From the Lectionary for 7 June 2026 (Proper 5A)

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

-----

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all of that district.

~

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

[...]

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

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

-----

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

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

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

~

"We now come to a sign of what Jesus actually is going to show us to be the life in the Spirit. So, “As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew” - yes, the very Matthew after whom this gospel is named - “sitting at the tax booth” - and he's seated and he's at this tax table - “and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”

"Now, there's an awful lot going on in just this very simple phrase. So, he saw a man called Matthew. So here is the person to whom the gospel is attributed. The name given to the person whom Mark calls Levi son of Alfos. Matthew means 'giving from God'. It's difficult to have a less tax collector-like name than giving from God, the normal role of a tax collector is to take from the people. So literally what we have here is the account of someone whose experience of following the Lord has taken him from a grasper from the people into a giver from God. And that is the whole purpose, if you like, of Matthew's gospel. The signature is being brought in. You want to know what this looks like? Here is a gospel that you should read from the perspective of a sinner, someone who was not technically impure - which is probably why Matthew doesn't have the scribes criticizing this, as we'll see in a second, but only the Pharisees - but was somebody who was very certainly somebody of moral dubiousness. [...] We are going to hear the gospel from the perspective of a sinner, someone who was brought in.

"So Jesus walking along. Remember that we're going to be walking with Jesus. And here is the great sign of how are we to read this, how are we to understand. Well, we only really understand it if we're alongside and with a sinner, if we are able to be forgiven. Someone who's in the process of being forgiven will understand the gospel. Someone who is righteous and just will not understand the gospel.

[...]

"But when Jesus heard [the Pharisees' question about eating with the tax collectors, he] said, “Well, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” In other words, what's the point of hanging out with a bunch of people who get everything right. If they're getting everything right, we'll let them get on with it. I'm hanging out with people who don't get anything right, and let's see what comes of it.

"And then he says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.” And this is a beautiful quote from the prophet Hosea, and it's a signature piece in Matthew's gospel - Jesus actually quotes it twice in Matthew's gospel. And it's more important than it seems because it's not just a quote. As with all Matthew's references, you're always required to stand back and actually have a look at the text that's really being talked about to see what it really means. And one of the beautiful things about this text is if you start in Hosea 5:15, which is just before these lines, the Lord says, “I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress, they will beg my favor.” In other words, he's making quite clear that what Hosea was promising was that the arrival of the Lord before anybody starts to repent and that it's in his presence, because he's present, that they will be able to repent.

"“Come, let us return to the Lord, for it is he who has torn and he will heal us. He has struck down and he will bind us up. After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up.” So these are passages which are used in Holy Week to refer to the Passion. “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord, his appearing is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.”

"And then a little critical line: “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.” So nothing like the dawn which is actually going to be firm and actually present. Nothing like the showers that once they rain actually wet things and make the harvest better. No, like the morning mist at noon which just goes away. It doesn't seem to do anything. “Therefore I've hewn them by the prophets. I have killed them by the words of my mouth” - spoken the words - “and my judgment goes forth as the light.” And here is his judgment, the one who has come into the midst: “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

"So Jesus is actually enacting that in their midst. And you can see that that's actually rather more shocking a thing to say than just seems from the little quote. Anyhow, [clears throat] this is the sign of what it's going to be like to walking with Jesus. It's going to be walking with Jesus accompanying Matthew, a forgiven sinner.

"The church then asks us to jump a few verses about fasting and the bridegroom, which is a pity [...] because in fact our next passage, the passage which is actually in today's gospel, is all about the bridegroom and the bride.

[...]

"So, what's going on here in terms of walking with Matthew? Well, the daughter is the daughter of Zion. Let's have a look at this wonderful passage from Isaiah 62. “For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not rest.” So, the daughter of Zion is the woman with the flow of blood. And Jerusalem is the daughter [of] the ruler who'd come. “Until her vindication shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a burning torch. The nations shall see your vindication and all the kings your glory [...] You shall no more be termed Forsaken and your land shall no more be called desolate. You shall be called My Delight is in Her and in your land Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

"So please notice what has happened here. We've accompanied Jesus and we've seen him fulfilling the arrival of the bridegroom and we've seen him actually fulfilling that in terms were completely comprehensible to anyone with a notion of what Isaiah had said, these would be very well known verses. A woman who would be unable to be married and was kept out because of the blood, and a young woman who was not yet able to marry - she was too young but had died on the point being - who is dead. And neither the impurity of the one nor the impurity [as dead] of the other is any obstacle to the one who is come into the midst of his people in order to marry them.

