduce experience, relationship and learning to intellectual abstractions and formulas. There remained an open-endedness about 'walking worthy of one's calling' (Gal 5:13,16; Eph 4:1; Phil 1:27; Col 1:10; 3:1-5,17; 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 1:11-12; 2:15). His message offered no formula to settle in advance which way to respond to contemporary intellectual and social patterns.

"New understanding for new circumstances emerged within the communities through conversation. Indeed, the power of the story of Christ only came to its fullness in the contingencies of social life. Paul, his colleagues, and the communities were each working out the message as they went. Yet even as his thought matured, Paul continued to show no interest in formulating final statements in the sense of the doctrinal debates and creeds of subsequent generations. He remained focused on specific people and contexts. New contexts continued to prompt new responses as Paul sought to remain open to the Spirit and to his own experiences and relationships to guide his thought." (pp.195-196)

and

"Paul's conversations bore the marks of his personality: pleading, strident, exasperated, affectionate, urgent, reflective, passionate and at times impatient. They bore the marks of his close knowledge of the popular intellectualism of his day and of the social systems of status and honor. If Paul had had his way, his ekklesiai would have remained creatively messy. But his opponents wanted neatness -- and they won. Twenty centuries later, we may look back amazed that we have drifted so far. Then again, perhaps we still don't get it. It remains profoundly difficult for leaders to let go of their need to control people. It is easier to impose order and conformity through prescribing belief and practice than to acknowledge the dignity and gifting of Christ's people. It is easier to disallow the conversation than to hear the hard questions. For many, it is easier to disallow the conversation than to join it." (p.197)

i don't think i can add anything to that, except to say i wholeheartedly agree and long for such an experience of christianity in conversation with others and the world around us. why is it so hard to find?