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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Not with Our Parents
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Not with Our Parents
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Not with Our Parents Deuteronomy 5: 1-15 This week I read an e-mail from a student now doing graduate work elsewhere: “I quit my job on Monday as I was averaging four hours of sleep a night and came down with two colds in the first two weeks of school. Best decision of the year.”…
Exodus and Leviticus - Now I will Seal a Covenant
Exodus and Leviticus - Now I will Seal a Covenant
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Now I Will Seal a Covenant EXODUS 34: 1-26 Visiting Jerusalem brings many striking experiences for sober-minded Westerners. The celebration of a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah at the Western Wall is an occasion of enthusiastic rejoicing, dancing, and singing as Torah scrolls are carr…
Exodus and Leviticus - Promises and Warnings and Promises
Exodus and Leviticus - Promises and Warnings and Promises
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Promises and Warnings and Promises LEVITICUS 26: 3- 46 Yesterday a student from a two-thirds-world country came to see me to talk about wealth and poverty, about the idea that God exercised a preferential option for the poor, about whether it was okay for us to enjoy the wealth w…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Real Life Is More Complicated
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Real Life Is More Complicated
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Real Life Is More Complicated JUDGES 1:1- 36 This week Barack Obama made what might be the most fateful decision of his young presidency in sending thirty thousand more soldiers into Afghanistan. By the time you read this commentary, we may know whether this produces the desired …
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Provision for the Sanctuary
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Provision for the Sanctuary
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Provision for the Sanctuary NUMBERS 7: 1-8: 4 We want to build a “proper chapel” at our seminary. We outgrew the original chapel decades ago, and for services we use an auditorium or a church adjacent to the campus. Now, one of the great cultural strengths of the United States is…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - She's a Moabite, for Goodness' Sake!
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - She's a Moabite, for Goodness' Sake!
by SPCK - John Goldingay
She’s a Moabite, for Goodness’ Sake RUTH 1:19b-2: 9 I was just reading the story of a man called Maxo who died in the earthquake in Haiti a couple of weeks ago when his house collapsed on top of him. His cousin in New York called Maxo a hustler, but his story showed how he was al…
Exodus and Leviticus - Sex and Taboos
Exodus and Leviticus - Sex and Taboos
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Sex and Taboos LEVITICUS : 15: 1-33 “Sexual intercourse began / in nineteen sixty-three / (which was rather late for me),” the poet Philip Larkin wrote in his poem “Annus mirabilis.” It was the decade when the pill made it possible to separate sex from procreation. My prospective…
Exodus and Leviticus - Some Responsibilities of Priests
Exodus and Leviticus - Some Responsibilities of Priests
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Some Responsibilities of Priests LEVITICUS 21: 1- 22:33 When you give people presents, you can get into a lot of trouble, some of which you deserve. You can spend time and money finding what you hope will be just right for someone and find it was just the wrong thing: “You think …
Exodus and Leviticus - Surviving in the Wilderness
Exodus and Leviticus - Surviving in the Wilderness
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Surviving in the Wilderness EXODUS 15: 22- 17: 7 A former colleague of mine used sometimes to say of a seminary student, “He [I don’t remember it ever being a she] needs to learn to love the church.” The comment would be aroused by the student’s reaction to some piece of apparent…
Job for Everyone - Tested to the Limit
Job for Everyone - Tested to the Limit
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Tested to the Limit Job 34 31- 35: 16 One aspect of the forty-two years during which my first wife had multiple sclerosis was that it was a time of periodic testing, or even of continuous testing (but it was also joyful). As she got to be recurrently tired, or could no longer do …
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Teach Me
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Teach Me
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Teach Me Psalm 119: 49-72 I’m grading student papers, and one effect that has on me (alongside making me want to commit suicide) is to make me puzzle over what it is that enables people to learn. There are people who have read the Scriptures with fresh eyes, seen things they had …
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Appeal of the Lost Sheep
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Appeal of the Lost Sheep
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Appeal of the Lost Sheep Psalm 119:145-176 A Bedouin herdsman tells of how he was tending a flock of goats in the Judean wilderness near the Dead Sea. Before sleeping, the herdsmen would count their flocks, but for some reason this herdsman failed to do the count for two days…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - The Attraction of Images
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - The Attraction of Images
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Attraction of Images Deuteronomy 4: 1-49 Two or three weeks ago I went for a few days holiday and drove from Los Angeles up the coastal highway to Monterey. I had always heard it was a beautiful drive, and it is. The second night I stopped at a motel and noticed as I checked …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - The Cloak and the Power of Elijah
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - The Cloak and the Power of Elijah
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Cloak and the Power of Elijah 2 Kings 2:1-3:3 I once had to change a flat tire by the Dead Sea. I jacked the car up and in the process of changing the tire or loosening or tightening the wheel nuts, I lay on the sandy but hard ground. It was summer and hot, and when I got up …
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - The Divisiveness of Stuff
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - The Divisiveness of Stuff
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Divisiveness of Stuff Genesis 31:1-29 Money divides people from one another. A news item this week related how a twenty-five-year feud had been simmering in a particular family. When the father died, with the mother’s collusion his son concealed his father’s ownership of a nu…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - The God of Coincidences
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - The God of Coincidences
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God of Coincidences RUTH 2:10-23 When I was thirteen, I was walking home from school one day and met a teacher from the Sunday school I used to attend but had left two years previously to go to another church. She told me that my old church was about to start a new youth fell…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - The Fall of the Northern Kingdom
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - The Fall of the Northern Kingdom
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Fall of the Northern Kingdom 2 Kings 17:1-41 I suspect that people think I am an upright kind of guy, and they are not exactly wrong, but I have stories in my past of which I am ashamed and about which they don’t know, and I am not about to tell you these either. They still c…
Exodus and Leviticus - The Jubilee