From the Lectionary for 6 August 2023 (Proper 13A)

Isaiah 55:1-3a (NRSV Updated Edition)

Hear, everyone who thirsts;
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
    and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
    listen, so that you may live.

Matthew 14:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Romans 8:35,37-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

~

"[W]hat does it mean to be looked at through eyes that only know abundance, for whom scarcity is simply not a reality, for whom there is always more? Think of the rupture this produces in my patterns of desire! “If you want more, there won’t be enough to go round,” or “There’s no free meal at the end of the universe,” or “Grab what you can before it all runs out,” or just the gloomy depressed “euugh” of disappointment with things, life, and so on not matching up to expectation, the way of being in the world and perceiving everything which the ancient Hebrews referred to as vanity, or futility.

"What does it look like to spend time in the regard of One for whom it is not, as the whole of our capitalist system presupposes, scarcity that leads to abundance by promoting rivalry, which we then bless and call competition? Rather it is a hugely leisured creative abundance that is the underlying reality, and an endless magis, “more,” is always on the way.

"What does it look like to spend time in the regard of one for whom daring and adventure, not fear and caution, underlie the whole project of creation, for whom everything that is is open-ended and pointing to more than itself, and for whom we are invited to share in the Other’s excitement and thrill, to want and to achieve crazy and unimaginable things?

"What is it like to sit in a regard which is bellowing at us “something out of nothing, something out of nothing”? Our pattern of desire says “Unnhh, nothing comes from nothing” and feels sorry for itself. Yet the heart of the difference between atheism and belief in God-who-is-not-one-of-the-gods is not an ideology, but a pattern of desire which thrills to “something out of nothing.”

...

"Well, these terms - deathlessness, abundance, daring and something out of nothing - are just a few of the sorts of phrase by which the Scriptures attempt to nudge our imagination into spending time undergoing a regard that is not the regard of the social other, one which has a wish, a longing, a heart that is for us, much more for us than we are for ourselves, one which we can trust to have our long-term interests at heart."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, p. 422-24

~

"Again here is the difference with the Mosaic story [of the quails in the wilderness] - in the Moses story the quails come, people can't get enough of them ... and a huge number of people die of excess quail eating - but here there is no excess eating, everyone is satisfied and there's a huge amount of fragments left over. And the fragments are collected up in twelve baskets, giving a sign obviously of the twelve tribes of Israel that have been fed by the real Moses, the one who has come to put right what Moses was never quite able to to get right. We'll see that compared a little bit later, Jesus walks across the sea either like Moses or across the Jordan like Joshua, and then we'll get another feeding but this time with the numbers indicating Gentiles.

"So what's going on here? Well the first thing of course is that faced with people in a place of hunger, people who are hungry for a sign, people who hadn't really understood Jesus's teaching in parables, he enacts a sign. He's not only generous in healing the sick but he enacts the sign of Moses, saying. 'Yes, I am the one who is going to bring to fulfilment what Moses was unable to do'. Because of that, he does show the abundance, the utter abundance, of God - nothing is held back. And the prophetic passage that's being fulfilled is exactly the one which we have in our first reading [Isaiah 55:1-3]. ...

"This is, if you like, the definition of something for nothing, something out of nothing, pure abundance, something that can be relied upon. But there's something that goes along with this. In the Isaiah passage it's not only, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread or labour for that which doesn't satisfy?” [but also] “Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; listen so that you may live.” This is a continuous element of Jesus's teaching: not by bread alone but by the word that comes from the mouth of God.

"So every activity becomes a sign of a much richer lesson. Are we going to be able to find ourselves not satisfied with physical feeling alone but beginning to allow ourselves to be satisfied by the sheer abundance and generosity of God - by, if you like, a changing of our mind that comes through listening such that we're able to rest peacefully with each other and with God. This of course will later become a prophecy of the Eucharist and that's how it will be understood over time but for the moment it's this extraordinary sense of there being a richness in the teaching that is even greater than the abundance of the food...

