SPCK

Ensuring Justice NUMBERS 35:1- 36: 13 A Florida lawyer commented this month that it is becoming more and more common to hear news accounts of people convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death, then released many years later after it is determined (usually through DNA te…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Land, Promises and Politics

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Land, Promises and Politics NUMBERS 33:1- 34: 29 I have several friends in Beirut, including a former student who teaches the Bible in a Christian university (actually he is the guy who once threw me into the pool, as I mentioned in connection with Numbers 28–29). He has a hard t…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - On Mutual Support

by SPCK - John Goldingay

On Mutual Support Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone NUMBERS 32:1- 42 1Now the Reubenites and the Gadites had much livestock, very extensive, and they looked at the country of Jazer and Gilead: this was a place for cattle. 2So the Gadites and Reubenites came and said to Moses, …

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Unfinished Business

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Unfinished Business NUMBERS 31:1- 34 Two or three years ago, out of the blue, I received a phone call from a Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles. He had self-published a book called Twenty-six Reasons Why Jews Don’t Believe in Jesus, and he wanted me to make sure that his statements abo…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Negotiations and Love Songs

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Negotiations and Love Songs NUMBERS 30:1- 16 About a year after he got married, one of my students set off from Los Angeles for Chicago, driving the opposite way to the one recommended in the song “Route 66,” in order to begin graduate school. Only subsequently in an e-mail did h…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Eating with God

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Eating with God NUMBERS 28:1- 29: 40 A week ago, our church had a homecoming/harvest barbecue. Alas, I missed it because I had arranged to be elsewhere, but I was there in my imagination, partly because I know these guys know how to barbecue. As I write now, in my imagination I c…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - On Appointing a New Leader

by SPCK - John Goldingay

On Appointing a New Leader NUMBERS 27:12-23 The rector of a church I know has announced that she intends to retire in a few months, and the church is in the midst of the process for appointing a new rector. The present rector has been there for twenty years and has led the church…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Five Pushy Women

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Five Pushy Women NUMBERS 26:52- 27: 11 I just came across someone’s list of the five feminist biblical scholars who had most influenced him. The idea of “feminist” biblical scholars is that these are people who in their study of Scripture are conscious of their particular identit…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - How It All Goes Wrong (Again)

by SPCK - John Goldingay

How It All Goes Wrong (Again) NUMBERS 25:1- 26: 51 Numbers cause us some anxiety. I am often discouraged by the numbers of people in our church, afraid it is dying (the average age is quite high). A shrinking church will seem to be a failing church. So from time to time I glance …

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Beautiful Tents, Jacob

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Beautiful Tents, Jacob NUMBERS 23: 25 24: 25 As a boy I sang in a cathedral choir. One of my favorite anthems was “How Goodly Are Thy Tents, O Jacob,” composed by a Victorian composer called Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, a professor of music at Oxford, a prolific composer …

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God Doesn't Go Back on a Promise

by SPCK - John Goldingay

God Doesn’t Go Back on a Promise NUMBERS 22: 1- 23:4 People in traditional societies know there can be a strange power about blessing and cursing. A Nigerian told me about the way in his society people know that their enemies can use curses to cause harm to them, and the traditio…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - A Story about Several Asses

by SPCK - John Goldingay

A Story about Several Asses NUMBERS 22: 1- 23:4 I was once assistant minister in a flourishing suburban church that had a history of having notable rectors, one of whom was by then rector of one of the most high-profile churches in the country. I have never forgotten hearing him …

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Snakes, and Progress and Another Attitude to War

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Snakes and Progress and Another Attitude to War NUMBERS 21: 4- 35 Yesterday in church I was aware, as I sometimes am, that many people make the sign of the cross at certain points in the service. I was never taught to do that, and I would feel self-conscious about trying to do it…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Two Very Different Attitudes to War

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Two Very Different Attitudes to War NUMBERS 20: 14- 21:3 I write at what we hope is near the end of a war in Iraq but in the midst of a war in Afghanistan whose likely outcome no one can predict; both these wars relate to the attack on the United States of September 11, 2001. Bef…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - One Fatal Mistake

by SPCK - John Goldingay

One Fatal Mistake NUMBERS 20: 1-13 A few years ago a bright young church leader in England whom I knew slightly made one mistake, and his ministry was finished. It must have been devastating for him; it was devastating for people who had set their hopes on him as a symbol of some…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Provision and Purification

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Provision and Purification NUMBERS 18: 1-19: 22 The other day I was visiting a big church in another city. It made for an extraordinary contrast with my little church, where the pastor is the only paid person and the building feels very full if there are seventy people present. T…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Dealing with Ambition

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Dealing with Ambition NUMBERS 16: 1-17: 13 I am amazed that anyone seeks a position of leadership. We once had a new principal come to the seminary where I taught in England who unveiled his detailed and carefully thought-out vision for its future. The faculty took one look and s…

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Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - The Intentional and the Unintentional

by SPCK - John Goldingay

The Intentional and the Unintentional NUMBERS 14: 39-15: 41 In our church we usually douse the candles during the final hymn, before the ministers process down the aisle and walk outside into the main street, back into the outside world, to say goodbye to the congregation. One Su…

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