Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - How Stupid Parents Can Be
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - How Stupid Parents Can Be
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Stupid Can Parents Be Genesis 26:34- 27:33 It’s amazing how foolish we can be as parents. A little while ago my wife and I were having dinner with some friends, and I made some remark about how people are always talking about intimacy and the importance of being relational bu…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate RUTH 4:1-10 The end of the first decade of the twenty-first century saw a collapse in housing prices in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, and an increase in the number of people “walking away” from property they “owned” but coul…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How to Be a Mixed-up Person
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How to Be a Mixed-up Person
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Be a Mixed-up Person JUDGES 6:25- 40 This week I asked a group of students what impressions their Christian background had given them about prayer. One of the recurrent themes was that we need to be a bit careful how we talk to God. You don’t complain to God, question God,…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Save the Situation
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Save the Situation
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Save the Situation JUDGES 21:1-25 The story goes that in 1941, on the eve of the U.S. entry into the 1939–1945 war, two teenage ham radio operators who had joined the U.S. National Guard were enrolled into the army and were trained in “scrambling” messages to try to av…
Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward
Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Wickedness Gets Its Reward Job 20: 1-29 A pastor in the United States has just published a book that begins by questioning whether people who have not believed in Christ will go to hell. The pastor is someone with his finger on the pulse of U.S. culture, and he has been able …
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to Recycle Your Killer Instinct
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to Recycle Your Killer Instinct
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Recycle Your Killer Instinct 1 Samuel 17: 1- 54 It was the Oscars last weekend (I went to a great jazz concert two blocks away, though I was nearly late because of the road closures in Hollywood), and against the odds, The Hurt Locker beat Avatar (which grossed fifty times…
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Pray for Rebels
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Pray for Rebels
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Pray for Rebels EXODUS 32: 1-29 You could say I came to the United States to avoid the responsibility of leadership. I was the head of a seminary and got paid more than my colleagues because it was my job to lie awake worrying about its future. Metaphorically speaking, on …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Render to Caesar 2 Kings 15:1-16:20 A recent graduate of our seminary was telling me on Friday that the seminary faculty is divided between people who avoid saying things that students would disagree with and people who don’t mind saying such things. The logic (she thi…
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - How to Say a Lot in a Few Words
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - How to Say a Lot in a Few Words
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Say a Lot in a Few Words Psalm 117 & 118 I joined the faculty of my seminary in England at the time when it moved to a new campus in a different city, so the beginning of my first year was a big moment for the seminary, not just for me. As I walked onto the campus on that …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Undo a Reform
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Undo a Reform
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Undo a Reform 2 Kings 22:1-23:24 The first time I visited the United States, I came to give a week’s guest lectures in a seminary. People must have thought the lectures were OK, because they were then interested in offering me a job, but it wasn’t a moment when I could thi…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How to Swallow Your Pride
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How to Swallow Your Pride
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Swallow Your Pride JOSHUA 9: 22- 10: 11 In the church where I was a young assistant pastor, I shared a house with an older man called Charles who in U.S.-speak would be called the janitor but in Brit-speak was called the caretaker. I don’t remember how he had been appointe…
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Start and End the Day
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Start and End the Day
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Start and End the Day EXODUS 29: 38- 30: 37 When my wife died, we “celebrated” her life and marked her death at a memorial service where we burnt lots of incense, not something we regularly do in our church. One striking aspect of the burning of incense is the smell, which…
Psalms for Everyone - How to Pray for the Government
Psalms for Everyone - How to Pray for the Government
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Pray for the Government Psalm 72: 1-17 The phrase “It’s the economy, stupid,” played a key role in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Most people are not really interested in foreign policy or other such important issues but in whether they are feeling financially …
Job for Everyone - If Only Wickedness Did Get Its Reward
Job for Everyone - If Only Wickedness Did Get Its Reward
by SPCK - John Goldingay
If Only Wickedness Did Get Its Reward! Job 21: 1-34 Two or three years before I write, the United States and the Western world as a whole experienced a “great financial meltdown,” with a significant factor in the crisis being the way financial institutions lent money for mortgage…
Exodus and Leviticus - Improving on Creation
Exodus and Leviticus - Improving on Creation
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Improving on Creation LEVITICUS : 19: 19- 20:27 When a man and his wife are about to go out and the wife asks whether she looks okay, the appropriate answer is “You look lovely” (not “Maybe that dress and those shoes don’t go together”). If she then says, “Is that what you really…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - If Only...
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - If Only...
by SPCK - John Goldingay
If Only… Deuteronomy 5: 16-33 Yesterday we had the service to which I referred in connection with Deuteronomy 1, when the Episcopal Church in Los Angeles expressed its contrition for the racism that has characterized it in encouraging segregation and condoning discrimination with…
Psalms for Everyone - In the Dark of the Canyon
Psalms for Everyone - In the Dark of the Canyon
by SPCK - John Goldingay
In the Dark of the Canyon Psalm 23 In the foothills of the mountains near where we live is a retreat center where we have a faculty gathering each fall. Two years ago a new director at the center gave us some advice we had not been given before. If we met a bear on the grounds, w…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - In the Beginning