SPCK - N T Wright
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: SUNDAY Psalm 121 1 I must have sung this Psalm a hundred, perhaps a thousand, times before I stopped to think about the famous first verse. (I have seen it carved above doors and mantelpieces in mountainous parts of the country, sometimes in Latin.) ‘I lift my eyes to …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
EK 1: SATURDAY Matthew 17.1– 9 Imagine yourself as a fifth member of the party, going up the mountain with Jesus leading the way, Peter beside him, and James and John following too. The last days and weeks have been utterly bewildering. Nothing like this has happened to you befor…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: THURSDAY Matthew 8; focused on 8.23 –34 Let’s go on that boat and think what it was like. It’s a small lake, as lakes go, but sudden storms come sweeping down from the hills. All of us in the boat know of people who’ve been drowned there, of whole boats that have been swa…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: FRIDAY Matthew 9; focused on 9.9 –17 Those of us who now use computers take it for granted that they will have a large internal memory. This is stored on what is called a ‘hard disk’, as opposed to what we used to have, back in the 1980s, which was a ‘floppy disk’, which …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: WEDNESDAY Matthew 7; focused on 7.15 –23 One of the great lies of our time is to suppose that because Jesus brings forgiveness, and urges us to be forgiving people, meek and gentle, there is no sharp edge to his message. To hear some people, you’d think the whole of the C…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: TUESDAY Matthew 6; focused on 6.5 –15 At the very heart of Jesus’ vision of the kingdom – of heaven’s kingdom coming on earth – we have a picture of one person, secretly in their own room, praying. Prayer is a mystery. I’ve often heard people saying, with a sneer, ‘It doe…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: MONDAY Matthew 5; focused on 5.1–12 The worst mistake we can make about this famous and stunning passage is to see it as a list of rules (you’ve got to try hard to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, and so on). It isn’t. It’s a royal announcement that God is turning…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: SUNDAY Psalm 32 A long time ago, when I had just learnt to drive, I ran out of petrol on a lonely country road. I gratefully accepted some fuel from a nearby farmer. What he didn’t tell me was that it was a mixture designed not for a car, but for a lawn mower. I got back …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 4.1–11 It starts with a flicker of thought, a tiny little idea that darts across the mind while you’re doing something else. It seems harmless, just one of the millions of things that the human brain comes up with. But then it returns, a minut…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday after Ash Wednesday Reflection
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday after Ash Wednesday Reflection
by SPCK - N T Wright
FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 4; focused on 4.18 –25 18 There’s a sense of excitement at the start of the season. The ground is prepared and marked out. The fixture list is printed. Everything is ready. So along you go for the first match. But imagine what it would be like i…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
HURSDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 3; focused on 3.1–12 1 When a couple get married, there is so much to learn. Not so much the immediate and obvious things – favourite foods, musical tastes, good ideas for holidays, and so on. There are deeper things that make each one of us m…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Ash Wednesday
Lent for Everyone Year A - Ash Wednesday
by SPCK - N T Wright
ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 1-2; focused on 1.18-25 We know very, very little about Joseph. Some legends make him an old man who died while Jesus was growing up, but we don’t know that for sure. We know he worked in the building trade, including what we call carpentry. We know he could…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Second Sunday Before Lent Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Second Sunday Before Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday Before Lent - Year A Genesis 1.1—2.3 Romans 8.18–25 Matthew 6.25–34 The project was all set up and ready to go. Creation was more like a perfect studio than a finished painting; everything was there, paints, canvas, artist, and all. It had its own inbuilt rhythm…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 3 Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 3 Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 3 - Year A Leviticus 19.1–2, 9–18 1 Corinthians 3.10–11, 16–23 Matthew 5.38–48 There are two basic mistakes people make about the command to love your neighbour as yourself. The first is to forget the last two words. We aren’t told to love our neighbour with all our heart,…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 2 Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 2 Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 2 - Year A Deuteronomy 30.15–20 1 Corinthians 3.1–9 Matthew 5.21–37 A real choice with real consequences. The great temptation today is not so much to cast off all moral restraint – few would actually advocate that, though many act from time to time as though that were the…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 1 Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 1 Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 1 - Year A Isaiah 58.1–12 1 Corinthians 2.1–16 Matthew 5.13–20 Isaiah’s stinging rebuke contains the seeds of the Sermon on the Mount. True piety must be part of the outward movement to share your blessing with the world. Fasting is useless if injustice goes unchecked. L…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany Year A