From the Lectionary for 3 March 2024 (Lent 3B)

John 2:13-22 (NRSV)

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

~

"It is Lent three on our journey to Holy week and the gospel text has switched from St. Mark to the Gospel of John. In John’s gospel the cleansing of the temple occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than the end. In the other three gospels the ruckus at temple is the turning point where the temple authorities decide Jesus must be killed and it is very near the end of his ministry and close to the Crucifixion. He is threatening the Temple authority’s power by declaring them unnecessary. How is he doing this? He is saying God loves all people, has no wrath toward them and therefore does not need or want them to sacrifice animals, birds, their children nor any other creature to appease him. He didn’t need to be appeased. If this was true, if Jesus was right, or if the people began believing Jesus, the Temple would be unnecessary and it’s priests and administrators out of business.

...

"[Anthony Bartlett] writes: “What renders the Temple redundant is forgiveness: if we humans forgive, i.e. respond nonviolently, then necessarily there will be no need for Temple and we will be one with the forgiveness/nonviolence of the Father. Forgiveness deconstructs and replaces sacrifice.” [Seven Stories: How to Study and Teach the Nonviolent Bible, pg. 189]

...

"The sixth story of the seven that Tony says shaped how human’s think was entitled “The Temple and its Deconstruction.” Our lectionary passage from John traces the way Jesus announced the deconstruction, the taking apart of the Temple, and all other sacrificial institutions. ‘Temple’ is a worldwide human institution that produces the ‘holy’ through killing/sacrifice. I want to use Tony’s words to try to explain what Jesus was doing when he disrupted the temple:

“John’s description highlights both the expulsion of the animals and the money changers. What is going on? In both cases Jesus is bringing the actual operation of the Temple to a halt. Jesus is not simply ‘clearing’ the Temple, or ‘cleansing’ it, he is rendering sacrifice impossible. If there are no animals, there are no sacrifices. If there is no money to buy the animals, again no sacrifice.” [Seven Stories, pg. 187]

"Do you see how far this is from an angry Jesus losing his temper? This is something way, way bigger than that. From the beginning we have made God in our own image and made him angry because we have been angry. We were rivalrous and jealous toward each other and projected that onto God. Since we feel that way toward others surely God feels that way for us. Since we have seen God as wrathful and envious of us, we have attempted to appease God so that God will be good to us and let us live. The Temple is the institution that carries out this transaction. People used their scarce and hard earned money to buy cattle, sheep and doves that would then be slaughtered and burned on the altar so that the one who bought these creatures would be safe from misfortune or disease caused by an angry God who hadn’t been paid off. But if God is not angry, and maybe even forgiving, this is not necessary.

"Jesus plugs up the machinery of sacrifice. He doesn’t cleanse it as though once cleansed it can be used again. He is not clearing the Temple as though the problem had been its overcrowding with commercial interests and animal dung. He is telling the world the Temple has seen its day and Jesus is its replacement.

“The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

"Jesus is the new temple. Instead of allowing us to believe God wrathful and in need of being paid off to placate his wrath (like being shaken down by the Mafia), Jesus undercuts the whole thing by showing us God is not only not wrathful but nonviolent, one who not only loves us when we behave but forgives us when we misbehave. The forgiving body of Jesus whom God raised up in three days is the new temple. With Jesus being raised in three days, relationship is restored all around and none are lost. The human and the divine are on the same page and there is no gap between them that needs to be appeased. As Tony says, “forgiveness deconstructs and replaces sacrifice.” This new temple is not separate from the world but fills it completely. No one is excluded. There is no inner and outer chamber. Jesus as Temple is for all people. This temple doesn’t take life, it gives it."

- Thomas L. Truby, from "The Temple Becomes a Person," sermon delivered on March 4, 2018 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Truby-Lent3-2018-The-Temple-Becomes-a-Person.pdf)

~

"So the Jews - that's the Temple authorities - said to him, the translation here says, “What sign can you show us for doing this.” Interestingly, [in the Greek] ... it's not saying, “Okay, you've done this, now give us a sign." It's saying, “What is the sign that you are showing us that you are doing these things.” They want him to interpret for them what he's been doing. What he's been doing is fairly obviously a bringing together of a series of Messianic fulfilment prophecies and naturally they want to know how that goes. It's not a stupid question. ... Their first reaction, the first direction is: Hmm, we know what this means and wonder who he thinks he is who's doing these things, or what account he gives of what he's doing. In other words, there is both wisdom and cynicism and suspicion and all of these things at once in their reaction.

"And Jesus says to them, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Now again our translations mislead: in the beginning of this [passage], it says he comes into the Temple, and ... the word Temple there, 'heeron', refers to, if you like, the Temple compound: the whole of the gated area that included the places of slaughter, the places for meeting, the Portico of Solomon and also the actual rather small Temple building ... But here Jesus answers: destroy this Temple - this 'naós', that means, that's referring only to the small bit, the nave, the sanctuary if you like - and in three days I will raise it up.

"Now, this perhaps gives us a hint of why when he was addressing the people earlier he was particularly annoyed with those who were selling the doves, because if you remember at his baptism the Holy Spirit had come upon him like a dove indicating that he was now the sanctuary, the place of piety, the real place where God's piety would be shown and worshipped. And that he had specifically rejected those who were selling the doves - the kind of piety that could be bought and that was especially the kind of piety that was made available to the poor - in other words it exploited the poor - that gave them access to this sanctuary, he was particularly annoyed with that. ... In other words, abusing the poor for the sanctuary of the Lord. And of course, what he is and who he is speaking is the sanctuary of the Lord.

"So he's saying, “Destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will build it up.” Actually, he says, “raise it up,” he uses the language of resurrection rather than actual physical building unlike in the synoptic Gospels where it's the physical building that he uses. ... And then it says but he was speaking of the Temple, the sanctuary, of his body. He's fulfilling what is said in Psalm 40, “You have said holocaust and sacrifice I do not want, and so I said here am I in my body.” He's speaking of the Temple of his body.

"“After he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this.” In other words, they didn't understand the sign any more than the Jewish authorities. “And they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” What scripture? I put it to that the scripture is the one that his disciples remembered: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” In other words, they are realising that what he is doing, the whole of his project has been the coming in of the zealous God who loves people for a thousand generations, and that his coming in is actually going to consume him literally, in the sense in which a holocaust or a sacrifice was consumed. And that was how he was going to rebuild the house, by becoming the Temple, the sacrifice, the altar, the victim, the priest and enabling all of us to share in that. We are going to find ourselves living in the Temple made without hands."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2jCGnIhzXc)

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent3b/]

From the Lectionary for 25 February 2024 (Lent 2B)

Mark 8:31-38 (NRSV)

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

~

"Vv. 35-37, “life” is a translation of psychē, which can be translated as “soul” or “self,” but is translated as “life” in all four instances in these verses. How do these verses relate to Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”? What if we used “self” in translating these verses?

“For those who want to save their self will lose it, and those who lose their self for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their self? Indeed, what can they give in return for their self?”

"I am reminded of a scene near the beginning of the movie Gandhi, where Gandhi is trying to help others understand nonviolent resistance:

“I am asking you to fight. To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow. But we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice. And it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then, they have my dead body. Not my obedience.”"

- Paul Nuechterlein, Exegetical Note from the Girardian Lectionary page (link below)

~

"Peter, like most of Christendom after him, refuses to accept this clear revisioning of the meaning of Messiah. . . . The problem is that Peter remains loyal to the traditional Messianic script that affirms the “myth of redemptive violence,” in which the hero prevails over the enemy through superior and “righteous” force. With this oldest lie Satan rules history, as nations and peoples invoke God while they destroy their enemies through “just wars” and crusades. Against this is pitted the Human One’s strategy of nonviolence, which understands that the enemy is violence itself.

