From the Lectionary for 26 January 2025 (Epiphany 3C)

Luke 4:14-21 (NRSV)

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

~

"The Isaiah passage is one excerpt from a long recitation of the blessings that will accrue to the Jews when God vindicates them finally and forever. The original passage included the announcement of “the vengeance of our God,” which pointedly Luke leaves out of his quotation. Even in the final judgment of God upon the nations there is for Luke's Jesus no vengeance, but for the Jews who wrote these self aggrandizing “prophesies” the riches, freedom, miraculous medical care and terminal unburdening were for them, and the divine revenge was for the Gentiles. All those who had treated the Jews badly would feel the cold steel of God's vengeance, while the Jews felt the warm embrace of his vindication.

"Not so for the Jesus of St Luke! He quotes from these prophesies to change their purport from ethnic to ecumenical, and before that more subtle move, to banish flatly and firmly, any hint of revenge in the dealings of God. Indeed, there is not even a whisper of revenge in this Gospel passage because Luke leaves out the line about vengeance altogether! This fact is of major importance: no vengeance in or from God! No divine keeping score so God can fit his revenge to our crimes!"

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on January 24, 2010 (source no longer available online)

~

"More and more of us have begun to see what was incredibly obvious all along, if it weren't for our thorough Greco-Roman “civilizing” (or mind control): that the good news proclaimed by Jesus Christ wasn't primarily a way of integrating Plato and Aristotle, spirit and matter, perfect being and fallen becoming, or even law and grace - even though, in a sense, it does all these things. More essentially, it was a fulfillment of the three prime narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures.

"First, to accept the free gift of being “born again” into “life of the ages” or “life abundant” meant participation in a new Genesis, a new creation, interrupting the downward death spiral of violence and counterviolence and joining an upward, regenerative movement.

"Second, to follow Jesus meant embarking on a new Exodus, passing through the waters once again (this time, baptism instead of the Red Sea), eating a new Passover meal (the Eucharist), and experiencing liberation from the principalities and powers that oppress and enslave.

"Third, to enter or receive the “kingdom of God” meant becoming a citizen of a new kingdom, the peaceable kingdom imagined by the prophets and inaugurated in Christ, learning its ways (as a disciple) and demonstrating in word and deed its presence and availability to all (as an apostle).

"In this way, the most striking single element of Jesus's proclamation of the kingdom may have been “The time has come!” The kingdom of God is not a distant reality to wait for someday, Jesus proclaims; the kingdom is at hand, within reach, near, here, now (Mark 1:15).

"Everyone agrees the poor and downtrodden should be helped someday, oppression and exploitation should be stopped someday, the planet should be healed someday, we should study war no more someday. But for Jesus, the dream of Isaiah and the other prophets - of a time when good news would come to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed, and the indebted - was not five hundred or a thousand years in the future: the dream was being fulfilled today (Luke 4:18-21)."

- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 139-40

~

"So what do we have here? We have captives, or those amongst the captives from Judah, watching very very closely at the one who has returned to finish the work of the house of the Lord. You can see how very carefully Luke is framing this reading. Luke is giving a filled-out account of what Mark had said when he announced [...] at the  beginning of [his] Gospel was: “the time is fulfilled.” That's what is being described in this scene. He's talking about the word, the word from Isaiah, the word from Ezra - all of that about the coming in of the one who is going to build up the house of the Lord - that is what's being fulfilled in their sight.

"So what is it like to listen to the Lord? It's like sitting under a huge act of communication which very subtly comes amongst us, showing what it's going to do by fulfilling something even though the fulfilment is in some ways  an excess of what was described before. But the fulfilment is going to happen in very small, precise things that St Luke is now going to show us. This I think is part of the joy of reading Luke. He is a very very rich painter - people have sometimes said they thought he must have been a painter because of the ways that rather than just give the words he gives very rich images to allow us to imagine what it was like to undergo this.

"So we have one sitting in the synagogue fulfilling the promises [...] and all of this is to do with the building up to the completion of the house of the Lord, which is what Jesus is now beginning."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRBuBmN5BE)

[Source of Brian McLaren quote and link to Robert Hamerton-Kelly sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany3c/]

From the Lectionary for 19 January 2025 (Epiphany 2C)

John 2:1-11 (NRSV)

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

~

"[W]hen there was no more wine for the wedding guests, the mother of Jesus takes action. Notice that John doesn't call her Mary. He only refers to her as “the mother of Jesus.” At some point during the feasting and celebrating, Jesus' mother brings this information about the wine running out to Jesus. He answers her with, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

"His response seems troubling, doesn't it? It sounds cold and harsh. Some translations add “dear woman” to try to soften it. It sounds as though he's treating her like a silly woman who should be minding her own business. But the way we hear his response has surely been shaped by societal and cultural views that diminish women.

"The word “concern” isn't from the Greek. That's supplied by translators. What if Jesus is actually asking his mother, “Is this for you and me?” What if Jesus is seeking his mother's counsel? Maybe he really wants her guidance here and is looking to her. Even if Jesus is saying No, she isn't taking No for an answer! She acts anyway. Since the time Jesus, the Word of God, was in her womb, she's been waiting and listening for God's time. And now she recognizes the quickening in her body. She knows that Jesus' hour has come; the hour is now. And with full and absolute trust, as soon as his mother acts, Jesus participates.

[...]

"And now we go back to the exchange between Jesus and his mother, when he calls her “Woman.” Why does he do that? Part of what makes that interaction sound harsh and cold is that “woman” doesn't recognize the warmth of the familial relationship. Why not call her mother? To answer this question, we need to remember that John begins his Gospel with the end in sight. So when we look, after this wedding, we don't see Jesus' mother again until Jesus is on the cross. There on the cross, Jesus has another exchange with his mother. Ch 19 v 26, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

"When we remember that John is telling a creation story, then “woman” refers to the first woman. John is likening the mother of Jesus to Eve, the mother of humanity, the mother of life. So, as John is telling the story, Jesus is relating to Mary not as his mother, but as Eve, woman. And on the cross, his death gives birth to a new humanity. Jesus' death is part of the creation story, the completion of the creation story. He has given birth to a new way of being human. Here, at his end, the woman is his mother. Here, as a new humanity has been birthed, the woman becomes the mother of the disciples, of us.

[...]

"Following Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. also had the end in sight. The Beloved Community that he saw is the new humanity of love. In a speech at a victory rally, after a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery's buses, King said,

“the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men [and women].”

"So today we celebrate the miracle that turned water into wine, the miracle that continues to turn the waters of our empty humanity into wine, giving birth to the beloved community. May we continue to give ourselves, our bodied vessels, to be filled with the wine of God's love, participants in the “exuberant gladness of the new age.”"

- Suella Gerber, from "Celebrating, feasting, delighting: Epiphany 2C, John 2:1-11"(https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gerber-Epiphany2C-1-17-16.pdf)

~

"Throughout these pages there have been two imaginative poles, two principal images, which have given us hints for the understanding of something of 'the things that are above' on which we are to fix our minds: the vision of the open heaven with the risen victim — the slaughtered lamb standing or seated at the right hand of God — and the wedding banquet.

"In fact these two images permeate the whole apostolic witness: shortly after John the Baptist points Jesus out as the Lamb of God, and shortly after Nathanael is promised that he will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man, Jesus works his first sign, in Cana of Galilee. The sign is that the bridegroom of Israel has arrived, and the one who was an abandoned and repudiated woman is beginning to be able to enjoy a wedding banquet where flow a wine and a rejoicing quite unthinkably greater than that imagined by those who had made the wedding preparations.

[...]

"The two images flow into one alone: the wedding banquet of the lamb. And this confluence of images has as its effect precisely that we should learn to imagine the things that are above, that we should allow ourselves to be nurtured by this imagination which will empower us to re-create that wedding banquet... This is a story which we construct in hope, and by which we construct hope, creating belief, in the midst of the crushing darkness of the dominion of death. That is, the apostolic witness itself shows clearly that the inner dynamic which runs through it reaches maturity precisely in this fusion of images which come together to form a single vision of heaven."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pp 189-190

~

"The whole movement of the Bible is toward ever-greater Incarnation and embodiment, until the mystery of mutual indwelling is finally experienced and enjoyed even here in this world and this life. It then becomes the banquet that we call eternal life or heaven. For Christians, Jesus, the Christ, is the ultimate symbol of this divine goal, pattern and embodiment: “When Christ is revealed, and he is your life, you will be revealed in all your glory with him” (Colossians 3:4). Henceforth we know our true and lasting life in the new “force field” that Paul calls the Body of Christ and not in individual or private perfection. It becomes more important to be connected than to be privately correct.

