Bishop McFadden, Birth Control, and the Purity Rites of the Sado-Sublime

While deciding what to preach on this Sunday, I was thinking about going off-lectionary and preaching about the Ark of the Covenant’s adventures with the idol of Dagon (“That Dagonne Dagon!” was the working title).  But then I began to consider some of the Girardian implications of this Sunday’s lectionary text, Jesus’ “cleansing of the temple,” especially within the context of Jesus’ curse of the fig tree in Mark, in light of the recent chatter about birth control.