...

"The cross was not a religious icon in first-century Palestine, nor was “taking up the cross” a metaphor for personal anguish. Crucifixion had only one connotation: It was the vicious form of capital punishment reserved by imperial Rome for political dissidents. Crosses were a common sight when Mark wrote, since there was a Jewish insurrection under way. In contrast to Judean nationalists who were recruiting patriots to “take up the sword” against Rome, Mark’s Jesus invited disciples to “take up the cross.”

"The rhetoric of “self-denial,” in turn, should be understood not in terms of private asceticism but in the context of a political trial. Under interrogation by state security forces, admitting allegiance to “Yahweh’s sovereignty” would result in charges of subversion in a world where Caesar alone claimed lordship. Self-denial is about costly political choices."

- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor; “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pp. 101-2

~

"This is a powerful congregation. We have power by virtue of our education, our relative wealth in the world, our privilege in society, our voice. It can be very tempting - all too tempting - to seek nothing more than charity. Charity is a start, but it can take us to a dangerous place in which we release some portion of our resources in order to get more power. We maintain a death grip on the unjust privilege that makes us wealthy, that gives us the illusion of control, and then we give away just enough to feel generous without seriously compromising our privilege.

"The way of the Cross - Jesus’ way of life - calls us to let go of that. Jesus’ way calls us to be honest about the power we have - both the worldly power we’ve got because of our skin color, our gender, our social class, our education, our birth in the most powerful nation in the world, and the spiritual power we have as a community upon which God has breathed the Spirit - and then to let all of that pour out - “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24) - to empower the poor.

"We are called not only to make sure that the most marginalized have a place at the table, but also to recognize whose table it is. The table around which we gather belongs to Jesus the Christ, who saw, as Peter in this Sunday’s gospel did not, that true power is made perfect in self-giving love, that the way of abundant life leads to the Cross. And the symbol of humanity’s brokenness, of power corrupted to become domination, becomes a sign of peace, and freedom, and life."

- Sarah Dylan Breuer, from a sermon for Lent 2B (https://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2006/03/second_sunday_i.html)

~

"[This is] the central point where the shape of discipleship finally becomes clear [in Mark's Gospel], and what we're going to see from now on is Jesus will now turn his face back to Jerusalem and start heading there. The second half of the Gospel is this long way of the cross, which is designed to teach and prepare the group of disciples to bear witness to how Jesus did it so that they, after the resurrection, would be able to bear witness to us and enable us to enter into that following."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 24th in Ordinary Time 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPJb8x4PU8Q)

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein and Ched Myers quotes and link to Sarah Dylan Breuer blog, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent2b/]

From the Lectionary for 18 February 2024 (Lent 1B)

1 Peter 3:18-22 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Mark 1:9-15 (NRSV)

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

~

"The Gospel account is very interesting: “And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.” “Cast” Jesus out into the wilderness. So again we have the Spirit doing things which we don't normally associate with the Spirit. But here, what is the Spirit doing? The Spirit is causing Jesus to re-enact Adam. Adam was cast out, driven out - the Greek verb is almost exactly the same - of the garden, after he'd failed the testing from Satan. He failed. But here Jesus is driven out, so he undergoes the expulsion first and then he's going to live into the period of the garden so as to become Adam, and he's going to be getting right what Adam got wrong. That's very much what's in the background here, a little hint of that. And what is ... the link between this wilderness and the expulsion? Well, the wilderness is the route back and it's the place of sifting so that the one coming back can be sifted through from all the things that caused them to be remained outside.

...

"So here, what we have, is Jesus going through the being sifted on behalf of all of us, on behalf of Adam, on behalf of the people of Israel, on behalf of the whole of humanity along with Noah - is going through all of this being sifted so that he is able not just to receive the Word but to be the Word, which is what he is to be. He is to be the Word, and it's him going to be speaking that into being, and revealing through the whole of his life, being shown that he is the Holy One of God, the actual internal logic and structure of creation. That's what hinted at in these stories.

"St Peter talks about this in the same way... He refers to [the flood] as a prefiguration of our baptism. Remember that baptism means undergoing the wrath, death in advance so as to be able to live freely and openly as part of a son or daughter, alive in an entirely peaceful, an entirely violence-free creation, one brought into being with that promise of the covenant of peace for humans, for animals, learning how to live together as God's image which was what God commanded Noah to do.

"So, lets just think a little bit about this sifting, because sifting, if you like, is the work of Lent for us...  It's a question of working through all the ways in which we are involved in fight or flight, shame, gossip, violence, throwing out the good one, not trusting the goodness that is before us but complaining and wanting to shrink back into lesser selves. And Lord alone knows how each of us has a history of this, a history of not having been able to stand up and become the human being we are called to be.

"This I think is what Lent is about: us accompanying our Lord as he goes through the sifting that will enable him to become the true Adam, the first High Priest, the one who shares his priesthood and thus his good conscience with us, so that we may have the conscience of sons and daughters of God, being able to step out of the violence, the corruption, the hatred, the depression, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of loss - all the ways in which those things grinds us down - and start to become, instead, the bearers of the Word, the livers of the Word, the reflectors, if you like, the witnesses, of the true dynamic of creation made utterly alive."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the First Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1yAfj-O8mU)

[For discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/lent1b/]

From the Lectionary for 11 February 2024 (Transfiguration Sunday, Year B)

Mark 9:2-10 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling bright, such as no one on earth could brighten them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

2 Corinthians 4:3-6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing clearly the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

~

"What is the glory of the Lord?  Is it that Jesus is hugely powerful and could destroy us all if he wanted?  This is how many Christians portray him—like Superman shed of his Clark Kent glasses, business suit and paten leather shoes.  Suddenly he is sporting red and blue tights with a cape and mask and we can see his muscles rippling as he soars through the air faster than a speeding bullet.

"I think Mark is giving us a hint when he tells us that Jesus takes them up the mountain six days after he announced his coming suffering, death and resurrection.  Six days is incomplete and calls for a seventh to complete it.  It’s like saying “Puff the Magic Dragon that lived by the____.  If you know the song you have to say “sea” to complete it.  The same is true of the glory of the Lord.  It starts on the mount of Transfiguration but it reaches its completion and finality somewhere else.  And that place is the hill of Golgotha on the far side of Lent.  Just before Lent begins we go to a high mountain and see Jesus’ glory as he is about to go into the valley of Lent before again ascending on a cross on the other side.  The Cross is where the glory of the Lord is fully seen and finally completed.  The Cross is Jesus’ glory!

"But here is the question.  Was Jesus glorifying himself when he went to the cross?  Was it some sort of slam dunk that had everyone enthralled?  I don’t think so.  When we put Jesus in this context suddenly we see the glory of Jesus not as self promotion but self-giving.  He went to the cross to show us where we are stuck and what we must do to become unstuck.  He did this because he loved us.  He died to teach us to stop killing.

"Now we see that the dazzling one dazzles with his infinite capacity to love us.  We have begun to grasp that there is nothing we can do to prevent him from loving us.  Even if we murder him, he still forgives us and loves us.  This is a white whiter than any bleach on earth can make pure white.  It goes beyond anything we humans know or can do.  His tenderness is absolute and his non-violence has no limit.  This is his glory. His glory finds its completion on the Cross.  The transfigured glory of Jesus is his limitless self-giving.

...

