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With My WholeHeart - Psalm 31:27
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 31:27
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 31:27 Jesus, of all people, knew the human heart. He knew how fickle the heart could be. He could see what flowed from it and knew what it was capable of, both good and bad. I don’t think any human being would dissent from that assessment. The heart is like a rudderless bo…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Advent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Advent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Second Sunday of Advent Isaiah 40.1–11 2 Peter 3.8–15a Mark 1.1–8 The trouble is that we think we know the end of the story. We think that this time of waiting that we call Advent is all building up to the joyful time of Christmas. In fact, it can hardly be called a ‘time of …
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…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christ the King Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Christ the King Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Christ the King Daniel 7.9-10, 13, 14 Revelation 1.4b-8 John 18.33-37 Philip Pullman’s brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy ends with the words ‘and then we’ll build . . . The republic of heaven.’ This is the vision that Lyra holds out to us after all she has learned and suffered…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Christmas Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Christmas Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The First Sunday of Christmas Isaiah 61.10—62.3 Galatians 4.4 –7 Luke 2.15–21 Galatians is one of the most moving of all Paul’s epistles. Paul is fighting for his calling in this epistle. The fight is partly for himself, because if he is wrong, and God has not called him to be an…
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 - Proper 3 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 3 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 3 Isaiah 43.18–25 2 Corinthians 1.18–22 Mark 2.1–12 Forgiveness is always shocking, even when it’s God who’s doing it. Indeed, that’s often the worst: in a paradox whose only solution is the depth of human pride, we shrink from the undeserved, and hence humbling, grace a…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Third Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Third Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Third Sunday of Epiphany John 2.1-11 And remember, we are still in the season of Epiphany – the showing forth of Jesus to the world. And this is where we find the proper significance of this story. Consider the difference between the meaning of the words ‘sign’ and ‘miracle…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Christmas Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Christmas Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Gazing on the Gospel - Year B The Second Sunday of Christmas John 1.(1-9,) 10-18 Gaze on an illuminated manuscript. See how the page is full of gold leaf, which lights up the word. When an idea is illuminated for us, it confers vision far greater than sight, as Jesus does of God.…
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 - 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…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The First Sunday of Epiphany Isaiah 43.1–7 Acts 8.14–17 Luke 3.15–17, 21–22 We now have the middle of Luke 3 for the second time in four weeks, and verses 19–20 are still missing. This mightn’t matter so much if they didn’t relate as closely as they do to the underlying themes of…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The First Sunday of Advent Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The First Sunday of Advent Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The First Sunday of Advent Jeremiah 33.14–16 1 Thessalonians 3.9–13 Luke 21.25–36 It is January, ad 69. You are a Greek-speaking Christian in a Roman town in Turkey. You are deeply anxious about the fierce war in Judaea: the Romans have laid siege to Jerusalem; the city faces sta…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Second Sunday of Christmas Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Second Sunday of Christmas Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday of Christmas Jeremiah 31.7–14 Ephesians 1.3–14 John 1.1–18 Take a deep breath, and try reading Ephesians 1.3–14 all in one go. It is, after all, a single sentence in the Greek, a Christian version of the Jewish-style prayer, ‘Blessed be the God who . . .’. Only …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Fourth Sunday of Advent Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Fourth Sunday of Advent Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday of Advent Micah 5.2–5a Hebrews 10.5–10 Luke 1.39–45 ‘He shall be the one of peace.’ We can feel the sigh of relief rising from prophet and hearers alike. To a world of uncertainty, fear, wars and rumours of wars, there comes the news of a king whose rule will es…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Telling the Gentiles about Jesus