From the Lectionary for 30 June 2024 (Proper 8B)

Mark 5:21-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and pleaded with him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Immediately her flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my cloak?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the synagogue leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the synagogue leader, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the synagogue leader’s house, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl stood up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.

~

"In the art of narrative, every detail is there for a reason, and Mark's “aside” that the girl was twelve years old is a good case in point. She has lived affluently for twelve years, and is just on the edge of puberty. In contrast, the bleeding woman had suffered for twelve years, permanently infertile. This number symbolizes the twelve tribes of Israel (3:13; see Chapter 4), and represents the key to the social meaning of this doublet. Within the “family” of Israel, these “daughters” represent the privileged and the impoverished, respectively. Because of such inequity, the body politic of the synagogue is “on the verge of death.”

"The healing journey must, however, take a necessary detour that stops to listen to the pain of the crowd. Only when the outcast woman is restored to true “daughterhood” can the daughter of the synagogue be restored to true life. That is the faith the privileged must learn from the poor. This story thus shows a characteristic of the sovereignty of God that Jesus will later address: The “last will be first” and the “least will be greatest” (see 10:31, 43)."

- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor, “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pp. 66-67

~

"Here’s my proposal to you this morning: Jesus came not simply to bring healing to isolated individuals like the two daughters in this wrap-around story. He came to heal the system which makes the families of human communities outsiders to one another, declaring some to be unclean and untouchable. Jesus came daring to touch, and to be touched by, those untouchables. He was willing in the end to even let himself be declared an untouchable, hanged on the cross. He crossed those boundaries to offer healing not just to individuals but to the systems and communities of healing themselves. He came to help us see that there will never be any ultimate healing and peace until we cease to play the games of insiders and outsiders."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on July 1, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_8b_2012_ser/)

~

"Here [Jesus] is back on the 'Jewish' side [of the lake of Galilee] and we get this wonderful [story], two women who together represent the Daughter of Zion, the one who is going to be married to The Bridegroom. We have this diptych about the coming into the midst of the people of the great High Priest, who is also the one who is setting up the possibility of the marriage between the Lord and Zion, and how this breaks through all fear of death and impurity - the great things that kept people away from the Holy of Holies such that only the High Priest could go in and only after [he] had been separated from any sort of death and from any sort of impurity.

[...]

"Jesus is going with the [synagogue] leader, remembering, someone who would bring up his daughter in very strict separation from boys and who's now coming terribly close to the moment when she is about to be marriageable. And as [for] many many young women in Middle Eastern society at that time, and maybe still in other societies, that is a real crisis point, the time when you can suddenly become marriageable. And perhaps you don't even have any choice about the matter, especially if you're in a religiously conservative household such as being in an synagogue leader's household -you're not going to choose, you're going to be forcibly married off. You're not sure whether you want to enter into that world, so developing a catatonic stupor and refusing to carry on living is a conversion, it's a recognized conversion symptom. Under those circumstances, others do the reverse, the reverse of this kind of anorexic shutdown is done by eating far too much, bloating - again trying to avoid becoming marriageable.

"[... Then] we have a mature woman, the one who'd been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. Very soon we will see that the little girl was twelve. So that's very deliberate. Mark is showing this woman for twelve years has been unable to be married, unable to enter into any sort of tactile relationship with anybody because she is ritually impure constantly. She can't be made pure, she can't go to the synagogue, she can't marry, she can't have sex, she's untouchable - quite literally can't be touched because of her condition. She's tried the doctors, the doctors can't do anything about it, she's made herself poor in this way. But she'd heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak.

[...]

"And Jesus says to her, “Daughter,” - he used not the term little girl, he uses the term daughter - “your faith has made you well, go in peace and you will be healed of your disease.” He is not treating it as though he is a father, he's using the term daughter to indicate she is a daughter of Zion. [...] She is now going to be marriageable, she's now able to enter into the marriage banquet between the Lord and Zion, what we call the marriage supper of the Lamb.

"While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, “Your daughter is dead,” - ok, so it's no longer a case of a spirit possession, she's dead - “why trouble the teacher any further?” [...] But they're also saying: don't bring him into the house, it is now an impure place and of course he will be made impure if he comes into the house. But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue “Do not fear, only believe.” In other words, [...] the synagogue leader is going to have to have believed what happened to the woman, whom he would have barred from his synagogue, and agreed to go into his own home, which is now an impure place, with Jesus in faith. It's faith that's going to make him whole. In other words, the woman cured from her bleeding is the example of faith that he's being asked to accept to go forward. It's the daughter of Zion who's at work here.

[...]

"[Jesus] took the child's father and mother, and those who are with him - that's, the three disciples, Peter, James and John - and went in to “where the child was,” it says in our version. The best Greek text is, “where the child was laid.” And the verb used for “laid” is very interesting because it's a verb with two meanings. It can be “was laid out” as a corpse is laid out, meaning that they'd washed her and laid her corpse out; or laid “was reclining,” and the same verb is used to recline as at a banquet. In other words, it's a very very clever use of a verb there to indicate that both of those might be the case. Because after all, this is the one who had died just short of becoming marriageable in just the same way as the other had been locked into the impossibility of marriage.

"He took her by the hand, which is always the sign of an invitation to marriage, and said to her, “Talitha koom,” which is Aramaic for “little girl, arise!” And it's straight out of the canticle, the Song of Songs, the Canticle of Canticles. The daughter of Zion who is being told to arise because the bridegroom is coming. And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about. [...] Obviously, this whole business of growing up and becoming marriageable had been too much for her - stressful circumstances, a bound-down religious atmosphere, marriage impossibility, inability to flourish - all of that has been solved by the arrival of the  Bridegroom.

[...]

"So in today's Gospel we have the Bridegroom, the Lord, the High Priest, come into the midst of the Daughter of Zion, to call her to life, to break through the fear of death and of blood, of impossibility and impurity, to bring to life impossibility and marriage."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 13 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJ4UYCATu8)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, and for discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_8b/]

From the Lectionary for 23 June 2024 (Proper 7B)

Psalm 107:23-30 (NRSV)

Some went down to the sea in ships,
    doing business on the mighty waters;
they saw the deeds of the Lord,
    his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
    which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
    their courage melted away in their calamity;
they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
    and were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he brought them out from their distress;
he made the storm be still,
    and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad because they had quiet,
    and he brought them to their desired haven.

Mark 4:33-41 (NRSV)

With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

~

"The fact that the disciples need special instruction (4:34) shows that they cannot spontaneously grasp the revelation in the parables. Their inability to understand becomes clearer in the subsequent miracle story which leaves them puzzling “Who then is this, because even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4:41). The miracle of the stilling of the storm introduces a series of portentous actions that disclose the mysterious power of Jesus and the essential incomprehension of even those closest to him. In the previous set of such miracle stories in the Gospel (the “conflict stories” in 2:1-3:6), the opposition is the religio-political vested interests; here, it is incomprehension and misunderstanding on the part of the disciples themselves. We are being shown how it is possible that three quarters of the hearers of the word could prove unfruitful, as well as the crucial fact that the insiders are in no better case than the outsiders... Those who go into the house with Jesus for private instruction are no better off than those who remain outside because they do not yet understand the cross."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pg. 92

~

"[O]ur translation says: “a great gale arose.” This is in Greek 'lilaps animal' and that's not proper Greek, it's a direct translation from Hebrew: “a storm of wind.” And this is the key point: it's exactly the phrase that is used in a couple of key places in Scripture. First of all in the Psalm which is our Psalm for today, where it says: “Some sail to the sea and ships to trade on the mighty waters.” - this is why it's important that there was more than one boat on the sea at this time [cf. Mark 4:36)] - “These men have seen the Lord's deeds, the wonders he does in the deep” - so we're going to see a wonder of the Lord - “For he spoke, he summoned the gale” - that's what it says in our translation, but in fact the Hebrew behind it is “the storm of wind,” which has been translated by Mark into 'lilaps animal' - so “For he spoke the storm of wind, tossing the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep, their souls melted away in their distress.” So the Psalm is a very good description of what the disciples are then going to live out.