"We know about this!  We are discovering it!  Our love may not be as deep as Jesus’ but we follow him by going as deep as we can.  We know it is sacrificial self-giving that counters and subverts the violent god of this world.  We have learned this from Jesus who modeled it on the Cross and lived it in the world.  When the cloud overshadows the three disciples, the voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, sermon from February 19, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Transfiguration-Listen-to-Him-2012.doc)

~

"Now we come to, really, the center at the middle of Mark's Gospel, Jesus' transfiguration. And we get a key word - beloved - which had also last come just before Jesus went out into the wilderness. At Jesus baptism, he heard a voice which said, “You are my beloved son” - agapetos. And here on the Mount of Transfiguration that is going to be the key word, beloved.

...

"So, then a cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud there comes a voice: “This is my son, the beloved.” - agapetos - “Listen to him.” Okay, so here we have curiously the center of what is expected to be shown to them, this strange mystery of dying and rising, which is what this is supposed to be about, which is what they hadn't understood before and still won't get to understand, and which God is trying to get through to them is about to come into their midst.

"And there's no question  that it refers to the Genesis [story of the command to sacrifice Isaac]. It refers to “your son, your beloved son.” (Gen. 22:2)  Now let's just remember something about the Genesis text... The Genesis text, the sacrifice of Isaac, is a terrible, scandalous text as we have it now, and it requires us to do a good deal of hard work to be able to imagine it as what it actually was, which was deliberately and from the beginning a prophetic text, undoing the world of child sacrifice.

"In it, immediately Abraham is taken out as a test. He sees from afar the place where the sacrifice is going to be. And the place where the sacrifice is going to be here is also going to be the place on which Solomon is going to found the temple. In other words, what does he see in the distance? He sees in the distance the place where a temple based on the sacrifice of lambs instead of humans is going to be set up. In other words, the place where Moses's redemptive lamb religion is going to replace the older religion, in which some people at least thought they were justified in sacrificing their firstborn.

"When Isaac, reasonably enough, noticing that there isn't a victim as he's taken up the hill asks his dad what's going to happen, Abraham says, “God will himself provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son.” God is a third person it's referred to as Elohim. But all of this, of course, is before the Moses revolution in which God is “I AM.” And it's an angel from I AM who, theoretically,  Abraham has never heard of, it says in the book of Exodus quite clearly: by my name, I AM, I did not  prefer to refer to myself to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, I had other names for them. But I AM speaks as it were from Moses's future into Abraham's past and countermands the sacrifice.

"And remember that the very same phrase that I've just recited for you: “God will provide, God himself will provide the lamb for sacrifice, my son,” if it's I AM who's saying that, then it is I AM will provide Myself for sacrifice, the lamb, my son. In other words, it's a prophecy of the One who is going to give himself up as an act of self-providing so that we never have to be involved in the world of sacrifices again. So there's already the hint of that in the I AM, God undoing the Elohim God's instruction.

"And of course, this is part of what is being fulfilled and Jesus is actually the acting out of God giving himself as a lamb, his Son himself to be the sacrifice. This is what Jesus is saying. He's saying, “Yes this is what's going to happen, this is going to be a gift for you. And what your life is going to look like is entering into that  gift, that's what's going to be made possible. Now, how could they have understood this? How can we understand this? it's immensely difficult to understand  that God gave himself a sacrifice to us, undoing our need for sacrifices in order to establish our stability our security and all that. Not because God needed sacrifice, but because we need sacrifices, such is our fear and our dangerousness to each other. And that he's entering into that space to take us out of it, and to enable us.

"“Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” Okay, so the vision that's attempted to complexify what they were about to see vanishes. Now they're left just with a human being - Jesus. “And as they were coming down the mountain he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” In other words: don't attempt to explain all this until this actually happened, then you can find yourselves on the inside. ...

"All of this is about rising from the dead. What [the disciples are] being asked to do, what we're being asked to do, ... is to enter into the dynamic and wonder what it is that God is bringing us to life, what that's going to look like."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLRs17xyFqA)

[Source of link to Thomas and Laura Truby sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/transfigb/]

From the Lectionary for 4 February 2024 (Epiphany 5B)

Isaiah 40:27-31 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint
    and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted,
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.

Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

~

"[...] God is outside the system. ... This God is the creator “of the ends of the earth.” [Is. 40:28] Not only that, but God “gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless” (Is. 40: 29). Far from creating servants, God serves the creatures God has made and God serves most especially the powerless, like a rabble of slaves in Egypt and an exiled people in Babylon. ...

"This vision of God as one who serves is embodied in Jesus as presented by Mark. Coming from outside the human system of violence, Jesus exorcises those who are possessed by their violent culture. Jesus serves Peter’s mother-in-law by healing her of a fever, thus allowing her to imitate Jesus by serving him, the disciples, and her family. Meanwhile, Jesus goes on to serve the many people who come to be healed of sickness and violence. ...

"Both Isaiah and Mark are showing us that creation is not a one-shot deal. Creation is a continuous process. God renews the strength of those who wait on God so that we can “mount up with wings like eagles.” Jesus uses the same creative power to heal sicknesses and drive away the violence that possesses us.

"The question then is: Will we allow Jesus to bring us out of the exile into which violent human culture has captured us so that we can return to the world God created from the beginning—outside the System—or will we prefer to stay in exile?"

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "Above the Circle of the Earth" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/02/08/above-the-circle-of-the-earth/)

~

"I'd like to bring out and emphasize something which I've mentioned before but which is going to be increasingly important. Mark's gospel presupposes always a spiral reading, and I mean that in [the following] sense. At face value, we are having an account of what happened in Jesus's public life at the very beginning of his ministry before people knew who he was, and a number of significant elements are being shown which were memories of people from the time when they didn't understand who he was, and yet every single one of these is being told by people who knew who he was because they had lived through to the end of the story. So in fact, they always describe these initial moments as if they were, in fact, the things that happened after Jesus had fulfilled his mission.

"So you get this double vision, if you like, that every single passage of Mark, it's something that happened initially and yet it's also something that happened after Jesus's death and resurrection. And we're expected always to notice these two things happening together: the Holy One of God was misrecognized by the unclean spirit [in last week's reading, Mark 1:24], but that's in fact who he was, and what he was doing after his resurrection is being shown lived out here. Which is why at the very end of the Gospel the angel tells the lost and muddled disciples to go back to Galilee where he would show them everything and that's exactly what we're doing here: we're part of the going back to Galilee of the disciples after the resurrection seeing what he's doing so that we know what to do. That's how Mark's Gospel works."

...

"Just in case there's any doubt about this, here we have the resurrection scene suddenly in Galilee: “In the morning while it was still very dark he got up” - 'anastasis' - he “resurrected.” So remember, this is the equivalent of the end, of when the Sabbath comes to an end, the first morning [of the resurrection], when in the Gospel this was the time when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, but he's up already, he's got up. “.. and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed.“ And Mark is no fool: with what verb does he pray? Well, with exactly the same verb as he prayed in Gethsemane in Mark's Gospel. In other words, all of the later events are being concentrated here.

"“And Simon and his companions hunted for him.“ Where have they taken, where has he gone? The same response that the disciples had after the resurrection. “When they found him they said to him everyone is searching for you.“ So the question is: where is he, where is he to be found? Remember [after the resurrection (Mark 16:7)] they have been told by the angel to go back to Galilee. “And he answered: let us go on to the neighboring towns.“ - let's go on, in other words, this is the continuation - “so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.“ What did he come out to do? He came to make repentance possible because the kingdom of heaven had drawn near and what we get is him announcing that at the very beginning of his ministry and the disciples coming back and understanding that that is exactly what it is now their job to do with him: pronouncing his name now. That's what he came out to do ...

