Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 6 Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 6 Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Twelve Months of Sundays – Year A Ordinary Time Proper 6 Genesis 18.1–15 Romans 5.1–8 Matthew 9.35—10.8 [9–23] Take the gospel reading (the longer version) and lay it, like a template, over the life of the average parish. What do you find? I know, I know. We don’t live in the fir…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 6 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 6 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 6 1 Kings 21.1–21a Galatians 2.15–21 Luke 7.36—8.3 ‘He loved me and gave himself for me.’ These words in Galatians 2.20, coupled with those in 1.4, probably form the earliest written statement of what we know as the doctrine of the atonement. They invite comment at sever…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 8 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 8 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 8 2 Kings 2.1–14 Galatians 5.1, 13–25 Luke 9.51–end ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead.’ One of Jesus’ starkest commands, this flies in the face of the sacred Jewish obligation to attend to the burial of one’s father ahead of all other duties, even saying one’s daily praye…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 7 1 Kings 19.1–15a Galatians 3.23–end Luke 8.26–39 Elijah went to Sinai, to hand back his commission. ‘I’ve done all this for you, and now they’re going to kill me. I’ve had enough.’ Fear and exhaustion generated self-destructive depression. What was he expecting? A volcan…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen Tells the Story
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen Tells the Story
by SPCK - N T Wright
Stephen Tells the Story Acts 7.1-16 One of the most obvious differences between cricket and baseball is the way the ball is projected towards the person who is trying to hit it. As most people will know, the person who ‘pitches’ in baseball stands on a single spot, where he (or s…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen Becomes a Target
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen Becomes a Target
by SPCK - N T Wright
Stephen Becomes a Target Acts 6.8-15 Without in any way wishing to complain, I do have a fellow feeling with Stephen in this passage. He has only just been appointed a ‘deacon’, with particular responsibility for helping organize the daily distribution of food to the community …
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Spiritual or Merely Human?
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Spiritual or Merely Human?
by SPCK - N T Wright
Spiritual or Merely Human? 1 Corinthians 2.14-3.4 Once, during the ‘hippy’ era in the late 1960s, I sang and played my guitar in a folk club on the west side of Vancouver. I was there a week, and got to know some of the other regular performers quite well. One was a young man wit…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen and Moses
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Stephen and Moses
by SPCK - N T Wright
Stephen and Moses Acts 7.17-34 Where do you get your sense of national identity? In America, people often look back to three great moments. First, there was the arrival in America of the first settlers from Europe, particularly from Britain. Second, there was the glorious revolut…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Standing firm by God's Power
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Standing firm by God's Power
by SPCK - N T Wright
Standing Firm by God’s Power 1 Peter 5.8-14 One of the great advances in tropical medicine came when researchers discovered how malaria was spread. They had been trying to treat the disease for a long time, but it seemed hopeless. As fast as you helped one patient, three more wer…
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Stay the Way You Were Called
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Stay the Way You Were Called
by SPCK - N T Wright
Stay the Way You Were Called 1 Corinthians 7.17-24 I once sat in an entranced audience as one of the leading comedians of the day told a very long, very funny, story. The story itself was clever, witty, and amusing in all sorts of ways; but what fascinated me was the way he would…
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Speaking Clearly in Church
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Speaking Clearly in Church
by SPCK - N T Wright
Speaking Clearly in Church 1 Corinthians 14.6-12 Two days ago I went to a meeting where seven or eight different languages were used in quick succession. There was a large crowd being addressed, including people from many parts of the world. One by one the speakers got up and spo…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Standing Firm Against Opposition
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Standing Firm Against Opposition
by SPCK - N T Wright
Standing Firm Against Opposition Galatians 2.1-5 The anthropologist Nigel Barley wrote two famous (and often very funny) books, The Innocent Anthropologist and A Plague of Caterpillars, about the Dowayo tribe, with whom he lived for a while in a remote part of the African republi…
New Testament Wisdom for Everyone - Spiritual or Merely Human
New Testament Wisdom for Everyone - Spiritual or Merely Human
by SPCK - N T Wright
1 THE WISDOM OF THE SPIRIT SPIRITUAL OR MERELY HUMAN? 1 Corinthians 2: 14-3: 4 Once, during the ‘hippy’ era in the late 1960s, I sang and played my guitar in a folk club on the west side of Vancouver. I was there a week, and got to know some of the other regular performers quite …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Taking Root- and a Name!- in Antioch
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Taking Root- and a Name!- in Antioch
by SPCK - N T Wright
Taking Root - and a Name! - in Antioch Acts 1.19-30 The other day I had to go to Cambridge once more, just for a few hours. Looking for a particular shop, I walked up King’s Parade, and was reminded of someone once saying that if there’s anybody in the world you want to meet, you…
Mark for Everyone - Teachings on Divorce
Mark for Everyone - Teachings on Divorce
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 10.1–16 Teachings on Divorce... ...In Britain during the early 1990s, from time to time a journalist would telephone a bishop or theologian to ask about divorce. It happened to me once. It’s a question every church, every member of the clergy, has to think …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering as the Messiah Did
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering as the Messiah Did
by SPCK - N T Wright
Suffering as the Messiah Did 1 Peter 2.18-25 Not long ago, at the height of a snowstorm, our house, and two nearby villages as well, were without electric power for fourteen hours. Our heating system is controlled by electricity, so the house became very cold. We could burn logs …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering for Doing Right
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Suffering for Doing Right
by SPCK - N T Wright
Suffering for Doing Right 1 Peter 3.17-22 The older I get, the more I dislike things which need to be put together, after you buy them, by following complicated instructions and diagrams. Part of my dislike is my sense that I will probably get it wrong, force something where it w…
Hebrews for Everyone - Suffering in Hope