"So this is how Matthew is going to show us what the arrival of the bridegroom is like in our midst. Entirely unconcerned about sinners like himself. Entirely unconcerned about sinners like us. This is the goodness of the Lord which he wants to bring out for us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A (Proper 5 RCL)" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARUslMnk4z8)

~

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

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

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

[Source of quote from James Alison's Faith Beyond Resentment, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_5a/]

From the Lectionary for 31 May 2026 (Trinity Sunday, Year A)

Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

~

"What we have... is a gradual process of the re-casting of God in the light of the resurrection of Jesus, such that it becomes seen that the previous discourse, within which Jesus had operated, and within which his victimary self-understanding was forged, was in fact a provisional discourse.

"In the light of the resurrection it gradually becomes possible to see that it was not that God was previously violent, now blessing, now cursing (Deut. 32:39), but had now brought all that ambivalence to an end. Rather, it became possible to see that that was all a human violence, with various degrees of projection onto God.

"God had been from the beginning, always, immutably, love, and that this love was made manifest in sending his Son into the midst of the violent humans, even into the midst of their persecutory projections of God, so that they might treat him as a human victim, and thus reveal the depth of the love of God, who was prepared to be a human victim simultaneously to show the depth of his love for humanity, and to reveal humanity as having been locked into the realm of the Father of lies [John 8:44].

"The process we have seen in the Pauline writings and in the Johannine epistles is then the definitive demystification of God and human beings, such that it becomes possible to look again at the crucifixion and the resurrection and develop a perception of God only as derived from that event.

"So, it becomes possible to see the crucifixion as the meeting point between, on the one hand, a human act of violence, and, on the other hand, the love of the Father, who sends his Son into humanity as an act of love, the Son who gives himself freely to being victimized by human beings as part of his imitative love of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is the inner dynamic of the relationship between the two of them. Jesus on the Cross gives up his Spirit to the Father. The Father at the resurrection gives back the Spirit to the Son, and the two of them are then able to give this same Spirit, the Spirit of the crucified-and-risen victim to humans as induction into a new way of being human - becoming children of God, quite outside the violence of the “world.”

"The understanding of God as Trinity then is the understanding that the Cross of Christ, made alive in the resurrection, was in fact a relational reality - a reality of giving and of self-giving that was saving as revealing and revealing as saving. The Trinity is revealed as the salvific density of the Cross."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 108-109

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

[See also the post for Trinity Sunday Year A from 2023: https://daveroberts.blogspot.com/2023/06/from-lectionary-for-4-june-2023-trinity.html]

From the Lectionary for 17 May 2026 (Easter 7A)

John 17:1-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

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

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

~

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

[...]

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

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

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

~

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

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

- James Alison, Knowing Jesus, pg. 109

~

"[B]efore I actually read the text with you, just let's take a little time to deal with this word 'glory' and its oddness and what's really going on there. When we hear the word 'glory', we think of, oh I don't know: military parades, heavenly angels, all sorts of exuberant, slightly over-the-top things. But 'glory', the Greek word, is the same word for reputation, for opinion, it's what someone thinks of someone else. St Augustine understood this very clearly. His definition of heaven, what it's going to be like for us to be in heaven, is - he says this in Latin - 'clara cum laude letitia' - to be noticed with clear praise. That's what we want. We want people  to look at us and say: yes, that's who you are; yeah, that's my boy, that's my girl. To be held in glory. That's what glory is, being able to rejoice in being known and loved and appreciated. That's glory.

"Please notice - friends of mine who understand that I'm a student of the thought of René Girard will understand it perfectly clearly - the glory is a completely mimetic thing. It's how we get a sense of something from what other people think of us. Reputation is always a social thing. And I think that that's vital if we're to understand what Jesus is talking about here. It's actually terribly simple. It's as if he's having a family, an intimate family conversation with his apostles - and, by extension, with us.