"“And he went through Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” In other words, the Holy One of God is making the full holiness of the synagogue and thus the temple alive but also healing the profane - that world where demons, people are bound down by spirits that dehumanize, so both the holiness of God and the humanizing bringing into being of Creation is going on at the same time. What do we do when we preach the Gospel?  We go back to Galilee, and watch and learn and pray to be taken into the same Spirit, so that we may discover what is really holy, and we may bring each other to life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi548DJahSo)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr blog, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany5b/]

From the Lectionary for 28 January 2024 (Epiphany 4B)

1 Corinthians 8:6 (NRSV Updated Edition)

yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Mark 1:21-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

~

"The presence of salvation showed itself especially in the fact that as Jesus proclaimed his message, something actually happened. The effect he had was entirely different from that of other teachers: “for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). His message of salvation became a healing and liberating force. The sick became healthy; the possessed became free, and people on the margins of society experienced his loving attention. It was not the abstract content of what he said, but the total event of teaching, preaching, healing, and caring which affected people."

- Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, pg. 32

~

"Well, what does “as one having authority” mean? It's an odd word because it doesn't appear very often in the Hebrew bible at all, this is a Greek word. And we tend to think of authority in two ways: someone speaks with authority, meaning someone has appointed them, they've said “I hereby name you to go and talk about... you are my authorized agent”; or we have a more charismatic sense of authority, someone speaks with a certain personal gravitas, interior quality, that makes you think they're worth taking seriously. That's the kind of thing we usually mean when we talk about someone who speaks with authority - knows what they're talking about, that sort of thing.

"Okay, well here this is where the passage from Deuteronomy, which is our first reading, is very helpful because authority seems to me actually something more than that in this sphere. ... “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it” [Deut 18: 22]. Now here's what's important about this. We're not talking about guesswork here... No, behind this is the notion that the word of the Lord is creative. It's the Creator who speaks, and if the Lord says something, that is part of bringing into being. The Creator speaks reality into being by his word. So if a prophet is speaking the word of the Lord, that thing will be. ... He's talking about someone whose word is part of the bringing into being of what is. That's the sense of authority that we're talking about here.

"So when people perceive that the one who is speaking is someone who is to do with the bringing into being of what is, they know that something different is amongst them. And that's going to be the key question: Is Jesus the one who is bringing all things into being? That's going to be the question throughout, and here we have if you like this first sense of something quite shocking about the one coming in.

...

"So, at the very beginning of Jesus's ministry, we have him coming in, enacting the new word, the new teaching, the Creator speaking and the power that is the power of the Most High to remove sources of impurity. That's what's going to be acted out, and we get the two responses to it: the people being amazed and curious of what this is; and the evil spirit having too quick an idea of what it is, not yet being ready to see the Holy One of God fulfilling his role so as actually then to destroy all sources of impurity and enable death itself to be conquered, which is going to be the route that he follows."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aYnIJJ-Iu0)

[Source of Raymund Schwager quote, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany4b/]

From the Lectionary for 21 January 2024 (Epiphany 3B)

Jonah 3:1-5 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

Mark 1:14-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

~

"So [Jesus] comes to this place and he proclaims the good news of God. Now this does not mean the good news 'according to God', it means the good news that *is* God. God as good news. This is, if you like, that which is going to take us, all of us, the rest of our lives to unpack: the good news that is God, that God is good news. What does this 'good news-ness' of God ... sound like, what does this look like? How is this lived by any of us? Well, one of the things about it is that the terminology 'the good news' comes from Isaiah. ... There are a number of references [in Isaiah] to ... 'the bearer of good news' and this is something that is absolutely central, because what Jesus is saying is [that it is] this Isaian vision of God as good news that is now being instantiated in your midst, and that I'm telling you about. This is now happening - the good news of God.

"Now, here our Jonah passage, our first reading is actually very helpful because it gives us, if you like, how not to do this. Jonah is a wonderful story because it's someone who is told to go and say something that he doesn't want to say. Why? In the book of Jonah God tells Jonah to go and preach conversion to the people of Nineveh and Jonah really doesn't want to go. Why? Because he knows that if God is sending him to preach the good news to enemy it really means that God likes the people of Nineveh and wants to be able to set them free from all the hardness of heart and difficulty and awfulness of their lives. And he, Jonah, doesn't like them, he really doesn't want the people [to repent], he longs for them to be punished. ... And as he arrives in Nineveh, preaching the word of God, he finds that they were already starting to repent, ... and it says “and they believed God.”

"And here's the thing: what the Hebrews understood and what's difficult for us to understand is that believing in God and being penitent amount to the same thing. Why? Because God likes us. This is the central thing which is difficult. If you like somebody, you long for them to be able to be penitent, you long for them to be able to have their hearts stretched open so they can become more. If you dislike somebody, what you want them to do is to close down evermore, to double down into their hardness of heart and become if you like more and more stuck in ruts that will lead to their self-destruction. If you like someone, they become penitent. If you like someone they're able to relax in your liking them and their hearts are able to be broken and become open and so be able to be stretched into ways of peace, things that are good for them and for each other. This was what Jonah knew: he knew that if God likes someone he helps make you penitent. ...

"So here Jesus is saying, “the good news of God.” The good news of God is: God likes you. He likes us. Therefore he's making it possible for us to become penitent. These two phrases he's saying: “the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.” So he's saying all of that Isaiah stuff about the good news coming in, all of that is being fulfilled. The text of Isaiah is absolutely fundamental ... in terms of the shape of God's good news coming into the world. Jesus is going to be constantly re-enacting and fulfilling Isaiah. ... “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.” So, the time when God is going to be able to reign, thus making it possible for us to live together. This is what is possible for somebody who likes us: humans being able to live peaceable together, collaborating, learning how to help each other. The one who makes that possible is the one who's bearing God's liking of us. That's good news.

"And then he says, “Repent and believe in the good news.” ... The one who's going to make it possible for you to be able to do this is coming in. That in fact is what he, the Son, is going to be doing, [he] is going to make penitence possible for us. That's the whole point of him coming in and going up to his death - not to judge us, but to make it possible for us to see the kind of things we're doing and be forgiven from it, so that we can learn to collaborate without destroying each other. This is the program of someone who likes us: repent and believe the good news. What's the good news? The good news is God, the utterly Living One, the One who is not out to get us, not trying to punish us, not come to judge us, has come to make it possible for us to learn how to live together, for God's kingship to be brought alive amongst us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHWh3-VO1Q)

~

"Let me in conclusion revert to the simple narrative mode of the Gospel. Jesus is the human face of God and he calls us to live with him and allow that cohabitation to reform our social selves into our true selves. Repentance is the leaving behind of the old self; belief is the entrustment to Jesus. Repent, believe and follow me – the old, traditional and true moment of our Christian Gospel.

"This all stands to reason. Many of us know with vivid certainty how the people we loved and lived with made us who we are; more precisely perhaps, not so much that we loved them but that they loved us, loved and continue to love us. I am convinced that the heart of the divine creative grace is the marvellous experience that somebody loves me. I am loved into being. Who can’t see that the saddest most destructive people are those who have never been loved?

"Where can I be sure to find such love to make me me? Use your imagination, meditate on the Gospel, and be with Jesus. Imaginatively being in relationship with him will activate your receptors of his life-giving love. “Jesus loves me, this I know, Because the Bible tells me so.” This is the truth about leadership, and discipleship; all unspoiled human existence, and good citizenship too, must be and is a friendship of love."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on January 25, 2009 (source no longer available online)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany3b/]

From the Lectionary for 14 January 2024 (Epiphany 2B)

John 1:35-51 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

~

"The willingness to look and to see stands at the center of this morning’s story... “Come and see.” ... In fact, it’s shocking to realize all the imagery in the Bible having to do with God not being able to get us to look and really see, to listen and really hear. ... The greatest of [the Hebrew] prophets was Isaiah. And it is the following passage from Isaiah which is quoted as a central piece in all four gospels (Mt. 13:14-15; Mk. 4:12; Lk. 8:10; Jn. 12:40). Isaiah tells the story of his own calling as a prophet, and says,

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” (Isa 6:8-10 NRSV)

"Wow! Isn’t this a strange and shocking passage? It’s as if Isaiah came to see his whole ministry as one that was impossible for people to really see and hear and understand.

