Tom Wright

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Glossary

by SPCK - N T Wright

GLOSSARY Acts for Everyone Part 2 age to come, see present age apostle, disciple, the Twelve ‘Apostle’ means ‘one who is sent’. It could be used of an ambassador or official delegate. In the New Testament it is sometimes used specifically of Jesus’ inner circle of twelve; but Pau…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The End is Where We Start From

by SPCK - N T Wright

The End is Where We Start FromActs 28.23-31 When I was an undergraduate, I played the trombone (badly) in various instant home-made orchestras. There were plenty of budding conductors around, eager to try out their skills, and they would organize concerts at a couple of weeks’ …

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - To Rome at Last

by SPCK - N T Wright

To Rome at Last Acts 28.11-22 It has been a long voyage, and the biblical commentator, in this, one of the three longest books of the New Testament (Matthew, Luke and Acts are more or less the same length), may well feel on arrival at Puteoli, Appian Forum and Three Taverns that …

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Snake on Malta

by SPCK - N T Wright

The Snake on Malta Acts 28.1-10 It was only when I got back from the walk that I realized I was foolish not to have taken a stick. The hills up by the Scottish border, where I was walking by myself, were known to have plenty of adders, and the fact that the previous year they had…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Shipwreck

by SPCK - N T Wright

Shipwreck Acts 27.33-44 We were already horribly late for the service. It was nobody’s fault, really; the traffic had been far, far worse than anyone could have imagined. I had phoned through and told people how it was, but it was really important, still, that we got there as qui…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Storm and the Angel

by SPCK - N T Wright

The Storm and the Angel Acts 27.13-32 It’s a long time since I’ve been seasick, but the last time I came close to it I was more or less in the same place as Paul in the middle of this storm. I was doing some guest lectures, and taking some services, on a cruise ship (the things c…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - All at Sea

by SPCK - N T Wright

All at SeaActs 27.1-12 In John Fowles’ novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the reader getting near the end receives a shock. There are two endings. You can choose. Would you like the story to finish like this, or like that? What are you saying about yourself, or about the boo…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Paul. You're Mad

by SPCK - N T Wright

“Paul, You’re Mad”Acts 26.24-32 I was once lecturing to a group of students in Oxford. We were just getting to the point at the centre of the lecture – I think it was dealing with Romans 8.3 – where I wanted to explain as clearly as I could the full Pauline meaning of the death…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Paul's Conversion (One More Time)

by SPCK - N T Wright

Paul’s Conversion (One More Time) Acts 26.12-23 ‘Listen to the tune,’ says the music teacher. The children sit round her, spellbound. They love this bit. ‘Now sing it back to me – Johnny!’ Johnny does his best. Then Sophie. Then Philip. ‘Well,’ says the teacher, ‘you’re not doing…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Paul Before Agrippa

by SPCK - N T Wright

Paul Before AgrippaActs 26.1-11 One of the great, though controversial, bishops of Durham in the first half of the twentieth century was Hensley Henson. He was a brilliant speaker and writer, a much loved (though sharp-tongued) pastor, and a great campaigner on all kinds of soc…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Agrippa and Bernice

by SPCK - N T Wright

Agrippa and Bernice Acts 25.13-27 ‘To see ourselves as others see us.’ That telling line from Burns (actually, he wrote ‘oursels’; but someone would think it was a misprint if I had put that) sums up a good deal of the task of human communication. I am in correspondence, as I spe…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - To Caesar You Shall Go

by SPCK - N T Wright

To Caesar You Shall Go Acts 25.1-12 There is a kind of wistfulness about the royal Psalms. We imagine them being sung in the first Temple in Jerusalem, some of the Western world’s oldest and still finest poetry. ‘Give the king your judgments, O God, and your justice to the king’s…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Felix Calms (and Slows) Things Down

by SPCK - N T Wright

Felix Calms (and Slows) Things DownActs 24.22-27 A friend of mine preached a sermon, as my guest, on radiators and drains. Some people, he said, are radiators, and other people are drains. Some people, that is, naturally give energy and warmth to others. People like having them…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Defence of Hope

by SPCK - N T Wright

A Defence of the Hope Acts 24.10-21 I am still fascinated by kaleidoscopes. I love watching the shapes as they move around and form themselves into different patterns. They were quite basic when I was a boy, and now that I’m grown up and not supposed to like toys any more I often…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Bring on the Barristers

by SPCK - N T Wright

Bring on the Barristers Acts 24.1-9 Jokes about lawyers are unkind, ungrateful, uncharitable – and often uncannily accurate. I remember listening in horror as a clever and unscrupulous young lawyer, in a meeting of a college governing body, constructed a rhetorically powerful arg…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - We Have Ways of Keeping You Safe

by SPCK - N T Wright

We Have Ways of Keeping You Safe Acts 23.23-35 Richard Adams’ celebrated novel Watership Down draws the reader into the dramatic and complicated world of a group of rabbits. We follow with increasing sympathy and fascination as Hazel and his companions go on their journey. (Adams…

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Oath and the Plot

by SPCK - N T Wright

The Oath and the Plot Acts 23. 12-22 Today in the newspapers there was a story about a woman who had a ridiculously narrow escape. She had stepped out of her office for just a moment of fresh air, when a car, whose driver had suddenly fallen ill, came crashing through the window …

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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Paul Before the Sanhedrin

by SPCK - N T Wright

Paul Before the Sanhedrin Acts 23.1-11 Ever since the French Revolution, politics has been seen in terms of a left–right spectrum. The further Left you go (it is assumed), the more you will favour freedom from constricting and aristocratic authority, loose structures, plenty of v…

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