From the Lectionary for 28 December 2025 (Christmas 1A)

Matthew 2:13-23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”

Hebrews 2:17-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

~

"In Matthew, Jesus is the new and more powerful non-violent Moses. Moses' birth was also contested and empire his enemy. At the time of Moses' birth the Hebrew women were to abandon their male babies lest the birth of more little boys, who could grow into warriors, threaten the king. [...] In Matthew the new Moses miraculously escapes death at the hands of empire by going to Egypt. Being in Egypt, he is set to come out of Egypt and save all people just like Moses saved the Hebrews. [...]

"After King Herod died, an angel from the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. “Get up,” the angel said, and “take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead.” I love the phrase “get up”; take action, get a move on, get going, it's time to go forward in a new way. These are significant times! Do you believe that? The New Year has arrived, the Christmas break is over. It's time to move back to Israel and reclaim the journey toward wholeness there. The gospel of the non-violent Jesus has been hidden in Egypt and it's time for it to return to its homeland.

[...]

"We end with Joseph and the Holy Family beginning anew in Nazareth. We too are beginning anew; a new year [...] And like Joseph and his family, we are not alone. We journey forth with each other and with the Spirit from God telling us we are non-violently loved and that we can nonviolently love wherever we are. We know we are part of the biggest movement in history that, in the end, will show love as the driver and maintainer of the whole universe."

- Tom Truby, from a sermon delivered on January 1, 2017 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Christmas1-2017-Get-Up-and-Embrace-the-Future-Unafraid.pdf)

~

"[T]he Bible's sense of Christmas is well-anchored in our human reality of pain and suffering, so that it can truly bring us Good News. Our second lesson from Hebrews is a good example. [...] Jesus came into the flesh, not to gloss over reality with fantasy, not even the fantasy world of holiday cheer, but to share in the very things that make up our realities. It says that “he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might pioneer for us a perfect way of salvation through the sufferings of our human reality.” Not around them, or over them. But through them. That's the Good News for us this morning, even in the face of our normal, non-holiday reality. The Good News is that God helps us to face that reality. We don't have to try to run away or escape it.

"No, the gospel stories of Jesus' birth never wander far from that reality. In this age, our culture has built up whole fantasy world stories to surround Christmas, but that's not what the gospel stories of Jesus' birth are like. Luke's story of Christmas is the most pastoral and peaceful. Yet even there the cold reality is that there was no room for Mary and Joseph under a roof, so Jesus was born in a barn. And as Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus for his naming, the prophet Simeon tells them, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)

[...]

"Matthew expresses the theme of rejection directly with a story. Three traveling magi welcomed the prospect of a new king, but local King Herod didn't think much of it. He responded with the kind of violence we'd rather not think about, the kind of violence we'd like to forget with our holiday cheer. Jesus is saved at this point of Matthew's story. But for what? We know the ending: eventually the powers and authorities will get their wish and kill Jesus. At the beginning of Matthew's story, it is not yet time.

"But the troubling part is that, in the meantime, scores of other little children are slaughtered by Herod. Isn't that the same kind of reality we go back to this week, the kind of world we live in? We celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace at Christmas, but this week we return to a world of terrible violence, where innocent children suffer and are killed everyday. This is the point of the sermon were I am tempted to find a nice story that will help us to feel better and to make things alright. But there isn't such nice stories, are there? I may search all my sermon resources, and I don't think I'm going to find such a story. I search my own personal story, and I know so. Because I know too many people who suffered terribly as children, who were abused and neglected. And there aren't any nice stories that magically make it alright. There isn't enough holiday cheer to cover over the reality.

"No, there is only one story I know that can begin to make things alright. It is this story of a baby born in a barn, who escaped death at the hands of the authorities as a child, but who did not do so as an adult. No, he knowingly went to his death for me and for you. And it is only the fact that God raised him up from death, that I can begin to have any hope at all. Because that resurrection is the promise that God does ultimately save us from this world of suffering and pain. God does ultimately rescue us from the hands of those who would do us harm.

"I say that it only begins to make things better, because two thousand years later, there are children still being sacrificed to madmen the likes of Herod. But this is because God has chosen a whole new way of living to win us salvation. This new way does not run away from the violence but faces it. Neither does God resort to the old way of doing things, which is to fight force with force. God will not stop the madness by getting caught up in the same madness. No, God gives us a totally new way to live. God neither runs away from the madness, nor gets caught up in it, but stands there in the face of it and continues to love. Love. Instead God came into the midst of the madness, and through a suffering love has begun to pioneer a new way for us. Jesus was the pioneer of that perfect way.