"It's also exactly the same phrase in Psalm 148: “Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, storm of wind fulfilling his command.” It's a stormy wind, a storm of wind - it's exactly the same phrase. But notice that in both cases the stormy wind is fulfilling his command. And I want to suggest to you that the relationship between word and what is going on here is very important. This is all to do with the One who is speaking and whose word can be relied on and trusted. And that this is in a sense what's the difficult learning thing here.

[...]

"A little thought back: had he not just told them a parable about someone who planted a seed - that's to say, put out the Word - and then went to sleep and got up again, imagining that the seed would be growing. He knew it how - 'automate', automatically [(reference to Mark 4:28, "The earth produces of itself" where the Greek word translated 'of itself' is 'automate')]. And has not Jesus just actually done that with his disciples - just going to sleep? And seeing whether the seed has been sprouting?

[...]

"So he's asking them, “Has the seed spread?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” So the Master, even more than Moses, and the Word. And here I'd like to end by stressing something: the power of the Word is what brings things into creation.

"If you thought Jesus was a magician, you think of someone who has power over things - that's the 'magician' picture of Jesus, and that's absolutely not what's at work here. What is at work here is the Lord, who's Word speaks the storm into being. It's not that he just controls it when it's convenient or inconvenient. He's actually the Creator, it's his Word that can take the form of a storm. His Word produces things 'automatically'.

"His Word is behind all these things, so of course Jesus can go to sleep: the Word is at work. The disciples who are frightened and scared have at their disposal, and are part of the spreading of, the Word. Behind them, in their midst, impelling them onwards, compelling us onwards, is a power far greater than we can imagine. Not a magical power, but a power that stunningly is bringing things into being in unexpected places. And he's continually pushing us on, saying, “Has the seed sprouted a little bit? Are you able to see that the Word is at work? My Word? That this is the Word of God and of course it accomplishes whatever it purposes?”"

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 12 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3WA2VZyc3s)

[Source of the Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_7b/]

From the Lectionary for 16 June 2024 (Proper 6B)

Ezekiel 17:22-24 (NRSV)

Thus says the Lord God:

I myself will take a sprig
    from the lofty top of a cedar;
    I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
    from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
    on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
    I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
    and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
    in the shade of its branches will nest
    winged creatures of every kind.
All the trees of the field shall know
    that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
    I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
    and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
    I will accomplish it.

Mark 4:26-34 (NRSV)

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

~

"I believe that in this morning’s gospel lesson... Jesus tells a joke. But two thousand years later, did we laugh? It’s a classic case for those failed-joke-comebacks:

“I guess you just had to be there.” or

“It loses something in translation.” or

“We just don’t get it.”

"A joke, you say? How so? Well, the creators of our lectionary at least gave us half a chance by pairing this Parable of the Mustard Seed with the First Lesson from Ezekiel 17. Did you notice how Ezekiel compares the Kingdom of God to the twig of a cedar tree which God plants and it grows up to be a huge tree that all the birds want to come nest in? Well, keep that majestic cedar tree in mind, as many of Jesus’ audience no doubt had it in their minds, as you listen again to the parable: “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all … shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

"Do you see how Jesus even uses some of the same words as Ezekiel? The birds of the air nesting in its branches? Yet he has changed Ezekiel’s mighty cedar tree to a scruffy little mustard bush. That must be a joke, don’t you think?

"And that’s only part of the joke! To get the other part I think you need to be farmers like many of Jesus’ original audience, not farming-impaired city-dwellers like most of us. Would you get the joke if I told it to you this way(?): the kingdom of God is like dandelion seed, which, when sown into your lawn…” Do you get it? Yes, mustard shrubs are weeds! Farmers generally spend a lot of effort trying to keep it off their soil, not sowing it on! Jesus had to have been smiling when he told this parable, don’t you think?"

- Paul Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, June 14-15, 1997 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_6b_1997_ser/)

~

"It is a joke, of course, with a serious message behind it. But the vehicle of a joke is more gracious than that of a diatribe. These series of parables began with the Parable of Satan casting out Satan, last week’s text, which is closer to a diatribe, though in riddle form it tends to be ‘heard but not understood.’ The issue at stake is to either live by the power of Satan, which is the power of accusation followed by casting out, or to live by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is the power of forgiveness (or to use St. Paul’s word, reconciliation). The only unforgivable sin, then, is to not believe in the power of forgiveness; the only way to not be reconciled is to reject the offer of reconciliation.

"We are faced, then, with a choice of households, or kingdoms, to live in. This week’s parable of the mustard seed prepares us that this may seem, in the eyes of the world, like a crazy garden to live in if we choose God’s. We will seem like weeds to the world, very out of place as we try to live out of forgiveness in a world based on vengeance."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from 'Reflections and Questions' on this week's lectionary texts (link below)

~

"[In Mark] chapter 4, we have several explained parables, he's explaining parables to the disciples. And today's two parables are both parts of those. These are, at least as it appears, not spoken to the general public but spoken to the disciples. In other words, these are instructions to preachers about what they're preaching. I think that that's a point worth remembering: they're not general, they are for people whose job is the word.

"Having said that, as so often, we're reminded of the Lord's words, which don't appear in today's Gospel but in the passage just before it [vv 11-12], that he told those outside: “everything comes in parables in order that they may indeed look but not perceive, and may indeed listen but not understand, so they may not turn again and be forgiven.” This quote from Isaiah indicating God making something known which is also capable of producing confusion in the hearts of those listening. It's also capable of being understood the wrong way. And that's if you like the first lesson for a preacher like me is to what extent am I simply one of those who thinks I know but don't, thinks I'm passing on something good but I'm not. And there is, if you like, I think a very necessary sense of awe before the word lest we be mishandling it.

[...]

"I wonder whether [the Parable of the Growing Seed] isn't more directed to preachers than an allegory about God. It presupposes the allegory about God, which is that God knows exactly what he's doing, he's the one who produces the seed. We may think we're scattering it and, indeed, a random preacher, like I, is well aware that I'm scattering seed. And we don't know how it grows, I certainly don't. And yet we can sense harvest, consensus, things growing. [...] I've been trying to do something that may not be good but if any of the words that I have been scattering are part of what God accomplishes then there will be growth, and there will be a harvest.

[...]

"What we have [in the Parable of the Mustard Seed] is a small garden where the birds might be very inclined to eat the seed but if you plant it and it grows, it does become a shrub, and the birds, even the birds who would have been its enemy, find an ability to rest in it. And this I think is one of the wonderful things about the Gospel and preaching the Gospel, that the things we plant, that are treated with apparent hostility, we turn out to be making something friendly for even our apparent enemies. We give them a rest and a place to sit. They might not have appreciated in the first place, and that's part of the preaching of the word and that's part of allowing ourselves to grow and to see what is being brought into being without being concerned that it's something glorious or powerful or of good reputation. It may be a mustard bush."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 11 in Ordinary Time, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YLih3aFABU)

[Source of reflections by Paul Nuechterlein and link to his 1997 sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_6b/]

From the Lectionary for 9 June 2024 (Proper 5B)

Mark 3:20 -35 (NRSV)

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

~

Exegetical Note by Paul Nuechterlein, from the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 5B (link in comments below):

V. 29, NRSV translation: “but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” There are multiple problems with this translation (and many similar translations). “Never” and “eternal” translate the Greek word aiōnion, which does mean “eternal” in the context of Greek philosophy, but we need to remember that this is a Jew speaking to other Jews. They thought in more temporal terms of an old corrupt age marked by sin and corruption, and a new age brought about by God which would set right what humans have corrupted. The two uses of aiōnion in this sentence reflect that Jewish thinking as well as the immediate context of Jesus’s challenge to the scribes. This present age is characterized by the human sin of sacred violence and keeps the human family a house divided. The new age of God which Jesus is inaugurating will be characterized by forgiveness. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is to resist the coming of the new age of forgiveness and thus remain stuck in the old age. So a better translation of this verse would be something like, “But whoever may blaspheme towards the Holy Spirit holds no place in the new age of forgiveness but is trapped in the old age of sin.”