"Yet Jesus, too, quotes this passage in all four gospels as a way to say the same thing: that he came to give us a message from God that is nearly impossible for us to hear and see and understand. We look, but what do we see? We listen, but what do we hear? The gospels show how Jesus’ own disciples had a difficult time seeing and hearing; they wouldn’t really start to see and hear until after Jesus rose on Easter and came back to them and graciously forgive them for not hearing and seeing and understanding. Thank God for that forgiveness! And thank God that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them, or we might never have begun to understand!

"So what is it that is so hard for us to hear and see and understand? It has not only taken Jesus’ resurrection to get us disciples to hear and see, but it has continued to take the work of the Holy Spirit through the ages for a few people here and there, to help us to see and hear and understand.

"In this morning’s gospel John begins a theme that is carried throughout his gospel. Jesus says that Nathaniel will come to see even greater things. Later, Jesus will tell his disciples, “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.” (John 14:12 NRSV) Greater things than Jesus! Because Jesus also promises them the Holy Spirit."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on January 18-19, 1997 (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany2b_1997_ser/)

~

"What I wanted to bring out in this particular Gospel is the intimacy of all this, that what we have in the prologue to John's Gospel and in the feast of the Baptism are these incredibly rich and powerful signs - the Holy One of God, the Lamb of God - coming in, being present, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Lord here, the one who is in fact going to open up the new creation. And yet, what we actually see is all that conducted in this series of very small, very intimate interpersonal relationships with named others, not very significant named others, but real human named others.

"This is not about an idea... let alone an ideology that's being talked about. This is a series of relationships that are being opened up by this presence amongst us, the Holy One of God come down to our level to bring about the fulfilment of creation. And it's at our level, the Holy Spirit has come down, and now seek the Lord while he may be found - when Jesus turns and says, "What do you seek?" [v38] - seek the Lord while he may be found, there's something of the contingency of time.

"And it's this which we're being asked to share in, in ordinary time, to realise that the Lord who may be found can be sought now, can and does speak our names to us and allow us actually to become much more than we could imagine, as we become part of his manifestation into being of the new creation."

- James Alison, from "Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk3ShKH9yRs)

[Source of link to Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany2b/]

From the Lectionary for 7 January 2024 (Epiphany 1B):

Mark 1:4-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

~

"[H]ere we are back to St Mark's Gospel, that incredibly parsimonious word by word detailed account of what's going on, with the hints given to us so we can understand something much much bigger than what appears on the page. Remember we saw the first half of this [passage] in Advent, when we looked at John the Baptist and what he was preaching and announcing. So here he is, he proclaims, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

"Now here's the interesting thing: John sees some sort of continuity between what he himself is announcing and the one who is to fulfil that, so he uses this term, “the one who is more powerful than I.” There's a slight ironic use here by Mark because in fact, the one who is coming is not more powerful than he; it is the Powerful One, the Mighty One. That is the irony that's at work here. John seems to be thinking that it's something that is in some way in continuity with what he's doing, and it is, but so much out of the league, if you like, of what he was about, it's something so much vaster than what he could imagine that is going to happen.

"So he says, “I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Again, it's not at all clear what he meant but what we then get in the baptism of Jesus is the stunning arrival, completely beyond expectation, of the Holy One of God, the Mighty One, the One whom John was pointing to even if stuttering towards a reality that was vastly greater than he could imagine.

...

"[I]t was in the Jordan, so that was the first water symbol that we hear, ... “And just as he was coming up out of the water.” This verb, 'coming up', ... it's a technical term: the priests, in order to be ordained, 'came up' out of the water. That was part of their ordination rite before they were anointed. They're coming up, then the anointing for the ordination. Right here we have the great High Priest, the Holy One of God coming up out of the water. In other words, the real thing is enacting the meaning of priesthood. All priests were understood thereafter to have been resurrected, in fact our word resurrection comes from the Greek 'anastasis' which was the sharing in the opening up of heaven that comes after you have 'come up' out of the water. That was what being a priest was, which is why all Christians by baptism are priests: we share in the open heaven that is possible, ... because we share in the identity of the great High Priest. So that's what's going on just coming up out of the water...

"And he says, and “he saw the heavens torn apart,” ripped open. And this word is very important, it's a 'schizo' in Greek - it's where we get schizophrenic or schizoid - ripped apart, torn, split. And it's a very very key word because it appears in Mark here and at the moment Jesus dies on the cross, when he breathes out his breath and the veil of the temple which was the symbolization of the beginning of materiality was ripped open. In other words, we are starting here outside creation, and what Jesus is doing is coming into creation, fulfilling it, so that finally creation will be definitively fulfilled in his death on the cross when he breathes out his spirit, in other words when he gives the Holy Spirit. There is being set up here, if you like, the entire pattern of what he's about to do. ...

"The word torn apart comes in two absolutely key passages in the Hebrew scriptures one which will have been called mind instantly by us here was when the Israelites were escaping from Egypt, Moses had held out his hand over the sea, a wind from God blew over it and God split the sea, he 'schizo'ed the sea, [and] the spitting of the waters was what enabled the people to pass over. And it was perfectly clear that the mixture, the relationship of the wind to the water, the wind or breath, the spirit, to the water, and the splitting hearken back to Genesis where if you remember the Spirit floated over, hovered over in a 'windy-like' way, the waters. So this is creation language, and the fulfillment of creation language.

"So he saw the Spirit descending like a dove on him, but what's the spirit descending like a dove doing? Well, it brings to mind the hovering, it also brings to mind the waters of Noah. The hovering of the Spirit before creation also brings to mind Noah, where the waters were finally pacified, the terrors of the deep were pacified, after the flood, and the dove was able to settle. So here is the sign in fact that the fulfillment of creation is about to be inaugurated, that it will be safe, that the waters will have no more power, waters of death and destruction (because that's what they signified), the waters of chaos, they will have no more power.

"The one that was hovering over in the beginning is now coming in to creation as the Holy One of God. Jesus will be born, if you like, of the Holy Spirit, which is one of the ways that people refer to him in some of the Patristic texts, but the point is that who he is as the Incarnate Son, as we'll see in just a second, who he is is the Holy One of God who is going to make available the Holy Spirit for all of us. He is going to turn that which was hovering over creation, it's now come into creation, so that the whole principle of creation is going to be able to lived out in human form, and be able to be given to us so that we are no longer run by death, despair, sin, violence, and those things. This is the beginning of that. Here is the Spirit coming in, it's coming in like a dove that was fluttering, that has now found peace. And the fullness and the peacefulness of creation is about to be opened up.

...

"And then [God] says, “with you I am well pleased.” ... [in other words] “my pleasure rests on you, I look at you and, mmm.” This is creation language, this is God who created everything, ... and when he created humans he looked at it and he was very pleased, he saw it was very good. So this is a hint that here we have finally, at last, the definitive Adam, not the confused Adam which we know and are, but the firstborn of all creation, of the Son come into our midst. What we're seeing in Mark's Gospel, in this tiny incredibly compact passage, is the Holy One of God come into our midst in order to live out and make possible the giving to us of the Holy Spirit so that we can be opened out into becoming the new creation."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmiEYDzXDq0)

[For analysis and discussion of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflect.../year-b/epiphany1b/]

From the Lectionary for 31 December 2023 (Christmas 1B)

Luke 2:22-40 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.

