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2 Corinthians - The God of All Comfort
2 Corinthians - The God of All Comfort
by SPCK - N T Wright
The God of All Comfort 2 CORINTHIANS 4.13-18 ‘To Carthage then I came,’ wrote T. S. Eliot in one of his famous poems. One can imagine someone picking up the poem in a bookshop and wondering what on earth he was talking about. Had he gone to the real Carthage, in North Africa? If …
John for Everyone Part 1 - The Man Born Blind
John for Everyone Part 1 - The Man Born Blind
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Man Born Blind John 9.1-12 I was just waking up, listening to the radio, when a news item caught my attention. Someone had been dismissed from their job for holding heretical views about the afterlife. I listened more intently. Who was it? What job had they been doing? Was it…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Lord's Coming
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Lord's Coming
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Lord’s Coming Thessalonians 4.13-18 How do you describe the colour blue to a blind person? If someone has never been able to see, how can you even convey the idea of colour, let alone the difference between colours? That difficulty faces Christians whenever we talk about the …
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Parable of Clean and Unclean
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Parable of Clean and Unclean
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Parable of Clean and Unclean Matthew 15.10-20 One of the best-loved characters in children’s stories is Winnie-the- Pooh. In one escapade of this down-to-earth, loveable toy bear (the creation of the writer A. A. Milne), Pooh attempts to trap an Elephant – or, as he mispronou…
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Priests and the Guards
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Priests and the Guards
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Priests and the Guards Matthew 28.11-15 In the world of science, there is a particular form of behaviour that occurs when a long-held belief is under attack. The most famous instance of it was when Copernicus (1473–1543) argued that Earth and the other planets go round the su…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Sending of Timothy
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Sending of Timothy
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sending of Timothy Thessalonians 3.1-5 The young adult daughter of some friends of ours went on a trip round the world, and was so enjoying life that, at one stage, she didn’t phone home for several weeks. Her parents had no way of getting in touch, and were beside themselves…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Third Sunday Before Advent Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Third Sunday Before Advent Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday Before Advent Job 19.23–27a 2 Thessalonians 2.1–5, 13–17 Luke 20.27–38 The overall theme (‘resurrection’) is obvious, but the detail is daunting. It seems a shame, as the translators’ footnotes say, that the Hebrew of Job 19.26 is ‘incomprehensible’. The old vers…
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - To Live or to Die?
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - To Live or to Die?
by SPCK - N T Wright
To Live or to Die? Philippians 1.18b-26 One of the great questions that people have asked throughout human history, and still address particularly to religious leaders, is this: where do we go when we die? Until recently, most people in what used to be the Christian Western world…
Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - To God Be the Glory
Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - To God Be the Glory
by SPCK - N T Wright
To God Be the Glory ROMANS 11.33-36 I was taken yesterday to see the site of a new bridge across a river. We parked the car in a grassy wood and set off to walk. The trees were quite thick to begin with, and I couldn’t see the river, though I could hear it. I assumed the bridge w…
2 Corinthians - Unbearably Crushed
2 Corinthians - Unbearably Crushed
by SPCK - N T Wright
Unbearably Crushed 2 CORINTHIANS 1.8-14 You watch from a distance as a friend walks down the street. You see him turn and go into a house. He strides in cheerfully and purposefully. You wait for a few minutes. Then you see him come out again – only now you see, to your horror, th…
Poem: Always missing, never grasping
Poem: Always missing, never grasping
by Andrew Pratt
(Doubting Thomas after Leonard Cohen’s song 'Suzanne' which has the line: '…and Jesus was a sailor...') Always missing, never grasping, hope amid this shifting sea, coast and haven seem remote now, too far off to harbour me. Yet those fishermen are telling news that I can't compr…
Reflection/Meditation: 'What are you doing this afternoon?'
Reflection/Meditation: 'What are you doing this afternoon?'
by Andrew Pratt
Reflection/Meditation: 'What are you doing this afternoon?' 'What are you doing this afternoon?' I'd been referred to an ophthalmologist. He thought I might lose my sight. There was a possibility of chronic glaucoma. This was 11 o'clock. By 3 that afternoon I'd had laser treatmen…
John for Everyone part 2 - Mary and her Ointment
John for Everyone part 2 - Mary and her Ointment
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mary and her Ointment John 12.1-8 I always hate it when, in a movie or a novel, a social event suddenly becomes tense and fraught. People who write novels and screenplays seem to like them: anger and bitterness bubbling to the surface, family members losing their tempers with eac…
The Resurrection
The Resurrection
by Dave Hopwood
Back for Good Bible Ref: Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20-21; Acts 1 Each of the following sketches (scenes) can be used to form the basis for a complete act of worship or used as individual scenes on separate occasions. Each scene will require a narrator to read the linking…
Cross and Sun (landscape)
Cross and Sun (landscape)
by Antony Oakley
Silhouette of cross against sunlit sky. TIP- PowerPoint Slide Size- The ideal way to insert into PowerPoint is:- • Reduce the image size to 1024x768 pixels using your image editing software. (Will reduce image proportionally) • Insert as Picture in the normal way. • If needed fil…
The Real Good News
The Real Good News
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Real Good News First, though, the inadequate and misleading accounts. Jesus’s resurrection does not mean that God somehow gave him a free pass on a personal basis, either because he was God’s son or for any other reason. The resurrection was not a special favour granted to Je…
Revelation for Everyone - Final Judgement
Revelation for Everyone - Final Judgement
by SPCK - N T Wright
Final Judgement Revelation 20.7-15 John was not the first to suppose that after God’s great act of rescue and restoration there might be a further challenge, a final fling of the powers of evil against the already-redeemed people of God. In one of his favourite books of scripture…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Easter Sunday Year C