Search Results
Enabling Church: inclusion of disabled people - Author's introduction
Enabling Church: inclusion of disabled people - Author's introduction
by SPCK - Gordon Temple and Lin Ball
Author’s Introduction: Living interdependently The life experience of those in the African bush is so different from that of those in Europe, as I discovered on a trip to Malawi and Uganda. I felt privileged to spend time with some of the poorest people on the planet: blind peopl…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 11 Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 11 Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Lectionary reflections - Year A Ordinary Time Proper 11 Isaiah 44.6–8 Romans 8.12–25 Matthew 13.24–30, 36–43 This section of Romans is part of a long and not always lucid discussion of life and death, slavery and freedom. In chapter 6, Paul has been explaining that our Christian …
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Easter Day Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Easter Day Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Easter Day Isaiah 25.6-9 Philippians 15.1–11 Mark 16.1-8 After all the horror, and the crowds and the noise of the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, this chapter of Mark’s Gospel starts quietly. We have already seen these women at the crucifixion scene, but we hardly noticed them there…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The First Sunday of Epiphany Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Baptism of Christ - The First Sunday of Epiphany Genesis 1.1–5 Acts 19.1–7 Mark 1.4–11 What is nothingness? We have no concept of it. Our image of it consists of the absence of things that we can picture and describe, which is very different from the nothingness before creati…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Restoring the Twelve
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Restoring the Twelve
by SPCK - N T Wright
Restoring the twelve Acts 1.15-26 The older I get, the more I dislike trying to follow the complicated instructions that come with new technology. I’m not what they call technophobic. On the desk where I am working there is a computer. It is linked to a cell phone which includes …
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 15 Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 15 Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Lectionary reflections - Year A Ordinary Time Proper 15 Isaiah 56.1, 6–8 Romans 11.1–2a, 29–32 Matthew 15.10–28 This strange story of the Canaanite woman clearly scratches an itch for Matthew’s readers. If you put this version and Mark’s version side by side (Mark 7.24–30), you w…
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…
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 - 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…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Restoration and Refreshment
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Restoration and Refreshment
by SPCK - N T Wright
Restoration and Refreshment Acts 3.17-26 I remember a hot, hot walk in the Scottish highlands. (It’s true: there are times, even at altitudes of 4,000 feet, when you can be just as hot in Scotland as anywhere in Europe.) We climbed Braeriach and Cairn Toul, the third and fourth h…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Last Sunday after Trinity Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - The Last Sunday after Trinity Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Lectionary reflections - Year A Ordinary Time The Last Sunday After Trinity Leviticus 19.1–2, 15–18 1 Thessalonians 2.1–8 Matthew 22.34–46 1 Thessalonians is almost certainly the oldest document in the New Testament. As in so many other things, Paul is a pioneer. It is hard for u…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 24 Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Proper 24 Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Ordinary Time - Proper 24 Exodus 33.12–23 1 Thessalonians 1.1–10 Matthew 22.15–22 The multiple echoes of Exodus 33 bounce around the New Testament. The first letter to the Thessalonians, held by many to be the first surviving Christian writing, offers another reminder that the go…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 8.26-40 1John 4.7-21 John 15.1-8 The writings of John, both in the Gospel and the epistles, are bafflingly determined not to come down on one side or the other of the ‘chicken or egg’ question. Which comes first, love of God or love of our neighbou…
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 16 Year A
Lectionary Reflections Year A - Proper 16 Year A
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Lectionary reflections - Year A Ordinary Time Proper 16 Isaiah 51.1–6 Romans 12.1–8 Matthew 16.13–20 There seems to be a bit of a break in the argument at this point in Romans. Chapters 9––11 are Paul’s attempt to give some kind of coherent shape to God’s activity in choosing fir…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 12 Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Proper 12 Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Proper 12 2 Kings 4. 42-44 Ephesians 3: 14-21 John 6: 1-21 The story of the feeding of the five thousand is found in all four Gospels, making it one of the best attested of Jesus’s miracles. John’s Gospel sometimes uses memories and stories that clearly come from different source…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
by SPCK - N T Wright
David Speaks of Jesus’ Resurrection Acts 2. 22-36 I watched the Press Gallery during the speech. For most of the time, the journalists looked bored. One was sharpening his pencil; another was varnishing her nails. Then, quite suddenly, all that changed. Notebooks were seized, sho…
Secondary Schools Assemblies Resource Book - Rise to the Challenge