"So let's have a look at the phrases. Just think a little bit about this talk about glory. So Jesus looks up to heaven and says, “Father, the hour has come,” - it is before the Passion here - “Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.” In other words, give me the reputation which is really mine, who I'm really known to be by you, so that when I  go to my death I will, in fact, be showing who you really are. In other words, who you really are in heaven, that's something which I know. I've been trying to show people who you are. I've even taught to pray “Hallowed be thy name” - may your name, who you really are, become ever more evident in heaven, so on earth as it is in heaven. And I'm here to make it evident. I want to allow your real reputation and who you really actually are to be known. So please show all these here who I am, so that they will understand who you are, and that what I'm doing shows who you are. Obviously, that's a level of intimacy with people whose very being is given to each other by the love, and the fame, and the appreciation.

"Jesus now goes on: “... the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” In other words, the Father wants who He is to be known. He's made it possible at a human level who he really is to be known. And he's inviting people into this knowing who he really is in such way that it can be shared by us intimately. Because as we know this we start participating in it.

"He says: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” In other words, once we appreciate who God really is with all the glory that he has always had, but also quite how gentle and intimate he is in wanting to come and be amongst us as a friend and share who he is with us, going and giving himself up to death for us, so that we no longer need to be frightened by death, but start to be able to know who he is and so live towards him. All of that has been done at this tremendously intimate, domestic, family level.

"He continued: “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do." In other words, all these signs  that I've been doing, by all of them I have been pointing people to who you really are. I was making who you really are known to them. And I'll be finishing that work so that who you really are can be completed. I'm just about to finish   it by going to my death so that you'll be able to show who you really are to everyone. “So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed." So he's saying: make our  absolute inter-involvement become absolutely visible to everybody, so that people can know that where I am, who I am - as I go into my death - is exactly the Glorious One who was exactly that long before I came into the world. The image which I always have, the Lamb slain before the foundation world, allow it to be known that this is what I had been doing, and I've been doing to show who you are. Let's bring this whole revealing in love of who we are to a conclusion so that all are able to be involved in it.

[...]

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

[...]

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

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

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

From the Lectionary for 19 April 2026 (Easter 3A)

Luke 24:13-35 (The disciples on the way to Emmaus)

(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%20Luke%2024%3A13-35&version=NRSVUE)

~

"[T]he resurrection deepens our understanding of the cross while also drawing us into further reflection upon Jesus' life-ministry. The resurrection is precisely an act of 'memoria', God's transformative memory. Resurrection purifies and redeems memory. As with the story of the travellers to Emmaus, the presence of the risen stranger facilitates an act of recollection in which the disciples are capable of remembering Jesus' life from a fundamentally new perspective.  They remember what he said and what he did, but they now do so in the light of a transformative experience, brought to consciousness in the breaking of the bread, that purges and deepens memory."

- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pg. 12

~

"Well, I'd like to draw attention to one element of this story, a story which offers not so much a key to reading scripture as an ongoing hermeneutical principle which we do not control, and which is alive independently of us and transforms us. [...] It is the fact, little commented, that what is odd about the Emmaus story is that it is a dead man who is talking.

"I think it very important that we don't make the separation which we are accustomed to when talking about the risen Jesus, imagining that he is alive, and for that reason, not dead. No, what is fascinating about the doctrine of the resurrection is that it is the whole human life of Jesus, including his death, which is risen. The life of God, since it is totally outside the order of human life and human death, doesn't cancel death, as if it were a sickness which is to be cured, but takes it up, assumes it. Luke offers us a vision of a risen Jesus who has not ceased to be a dead man, and who, starting from his living-out-being-a-crucified-man, teaches and empowers his disciples by his presence."

- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pg. 42

~

"Not only, then, is it a dead man talking. It's a dead man talking without any rancor. It is someone who has been seriously victimized, as Cleopas and N know very well - someone put to death cruelly by a violent conspiracy between religious and political forces. [...] So this is a victim telling the story, but it's not a victimary story at all. When the unrecognized third party says, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” there is no hint of a victimary bleat. [...] And as Cleopas and N discover later, the one who is telling them this story is in fact its protagonist. He's not complaining, he's not hard done by. Yes, it is a victim speaking, but without rancour. Yes it is a dead man talking, but without desire for revenge.

