From the Lectionary for 22 February 2026 (Lent 1A)

Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

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

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

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

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

~

The Old Testament reading for this week is Genesis 3 (the temptation and "fall" of Adam and Eve), and the Epistle reading is Romans 5:12-19, culminating in the following verses:

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19, NRSV Updated Edition)

The thread through the Matthew 4 passage of Jesus' temptation is clear: the 'failure' of Adam, the faithfulness of Jesus, and the consequence thereof.

~

"I would like to suggest that St. Paul’s typology of the first Adam and Second Adam is highly resonant with the evangelical anthropology around fallen desire, rather than some version of fallen human nature itself. Our desire is fallen because it takes the wrong model: each other. Desire isn’t bad in itself. It’s simply that the First Adam put us all on the road of desiring according to each other’s lesser desires.

"It takes the coming of the Second Adam to finally have a human being who fully lives God’s loving desire in this world. His perfectly loving desire can become, through the help of the Holy Spirit, the model for our [imitative] desire on its way to becoming more loving. Prior to this Second Adam we had no such model to imitate, short of learning to somehow model God’s love directly, so our redemption is impossible without the coming of the Second Adam. The way of the First Adam is one that leads to death; the way of the Second to life."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from "Reflections and Questions" on Romans 5:12-19 on the Girardian Lectionary page for Lent 1A (link in comments below)

~

"[The imitative] nature of desire is illustrated graphically in the accounts of the devil’s temptations of Christ in Matthew and Luke. First the devil tries to undermine Jesus’ identity, “if you are the Son of God,” attempting to make him feel a lack, and so prove himself out of a feeling of lack of being. Jesus’ replies show that he receives his sense of being as Son from, and by a non-envious obedience towards, God. The final Matthaean temptation shows the devil explicitly as deviated transcendence: the devil offers to give Jesus power over everything if he will worship him. That is to say, distorted desire is the ruling principle of all the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus was being offered to incarnate that principle if only he would distort his desire from pacifically imitative of God, to conflictually acquisitive.

"The devil here is represented not only as obstacle, but as [...] distortion of desire, making gifts that should be received from God turn into obstacles that turn us away from God. The irony of this passage is that, by his obedience to God, his allowing God to constitute his consciousness pacifically and without obstacles, Jesus is in fact enabled, himself, to become the bread by which men can live because it is the same as the word which comes out of God’s mouth. He is able to become the Temple from which he refused to cast himself down. Finally he becomes, in his death, the king of all the kingdoms of the world. However, all this comes about as something he receives the hard way, through obedience to his Father, not something he grabs via a short cut, through allowing his desire to be distorted to an acquisitive [imitation]."

- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 158-59

~

"Now please notice what Jesus has done: he has rejected the three classic Messianic temptations: that of prophet, that of priest, and that of king. He is going to redefine hereafter what is meant by prophet, what is meant by priest, and what is meant by king: the principle of power, the principle of blessing, and the principle of speaking and living the truth. These three are going to be radically altered by what Jesus is going to live through hereafter.

"It says, “Then the devil left him and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” So it's interesting that the movement from the water of baptism, which in Luke he comes straight up, and the sense is that already his ordination has kicked in, and so now he is able to be within the Holy Place; the Holy Place has now become associated with him. Here it's interesting that the wilderness acts as a psychological step through into the Holy Place, so that the real Holy Place is not simply something that happens by an extrinsic act like baptism, but it's something that actually we grow through and into by our baptism, like by Jesus's baptism.

"As we become the priest, the prophet, and the king, so we are to learn to say no to the shortcuts, to agree to be held in being and allow ourselves to be given the capacity to be good to others, to be given the capacity to forgive and make forgiveness available for others, and to be given the capacity to exercise the kind of power that actually helps people live in truth. All of these are processes into which we are taken by baptism, and Jesus is showing us that this is the true path of Israel. The same elements will come up in different readings over the next weeks and I hope you will keep this in mind as we invite our Lord to help illuminate our Lenten Journey."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for First Sunday in Lent 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DLHErAUKYw)

[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 1A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent1a/]

From the Lectionary for 15 February 2026 (Transfiguration Sunday - Year A)