~

"If we can’t learn as followers of Jesus to raise our level of discourse to the anthropological level, then we remain trapped within the viewpoints of our own cultures and languages and religions. And these things divide us as a human family. Even our theologies, which usually find themselves inside a certain religious context, divide us. None of these things will ever unite us into God’s one new humanity (Eph 2:15) without the Bible’s anthropology that transcends culture and language and religion. As we said on Pentecost, our human way of uniting is based on dividing us into us-and-them. Our way of seeking peace, of trying to stop violence, uses violence. That’s why the chief thing that Jesus came to save and redeem is our anthropology, our way of being human.

"This is also abstract. So let’s get a bit more concrete by looking at our Gospel story more closely. Jesus is getting flack from his own family. He’s doing far-out things that give us glimpses of this new way of being human, and so it looks strange. He goes around forgiving everyone, and there’s lots of healing because of it. He treats perfect strangers — unclean lepers, no less! — as if they are brothers and sisters. It appears crazy! This new way of being human! And so Jesus’ family seems to almost team-up with the authorities from Jerusalem who accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul, the chief of demons.

"Jesus, as usual, has a clever response. He almost never argues head-on with opponents but instead uses questions. Mark signals us that his question is even like a riddle. It is the first use of the word “parable” by Mark to describe Jesus’ teaching, and parable in Mark has the character of a riddle, something that transcends common logic and reasoning.

"“How can Satan cast out Satan?” asks Jesus. It seems like a rhetorical question, doesn’t it? And Jesus follows with, “If a kingdom or house is divided against itself, that kingdom or house cannot stand.” Common logic says that Satan would not try to cast out Satan and divide his kingdom. But remember that Mark has given us the clue that this is a parable, a riddle, a question defying standard logic. And, sure enough, consider the context: the authorities from Jerusalem have just tried to accuse Jesus of being in league with Satan, or with one of Satan’s cohorts, Beelzebul. It is a prelude to casting him out, which they will later succeed in doing by having him sentenced to death on the cross. So the second part of the equation, the casting out Satan part, has just happened. But what about Satan casting out Satan, the first part of the equation? Here’s the thing: the Jerusalem authorities will never see themselves as Satan. No, as well-meaning people always do, they see themselves as doing God’s work! God wants us to cast out the evil doers, right?

"But this riddle from Jesus means for us to look deeper. The oldest tradition of who Satan is, in fact, is that Satan is the Accuser. He is the Prosecuting Attorney, the one who makes the accusation of the majority against a minority that they think guilty of evil doing, guilty of being in league with the demons. We know, in this instance, that the Jerusalem authorities are wrong. Jesus, God’s Son, is not guilty of anything. They are the guilty ones by virtue of making a false accusation. So what this riddle is trying to get us to see is that the Jerusalem authorities have just provided a splendid example of Satan casting out Satan. They think they are doing God’s work of casting out the evil one, while Jesus is inviting us to see that they are actually doing satanic work, the work of accusation.

"But I believe, if we are to rise to the level of anthropological discourse, that this riddle means more than simply the fact that they got it wrong in Jesus’ case. Our entire human way of staying together in community is being judged here. “Satan casting out Satan” names how human beings have cohered in groups since the beginning of our species. It is what, up to now, defines our species. Our group formation into languages, cultures and religions is based on being over against someone else. We are always able to have a group identity for ourselves based on someone else being different or wrong. There is underlying our group’s identity an accusation against the others. [...] What Jesus is trying to get us to see is that our anthropology, our whole way of being human, can be named as “Satan casting out Satan.”

"How do we know that? Again, the context. This riddle about Satan casting out Satan is surrounded by an episode involving Jesus and his family. His flesh and blood family is accusing him of being crazy. He names his real family, then, as those who do the will of God. What is that will? Forgiveness. The only unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit is refusing forgiveness itself. One can’t be forgiven if you refuse it. The Holy Spirit has come into this world in order to do nothing less than offer us a new way of being human based on forgiveness rather than on accusation and casting out. It’s the only way that we can live in peace as God’s one human family. Yet we continue to choose the way based on casting out. The human family remains a house divided, a family divided."

[...]

"What we’re saying, in short, is that our way of being human up until now has been a way of dividing into groups based on languages, cultures, and religions that have a casting out behind them instead of a forgiveness that compels us to see the whole human race as a family. Jesus came to redeem that old way of being human that will always mean a house divided which cannot stand. And he is offering us a new way of being human which sees every single person as a brother or sister in God’s family with whom we live in a relationship of forgiveness, the only power which can keep families together."

- Paul Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran, Portage, MI, June 10, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_5b_2012_ser/)

~

"[I]t's the whole dynamic of forgiveness that is being reacted against, which is why this is a particularly strong parable for the scribes. It's a particularly strong parable for the religious leaders, for Christian religious leaders thereafter, because of course it's religious leaders, we are the ones who are tempted to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit by refusing to see people being forgiven and brought to creation. We throw around words like blasphemy as an accusation when God can forgive all our blasphemies, that's not a problem. But he so so longs for us to be [in] on the dynamic of being forgiven into created life.

[...]

"Looking around at them sitting around he said, “Behold, my mother and my brother. Whoever does the will of my Father” - I have willed to come to me - “that one is my brother and sister and mother.” In other words, this is simultaneously what he's doing with relation to his blood relatives but also an indication to those who are coming from Jerusalem and attempting to, after Pentecost, attempting to hold back Jesus's presence in the new house that he was building as he was spreading the wholeness and holiness of God amongst all nations and all people.

"That is what the work of the Holy Spirit looks like, that is what is being brought into being: his family, his kingdom, the one where he is with his sisters and brothers and mothers. This brand new sibling-icity - sorority, fraternity - which is what he is making possible, and that the dynamic behind this, the creative spirit is bringing into being by forgiving us, opening us up, plundering - taking out all Satan's favourite tricks to produce division, sickness, downcast, saddened lives - all of that is being done by the one who wants to open us up into belonging to his family."

- James Alison, from video, "Homily for Sunday 10 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_29p6il0E)

[Source of exegetical note by Paul Nuechterlein and link to his 2012 sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_5b/]

From the Lectionary for 26 May 2024 (Trinity Sunday, Year B)

Romans 8:14-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

~

"The Church gives us on this Sunday the reading from the end of Matthew's Gospel, just the last four verses, where we get very clear reference to “in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.” What I'd like to do with you is explore a little bit about this, the reality of the Trinity. We all know that it's a mystery, which means that it's a way of talking about something that is so clear, so huge, so alive, that it's difficult for us with our limited vision to see. It doesn't mean that it is in itself something that is unclear, it means that its clarity is such that it's rather beyond our capacity to get things clear.

"And that's what i want to bring out, just some little hints of why and how this is such a wonderful doctrine for us, or dogma if you like, something that opens up rather than closes down discussion of all talk about God, [or] makes talk about God something nonsensical. Because it contains within it some very important hints for the opening up of reality for us. That's why I think that it's good Trinity Sunday comes, if you like, immediately after Pentecost Sunday, so at the end of the whole cycle of salvation - started in Advent, concluding with the Ascension, and then finally brought to life in our midst with Pentecost - we then have Trinity Sunday [which is] the wrap-up, if you like. It's the narrative condensed into its briefest form. But it is a narrative, and I want to bring that out.