"Why is there still violence? Because love refuses to violently snuff it out. Love only knows love. With this new option, one that will someday end the madness, there may even be more violence for a time. Matthew's story of Herod makes that clear. When those who stand for the old way of doing things like Herod, when they are confronted with this new possibility, they strike out with all that they can muster. But Christ-like love is the power of love that can stand tall in the face of it. And we who are called as disciples are called to follow in this new way of love. Perhaps the best news is that God, in becoming a human being, took on our human nature and has begun to transform it, baptize it, so that we are able to follow in the way of Christ.

"Let's close today with that last line of our second lesson: “Because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (Hebrews 2:18) Did you get that? Because Jesus fought off the temptation to do things the old way, to use force to fight force and violence and inflict pain on others, because he won out over that temptation, he is able to help us to do so, too. That is the Good News this morning. That you and I, in knowing that story of Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit of that same Jesus, that you and I can beat that temptation, too. We can become new creatures with a new way of life. We can begin to make a difference in this world.

"As we face a New Year, we do so again with the promise that we daily can become new creatures in Christ. The only resolution we need make this New Year is to truly be his disciples. For his is the way that goes through reality, the reality of suffering. Not around it, or over it, but through it. That's the Good News for us this morning as we head back to our post-holiday realities."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on December 30-31, 1995 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/xmas1a_ser_1995/)

[Source of links to Tom Truby and Paul Nuechterlein sermons, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/xmas1a/]

From the Lectionary for 25 December 2025 (Christmas Day, Year A)

Isaiah 9:2 (NRSV Updated Edition)

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.

John 1:1-18 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

~

"The beginning of John's Gospel, even though in one sense it seems the furthest removed from what we're used to at Nativity, which is focusing down on the very practical issues of baby, manger, beasts, swaddling clothes, stars, shepherds - all those very particular human and animal things which attend a birth - and what we get in John's Gospel, if you like, seems so extra-planetary that we pass it off with something like dismay. [...] These 18 verses are some of the most remarkable words ever to have been written in any human language, it would be foolish to try and expatiate too wildly on them. What I would like to do is to say how much closer I think they are to more concrete, more human, more historical sense of a little baby in precarious situation in Bethlehem then perhaps we might give credit for.

[...]

"The beginning was the Criterion, was the Word, the beginning for us of creation. [...] In creation, you remember the Genesis narrative,  “And God said.” The creative Word, the Word that creates. So the Word was at the very beginning of all things, [the] Word was with God, and the Word was God. [It's saying] the creative thing is not simply an extra thing that God happens to do, it is God's criteria for God. We are actually learning something about who God is, when God makes God's Criterion available to us, in, and as, and through creation.

"We pair that off with the very end [of the passage], [...] “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” So the Criterion that was with God, and the Criterion was God, was in the beginning with God. So it turns out that the Criterion for everything being is a Son. That's in a sense the most extraordinary claim that's for us to understand and from which to get a glimpse of what's going on in the Christmas story. [...] [T]he criteria for bringing everything into being is that of a father's love for a son. The underpinning reality of everything that is, is this sort of affection. The very structure of reality is made available to us through this sort of love.

[...]

"“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Here's the suggestion that the very structuring force of reality, which is a loving structure, finally came into our midst as something that can enlighten us, light us up from within - was the light, was the source of our seeing - has come in and for those who receive him who believe in his name I believe that his name is the same as of the name he gives power to become children of God. [...] He's talking about people being brought into being so that we may actually participate on the inside of creation and discover what really is [...]

"The way that this was made available to us started - of course John doesn't say this, we only get this in Matthew and Luke - started with the bizarre, the bizarrely powerless-seeming sign of the babe born in Bethlehem. This was a wholly, fully human sign. It's us learning to detect the love of the only begotten son.

[...]

"With grace and truth, and through Jesus Christ, the sense of the tenderness and 'not out to get us' - the friendly quality, the backdrop to everything that there is, that this is a friendly gentle adventure - strangely it's that, if you like, the background colours to the Nativity picture, that are some of the most difficult things to get, the background colours which are of the whole of creation actually being vastly more friendly to us if only we could learn to find our way into being sons and daughters of God, those who are actually on the inside of creation. [...]

"So as you come to Christmas celebration this year, think not only of the 3D figures in the creche, what they say about God's power being shown forth in being disposed to be absolutely weak, in the middle of precarious situation, in the middle of people who are going to make his life difficult and ultimately kill him; but also the vast backdrop of the sheer friendliness of creation, that which we're becoming used to learning about and seeing ourselves as sons and daughters. This is, if you're like, not a moral thing but us being shown who God really is.