"Paul's notion of the body of Christ has a material and cosmic character to it, and begins in this world (which is why we believe in the resurrection of the body and not just the soul). Yes, there is “a new heaven” but there is also “a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). What more fitting meaning could the “Second Coming of Christ” have except that humanity becomes “a beautiful bride all dressed for her husband?” (Revelation 21:3). Union is finally enjoyed, and God's win-win story line has achieved its full purpose. What a hopeful end to history! What an apokatastasis, or “universal restoration” (Revelation 3:21)! What a victory for God — and for humanity!"

- Richard Rohr, Things Hidden, pp. 211-12

[Source of James Alison and Richard Rohr quotes and link to Suella Gerber sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany2c/]

I also highly recommend James Alison's video for this day in the lectionary: "Homily for Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vexfI5Tjz8

From the Lectionary for 12 January 2025 (The Baptism of our Lord, Year C)

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (NRSV)

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

[...]

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”[a]

[a] Other ancient authorities read, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”

~

"The Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in the “bodily form of a dove” and the voice from Heaven proclaiming Jesus to be God's son, “the beloved,” (Lk. 3:21–22) could not be a greater contrast to John's closing words that the one who is “more powerful” was going to bring a winnowing fork to baptize by burning the chaff with “unquenchable fire.” John's water baptism was a rite of purification and he expected the one who was coming to bring fire to do a more powerful job of purifying. But instead Jesus' first act of preaching was to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Lk. 4:16–19) Quite a different approach than John's! Jesus was going for transformation, not purification.

"We celebrate our own baptism on this day as we follow Jesus to the river Jordan, see the dove for ourselves and listen to the voice from Heaven proclaim us sons and daughters of God. Our baptism, too, is a call to spread God's love and favor to others. We are used to living in a culture built on wrath and disfavor, where we bind and oppress captives rather than free them. The call of baptism is a constant call to leave this culture of wrath to journey towards a culture of love and the freeing of captives."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post "Celebrating our Baptism" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2019/01/10/celebrating-our-baptism/)

~

"John the Baptist knows there is One coming whose power resides beyond his imagining. Someone approaches so outside John's reach that he feels unworthy of touching him, unworthy even of untying his thong. John, stumbling for words, uses the language of separation and combustion because it is the only language he knows. He does not know about forgiveness and being loved toward a renewal of heart. John the Baptist only knows about repenting, self-denial and hair shirts. He eats grasshoppers and honey that he got stung getting to. He is a severe man, like [an] old threshing machine; gobbling up, separating and spewing out. Jesus, the One greater who is coming, will offer a different way.

"Jesus does not separate. Jesus reconciles. He joins together. Jesus teaches tough forgiveness and strong compassion. For Jesus, the wheat and the tares grow together undisturbed. For Jesus the tool of choice is not the pitchfork that casts aside and clears the floor, exposing the grain. No, his tool is the cross where he becomes the chaff and allows himself to be burned in the flames of our violence. This is the thing that John can neither see nor imagine. Jesus allows our violence to consume him and then while he is being consumed he forgives us and God vindicates him by raising him from the dead. And strangely, it is Jesus' forgiving of us that begins the process of burning away our violence. In an about face that stuns us, violence itself is discovered to be the chaff. It is the useless thing that must be destroyed and Jesus does it by allowing himself to be destroyed by it while forgiving us for it.

"John predicted the one coming would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of gentleness, forgiveness, non-violence, enemy love, non-retaliation and radical inclusion. And the promised fire turns out to be Jesus' willingness to endure our fire so that we could see what we do when we separate ourselves and cast out those we consider trash or on the opposite side of our process. [...] John's angry and unquenchable fire, his hot burning of all chaff, turns out to be quite quenchable when doused by the water's of God's forgiveness poured upon us in baptism.

"This is the real meaning of baptism. Baptism announces and confirms our participation in a new identity. We are children of God and nurtured by that connection. We are not rivals grasping against each other for some limited commodity that must be obtained before the other gets it. In baptism we are sealed into a new understanding of humanness. We are freed to be for each other and lose our fear of final exclusion. In baptism Jesus immerses us in his gentleness and invites us to become like him. It's always a process of growth toward gentleness and away from violence and rivalry. Philippians 4:4 says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

"John baptized with water that for him symbolized the need to remove something that he thought had contaminated us. But Jesus baptizes with the Spirit, a spirit like himself, full of gentleness and non-retaliation. It is a new thing that gets added to us and gradually changes us from the inside out. He infuses us with a love that radiates toward our enemies and evolves into an inner peace deeper than the world can know. If we are the threshing machine, and I think we are, we find ourselves transmuting into something quite different. This is the new thing John can point toward but not imagine.

"In a more modern metaphor, baptism is a kind of access code, but much more, that allows us to download new software for humanness.  The full meaning of the download takes a life-time to discover and leads us away from rivalry and violence and toward gentleness and peace.  May we live our baptism and discover its’ astounding depth more and more as we move through our lives."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on January 13, 2013 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Baptism-of-the-Lord-2013-The-New-Thing-John-Can-Point-Toward-but-Not-Imagine.doc)

~

"So, something very striking about the mystery of today's feast, it's one of the key moments, the beginning of something. The Holy Spirit has now come upon him in a particular form, the dove (which some took to be a sign of an animal that would give itself in sacrifice), [and] following, the promise of begetting. And the Spirit will leave him when he dies on the Cross, he will breathe the Spirit out. That which was hovering over the waters [Genesis 1:2] has come upon him, and when he breathes out on the Cross, that's when the Spirit, if you like, goes back to God, creation having been completed. That's going to be Luke's vision. [...] and Luke is the one who gives us [the] most account of the Holy Spirit in historical operation because, of course, Luke gives us the Acts of the Apostles as well.

"So here we have the fullness of the begetting come amongst us, as the One who is the Creator begins to live out the mission of setting in motion the New Creation into which we are to be involved. This is why people refer to him being baptized as in a sense the beginning of him making it possible for us to be baptized. [...] [T]he waters, if you like, are now going to be formed into a creation which is including us, [and] is also benevolent, it's not something that's frightening against us, it's not part of a wrath or a fear. It's going to be worked through from within and given to us by the One who is then going to show us how to live in it ourselves, to be born again, to be begotten of the Spirit, to be begotten from above."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Baptism of the Lord 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGzT4HYyCfU)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog and Thomas Truby sermon, and for further analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/epiphany1c/]

From the Lectionary for 5 January 2025 (Christmas 2ABC)

John 1:1-18 (NRSV)

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 overcome 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 God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

~

"It is difficult to capture the linguistic connotations of the term ‘logos’ in John 1. Scholars have long debated its background [...] It is a term used in Greek philosophy to refer to ‘the structuring principle of reality.’

[...]

"As the ‘structuring principle of reality’ it is more than ‘speech’, more than ‘power’, more than ‘thought’, more than ‘act’. It is all of the above and more. Friedrich Nietzsche, that great critic of Christianity proposed that the ‘Logos’ is ‘Nonsense’. I want to suggest that this is an insight worth pursuing. For what happens to this Logos is twofold nonsense: this Logos is rejected (1:11) and ‘becomes flesh’.

"Why is this logos rejected? Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher had identified that which structured reality as ‘polemos’ (violence or war). This is an insight about the way we humans structure reality long before [Rene] Girard discovered the power of violence to shape the way we do this thing called humanity, culture, history and religion. Violence is that which structures our reality!

"The nonviolent Logos, Jesus Christ, the Logos who structures reality in forgiveness will never make sense to a reality structured on violence. This is why so many people, especially Christians, cannot make sense of a nonviolent Jesus or a nonviolent God. We have made God into our own image: rivalrous, violent and retributive. A God who freely forgives apart from sacrifice, apart from blood, is a god who does not fit into this world’s (kosmos) way of thinking, therefore this kind of a God is sheer nonsense.

[...]

"This Christmas let us experience the SHOCK AND AWE of the evangelic message; let us stand stupefied before the absolute NONSENSE of the gospel of forgiveness. Let us come to the cradle of Bethlehem not with songs but with confusion, then perhaps we might just see how it is that this baby, this Jesus, is truly Emmanuel, God with us!"

