SPCK - N T Wright
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 5 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 5 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 5 1 Samuel 8.4-11 [12-15] 16-20 [11.14-15] 2 Corinthians 4.13-5.1 Mark 3.20-35 So: did God want Israel to have a king, or didn’t he? The question haunts not only this passage in 1 Samuel but much of the rest of the account of the monarchy, from the ill-fated Saul right dow…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 4 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 4 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 4 1 Samuel 3.1-10 2 Corinthians 4.5-12 Mark 2.23-3.6 Like a cathedral chorister, Samuel has been brought to live and work in the atmosphere of prayer, worship and pilgrimage. Considering the lively human interest, it’s surprising this story didn’t entice the great classi…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Easter Day Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Easter Day Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Easter Day Isaiah 25.6-9 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 John 20.1-18 This Gospel reading is not, as one writer has suggested, ‘a sanitized story about a trip to a garden and a lovely surprise’. If Easter is in any sense the happy ending after a sad story, that is the least important thing…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Seventh Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Seventh Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday after Ascension Day) Acts 1.15-17, 21-26 1 John 5.9-13 John 17.6-19 The interesting thing about the choice of Matthias has nothing to do with Matthias himself. Nor is it the striking method of his selection, which if applied today would simpli…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 10.44-48 1 John 5.1-6 John 15.9-17 ‘His commandments are not burdensome.’ Hard to take, that, in a world where all commandments are burdensome, where anybody telling anyone else what to do – even God telling his creatures what to do – is felt as an…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 8.26-40 1 John 4.7-21 John 15.1-8 If you like evangelism, you’ll love Philip’s story. A spirit-led meeting with a court official, who happens to be reading Isaiah 53 and asking the right questions. There is time to converse at leisure; there is wat…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 4.5-12 1 John 3.16-24 John 10.11-18 The text about the rejected stone has itself become something of a stumbling stone. The point of the quotation from Psalm 118.22 is that, though Jesus appeared to the ‘builders’ of Judaism (the Chief Priests in …
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 3.12-19 1 John 3.1-7 Luke 24.36-48 The ancient world knew all about ghosts, visions, apparitions, and spooks. Ancient literature has plenty of people being found alive after being supposed dead, plenty of spirits of the dead returning to haunt, spy…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 4.32-35 1 John 1.1-2.2 John 20.19-31 ‘Peace be with you’, said Jesus. And again, two verses later, ‘Peace be with you.’ Like a great bell, a single note with multiple overtones, the promise of peace tolls out across the world. Not just an inner pe…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Day of Pentecost Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Day of Pentecost Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Day of Pentecost Acts 2.1-21 Romans 8.22-27 John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15 It is one of the striking features of the New Testament that Luke, Paul and John, so very different as writers and theologians, sing in rich harmony when it comes to the Spirit. At the heart of the music is the…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Christ the King Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Christ the King Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Christ the King Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14 Revelation 1.4b-8 John 18.33b-37 The ‘Feast of Christ the King’ was invented by Pius XI in 1925. Only in 1970 was it moved from October to the last Sunday before Advent. It slid into Anglicanism very recently, introducing three muddles. First,…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday Before Advent Deuteronomy 6.1-9 Hebrews 9.11-14 Mark 12.28-34 For once the lectionary hits the jackpot. These readings dovetail perfectly, revealing powerfully the continuity and discontinuity between Christianity and the Old Testament. The key is the bit we mig…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday Before Advent Jonah 3.1-5, 10 Hebrews 9.24-28 Mark 1.14-20 ‘Once, only once, and once for all.’ The hymn that starts thus withdraws with the left hand some of what it gives with the right, hinting that Christ’s unique sacrifice is still somehow present in the e…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday Before Advent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday Before Advent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday Before Advent Daniel 12.1-3 Hebrews 10.11-14 [15-18] 19-25 Mark 13.1-8 The lady in the icon shop may not have understood my English, let alone my Greek. Did she have an icon of Jesus’ resurrection? Yes, she said, pointing at the wall behind her head. There it wa…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Palm Sunday (Liturgy of the Passion) Isaiah 50.4–9a Philippians 2.5–11 Mark 14.1—15.47 ‘In spite of that, we call this Friday good.’ They didn’t at the time, but Jesus’ surprised friends, and some very surprised enemies, quickly found themselves telling the horrid and brutal tale…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Passiontide begins) Jeremiah 31.31–34 Hebrews 5.5–10 John 12.20–33 Imagine the simple request echoing along the corridors of church bureaucracy. It is passed from office to office, from secretary to secretary. It is left on voice-mails and e-mails, faxed…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday of Lent Numbers 21.4–9 Ephesians 2.1–10 John 3.14–21 The serpent slithers its way through myth and legend, poetry and art. Too potent a symbol to be ignored, some cultures have worshipped it, while others have feared and loathed it. Freud said predictable things…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B