"He said, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Everything that we learn about God is going to be learned through following the human life of Jesus, and it's going to show us that there is an extraordinary power in weakness, an extraordinary joy in our discovering our likeness with apparent others, and that all these actually tend to show a vastly richer project, adventure - a friendly adventure - which is creation. And that this is the constant backdrop to everything that is. Curiously it's the difficulty of receiving and living from that backdrop which is one of the real challenges of our lives and one of the real joys of Christmas."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for The Solemnity of the Nativity 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jx9ElzPlWo)

~

"Christmas is the gift that keeps on giving. The Word made flesh in Jesus Christ comes to be born in all people - through the Gospel of grace and truth - the gift of a common identity in a divided world - the gift of peace. This is the present we receive today. This is the gift that we receive in order to give away all year long - the Word made flesh - Jesus Christ - God’s peace to us."

- David Froemming, from sermon, “Christmas: God’s Peace.” (http://www.christlutheranlancaster.com/site/file.asp?sec_id=180019502&file_id=180425357&cpage=180096537&table=file_downloads)

~

"Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe"

- Bruce Cockburn, from song "Cry of a Tiny Babe"

[Source of link to David Froemming sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas/]

From the Lectionary for 21 December 2025 (Advent 4A)

Matthew 1:18-25 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

~

"We are on the very brink of the Nativity. Our sense of the power of the One Coming in has been stretched, challenged, recast over the last three weeks. And now the reality of that power begins to dawn more clearly. And what is astonishing about it, is that unlike any power we know, this power is confident enough to be vulnerable. And that means confident enough in us to be vulnerable to us.

[...]

"[In Isaiah 7:10-16] Isaiah gives [King Ahaz] a sign [...] There is nothing outlandish about it. It doesn't appear to come from Heaven, nor to emerge from Sheol. It is quiet, gentle, ordinary-seeming. A maiden is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel. It would appear, at first glance to be totally natural, totally from this, human side of things, rather than emerging from something special, divine and portentous. Thus it seems not really to be a sign at all. And yet, it is in this sign of quietude, and confidence that God will reveal himself as the one who loves his people, and who will bring his kingdom to flourishing. It is the sort of sign which is not able to be perceived by those whose attention is fixed on current affairs, on power politics and on strategic calculations.

"Matthew has seen this in his Gospel. He has seen that Isaiah's promise of a sign relating to a kingdom flows into the much fuller sign which is happening now, quietly, and offstage. The fulness of the power pointed to by Isaiah was revealing itself in a gentleness made available under the most delicate of circumstances. For the maiden chosen to bear the son was not living in any well-protected enclave. On the contrary, the first thing which the power dared to do was to make itself visible as a provocation, inviting the maiden who was found to be with child to share the opprobrium of being a single mother in a society where such things might easily lead to death. She was to depend for her reputation, and maybe for her life, on the good will of an untested male who knew that he was not the father of the child.

"What sort of power is it that allows itself to be so vulnerable? It is prepared to trust itself to one of the most notoriously unreliable features of human existence. Not merely the pain and riskiness of human gestation and childbirth. But also the whole of human skittishness around male honour, and the potential for violence which goes with female dependency.

"Beyond even this, as Matthew makes clear, this power is prepared to allow itself to be vulnerable to that most dangerous of constructs: the Law. For Joseph was a righteous man, and as such would know well what Deuteronomy 22 prescribed for cases like this: death by stoning. That Joseph's righteousness already consisted in his being inclined to interpret that law in the most gentle way possible, seeking to obey it by “putting her away quietly” was not something automatic.

"Joseph decides to apply the law in this way, already a fragile act of interpretation, and one which it might not be at all easy to carry out in practice, since “secrets will out”. This decision was made just prior to the Lord inviting Joseph to consider another possible interpretation: that Mary's pregnancy was not in any way something which fell foul of the Law, coming instead from the Holy Spirit. Joseph is given a dream, and in the light of that he is invited to make an interpretation with enormous practical consequences.

"Again: quite how extraordinary is the power that is gentle and confident enough to be able to enter into the practical consequences of a human act of interpretation? For there is no sign that is not also a human act of interpretation. And there can be no riskier way than this to enter into the realm of signs. This pregnant woman is either an adulteress or a virgin blessed by God. What power is it that is prepared to trust that a human will choose the latter, infinitely less plausible interpretation, and then be so gracious as to cover over the vulnerability of his bride to be and allow the sign to flourish?