- Michael Hardin (from facebook post on 14 December 2013)

~

"[T]he notion that [creation is] something good is because the One who is bringing it into being allows hints to those of us who are on the inside of what the Creator is really all about, the creation created through wisdom [...] [T]he principle of wisdom is precisely that it's making a live creation, holding it all together in such a way that it shows off of itself the glory of God. It gives off, points up to, gives away the glory of God. If you like, that creation, the wisdom, comes into our midst to open our eyes, to make it possible to be on the inside and actually see something clearly for what it is.

"And in the back of this, [...] part of the deep sense of this is that everything that is, there's a rationale to it, there's a logic to it. Reality is not simply a chaotic and random series of events and things. This is what the creation means, that there is a there's a rationale, an inner structure of reality which, when it's brought alive and we're unable to share with it, opens us up to what's going on, the possibility of us being participants and insiders in this, in creation. The world creation means God's rational dynamic product which is functional, which is for something, and inside which we are and can grow.

"So when we [...] get to St John's Gospel, we have these extraordinary phrases: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” So for “Word” - an act of communication - understand the logical structure, the structure of reality. That's what is coming into the world, the logical structural reality is actually going to enter into creation, to open us up actually to be able to come to life, to become fully alive in creation, to become sons and daughters of God.

"So this baby who is born is not just a baby, he's the beginning of the manifestation in our midst of the dynamic structuring reality of everything that is. If you like, the plan, the form of communication, all of that is being made alive so that it speaks to us and so that if we accept it we can be included in it, so that we can actually become Children of God. [...] We actually get to be the heirs of creation, creation fully alive its entire dynamic, fully revealed. We get to be participants in it.

"In other words, this is something which is less fashionable than it should be in Christian circles, is that Jesus is actually bringing about the reality of what is. That's part of what this birth is, it's the beginning of it becoming available and clear to us, the reality of what is. And as John says, the reality turns out to be  something much, much better than had been hoped for.

[...]

"What's being brought out is how the one came in, making it possible for people to receive him and therefore to become children of God, which meant that he became available as a sacrifice of forgiveness. Those who were able to receive this actually found that forgiveness turns out to be the structuring dynamic. There's not as it were a law and then something to be forgiven. There is the structuring dynamic of everything that is, that is in fact opened out by forgiveness. It is this that we're invited to participate in.

"John is saying here that this is the one that's coming in, this is the one that John the Baptist pointed to. What we're seeing here is not merely a baby, it's the baby who is going to grow into a man, we are going to be able to see him and he is going to become the way, the structuring principle of reality opens us up to it and to being participants in it. This is the greatest thing that could possibly ever have happened.

"[John says], “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.” This was the Lord, understood to be the begotten, not created, Son of God, who had come into our midst, thanks to the Virgin who became the holy place. That was how the ‘shekinah’, the Most High, tabernacled in our midst. And this is how the whole fullness of God became revealed to us, shown to us, but not, if you like, simply something for us to see, but for us to become participants in the making finally alive and full of creation.

"So this is if you like the richness of the Christmas story, the fullness of the invitation that's going on here, and the source of endless joy and the opening up of our imaginations."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for The Second Sunday of Christmas" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upVCydSEUcE)

[For further analysis and discussion on this week's lectionary text: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas2abc/]

"I believe with all my heart that honesty with oneself is a central component to spiritual growth.  God honors our honest questions.  He is not surprised by them, nor is he ashamed to be our God when we pose them.  He is our God, not because of the questions we ask (or refrain from asking), but because he has united us to the risen Christ.  And being a part of God's family is ultimately a gift to us, not something to be obtained by us.  God has freed us in Christ and made us his children.  And, as all children do, we ask a lot of questions."

- Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation (2nd ed), pg xiv

From the Lectionary for 29 December 2024 (Christmas 1C)

Luke 2:41-52 (NRSV)

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

~

"St. Luke gives us [the theme of 'lost and found'] more than any of the other three Gospel writers. He has a whole chapter on it that is unique among the gospels. In Luke 15 Jesus tells us those three parables back-to-back-to-back: the parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost, Prodigal Son. On Sunday mornings we gather to celebrate that we who are lost have been found. We celebrate like that shepherd who finds his lost sheep, like the woman who finds her lost coin, and like the Father, who upon the return of his Prodigal Son, tells his servants, “Quickly, bring out a robe - the best one - and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

"Luke is also the only Gospel writer to tell us this story of Jesus being left behind in the Temple, without his mother and father even realizing it until three days had passed. But this, of course, a bit of a different story about being lost and found. On the surface, it's about a twelve year-old boy being lost and then finally found by his parents. But in the exchange at the end between Jesus and his mother, it becomes evident that the story is really about the parents being lost. The boy Jesus knows exactly who he is and where he needs to be: in his Father's house. It's his mother and father who have lost him and need the help.

"The amazing grace in this story is that it's like a dry-run for what comes later: Jesus and his disciples will also later journey to Jerusalem, and the disciples will come away from Jerusalem thinking that they have lost Jesus forever to the cross, and not understanding that they are the ones who are lost. Jesus wasn't lost on the cross. No, he was doing what he needed to do to save us! He was going to his Father's house. When Jesus dies in Luke's Gospel, Jesus knowingly offers his spirit back to God: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He does so, knowing that on the third day those who think they have lost him will find him."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on December 31, 2000 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas1c_2000_ser/)

~

"Well, if we have a hard time understanding this, we are not alone. The text from Luke says, “But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” In essence he told them he is the Son of God and then relinquishes all power-claims that could go with that by submitting to Joseph and Mary's authority as his earthly parents. In this way he emptied himself becoming a human being, as it says [in Philippians 2]. We see in this brief glimpse into Jesus' life at age twelve both his divine nature, as Son of God, showing us the face of God, and his self-emptying willingness to be fully human just like us."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on December 30, 2018 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Truby-Christmas1-2018-Riffing-Off-Jesus-at-Twelve.pdf)

~

"“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” So that's referring both to the Temple, and of course to the trajectory of his life, in which he is going to open up the Father's House to us, and sit in it. That's the whole of his family life trajectory.

[...]

"So how do we add to this for our celebration of this feast, the feast of the Holy Family? I think it's a reminder that of all the difficult things that God does in order to bring us to life, he even comes into a family. This is not necessarily a happy, sweet, kitsch, perfect porcelain reality. It can be a difficult, tense, complicated reality, full of all sorts of hidden things and unspoken things, and tensions and dramas, and that yet it was in the midst of a family and dealing with all those things that God wanted to come into our midst so as to open up the possibility that we might become God's family.

"So let's rejoice with the Virgin at what she saw. Remember how little she understood about it. Rejoice to think that our family screw-ups, our family misadventures, may also be blessed and have another meaning than the one we're currently able to give them. And that there may be a far, far happier and richer fulfilment of them than we can imagine."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Holy Family Sunday 2021 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Binsy23Sns4)

[Source of links to Paul J. Nuechterlein and Tom Truby sermons, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas1c/]

From the Lectionary for 22 December 2024 (Advent 4C)

Luke 1:39-45 (NRSV)

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

~

In James Alison's video homily for Advent 4C 2021 (link below) he links some of the crucial words and phrases in this text (eg. "with haste", "leaped in her womb", "exclaimed with a loud cry", "the child in my womb leaped for joy"), which are almost certainly deliberate references by the author of Luke to verses and passages in the Hebrew scriptures with which his intended audience would have been familiar.

Following are the concluding words of the homily:

"Well, I don't know whether this is Elizabeth talking about herself, or about Mary, or about both of them - “Blessed are the women who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” So it's Mary's fulfillment and it's Elizabeth's fulfillment. But what they are doing is just acting out major fulfillments, that's what's going on. It's not only the pregnancies, it's the fact that it's the final coming of the one who Malachi had prophesied, who Isaiah had prophesied, who David had been the predecessor of, [and also] the Levites. You see how this wonderful text is constructed so as to prepare us for what is the great birth, which is the moment when God gives birth in human form, through the virgin, to God."

- James Alison, from "Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4aDWAmlITk)

~

"Elizabeth carries the pre-natal John the Baptist who opens the way for God's Son. In Luke's story, John the Baptist, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, knows he is the forerunner of God's Messiah even before he is born and leaps for Joy three months prior to his birth when in Messiah's presence.