"And these two elements are the final elements I want to bring out today of the tone of voice of the one speaking. Because they are further elements of what it is like to have our texts interpreted to us through the eyes of our dead-and-risen Rabbi. They enable us to share the disciples' sense, quoted elsewhere in the Gospels, that “It is the Lord!” - meaning not only that it is Jesus who is speaking, but that Jesus is in fact YHWH. For there is only one source of protagonism that is not on the same level as death, whose life and aliveness is nothing to do with death, and that is God."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 75-77

~

"So here we have this wonderfully familiar Gospel - the road to Emmaus. And I'd like to follow on from our two previous Sundays, showing how Jesus's drawing close to people doesn't follow things they understand, is not obvious. They don't know what's going on. Аnd yet he wants to make himself present. There is a giving of himself to them that is to take them beyond themselves. We saw that with Mary Magdalene, we saw that with Thomas, and now we're going to see it with Cleopas and friend as they head to Emmaus.

"So there they are, walking out of town, [...] and there they've heard about the visit of Mary Magdalene and other women to the tomb. They know that something is very strange and they can't make sense of it. So while they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. So a third person appears, but he's not a third person whom they recognized. Again, the risen Jesus is never obvious. “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” [...] I think that's hugely important. The voice of the Risen One is going to come to us from a strange place, it's always going to be experienced by us as a strange turnaround.

[...]

"So there he was, doing this, giving them a completely new take on the story which they already knew, the take that was not obvious and that would not have come from somebody who they would have taken seriously. So this is the strangeness of this thing, that they have someone outside themselves, from a not a very respectable position, giving them the whole  thing. [...] The voice has come from outside. We have to learn to hear the unexpected, the strange, not very reputable voice, challenging us to turn our sense of what's really happening upside down.

"And then with them in the home, he is their guest and yet he performs a gesture which is the gesture of a host, breaking the bread, blessing it and giving it to them. In other words, suddenly they find that the one who they thought they were hosting is the one who has been hosting them. And immediately they perceive that all that he had been telling them as if about a third person was in fact, I Am. He had been telling them in the first person about what he had been doing and what he was including them in.

"And of course, immediately they grasped that he was actually not a third person speaking to them, but the first person narrative. They realized that this is a theophany, this is the presence of the Most High. And immediately he's gone. And all theophanies, all glimpses of the Most High, he's gone in the glimpse, and that is the case here. So now they've heard the story from the one who was telling it, so their version is no longer muddled. They're now able to speak with confidence about what had really been going on.

[...]

"So as we celebrate our Eucharists [...] let's remember the Word coming from outside, [...] our world being turned upside down and us being given a new perspective - “Oh my God, I am actually being invited here rather than running the show. And the One who is giving himself to me is giving himself to me as my host even as I thought I had hosted him.”

"What I hope and pray for you all with this Eucharist is that we are able to follow the paradigm that was opened up for us on the road to Emmaus and share in the presence of the Most High who gives himself to us and reveals himself in the breaking of the bread."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter 2020 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTFKY_Lf4gE)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's book Faith Beyond Resentment and Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter3a/]

From the Lectionary for 12 April 2026 (Easter 2A)

John 20:19-31 (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.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

~

"In these verses, the emphasis is on “Peace be with you. As the Father sends me...” This sums up the resurrection, which is the experience of suddenly being impelled to do what he did. My life is no longer my own. He lives in me. The experience of the resurrection is twofold. First part: The Christic impulse is in me. I feel compelled to do what he did.

"The second part: “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.” The Holy Spirit is synonymous with the Paraclete. The Paraclete is the defender of victims. How do we defend victims? [Pope] Urban II had a way of defending victims: go and slaughter the victimizers. We know where that leads. How does the Paraclete defend victims? Forgiveness, even forgiveness of the victimizers.

"From our sacrificial point of view, we read this as a stern God who says, ‘You get to go out there and decide who's going to go to hell and who's not.’ Rather, the part about retaining sins is an urging to the disciples to get out there and get busy forgiving people's sins, because if they don't do it, it won't get done. Unless people experience forgiveness from them, they won't be forgiven. [...] It's not some pious thing that says, ‘Ah, you're O.K.’ It's tremendously dynamic – and hard to pull off. People today will pay hundreds of dollars an hour trying to be forgiven.