"Okay, so here's my ... thumbnail way of talking about the Holy Trinity. You have God the Creator of everything that is, one God. So far that's easy, if you like. Either you believe in God or you don't. If you do, one god is not really a problem - one not in the sense of numerical one, but one in the sense of there are no more than this utterly unmentionable other who is beyond any of our numerical and sense of being, because so much more than any of, we can only think of one as a number as God, of whom we are small symptoms, we and everything that is is a small symptom.

"Okay, well so far so good, but that doesn't actually help us have a handle on anything much. So god may be, you know, a spaghetti monster, or more like a piece of basalt rock, or lord alone knows. If you just say 'god' just like that the question arises: what criterion on earth do we have for talking about god? What's our criterion for talking about god, and how on earth do we know whether we're right? When we talk about Jesus, and we say Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, or the Logos, we're saying that Jesus is God's criterion for God. The Patristic Fathers would use words like God's word, God's self-understanding, or something like that.

"Why do I use the word criterion? Well, because I think that it actually helps us not only think of this in a psychological sense, as though God were some sort of mind, but actually in an interactive sense. If you wish to conduct a trade negotiation with someone, you send an ambassador. You give that ambassador powers. That ambassador effectively becomes your criterion for dealing with the group that is being negotiated with, and the more authority you give to that ambassador or that person, the more that person has your total confidence, the more that ambassador is free to exercise his or her discretion in the negotiating process. [...] You would [say], “This person represents me completely, he is my criterion for who I am. It's exactly how I understand myself to be, and how he exercises that role is me exercising that role.” [...] That's what we're saying: Jesus is the criterion of God, who is God. There are no other bits of God. ...

"The criterion for God is God, so the claim that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity is: Jesus is God's criterion for God, who is God. And what we have in all the Gospels in one way or other is a way of pointing out this is exactly who Jesus is. In today's gospel as you would have noticed it's again done narratively with Jesus saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That was what he had achieved in his lifetime, in his life leading up to and into his death, he had become the criterion for God. That was the whole purpose of his coming amongst us as a human being, to establish forever the criterion for God, which is God amongst us, and then breathing that into us so that we, from his authority, from the criterion, are able to take something forth.

"And this is the thing about the criterion: God has a criterion who is God, but the criterion can be difficult to understand. We might, in any relationship with the criterion, and we might think, okay, the criterion who's come amongst us is a hard task master, a judge. We can misinterpret any number of things in ways that screw up our relationship with the criterion, we can fail to understand the criterion. That's the thing about humans and criterion, literally everything ever since we became symbolic animals is capable of being interpreted one way or another, things can stand for other things, we became capable of telling lies in ways that our nearest animal cousins can't, we became capable of fooling ourselves in ways that they can't, we also became capable of learning an immense amount more. So we have God's criterion for God, and then we have God's interpretation of God's criterion for God, which is what we call the Holy Spirit.

"The third person of the Trinity is the one who comes amongst us and interprets who the criterion is for us, always for us - that's the term advocate, the defence counsellor which we looked at a bit last week. It's the interpretation of God's criterion for God, for us, so as to enable us to become sons and daughters, children of God. Beware that problem of translation since the Pauline text we have as a second reading, which here is translation the first reference is translated: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God,” and it puts that so as to avoid the word 'son' because it's a sexist word for us. That's not how it's meant by St Paul. Sonship referred to equality rather than to gender at the time, it means that you're “on equal footing with,” that's the purpose of the word 'son'.

"So our adoption as quote-unquote sons is not our adoption into a patriarchal masculinist form of being, ... it's our transformation into equality. That's the key sense that's going on there: our adoption into actually becoming equal. That's the purpose, that's why the interpreter who is God, God's interpretation of God who is God, is equal with God. And because that one moves us from within and transforms us from within, that one is making us “Son,” equal, we would say son or daughter. Children is not such a helpful term because it always implies a minority, for us it's the word by which we refer to minors, and the whole purpose of this is that it's not being a minor in the presence of God, it's being equal, and that's something very important.

"So, God, God's criterion for God, and God's interpretation of God's criterion for God, each one of which is God, each one of which is equal, and on the inside of which we are being brought to life. And this is, if you like, this is the interpretive reality: the interpretation of God's criterion for God is love.

"The Holy Spirit is building us up, interpreting us into being. Why do I say 'interpreting us'? Because we are narrative beings. It's because we are both capable of telling lies and telling the truth that the Spirit - who's able to work through, get through, every single crevice of our capacity for honesty, dishonesty, fooling ourselves, telling the truth, telling lies, presenting ourselves falsely, etc, etc - [to] get through to the cut between 'the quick and the marrow' ...

"The Holy Spirit is able to narrate us into being, it's the in-between God that enables the 'I' that is 'I Am' of Jesus to be reproduced in us, so that we become the son, literally The Son. That's our I, the I of each one of us - different, diverse, born in different times, countries, with a whole lot of different qualities - being narrated into being by the one incredibly rich interpreter, who is the Wisdom of God, who's able to explain, orchestrate, make symphonic, everything into being. Us being taken out of the spirit of servility, of slaves, and turned into those friends who share this wonderful adventure that we're on."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Trinity Sunday 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYLnVCD75gI)

[For discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/trinityb/]

From the Lectionary for 19 May 2024 - Pentecost Sunday, Year B

Acts 2:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

John 15:26-27 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.”

John 16:13-15 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

~

"Here I would like to make a brief observation concerning the meaning of the gift of the Holy Spirit. If we read the famous chapters 14-16 of John’s Gospel, something will be noted which is very similar to the account which I am proposing to you. We see God himself, as a human being, giving his Creating Spirit to human beings as a consequence of his going to death so that we be led into all truth. That is to say, the role of the defense attorney, the Paraclete, and the role of opener up of all truth ... and the role of making us participants in bringing Creation into being on the same level as Jesus, are the same role.

[...]

"In the model which I am sketching out, and which I hope to be in harmony with the Johannine witness, we don’t get to receive the divine “eye” or “insight,” so as to speak, by an intellectual leap outside the human process of discovery. Rather it is from within the process of the forgiving overcoming of group violence that we are carried to discovering all truth. Which is to say, that through the gift of the Holy Spirit we get to participate actively as conscious and knowing beings within God’s own creative act."

- James Alison, On Being Liked, pg. 58

~

"I want to stand back a little and think of the feast itself. We're inclined to think of the Holy Spirit as being something that is sent. You know, God the Father did something and then Jesus said something and they between them somehow sent the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit then gets to be, if you like, a third thing, something sent. And I want us to stand back just a moment from that and say: no, there is something about the sending of the Holy Spirit which makes the word "send" very inappropriate. Because we are talking not about a messenger, we're talking about God. We're talking about the protagonism that is God, the one who sends us, the sender if you like.

"When Jesus talks to the disciples in the upper room in John's Gospel, he says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And then he breathes the Holy Spirit upon them. The breathing of the Holy Spirit is the sending. There is all the dynamism and protagonism of God. God is the starter, the initiator, the beginner of all this. We are all secondary in the light of the Holy Spirit. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit this does not mean that we become the captors, as it were, of this particularly nice gift, the gilded cages in which this wonderful bird sings. No, it means that we start to be taken over by the creative Spirit of God. In other words, we become sent.

"I want to bring that out because it helps us understand something of the amazement and the excitement and the oddness of what's going on in the Pentecost reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which is that Jesus had told them that something was going to happen, he told them about power coming from on high, he told them about the promise of his Father. And yet, what came was a form of protagonism, a form of initiative that was vastly outside and more and beyond anything they could possibly have come up with. It was enormously more powerful. It was not only turning them into the beginnings of the New Temple which meant the sign of the coming in of the New Creation, because the whole point of the temple was that it would be a sign of the Creator, completing creation.