"There is a sense in which the pregnant Mary is like the true church. Like the true church, Christ is hidden in her body, active and growing within. Like the church, Mary has received God into herself and allowed herself to be a vehicle of blessing to all human-kind.

"Just as Mary took in God, we take in God today in receiving Communion. In eating the bread and drinking the wine we take into our bodies the very presence of the Holy. We become inhabited by the Eternal One; overwhelmed by his body broken for us, and profoundly nurtured by his blood of forgiveness poured out that we might drink it and live. In receiving communion we become inhabited by Pure Love.

"How blessed are we! We have been blessed beyond our wildest imagination. Our spirits leap with joy. We are discovering that the Lord has fulfilled his promises and new life does stretch out before us endlessly. Thanks be to God!"

- Thomas L. Truby, from reflection delivered on 20 December, 2015 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Advent4-2015-Surprised-by-Joy.pdf)

~

Who are we, Lord God,
that you should come to us?
Yet you have visited your people
and redeemed us in your Son.
As we prepare to celebrate his birth,
make our hearts leap for joy at the sound of your Word,
and move us by your Spirit to bless your wonderful works.
We ask this through him whose coming is certain,
whose day draws near:
your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
Amen.

- Opening Prayer from Roman Catholic liturgy for Advent 4C

[Source of link to Tom Truby reflection, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/advent4c/]

From the Lectionary for 15 December 2024 (Advent 3C)

Luke 3:7-18 (NRSV)

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin 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; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

~

"John's sharp words are compelling and these crowds of people respond, “What should we do?” They apparently receive his judgment and they agree with it. They're eager for it. The way they've been living and being isn't working anymore and they're ready for something new. They've already left the familiarity and certainty of their known worlds and come into this wild and alien wilderness seeking Good News, longing for a life-giving way.

"So they ask, “Tell us, John, what shall we do to bear fruit worthy of transformation? What fruit is appropriate for this new way of thinking and being?” I wonder what kind of a response they expected to get. After his fiery judgment, his answer is anticlimactic. “Go home. Go home and inhabit your lives. But instead of being stingy, be generous. Instead of being greedy, do the right thing. And instead of threats and violence, be satisfied with what you have.”

"This response seems tame following the wild opening words, but we cannot miss how profound it is. My sense is that we human beings often want answers that offer magical or miraculous solutions to our problems. But John isn't doing that. From this barren, uninhabited, unknown place, John is telling them to return to their domestic habitations, to return to the homes and work and communities they know. But instead of behaving like snakes, be children of God.

[...]

"Imagine a world where all people inhabited their lives bearing the fruits of God's Spirit. Imagine a world where everyone would inhabit their lives knowing they are God's offspring. The crowds of people listening to John could imagine. And they were so moved and inspired by it they were pretty sure John was the Messiah.

"I wonder what John would say to us if he spotted us in the crowds of people? My guess is that we wouldn't be singled out but are already included in these three messages. We want the same thing those crowds wanted. Our bodies and beings, deep in our flesh and bones, we want to see and experience God's salvation and healing and liberation not only in our lives, but blanketing the planet.

"John's words are for us, for us to prepare for all that is unknown and wild in our lives. In the face of all the broken systems of our time; all the unjust and violent and oppressive ways of thinking and functioning; all the worn out, slithery and slippery and unproductive ways our empire shapes and forms our children, I can hear John saying to us, “Go home. Bear fruit worthy of God's offspring.”"

- Suella Gerber, from a sermon delivered on December 13, 2015 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Gerber-Advent3C-12-13-15.pdf)

~

"The people that heard John speak recognized that he was on to something. Somehow it felt right, and the people got excited and felt hopeful. “Filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.” But John's way depends too heavily on human effort. It doesn't get at the heart. John does his best but he knows something more is needed. “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than I IS coming. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Jesus is the one Malachi described as “like a refiner's fire.” He has the power to refine us like gold and silver, and burn away what's useless. Could violence itself be the part that's useless?"

"Is The Coming One different from John the Baptist because he makes himself the chaff, and this is what changes people's hearts? He allows himself to be burned by our violence and then forgives us as we do it. Is this his refining fire? Is this how he gathers the wheat into his granary? Rather than inflicting violence and revenge, Jesus absorbs the violence we inflict on him. His forgiveness is the flame. This is how he changes our hearts and burns away our chaff. The good news is that this is coming and has already happened. Not even John can imagine it!"

"The Coming One turns us from violence. He changes even our desires. This Christmas, let your gentleness be known to everyone. Let your hearts be filled with expectation. Our Savior has come! He will renew us in his Love."

- Tom and Laura Truby, from a sermon delivered on December 16, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Advent3-2012-Deep-Sorrow-Deep-Darkness-or-Disaster-No-More.doc)

~

"So here we have John, who still has a vindictive vision of God, a punishing vision of God, who's wrath he announces. And yet part of the good news that we know has come in - which led John himself later [Luke 7:18-35] to be concerned that something wasn't right - is that the coming in is not the vindictive God. There is no wrath in God. There is no cataclysm coming from God. This is something that Jesus will be bringing in, this is the good news that is really going to come for us, which Luke is so keen to bring out as we will see as we read his Gospel over this [liturgical] year."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEpsf3VWHkw)

[Source of links to Suella Gerber and Tom and Laura Truby sermons, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/advent3c/]

From the Lectionary for 8 December 2024 (Advent 2C)

Luke 3:1-6 (NRSV)

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
    and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

~

"John goes into the region around the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So the Word of God is coming in and is going to shake up the order of this world. This order of the world is apparently going to win on two occasions but in fact, it's going to be profoundly shaken from within so that it's not even going to know that its whole system of dominance has been destroyed from within by the word of God that is coming in. This God's promised coming in.

"He proclaims a baptism of repentance, he's saying get ready: this great big change is coming, allow your hearts to be opened and broken so that you can take part in the new thing that's coming in. That's the message which he's given. And the words he uses are the words of the prophet Isaiah. [...] We're used to this being sung rather beautifully to Handel's music through The Messiah and so we don't actually remember that this is the threatening  of, the destabilizing of, the order of everything that is: hills, mountains, of course, can refer to the geographical things but they can also refer to high places, places of importance like temples and places of sacrificial cult; and mountains can be the sort of things that empires are built on. [...]

"In other words, there's going to be a general shaking up of every form of human coexistence. And this shaking up is going to be necessary for a particular purpose: “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  Interesting, while we are in our normal topography of highs and lows, those who are raised up, those who are cast down. And incidentally the valleys to be filled: plērōthēsetai [means] to be filled up, it's a very human talk of fulfilment; and the being made low is humiliated or humbled. So although these are mountains or hills, the verbs do not only refer as it were to work being done by an excavator and a tractor, it refers to humiliation, things being brought low.

“All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” In other words, the one who is going to come in is going to come in at our level, at a human level. And any obstacles through being too high or through being too low are not going to be able to see him. It's only as we become level that it will become perfectly clear who our salvation is - the One who's coming in sideways, at our level, who will be known by us eventually, as the crucified and risen One. That is how God's promise is coming into the world.

[...]

"What's interesting is Luke starting this by giving a very concentrated account of the powers of this world, the Word of God coming in, the fact that it's going to be a massive shakeup, but “all flesh shall see the salvation” - afterwards the Word is going to go out to all nations, to the ends of the earth. And the whole work of Luke and Acts ends back in Rome, of course a different emperor by that time, but that's the whole path, if you like, that his Gospel takes.

"From this extraordinary breaking-in, in the midst of a very specific historical moment, under very specific circumstances of troubled rule - difficult, hostile powers - in the midst of this the Word of God comes, it's going to level, it's going to reveal who God is at the level of sibling-icity, at the fraternal level, and that is going to go to the ends of the world. So it's that that we are asked to prepare this Sunday."

- James Alison, from "Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6J_rYPCZE)

~

"There has been a strong tendency in modern times to limit the significance of Christ and of the Christian faith to the realm of the private and the personal. Faith for many of us is a private and subjective activity but for Luke it is an event in the history of nations, of politics and of culture. I know this is difficult to believe, but it is the fullness of our faith. Whether we believe it or not, whether we understand it or not, God in Christ has caused something pivotal to happen in this world that has changed the nature of things forever, and has changed me too, whether I acknowledge it or not. For that reason we are confident and expect to find the traces of this event wherever and whenever we go. All of time is changed by it, all my life is changed by it. Faith in Christ is the way to make that universal event happen in my particular life.

