Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Amen Anyway
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Amen Anyway
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Amen Anyway Psalm 89:52 There is a play by Elie Wiesel called The Trial of God, set in a concentration camp and based on something the author witnessed at the end of the trial, God is found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind. After a period of silence, a Talmudic sch…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Blood Cries Out
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Blood Cries Out
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Blood Cries Out Genesis 4: 10-13 I write the week after bombings and attacks in Mumbai that killed hundreds of people. “This is our 9/11,” many Indians said. They did not merely mean that these were attacks on a vast and savage scale, carried out with unprecedented sophistication…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Better with Abraham and Sarah than in Egypt
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Better with Abraham and Sarah than in Egypt
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Better with Abraham and Sarah than in Egypt Genesis 16: 8-16 Toward the last years of my time as a seminary principal in England, the demands of the job took a toll on me. One reason you get paid more if you are the boss of anything is that you are the person who lies awake at ni…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Bigamy, Music, Technology, Murder
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Bigamy, Music, Technology, Murder
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Bigamy, Music, Technology, Murder Genesis 4: 18-22 A few weeks ago my wife and I were in an Italian restaurant and jazz club, listening to jazz or blues, and a woman came up and said she was a nurse and was glad to see that I took Ann there, silent and immobile in her wheelchair.…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Beautiful Tents, Jacob
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Beautiful Tents, Jacob
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Beautiful Tents, Jacob NUMBERS 23: 25 24: 25 As a boy I sang in a cathedral choir. One of my favorite anthems was “How Goodly Are Thy Tents, O Jacob,” composed by a Victorian composer called Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, a professor of music at Oxford, a prolific composer …
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Breaking Faith
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Breaking Faith
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Breaking Faith NUMBERS 5: 5-31 I remember having a slight fit of jealousy (it was twenty years ago, but I still remember!) when my wife started talking to the man next door. He was another priest, my colleague and friend, but that didn’t make much difference. He was a wise and sp…
Exodus and Leviticus - Being Grateful, Keeping a Promise
Exodus and Leviticus - Being Grateful, Keeping a Promise
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Being Grateful, Keeping a Promise, Being Generous LEVITICUS 6: 8- 7: 38 When my wife died, I was touched by the way people wanted to give something in thanksgiving for her life. One obvious object for that was the MS Society, because MS was the illness by means of which she had s…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Coping With the Aftermath
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Coping With the Aftermath
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Coping with the Aftermath 1 Kings 2:1-46 As an undergraduate, I often walked past the Martyrs Memorial, standing where Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were burned at the stake in Oxford in 1555 and 1556, caught in the conflict between different Christian groups.…
Job for Everyone - Comforters? More like Troublemakers
Job for Everyone - Comforters? More like Troublemakers
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Comforters? More like Troublemakers Job 16: 1-17 When I take students through the book of Job in classes, I invite them to let me know the questions it raises for them, and usually someone asks, “So when we are ministering to people who are suffering like Job, what do we say to t…
Isaiah for Everyone - Compassion and Openness to Learning
Isaiah for Everyone - Compassion and Openness to Learning
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Compassion and Openness to Learning I have mentioned that my wife’s daughter and son-in-law give their lives to seeking to make known the plight and needs of the hundreds of thousands of Darfuri refugees who fled from genocide in Sudan ten years ago and have been living since the…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Come Blow Your Horn
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Come Blow Your Horn
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Come Blow Your Horn JOSHUA 6: 1-21 In New Orleans over the weekend for a meeting (I have such a hard job) I talked with Tom Wright, author of The New Testament for Everyone series, and with staff from the publishers. I remarked that the most demanding aspect of this project is ha…
Job for Everyone - Covenant or Contract?
Job for Everyone - Covenant or Contract?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Covenant or Contract Job 1: 6-12 Yesterday the air-conditioning/heating maintenance office called. After we had a big problem with the air conditioning last year, I took out a maintenance contract to try to avoid a recurrence of problems of that magnitude, so I now pay a certain …
Exodus and Leviticus - Coping with Crises
Exodus and Leviticus - Coping with Crises
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Coping with Crises EXODUS 20: 22- 22: 14 When I worked as a pastor, the Inland Revenue treated me as self-employed rather than as an employee. I am not sure why this was, and I didn’t feel self-employed. I had a boss (my rector) who made it clear that he was my boss, and I had em…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Enter the Queen of Sheba
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Enter the Queen of Sheba
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Enter the Queen of Sheba 1 Kings 10:1-29 The news yesterday reported on one of the unbreakable rules of capitalism: whatever regulations are put in place to control capitalism, people will find a way around them. Interestingly, one of its examples was the Old Testament ban on len…
Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Tries Again
Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Tries Again
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Eliphaz Tries Again Job 15: 1-35 Today’s newspaper contains a long excerpt from a book about a gigantic fraud that brought about the collapse of a Wall Street financial empire during the financial crisis of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The head of the business in…
Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Rewrites Job's Life Rather Than revise His Own Theology
Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Rewrites Job's Life Rather Than revise His Own Theology
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Eliphaz rewrites Jo’s Life Rather Than Revise His Own Theology Job 22: 1-30 My early years of teaching coincided with a time when many churches were rediscovering the possibility of praying for sick people to be healed and of finding that many were healed. It was an exciting redi…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Ensuring justice
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Ensuring justice
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Ensuring Justice NUMBERS 35:1- 36: 13 A Florida lawyer commented this month that it is becoming more and more common to hear news accounts of people convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death, then released many years later after it is determined (usually through DNA te…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Eating with God