The United Reformed Church

I have been invited to contribute reflections on the Lectionary readings during September and October. I eventually decided that the best approach was to share something that I find of interest, namely, insights from a Girardian perspective. René Girard, now a professor Emeritus at Stanford University, is perhaps best known for his work on "mimetic theory." In crude terms people compete over objects of desire which they want only because other people want them too, in the first place. This "mimetic desire" leads to "mimetic rivalry” which results in conflict and a cycle of revenge and feuding. In light of this the focus of the biblical message in general, and the Christ event in particular, can be seen as God's rescue of homo sapiens from its own implosive violence. I do not claim any originality as I am drawing on work by Paul Nuechterlein. I may not necessarily agree fully with what’s said, but such things can help as starting points.

Marc Dummer, Minister, Canton Uniting Church, Cardiff

5th SEPTEMBER 2010: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Focusing on Deuteronomy 30:15-20

James Alison in The Joy of Being Wrong "The Founding of the New Israel of God," pp.83-88 refers to Deut 30:15 on p. 85. It is interesting to find this reference to the text by Alison in a passage where he is trying to show the development of a new Israel. Here is the crucial paragraph [p. 85]:

‘In the previous section I tried to make it clear that the witnesses perceived a difference between their accession to the intelligence of the victim, a necessarily dialectical process involving their own conversion, and their awareness that this intelligence was pacifically held by Jesus (or that it was what pacifically possessed Jesus) from the beginning.

"The Same Forever"

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. There was a sense of permanence and rightness that characterised the rural village world of my youth. Harvests brought the familiar smell of corn dust to my nostrils and the juice of freshly pressed apples. The soft, first snows of winter always seemed to come at night, falling ever slowly and lightly and illuminated in the darkness by the light of our windows. Later in the bitter cold of January the snow was harder and crunched under our feet as we walked back to school after Christmas. Spring came with unruly green, wet wind, colour and a packed church on Easter Sunday. And finally there was the sweaty heat and the thistles and the fire flies of summer. The rhythm was the eternally turning rhythm of permanence, and it matched the security we felt as Christians with a God who would care for us.

The bent-over woman

They've invented mattresses for cows. An agricultural products company in Northern Ireland has markets Pasture Mats and Poly Pillows, which are like beanbags covered by army blankets and filled with rubber crumbs from old car tyres. The theory is that happy cows produce more milk.

The news reminds me of the slogan for a certain brand of condensed milk which in my youth was advertised as having come from "contented cows". The image of contented cows grazing in lazy green pastures on warm, sunny days like today and reclining on their Pasture Mats at night seems to me a terrific image of sabbath rest, and reminds me of the stress-free Sundays I grew up with – no dishes to wash, no shopping to do, no lawns to mow, no floors to polish, no cars to wash. Sunday was Sunday, a day of contentment, a day of rest.

'The force that through the gree fuse drives the flower'

"I came to cast fire on the earth," Jesus says. If you think I came for peace on earth, you've got another think coming. Jesus came to shatter things in disunity. He came to set family members against one another, son against father and mother against daughter. He came to dethrone the family as the focus of our value system.

Thank goodness this reading is hidden away in August when everyone is on holiday. This is just not going to cut it as a lesson to be read at Christmas, when family harmony must be achieved at all cost. Peace on earth, indeed.