NT Wright
Simply Jesus - The Campaign Starts here
Simply Jesus - The Campaign Starts here
by SPCK - N T Wright
The campaign starts here Keep these spectacles on, then, as we come back to Jesus and to what he was saying about God – about Israel’s God. Jesus was going about declaring, after the manner of someone issuing a public proclamation, that Israel’s God was at last becoming king. ‘Th…
Simply Jesus - God's in charge now
Simply Jesus - God's in charge now
by SPCK - N T Wright
God’s in charge now The reason there were crowds with Jesus that day as he rode into Jerusalem is that there were always crowds around Jesus, from the beginning. He attracted them. The first thing most people knew about Jesus was that when he arrived in the village there was a pa…
Simply Jesus - The Hurricane
Simply Jesus - The Hurricane
by SPCK - N T Wright
The hurricane The gale of Rome and the high-pressure system of Jewish hopes. It takes one more wind to make the perfect storm. And, as in the original Massachusetts disaster, this one was of a different order altogether. To understand this great cyclone, this tropical hurricane, …
Simply Jesus - The Making of a First-Century Storm
Simply Jesus - The Making of a First-Century Storm
by SPCK - N T Wright
The making of a first-century storm A really good metaphor deserves more than one outing – as Jesus himself seems to have found, using and reusing ideas and scenes in his kaleidoscopic display of parables. Let’s have another go at the perfect storm, then, but now set in the first…
Simply Jesus - The Perfect Storm
Simply Jesus - The Perfect Storm
by SPCK - N T Wright
The perfect storm It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail, out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the Canadian border sent a strong disturbance through New England, whil…
Simply Jesus - The three puzzles
Simply Jesus - The three puzzles
by SPCK - N T Wright
The three puzzles Jesus of Nazareth, then, stands out in the middle of history. Tens of millions call him ‘Lord’ and do their best to follow him. Countless others, including some who try to ignore him, find that he pops up all over the place – a line in a song, an image in a film…
Simply Jesus - A very odd sort of king
Simply Jesus - A very odd sort of king
by SPCK - N T Wright
A very odd sort of king ‘As Jesus was going along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. When he came to the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began to celebrate and praise God at the tops of their voices’ (Luke 19.36 –37). The crowd went wild…
Simply Jesus - Preface
Simply Jesus - Preface
by SPCK - N T Wright
Preface Jesus of Nazareth poses a question and a challenge two thousand years after his lifetime. The question is fairly simple: who exactly was he? This includes the questions, What did he think he was up to? What did he do and say, why was he killed, and did he rise from the de…
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 - Christ the King Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Christ the King Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Christ the King Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14 Revelation 1.4b-8 John 18.33b-37 The ‘Feast of Christ the King’ was invented by Pius XI in 1925. Only in 1970 was it moved from October to the last Sunday before Advent. It slid into Anglicanism very recently, introducing three muddles. First,…
Mark for Everyone - Teachings on the Sabbath
Mark for Everyone - Teachings on the Sabbath
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 2.23–28 Teachings on the Sabbath... ...The twentieth century saw a great deal of secret police activity. The KGB in the Soviet Union, and the Stasi in East Germany, were legends in their own lifetime during the Communist period. Several countries in Central…
Mark for Everyone - Questions about Fasting
Mark for Everyone - Questions about Fasting
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 2.18–22 Questions about Fasting... ...When I was a boy there was a craze for ginger-beer plants. An uncle gave us the starter kit, including the bacteria that, by a process I never understood, produced the secret ingredient that gave the homemade brew its f…
Mark for Everyone - The Calling of Levi
Mark for Everyone - The Calling of Levi
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 2.13–17 The Calling of Levi... ...There are some jobs where you need a particularly thick skin. In many modern Western countries, one of the worst is being a parking attendant or traffic warden. All day long it’s your job to give people parking tickets, to …
Mark for Everyone - The Healing of the Paralytic
Mark for Everyone - The Healing of the Paralytic
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 2.1–12 The Healing of the Paralytic... ...Everyone was astonished, and they praised God. ‘We’ve never seen anything like this!’ they said . Most people don’t realize that this was probably Jesus’ own house. He had moved to Capernaum from Nazareth; the point…
Mark for Everyone - The Healing of the Leper
Mark for Everyone - The Healing of the Leper
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 1.35–45 The Healing of a Leper... ...Oscar Wilde said he could resist everything except temptation. In rather the same way, some people can keep anything except a secret. However much you say ‘You won’t tell, will you?’, and however much people say ‘Oh no! …
Mark for Everyone - Exorcism and Healings
Mark for Everyone - Exorcism and Healings
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 1.21–34 Exorcism and Healings... ...Not long ago there was a great disaster at sea. A tourist boat, loaded with cars and holidaymakers, had failed to shut its doors properly; the water began to pour in; the boat began to sink, and panic set in. People were …
Mark for Everyone - The Calling of the Disciples
Mark for Everyone - The Calling of the Disciples
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 1.14–20 The Calling of the Disciples... ...The poet John Betjeman describes in his verse autobiography how his father put pressure on him to follow him into the family business. The young John had no desire to do so; he wanted to be a poet. That’s just a st…
Mark for Everyone - Jesus' Baptism