Search Results
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Prayer and Peace
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Prayer and Peace
by SPCK - N T Wright
Prayer and Peace Ephesians 6.18-24 Imagine an eagle with clipped wings. Imagine a great oceangoing liner stuck in the Sahara sands. Imagine a basketball player with his ankles tied together. Imagine a railway locomotive in a ploughed field. Now imagine an ambassador wearing chain…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Praying in the Faith
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Praying in the Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
Praying in the Faith James 5.13-20 There are many things in life which look extremely odd to someone who doesn’t know what’s going on. Imagine watching someone making a musical instrument if you’d never heard music in your life. What, you might think, can such an object possibly …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 24 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 24 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 24 Jeremiah 31.27–34 2 Timothy 3.14—4.5 Luke 18.1–8 The passages from 2 Timothy and Luke 18 both envisage God’s people hanging on, sustaining their energy and sense of direction, even though things seem to go from bad to worse. By contrast, Jeremiah 31 sees through the lon…
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Recognizing the Body
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Recognizing the Body
by SPCK - N T Wright
Recognizing the Body 1 Corinthians 11.23-34 I once witnessed a moving reconciliation scene, and the most moving thing about it was that no words were necessary. A lay minister had been storing up resentments against the clergyman who was the senior pastor in the church where they…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Redeemed from the Law's Curse
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Redeemed from the Law's Curse
by SPCK - N T Wright
Redeemed from the Law’s Curse Galatians 3.10-14 I sat in the traffic jam for two hours. The road signs told me I was pointing in the right direction. From what I knew of the road it looked as though I was in the right place. But nothing was moving. The clock ticked slowly on; I w…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Requests for Prayer
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Requests for Prayer
by SPCK - N T Wright
Requests for Prayer 2 Thessalonians 3.1-5 Among all the strange dreams that visit us at night, one of the most frustrating – which happens to me quite frequently – is the dream of trying to run and discovering that it’s impossible to do so. My legs feel like lead: they become hop…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Roman Citizenship Comes in Useful
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Roman Citizenship Comes in Useful
by SPCK - N T Wright
Roman Citizenship Comes in Useful Acts 22.23-30 CAN YOU PROVE IT? The sign in the shop selling alcohol challenges all and sundry. I was once buying a drink in one of the small bars in O’Hare Airport in Chicago and was astonished, as a bald and bearded middle-aged man, to be asked…
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Scandal and Judgment
Paul for Everyone 1 Corinthians - Scandal and Judgment
by SPCK - N T Wright
Scandal and Judgment 1 Corinthians 5.1-5 When I was a boy, studying Greek and Latin classics, the texts we were given to study often had bits cut out. There were lines missing from poems, and sometimes entire sections; in one case (in the Roman writer Juvenal, I recall) a whole p…
Revelation for Everyone - Sealing God's People
Revelation for Everyone - Sealing God's People
by SPCK - N T Wright
Sealing God’s People Revelation 7.1-8 Just when you think you are nearly at the top of the mountain, you crest a ridge and there . . . is another ridge half a mile ahead, steeper than the one you’ve just climbed. That is how it feels to get to this point in the sequence of the ‘s…
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - Sheep among Wolves
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - Sheep among Wolves
by SPCK - N T Wright
Sheep among Wolves Matthew 10.16-23 I went to the fairground with my daughter. We stood in line for over an hour for one of the biggest rides; it looked fun, and everyone was excited and happy to wait for their turn. Finally we boarded the car. Up it went, up and up, higher and h…
Luke for Everyone - Teachings on Stewardship
Luke for Everyone - Teachings on Stewardship
by SPCK - N T Wright
Teachings on Stewardship Luke 16.10-18 Luke for Everyone 10‘Someone who is faithful in a small matter’, Jesus continued, ‘will also be faithful in a large one. Someone who is dishonest in a small matter will also be dishonest in a large one. 11If you haven’t been faithful with th…
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Thanksgiving For Gospel's Work
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Thanksgiving For Gospel's Work
by SPCK - N T Wright
Thanksgiving For Gospel’s Work Colossians 1.1-8 When Susan bought the house, there wasn’t much growing in the garden. A few tatty little shrubs; a mouldy rosebush or two; a tree that had been bent sideways by a storm and left to grow crooked. It was a depressing sight. A few days…
Luke for Everyone - Temptation in the Wilderness
Luke for Everyone - Temptation in the Wilderness
by SPCK - N T Wright
Temptation in the Wilderness Luke 4.1-13 Jesus was not Superman. Many today, including some devout Christians, see him as a kind of Christian version of the movie character, able to do whatever he wanted, to ‘zap’ reality into any shape he liked. In the movies, Superman looks lik…
Luke for Everyone - Teachings on the Sabbath
Luke for Everyone - Teachings on the Sabbath
by SPCK - N T Wright
Teachings on the Sabbath Luke 6.1-11 A relative of mine likes to tell of an occasion when he flew, with some business friends, to Ireland to watch a rugby match. When they got off the plane, there were no customs officers waiting to receive them. So two or three of them went into…
The Pastoral Letters - The Character of a Bishop
The Pastoral Letters - The Character of a Bishop
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Character of a Bishop 1Timothy 3.1-7 A friend gave me a lift in the car the other night. He’s a politician and has been a member of parliament for 25 years. But now he’s decided to run for a new kind of public office: he’s hoping to be a candidate to be Mayor of London. ‘Sudd…
The Pastoral Letters - The Character of Deacons
The Pastoral Letters - The Character of Deacons
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Character of Deacons 1Timothy 3.8-13 We had just begun to taxi out to the runway, and I was settling back in my seat and wondering what the airline might come up with for lunch. Suddenly the plane stopped. After a short pause, the captain came on the intercom. ‘Sorry, folks,’…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Challenge of Love
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Challenge of Love
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Challenge of Love 1 John 3.11-4.6 One of my favourite stories from the Old Testament is found in the book of 2 Kings, chapter 6. The context is one of continual skirmishing, and sometimes open warfare, between Israel, the northern half of the people of God, and Syria, their n…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Challenge of Faith