"The whole point of the Rite of the Atonement was that it helped inaugurate the new creation. All of this: the sign of the coming in of the Creator, the complete undoing from within of everything that had screwed up human togetherness, by the undoing of Babel, the unconfusing of tongues. Babel just means confusion; here in the Gospel text and the text from Acts where it says they came together and were bewildered. Actually, it says they came together and were confused. This is Luke's pun, this is the undoing of the confusion of faith. And they're discovering the non-unitary, the wonderful diversity, orchestrated together of language in which each of us from within our mother tongue can learn how to speak the truth. And how God can in fact speak the truth through us and speak us into being, from every nation, culture, tribe, without any over against. This is a huge initiative by God, the undoing of a falsely entrapped creation and it's being  opened up into the fullness of creation.

"So that's something that we usually forget. We usually talk about the Holy Spirit as though it was something somewhat less than God. A kind of a tame version of God. And what I want to say is: no, it's us being introduced onto the inside of the life of God as humans. In other words, God having agreed to be Godself at a human level for us, that that's what Jesus had achieved. That's why Jesus is so keen that we understand that the only access to the Father is in him. Everything that is in the Father he is bringing to us, and everything that he is bringing to us is now available to us in the Spirit, on our level - sideways, horizontally. That God, the dwelling place of God, is with humans.

[...]

"[In John 15:15, Jesus] said something which is not in today's Gospel, which we had a few days ago: “I do not call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing. But I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Everything I have made known. In other words, I've opened up knowledge to you. I've opened up the knowledge of what really is for you, everything that I've heard from my Father.

"And then today, just a little later on, [in John 16:13]: “he will not speak on his own,” - the Spirit who's coming upon you, it's going to be the same initiative as mine, which is the same initiative as the Father's - “but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you.” So, “I have spoken to you what I have heard, I made it known to you, I've made known to you what I've heard” [15:15; and] “He will speak whatever he hears and he will declare to you.” [16:13].

"So, what we're getting is, if you like, the continuation of Jesus making things known to us through the Spirit. Which is bearing the whole of Jesus's life and death, keeping that whole dynamic alive for us to share in and living. And that this is what is being made available to us as something friendly, just as a master doesn't tell friends what it's about, but friends share what they've heard and share what is true about what they've heard so as to open up for other friends. That's what this talk of hearing means: that this gift of the Spirit, all the power and glory of God coming at the level of us, is a friendly opening up, [of] the reality of creation, of everything that is, as something profoundly friendly to us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Pentecost Sunday, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bDtRSUUQEM)

[Source of James Alison quote from "On Being Liked" and for discussion of all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/pentecostb/]

From the Lectionary for 12 May 2024 (Ascension Sunday)

Mark 16:1-7 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

Acts 1:6-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

~

"[I]n Mark's resurrection account there is a little hint of the Ascension. Here Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome come to the tomb. As they entered the tomb they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side and they were alarmed. That's all it says: sitting on the right side. So here is the new Holy of Holies with an angel sitting on the right side. This symbolizes that the One who is not here, is in fact now sitting on the right-hand side of God. That's the message of the Ascension, that the Son of Man who has performed the sacrifice is now enthroned at God's right hand. That fulfils the prophecy in ... Daniel 7 which explains exactly how this was going to happen.

"So I think that an earlier generation would have picked up that this was a reference to everything having been fulfilled, but because we've got rather more used to, if you like, the helicopter imagery, we're less aware of what is meant by the Ascension. We think of it much more in terms of physical liftoff than how it would have been considered by the earliest readers of Mark, by the earliest Christian thinkers. Because it seems both in Mark and in Luke's account that they are thinking of ascension, of ascent, of lifting up, much more in terms of the throne visions of the Holy Place in the temples, starting with Isaiah's which is very clearly referenced in Luke's account.

"So here in Luke's account, we have, after Jesus has interacted with his disciples after his resurrection, he's told them that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit will come upon them and he's going to send them to the rest of the world. And as he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their side. The same verb, lifted up, is used to describe the vision of Isaiah in the year the King Uzziah died, this is Isaiah 6: “I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple, and the house was filled with smoke.” Smoke meaning clouds of incense. So here we have the lifting up and the clouds. Fairly soon [at Pentecost], the house will be filled, the house where the disciples are is being filled, as part of the Lord's train now comes down upon amongst them. In fact at the beginning of [Acts], we have the, if you like, living out on earth of Isaiah's throne vision.

"We get the throne vision in Daniel as well and all of this is important to understand what's going on in the ascension, rather than it being a matter of how Jesus physically departed, i.e. vertically, which is actually stressed by the angels [in Acts 1:11] was not really how he departed. It's a question of what was meant by the rite of the Ascension. In the background to this there is the understanding, the ancient Jewish understanding from the time of the first Temple, [of] the key liturgy: atonement and enthronement. The great High Priest giving himself and then the royal figure being enthroned and God's power being over all.

"These two central feasts, they had already happened in heaven. They were part of the Creator's plan that already happened in heaven, they already existed, if you like, as real facts. And in this secondary reality - which we call the world, earth, creation - they hadn't yet been actually fully enacted. They could only be enacted liturgically by signs in the temple, but the prophets awaited the time when they would actually be lived out. And Jesus's life, death, resurrection and ascension is the living out on earth of that which is done in heaven. That's the whole purpose of it, that's what's meant by the incarnation - the making available in flesh, living out on earth, that which is already done in heaven. And the Ascension is the conclusion of that. It's, if you like, the earthly glimpse of the end of the whole thing. And it's only an earthly glimpse because we have no possible language to describe the end of the heavenly liturgy.

"We see different moments. We see Jesus's teaching. We see him going to his death, we see him living into death so as to detoxify it. We see his resurrection in which the beginning of everything opens up and we suddenly see the whole wonder of creation being made alive for us and us being invited to take part in it. And then, very very quickly, the Ascension, the enthronement in heaven. We use simply a mystical language for that, because how do we talk about the conclusion to the whole thing? How do we talk about the whole thing having been finally enacted, so the full power that God had intended to unleash on earth has now been unleashed and we can now await for the whole of that presence to make itself available to us in the form of the Holy Spirit?

"That's the key distinction that's going on here. Jesus finished something, he achieved something, it's done, it's over. And now that he's achieved it, something massive is going to be made available to us, something huge is going to be unleashed in our midst. The hugeness that has already been achieved in heaven is now going to be made available to us in the form of power, gifts and so forth...

"So that very much more than the vertical lift-off is what's going on here. And just to remind us about that, even at the time in [Acts], Luke is aware of the risk of vertical thinking. So he says, “they were still staring in the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them.” So here we have the two seraphs from the Holy place. The Holy place has now gone out into the world. The two seraphs are standing near them, they're standing beside them- not up in heaven, they're standing beside them on earth - saying, “Why are you, men from Galilee, standing here looking into the sky?” That's distinct from heaven. Heaven is, in principle, anywhere and everywhere. The sky is physically upwards. “Jesus, who has being taken up from you into heaven,” - not the same as the sky - “this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go.” How did they see him go? They saw him go between two different sorts of seraphs, thieves, one of whom was penitent, on either side of him, as he gave himself for them, promising that that day the penitent thief would be in paradise. So the opening up of the creation, the opening up of the garden would be happening that day. That's how you saw him go, that's how you will see him come back - in the opening up of the new creation by the One handing himself over.