~

"I invite you to join me in the Temple. Let us imagine that we are there, ordinary inhabitants of Jerusalem, hanging around for evening prayer, or to meet friends, or whatever. It is just an ordinary day, not a major feast. The Temple is a big and imposing building with its series of courts; there are a variety of sacrifices going on at altars up in front of us, priests doing their stuff with impressive seriousness, other priest-like figures scurrying hither and thither looking as though they know what they are doing, temple guards standing on quite relaxed duty at the various entrances and exits. There are money-changing tables, booths for selling the various animals for sacrifice, and inevitably, a fair smattering of adolescent boys running here and there as messengers, carriers, pick-pockets and so forth.

"There is smoke, there is incense, and there are the smells and the background sounds of cattle, sheep and caged birds. In different places, there are people involved in prayer, by themselves, or in groups, some attending the sacrifices, others apparently making deals with the Almighty with much bobbing and bowing. Over all this, there presides the Holy of Holies. The veil is in place, and all that is going on is going on with some, but not too much, reference to the apparently indifferent gaze of the One who dwells there.

"Someone tugs your sleeve, and points to a small gathering which is happening just out of the corner of your eye. Nothing special. A couple with a baby come in for the rite of Purification. And who’s that coming up now? Oh, that’s old man Simeon – older than Methuselah! He looks so old that he might very well be the High Priest Simeon himself from three hundred years ago – one of the last decent High Priests in Jerusalem. In fact he probably is a real descendant of his. Funny to think that someone like him would be High Priest today if it hadn’t been for the various bits of skulduggery by which the current bunch had co-opted, bought and stolen their hold on office. Anyhow, the couple have got someone proper to do their rite for them. Old Simeon will take the thing seriously.

"Now watch out, crazy Anna has spotted them and is rushing up! Didn’t anyone warn them? She’s older than God and has been around the Temple since before time began. Actually, she’s a survivor from one of those tribes which went into the desert generations ago and didn’t go along with the whole return from Babylon and second Temple project; She thinks that if she stays here day and night, fasting and praying, then God will bring the first Temple back, Ark, Mercy Seat, Fire, Wisdom and all. She makes it clear that she considers the current priestly families to be little more than pretenders, – well she isn’t unique in thinking that, but she has the courage of her convictions, since she actually stays in the Temple to try to make it holy. Good luck to her, and to all whom she pesters!

"Ah, now the Evening Sacrifice is about to start up, let’s turn towards the Holy Place, the dwelling of the Most High, and get on with it. Curious though that as the couple are leaving with their child, both Simeon and Anna, normally a mixture of the cranky, the zealous and the infuriating, look suddenly peaceful, as though something had happened to them. Oh well, funny things go on in the Temple! Maybe they got given a bigger than usual tip for their services. Let’s press forward and join in the chanting which is starting up: “I will gaze on the Lord in the Sanctuary to see His strength and his glory”.

"Well, of course this is not the version of the story we hear in St Luke’s Gospel... My version is the majority report – what a normal passer-by would have noticed that day. We celebrate the minority report: for Luke, anything else that was going on in the Temple on that date was quite irrelevant. We get no mention of it, so we have to supply with our imagination. What we remember is that on that day, Malachi 3:1-4 was fulfilled. God suddenly came into his Temple. But he came in almost offstage, along with the Ark and the Seat of Wisdom who had borne him, and was noticed only by a couple of eccentrics who had been hoping for him in quite specific ways as fitting in with their expectations for how God would show himself to his people, to Jerusalem and to the Temple; expectations which were regarded as indecent pieces of folk-culture by the people who ran the show in the Temple.

"In other words, the shape of the arrival of God on the scene, the God to whose worship the Temple was dedicated, was that of a tiny offstage interruption, scarcely to be noticed. Not even enough for us to talk about the Temple authorities having been blindsided by God, since they remained unaware of what had happened. Only much later would it become clear how completely blindsided they had been.

...

"One of the tell-tale signs of ... the experience of undergoing “I AM” coming towards a human is that thereafter the human becomes aware of the universe tilted on a new axis. ... The centre of stability, of gravity, shifts from the world formed by the desires and struggles of humans, which is only an apparent centre of stability and gravity, and rests on something entirely outside the human world of perception and desire. What appears to be the most ethereal and least solid part of the universe comes to be the real centre of solidity and rooted-ness in being. Part of the authentic nature of the experience of undergoing [the true God] is this Copernican revolution out of human and cultural foundations and security into receiving a centre and a non-grasped-after solidity that was entirely outside of human control and from which all comes to be.

...

"I [want] to make it clear that for us the first and root meaning of reconciliation is not an ethical demand. In the understanding of the Christian faith, it is first of all something which has triumphantly happened in a sphere more real than ours, and which is tilting our universe on a new axis, whether or not we understand it. This means that what we think of as real, as stable and as ordered is not so, and what is real and true and ordered and stable is not what is behind us, but what we can become as we learn to undergo being set free from our imprisonment in what we might call “social order lived defensively”.

...

"If you like, we are being shown that we start off from a skewed reality, that what we call normality is in fact out of kilter, and true reality is much more alive than anything we know; so much so that we need training and new hearts and new eyes to be able to glimpse it along with that gift of being able to relax into spaciousness and being held by a power greater and more trustable than our own, which we call the gift of faith.

"Well, this I hope gives us a slightly different perspective on how we might come to be involved in and practice reconciliation. Because it means that our starting place is not, in the case of any of us, that of good people who are going to do something good. Our starting place is that of people who are undergoing being forgiven, ... knowing that the reality we are leaving is futile, but not yet gifted with the heart and eyes of the diamond-bright aliveness that is coming to be.

"And this means that there is no beginning of reconciliation amongst us that is not the first inklings of a learning of an entirely new way of being together, by people who are accomplices in war and who are undergoing being forgiven as their necessary induction into the real. Forgiveness is not something which is in the first instance a moral imperative. Forgiveness is the shape of being inducted into the real in the case of all of us human creatures who, basically good, find ourselves inextricably caught up in an addiction to being less than ourselves.

...

"This is what is surprising: that we have no access to being created which doesn’t pass through our allowing ourselves to be reconciled. And being created is adventure, delight, and irresponsibility, since we aren’t in charge; it is lightness of spirit, undeserved security, luck and fortune. And along with this, as we allow ourselves to be stretched into this spaciousness, there comes a greatness of heart, a magnanimity that is playful, because trusting, since we have discovered, rather despite ourselves, that there is no greater victory than the mutual enrichment of those who are not frightened of losing themselves in the other, but who know that on the flourishing of the other depends their own capacity to be and to enjoy what they really are on their way to being, with all their heart."

- James Alison, "Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the Underside" (http://jamesalison.com/blindsided-by-god/)

[For analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/xmas1b/]

From the Lectionary for 24 December 2023 (Advent 4B)

Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

~

"The mystery is that Jesus did not come into the world to compete with Caesar Augustus the way he competed against Brutus and Mark Antony or David competed with Saul. Jesus came to preach and live a totally different way of living than the way of Empire, a way not based on violent competition but on mutual support. Rather than inflict violence in humanity’s never-ending civil war, Jesus took the whole violence of all empires in all times on himself in the place of all those who have been and ever will be victims of Empire."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), blog post from 21 Dec 2017 (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2017/12/22/the-throne-of-david-part-two/)

~

"When it we read on Christmas night the shepherds in the field being the first to hear and being told to go to see this sign given in the house of David, [we see that] God took the shepherd boy [David] and now he's going to come back announced and understood by shepherds. This is the lowliness of God, and God's, if you like, rejection of power ... [This is] the mystery of the coming in of the Lord, the Lord who is going to come in himself is going to be shown slowly and off stage, not in any of the expected places.

