SPCK - N T Wright
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Patience and Trust
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Patience and Trust
by SPCK - N T Wright
Patience and Trust James 5.7-12 When my sister and I were reckoned to be old enough not to need a babysitter any more, my parents occasionally went out for the evening, leaving us on our own. Normally this worked fine. We could see to ourselves, the front door was locked, and in …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Warnings to the Rich
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Warnings to the Rich
by SPCK - N T Wright
Warnings to the Rich James 5.1-6 Suddenly we find ourselves in two quite different worlds – and we realize that James has been thinking this way all along. Reading through the book casually to this point, we might suppose it was a ragbag collection of different moral commands: a …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Living by Trust in God
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Living by Trust in God
by SPCK - N T Wright
Living by Trust in God James 4.11-17 One of the most memorable minor characters in C. S. Lewis’s famous ‘Narnia’ stories is the strange and increasingly sinister ‘Uncle Andrew’ in The Magician’s Nephew. Uncle Andrew is, in fact, the ‘magician’ of the title, and his nephew Digory …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Humanity and Faith
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Humanity and Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
Humanity and Faith James 4.1-10 Schoolchildren of a certain age form exclusive friendships. Great human dramas are played out on a small scale when your daughter comes home in tears because her ‘best friend’ has declared she isn’t her best friend any more, but has taken up with s…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - True and False Wisdom
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - True and False Wisdom
by SPCK - N T Wright
True and False Wisdom James 3.13-18 It all began with a wrong diagnosis. I came upon the obituary of a famous actress in the newspaper just the other day. She wasn’t particularly old – in her early 70s, quite young these days. Her doctor hadn’t seen the early warning signs. By th…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Taming the Tongue
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Taming the Tongue
by SPCK - N T Wright
Taming the Tongue James 3.1-12 Some while ago I was asked to give a talk about my early life and why I had chosen the path I did. I was surprised, when preparing the talk, to discover how many of the key moments in my first fifteen years were to do with my teachers. Like many oth…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Faith and Works
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Faith and Works
by SPCK - N T Wright
Faith and Works James 2.14-26 That’s the wrong way round, isn’t it? That’s what we are inclined to think as we read that final verse. If I were to use ‘the body and the spirit’ as a picture for ‘faith and works’, I would make ‘faith’ correspond to the ‘spirit’ and ‘works’ to the …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Word that Goes to Work
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Word that Goes to Work
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Work that Goes to Work James 1.19-27 Human wisdom regularly produces proverbs. ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’ And so on. One of the proverbs I learned very early in life went like this: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will n…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Snares of the World and the Gift of God
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Snares of the World and the Gift of God
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Snares of the World and the Gift of God James 1.9-18 ‘Listen for the echo,’ said my friend. We were standing at the back of a great cathedral, and the choir was about to sing a powerful, beautiful anthem. Sure enough: the conductor knew what he was doing. As each part of the …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Challenge of Faith
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Challenge of Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Challenge of Faith James 1.1-8 I used to think the waves had come from far away. Standing by the sea and watching the grey-green monsters roll in, it was easy to imagine that this wave, and then this one, and then the one after that, had made the journey from a distant land. …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Introduction
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Introduction
by SPCK - N T Wright
INTRODUCTION On the very first occasion when someone stood up in public to tell people about Jesus, he made it very clear: this message is for everyone. It was a great day – sometimes called the birthday of the church. The great wind of God’s spirit had swept through Jesus’ follo…
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 - The End is Where We Start From
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The End is Where We Start From
by SPCK - N T Wright
The End is Where We Start FromActs 28.23-31 When I was an undergraduate, I played the trombone (badly) in various instant home-made orchestras. There were plenty of budding conductors around, eager to try out their skills, and they would organize concerts at a couple of weeks’ …
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - To Rome at Last
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - To Rome at Last
by SPCK - N T Wright
To Rome at Last Acts 28.11-22 It has been a long voyage, and the biblical commentator, in this, one of the three longest books of the New Testament (Matthew, Luke and Acts are more or less the same length), may well feel on arrival at Puteoli, Appian Forum and Three Taverns that …
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Snake on Malta
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Snake on Malta
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Snake on Malta Acts 28.1-10 It was only when I got back from the walk that I realized I was foolish not to have taken a stick. The hills up by the Scottish border, where I was walking by myself, were known to have plenty of adders, and the fact that the previous year they had…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Shipwreck
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Shipwreck
by SPCK - N T Wright
Shipwreck Acts 27.33-44 We were already horribly late for the service. It was nobody’s fault, really; the traffic had been far, far worse than anyone could have imagined. I had phoned through and told people how it was, but it was really important, still, that we got there as qui…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Storm and the Angel
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Storm and the Angel
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Storm and the Angel Acts 27.13-32 It’s a long time since I’ve been seasick, but the last time I came close to it I was more or less in the same place as Paul in the middle of this storm. I was doing some guest lectures, and taking some services, on a cruise ship (the things c…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - All at Sea