"Rowan Williams wrote: “There is no hope of understanding the Resurrection outside the process of renewing humanity in forgiveness. We are all agreed that the empty tomb proves nothing. We need to add that no amount of apparitions, however well authenticated, would mean anything either, apart from the testimony of forgiven lives communicating forgiveness.”

"The resurrection was an experience of forgiveness. The disciples had all abandoned Jesus, becoming complicit with his murderers. The fact that the resurrection was happening to them was an experience of forgiveness for them."

- from notes by Paul J. Nuechterlein on Gil Bailie's “The Gospel of John” audio tape series, tape #12

~

"I want to put the first appearance, the last Sunday evening appearance, in the background a second, bring out what's going on with Thomas. Thomas, if you like, is the other side of the diptych with Mary Magdalene. Do you remember last week her first reaction was: “They have taken him away and we don't know where they have placed him.” First, she says that to the other disciples who of course haven't got the faintest idea, then she says it to the two angels, and then finally she says it to the gardener. The gardener of course is Jesus, [who] turns around and says to her: “Mary.” And she recognizes who she is in his voice, and so she says: “Rabbuni!” He says: “Don't touch me, don't grasp onto me, I'm going to my father and your father, I haven't yet ascended to heaven.”

"So what's very interesting is that her longing is being answered, her longing to know what they have done with him, where have they placed him, is being answered. But it's being answered in a way that's actually a slight deviation from a straightforward answer. He's saying: “Yeah, I'm gonna show myself to you but in a way you can't grasp. Don't grasp me yet because I'm going to be so much more for you than what you could imagine if you would have grasped me.” I think that's very very important first move on this part. Who is the crucified risen Lord? What does it look like for him to appear to us? Well the first thing is it's going to shake up all our stories of that which we can grasp. It's a new story that we're beginning to discover ourselves on the inside of and we don't know where it's going.

"Flash ahead a week and we get Thomas who last week had turned up after the party and refused to believe. He said: I want evidence. He wants something firmer. And please notice that this second time Jesus is doing to Thomas exactly what he did to Mary Magdalene, saying: “Yeah, I get what your notion of what you want is. You want something that you could recognise, that you can deal with. That's fine, okay, I'm gonna give you the chance. But actually, it's not going to be what you think.” So he shows him the marks of his hand and the marks of his side, and he invites Thomas to come up and put his fingers in the marks, and his hand on the side.

"I hope you will excuse me if I indulge in one of my favourite pieces of scriptural allusions here: the Ark of the Covenant was carried by staves that were stuck through rings that were called 'fingerholds'. And one of the [reasons] that this was done was to prevent people from touching its side, which is where the Covenant was supposed to be, because that would be sacred and would kill them.

"So here Jesus is actually inviting Thomas to come up to him, to stand in front of him and be a mirror image, if you like, which is why I think probably the word 'Twin' became the nickname. “Be my mirror, stand in front of me, touch my hands, touch my side. You are now going to be me. And you are going to be the bearer of the Ark of the Covenant. Actually, it's easier for those who haven't seen me because the those who haven't seen me, I'm not an object that's in the way of them becoming me.”

"In other words, Jesus is doing the same to Thomas as he's doing to Mary: “Yeah, I really want to help you move on. I recognize, I affirm your longing for something that makes sense to you. But even the thing that apparently makes sense to you is actually going to take you off on an adventure of becoming yourself, that which you think I am. That's why I gave myself to you. I ran the risk of you making of me what you are going to make of me. You are going to bear the Covenant, you are going to be the one.”

"So those two wonderful moments, if you like, of personal generosity, those appearances to help us get out of fixed stories and into unending adventure. And then in the midst, the absolute central part, [...] Jesus on the evening appears in the room that was locked “for fear of the Jews” - and that's clearly an ironic way of referring to the Holy of Holies of the old temple, which any reasonable Jewish person would be frightened to go into, only the High Priest could do that. But this has become a secular thing now, reality has escaped the cultic world.

"And here is Jesus in their midst, showing them his hands and sides, breathing peace on them. It's no longer a terrifying figure, there is no longer a mysterious and tremendous sacred. Having breathed, having given peace to them, they start to rejoice. They recognize him. Then he breathes into them - our translation says 'breathed on' but the Greek is 'breathed in' because it's the same verb as the one in Genesis, where the Lord breathes into the nostrils of Adam to make him a new creation. So here in fact Jesus's breathing into their nostrils, and making them the creation. This is the account of creation in the New Testament.

