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Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Defence of Hope
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Defence of Hope
by SPCK - N T Wright
A Defence of the Hope Acts 24.10-21 I am still fascinated by kaleidoscopes. I love watching the shapes as they move around and form themselves into different patterns. They were quite basic when I was a boy, and now that I’m grown up and not supposed to like toys any more I often…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Huge Row
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Huge Row
by SPCK - N T Wright
A Huge Row Acts 15.36-41 There is no point beating about the bush with this one. There are times in church work when leaders, including bishops, really want to knock two people’s heads together and tell them not to be so pig-brained (though actually most pigs wouldn’t dream of be…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Light to the Gentiles
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Light to the Gentiles
by SPCK - N T Wright
A Light to the Gentiles Acts 13.44-52 Everyone who works with words – the poet, the journalist, the philosopher, the translator, the theologian – knows it all too well. We use a word one day and it seems perfectly all right. It does the job. The next day we are told it now means …
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Year in Corinth
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - A Year in Corinth
by SPCK - N T Wright
A Year in Corinth Acts 18.1-11 This morning, knowing I was going to be thinking about Corinth, I helped myself to a big bowl of Greek yoghurt and honey for breakfast. It still takes me straight back to the little streetside cafe where, in the early 1990s, I first tasted that simp…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Address in Antioch
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Address in Antioch
by SPCK - N T Wright
Address in Antioch Acts 13.13-25 I sat in the small meeting room, intrigued at what I was hearing. I had been invited to a presentation organized by local councillors and businessmen in a particular area. They had a project, and they wanted support for it. There was an old factor…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Agrippa and Bernice
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Agrippa and Bernice
by SPCK - N T Wright
Agrippa and Bernice Acts 25.13-27 ‘To see ourselves as others see us.’ That telling line from Burns (actually, he wrote ‘oursels’; but someone would think it was a misprint if I had put that) sums up a good deal of the task of human communication. I am in correspondence, as I spe…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - All at Sea
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - All at Sea
by SPCK - N T Wright
All at SeaActs 27.1-12 In John Fowles’ novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the reader getting near the end receives a shock. There are two endings. You can choose. Would you like the story to finish like this, or like that? What are you saying about yourself, or about the boo…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Another KIng
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Another KIng
by SPCK - N T Wright
Another King! Acts 17.1-9 Just north of where I am writing this, and visible from not far away, is the small but famous island of Lindisfarne, commonly known as ‘Holy Island’. It was the first beachhead of Christian faith in England, long before the Romans sent Augustine from Rom…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Apollos in Ephesus and Corinth
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Apollos in Ephesus and Corinth
by SPCK - N T Wright
Apollos in Ephesus and Corinth Acts 18.18-28 These days people will do anything for sponsorship. Recently a Christian leader made well over a million pounds (roughly US$2 million) by running in the London Marathon. I once had a colleague who made a lot of money for his church by …
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Bring on the Barristers
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Bring on the Barristers
by SPCK - N T Wright
Bring on the Barristers Acts 24.1-9 Jokes about lawyers are unkind, ungrateful, uncharitable – and often uncannily accurate. I remember listening in horror as a clever and unscrupulous young lawyer, in a meeting of a college governing body, constructed a rhetorically powerful arg…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Christianity Declared Legal in Achaea
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Christianity Declared Legal in Achaea
by SPCK - N T Wright
Christianity Declared Legal in Achaea Acts 18.12-17 Though I have walked with great pleasure in the hills of the north of England, both the Lake District in the west and the Cheviot hills in the east, I have only once walked in the almost equally famous Peak District of Derbyshir…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Confusion in Lystra
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Confusion in Lystra
by SPCK - N T Wright
Confusion in LystraActs 14. 8-20 I have a sneaking sympathy for the medical profession. Two or three generations ago, everybody knew that there were all kinds of diseases that the doctors couldn’t cure. They would do their best with what was available. They would offer sympathy…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Disturbing Prophecies
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Disturbing Prophecies
by SPCK - N T Wright
Disturbing Prophecies Acts 21.1-14 I was in Canada in 1983 when, on a flight over the Pacific, a Korean airliner was intercepted and shot down by Soviet jets. All on board, needless to say, were killed. There was a long argument subsequently over why the plane was where it was an…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Earthquake and Salvation
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Earthquake and Salvation
by SPCK - N T Wright
Earthquake and Salvation Acts 16.25-34 I remember old Bishop Stephen Neill, who was winning classical scholarships around the time my father was born, telling me how we should translate verse 30. He was used to hearing people quote the panic-stricken question of the Philippian ja…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Felix Calms (and Slows) Things Down
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Felix Calms (and Slows) Things Down
by SPCK - N T Wright
Felix Calms (and Slows) Things DownActs 24.22-27 A friend of mine preached a sermon, as my guest, on radiators and drains. Some people, he said, are radiators, and other people are drains. Some people, that is, naturally give energy and warmth to others. People like having them…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Glossary
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Glossary
by SPCK - N T Wright
GLOSSARY Acts for Everyone Part 2 age to come, see present age apostle, disciple, the Twelve ‘Apostle’ means ‘one who is sent’. It could be used of an ambassador or official delegate. In the New Testament it is sometimes used specifically of Jesus’ inner circle of twelve; but Pau…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Great is Ephesian Artemis
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Great is Ephesian Artemis
by SPCK - N T Wright
“Great is Ephesian Artemis” Acts 19.23-41 We ought to know the scene by now. We see it often enough on our television screens. A huge gathering, assembled in the street and the public square. Faces are flushed with excitement and anger. Being reminded of some great hero or leader…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Iconium