SPCK
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 7 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 7 1 Kings 19.1–15a Galatians 3.23–end Luke 8.26–39 Elijah went to Sinai, to hand back his commission. ‘I’ve done all this for you, and now they’re going to kill me. I’ve had enough.’ Fear and exhaustion generated self-destructive depression. What was he expecting? A volcan…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 8 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 8 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 8 2 Kings 2.1–14 Galatians 5.1, 13–25 Luke 9.51–end ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead.’ One of Jesus’ starkest commands, this flies in the face of the sacred Jewish obligation to attend to the burial of one’s father ahead of all other duties, even saying one’s daily praye…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 9 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 9 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 9 2 Kings 5.1–14 Galatians 6.1–16 Luke 10.1–11, 16–20 Going out like lambs amid wolves hardly makes sense in any culture. Only Jesus could propose something so apparently hare-brained yet strangely powerful. Only he, knowing himself to be utterly vulnerable, yet protected …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 10 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 10 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 10 Amos 7.7–17 Colossians 1.1–14 Luke 10.25–37 If you like word-development, you’ll love Samaritans. Start with a geographical designation: people who live in the hill country, between Galilee and Judaea. Develop to discrimination: the pre-exilic Judaeans speaking of their…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 12 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 12 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 12 Hosea 1.2–10 Colossians 2.6–19 Luke 11.1–13 Part of the prophetic vocation seems to have been to carry the pain of the message in one’s own soul. Thus it was, at least, with Hosea. Married to a prostitute, he felt not only the pain of Israel but also the pain of God, se…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 12 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 12 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 12 Hosea 1.2–10 Colossians 2.6–19 Luke 11.1–13 Part of the prophetic vocation seems to have been to carry the pain of the message in one’s own soul. Thus it was, at least, with Hosea. Married to a prostitute, he felt not only the pain of Israel but also the pain of God, …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 14 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 14 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 14 Isaiah 1.1, 10–20 Hebrews 11.1–3, 8–16 Luke 12.32–40 Stories about a master going away and returning would have been interpreted in Jesus’ world as stories about Israel’s God, YHWH. He had ‘gone away’ at the exile, as Ezekiel describes graphically. At no point in the ‘p…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 15 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 15 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 15 Isaiah 5.1–7 Hebrews 11.29—12.2 Luke 12.49–56 This Lukan passage is high on the list of Things We Would Rather Jesus Hadn’t Said. It’s not gentle, it’s not meek and mild; it’s not even nice. Parents and children at loggerheads, in-laws getting across one another – what …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 16 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 16 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 16 Jeremiah 1.4–10 Hebrews 12.18–end Luke 13.10–17 Moses said he wasn’t a speaker. Isaiah said his lips were tainted. Ezekiel fell on his face. And Jeremiah says he’s too young. One might, perhaps, be a trifle suspicious if God’s call to prophecy met with too ready a respo…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 17 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 17 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 17 Jeremiah 2.4–13 Hebrews 13.1–8, 15–16 Luke 14.1, 7–14 Don’t sit at the top table, declares Jesus; start at the bottom and see what happens. If this is a parable, as Luke says, it isn’t advice about behaviour at dinner parties. In Luke’s wider context, its meaning is cog…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 18 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 18 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 18 Jeremiah 18.1–11 Philemon 1–21 Luke 14.25–33 Luke 14 has more than its fair share of ‘hard sayings’. Hate your family; give up your possessions. A nice clear message for the end of the summer holidays. And, to back it up, a solemn warning: such carrying the cross requ…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 19 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 19 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 19 Jeremiah 4.11–28 1 Timothy 1.12–17 Luke 15.1–10 In a recent article, a priest from another tradition described the cheerful mixture of spiritualities which made up his regular personal prayer. It was a vivid and moving account of a busy man nourishing and cherishing a s…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 20 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 20 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 20 Jeremiah 8.18—9.1 1 Timothy 2.1–7 Luke 16.1–13 The first thing to get clear about the ‘parable of the wicked mammon’ is that it is precisely a parable. It is not advice about financial management: Jesus is not telling people to cheat their bosses. It makes sense within …
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 21 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 21 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 21 Jeremiah 32.1–15 1 Timothy 6.6–19 Luke 16.19–end Among the many symbolic actions Jeremiah was commanded to perform, this one stands out as a sign, not of judgement, but of hope: hope for God’s restoration the other side of judgement. Resurrection hope, if you like. He i…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 22 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 22 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 22 Lamentations 1.1–6 2 Timothy 1.1–14 Luke 17.5–10 Paul, in prison, writes about power. Dangerous stuff, we say – tends to corrupt, and all that. Paul’s setting, and the work that got him there, guards him from misunderstanding. Tyrants speak of God’s power to validate th…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 23 Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - Proper 23 Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 23 Jeremiah 29.1, 4–7 2 Timothy 2.8–15 Luke 17.11–19 A sharp-edged summary of Paul’s gospel: King Jesus, raised from the dead, of David’s seed. The word ‘gospel’ itself, in Paul’s world, meant a royal proclamation; this explains why its heralds fall foul of the authorities…
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…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Last Sunday After Trinity Year C