Matthew 17:1-9 (NRSV)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

~

"When the disciples heard the voice from the bright cloud, they “were overcome with fear.” What were they afraid of? Was it just the power of a voice from Heaven? That could account for the fear. But maybe there is more to it. The disciples had been following Jesus for some time but they often failed to understand him, not least when Jesus predicted his imminent suffering and death. Were these predictions giving the disciples second thoughts about Jesus? If so, the heavenly affirmation of Jesus would have been frightening if it was Jesus’ willingness to suffer that made Jesus the beloved Son with whom God was well pleased. Worse, this could mean that being willing to follow Jesus through the same suffering and death was the way for them to be sons with whom God was well pleased. The glory revealed on the mountain was a powerful encouragement, but the kind of encouragement that must have left the disciples shaken, as it should leave us shaken."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from 2020 blog post titled “The Beloved Son on the Mountain” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2020/02/22/the-beloved-son-on-the-mountain/)

~

James Alison, in an essay on the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16, describes how the priest readies himself to enter the Holy of Holies:

"At this stage, the High Priest is going to get into a brilliant white robe or tunic, pure, glistening white, and this is because he is about to acquire angelic status - not an angel in the modern sense, but in the more ancient sense in which the “Angel of the Lord” meant “a particular localized instantiation of the Lord”. It is as “Instantiation of the Lord” that the High Priest will emerge from the Holy of Holies, in glistening white, with the Tiara bearing the Name YHWH - the Tetragrammaton - upon his head, and maniples, or cufflinks, also bearing the name.

"Of course, we have a memory of this moment of the rite in the narrative of the Transfiguration where Jesus is revealed as the instantiation of YHWH in refulgent white. Naturally Peter and the other disciples want to stay with this bit of the rite, so Jesus has to insist from then on that he is going to head down the hill and up to Jerusalem to perform the sacrifice which is the next part of the rite."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 245-46

~

"How do we know all this? Is it mere theory? It is just what the church says? Is it myth or fiction?

"Barth has already given his reply in principle: the ground of being is the ground of knowledge. We do not know it 'a priori' nor can we come to know it by demonstration. The divine act has a subjective as well as an objective character.  It establishes itself in the knowing subject. It has the character of revelation.

"Noetically [ie. according to what know intellectually] we begin with the church and particularly holy scripture, but these lead us to the unique history of Jesus Christ in his self-revelation, which we can read and expound but cannot control. The Holy Spirit opens it up to us [...] by disclosing what is objectively concealed. In this witness Jesus Christ is present as the one who rose again in an unequivocal self-demonstration intimated already in his life, for example, at the Transfiguration, but fully given only when what is revealed had been effectively completed at the cross.

"Corresponding to that death, taking historical form yet also as an act of divine majesty or a miracle, the resurrection gives us a particular knowledge of the one who first loved us - a knowledge which rests on a genuinely historical investigation of the texts. In its totality the resurrection includes the ascension, thus telling us where Jesus came from - he rose from the dead - also where he went to - he ascended to the right hand of the Father. In this exaltation, which is his for us, is manifested also the exaltation of the cross."

G. W. Bromiley, "An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth", pg 200

~

Now, the Son of Man, the true human, has been glorified, and God is glorified in him. And if God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and will glorify him at once. (John 13:31-32)

"All of this glory language [...] refers, not to Jesus being magnified by God, not to Jesus being vindicated by God, none of that. [...] When Jesus says, “God is going to be glorified in him,” you might as well translate this as “God is going to be humiliated in him,” because for this writer, it's this act of humiliation that Jesus does, [...] going to the cross, that's the act of service, and what is happening on the cross is the forgiveness of sin. And this writer sees that as the ultimate glory of God - God is most glorious [in the act of] forgiving the human species from the cross.

"This is utterly different than beginning with the presupposition that God is majestic and God is almighty like we do in the Western tradition, the Calvinistic tradition, the Charismatic tradition. We start off with how great God is, how powerful God is, how all-knowing God is, and all this - no, no, no, no. The ultimate glorification of God for this writer is to bear witness to the crucified Jesus, and that is the most difficult thing in the world, for the world to do, or for Christians to do. Because what's happening here on the Cross is that there is a Creation that's being completed, and that act of creation includes the forgiveness of all."

- Michael Hardin, from a lecture on John 13

[Source of James Alison quote and link to Andrew Marr's blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/transfiguration_a/]

[In the Roman Catholic lectionary, today is the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (corresponding to Epiphany 6A in the Revised Common Lectionary). For James Alison's reflections on that Gospel text (Matthew 5:17-37): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU3LaT0FTMo)]

From the Lectionary for 8 February 2026 (Epiphany 5A)

1 Corinthians 2: 6-7 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed. But we speak God's wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory

Matthew 5:13-16 (NRSV)

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

~

"In Matthew's gospel Jesus tells us that we are salt. Does that mean we know about God's secret wisdom? Is that what makes us salty? Paul says God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory. God was working for our benefit in a way beyond our imagination before the world began. It's so good we have trouble believing it and it's for our glory, not God's glory. It's from God but for us. [...]