"So, the feast of the Ascension is celebrating completion. The fullness of everything that God had intended for us on earth has finally been achieved for us. We are now going to be enabled to receive this power and take it up ourselves and become its full participants and its 'acters-out'. It's like Jesus is being enthroned in heaven, which means, finally, if you like, that human nature which was always meant in Adam to have been given a heavenly status, has finally been given that heavenly status. It's finally been resolved - the problem of Adam having fallen into futility. Now Adam has been taken to the heavenly place, and with him, that's with Jesus, all of us, potentially starting now, beginning to be able to live out the heavenly vision.

"Hence the importance of us being asked to keep our minds, fix our minds, on the things that are above, allowing our minds to be transfixed by that which is coming upon us, by that which is opening out and coming upon us, rather than that which is worrying us, tempting us to fear, depression, and panic. Rather, allowing ourselves to be filled with the thought of how much is being given to us, and that the Giver is constantly looking for new things to give us in order to fulfil that which has already been achieved.

"So this is, if you like, the something victorious about the Ascension - victorious not only for what Jesus was intending, what God had intended, not only for creation, but for us. This is the beginning of our victory, if you like, and that's why this is a great great feast."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Ascension Sunday, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7bisCHfBXY)

[Note that the celebration of the Ascension is traditionally on the Thursday before the seventh Sunday of Easter. For analysis and discussion of the lectionary texts for Easter 7B, see https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter7b/]

From the Lectionary for 5 May 2024 (Easter 6B)

John 15:9-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

~

"I hope you can see that there would be a glitch in this passage if we were to assume the moralistic “authority gives instruction” mode of teaching. Because in that mode, Jesus has friends, and lays down his life for them, and then commands them, who are already his friends, to do the same to others.

"However, that’s not what the passage says! The passage presupposes that those for whom he gives his life are not yet his friends. On the contrary, he is opening up the possibility for them to become his friends by his doing something for them, on the inside of which they will then be able to find themselves as multipliers of exactly what he has done, which is how they will become his equals, his friends. They will become people who are going to be empowered to give themselves away, freely acting out of being insiders in something that has been opened up for them by someone who loved them.

"In other words, the gift of creating this possibility for his friends, and the commandment to create it are the same thing. There is no moralism here! There would be moralism if something were done, and as a result of it something were then commanded. That could indeed be a sort of emotional blackmail: “Look at me, I’ve done something for you, gone to so much trouble and suffering for you - now at least show that I have purchase on your heartstrings: do what I say.”

"Instead of that, what we have is a personal invitation, so that each one of the disciples, which is each one of us, finds him- or herself being taken out of the realm of blind commandments into that sharing in equality of spirit which is friendship. [...]

"Servants are told to do something, and if they don’t understand why they should do it, they’re told “You don’t need to understand why, just do it, you’re a servant. I, the Master, know why I want it done, and your ways are not my ways.” Morals are often taught in this way!

"Friends, however, are chosen freely, and become trusted insiders on a level of equality with each other. They are not given compartmentalized tasks, but are entrusted with being imaginative, creative sharers in the whole project. As they share in a project, discovering for themselves the open-ended parameters which have been made available by the One who gave himself, so they will find that they are not only friends of the one who inaugurated the project, but brothers, heirs, the ultimate insiders, fully adopted into the life of the Son.

"Jesus makes it possible for us to share his desire at the level of equality, which is that of friendship. So we are enabled to desire as Jesus desires, according to the Father. Given that, it makes perfect sense to ask the Father for whatever we want, as if we were the Son, because we will in fact be becoming the Son, the ultimate insider in the life of God."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 553-55 (from Essay 12, “Neighbors and Insiders: What’s It Like to Dwell in a Non-moralistic Commandment?”)

~

"[The] extraordinary privilege of finding yourself chosen to be a friend by Jesus... that's what this is about, sitting in the sense of: this [has] all been set up by someone else, this is all for us, this is not a task, this is not a duty, this is much more like an invitation [from] someone who's actually chosen us, who thinks we're worth something, who wants us to bear fruit.

"And it says, “and I appointed you to go and bear fruit” [v 16].  This word “appointed” - strangely it's the same word [Greek: tithemi] as “laying down” one's life. It's “to place” ... “No one has greater love than 'to place' one's life for his friends” [v 13]. “And I 'placed' you to go and bear fruit” [v 16].

"I think there's a very delicate sense here which... becomes rather official with the word “appointed.”  [Instead I think the sense is,] “I've placed you, I've put you in the place where you will be able to go and bear fruit.”  In other words, not only have I chosen you as a friend, but I've placed you, you're going to be in the right place.  You'll be pruned (and how), but there is a place for you and that place will enable you, sharing in the joy, to be able to achieve and fulfill all the things that my Father has planned for you.

"“I appointed you to go and bear fruit, placed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”  And here he goes back to the sense of the vine, that he is the one in whose name, in whose person, we are going to be able to desire and want and be fulfilled.

"“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”  Remember that the command is, before it's an instruction, it's the gift, it's the illustration, it's the whole life [of Jesus] that is being lived out of love, knowingly and joyfully knowing that he was loved, so that we can get on the inside of that, reproduce it for others, and find ourselves on the inside of the life of God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwtQK-qa2xs)

[Source of James Alison quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and for discussion of all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter6b/]

From the Lectionary for 28 April 2024 (Easter 5B)

John 15:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

~

"The image of the vine and the branches in John 15 gives us a powerful image of closeness both between ourselves and God and also with each other through our grounding in God.

"Each of us is a branch connected to the vine which is Jesus. Jesus is telling us that the desires of each and every one of us must be rooted in His Desire, which is the same Desire as that of his heavenly Father. Between Jesus and his Father, there is no rivalry and Jesus does not enter into rivalry with us. From our side it tends to be a different story. We experience rivalry so constantly that it is very hard to imagine a relationship without rivalry. Just note how political and social debates are saturated with it.

[...]

"We often think of union with God as individualistic but that is not so. On the contrary, union with the vine unites us with all of the other branches. This means we share our union with the vine with everybody else’s union with the vine. It is by being united to others through Christ that we have the ability, through grace, to act towards others in God’s Desire rather than through our rivalistic tendencies. Since there is no rivalry in Jesus, there is no way that Jesus would encourage rivalry with others who are connected to him. [...] God abides in us insofar as we love one another. If we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves off from other people and if we cut ourselves off from other people, we cut ourselves off from God.

"The image of the vine and the branches is, above all, Eucharistic. The Eucharist is a public event. The wine in the Eucharistic celebration is the blood of Jesus that he gave to heal all of us of our violent ways. The blood of Jesus on the altar shared with each of us makes present to us the death of Jesus at the hands of persecutory humans as it also makes present the risen life of Jesus. In exchange for the way we betray Jesus with our violence, we receive the gift of life through deep union with Jesus, a union like that of the branches to the vine. We associate blood with violence, such as with the term “bloodshed,” but blood is the life within us and it is life that the Risen Jesus gives us through his Blood. This is the wine, the blood, that flows from the vine to the branches to connect us to Christ and to each other."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "On Being Branches Connected to the Vine" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/04/26/on-being-branches-connected-to-the-vine/)

~

"I don't know whether you've ever seen a vine close up but the interesting thing about is the vine itself looks dead. It's gnarled and looks like a dead stick basically. Not so the branches. The branches are green and supple and come out of it and, obviously, the fruit. [..] But there's this strange juxtaposition of this apparently dead stick out of which comes so much life. And I think that's part of the image that Jesus is using here. He's talking about how he, the risen Lord, is the dead and alive one. He is the one who is apparently dead and in whose death we are buried so that we can become alive and become him. I think that that's what he's talking about. He's talking about how we can share his dead and alive quality and how sticking with that dead and alive quality, not running away from it, is what's going to allow us to be pruned and turned into bearers of fruit.

