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Gazing on the Gospels year c - The Third Sunday of Advent Year C
Gazing on the Gospels year c - The Third Sunday of Advent Year C
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Third Sunday of Advent Luke 3.7-18 Gaze on all these people arriving at last by the river where John is busy baptizing the penitents. They run on eagerly, but when they get within earshot, they rock back on their heels, as he explodes ‘You brood of vipers!’ Is it for this tha…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Palm Sunday Isaiah 50.4–9a Philippians 2.5–11 Mark 14.1—15.47 It is as though there are any number of parallel stories in Mark’s account of the trial and death of Jesus. The characters in each story are largely unaware of the others, though they may interact with each other to so…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 1 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 1 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 1 Isaiah 6.1–8 (9–13) 1 Corinthians 15.1–11 Luke 5.1–11 The question of the correct posture for worship – should we sit or should we kneel – is a perennial one. Well, if anything can make us less sedentary, it should be today’s readings. They are none of them conducive to …
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 10 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 10 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 10 Deuteronomy 30.9–14 Colossians 1.1–14 Luke 10.25–37 Does God actually make things too easy for us? Do we keep looking around for the catch, trying to work out what we are missing, when really the truth is as simple as can be? Our human religious instincts tend to go in …
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 20 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 20 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 20 Jeremiah 11.18-20 James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a Mark 9.30-37 What an emotional roller-coaster ride the disciples are on by this stage of Jesus’s ministry. Not that life with Jesus had ever been boring, exactly, but at least they had known what they were doing. Or they had though…
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 2 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 2 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 2 Jeremiah 17.5–10 1 Corinthians 15.12–20 Luke 6.17–26 Paul’s discussion of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 has fascinated scholars and Christians alike. It shows clearly that the earliest preaching of the gospel contained the witness to the risen Christ. This is, as …
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 6 Year C
Lectionary Reflection Year C - Proper 6 Year C
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 6 2 Samuel 11.26—12.10, 13–15 Galatians 2.15–21 Luke 7.36—8.3 Nathan the prophet is a good story-teller and a brave man. Though he obviously knows the character of his king well enough to guess David’s reaction to his story, yet this is, after all, the king he is talking t…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Saturday
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Saturday
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Saturday Genesis 1: 31- 2: 3 At the end of a week, many people wish they could look back over the week’s work and smile in satisfaction because they have a sense of a worthwhile job completed. But instead, they simply think with relief, “Thank God it’s Friday!” or wish, as Mark K…
Isaiah for Everyone - Second-Degree Manslaughter
Isaiah for Everyone - Second-Degree Manslaughter
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Second-Degree Manslaughter Isaiah 1: 21-2: 5 The other Sunday, halfway on our five-minute drive to church there was a huge police presence off to the left of our street, with police cars and barriers and police officers apparently searching waste land and dumpsters. Some aspects …
Job for Everyone - Same Old, Same Old
Job for Everyone - Same Old, Same Old
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Same Old, Same Old Job 11: 1-20 As I write it is Holy Week, and last Sunday we read the passion story from Matthew with its exotic account of tombs opening in Jerusalem so that people came out and wandered around after Jesus’ death and in anticipation of his resurrection. It’s an…
Exodus and Leviticus - Seeing God
Exodus and Leviticus - Seeing God
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Seeing God EXODUS 24: 1- 18 A Christian song by Michael W. Smith called “Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord” declares, “I want to see You; to see You high and lifted up, shinin’ in the light of Your glory.” Another song, “I Want to Know You,” by Andy Park, several times repeats the …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Temples and Palaces
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Temples and Palaces
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Temples and Palaces 1 Kings 7:1-8:9 Intriguingly interwoven with the story of the temple building is the brief account of Solomon’s spending thirteen years building his house; he spent seven years building God’s house. Is that a sign that God’s house had priority, that he focused…
Job for Everyone - The Angry Young Man
Job for Everyone - The Angry Young Man
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Angry Young Man Job 32 1-22 I was a “word child.” Indeed, I probably still am, though I am also a music child and a people child. A Word Child is a novel by Iris Murdoch about a man for whom words are the means of his redemption or happiness. Words save him. For me, that was …
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - The Complications of Surrogacy
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - The Complications of Surrogacy
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Complications of Surrogacy Genesis 16: 4b-7 Establishing whether a couple’s problem in having children lies in the man or the woman involves stressful processes of medical investigation. When a woman who had gone through such procedures told me her husband had a zero sperm co…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - The God Who Intervenes
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - The God Who Intervenes
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God Who Intervenes Genesis 11: 3- 7 I was talking to a young man training to be a counselor. The program involves undertaking a chaplaincy in a trauma unit and working with people with brain or spinal cord injuries as a result of a sporting accident, car crash, gunshot wound,…
Job for Everyone - The Man of Integrity
Job for Everyone - The Man of Integrity
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Man of Integrity Job 1: 1-5 Seminary chapel this morning focused on a devotional study of Psalm 23 that involved our asking which phrase in the psalm especially spoke to us. The phrase that leapt out for me was “my cup runs over.” I have been married for four months, and I lo…
Psalms for Everyone - The Secret of Life
Psalms for Everyone - The Secret of Life
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Secret of Life Psalm 16 As a result of a routine physical exam I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. Quite likely it would not develop into something actually life-threatening before I died of something else, and I might have decided to do nothing about it, but the d…
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - The Stairway to Heaven