Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The First Sunday of Lent Mark 1.9-15 Contemplate how passive Jesus is in this description: he acquiesces to baptism; he hears the voice and accepts anointing; he goes where the Spirit sends him, and endures. He is obedient. Contemplate being with Jesus in this wilderness. Excha…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 2 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 2 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 2 Mark 1.40-45 Gaze on this man, whom we know nothing about, except that he is a leper. We don’t know whether he’s old or young, rich or poor. Once someone was labelled ‘leper’, that was all that was important, and their individual identity was lost. His body and limbs a…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Palm Sunday: The Liturgy of the Palms Mark 11.1-11 or John 12.12-16 Gaze on donkeys plodding down arid hillsides in the Middle East or North Africa – they can still be seen today. At first they appear in the distance indistinguishable from the boulders – only their movement betra…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 10 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 10 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 10 Mark 6: 14-29 Gaze on all the Herods of this world and all the gratuitous violence they unleash. Gaze on all the ethnic cleansing that has gone on down the ages – innocents massacred, women raped and the elderly displaced, staring at us every day from our newspapers, dr…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 12 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 12 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 12 John 6: 1-21 Gaze on the crowd expecting to see more miraculous cures and wondering who will be healed next. They are in for a shock, for instead they all become part of a miracle, for today Jesus is not concerned for their aches and pains but for their hunger. Taste th…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Trinity Sunday Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Trinity Sunday Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Trinity Sunday Isaiah 6:1-8 Romans 8.12-17 John 3:1-17 John Donne, the great seventeenth-century Anglican poet, said in his Litanie that the doctrine of the Trinity is ‘Bones to Philosophy, but milk to faith’.1 Bones and milk are both provided by today’s readings. The belief that…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday of Lent Numbers 21.4–9 Ephesians 2.1–10 John 3.14–21 The serpent slithers its way through myth and legend, poetry and art. Too potent a symbol to be ignored, some cultures have worshipped it, while others have feared and loathed it. Freud said predictable things…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Third Sunday Before Advent Jonah.3.1-5, 10 Hebrews 9.24-28 Mark 1.14-20 Hebrews is convinced that the work of Jesus is completed in the cross. And not just the work of the Son of God, but the whole providential work of God in creating us in the first place. The cross of Chris…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Passiontide begins) Jeremiah 31.31–34 Hebrews 5.5–10 John 12.20–33 Imagine the simple request echoing along the corridors of church bureaucracy. It is passed from office to office, from secretary to secretary. It is left on voice-mails and e-mails, faxed…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Second Sunday of Easter John 20.19-31 Gaze on Jesus. He looks exhausted and worn out, as if he’s been on a long journey. But there is no mistake, it is certainly him. He’s appeared when he was least expected. Gaze on the disciples, nervous and jittery. What a state the discip…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fourth Sunday Before Advent Deuteronomy 6.1-9 Hebrews 9.11-14 Mark 12. 28-34 Person A: Do I love God? Well, why should I? What’s God ever done for me? I’ve worked hard all my life and nobody’s ever given me a thing. There are people out there born with everything they’ll ever…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 9 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 9 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 9 Mark 6: 1-13 Gaze on all the preparations we make for a journey these days. Count the suitcases, shoulder bags, plastic bags, camera cases and picnic hampers that we pile into the back of the car. Today we even need ‘SatNav’ to find our way for us. Gone are the days when…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second before Advent Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second before Advent Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Second Sunday before Advent Mark 13: 1-8 Gaze on the stones that are all that remains of the Temple today. They are huge slabs, glaring in the sun, lying there as a heap of blocks, tilted and abandoned where they fell. It is easy to imagine the massive walls and the moulded c…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Second Sunday of Advent Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Second Sunday of Advent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday of Advent - Year A Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4–13 Matthew 3:1–12 ‘His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord’ (Isaiah 11.3).Yes, no doubt, but the Hebrew word for ‘delight’ actually means ‘smell’. This may be just a metaphor, borrowed perhaps from the cultic co…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Sixth Sunday of Easter John 15:9-17 Gaze on a page of the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript from around ad 800; study the Celtic knots and intricate spirals that adorn it. See the way the threads twist and loop together without end or beginning, how hard it is to unrav…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Third Sunday of Lent John 2.13-22 Gaze on all that remains of the Temple in Jerusalem. Once a massive edifice with columns of white marble and gates of silver and gold, Herod’s monument was destroyed by the Romans, much as Jesus had predicted. But a fragment remains, which is…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B