John Goldingay
Jeremiah for everyone - The Big One
Jeremiah for everyone - The Big One
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Big One One time when my elder son and his family visited us in California, there was an earthquake of the kind that you can feel but that doesn’t cause much damage, though it causes some unease if you’re used to the stability of London…
Jeremiah for everyone - Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage
Jeremiah for everyone - Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage One of my first memories of being a wet-behind-the-ears young parish minister is an interview with a couple who wanted to get married in our church though they were not members of it…
Jeremiah for everyone - Looking for Spiritual Resources
Jeremiah for everyone - Looking for Spiritual Resources
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Looking for Spiritual Resources I just read about a couple who travelled to India because they couldn’t have a baby. The British medics were puzzled about the reasons, as both husband and wife seemed to be physiologically OK…
Jeremiah for everyone - More a Summons than a Vocation
Jeremiah for everyone - More a Summons than a Vocation
by SPCK - John Goldingay
More a Summons than a Vocation Last week I took part in a conference on God, the church, and disability. One participant was a woman who has been ordained a priest, but she has a speech impediment that makes it hard to understand what she says, and she has had difficulty finding …
Isaiah for everyone - Choose Your Ending
Isaiah for everyone - Choose Your Ending
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Choose Your Ending There’s a classic movie called The French Lieutenant’s Woman, set in nineteenth-century England, that tells of a tortuous relationship in which a man is powerfully drawn to a woman who hardly belongs to his class and when he is already committed to marrying som…
Isaiah for everyone - Straight-Talking Meets Straight-Talking
Isaiah for everyone - Straight-Talking Meets Straight-Talking
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Straight-Talking Meets Straight-Talking I sometimes have a hard time persuading people that prayer is an act of communication between us and God and that there’s a mutuality about this communication. The idea has got around that prayer is really more like a form of reflection and…
Isaiah for everyone - On Grieving God’s Holy Spirit, and the Consequences
Isaiah for everyone - On Grieving God’s Holy Spirit, and the Consequences
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Grieving God’s Holy Spirit, and the Consequences The Episcopal Daily Devotions that we use each morning include prayers from Psalm 51 asking God to renew a right spirit within us, to sustain us with his bountiful spirit, and not to take his holy spirit from us. Using that pray…
Isaiah for everyone - People Who Won’t Let Yahweh Rest
Isaiah for everyone - People Who Won’t Let Yahweh Rest
by SPCK - John Goldingay
People Who Won’t Let Yahweh Rest I mentioned earlier the work calling that my wife’s daughter and son-in-law have been following for several years to stir up concern for the people of Darfur who are refugees in Chad. The effort is hard work for little effect…
Isaiah for everyone - Blown Over and Anointed
Isaiah for everyone - Blown Over and Anointed
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Blown Over and Anointed This week I’m meeting with a young man considering ordination in the Episcopal Church who wants to “seek my advice regarding my vocation.” There are aspects of the Episcopal Church about which he is uneasy—how will he cope with those? Should he ask his rec…
Isaiah for everyone - An Invitation to Imagination and Hope
Isaiah for everyone - An Invitation to Imagination and Hope
by SPCK - John Goldingay
An Invitation to Imagination and Hope I was exchanging messages with a Pentecostal friend yesterday, the Feast of Pentecost, and was amused when he observed that oddly “we don’t really celebrate Pentecost in the Assemblies of God.” I don’t know whether his Pentecostal church has …
Isaiah for everyone - Three Ways a Prophet Speaks
Isaiah for everyone - Three Ways a Prophet Speaks
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Three Ways a Prophet Speaks It’s Pentecost Sunday. I came home from church with some mixed feelings. There were fewer people in church than usual (it happens also to be a holiday weekend), but the day had a sense of celebration, including red balloons flying from the pews. People…
Isaiah for everyone - (Un)spiritual Practices
Isaiah for everyone - (Un)spiritual Practices
by SPCK - John Goldingay
(Un)spiritual Practices I was talking with a friend about the way Christians in our culture have got interested in “spiritual practices” such as meditation, silence, and fasting. This development is taking place in a context where Christians don’t have as much sense of God as the…
Isaiah for everyone - High and Holy, but Present with the Crushed and Low in Spirit
Isaiah for everyone - High and Holy, but Present with the Crushed and Low in Spirit
by SPCK - John Goldingay
High and Holy, but Present with the Crushed and Low in Spirit In a recent sermon in our seminary I told students that Jesus isn’t their buddy. I’m told the air went out of the room when I said it. A friend subsequently gave me a “Buddy Christ” statuette, which I could put on my d…
Isaiah for everyone - An Ambiguous "Because"
Isaiah for everyone - An Ambiguous "Because"
by SPCK - John Goldingay
An Ambiguous “Because” At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, is a room dedicated to the million and a half children who were murdered in the Holocaust. It’s a hollowed out cavern with some candles whose light is reflected on the ceiling by hundreds of mirrors so tha…
Isaiah for everyone - Our Ideas and Plans, and God’s
Isaiah for everyone - Our Ideas and Plans, and God’s
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Our Ideas and Plans, and God’s This morning we had the last regular seminary chapel of the year, the last regular seminary chapel ever for people who were graduating. The preacher was an eighty-year-old retired professor who told us stories about his experience at that stage of h…
Isaiah for everyone - A Time to Cry and a time to Whoop