"He is also saying to them that any sins you forgive are forgiven, and what you hold back are held back. And of course, our first temptation is to think about that in a moralistic way: we are given super powers to forgive sins. No, something vastly more important than that: he's opening up creation. He's saying: “Listen, now because I have gone to where I've gone, you are going to be the openers up of creation. It's going to be your responsibility, in as far as you allow yourselves to be forgiven and forgive other people. You're going to open things up, you're gonna take us to new places, and you'll get to discover who are you in ways that you never knew before. That's gonna be the whole dimension of creation from now on. Not a frightened holding onto a collapsing order but a daring move into a quite new story of who you're becoming, how you're learning to love, how you're learning to become a new 'we' with other people. And it's gonna be entirely up to you: in as far as you do it, it will happen; in as far as you don't do it, it won't happen. But you are now the ministers, the heirs, the firstborn of creation. Please, where are you going to take it?”

"For me, what's so exciting about these Easter stories, they are not a happy ending, if you like. They're a really very weird and tantalizing beginning. “Where are you gonna take this, it's gonna be up to you. It's not gonna fit into old stories, it's going to become something entirely different. Please take me with you.”"

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

[Source of Paul Nuechterlein notes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter2a/]

From the Lectionary for Easter Sunday 2026 (Easter A):

John 20:1-9 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

~

"Happy Easter to you all! I'm going to comment on the Gospel for the day, St John's Gospel 20, 1 to 9. Some are frustrated that they only give us 1 to 9. It's only the first half of the diptych in which Mary Magdalene asks a question, and in the second half she gets our question answered. But this is what the Church asks us to look at today, so I'm  going to go through with you step by step. It is the beginning of, I think, the most wonderful page of literature that we've ever had. It's the account of creation; for the Christian account of creation is not in Genesis, the Christian account of creation is in John 20. Genesis is the background necessary to understand what's really going on.

"Anyhow, “It was early on the first day of the week". Actually, it was early on day one, that's what it says: day one, the beginning of creation. And it was still dark. In other words, it was before God had made light. When Mary of Magdala came to the tomb, she probably didn't come alone because when she goes to see the disciples she says 'we'. And the other Gospels all refer to her and two other women who went to the tomb. But it seems as though John probably reconstructed this from the witness of Mary Magdalene, Mary of Magdala, and that she is the person who is described here, her vision and her understanding of what's going on.

"She arrived and she saw that the stone had been removed. It doesn't say, she looked in. Her first reaction is to assume skullduggery because she goes running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved; and she says, “They've taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him.” Where they have put him? She asks this question, she explains this longing with anxiety first to Peter and the Beloved Disciple talking about 'they' - perhaps implying that it was some soldiers or some tricksters who did this. Later, but not in today's Gospel, she'll say  the same thing to two angels. And then very shortly after she'll actually say the same thing to Jesus, but she says not 'where they have taken him away' - 'you have taken him'. In other words, she is going through a process of understanding what's gone on which is going to culminate in the empty tomb turning into the Holy of Holies that is now open forever.

"But let's get back to our text. So “Simon Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together but the other disciple running faster reached the tomb first.” Okay, a younger man. “He bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground but did not go in.” Okay, good move. Why? He could see that something had happened but he was a priestly family. You'll remember that he joined at the suggestion of John the Baptist [...] who was a priestly  family. And he was himself clearly in with high priestly circles since while Jesus was being tried he was able to go in to the sanctuary, while Peter had to stay outside. So we're talking about quite an interesting reversal here. So he is a member of a priestly family and should not enter into a tomb where there had been corruption because that would have prevented him from exercising any priestly function. It would have been seriously wrong for him as a priestly person to go into a place where there had been corruption - the corruption of death. So he doesn't go in, he waits.