...

"There's this little phrase which I think we vastly underestimate: “But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” ... I want to bring out that the [Greek] word is actually a very very strong word, it means 'mega perturbed'. ... [T]ypically the place where [the word] 'troubled' comes up [elsewhere] is in relation to wrath. [For example] in 2nd Samuel there is a hymn which describes the earth being “troubled at the wrath of the Lord coming in,” the earth and the heavens actually being being perturbed in this way. It's the sign, it's how you react when wrath is upon you, that's the sense of trouble: what wrathful thing is going on here?

"You can imagine here is a young girl and the first reaction to the arrival of an angel is, “Wrath is upon me! How, oh what's going to go on, what's going to go on here?” So it says she tried to work out what on earth might be going on, this is a terrifying first reaction. So it's scarcely surprising, the very first thing that the angel has to say is “Do not be afraid!” And this is a vital part of the gospel. It's the difference between the expectation that the coming in of the Lord was going to be in some sense a wrathful coming in, a shaking of the earth in terror at the arrival of the lord, the king, and the angel saying, actually it's not going to be like that.

...

"Well, any normal maiden suddenly informed that she's going to bear a son will have had a good deal of reason to have been profoundly afraid of wrath. This is what happens if you are an unwed mother in an honor society, where these things can be taken to death very very quickly. This is it's extremely difficult for someone to learn that they're going to become, in the midst of all this potential for wrath, a positive vessel of God's favour and love.

...

"Just a word here about Son, “It will be called the Son of the Most High,” because when we think of the word 'son' we also think of the word father or mother, two separate persons. There's the father and the mother and then there is the son. But in the understanding of God it's understood that the Son of God is God's self. The Son of God is God's self manifest in human form. We would say manifest as a human. In other words, it's not some distant relative of the Most High, it is the Most High in person, is what we would say. That is what is going to come here, that's what the birth of the Son means: it means the human manifestation in real presence of the self of the Most High.

...

"Mary answers quite sensibly, “How can this be since I do not know man.” She wants to understand what's going on here. And the reply is to say no you are about to become the holy place of God. “The power of the Most High will overshadow you." This is how the power of the Most High was over the tabernacle. [The angel is saying,] “You are about to become the Holy of Holies. You are effectively the Ark of the Covenant,” and that is exactly how Elizabeth her cousin would greet her when she went to visit a few days later.

"So this is what we're being prepared for: the coming into the world of the Son, God's very self, in the Holy Place. And the virgin being taught to discover this is who she is called to be."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuLnfMol90)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for analysis and discussion of all three of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent4b/]

"It is difficult to accept change in our circumstances or our life. Moving, death, estrangement from those we previously loved and cherished, a new job, economic conditions, health issues, political situations, all of these and many more examples create fear and tension. We adapt quickly to the status quo and wish to remain there.

"Change is part of life, yet we seek ways to avoid it or ameliorate it or stop it from happening altogether. Those who study change and its effects have noted that too much change causes undue stress, but too little change also causes stress.

"We are made to change, created to experience change. The universe itself is constantly changing. In physics, quantum mechanics observes change taking place all the time at every level of the universe. People change too. We grow from infant to old age and note all the changes in between. As a species we have changed. We evolved from single celled organisms to become the dominant species on the planet. In short, life is all about change and adaptation.

"Theology too changes as does the church. Christianity is a religion of change. There has never been a period in the 2,000 years of church history where some change was not occurring. Dip into any century, era or epoch, and one finds some thinker, theologian, nun, monk, priest or lay person who is reconsidering the gospel.

"Yet is it not the case that Scripture says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)?  If Jesus does not change why is it that theology and church seem to constantly change?

"Like the speed of light in Einstein’s theory of relativity, Jesus has been Christianity’s single bearing, that which everything else could be measured against and by. Jesus is the singularity of all Christian reality. So why do we expect our theology to remain unchanging? Why do we seek some form of absolute, whether in a book or a creed or a dogma or a theology?

"Our problem is that we have failed to recognize that our understanding of Jesus is always changing. One cannot read the many studies of Jesus written in the past 300 years and not be aware of two tendencies. The first was pointed out by Albert Schweitzer: we have a tendency to make Jesus in our own cultural image. The ‘liberal lives of Jesus’ of 19th century German biblical scholarship all looked suspiciously like the bourgeois citizen with rarified ethical ideals.

"There is another tendency we have though when it comes to Jesus. We tend to subordinate Jesus to our vision or understanding of ‘God.’  We first define God, and then we fit Jesus into that understanding rather than the other way around. We no longer let Jesus change our view of God. When we do this we are fitting a large round peg in a tiny square hole. It just won’t work. Our theologies reflect this problem, and our lives reflect our theologies, our beliefs about God. So we tame Jesus, we domesticate him, we bring him into the orb of our religious paradigm and seek to absorb him, to make him harmless. This, I submit, is the biggest crisis that faces Christianity today.

"Christmas, therefore, is our antidote. Christmas is the time we stop all of our theological speculating and allow ourselves to STOP!  Stop trying to make Jesus fit into our world and recognize that God in Christ, by becoming flesh has fit us into God’s world. The old debates from the 16th-19th centuries about whether the finite could contain the infinite (finitum capax infiniti) are completely reversed for infinity has been revealed to contain the finite (infinitum capax finiti). The baby in the manger is the APOCALYPTIC recovery of the creation. The Christ-child is God’s rescue operation. This is where Word becomes flesh and all flesh is reconciled and transformed. From that day forth, flesh will no longer remain stuck in the status quo of its sin, its violence, its rivalrous behavior, its tendency to create dualisms, in groups and out groups, for in this child, all flesh is redeemed and transformed.

"Christmas is about change, the hope of change, the hope for change. This is why we have four weeks to prepare: for it is our GOD who is coming to us. And he shall be called ‘Emmanuel.’ This God comes to us, to be with us and for us, not against us and over us, but under us as a servant, with us as a friend, and in us as a beneficent transforming teacher and power. This is why we celebrate Jesus’ birth!"

- Michael Hardin, FB post from 19 Dec 2022

(https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/posts/pfbid02jExtow36ioeCuaZVTTpkssRmTC6EWvMSXEwzwhJLGJJybjo63G63RNUF4YDTJz6El)

From the Lectionary for 17 December 2023 (Advent 3B)

Isaiah 61: 1-2; 10-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
    to comfort all who mourn,
...

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
    my whole being shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to spring up before all the nations.

~

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

...

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

~

"The Christmas story we all know and love gives witness to the centrality of Jesus, the Christ.  Every year we put up the manger scene and combine aspects of the story taken from Matthew with dimensions from Luke and act them out in the Christmas pageant.  In this way, we know Jesus is important and the Son of God because of how he came to be born.

"But in Year B we have a problem.  Neither the Gospel of Mark nor the Gospel of John has a Christmas story.  How do we come to know who Jesus is when we can’t use the Christmas story to show his specialness?  Mark and John have no shepherds coming to see the child, no stars leading wise men from the east, no flight into Egypt to escape a jealous and ruthless ruler, no donkey carrying a pregnant teenage mother to a distant ancestral town, and no Joseph being turned away at the door of a crowded Inn.