"It is little wonder that Paul in Galatians emphasizes that Jesus was born under the Law, for Jesus' vulnerability to the Law is the sign of the power of the one who was to fulfil the whole purpose of the Law. This is all about power, as is made magnificently clear in the Introduction to Romans. The fulfilment of all God's promises would come through someone who was of the now failed and insignificant line of David. This one would be declared, or ordained the High Priest of God, God's Son, YHWH himself, bearing the Name by his passing through death in the spirit of holiness.

"Vulnerability to mere flesh; vulnerability to the Law; vulnerability to death: these will be the signs of the power of the One coming in, of his confidence in us, in what we can become, and in what he can make of us."

- James Alison, from facebook post on 18 Dec 2019 (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid0yXSqGzq5YesYmeF4hEnFxCazGVKXoVfAkYknrRAqWvHYBhSXpUwJmDzYJ2GRqqi2l)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent4a/]

[I also highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for Fourth Sunday in Advent 2022 A" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whq4HhUxFhA]

From the Lectionary for 14 December 2025 (Advent 3A)

Matthew 11:2-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What, then, did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What, then, did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written,

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way before you.’

“Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

~

"With each Sunday of Advent, it is as though the Spirit brings us deeper into the Presence by bringing us closer to having our feet on the ground, closer to the present, and closer to our hearts. The Divine heart surgeon carries on reconfiguring our desires so that we can inhabit both the Presence and the present. For how else can we be made alive?

"And this means learning how to be stretched, how to long, how to hope, how to be vulnerable to failure. This is the route without undergoing which there is no Coming. For if we cannot be taken to the end of ourselves, stretched beyond our capacity to imagine a salvation, have our longing forged against the hard anvil of apparent impossibility, then we are still wanting something that is a continuation of our selves, and not the Other who is Coming in.

"There is scarcely a more poignant communication in the New Testament than John’s message from prison: “Art Thou the One who is to come, or wait we for another?” Here is a heart stretched towards a fulfilment that is not of his making, and in the face of which he is vulnerable to a sense of shame, loss and futility. Given what he is undergoing, how can he be sure that he was even pointing in the direction of God’s breaking in? Will this One vindicate him against the enemy who holds him in a dungeon? Even he runs the risk of being scandalized by Jesus.

"The presence of the One who is coming in had been vastly easier to talk about when its time was not yet at hand. And yet now, as it comes in, the presence is very unlike how John, as all the prophets before him, had imagined him. The Presence becomes much more difficult to identify as it draws closer to us in time and place. Shouldn’t the criteria be clearer? Shouldn’t it be more obvious that the One who comes in will recompense his faithful ones and wreak vengeance on evil doers?

"Our Lord replies in two ways. First he replies to John. [...] The signs being given are those of the Creator breaking in to fulfil his creation, which is what the promised redemption was all about. John’s heart, stretched beyond parchedness can rest on this knowledge – can be satisfied, for to the heart attuned to the One who is no part of the order of existing things, a prophet’s heart, a sign of the creative work of God being made manifest is already the greatest refreshment that can be given. It allows the heart to rest on the giver.

"And Our Lord even recognises for John that at the very end of being stretched towards the Other who is coming in, there does lie the risk of scandal. There lies the risk that we will interpret the One according to our own pattern of desire, make of him a resolution of our partisan needs, and so be scandalized into not recognising the real One who comes. If however we are not scandalised, we are set free, we no longer need fear the social other which surrounds us, because we are confident of being held in the regard of that power which is coming in, and which is more solid than any form of group bonding, cultural togetherness or inter-personal prestige.

"Here, at the very edge of the stretched fulfilment, it is as if Jesus knows that by asking people to let go of the very notion of vengeance, of divine retribution, he leaves them with two options – to trust in the goodness of the One coming in, or to be locked in scandal at the collapse of partisan goodness and the constant need to build it up again. This latter possibility is indeed the arrival of a new sort of wrath, but rather than being divine wrath, it is a purely human wrath, one no less powerful for that. A human wrath that is a being enclosed into a scandalised imagination in the face of a goodness far too gentle for it to behold.

"Our Lord then turns to those he was teaching, and comments on John: when the crowds went out to the desert to be baptised, was it just a celebrity show, a collective display of mourning? This week we have an ascetic celebrity. Next week we will have a Hollywood starlet? Yet the crowd fascination is just the same. Was this all there was to John? No indeed! He was indeed part of the solidity of God’s self manifestation, nothing futile about him. The crowd was right to pick up that there was something of God here. Just as John was stretched, even in his imprisonment, so he had been sent to stretch hearts and imaginations towards the fulfilment so that others might find themselves closer to being able to receive the One coming in.