"[A]t the bottom of all this there is an abyssal love, a longing for us in our precariousness, in our weakness, a longing for us to receive a fullness - a fullness that is both physical and of understanding of heart, such that we can learn to rejoice and discover ourselves the loved children of God, who as Paul says, nothing can separate us from."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 18 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxnN89m16Uk)

[Source of quote from James Alison's 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/proper13a/]

From the Lectionary for 30 July 2023 (Proper 12A)

Matthew 13:44-52 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

~

"The first thing of course is that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. So someone has hidden it there's a little hint there that there's something slightly more mysterious going on. ... We must assume that it was hidden in the field and that the owner of the field didn't know about it, and that very very carefully the person who finds it does exactly what a good Jewish contemporary of Jesus would have done when finding such a treasure, which is not lifted it out. You hide it over of course to make sure that no one else saw it, but also you've glimpsed it - if you lift it out then there's a whole new legal ball game and you have to start discussing it with other people. But by hiding it over, you know it's there, you know something about the field the owner doesn't know - it's not his - and in your joy you go and sell all that you have and you buy that field. In other words, the treasure is something which you know about, that's there, which is not visible to anybody else, is not known about, something that has been hidden and it's worth your while to give everything in order to explore. ...

"Remember, in this first parable the kingdom of heaven is shown to be like the hidden treasure, the treasure hidden in the field. In other words, someone hiding something somewhere unknown is what sets off the process by which you can discover and then get yourself into a position of giving yourself completely away to the digging it up and finding out what it's about.

"In the second parable, which at first sight seems very like the first, it says, again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls... That one sounds a bit like the person with the treasure in the field - goes and sells all that he hasn't bought it - except that here the kingdom of heaven is not related to the treasure, it's related to the merchant: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant.” This kingdom isn't about [the] fine pearls. ... Here is this merchant in search of fine pearls on finding one pearl of great value he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

"Well please notice that if you're a merchant and you go and sell everything that you have and buy something, you cease to be a merchant! You're not able to take part in any more give and take... And here's the bizarre thing: it's got you! If you've sold everything you had in order to get this, this is not your property, you are its property, that's the bizarre feature. You cease to be able to be a merchant, ... the moment you get rid of absolutely everything in exchange for this, you can't partake in trade anymore. It's got you. You become, if you like, the setting which shows it off, that's all.

"And that's the really interesting thing about this, is that here, rather than us being, if you like, the people who are taken inside a process of working out ourselves what the kingdom of heaven is, here we're shown that the kingdom of heaven is looking for us. And this is the remarkable thing: in this [parable] the kingdom of heaven finds a pearl, gives everything he has away completely for the sake of the pearl, and then actually becomes identified with the pearl - he can't get rid of it without getting rid of himself. It's everything he's got, there's this complete identification with the pearl.

"The suggestion being that that's what the kingdom of heaven looked like, it's God completely identifying with us and giving us a value that we had no idea that we had the value. The value is discovering ourselves in the regard of this 'merchant' who gave everything up in order to become completely associated with us, such that he actually ceased to be a merchant, ceased to be able to be a a bargain hunter looking for better things. He's where he's found us, and that's it, that's who he is to be hereafter. So being on the inside of the process here is discovering what it is to be a pearl who has been found, rather than discover the process of being the finder of the pearl.

"Then we have, “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea,” and in the translation we have, it says, “and caught fish of every kind.” It's actually not what it says in Greek at all. In the [Greek] it says, “Again the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet,“  so not any net - a dragnet, that's the kind of thing you draw drag along the bottom of the sea - “that was thrown into the sea and caught or gathered together every kind.” So the word fish does not appear in the Greek. ... Well here's the interesting thing: because of the word fish we're very inclined to miss I think what's going on here, which is that if you put a dragnet it brings things of every kind.

"If you were a fisherman in Galilee or in Israel at the time, in Palestine at the time, you would be very aware that there are many sorts of things that you can bring out of the waters, especially with the dragnet, some of which are inert, inanimate objects, but there will be, of the living things that you might find, there would be three quite distinct sorts: things that were edible, things that were inedible and things that were, although edible, in principle impure, for instance, any shrimps lobsters, crabs that you might come across, the crustaceans - these are all impure. ... But this dragnet mysteriously is quite unbothered by all that, this dragnet goes along the bottom brings up everything, it gathers things of every sort.

"“And when it was full they drew it ashore sat down,“ so there's a nice notion of this slow process, “and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” And it's quite interesting that the words here for good and bad are the same words which Jesus uses earlier in Matthew's Gospel to refer to a tree which produces good fruit and the tree which produces bad fruit, those are the terms that are being used. In other words, it's something to do with a form of growth into goodness and the form of failure, to grow into badness. And then we get at the end of the age the angels will come and do all the separating. In other words, as we heard in the parable of the wheat and the [weeds] last week, here we have the notion that the separation is only to be done by angels, and at the end of the age. We are not to be involved in that, we are part of everything that is being gathered together - without the usual forms of discrimination, that's the surprising thing, you know. Where's the category of impure fish, impure crustaceans? No, it's not here, everything is being gathered in here. And then the badness will be nothing to do with their previous status. ... Process is all: the gathering of everything and the refusing to discriminate before time.