[...]

"An essential, I mean absolutely essential, part of [Jesus's] coming were those who recognized and accepted him. There were those who accepted him after his work, on the basis of his life, death and resurrection, and they are primarily the apostles and secondarily each one of us. We are his disciples too and as such we are part of the event of his coming.

"But there are also those who acknowledged and accepted him before his self-disclosure to the world, and they were Mary his mother who was told by an angel, and John the Baptist who knew him through prophecy. The word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness in that marvelous year of AD 29, and the prophet Isaiah confirmed that word, and John embarked on a mission to prepare people to receive him. John and Mary are the dominant figures of Advent; they knew him beforehand and they prepare us to receive him, they warn us to be ready so that when the time comes we may acknowledge and accept him into our lives.

"The fact that Christ’s coming is an event of world history means that it is far, far greater in its breadth and depth than anything we can comprehend. Too often we try to make of the incarnation of God only a personal experience, as if the limits of my religious experience were the limits of God’s saving presence in the world, as if heaven and earth were not full of his glory. Christ is in each one of us, because he is incarnated in humanity as such. When we say he comes to us we really mean that he who is always already there with us causes his presence to be known in special ways and at special times.

"May this advent be a special time for you, when the God incarnate in the history of the world makes his presence known in the history of your life, in its trials and challenges and in its joy and gifts. May this time be a right time for you, and may you discover the life and joy hidden in the midst of your days, the God made flesh in you."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from sermon delivered on December 10, 2000 (source no longer available online)

[Source of link (now obsolete) to Robert Hamerton-Kelly sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/advent2c/]

From the Lectionary for 1 December 2024 (Advent 1C)

Luke 21:25-36 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man.”

~

"One of the things that [Luke is] very keen to bring out, one of the things he downplays, or in fact removes, in his Gospel, time and time again, is any notion of vengeance. It's one of the extraordinary things that wherever you might expect vengeance, Luke takes it out. So here we have a speech [...] which in a more semitic Gospel [...] where those kind of signs of distress and so on will be attributed to God, here they are not. He's talking as if all that is over. If there were a day of vengeance [in Luke], it's already past with Jesus's death, which was actually presented in his Gospel, or will be presented in his Gospel, as the moment of the New Creation, when Jesus breathes out after the sun has gone down. [...] There is complete darkness at noon, and Jesus breathes out the Spirit which is going back therefore outside creation for the whole of creation to start again.

"So Luke does not use the threatening language of the prophets - he uses the images of the prophets but without the threatening language because he knows that there is no vengeance in God, that what he refers to here as “people will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken,” he's talking about what we would now call intermediary cosmic forces, the notion of angels - good angels and bad angels toughing it out in heaven - we would talk more about, I guess, shifts in human interaction that have worldwide consequences, how our attitudes towards each other, towards families, towards competition and so on, shifts over time - the in-between is constantly shifting and it produces enormous alterations in how we live together. That kind of thing of course was noticed at that time as well but now it's just noticed on a more global scale, but [Luke] takes out the divine causality of these things, in fact it's quite important that it not be divine causality - the divine causality has already come in terms of Jesus going to his death.

"So Jesus here is telling his disciples what it's going to be like after he's gone to his death, after he's actually made the great change, brought to an end any possible notion of vengeance, fulfilled everything. From that point onwards there is going to be a new time to be opened up and it's going to be a difficult time in which everything is going to be shaken up because what he has done will start to become visible - he will have made visible the innocence of the victim, which is the beginning of the undoing of all our systems of fooling ourselves about how good we are by blaming other people. It's going to become visible that that's what we're doing, we will know that it's wrong, and that actually loosens up all our systems of belonging, makes it more difficult, and that in itself makes us more tense and more inclined to more violent forms of belonging, which don't last for so long because we know they're fake, we know they're wrong. And so on, this constant human violence because we can't accept what the Son of Man has done for us.

"So Luke is very keen on talking about this intermediate time, which is the one in which we're still living and which is therefore what the first Sunday in Advent is about, it's saying this is the time you're living in and of course any of us who follow the news, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken,” Well, it almost doesn't sound as though it was written two thousand years ago, apart from the phrase about the powers of the heavens being shaken, which is signs of an old cosmology, anyone looking around the world has a good deal of those in mind."

- James Alison, from "Homily for the First Sunday of Advent 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I19KwYZFlbo)

~

"In this period of time, the time in which we live, many things will happen. These things have to happen for us to have any chance at finding our way out of our early Advent darkness toward the light we, as a species, often prefer to avoid. Will we find our way or will we destroy ourselves as a species? Will Jesus come because we have embraced his forgiving and merciful way or will he come to resurrect our destroyed bodies after we have incinerated ourselves? We don’t know. All we know is that “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.”

"In the meantime, while we wait, Jesus has some advice for us. Focus on the signs of spring, allowing those to energize you and keep you positive. Look for the good things happening in the world and contribute to them. Christmas is a wonderful time to support anything that looks like swelling buds soon to burst into life."

- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on November 29th, 2018 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Truby-Advent1-2018-In-Advent-We-Await-Full-Humanity.pdf)

~

"One of the things I love about the liturgical life of the Church is the way that the Holy Spirit, quietly and gently, works on us. Through the texts and prayers set out for us each year in the lectionary the Spirit draws us ever more fully into the Presence. If we read the texts in a literalistic manner, it can sounds as though, week by week it is God who is undergoing change toward us. In fact, however, in the liturgy of the Presence it is we who are worked on through the scriptures and the prayers, we who get to be reconfigured and brought in to the life of the Changeless One.

"At Advent, it begins again: the cycle by which God breaks through the clutter of our lives to announce to us that the Presence is very near, irrupting into our midst, hauling us out of our myths, our half-truths and the ways we have settled for what is “religious” rather than what is holy, alive, and real. So, lest we be tempted to think that “Advent” is merely a religious warm up for “Christmas”, let us see if we can allow ourselves to be brought near the cold-water spigot whose splashes can chasten us into reality.

"Someone wants to speak to us. Someone who is not on the same level as us at all. The “oomph” behind the “isness” of everything that is wants to invite us into the fullness of a project. Can that One get through? Who are they? Will we be able to hear them? How trained are our ears? The assumption at the beginning of each liturgical year is that this is going to be difficult: that we are half asleep, our ears dulled, and the voice of One who loves us is too radiant bright to be picked up on our defensive antennae.

[...]

"And yet, as our imagination of the One who is coming undergoes its inevitable puncturing, so that we can be awakened to One whose criteria are not our criteria, the promise will be fulfilled. The One who is coming will not preside over us, but will teach us to want peace from within, and to learn the habits that make it possible. The One who loves us will come as one we despise, and crucify: The definitive puncturing of our god-fantasies, and yet the Presence of one who is powerfully determined not to let us remain wedded to our self-destruction."

- James Alison, "A Puncturing Fulfilment" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/2266645773387265)

[Source of link to Thomas Truby sermon, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/advent1c/]

From the Lectionary for 24 November 2024 (Christ the King, Year B)

John 18:33-37 (NRSV)

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

~

"Please note, [John] doesn’t say, as some translations have put it, ‘my kingdom is not of this world’; that would imply that his ‘kingdom’ was altogether other-worldly, a spiritual or heavenly reality that had nothing to do with the present world at all. That is not the point. Jesus, after all, taught his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come ‘on earth as in heaven.’

"No: the point is that Jesus’ kingdom does not come from ‘this world.’ Of course it doesn’t. ‘The world,’ as we’ve seen again and again, is in John the source of evil and rebellion against God. Jesus is denying that his kingdom has a this-worldly origin or quality. He is not denying that it has a this-worldly destination. That’s why he has come into the world himself (verse 37), and why he has sent, and will send, his followers into the world (17.18; 20.21). His kingdom doesn’t come from this world, but it is for this world. That is the crucial distinction."

- N. T. Wright, John for Everyone (pp. 114-15)

~

"The scene in John 18-19 has the hallmarks of the kind of hearing we might expect in a Roman provincial court, and it is this confrontation that lies at the heart of both the political and the theological meaning of the kingdom of God. Jesus has announced God’s kingdom and has also embodied it in what he has been doing. But it is a different sort of kingdom from anything that Pilate has heard of or imagined: a kingdom without violence (18:36), a kingdom not from this world, but emphatically, through the work of Jesus, for this world."