"One of the remarks that I wish I understood better and I raise it as a question more than anything else: “You've already been cleansed or pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” So that something about his speaking to us, what he spoke to his disciples before this, before the speech which is given during the Last Supper, something about the words which he speaks to us, they enable us to live in this dead and alive space without running away from it. And it's that that allows us to begin to yield fruit, because he's quite clear that what he wants is, as it were, for all his sap to rise through us. [He] talks about this at the end: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”

"So, abiding, dwelling, making our home in him - that's the sense, which means making a home out of his words, allowing his words to correct us, to nurture us, to nudge us. It's difficult to know exactly what's meant, but this dwelling with his words alters our pattern of desire, such that he is able to desire through us and that our desire is his desire. [...] That's the sense of us actually finding ourselves in a home in him, becoming a co-part of it 'sapped in' into the home, so that we're actually part of it, and it actually flows through us. That I think is part of the richness of what's going on here.

"[...] So this business of remaining in his word, it's a curious thing: how do we do that? What does it look like to find ourselves remaining in the word, allowing the sap to rise in us, allowing his words to nudge us, to correct us, to nurture us? That I think is part of what he's saying is going to be what our life is like from now on. It's going to be listening to the word, dwelling in the word, allowing ourselves to become his self by our imitation, by being taken over gently by his Spirit. And enabled to find ourselves actually wanting amazing things, much bigger things than we could have imagined, and getting them - bearing fruit.

"And this whole thing being on an adventure with a very careful, very caring, very wise vine grower who knows where to prune, who knows where to sift, who knows how to carry us through the times when we think that we're just bits of deadwood and no good at all, is aware that there's a season when the sap will come and we will turn into the fruit that we might fear that we were never going to see."

- James Alison, from video Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYk6IfBBPI)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter5b/]

From the Lectionary for 21 April 2024 (Easter 4B)

John 10:11-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

~

"[T]his Sunday we move on from the Easter Sunday evening meetings in the different Gospels, and we start to look at some of the great Johannine texts, the 'I  AM' texts. And what these enable us to do is to get some sense, to dwell, in the shape, the form, the feeling of the resurrection life. The Risen One's here in our midst. What does he feel like? What is it to be moved by him? What are we undergoing? In what way is the sap rising, as it were, amongst us? These images which Jesus used in his teaching are images of, by which, we can detect the presence of his risen life in us. That's the purpose of these texts being given to us in this Easter season.

"... [The Good Shepherd] is a slightly misleading image for us since we tend to think of shepherds principally as to do with people in the countryside looking after sheep. There are good reasons why we think that: because that's actually what shepherds are! But for anyone attuned to Israel's texts, a shepherd had a far greater significance than that. It referred to a royal leader, a king figure, a promised king leader who would keep people safe. This is the great promise of Ezekiel. But it's particularly the link with keeping people safe. Someone who is very free, very powerful and creates spaces of safety. That's the first thing that I want to bring out. We're talking about power and safety here. One of the things about the presence of the good shepherd in our midst is to enable us to feel that he has great power and this power is designed to make us very safe. That's absolutely central to what [is] going on.

[...]

"“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” And here this is one of the things I think that is difficult for us to dwell in: ... what's this quality of being known by the risen Jesus, knowing Jesus? Being known by one who has gone through death and therefore is able to look at us without being frightened of what's going to become of us, because he knows that he holds us in his hand and is able to take us to where is good for us. And our sense that we needn't be frightened of him because he's not a bully, he's not someone who's going to make us do impossible things to make him look good. There's no ulterior motive, if you like, in his knowing us and us knowing him. Which is one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit is not frightening. It enables us to relax into this very safe being known and being led.

"He says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me.“ I know my own and I know the Father. He's saying: “Actually yes that love with which I'm going to love you, that sense of being together with you - that's the same as the Father has with me. It's this shared love which includes, therefore, an immense fondness, an actual liking you as you are, wanting to take you somewhere good. And I'm not doing that out of some moralistic commandment. Actually, later on, I will refer to it as a command, but it's merely the fact that that's what my Father is and that's what the love between us looks like: the tenderness of active bringing into being.”

[...]

"“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” So he's showing us actually, yes that awful business of him being crucified, being murdered, being lynched, that looked awfully like other people doing something to him, but in the middle of it all there was this sovereign peace. It's that sovereign peace that he's sharing with us. It's that sovereign peace he wants to know you don't need to be frightened. There will be all these wolves, there'll be all these attacks, but I've opened up this space for you to be able to live without fear of that. Not to be run by it, not to be scattered by it, not to be grabbed by it.

"“I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” This if you like is the quiet and sensational power of the risen life. This is what we are being asked to allow to penetrate us during this Easter season. To sit in the space the world doesn't even know exists, a quiet, powerful space, following one who is powerfully and actively leading us beyond ourselves, taking us into new pastures, into new ways of living with other people who first we might not even think are like us. Who is making it possible for there to be new forms of unity and all out of this huge sovereign peacefulness. ...

"“I have received this command from my Father.” ... But notice the commandment is not a word. The commandment is a gesture, which includes the gesture of laying down his life and taking it up again, thus demonstrating the power of his Father's love and inviting us into doing exactly the same thing. Saying, this power is now available to you, therefore you will be able to do my commandment, which is love each other as I have loved you - in a later speech.

"But it's this making present of this coming-alongside gesture of sovereign power. And asking ourselves, praying, I think, during this Easter season, during this week: how is this coming through to me? How is this penetrating me? How am I being lifted up, enabled to receive the 'being taken up' from the One who was able to lay down? [And] understanding how gentle and yet how powerful this is."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaAxhh_6vv8)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter4b/]

From the Lectionary for 14 April 2024 (Easter 3B)

Luke 24:36-48 (NRSV)

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

~

"When Luke and John tell us that the risen Lord appeared with the visible wounds of his death, it wasn’t merely a way of identifying him as the same person, but a way of affirming that he was so much the same person, that, in the same way as that person was dead, so was he. But that death is nothing but a vacant form for God, something whose reality has been utterly emptied out, which can only be detected in the form of its traces in the human life story of someone who has overcome death.

"The marks, then, of Jesus’ death were something like trophies: it was his whole human life, including his death, which was made alive and presented before the disciples as a sign that he had in fact conquered death. This not only meant that he had personally conquered death, which he had manifestly done, but that, in addition, the whole mechanism by which death retains people in its thrall had been shown to be unnecessary.

"Whatever death is, it is not something which has to structure every human life from within (as in fact it does), but rather it is an empty shell, a bark without a bite. None of us has any reason to fear being dead, something which will unquestionably happen to all of us, since that state cannot separate us effectively from the real source of life. This can scarcely be said with more precision than it is by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews:

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Heb. 2:14-15)

"Now I insist on this, since it is the central pillar of the Catholic faith. From the presence to the disciples of the risen victim, the crucified one risen *as crucified*, the lamb triumphant *as slaughtered*, everything else flows. Without that insight, nothing unfolds, no clear perception of God, of grace, of eternal life, about what we must do, how we must live. This means that eschatology is an attempt to understand ever more fully the relationship between those empty marks of death which Jesus bore and the mysterious splendour of the human bodily life which enabled them to be seen.

"What type of life is it that is capable not of cancelling death out, which would be to stay on the same level as it, but to include it, making a trophy of it, allowing it to be something that can be shown to others so that they be not afraid? It is about this that I wish to speak."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 29-30

~

"Ultimately the resurrection narratives are commission narratives, narratives of sending and receiving, narratives that reveal the structure of being as “being given,” “being risen,” and “being sent.” Nearly every appearance story includes a word of command and commission. In Mark the women are commanded to “go, tell his disciples and Peter,” “so they went out” (16:7). In Matthew the eleven are told: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (28:19). And in Luke: “You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised . . . and, lifting up his hand, he blessed them” (24:49,50).

