Jeremiah for everyone - The Arrogance of Power
Jeremiah for everyone - The Arrogance of Power
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Arrogance of Power As we drank our morning tea my wife told me that some foreign banks had announced that they were pulling out of Greece during its economic crisis, and we wondered what this meant for people who had accounts at those banks…
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 - The Bold Miscalculation
Jeremiah for everyone - The Bold Miscalculation
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Bold Miscalculation In church this Sunday morning, the first of our three passages from Scripture was the story of God’s asking Solomon what he wanted, that most testing of questions, a test that Solomon passed magnificently…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Distressing Dynamics of Wisdom and Power
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Distressing Dynamics of Wisdom and Power
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Distressing Dynamics of Wisdom and Power Several days a week I find myself reporting to my wife something from the news with the explicit or implicit comment, “How can people be so stupid?” This week it’s the fact that Western forces in Afghanistan had burned some copies of t…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Grimmest Scene in the Old Testament
Jeremiah for everyone - The Grimmest Scene in the Old Testament
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Grimmest Scene in the Old Testament I hate this story about Jerusalem’s fall and its aftermath, and I hate the fact that it comes more than once in the Old Testament (indeed, more than once in Jeremiah alone, for goodness’ sake)…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Misleading Scholars
Jeremiah for everyone - The Misleading Scholars
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Misleading Scholars Yesterday a student asked me whether a particular book would be taken seriously by the wide majority of Old Testament scholars. The response I forgot to make was that whatever is the consensus of scholars today won’t be the consensus in a decade’s time…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Mouth of the Faithful Person is Fruitful
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Mouth of the Faithful Person is Fruitful
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Mouth of the Faithful Person is Fruitful I rode to my mother’s funeral with our rector, who told me a funny, poignant story about her. Being a mother, she had an exaggerated sense of her son’s significance…
Isaiah for everyone - The Outrageous Hope into Which the City of God Is Invited
Isaiah for everyone - The Outrageous Hope into Which the City of God Is Invited
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Outrageous Hope into Which the City of God Is Invited This past Sunday we prayed for the peace of the world, for a spirit of respect and forbearance to grow among its peoples, for people in positions of public trust to serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of ever…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Power of Being Forgiven
Jeremiah for everyone - The Power of Being Forgiven
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Power of Being Forgiven Last night we listened to one of our favorite singer-songwriters performing an upbeat song with a downbeat account of her life (well, a downbeat account of a life—one mustn’t imagine that every song is autobiographical)…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest
Jeremiah for everyone - The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest Today we had a bumper crop of birthdays to celebrate at church; I was tempted to ask people to stand up if they were not having a birthday this week. As a wondrous coincidence, the Gospel reading was the story of a birthday party…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2)
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2) My wife’s daughter and her husband work on behalf of Darfuri refugees who long ago fled from Sudan to Chad, seeking to make their plight known in the United States. My wife often feels it’s as if they’re bashing their heads against a brick …
Jeremiah for everyone - The Promise of a Future
Jeremiah for everyone - The Promise of a Future
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Promise of a Future It’s been a year since I became priest-in-charge at our church, when we could no longer afford a paid pastor. That fact was a sign that the church is getting smaller, and it wasn’t clear how long we’d be viable at all…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Secret of Life Is...
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Secret of Life Is...
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Secret of Life Is… We were in a bar last night to listen to a band playing blues. Behind and alongside us were people who at 8:30 were already rather the worse for wear. My wife commented that you could find some of these same people here every night…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (1)