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Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 9 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 9 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 9 2 Kings 5.1–14 Galatians 6.1–16 Luke 10.1–11, 16–20 Going out like lambs amid wolves hardly makes sense in any culture. Only Jesus could propose something so apparently hare-brained yet strangely powerful. Only he, knowing himself to be utterly vulnerable, yet protected …
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sixth Sunday of Easter - Year A Acts 17.22–31 1 Peter 3.13–22 John 14.15–21 In a spectacular (and presumably heavily abbreviated) speech, Paul takes on culturally sophisticated Athens with the new upside-down wisdom. He begins on their own territory, with the altar to the Unk…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The First Sunday of Epiphany - Year A Isaiah 42: 1-9 Acts 10: 34-43 Matthew 3: 13-17 John’s baptism can easily seem a mere introduction, the soon-to-be-forgotten starting point. The early Church clearly didn’t see it like that, since John continues to haunt the story in all four …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Second Sunday Before Advent Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Second Sunday Before Advent Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday Before Advent Malachi 4.1–2a 2 Thessalonians 3.6–13 Luke 21.5–19 Warnings against idleness seem irrelevant in our culture. Those who have work seem to have more and more of it; those who don’t seem stuck in a trap. No doubt there are shades of grey, and some man…
Walking Backwards to Christmas - Chapter 6 Martha
Walking Backwards to Christmas - Chapter 6 Martha
by SPCK - Stephen Cottrell
Chapter 6 Martha Walking Backwards to Christmas In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Easter Sunday Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Easter Sunday Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Easter Day Isaiah 65.17–25 1 Corinthians 15.19–26 Luke 24.1–12 ‘It seemed to them an idle tale.’ In Jesus’ world, nobody thought of ‘resurrection’ as happening to one person within ongoing history. It would happen at the very end, when God would raise all his people to share in…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fifth Sunday of Easter - Year A Acts 7.55–60 1 Peter 2.2–10 John 14.1–14 I’m never quite sure what Jesus meant when he said ‘you will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father’. But I’m quite sure he did not mean ‘you will do lesser works than these’. An o…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 17 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 17 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 17 Jeremiah 2.4–13 Hebrews 13.1–8, 15–16 Luke 14.1, 7–14 Don’t sit at the top table, declares Jesus; start at the bottom and see what happens. If this is a parable, as Luke says, it isn’t advice about behaviour at dinner parties. In Luke’s wider context, its meaning is cog…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 7 1 Kings 19.1–15a Galatians 3.23–end Luke 8.26–39 Elijah went to Sinai, to hand back his commission. ‘I’ve done all this for you, and now they’re going to kill me. I’ve had enough.’ Fear and exhaustion generated self-destructive depression. What was he expecting? A volcan…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 3 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 3 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Lent For Everyone WEEK 3: SUNDAY Psalm 95 A small boy I knew asked his grandfather, a retired priest, what ‘worship’ meant. The old man paused. He was over 80 years of age, he said; he had been a clergyman most of his life; and he still found it hard to say exactly what ‘worshi…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The First Sunday of Advent Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The First Sunday of Advent Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The First Sunday of Advent - Year A Isaiah 2:1–5 Romans 13:11–14 Matthew 24:36–44 Reflection on the first Sunday in Advent year A In The Magician’s Nephew, one of his Narnia books, C. S. Lewis describes a wood, which the children reach by magic. It is a kind of no-place, which Po…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fourth Sunday of Advent - Year A Isaiah 7:10–16 Romans 1:1–7 Matthew 1:18–25 Why won’t King Ahaz ask God for a sign? The reason he gives sounds like a good religious response, but the tone of the story makes it clear that it isn’t. What he says is ‘I will not put the Lord to …
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Palm Sunday Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Palm Sunday Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Palm Sunday Isaiah 50.4–9a Philippians 2.5–11 Luke 23.1–49 Luke’s account of the trial and death of Jesus revolves around images of judgement, and images of truth and falsehood. At the start of the chapter, one trial – the trial conducted by the chief priests and scribes of Israe…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 11 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 11 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 11 Genesis 18.1–10a Colossians 1.15–28 Luke 10.38–42 From the beginning, human beings have been image-makers, instinctively, compulsively making sense of their world through imagining it. In lives governed by the harshest necessity just to survive, primitive people still…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 18 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 18 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 18 Deuteronomy 30.15–20 Philemon 1–21 Luke 14.25–33 Which of your letters would you like preserved for a couple of millennia? Philemon is one of the most ‘domestic’ of the documents of the New Testament, and it is impossible not to read it like an unfinished novel. What ha…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 20 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 20 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 20 Amos 8.4–7 1 Timothy 2.1–7 Luke 16.1–13 Whatever is going on in this strange parable of the dishonest manager? Whichever way you read it, it is confusing. Luke has obviously decided that it is about attachment to wealth, and he has put it with a couple of other stories …
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 19 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 19 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 19 Exodus 32.7–14 1 Timothy 1.12–17 Luke 15.1–10 The shepherd and the sweeping woman in Luke’s stories today are not reacting normally. We are not meant to read these stories and think, ‘Ah yes, I would do just that.’ We are supposed to question their values and then reali…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A