From the Lectionary for 9 March 2025 (Lent 1C)

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
    and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to protect you,’

and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

~

"Now Luke had given comparatively little details about what was going on in the baptism other than that this was Jesus receiving the Spirit of Sonship. It was being shown to everybody that he was the Son. And here he has been reenacting the 40 days [/years] of Moses in the desert, and here we have the devil [...] and what the devil does and the form of his temptation is the little word “if”. He tries to get Jesus to doubt that he really is the Son of God, and therefore to attempt to prove it by himself by reacting to the temptation would be doing something to show that he is something. And if you do something to show that you are something it means you don't really believe you are. That's the temptation.

[...]

"Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. In an “instant”. The Greek word is 'stigma', which is the same word which you have with stigmata - a hole in the hand was the word used for tattooing, a little puncture in the skin, little puncture, an instant puncture of time. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and [...] here we have, if you like, the temptation of kingship. [...]

"Jesus again answers, this time from the compilation of texts in Deuteronomy, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” And please notice it's this question of time, the way in which a moment of time is shown to Jesus. And what Jesus is doing is slowly enacting the response to worshiping the Lord your God and serve only him over time. Because in just the same way as Jesus is not going to produce miraculous bread a la Moses he is in fact going to become the Bread, so here he's not going to quickly sing the devil's tune better than the devil, he's going to worship the Lord your God and undo the whole of the power of the devil over time. But it's going to be not in a puncture mark of time, that's the only thing the devil has got - clever ideas, puncture marks in time - it's the lived life over time which is going to undo the whole mechanism by which the devil keeps us in fear.

[...]

"Then the devil took him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple. So after the prophetic and the royal [tests] now we have the priestly, [the] pinnacle of the temple. [...] So the devil knows that Jesus is the Son and is the great High Priest who is going to perform the great atonement and that the Psalm [the devil quotes] does refer to him. But what the devil wants to get him to do is to anticipate it, see if [he] can get him to do the atonement too quickly, because then it will simply be something which he's done to show who he is and not the real thing. [...]

"Jesus answered him and said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Here he's quoting directly Deuteronomy 6:16 [...] and Jesus is not saying 'do not put the Lord your God to the test' to the devil, he's saying it to himself - I am not going to put the Lord your God - my Lord my god - to the test, which would be performing something that obliges God to do something so as to show who God is - that was what was the temptation. He's saying no, he will perform the atonement, he will become and show himself as the Priest just as the King and as the Prophet in due time, when he has lived through everything and it is the right moment.

"“When the devil had finished every test” - so this was the three principal ones, maybe there were others, we don't know - “he departed from him until an opportune time.” It's a very subtle little reminder that this whole thing is about time. The temptations in Luke, it's all about the difference between satanic time and the time of the one who comes in to give himself wholly and fully and without protesting, under obedience, who will then eventually live out the atonement.

[...]

"So Jesus resisting, resisting having to demonstrate what he is, because he knows that his being given Sonship, and his being the Son, is the same thing. But it happens over time, and it doesn't allow him to be bounced into doing spectacular tricks to demonstrate, for his own self-satisfaction, who he is. The only reason for doing these things is for other people, and that does not mean showing off for your own purposes.

"So here we have this wonderful beginning to Jesus's ministry, as he shows that the Son of Man is going to become who he is over time, that the something about the weakness and the historical journey that is not accidental to, but absolutely essential to what he is about to do. And that doing that richly and in our midst, and overcoming our fears and our shame and our feeling of inadequacy, that we too are enabled, not to fear that sonship is something we have to grasp onto, desperately trying to prove it to others, but to allow ourselves to be loved into being, starting from where we are, so that we may give ourselves, starting from where we are, and actually show what sonship, daughterhood, looks like over time."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the First Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgimWHTeX7Y)

[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent1c/]

From the Lectionary for 2 March 2025 (Transfiguration Sunday, Year C)

Luke 9:28-36 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but as they awoke they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

~

"Here is this wonderful moment, “the cloud came and overshadowed them.” This is exactly the word that is used at the very end of the book of Exodus, when the cloud overshadows the tabernacle. But there Moses can't go in. Moses can't go in when the cloud overshadows the tabernacle, he can only go in when it's lifted up and gone away. But here the cloud came and overshadowed them and they were terrified *as they entered the cloud*. In other words, with Jesus they are on the inside of the glory now. This is no longer something being waited or awaited from afar, something held off by death.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

"Again, what happens at the fullness of theophany, what we'd seen already indicated at the baptism and thereafter, which is, God is going to speak only at the fraternal level, only at the level of a human among humans. No top-down God, now only sideways God. This is one of the great confirmations: this glory, this being with Jesus in the glory, is something which is going to come down upon everybody at Pentecost, we are going to be inside it. And it's going to work sideways, horizontally, not vertically as heretofore. The voice speaks, the 'bath qol', the “daughter of the voice” as in the Hebrew tradition, but it says, “This is the one, this is my Son, listen to him. He's the one I've chosen. All his words will be my words.”

"“When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.” Well of course one wonders why not, one wonders whether it was because they couldn't really imagine there, weren't words for it, they were being given bits of a vision of what was going on around them that was far too great for them to be able to work out what was going on. Which is why they were planned witnesses. Which is why also they saw the next moment of the theophany at Gethsemane, and why thereafter they were witnesses when it came to choosing who to fulfill the role of the missing member of The Twelve. Jesus setting people up so that they could actually have an idea of the grandeur of what had been spoken amongst them, of what it was going to look like: God fulfilling his promise to Abraham. And that this, this that they had seen, this was what all the weight of glory looked like in their midst.

"And I think that this is a wonderful thing for us in our Lenten journey [Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday], because often in lent we just get little hints of what is being done for us, just occasionally, we can't put it together. And i think that that's right. I think that our experience is closer to that of the disciples, the apostles, then we may think, that Luke is so good at giving us scenes that we think, “Oh it must have been a very spectacular thing,” but what he's doing is showing how something that can be described as very spectacular, if you unpick every detail turns into something which is actually the sort of thing that we are on the inside of as we prepare to see his glory."

- James Alison's, from video "Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT5toq6NsYU)

[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/transfig_c/]

[Note that Transfiguration is celebrated on the Second Sunday in Lent in the Roman Catholic liturgical year. I highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" which looks at Luke 6: 39-45 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWdRkUs5ZY4]