"Peter who was following now came up. And here we have another while rather beautiful piece of Johannine irony: Peter trundled along later, presumably a slightly more middle-aged man, and he went right into the tomb. [...] He goes in and he saw the linen cloths on the ground and also the cloth that had been over his head, which John the Beloved Disciple hadn't seen. This was not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Okay here we're into something  really quite interesting. The linen cloths on the ground is the first sign that we are not dealing with a thief. Why? Well, you remember that immediately before Jesus is buried, a very large number of spices are produced: myrrh and aloe, and Jesus's body is rubbed down with these, and then wrapped in the linen. Now these spices formed quite a thick resin or gum. In other words, it wouldn't have been at all easy just to remove linen cloths. They would have been sticky and  weighed down, it wouldn't be an easy thing for a robber to do. And, in fact, why would a robber bother to take off the cloth especially if they were sticky? So the first sign that something odd is going on are cloths left on the ground. It suggests that the stickiness wasn't part of a funeral rite, that in fact those spices might have been part of the rite of how the Holy One came forth from that Holy of Holies because the same spices were used for the high priest emerging from the Holy Ones who had become an angel.

"So here we have these apparently resin-less cloths on the floor. And then Peter notices the napkin laid to one side. In other words, it's been placed, deliberately rolled up, and no longer necessary. This is an extraordinary thing. The Holy One has been in the place. He has borne within himself, he's taken his blood into the Holy of Holies. And is no more. He has left behind the earthly garments. He has rolled up, because there's no further use for the head covering. It's that that allows the other disciple to enter. He also went in, he saw and he believed. Well, what did he believe? In the first instance, he  must have realized that there was no corruption in the place. He must have realized what it says in Psalm 16, and I quote: “Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body also dwells secure; for thou didst not give me up to Hades nor let thy godly one, thy Holy One see corruption.” In other words, [the disciple] could see that this had been a place with no corruption. What did he believe? He believed that God had not let his Holy One know corruption. That Jesus had returned to heaven.

"“'til this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture that he must rise from the dead.” Well again that's very odd. What does it mean? Here it seems they did understand something. They understand that Jesus, who had always said he'd come from heaven, and now went back to heaven without knowing corruption. But the extension of the  cross to the tomb was himself giving himself up to death in the holy place. And that he was no longer visible. I suspect that their assumption was: “Okay, that's happened.” I think that they would have been astounded to think that in fact, he was going to rise and appear as a human to them, for quite a long time after this, explaining what he'd been about.

"In other words, from John's and Peter's point of view, already the promise had been fulfilled. And what they were not expecting was the dramatic illustrations of what had really been going on, which would start to come alive over the next few hours, actually - along with Mary Magdalene and then later that evening with the disciples all gathered in the upper room. Because the longing of the Lord to be with his disciples, those he loved, and to show them himself, and to manifest himself, was so great that he kept on doing it, just trying to convince them, to teach them, to allow them to see what happened. If you like, it is this extra spillover which is so wonderful - the utter aliveness of God made visible to us. And it's these appearances which we're going to be following over the next few weeks as we live through the Easter season."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Easter Sunday, Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DmNOgsx3Do)

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Easter Sunday (Year A), see https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter-a/]

Good Friday 2026

John 18:1-19:42 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A1-19%3A42&version=NRSVUE)

~

"There's a perfectly simple sense of the word 'sacrifice' which is not what is being meant [by Jesus' death]. And that is the way in which, for instance, I, a priest, offer a sacrifice to some divinity who presumably needs it for whatever reason. Or that someone demands of me a sacrifice for someone else, like some of the people [during Covid] were saying: well, all these old folk we aught to allow them to die for the sake of the economy. That's a sacrificial model of priesthood. That is it specifically and exactly not what is being asked for here. If that's what you think you're doing when you say the word sacrifice, then please don't say these prayers. That's the wrong thing to be doing. 

"I'm going to use the example which my mentor, my guru, René Girard, always used when explaining the double meaning, perhaps - two possible sets of meanings behind the word 'sacrifice'. He always used the story of King Solomon's judgment of the two prostitutes. You remember the story: two prostitutes, both of them had daughters at the same time, they both lived together. During the night the daughter of one of them died so the mum quickly swapped babies with the other one; and the other woman when she woke up found her baby dead but it wasn't her baby. So they took the matter to the king for judgement. And the king said: bring me a sword, I will now cut it in half the babies that you can each have half. Whereupon one of the two women said: that's splendid, quite right, then we're both in the same position. And the other one said: no, I would let the other woman have the baby, I would prefer that the baby lives than that I win. 