"Yet, and here Jesus is adamant. There is a difference not only in degree, but in kind, between the imagination of John, stretched as it was, concerning the things of God, and the imagination of those who are to find themselves ushered into the Presence, one where human violence has been taken inside himself by the one undergoing the sacrifice, and where there is no violence coming out at all.

"[...] It is easier now for us than for the stretched prophets, for, if only we would remember it, we have seen what John did not live to see: the full purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. Not as add-on qualities but as the full purpose of the Lord. The One coming in wants to show us that there is no violence in him at all.

"Did I say that makes it easier? What is it like to be stretched out in a wrathful world in expectation of the arrival of an incommensurable power who is not wrathful at all?"

- James Alison, from "A Stretching Fulfilment" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02jEPbChUdUmBwb3zhpmSAzSiof9kgb8LrBeBhPxDepiTHWQwtqN5wmhj5ZGBn6Z8gl)

~

"Remember that Jesus caused scandal to those who are too good rather than those who are too bad, to those who wanted to sort things out quickly rather than for those who are weak, too weak to do anything. The scandal of Jesus is the scandal of the one who is non-violent and who is going to make a God entirely available as one in whom there is no violence. And now we're on the threshold of beginning to sense what strange potential scandal is coming into our midst as the apocalyptic noise begins to diminish and our Saviour's birth draws nearer."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Third Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dYXcF3ZXpQ)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent3a/]

From the Lectionary for 7 December 2025 (Advent 2A)

Matthew 3:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
    make his paths straight.’”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

~

"How is the Presence working on us? Once again the liturgy gives us three different prods into life. And as the sound of portentous thunder diminishes, without disappearing yet, so we start to find ourselves being trained towards perceiving a somewhat different shape to the One who comes than our fantasies and our fears had constructed for us.

"A hypnotist summons a temporary new conscious self into being, by getting us to concentrate on something outside ourselves while, below the level of that of which we are conscious, the set of relationships which cause us to think and perceive as we do are worked on. In liturgy, the jostling together of the different voices from Scripture while we are summoned into concentrating on One who is coming, enables us to continue our journey of re-birth. Our new self is quickened into existence as the Spirit awakens in us someone who we didn’t know we were, but who turns out to be more ourselves than we thought we knew. So the jostling and the puncturing continue apace.

[...]

"[We] have John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, pointing to the fulfilment of his own work. And yet he too is out of focus. He knows that only a change of heart and mind will enable people to begin to perceive the shape of the One who is to come, for with our current mindsets we cannot imagine the shape of the Presence. He also knows that between his preparation of people, and the shape of the Presence to come there is an incommensurable distance. Yet even he who was of priestly family can scarcely understand that his rite of public penance and purification would also be the rite of ordination of the Great High Priest who was to come, and thereafter of all of us who are to have our access to the Holy of Holies laid open by his Sacrifice.

"Why his hostility to the many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism? He knows how dangerous apparent goodness is, that is all our grasped goodness, and the sense of entitlement which comes with it. He was aware of how dangerous to such goodness was the One who is to come, but [...] he seems unable to grasp that the One who is coming will turn out indeed to be the bearer of all that dangerousness, only because of the fear and resentment of those in whose midst he will be. Not because there is any violence or vengeance in himself.

"We have not yet undergone the extraordinary shift in perception and imagination which comes upon us when we understand that in the One who comes, there is no violence at all, no vengeance, no desire for retribution, only a longing for us to be fully alive. And that all our fears, our desires for revenge, our stumbling blocks, which we so easily project onto God, are ours, ours alone, and able to be undone, let go, forgiven, by the One who is coming in."

- James Alison, from "Reflections on Advent: A Jostling Fulfilment (Second Sunday of Advent)" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02aMpottGmS3WZK3xzHUHhr8m3ffNuq5tySGxjX1PUyf6sjo8dVt8XiNdpzHncWXH9l)

~

"So here we have John coming in, indicating, if you like, the threatening nature of what's going on, and people knowing that they must do something to change, and already there being all sorts of political [and] religious reaction of the sort to which we're entirely accustomed. As we live this, how do we hear this? What would it be like for someone to come and occupy one of our liminal spaces, someone who has proved themselves capable of speaking wise words, [...] someone who has, let's say, acquired credibility, so that they're not perceived as enacting cheap cosplay but are actually able to say a word?

"What would it look like for us to feel moved by that person, to say, 'gosh, yes, there's a point there, something must be happening'? [...] What would it be like to hear the words and start to repent? What would it look like, then, to start being discerning [about] what the one coming in is bringing? How will we know? How will we be able to follow? How will we recognize and be recognized? That's how our Advent journey is developing."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWtQvHN1g4o)

[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent2a/]