"The Gospel of John has a different way of showing us who Jesus is.  The writer begins with the witness of one man.  I quote, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”  In the Gospel of John, the first witness to Jesus is John the Baptist and “he came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”  Instead of a mysterious star moving through the heavens and coming to rest over a cradle containing a baby, here we have John the Baptist pointing to Jesus himself as the light.  Two verses before this, in the prologue, using N.T. Wright’s translation, we read, “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  What an Advent message of hope!  “Life was in him, and this life was the light of the human race, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

"I believe every word of that compound sentence.  Life was and is in him and this life was and is the light of the human race.  He is the light because he shows us the very character of God.  “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”  Contrary to much dark religion in many forms throughout the world, the God revealed by Jesus has no darkness at all.  He is full of life and there is no death in him.  None!"

- Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby, from a sermon delivered on December 11, 2011 (http://girardianlectionary.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Advent3b-2011-Pointing-to-the-Light.doc)

~

"So first of all the place: you remember last time he was in the desert and he was baptizing and here it gets more specific, he was in the place called Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. So that indicates that he put himself outside the Promised Land so as to create a new way into the Promised Land. ... [W]hat's being called to mind is the place where Joshua led the people over the [Jordan]... And it's no wonder therefore that what John the Baptist is doing is clearly creating some sort of new movement, that it's got the authorities rattled.

"Before the gospel tells us about the authorities [being] rattled, it specifies very exactly what John is, and the terms are more meaningful than they might seem: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness to the light.” In the prologue to St. John's gospel we hear about the light was before all things, who is coming into the world.

"Now please remember, the light was the first day of creation. The one who comes in bearing light is the Creator. So to bear witness to the light is very much standing outside if you like the normal historical form of witnessing. He's bearing witness to someone who has been coming in from Creation, the very Son of God, the promised Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, coming into the world. This is the light. So to bear witness to the light means something quite specific.

"Remember that in the Genesis account light and darkness were separated, but here it's light that comes before darkness and the darkness cannot hide it. So [John is] bearing witness to something that is from the beginning, that is from creation, so that all might believe through him. So, in other words, he's bearing witness to the creative light that's coming into the world, and everyone is going to be enlightened by it, or it should be possible for everyone to be enlightened by. He himself was not the light, he makes this quite clear, but he came to testify to the light.

...

"Now, I didn't realize this until recently, but [“I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.”] is apparently a reference to the Levirate law: if a married man died without having offspring his wife was married to his brother so that he could produce offspring for his brother via her. And if he refused to do so, the one who would take up the charge would untie the thong of his sandal. ... So what's John saying here? It's the one who's coming after me, although theoretically I get to marry the person first, it's the one who's coming after me who is the real bridegroom.

"In other words, this is a hidden reference to the coming in of the bridegroom, this bridegroom figure we will see, that it's the bridegroom and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All is being set up to announce the coming in of the one who will open the marriage supper of the Lamb, which is, if you like, the central image of the one coming in that we are going to rejoice in, starting with the hidden birth, the silence surrounding all things before the light comes into the world."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_6ED0MSuIo)

[Source of link to Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby sermon, and for discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent3b/]

From the Lectionary for 10 December 2023 (Advent 2B)

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

...

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
    and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

~

Mark 1:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.[1]

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight,’ ”

so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

[1] The NRSV Update Edition does not include "Son of God" in the main text but notes that "other ancient authorities add" it. I have included it as it is mentioned by James Alison in his video homily, see below.

~

"It's worthwhile thinking that part of the preparing the way is helping us prepare our imaginations for how that's going to look like that's what we celebrate in Advent. If you're like, allowing our imaginations to be prepared so that we may see the one who is coming in, so we may see the Holy One of God, the one who John the Baptist will later recognize as the Lamb of God, coming in.

...

"So “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Not the good news concerning Jesus Christ, not the good news about Jesus Christ, not the good news preached by Jesus Christ, but the good news that *is* Jesus Christ. That's the meaning of the genitive, and I get the “of” is the good news that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God - immediately there is given that title, a high priestly title, to tell us something about the coming in that's going to happen.

...

"So let's hold on tightly to these things: John symbolizing the Patriarchs; Elijah because of the leather belt; Samson because of the honey; the flight from Egypt because of the locusts; and really challenging the Temple establishment. So next Sunday we'll see how the temple authorities react to this and we'll be able to be taken further into our imagination of the one who is coming in."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJQ6j2qbOIk)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent2b/]

From the Lectionary for 3 December 2023 (Advent 1B)

Mark 13:33-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

~

"[In the discourse starting at Mark 13:3, Jesus has] explained all the forms of, if you like, chaos and catastrophe that are going to be the new normal in the wake of his performing the definitive sacrifice that brings the temple to an end, brings the sacrificial world to an end, [when] there'll be nothing to solve the problems of human violence. [The disciples are] going to be carrying on, and it's going to be very very difficult for them not to be distracted by all these fake sources of meaning, very difficult for them not to be distracted from the presence of the One who is coming, the coming in of the Son of Man.

"So he's preparing them for living in that time. ... In our time, just as for them, so for us, the the threat of being distracted by so much violence, so much fake meaning, being jostled about giving us a sense that something great is about to happen, or not, and yet all of that distracts us from having our eyes trained on the One who is coming in.

...

"First of all was the word going [(v. 34), then] “You do not know when the master will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” Now of course very beautifully Jesus sets up those four times which are going to be very specifically the times at which [the disciples] to whom he is talking does not see the coming of the master in his going, because in the evening Jesus hands himself over to them in the form of the Last Supper, setting up the Eucharist; at midnight while they're all asleep in the garden of Gethsemane ... while they are asleep suddenly Judas arrives and Jesus is handed over, it's the second handing over; then at cockcrow Peter hands over Jesus, Peter betrays Jesus, he denies him in the courtyard of the High Priest; and at dawn the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to the Romans.

"So every single one of the moments of the Son of Man coming, looking in fact exactly like he's going, but a particular sort of going, the sort of going that is a handing over and going out of being: a 'self-giving up out of being'; a 'violent being taken out of being'; a 'being betrayed out of being', a 'being dismissed as part of political convenience going out of being'. In every single one of those the coming looks like a going.

"And guess what? This happens in the few days immediately after Jesus has explained this to those [disciples] which is why it's tremendously important that he then says, “What i say to you I say to all: keep awake.” Why? Because these [disciples] get it wrong! This is the wonderful thing about the gospel - Jesus is setting up his disciples to get it wrong, to fail to perceive the coming. Why? So that they can then bear witness to us of what it looks like to be a failure, so that little by little we may all learn to get it right through failing. This is the wonder of the gospel: it's mercy for screw-ups not correctness for those who want to be right. This is what's being offered here: how we are going to be able, despite our failures, to come back time and again to having our eyes trained on the coming, to be able to see one going out of being.

"So think of what we're celebrating in the Mass as being a calling to mind this glorious failure. Jesus actually is setting up the watchmen to have failed at the very first go, so that we are able to bear witness to that - they're able to bear witness to us and we are then able to continue to bear witness as we gradually with great difficulty learn to be able to see the coming of the Son of Man in his going.

...

"So that is what is going on in Advent: this extraordinary shape of the mercy of God coming into our midst. We're being trained to observe it, to observe and to be taken on board by it, so that we can become living representatives of it. That means working through a whole lot of our projections of anger, of vengeance, of punishment, onto God, because our expectation is of someone who comes in to sort things out... [in] a rough way, [to] punish people. But in fact the one who comes is going to constantly surprise by the failure to be part of vengeance. That is going to be, if you like, the most difficult thing for us to perceive, that's the thing that's most completely going to fox us. So that we receive the mercy at this time of Advent of learning once again that the one who comes, comes in gentleness and precariousness. So that we can perceive his coming and his giving of himself away."

- James Alison, "Homily for the First Sunday in Advent Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YATO41e51_c)

[For discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/advent1b/]