"Then Jesus turns to them, “Have you understood all this?“ They answered, “yes.“ And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who's been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.“ Well the phrase, “who has been trained for the kingdom“ literally means “who is being discipled to the kingdom.“ It's a passive, and it suggests that it's the kingdom that is doing the 'dragging' into the process of learning to make proper discernments as we go through whatever situation [in which] we find ourselves.

"This process of being dragged into the middle of the things - the scribe who is being trained to the kingdom - is one who finds himself in the middle of these processes - the process of finding something hidden, covering it over with joy; the process of discovering yourself valued above everything by one who has given everything up in order to become identified with you; the process of being brought in along with everything else without discrimination long before there's any kind of separation. Finding ourselves on the inside of that is what we hope and we pray [teaches] us to be capable of bringing out of our treasure house things old and things new."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 17 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S4fIzOS2rM)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper12a/]

From the Lectionary for 23 July 2023 (Proper 11A)

Romans 8:18-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labour, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

...

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

~

"For me this is one of the wonderful parables where Jesus shows that he has what I call 'the intelligence of the victim'. That's to say he knows exactly how victimary thinking works, how it traps us, and how the Kingdom is getting us out of victimization and victimary thinking. First of all, as the tale is told, it describes [that] an enemy comes and sows these things which look just like the real thing. Now, first people's reaction is, 'Oh, I wonder who the enemy is. What should we do, how should we deal with the enemy?' The parable pays no attention to that at all. ... What is it that the enemy has done? The enemy has created a place where things that look like each other are potentially dangerous to each other.

"In other words, if you can create a situation where each of us thinks of ourselves as different from the other, and is on the watch out for how bad that other is, we will constantly be struggling with them. We will know that we are the good and the other bad, and we'll be out to fight them. [But] the more similar we are, the more we'll be inclined to be very careful lest we are destroying ourselves [as we are] destroying the others. In other words, Jesus is saying, “Yep, I can see exactly how fights work and quickly build up rivalry over against each other. This always leads to good versus bad, and you always pre-empt the real thing. The real thing is: be aware that you're all very very similar to each other. You've much much more in common than seems to be the case. Any clever enemy can cause you to fight amongst yourselves and therefore destroy all of you. But what it will look like to be the good fruit will be: the people who didn't judge the difference of the others, but saw themselves as the same as the others, will take time to work out what's going on, will start to bear good fruit over time and will be quite content for any verdict that needs to be made to be left in the hands of someone else.” This is the reverse of victimary thinking it takes a long time for us to stop being worried about who is casting the rivalry amongst us, and actually to get out of being rivals.

...

"[W]hat matters [is] that every single one of the points is a way of distracting us from seeking resolution, meaning, who's good and who's bad. Now leave [them in] the hands of another who will do things in his own time in his own way. ... At the very end of Jesus's rather beautiful words, he says the Son of Man will send his angels and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin - that's all 'scandala', all stumbling blocks - and all evildoers. In other words, we have to watch out for 'scandala', the ways in which we obsessively depend on enemies, obstacles, in order to give ourselves identity. It's scandala which turn us into evildoers. And as we watch out for those, let our Lord weed out, as it were, the 'scandala' at the end. 'Now thrown in with the furnace of fire where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth' - that's all that is scandal is, it's locking yourself constantly into weeping and gnashing of teeth, it's something that goes on and on and on. That's what's terrible about obsessive things, you can't get rid of it.

"'But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father' is the quote from the prophet Daniel. These are people who will have been through the grind, who have allowed themselves to have their scandals undone. And as I hope and pray all of us are learning to become sons and daughters, seeing our similarity in our sisters and brothers who 'apparently' are so unlike us but who share with us all the senses of shame and flight from which our Lord came to set us free."

- James Alison, from video "Homily: Sunday 16 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tlm3-ZwzjM)

~

"It is very difficult for us to imagine the huge change of perception underway here, but it could be described as the change from a perception of a god in which the deity has a double face, saying “yes, but…” or “yes, and no”, or “yes, if…”, to the perception according to which God only and unconditionally says “yes”. Another way of putting it is as a change from a god who is both good and bad, who loves and who punishes, to a perception of God who is only love, in whom there is no darkness at all. Jesus had begun to teach this to his disciples, but it had been incomprehensible to them until after the resurrection.