"God's wisdom embraces self-sacrifice and forgiveness; that's the secret hidden from the beginning of time and now revealed in Jesus and him crucified. Living out self-sacrifice, co-suffering love and forgiveness makes us the salt of the earth. [...]

"God's wisdom is grounded in non-violent, non-rivalrous, and totally forgiving love. It contrasts sharply with human wisdom where every word and action is subject to rivalry and fear, vengeance and hierarchy. [...]

"[... O]ur saltiness comes from being attuned to the wisdom of God; that wisdom that knows about sacrificial self-giving rather than sacrificing the other, that knows about co-suffering love rather than making sure only the other suffers, and that knows about a forgiveness so deep it leaves no enmity in its wake. This wisdom knows we are the light of the world, a city on top of a hill that cannot be hidden."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on February 5, 2017

(https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Truby-Epiphany5-2017-The-Big-Difference.pdf)

~

"[T]he Christian religion continues to sing and preach and teach about Jesus, but in too many places (not all!) it has largely forgotten, misunderstood, or become distracted from Jesus' secret message. When we drifted from understanding and living out his essential secret message of the kingdom, we became like flavorless salt or a blown-out lightbulb - so boring that people just walked away.

"We may have talked about going to heaven after we die, but not about God's will being done on earth before we die. We may have pressured people to be moral and good or correct and orthodox to avoid hell after death, but we didn't inspire them with the possibility of becoming beautiful and fruitful to heal the earth in this life. We may have instructed them about how to be a good Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, or Methodist on Sunday, but we didn't train, challenge, and inspire them to live out the kingdom of God in their jobs, neighborhoods, families, schools, and societies between Sundays."

- Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, pg. 84

~

"What would it mean to seek to be table-salt Christianity today? How is it possible to be salt that dramatically changed the taste of human life for the better, giving life to the earth in the 21st century? To answer this question you have at once to take into account an entirely other perspective about the “spread abroad” quality of inherited Christianity.

"Elsewhere I have argued that Christianity has had such a profound cultural impact it decisively and progressively affects our underlying responses and opinions, above all in our recognition of the victim through an undertow of Christ's compassion. This paradoxical impact explains why there is in fact so much implicit Christianity in so-called secular culture and why it is so easy to find a kind of diffused humanism and spirituality entirely away from the churches. For this kind of thing Jesus used parables of seed and its amazing, unstoppable growth. If we take the liberty of mixing this phenomenon with the image of the salt, it's as if the whole world is suspended in a kind of saline solution! Everything today is mixed with Christianity.

"However, this is of very little comfort when there are also many accumulated crises facing humanity. As a planet we have desperate decisions to make about inequality, poverty, the climate, weapons and war. Never in fact has the need for genuine disciples been more critical. I would say, therefore, that it's the single tangy grain of salt resting in the water which reveals what the whole medium really is. [...]

"Such a single grain can be achieved only in direct relationships where it is possible to see the qualities of compassion, nonviolence, forgiveness and peace at work. It is a challenge, and failure and false-starts are a constant possibility. But [we should not underestimate] the seasoning power of a single grain of salt, that tangy thing Jesus was talking about!"

- Anthony Bartlett, from blog post entitled “Salt Solutions” (no longer available online)

~

"The salt - this would have referred to two sorts of things. The salt was sometimes referred to wisdom, the kind of salt that comes with the savour of fine things that have been understood. These are people who are going to be producing the wisdom of this world the salt of the world. But also the salt that would be put on sacrifices that they would be pleasing to the Lord. These are the people who, by giving themselves away in the midst of the world and its lies and its violence, are showing what is true and a revealing God. So they are taking part, going to be taking part, in his one true sacrifice which is to come, which of course is not the same as any of the world's sacrifices, which are to protect us from the light, but are the ways of allowing the light to come in. So he's saying this is going to be up to you this is going to be your task. [...] [T]he savour is going to be related to you learning how to give yourself away and discover wisdom during that.

[...]

"[Putting your lamp on a lampstand] gives light to the whole house, whether you want it or not, so he's saying. “So here in the same way let your light shine before others.” In other words, you're going to become the celebratory lights that other people might try to put out, but you are not to allow yourselves to be put out. You are going to become that which lights the whole house, the whole city, you're going to become the light of the world.

"“So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven.” In other words, you're going to become witnesses through going through this process that makes you radiant witnesses for the one who is bringing you into being, so as to show the light of God, [...] your Father in Heaven.

[...]