- N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters, pg. 183

~

"The title [“King of the Jews” that Pilate places above Jesus' head on the cross] is, of course, heavily ironic. Pilate knows that Jesus doesn’t conform to any meaning of the word “king” with which he is familiar. Jesus himself, as we saw, had redefined “kingship” in his conversation with the governor, insisting that his kind of kingship meant bearing witness to the truth (18:37). But now readers are invited to join together the two points, which Pilate was never going to do - the two points that, ironically, much Christian interpretation has also found very hard to combine.

"Readers are invited to join together not simply a Johannine “incarnational” theology with a Johannine “redemption” theology. Both of those are there, but the middle term between them is once again the evangelist’s kingdom theology. As Paul saw, the rulers of this age didn’t understand what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). As the Irish-American New Testament scholar Dominic Crossan commented on Matthew’s story of Pilate’s wife having bad dreams about Jesus (Matt. 27:19), it was time for the Roman Empire to start having nightmares. Sending Jesus to his death was assisting in the enthronement of the one whose bringing of justice to the nations flowed out of his sovereign, healing love (John 13:1).

"The point for our present purpose is that, in all four gospels, readers are strongly urged to see Jesus’s death as explicitly “royal,” explicitly “messianic” - in other words, explicitly to do with the coming of the “kingdom.” Jesus has, all along, been announcing that God’s kingdom was coming. His followers might well have expected that this announcement would lead to a march on Jerusalem, where Jesus would do whatever it took to complete what he had begun. And they were right - but not at all in the sense they expected or wanted. That is what the evangelists are saying through this particular moment in the story. This is how the kingdom is to come, the kingdom of God, which Jesus has been announcing and, as Messiah, inaugurating.

"This point needs little elaboration in relation to the synoptic gospels, but we may continue to stress it in relation to John, who is not so often seen as a theologian of the “kingdom.” In fact, however, as we have already seen, John 18-19 offers an explosion of dense and detailed kingdom theology, so that when we meet the titulus in John 19:19, we read it with a special and heightened irony, coming as it does at the conclusion of Pilate’s debate with Jesus, on the one hand, and with the Jewish leaders, on the other, about kingdom, truth, power, and Caesar. Jesus, John is saying, is the true king whose kingdom comes in a totally unexpected fashion, folly to the Roman governor and a scandal to the Jewish leaders.

"In all four gospels, then, there is no drawing back. This is the coming of the kingdom, the sovereign rule of Israel’s God arriving on earth as in heaven, exercised through David’s true son and heir. It comes through his death. The fact that the kingdom is redefined by the cross doesn’t mean that it isn’t still the kingdom. The fact that the cross is the kingdom-bringing event doesn’t mean that it isn’t still an act of horrible and brutal injustice, on the one hand, and powerful, rescuing divine love, on the other. The two meanings are brought into dramatic and shocking but permanent relation."

-  N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, pp. 219-20

~

"So, we are brought to the end of the Church's year with this extraordinary, dynamic picture of how Jesus occupied the space of shepherd and of king, of scapegoat and of voice that speaks the truth, revealing not merely a different system of power but that underneath all our apparently solid but in fact incredibly fake systems of power there is an entirely different understanding of power, one that is immensely friendly to us, likes us, wants to hold us in being, wants to invite us in, wants to speak us out of our worlds of idolatry and confusion. And that that is how the kingship of Christ is exercised in our midst, and that we are invited each year to find our way into occupying that same space and spreading that voice, listening to it, occupying its space and making it more alive for all of those around us."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5-fWn6baKo)

[Source of N.T. Wright quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/xrstkingb/]

From the Lectionary for 17 November 2024 (Proper 28B)

Mark 13:24-32 (NRSV)

But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
    and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

~

"[Jesus is] in a sense trying to get [the disciples] out of thinking in terms of the times and signals that they thinking about. He's above all trying to get them to get out of conspiracy thinking, not to be moved by the great shocks and tribulations that are to come, but to be able to keep their eye on what is in fact coming in. So that's what the next verses are about.

"Now, at the same time that [...] Mark makes references to Ezekiel, which Jesus was enacting, there are the references to Daniel, another we would call apocalyptic book. But in Daniel the references are to the Son of Man coming - with Ezekiel he's leaving, with Daniel coming - and the whole point is that the two are happening simultaneously in the person of Jesus: the going and the coming are simultaneous in the person of Jesus. Many of the other quotes which Jesus hints at are from the book of Lamentations, again referring to the Lord going and the destruction that is about to come, but at the same time there are also references, not so hidden, to the Song of Songs, which is to do with the Lord being discovered, the Lord coming back and coming to meet his beloved.

"So these are the two that are going on: Ezekiel and Daniel, Lamentations and Song of Songs, both showing simultaneously departure and the arrival. I think that if we read today's Gospel with that dynamic in mind we'll get more out of it.

[...]

"[It's] actually quite a common theme, this notion of the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give it's light and the stars will be falling from heaven. This is the standard way of referring to un-creation, because if you remember, at the beginning of creation first of all there is the light, and that brings everything to being and thereafter order is established and so on. So this is a way that the disciples refer to something so terrible that it's as if the uncreation has happened.

[...]

"So here we have something that will be enacted at the crucifixion - remember that [at] the crucifixion the sun went out - there was no light of sun - and the moon did not give off any light. In other words, this passage was being fulfilled, uncreation actually happened [at the crucifixion]. The breathing out of Jesus' spirit going up to death was the going back outside to before the time of creation, because this was the work of the Creator bringing in the new Creation.

"Then they will see, at exactly that moment, they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Okay, so what did they see? They saw the Son of Man on a cross, and that was reigning from the Cross, as we sing at Easter, and the notion that it was the definitive sacrifice of the great high priest and therefore the clouds of incense were surrounding it. So what they were seeing was the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

"Now of course, at the moment that this happened, the crucifixion, they didn't see that - what they saw was someone being put to death, with the darkness. But of course it was the resurrection that brought out that in fact this was the real thing that had happened, that had been the Son of Man, and that those who'd actually seen the crucifixion had in fact seen the coming [of the Son of Man] without being aware of it.

"In other words, that from something that looked very small, frightening, insignificant and negative, that was in fact the moment of the coming: the going and the coming were the same thing.

[...]

"[...T]alking about the fig tree [...] “its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves.” So once again he's referring to the crucifixion and it's tenderness and it's vulnerability, but the huge effect that is coming behind it, because just as you see [...] the fig leaves becoming tender it's becoming the sign of the very very much bigger, more powerful thing that is in fact behind it, which is 'summer is a-coming in'. So Jesus is saying that what in fact [the disciples are] going to see, the tiny sign that is [him] dead on the cross, behind that there is all the power of the opening up of creation."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 33 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFmAX8nNz_Y)

~

"I hope that you see some of the threads of subtlety which are to be found beneath Mark’s text. The so-called apocalyptic discourse of Jesus is nothing other than a brilliant exercise in the subverting from within of the apocalyptic imagination. It has as its end to teach the disciples how to live in the times that are to come, the time which I called ‘of Abel.’

"Above all it seeks to train the disciples with respect to what must be their deepest eschatological attitude: the absolutely flexible state of alert so as to perceive the coming of the Son of Man, the one who is seated at the right hand of God, in the most hidden and subtle forms in which, in fact, he comes. That is, we are dealing with instructions as to how to live with the mind fixed on the things that are above, where Christ is seated with God: not glued to some fantasy, but learning to perceive the comings of the Son of Man in the acts of betrayal, of rejection, of handing-over and of lynching.

"We can compare this with the experience of Elijah on Mount Horeb, who had to learn that God was not in the tempest, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice which passes by unperceived (1 Kings 19:11-13). Well, we’re dealing with a similar experience: Jesus was explaining to the disciples that the state of alert in the face of his coming is a training in the perception, not of that which is bruited abroad, nor of what glistens appealingly, but of the way that all the majesty and splendour of God is to be found in the almost imperceptible victim, on the way out of being."

- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 149

[Note that I have chosen to present the Roman Catholic lectionary Gospel reading above. The RCL (Revised Common Lectionary) Gospel text for Proper 28B is Mark 13:1-8. For extensive analysis and discussion of this and the other lectionary texts, and the source of the quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper28b/]

From the Lectionary for 10 November 2024 (Proper 27B)

Mark 12:38-44 (NRSV)

As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

~

"More sermons than not this Sunday, I suspect, will... use a rather uncritical equation of Temple=church to say that Jesus wants us to give more money to the church, trusting that God will take care of us if only we have the courage to pledge more.

"There's one problem with this reading. Actually, I have to amend that. There are MYRIAD problems with this reading, but let's start with the biggest one: Where do you see any suggestion at all in the text that Jesus thinks it's a wonderful thing that this poor widow put her last two coppers - all she had to live on - in the Temple treasury, going away destitute?

"It just isn't there. If anything, the text suggests the opposite. The passage starts with Jesus warning his followers to beware of those who like to walk around in long robes, receive the seats of honor, put on a good show of prayers, and DEVOUR WIDOWS' HOUSES. That last bit is particularly important because of what follows: Jesus watches a bunch of guys in long robes take a widow's last two coins - all she has to live on.

"Then Jesus says something. What he says boils down to “and just in case you thought I was making stuff up on that point, check out this woman - she just put literally her last cent, all she had to live on, in the treasury to maintain this lovely building.”"

- Sarah Dylan Breuer, Proper 27B, of “Dylan’s Lectionary Blog.” (https://www.sarahlaughed.net/.../11/proper_27_year_.html)

~

"This pericope [of "The Widow's Offering"] is an example of the rapacity [of the scribes] described in 12:40. The docile contributions of the crowd show that it and the temple are in league. Then Jesus singles out one person from the crowd, a poor widow who gave her whole life (holon ton bion autes, 12:44). She is swallowed up by the temple and its supporting crowd. She is a scapegoat figure.

"This text is usually read as a moral comment on the relatively greater importance of intention compared to action. Because of the total commitment of the gift, it is worth more than all the other gifts that cost their givers less. But we are left wondering about the fate of the widow, now that she has given her all to the system. How will she live? Is this sort of prodigality really being commended, or are we being shown an example of why [in verse 37] the crowd heard with gladness the announcement of the end of the system? We think that the latter message is the more likely, even though the crowd does not understand how the system depends on its complicity. Despite its complicity, the crowd understands the scapegoating method of the temple system.

"This story picks up the theme with which the section on the temple began, the theme of the faith of the individual over and against the barren system (11:22-25), and shows how the demands of the system make the life of the individual difficult if not impossible. It tells us that the intention of the individual, misguided and betrayed as it is, is nevertheless worth more than all the crowd’s participation in this oppression, and it presents the culminating indictment of the system as it prepares for the climactic announcement of its destruction."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp.33-34

~

"Now, [Jesus] doesn't say that [the widow is] being meritorious, it doesn't say that she's getting something [of] value for this. In fact, and this is a reading which I strongly urge you to suggest, [Jesus] says this with a certain sadness. It takes nothing away from her goodness, but what on earth is this poor woman doing contributing to this thing which is about to be swept away, which is about to go out of existence? She's wasting her money. It doesn't at all stop her from having a beautiful heart. The future disciple of Jesus will be like her in giving away, but not to the Temple built with hands [cf. Hebrews 9:24] [but] giving away to others.

"And that will be the form of blessedness that's going on, which is why the Church gives us the reading from Elijah today [(1 Kings 17:10-16)], with Elijah receiving the very little that the widow of Zarephath had to give him, not keeping the temple going but recognizing a prophet and receiving a prophet's reward. That's going to be the shape going forward of how we contribute to the [true] Temple, out of our nothing, we contribute and we will be given what enables us to survive.

"But once again, what's going on here is the Temple - how it's going to be destroyed, how all this contribution to it is worthless. There's an amazing indifference by Jesus to this at this stage. He's already said it's over, he's not angry with it. He's just looking in amazement as sees both pointless goodness given out of abundance from those who are keeping the thing going, and maybe getting 'brownie points' as you hear the big clunking of their coins as they go in, but also of the genuine devotion and generosity of someone who is giving all that she has, which is the sign of what it's going to be like when there is no temple."

- James Alison, from "Homily for Sunday 32 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3MNoa3yAmM)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote and link to Sarah Dylan Breuer blog, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper27b/]

From the Lectionary for 3 November 2024 (Proper 26B)

Mark 12:28-34 (NRSV)

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.

~

"The religious and the secular powers have been shown to be transcended by the new community of the victim called “resurrection.” What then shall be the power of the new community? How shall society be preserved from chaos if not by [burnt offerings] and sacrifices? And what shall be the basis of law (prohibition) in the new community?

"A lawyer who has been impressed by the astuteness of Jesus’ answers asks him for the fundamental principle of the law. Jesus answers with the Shema, which is essentially a prohibition on idolatry. The love of God with all one’s powers leaves no love for other gods. If there is to be a new, community, it must be founded on the renunciation of idolatry, which is the worship of sacrificial violence in the guise of the deified victim. The renunciation of idolatry entails the renunciation of vengeance.

"The demand for the renunciation of vengeance takes the positive form of the command to love the neighbor as the self. The full quotation from Lev 19:18 is, “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” It is clearly a proscription of the fundamental principle of law, vengeance. The web of reciprocity must be broken and replaced by a network of love if there is to be a new community, and for that to happen the idol of the primitive Sacred must be forsworn.

"Jesus rejects the whole panoply of sacred violence in its first principle as idolatry and its social manifestation as vengeance. The lawyer is the one who expresses this fact when he says, “You spoke elegantly and truly, teacher, when you said that Cod is one and there is no other besides him, and that to love him with a whole heart and a whole mind and a whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is more than [burnt offerings] and sacrifices” (12:32-33). Jesus did not speak the words about [burnt offerings] and sacrifices; the lawyer added them, and we can only understand them as a summary of all that has gone before in the section beginning with the incident in the temple and the ensuing questioning of Jesus. The lawyer had been listening to the exchanges and was impressed by Jesus’ answers. He is not far from the kingdom because he understands the import of Jesus’ teaching on the non-sacrificial nature of the new community.

"The antagonists are silenced. “No one dared to question him any more” (12:34). It is now clear that a new society called “resurrection” is at hand, based on true transcendence and mutual love, and not on the law of vengeance and the order of the scapegoat. Jesus represents something more than the order of [burnt offerings] and sacrifices; he represents a new and different possibility of love."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp.30-34

~

"First let's concentrate on the Shema. The first commandment, curiously, is not 'love'. The first commandment is 'listen'. “Listen O Israel.” It's the collective listening. That is something which Jesus is indicating is the first and major commandment.

"We usually immediately go to the 'you must love God and your neighbour as yourself' bit, but as a good son of Israel, Jesus knows that the first commandment is 'listen'. It's being audibly under the voice of God, stretching your hearing, together with others, constantly trying to listen to the voice of God. That's at the beginning of the first commandment, there's no loving God with out that. The whole point of loving is not... 'okay, you've told me what to do now I must get on and do it, that's our problem'. No, in order to be able to love you have to undergo listening, that's the first commandment.

[...]

"So Jesus is interpreting [the commandments] in that sense: there's no love of God that is not also a love of neighbour. I'd just like to ask us to stop and think about that, because, at least psychologically for me, that's always been a tough one - knowing how. You say you should love God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and the strength - what on earth does that mean? I understand, you know, pushing a trunk uphill with all my heart with all my soul with all my mind and my strength - it's something that I can feel myself doing. I have no idea what it means to love God with all my heart, my soul, my strength, my will, because God is not a trunk or an equivalent thing - God is not a stock exchange or a house or a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

"It doesn't seem obvious how you fulfil the command, and yet the criterion is now given: the criterion is your neighbour as yourself. In other words, it's exercising all the qualities which are referred to God with your neighbour, without rivalry. There is no rivalry between the loving of God and the loving of your neighbour. On the contrary, the loving of your neighbour is the criterion for loving God. That's the absolutely central linking of these two, which is again one of the pillar teachings of Christianity.

[...]

"[T]he scribe was so pleased, because he understood perfectly well that Jesus had answered the question with relation to the one God, and with relation to the cleaving to [God] and how one worships [God] with relation to the neighbour, in such a way as to say, “Yes, I may have threatened, indeed prophesied the collapse of the temple, but I'm not here to set up another temple. What I'm going to be doing is going to be done as a witness to you for how you create [...] neighbourliness, fraternity. [...] That's what I'm going to be doing. In other words, you don't need to be frightened that what I am coming to introduce is another temple, a different sort of burnt offering. It's not a burnt offering at all. I'm going to be giving myself and creating the temple without hands that will in fact enable us all to become neighbours, and all to worship the God who is One.” So this is why the scribe goes away happy.

