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Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Day of Pentecost Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Day of Pentecost Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Day of Pentecost Acts 2.1-21 Romans 8.22-27 John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15 It is one of the striking features of the New Testament that Luke, Paul and John, so very different as writers and theologians, sing in rich harmony when it comes to the Spirit. At the heart of the music is the…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 1 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 1 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 1 Isaiah 40.21–31 1 Corinthians 9.16–23 Mark 1.29–39 Nobody in Corinth had seen it before. Nobody had thought of it. It wasn’t on their mental map, anymore than it is in our world. So when Paul wanted to tell them that as Christians, working out how to live in a pagan en…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Easter Day Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Easter Day Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Easter Day Isaiah 25.6-9 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 John 20.1-18 This Gospel reading is not, as one writer has suggested, ‘a sanitized story about a trip to a garden and a lovely surprise’. If Easter is in any sense the happy ending after a sad story, that is the least important thing…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Palm Sunday (Liturgy of the Passion) Isaiah 50.4–9a Philippians 2.5–11 Mark 14.1—15.47 ‘In spite of that, we call this Friday good.’ They didn’t at the time, but Jesus’ surprised friends, and some very surprised enemies, quickly found themselves telling the horrid and brutal tale…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday of Lent Exodus 20.1–17 1 Corinthians 1.18–25 John 2.13–22 Jewish jokes testify to the terror of the Ten Words from Sinai. Headache? Do what Moses did: take two tablets. Moses to the people: we’ve got them down from twenty to ten, but adultery is still in. Moses t…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 2 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 2 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 2 2 Kings 5.1–14 1 Corinthians 9.24–27 Mark 1.40–45 Naaman’s wife’s maid knew more about Elisha’s healing powers than the king of Israel. All the king could do was tear his clothes and rage against his Syrian counterpart, suspecting that a request for healing was a disgu…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 10 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 10 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 10 2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19 Ephesians 1.3-14 Mark 6.14-29 Two kings, a thousand years apart, and both in trouble at home. David brings God’s ark into Jerusalem, and is so carried away with dancing and leaping before the Lord that his wife despises him, remembering no doubt t…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 12 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 12 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 12 2 Samuel 11.1-15 Ephesians 3.14-21 John 6.1-21 Think of the Lord’s Prayer while reading Ephesians 3. Paul prays to the Father, from whom all fatherhood ‘in heaven and on earth’ is named, that he will give us . . . all things in Christ, because to him belong the power an…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 4 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 4 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 4 1 Samuel 3.1-10 2 Corinthians 4.5-12 Mark 2.23-3.6 Like a cathedral chorister, Samuel has been brought to live and work in the atmosphere of prayer, worship and pilgrimage. Considering the lively human interest, it’s surprising this story didn’t entice the great classi…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 11 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 11 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 11 2 Samuel 7.1-14a Ephesians 2.11-22 Mark 6.30-34, 53-56 Read 2 Samuel 7 through the eyes of a second-Temple Jew, and watch New Testament theology come into focus. This passage, read messianically at Qumran and elsewhere, fuses together four things. God promises David a p…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 3 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 3 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 3 Isaiah 43.18–25 2 Corinthians 1.18–22 Mark 2.1–12 Forgiveness is always shocking, even when it’s God who’s doing it. Indeed, that’s often the worst: in a paradox whose only solution is the depth of human pride, we shrink from the undeserved, and hence humbling, grace a…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 7 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 7 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 7 1 Samuel 17.[1a, 4-11, 19-23] 32-49 2 Corinthians 6.1-13 Mark 4.35-41 Right from the start in Mark, Jesus is up against it. Tempted by Satan in the wilderness; shrieked at by benighted souls in the synagogue; criticized by the self-appointed religious experts. Now the se…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 8 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 8 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 8 2 Samuel 1.1, 17-27 2 Corinthians 8.7-15 Mark 5.21-43 Mark folds one story inside another, like someone tucking a second letter inside a first. (A Markan sandwich, some say; but food is important within the story itself, so let’s not confuse the issue.) As in 2 Samuel, a…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 4.32-35 1 John 1.1-2.2 John 20.19-31 ‘Peace be with you’, said Jesus. And again, two verses later, ‘Peace be with you.’ Like a great bell, a single note with multiple overtones, the promise of peace tolls out across the world. Not just an inner pe…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday Before Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Second Sunday Before Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Second Sunday Before Lent Proverbs 8.1, 22–31 Colossians 1.15–20 John 1.1–14 Eyebrows will be raised at the reappearance of John’s prologue so soon after Christmas. But our surprise at the lectionary’s turns and twists is nothing to that launched upon the world by John’s fa…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 6 Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 6 Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 6 1 Samuel 15.34-16.13 2 Corinthians 5.6-10[11-13] 14-17 Mark 4.26-34 Once again the lectionary cuts Paul off just when he’s getting interesting. Next week’s passage starts at 6.1; what happened to 5.18–21, one of Paul’s greatest summaries of his life and thought? However,…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 10.44-48 1John 5.1-6 John 15.9-17 The desire for certainty goes very deep, and all of today’s readings look at that longing with sympathy, though the answers they give are as challenging as they are reassuring. In the Gospel, Jesus is at last givin…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B