"So, another challenge to us to find the way of radiance, the way of saltiness, as we come through Matthew's gospel, finding ourselves on the inside of the precarious of the world, and finding that God is in there, always trying to come through into us so as to make God's self better known through us, who will be discovered to be God's daughters and sons."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_19HUQX1UQ)

[Source of Brian Maclaren quote and links to Thomas Truby sermon and Anthony Bartlett blog, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany5a/]

From the Lectionary for 1 February 2026 (Epiphany 4A)

Matthew 5:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

~

"Now, the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount points to what I have called ‘the intelligence of the victim’. It starts with the beatitudes, where the people chosen as exemplars of proximity to God are all marginal, dependent people. People who have a certain relationship to others which one might describe as precarious: the poor in spirit are poor relative to people who might use power and riches against them; those who mourn are those who are in a relationship of vulnerability owing either to some loss, or some overbearing situation; the meek are meek in the midst of a social other that despises meekness; the merciful refuse to be involved in a vengeful relation to the other, that is they don't insist on their rights over against another; the pure in heart have acquired their purity of heart with difficulty in the midst of a world which does not encourage it; the peacemakers are notoriously those who eventually get blamed by both sides for not sharing their violence - each side sees them as traitors and those who are persecuted for righteousness [...] Well, the intelligence of the victim couldn't be more explicit - and this is emphasized again in the final beatitude: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of falsehood against you.”

"The key feature of blessedness is that it involves living a deliberately chosen and cultivated sort of life which is not involved in the power and violence of the world, and which because of this fact, makes the ones living it immensely vulnerable to being turned into victims. That is the center of the ethic as taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount."

- James Alison, Knowing Jesus, pp. 42-43

~

"Jesus has been speaking for only a matter of seconds, and he has already turned our normal status ladders and social pyramids upside down. He advocates an identity characterized by solidarity, sensitivity, and nonviolence. He celebrates those who long for justice, embody compassion, and manifest integrity and non-duplicity. He creates a new kind of hero: not warriors, corporate executives, or politicians, but brave and determined activists for pre-emptive peace, willing to suffer with him in the prophetic tradition of justice.

"Our choice is clear from the start: If we want to be his disciples, we won't be able to simply coast along and conform to the norms of our society. We must choose a different definition of well-being, a different model of success, a new identity with a new set of values.

"Jesus promises we will pay a price for making that choice. But he also promises we will discover many priceless rewards. If we seek the kind of unconventional blessedness he proposes, we will experience the true aliveness of God's kingdom, the warmth of God's comfort, the enjoyment of the gift of this Earth, the satisfaction at seeing God's restorative justice come more fully, the joy of receiving mercy, the direct experience of God's presence, the honor of association with God and of being in league with the prophets of old. That is the identity he invites us to seek."

- Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking, pp. 128-29

~

"Jesus is not speaking, as it were, from a starting point but from a midpoint. This is God in the middle of us, speaking into the midst of all our lives and indicating something about a quality of being alive which is what he is promoting.

[...]

"[T]he Greek 'makarioi' can be translated as blessed or happy, those are the two standard translations. “Happy” suggests [...] a good mood and it's perfectly nonsense - many of the people in this situation are not happy in the normal sense. “Blessed” suggests a kind of a fictional description of them, that although life is really awful they're blessed, so it's kind of extrinsic and outside them, a label.

"The translation which I've chosen - which is not really translation, it's a proposal - is “radiant.” Why do I say that? Because each one of the groups described are people who are in the midst of the grind in one way [or another]. They are precarious on the inside of the grind of being human, but they're beginning to turn up the right side. There is something about going through the grind in which they are being brought to radiance. [...] I know it's not a translation, it's just a suggestion, but I think it's suggestion that indicates something of the quality of someone who's going through the grind and is [...] beginning to come out with a sense that they're doing something real.

[...]

"[I]t seems to me [...] that he's saying these are not instructions from above, these are indications of what really is from within. And that's going to be the extraordinary thing about what we're going to learn over the next few weeks [from the Sermon on the Mount]: it's all to do with patterns of desire in the midst of living with real things. It's never a question of “I give you an order and now you must fulfill it.” It's always a question of: this is what is going on and this is what desire looks like, let's work out how to live this in such a way that it bears witness to God.

"So, “radiance” [and] the notion of God not coming down from above but being in the midst and actually beginning to show forth what it's going to be like to be radiant with life alongside him, with him being alongside us and enabling us to inhabit and to discover the kingship of God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK7aJyYupVU)

[Source of quotes from James Alison's Knowing Jesus and Brian Maclaren's We Make the Road by Walking, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany4a/]