The lectionary texts for this week call us to recognize and pursue a spirituality that is holistic; a spirituality that cares for the needs of the poor; a spirituality that takes the side of the needy against the powerful; a spirituality that entails a revolution of the heart; and a spirituality that takes the question of neighbourliness seriously. Such a spirituality would put us on the path of revolutionary neighbourliness.
Sometimes the most I can be grateful for is that it is still possible to imagine an alternative.
As the villagers of Pudukudi Melur showed in their moment of radical hospitality, true freedom is not about protecting one’s rights or maintaining boundaries; it is about breaking them open in love.
Mt. Carmel represents a very particular vision of Divine power, one dependent on a definition of power that equates it entirely with the strength to impose one’s will on another – even to the point of death. It’s an astonishing demonstration, yet also an extremist one, requiring power to equal unfathomable force: the unquenchable fire and Elijah’s subsequent unquenchable thirst to eliminate his enemies.
Faith in God must always be lived out through care and love for one’s neighbors.
The picture painted here, especially by the verses of the Psalm not included in the lectionary reading (Psalm 104:1-23) is an astonishing vision of the ubiquity of the Creator within their creation, directly immersed within the moment-by-moment dance of life in its most intimate, even quotidian – eating, drinking, growing, building, nesting: these are the tasks of home and family. Divine empathy for daily life, in its glorious diversity, for everything that is alive.
Regardless of whether we live in the shadow of volcanoes or glaciers, we can see and know that God is at work in the awesome and majestic unfolding of creation. The same divine sovereignty that moves mountains can move human hearts toward the kin-dom—if we have eyes to see and courage to act.
Lydia does not need a man or any other figure of authority to speak for her or to dictate her life. She is her own agent and even Luke-Acts’ Paul has to respect that. She cares for her own, commits to seeking justice, and makes her own choices.
Love disrupts both the ruin and misery we inflict upon others as well as our preoccupation with ourselves, for these are interdependent, synergistically working together for the degradation of all.
Political theology enacts inclusion by intentionally ‘de-whitening’ the text and celebrating multi-colourism in the economy of the divine.
Jesus transfers the miracle of recognition from his disciples recognizing him across an overflowing fish net, to the world’s hungry recognizing Jesus in his disciples in a food bank line or across a soup counter.
This reading of Thomas’s story, for me, is a powerful reminder that faith is not a straight line from doubt to belief. It is a complex journey through relationship, rupture, and repair. From the perspective of self-psychology, Thomas represents not merely an individual struggling with uncertainty, but anyone who has experienced the pain of exclusion (a break in connection).