"“When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, 'You are not far from the kingdom of God.' After that no one dared to ask him any question.” Very interesting. Why didn't they dare? Well, he'd given the three pillar teachings, and in each one he'd shown himself to be absolutely loyal and central to the faith of Israel, absolutely understanding of the central texts of Israel, and absolutely determined to create neighbourliness without rivalry in what he was planning to do. In other words, those who wanted to get rid of him would have to do so by false accusation, they couldn't take anything that he had said.

"And that is the end of their formal attempts to trap him in the first place, but later, as in the case of the scribe, to begin to see that here was something really interesting, and something not to be frightened of. So the scribe was able to go away having been blessed. [...] Non-rivalry between God and neighbour is going to be introduced fully in line with the faith of Israel."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 31 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLT43GG2ZpA)

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper26b/]

From the Lectionary for 27 October 2024 (Proper 25B)

Mark 10:46-52 (NRSV)

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

~

"The story of Jesus healing the blind man Bartimaeus is considered by many Bible scholars to be the closing bookend of what is called an inclusio. An inclusio is a literary device where two passages echo each other in such a way as to create bookends for the material in between them. In this portion of Mark, the two echoing stories involve the healing of a blind man. The material between these two stories is the journey to Jerusalem. The first healing (Mark 8: 22-26) takes place at Bethsaida. The second takes place as Jesus arrives at Jericho, the last stop before arriving in Jerusalem. In the intervening material the journey is punctuated by Jesus’ three predictions of his Passion coupled with the incomprehension of his disciples. Each of these predictions is also accompanied by disputes among the disciples as to who is the greatest.

"The blindness of the two men who need healing is often thought to represent the blindness of the disciples which also needs healing. With the man in Bethsaida, Jesus needs two tries to get the healing right, suggesting that the blindness of the disciples is difficult to heal. The much easier healing of the man in Jericho suggests hope that the disciples, though still blind, will also be healed.

"I agree with this interpretation of the inclusio but there is something else that has caught my attention. [...] When Bartimaeus cries out, the people in the crowd rebuke him and tell him to be quiet. Far from helping Bartimaeus in getting a healing, they try to hinder him. In this, they act the apostles who just a short time ago had tried to keep the mothers from bringing their children to Jesus. Moreover, the crowd has shifted its focus from Jesus to Bartimaeus and in an adversarial way at that. Again, this matches the disciples who focused on each other in their altercations rather than on Jesus.

"If the crowd at this point is an extension of the disciples, then they badly need healing and yet, the more healing they need for their blindness, the more resistant they are to healing. Bartimaeus, in calling out to Jesus by his Messianic title shows that he sees more than those who theoretically have eyes."

- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “The Blind Man Who Could See.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/10/22/the-blind-man-who-could-see/)

~

"Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” There’s the self-revealing question again. “What do you want me to do for you?” Remember James and John’s answer was “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” How will the blind man reply by contrast?

"He begins, “My teacher,” not just teacher but “my” teacher. This is personal and relational. He feels close to Jesus. He believes his teacher has something to teach him. He knows he is not a self-made, self-contained and self-actualized reservoir of individuality. He acknowledges his dependency, his need for Jesus and the warmth and respect he feels coming from Jesus. Our hearts soften as we hear them talk to each other.

"“My teacher, let me see again.” A simple expression of a simple wish. He wants to be made whole, to see in living color and see his teacher’s face. His request is not referenced to any other human being. He doesn’t want to be better than anyone else, even other people who are blind. He asks not to be served, only made whole."

- Tom Truby, from a sermon titled “Blind Bartimaeus and the Sons of Thunder Meet Themselves in What They Ask For.” (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Truby-Proper25-2018-Blind-Bartimaeus-and-the-Sons-of-Thunder-Meet-Themselves-in-What-They-Ask-For.pdf)

~

"Jericho only gets mentioned as a place that they come to and effectively go through. So here is Jericho. Jericho is a Benjaminite city, and we'll see why that's important later. But more important for this particular purpose it was a standard place from which people would make the pilgrimage up to Jerusalem [...].

"And, of course, no one could do it on the Sabbath. So one of the things that you would have on at dawn after the Sabbath would be people gathered to start together to make the trip up to Jerusalem, a large crowd of people. So not only Jesus and his disciples but a large crowd were leaving Jericho - that would have been standard particularly the morning after the Sabbath. And remember that this is the day in which Jesus gets to Jerusalem. He comes in on donkeys, so it's what we call Palm Sunday.

[..]

"So here they are, they're all about to leave heading up, when suddenly Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, a blind beggar was sitting by the roadside. Okay, but the name is repeated twice means we're meant to pay a lot of attention to it. And here's the thing: it's a pun in Greek and in Aramaic. In Greek, “Timaeus” means worthy, honourable, bearer of prestige. In Aramaic, it can mean disgraced, poor. It has these two meanings together, and we're going to see in a second why that's so important because the pun is going to respond to something very real.

"Anyhow, he's blind and he's a beggar, so he's doing something - he's begging, asking people for things as they go by. And he's sitting by the roadside. A wonderful memory comes up of a great figure of the Old Testament who blind sat by the roadside waiting for news of the Ark of [the Covenant]. And this was Eli - you remember, the great priest who had taken Samuel the prophet on as his acolyte, and whose two sons, Phinehas and Hophni, had been such bad models and were killed in battle, lost the Ark; and Eli had fallen over backwards. He'd been sitting by the side of the road, he'd fallen over backwards and died when he heard this news.

[...]

"Shortly before Eli dies, he's approached by another prophet, simply a man of God who comes to tick off Eli and his family. He says: “Now the Lord declares, far be it from me, for those who honour me, I will honour, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt. See a time has come when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestors' family so that no one in your family will live to old age. The fate of your two sons shall be a sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day. I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. Everyone who is left in your family shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread.”

"I hope you can see that what we have here [in Mark's Gospel] is the fulfilment of the honour/dishonour paradox in that prophecy. What we have is the descendant of Eli here waiting, longing for the true priest, the true son of David, to come along who will establish the new house and will undo his dishonour and enable him to come back to honour again.

"“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say: Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” So this is the beginnings of the reference to the son of David. This is very important here because it's the whole of the Passion narrative is going to depend very much on Jesus fulfilling the David narrative. Remember, going up to Jerusalem was what David did in order initially to conquer it when it was a Jebusite city. During David's conquest of Jerusalem, some blind people and some lame people got in the way and he said - this is in 2 Samuel - he got cross with them and said, “May the blind and the lame never be on the mountain.” So they could never come into the Temple. [...] But here this appears to be one of the blind who wasn't allowed to go up, couldn't go up because of David's curse.

"So, here this is someone who's bearing with him so much, if you like, of the curses of old Israel: the failed nature, a failed priesthood, a blind person who couldn't go up, who couldn't fulfil the promised pilgrimage. But he hears that it's Jesus of Nazareth. So he knows something about this, he realises that a prophecy is being fulfilled: “Jesus son of David have mercy on me!” [...] In other words, he knows that at last that which old Eli had been waiting for, the promised Ark, the promised Priest, the one who would undo the disgrace was coming along.  

[...]

"So, he wanted to see, but notice he said it straight away. He's begging, so he's used to asking for things, but what he really wants is to see, to be the priest he was supposed to be. Whereas James and John, if you remember [in the passage directly preceding, covered in last week's lectionary], had made a request for the place of honour, and it was only later that they began to understand what they had really asked for, he, Bartimaeus had worked through the begging and now wanted what really mattered.

"And Jesus says to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” He doesn't say follow him, he says go, because he's not asking to be followed once, he's saying 'go up to Jerusalem, go on this route you can now [take], you're no longer forbidden from going up to the temple'. “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” In other words he becomes the model disciple without even needing to be told that this, what's going on, can only really be learned in the following. He goes up with them and will no doubt now be a witness to the events that will unfold from later that day when, after the very long walk, they get to Jerusalem - come in on the donkeys - and the week of the Passion begins."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 30th in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnrLpMyrrDE)

[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog and Tom Truby sermon, and for discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper25b/]