"Of these two you could use the word 'sacrifice' perfectly easily: one woman was prepared to sacrifice the baby to be equal with the other woman, and one woman was prepared to sacrifice her right to the baby to allow the child to live. We used the word 'sacrifice' for both. But they're obviously completely incommensurable in meaning, they're not the same thing at all. One is involving killing something, the other involves letting go of something, giving something away for the sake of life. 

"Now, it's only conceivably in the second meaning that we can possibly refer to Jesus's going up to death as a sacrifice. I should say that it was language with which he was familiar and he was perfectly happy to use. So we shouldn't be too shy about it. He was happy to use it precisely because he was bringing it to its fulfilment and actually exploding it from within, because rather than this being the account of us sacrificing someone to God or - in some particularly terrible notions - God demanding that we sacrifice someone to God as though God needed bloodlust satisfying or something like that. It's exactly the reverse: God gave himself up to us, and *we* are the angry divinity, if you like, in the picture. And God is giving himself up into our midst, into the midst of violent and sinful humans, precisely so that we can be utterly amazed by the generosity, by the power, by the forgiveness in that act. And so we realize we never need to perform any kind of sacrificial logic ever again. That's self-giving up into the midst of us to enable us to live free from the world of sacrifice. That's what's called the one true sacrifice. 

"And please notice that means that all other sacrifices are not true sacrifices, they're fakes, they're nine-dollar bills, if you like. They're either not the real thing at all or they're a cover-up, but the self-giving of God up to us, sinful humans, so that we may be amazed, forgiven, loved, reached at our most violent, and enabled to understand how much we are being let off. That's the sense, if you like, of the word sacrifice - the same sense as the good mother in the wisdom of Solomon. The good mother was opening up the possibility for the baby to live. Well, Jesus is opening up the possibility for us to live."

- James Alison, from video "Meditation on Sacrifice" for Good Friday 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uFK91bdZxw)

~

"In Jesus Christ, God is trying to show us the only way to peace. Violence will never end as long as we think that our righteous violence is the only way to stop it. So, in Jesus Christ, God submits to our supposedly righteous violence in order to show us another definition of righteousness, one that is completely without violence. It is a righteousness that comes through the faith of Jesus when he went to the cross, trusting in a God of life, trusting in a God who would raise him on the third day in order that we might begin to live with that same faith in a God of life."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on April 13, 2001 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/goodfriday_2001_ser/)

~

“We have seen that Jesus knew from the beginning what he was doing, completely possessed as he was by his quickened imagination of the ever-living God. It was this which enabled him to stage a solemn mime in the midst of this death-based culture, so that he might be killed as a way of leading people out of that culture based on death, allowing us to come to be what God always wanted us to be, that is, utterly and absolutely alive with Him.

"What Jesus' entirely living imagination means, then, is that he was working so as to bring to existence what God had always wanted, but which had become trapped in the violent and fatal parody which we have seen, and which we tend to live out. So what Jesus was bringing into being was the fulfillment of creation, and this he knew very well as he was doing it. [...]

"This means something rather important: the understanding of God as Creator changes from someone who once did something to someone who is doing something through Jesus, who was in on what the Father was doing through him from the beginning. Creation is not finished until Jesus dies (shouting tetelestai -- it is accomplished), thus opening the whole of creation, which consequently begins fully, in a completely new way, in the garden on the first day of the week.

"This means, and here is the central point: we understand creation starting from and through Jesus. God's graciousness which brings what is not into existence from nothing is exactly the same thing as Jesus' death-less self-giving out of love which enables him to break the human culture of death, and is a self-giving which is entirely fixed on bringing into being a radiantly living and exuberant culture. It is not as though creation were a different act, something which happened alongside the salvation worked by Jesus, but rather that the salvation which Jesus was working was, at the same time, the fulfillment of creation.

"This was the power and the authority in Jesus' works and words and signs. Through him the Creator was bringing his work to completion. The act of creation was revealed for what it really is: the bringing to existence and the making possible of a human living together which does not know death; and Jesus was in on this from the beginning. Such is our world that God could only be properly perceived as Creator by means of the overcoming of death."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 54-55

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein's sermon and James Alison's Raising Abel, and for discussion and reflection on all of this week's lectionary texts, see https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/festivals/goodfriday/]