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Mark for Everyone - The Calling of the Disciples
Mark for Everyone - The Calling of the Disciples
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 1.14–20 The Calling of the Disciples... ...The poet John Betjeman describes in his verse autobiography how his father put pressure on him to follow him into the family business. The young John had no desire to do so; he wanted to be a poet. That’s just a st…
Mark for Everyone - The Burial of Jesus
Mark for Everyone - The Burial of Jesus
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 15.40–47 The Burial of Jesus... ...Yesterday a friend came to see me in great excitement. He had been in Jerusalem a few weeks earlier, and had happened to be present when an archaeologist stumbled upon a previously unknown first-century tomb, just outside …
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Canaanite Woman
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Canaanite Woman
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Canaanite Woman Matthew 15.21-28 One of the great moral and cultural issues of the last hundred years has been racial identity. The world was horrified to learn that the German Nazis had killed six million people whose only crime was to be Jews. The world was then increasingl…
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Call of Matthew
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Call of Matthew
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Call of Matthew Matthew 9.9-17 I was a teenager in the famous 1960s. Revolution was in the air. Protests, especially among young people, were the order of the day. Young Americans protested against the Vietnam war. Students in Paris told factory workers they had nothing to lo…
Revelation for Everyone - The Letter to Pergamum
Revelation for Everyone - The Letter to Pergamum
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Letter to Pergamum Revelation 2.12-17 From the train, many miles away, you can see the skyscrapers. You come up through New Jersey, from the direction of Philadelphia, past the lovely town of Princeton, and on through somewhat less lovely townships; and then, if you’re lookin…
Mark for Everyone - The Syrophoenician Woman
Mark for Everyone - The Syrophoenician Woman
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 7.24–30 The Syrophoenician Woman... ...Not just another healing, more a political incident. This very odd story has all the trappings of a dangerous event for Jesus, and Mark helps us to understand it by the way he’s linked it to what went before. We’ve jus…
Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - The Weak and the Strong
Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - The Weak and the Strong
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Weak and the Strong ROMANS 14.1-6 We have a friend whose son is a vegetarian. She was describing to us today how she has learned to cook special meals for him – and what sort of compromises with the code he has been prepared to make. In today’s Western world, vegetarianism ha…
How can God, condemned, be hanging?
How can God, condemned, be hanging?
by Andrew Pratt
How can God, condemned, be hanging? False messiahs meet such ends, and the ones then testifying, have no need to make amends. Educated folk were laughing, they foresaw what was to come, saw disciples hiding, crying, feeling both distraught and numb. Verses 2-3 follow Tune: CALON …
Hymn: Held in the arms of God's love and compassion
Hymn: Held in the arms of God's love and compassion
by Andrew Pratt
Held in the arms of God's love and compassion, Jesus had kept them right up to the end, these his disciples, now named as Apostles, each of these strangers now counted as friend. Jesus had taught them by word and example, shared times of suffering, illness and grief. Spell-bound …
Hymn: This is God, a human baby
Hymn: This is God, a human baby
by Andrew Pratt
This is God, a human baby, offered into human hands, hands to comfort, feed and nurture, hands that follow hate's commands. Then disciples, stunned and puzzled, couldn't make sense of his word, theologians down the ages, seek to juggle the absurd. Man, Messiah, Lord and Master, h…
Much brighter than a thousand suns
Much brighter than a thousand suns
by Andrew Pratt
Much brighter than a thousand suns, the source of life, eternal grace; light of the cosmos and this world now shining from a saviour's face. Upon the mountain’s towering height they saw transfiguration's light. This man, this Jesus, they had known, who called them once by Galilee…
Hymn - Who shares this wine? Who dips this bread
Hymn - Who shares this wine? Who dips this bread
by Andrew Pratt
Who shares this wine? Who dips this bread? Was Judas hesitant or calm, the moment Jesus sent him out to raise that awful, crazed alarm? The others looked around, askance, not sure what this might sign or seal. They whispered, questioned; all too soon resumed this fated, final mea…
Hymn: Lost in human expectation
Hymn: Lost in human expectation
by Andrew Pratt
Lost in human expectation, cannot grasp the reason why, love in human incarnation, has to suffer, had to die. Yet it seems our understanding, narrowed by our self-concern, makes us even more demanding, yet less able to discern. Verses 3-4 follow Tune: ALL FOR JESUS, STUTTGART Met…
Hymn: Total life! Too much to swallow?
Hymn: Total life! Too much to swallow?
by Andrew Pratt
Total life! Too much to swallow? We should all be one with Christ, share the living and the dying: is this challenge over-priced? But if we have grasped the message, life is more than human gain, then perhaps the risk is worth it - never be the same again? Verses 3-4 follow Tune:…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Human Inventions and Divine Instructions
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Human Inventions and Divine Instructions
by SPCK - N T Wright
Human Interventions and Divine Instructions Acts 5.27-42 We stared at the parcel as it lay on the floor inside the front door. Nobody had heard the delivery man. Nobody knew why it had arrived at this time of the day. The parcel was bulky, somewhat misshapen, with various semi-le…
Mark for Everyone - Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with Chronic Bleeding
Mark for Everyone - Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with Chronic Bleeding
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 5.21–34 Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with Chronic Bleeding... ...We really should take this passage with the next one, since in Mark’s mind they are all part of the same story. But both are so full of interest that it’s worth holding them apart for the m…
Mark for Everyone - Jesus Is Anointed at Bethany
Mark for Everyone - Jesus Is Anointed at Bethany
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 14.1–11... ...If the storm clouds are gathering over Jerusalem in chapter 13, in chapter 14 they are coming together over the head of Jesus himself. The parallel between the two is important: the fate Jesus has predicted for the Temple (destruction at the h…
Mark for Everyone - Jesus Heals a Blind Beggar