"Consider Jesus’ teaching that God makes the sun to shine on good and bad alike, and causes the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. This has the effect of removing God completely from the sphere of reference of our human morality, excluding him from any participation in judging and condemning humans. The same thing happens in the parables: we are not to separate the wheat from the tares (Matt 13:24-30) in this life, because we cannot judge adequately, and God’s judgement has nothing to do with our own."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 42-43

~

"When we talk about what Jesus came to do, did and is doing in our midst, we are talking about what comes upon us as an alteration of the axis of Creation rather than as a resolution of a moral problem. Our being brought close into the life of God by Jesus living out being a forgiving victim in our midst has this as its effect: that we perceive simultaneously where we used to be heading, into an ever-shrinking world run by revenge, envy and death; and where we are instead finding ourselves drawn: into being forgiven, forgiving, and thus being opened up into true, insider knowledge of creation as it unfolds dynamically."

"I hope you can see the sense of living on the cusp of two realities: creation is referred to as something which has been opened up and which is drawing us in to it with great zest. And at the same time as something which turns out to have been spinning round and turning in on itself in futility, unaware of what it was destined to become. The axis-turning moment, which is the present moment, in which we are living, feels like an upheaval full of suffering, which is in fact an act of childbirth. Through it, the Creator, “I AM” is bringing into being secondary I AMs, sons and daughters, the “gods” we were promised we would be, as our very bodies are drawn into being insider sharers of the life of God."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pgs. 493, 502

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel and 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/proper11a/]

From the Lectionary for 16 July 2023 (Proper 10A)

Isaiah 55:10-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Matthew 13:1-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”

Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:

‘You will indeed listen but never understand,

    and you will indeed look but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
    and their ears are hard of hearing,
        and they have shut their eyes,
        so that they might not look with their eyes,
    and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and turn—
    and I would heal them.’

“But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

~

"Jesus was indeed teaching about the arrival of something which is, for his listeners, very weird. That’s why he has to teach in parables. And please note the justification which he gives for teaching in parables. He quotes Isaiah, when he says:

“Listen as you will and you will not understand; look as you will and you will not see, because this people’s heart has waxed gross. They are dull of hearing and have closed their eyes against seeing and their ears against hearing lest they be turned to me that I may heal them.” (Mt 13:14-15 quoting Is 6:9-10; cf. Mk 4:12 and Lk 8:9-10)

"That is, there is no direct understanding of the kingdom: it is a strange thing, and people’s minds are dulled, which is exactly what we would expect as a result of what we’ve seen about the human condition, our own included, shot-through with death.

"It’s worth our while to stop a little to see what this teaching in parables consists in. The parables are highly creative little stories sprung from Jesus’ imagination and have as their aim helping people to overcome their being blocked-up with respect to God and his project. However, behold, they are two edged weapons, capable of different interpretations. It is perfectly possible to interpret the greater part in terms of a violent God. In that case the parables only serve to reinforce what people already think anyway, and they move on no further. What I’m suggesting is that this would be the ‘dull-hearted’ reading of the parables.

"At the same time it is perfectly possible to read the same parables as obliging us to overcome this vision. This means that there is an interpretation for those who understand, and that what they understand will increase exponentially, and there is another interpretation for those who do not understand, so that what little they do understand is in the process of being lost, for they will get into an ever more tied-up and painful understanding of the things of God."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 83-84

~

"Please notice that one of the key things that has been assumed here, silently, is the work of the ploughing [which in 1st century Palestine was done not before but after the seeds were scattered on the soil]. The ploughing is going to go on.

"So what's Jesus talking about here? He's asking people to listen to an image with which they'd be very familiar, but it's also an image which, if they have ears to hear, they'll understand perfectly well is an image that comes from [Isaiah 55].

"So supposing you start listen to this parable, a simple description of agricultural reality, but actually here there is a promise - this is the promise that God's Word will produce fruit, and it will produce fruit absolutely abundantly... So behind this there is the image of someone who is speaking, and whose word will produce fruit, and the question is: how involved in it are we going to be? How are we going to be involved in it?

"Now, when Jesus was finished [speaking to the people], the disciples come up and said, why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered, “To you it's been given to know the mystery.” I think that the mystery is this transfiguration from within of all the signs that are natural to us into signs of the incoming King, the new Temple, the crucified Lamb, the Lamb standing as one standing on the throne, who is coming in and who is in fact going to be the new sower [who] makes everything come alive. It's a transfiguration of all that. So something of that, he's saying, “you're on the inside of that process, that's what I've been preparing you for.”

