SPCK
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Second Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Second Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: THURSDAY Matthew 12.1–21; focused on 12.15 –21 To get the full flavour of what’s going on here, you should really read not just Matthew 12, but Isaiah 42 as a whole. Actually, even that isn’t really enough, because Isaiah 42 is a key passage within a much larger unity, Is…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: WEDNESDAY Matthew 11; focused on 11.1–19 Jesus is here being put on the spot. Today, when interviewers try to force politicians to say things they didn’t really want to let out, they tend to prevaricate, to ignore the question, or even to tell downright lies. We have pri…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: TUESDAY Matthew 10.16 – 42; focused on 10.16 –25 Let’s stand on the edge of the crowd and listen as Jesus gives his twelve disciples these next instructions. Some of the Twelve are looking decidedly uncomfortable, but there’s nothing they can do about it. Jesus has called…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 2 of Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 2 of Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: MONDAY Matthew 10.1–15 Every so often, usually just after a change of government, there is a spate of political autobiographies, as former leaders do their best to cash in on the public’s hunger to find out ‘the inside story’. One of the most fascinating elements of such …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: SUNDAY Psalm 121 1 I must have sung this Psalm a hundred, perhaps a thousand, times before I stopped to think about the famous first verse. (I have seen it carved above doors and mantelpieces in mountainous parts of the country, sometimes in Latin.) ‘I lift my eyes to …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
EK 1: SATURDAY Matthew 17.1– 9 Imagine yourself as a fifth member of the party, going up the mountain with Jesus leading the way, Peter beside him, and James and John following too. The last days and weeks have been utterly bewildering. Nothing like this has happened to you befor…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: THURSDAY Matthew 8; focused on 8.23 –34 Let’s go on that boat and think what it was like. It’s a small lake, as lakes go, but sudden storms come sweeping down from the hills. All of us in the boat know of people who’ve been drowned there, of whole boats that have been swa…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: FRIDAY Matthew 9; focused on 9.9 –17 Those of us who now use computers take it for granted that they will have a large internal memory. This is stored on what is called a ‘hard disk’, as opposed to what we used to have, back in the 1980s, which was a ‘floppy disk’, which …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: WEDNESDAY Matthew 7; focused on 7.15 –23 One of the great lies of our time is to suppose that because Jesus brings forgiveness, and urges us to be forgiving people, meek and gentle, there is no sharp edge to his message. To hear some people, you’d think the whole of the C…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: TUESDAY Matthew 6; focused on 6.5 –15 At the very heart of Jesus’ vision of the kingdom – of heaven’s kingdom coming on earth – we have a picture of one person, secretly in their own room, praying. Prayer is a mystery. I’ve often heard people saying, with a sneer, ‘It doe…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Monday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: MONDAY Matthew 5; focused on 5.1–12 The worst mistake we can make about this famous and stunning passage is to see it as a list of rules (you’ve got to try hard to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, and so on). It isn’t. It’s a royal announcement that God is turning…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 1 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: SUNDAY Psalm 32 A long time ago, when I had just learnt to drive, I ran out of petrol on a lonely country road. I gratefully accepted some fuel from a nearby farmer. What he didn’t tell me was that it was a mixture designed not for a car, but for a lawn mower. I got back …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 4.1–11 It starts with a flicker of thought, a tiny little idea that darts across the mind while you’re doing something else. It seems harmless, just one of the millions of things that the human brain comes up with. But then it returns, a minut…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
HURSDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 3; focused on 3.1–12 1 When a couple get married, there is so much to learn. Not so much the immediate and obvious things – favourite foods, musical tastes, good ideas for holidays, and so on. There are deeper things that make each one of us m…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Ash Wednesday
Lent for Everyone Year A - Ash Wednesday
by SPCK - N T Wright
ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 1-2; focused on 1.18-25 We know very, very little about Joseph. Some legends make him an old man who died while Jesus was growing up, but we don’t know that for sure. We know he worked in the building trade, including what we call carpentry. We know he could…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 4 Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 4 Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 4 - Year A Deuteronomy 11.18–21, 26–28 Romans 1.16, 17; 3.22b–31 Matthew 7.21–29 These are frightening words from Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. He imagines a group of people who truly believe they are his followers and yet are mistaken. These people perform mighty acts …
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A