"The empty tomb narrative in John includes Jesus’ instructions to Mary Magdalene to “go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (20:17). As we saw above, her announcement to the disciples (“I have seen the Lord”) indicates a fundamental shift in her understanding, just as it did for the eleven. She has received a new self from the crucified-and-risen One who, in the midst of her grief and misunderstanding, calls her by name and directs her to the community of disciples who will embody him and extend his mission in the world: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20:21). To Peter, Jesus says “feed my sheep,” “follow me” (21:17, 19).

"This connection between resurrection and apostolic mission is immediately evident in Paul’s self-understanding as well: “Paul an apostle sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1). All of this shows just how intimately the church’s identity is bound up with mission, how being reconciled and being-in-community is, for the New Testament, “being sent” in the world as an agent for justice, reconciliation, and peace. Mission in proclamation and praxis is not a secondary movement of the church, coming as a consequence of an identity already established within itself, but as the very way that identity comes about."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pp. 114-15

~

"So, ... we get the sense of the group working through what it is to become witness to this, that the Anointed One is to suffer, to rise from the dead, and the repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name. This, if you like, is what we are being turned into witnesses to. This is the purpose of having our minds opened. This is the purpose of him standing amongst us showing us his physicality. All of this is to make available for us as our doubting, troubled, questioning hearts deal with all this that one has come into our midst who was always going to come into our midst. It is he, he is doing these things, and he will take it forward and he's inviting us to undergo it beforehand so that we may be witnesses to it with him."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgLRd8akBk0)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Raising Abel and Brian Robinette's Grammars of Resurrection, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter3b/]

From the Lectionary for 7 April 2024 (Easter 2B)

John 20:19-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

~

"This Sunday we look at a text which happened later that day and a week later in which also the note is of fear. The disciples find themselves in a room that is locked for fear of the Jews, that's the fear of the religious and political authorities of the time. One of the things I really like about this fantastic passage is that it's not a quick celebration. I don't know whether you're anything like me, but I'm a very slow reactor to things. And there is something, if you like, about happy Easter liturgies on Easter Sunday that I find very difficult to cope with because it's suggesting that it's possible to do a quick turnaround from having been sad and lost and baffled by the events of Good Friday to suddenly being happy and everything being okay. And I can't do that myself and I'm very glad to say that the Gospel text suggests that that wasn't really what happened either.

"So one of the first things I want to bring out about both last week's and this week's Gospel texts is how they presuppose that it takes time to sink into what is happening. And that seems to me to be so important I even noticed that in today's Gospel we get two mentions of the room in which the disciples are found a week apart. The first time it says locked for fear of the Jews and the second time it just says: locked. In other words, a week later there's still an element of fear things haven't been sorted out magically and I think that it's tremendously important for our understanding of the Resurrection and the presence of the Risen One in our lives that we recognize and be grateful for that - the slowness, the difficulty, the oddness of what's going on.

"So first of all, our Lord appears, ... Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you.” So that's the first thing: they are riled in one way or another and peace is going to be necessary for them to be able to get anything of what is going on. “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” In other words, he identifies himself as the one who is crucified and risen. In the Apocalypse [Revelation] of St John, this is the vision which is described as a Lamb standing as one slain. It is a vision which to us is simply baffling: you can't be both alive and dead, and yet here is the one standing as one slain. But he's clearly alive, he's clearly a dynamic and protagonistic presence amongst them.

"[...] And then he says this: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This I think takes us way, way back. It suggests that the one coming into their midst is not one who has just turned up, as it were, as we might turn up to a friend's house in the midst of a party and surprise them. The suggestion is: “As the Father has sent me so I send you. I am coming into your midst from a very very far away place. I don't mean physically far away, I don't even mean chronologically far away. I mean, the place from which I'm coming to you is nowhere within your expectations. And I am going to be making you the bearers, the vanguards, the ones who are taking forward this coming in from a very very far away, very very distant, very very different place. You are going to be becoming something quite different from what you could possibly have imagined. It's going to be utterly remarkable. And this is an important thing: who you are going to become now, you are going to be the ones who are going to control this.”

"Because when he'd said this, that the Father sent me, so he breathed into them. Breathed on them, breathed into them - the same verb in Greek, it's the same verb as in Genesis where the Lord breathes into Adam. So here is the act of Recreation, it's that far back that is being brought into them now. Now what creation is and has always really been about is being brought to life in their midst through them.

"He says to them: “Receive Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Again this is the Creator Spirit, the protagonist, the one that had hovered over the waters in the beginning coming into their midst, and now coming into them, which is to say, into us, to turn us into the protagonists of creation. And the radicality of this, it's very difficult to grasp because effectively he's saying: “Let go of any notion of outside God, rescuer God, deus ex machina God. From now on God the creator, the full force of the creation is going to be available to you, in you and amongst you. And in as far as you take the ride, in as far as you allow yourselves to be swept up in this, it'll be opened up. And in as far as you don't, it won't. Your ability to forgive each other is going to be the same thing as your ability to open up creation for each other and to be opened up for each other. In other words, this whole exercise has been an extraordinary entrusting by God of Godself and God's project into your hands. And it's going to take you on journeys, it's going to take you into forms of becoming that you could not possibly imagine. And yet, that is what I have been doing for you, that's what I've been doing in your midst.”

"And then we have this wonderful memory of Thomas who is called the Twin, one of the twelve who was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We've seen the Lord.” He said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” In other words, reasonably enough, he's stuck in the identity that he was, he needs a push, he needs a boost. What they have told him is about seeing someone. They can't yet communicate what this means. So he's reasonably gone off. He's in the emotional equivalent of a locked place.

"A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them, although the doors were shut - the same verb [locked] as before. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you,” so the same making himself known through the presence of peace. Then he takes Thomas exactly at where he was in his stuckness. And this is if you like the affection of our Lord, ... he reaches him where he is and starts to move him on. But he also gives Thomas the task by making Thomas mirror him by putting his hands in his wounds, standing close up to him and becoming his mirror. He says, “Okay you're going to become me and you've been able to believe because you've seen me, but blessed are those who have not seen and have yet come to believe.

"And this, if you like, is the element that I want to bring out. This is, if you like, the slow train running beneath all this, is that the risen Lord coming into our midst as a friendly gesture, as a peaceful appearance. But what is really going on is the possibility of God having floated Godself into our midst, by faith, enabling us actually to become convinced of his presence, and able therefore, without anyone with whom we're in rivalry, of starting to have all our stuckness - our being locked in frightened places - changed, altered from within, so that we are no longer run by fear, by loss, by stuckness, and are actually able to start to move each other into the new creation.

"This for me is part of what John does by giving us Pentecost on the same day as the Resurrection. He's showing how the fullness of what the Lord gives is this extraordinary act of gentle opening up of creation which takes us at exactly where we are: frightened, lost, stuck, not heroic, not successful. In the Catholic liturgy, this Sunday is called Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy. And it seems to me that there is something here about, if you like, the power and the strength of what Jesus is breathing into us. The power and the strength of it is the kind of mercy that undoes our need to be successful, our need to win, that sets us very very gently free to start to be able to bear witness to it.

"And being able to bear witness to it doesn't look like suddenly becoming heroic and suddenly becoming successful. It looks like becoming alive in the midst of failure, and not a success, and not being heroic, and yet knowing we are loved. That the one who has come into our midst didn't do it to turn us into superheroes, that the one coming into our midst did it to show us that we are loved, that it is weak, fallible, not particularly heroic strugglers, people who need to be set free from our fears of freezing, our sense of loss - that all of that is what very slowly the Risen One is producing in our midst, floating us, if you like, off the seabed which we've got stuck on, and enabling us to be bearers of life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vad8tc86PM)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter2b/]