...

"And so Jesus then says, incidentally what I'm telling you is what's been known ever since the great Isaiahan vision, because the passage he quotes, ... he's quoting from what happened immediately after Isaiah had his wonderful Temple vision in Isaiah 6, where he sees the Lord high and lifted up on the throne, and he hears the voice of the Lord, who tells him to go and preach ... but warns him that he's sending him out to preach to a people who “seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” That's us.

"So strangely enough what Jesus is doing is saying, “I am the fulfillment of that promise, and I am speaking precisely into the midst of these people who are bound [to not know], and the whole question is to what extent are [the disciples], you, me, ... going to allow ourselves to be sucked into the ploughing over of the earth until we find ourselves able to take part in the rediscovery of the signs that are pointing in a completely different direction, things we take for granted as part of our systems of security undone, and thus finding ourselves born into belonging to a completely new way of being together, sharing together, loving together. ...

"So for me this is the greater challenge: at what depth are we prepared to allow ourselves to be ploughed into the earth, so as to become part of the bearers of the sign of the kingdom?"

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 15 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeVj6YKeWEU)

[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/proper10a/]

From the Lectionary for 9 July 2023 (Proper 9A)

Zechariah 9:9 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
    triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Matthew 11:25-30 (NRSV Updated Edition)

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

~

In his homily for "Sunday 14 in Ordinary Time Year A" (as this week is called in the Roman Catholic lectionary), James Alison points out the apparent contradiction in the Zechariah verse above: at least the way we normally see things, one who is "triumphant and victorious" is not one who is "humble and riding on a donkey," the two images don't fit together in our concepts.  He also highlights that the Matthew passage above comes right after the story of John the Baptist sending messengers to Jesus to ask him if he is indeed the Messiah, because Jesus is not acting in the "triumphant and victorious" way that John expects the Messiah should act.

This story in Matthew 11 is followed by Jesus comparing certain contemporary towns with ancient cities which had 'mythical' destruction stories, saying that if "the deeds of power" done by Jesus had been done in those ancient cities the people would have repented. Jesus is trying to convey to them that the way of the Father is not violence and destruction of the wicked, but a meek and humble man displaying true divine "power" which is entirely non-violent, gentle and life-giving.

I also think that the link between the two paragraphs of the Matthew text is significant: it is in Jesus knowing the Father that he is the one who can give rest to the weary and heavy laden. The way of Jesus, the 'yoke' of Jesus, is the way of coming to discover the utter gentleness and unconditional love of the Father, in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5), from whom we need fear no condemnation or punishment, in whom we can find true and complete rest for our souls, free of any threat, or any need to perform or hide who we really are.

~

"“At that time Jesus declared, 'I thank thee Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes.” He's saying, “Do you know, actually I realize that no one is gonna get who I am. People seriously are expecting something to come with violence. It would make sense to them if I were to go all 'Sodom and Gomorrah' on them. They seem to be unable to understand that it's tiny, little, gentle, peaceful bringing things in being. That completely breaks their oppositional bindings because it shows them to be completely moot. Those are the things that show that I am the Creator. ... Not even John the Baptist [gets it], not the people among whom I was doing all these works. Tiny little babies get it, they haven't yet reached adult complication, but everyone else is stuck in notions of good and bad and violence. It's difficult for them to see that I am bringing things into being for them on their behalf and that this is what the Father looks like. He is showing people, through me, what He's like. It's only if I share with those people what I am doing that they will get a glimpse of who the Father really is.”

"It's this astounding gentleness that we find so hard to get. So then he says, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” He's saying  all of us tied up in our complexities are fighting about things, including our desperate keenness to be good. He says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” ... 'Lowly' is the same word which is used both of the humble one coming on the donkey and of meek Moses - Moses was the meekest. Jesus is saying, “You want to know what the real meekness behind Moses' meekness looks like? This is it. I'm not here to put demands on you. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. You're not going to be ridden by a foreign invader, you're not going to find yourselves forced into becoming someone you are not by having to obey things that are extrinsic to you. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. You will be ... indwelt by my Spirit, which will enable you to become even more who you are than you were able to think of. And this will be done so gently that even you will find it difficult to imagine the sign of work in you, bringing you to life - such is the gentleness of my Father."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 14 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbhfOP8Efw)

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/]