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Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Fourth Sunday before Advent Mark 12: 28-34 Gaze on Jesus still in the Temple after hours of debate. Imagine him standing in the outer Temple courts where the doves are fluttering and goats bleating and penned ready for sacrifice. Five hundred years old, the Temple is the gold…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Fourth Sunday of Easter John 10.11-18 Gaze on the desolate mountains, the stony ground where sheep must scavenge for food, and the scant grass that only blazed in brief spring. Other dangers abounded, snakes lurked and wolves prowled and threatened the flocks and who was ther…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Fifth Sunday of Easter John 15.1-8 Gaze on a hillside covered in vines, their arms stretched out in rows, the branches clasped and intertwined. The bunches of grapes are pendulous, plump, ready to be picked. It is a glorious evening, and the scent of fruit is on the air. The …
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 1 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 1 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 1 Mark 1.29-39 Contemplate a solitary place where you can best pray. Where would you choose? Perhaps the sea shore, where you can hear God speak in the roar of the waves; or a wood where you hear him whisper in the rustle of the leaves; a garden, where you see his hope i…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Sunday before Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Sunday before Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sunday before Lent 2 Kings 2.1–12 2 Corinthians 4.3–6 Mark 9.2–9 Mark sees the Transfiguration as an anticipated fulfilment of the promise in the previous verse (‘Some here will not die until they see the kingdom of God come with power’). The thin curtain separating God’s dim…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The First Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The First Sunday of Lent Mark 1.9-15 Contemplate how passive Jesus is in this description: he acquiesces to baptism; he hears the voice and accepts anointing; he goes where the Spirit sends him, and endures. He is obedient. Contemplate being with Jesus in this wilderness. Excha…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 2 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 2 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 2 Mark 1.40-45 Gaze on this man, whom we know nothing about, except that he is a leper. We don’t know whether he’s old or young, rich or poor. Once someone was labelled ‘leper’, that was all that was important, and their individual identity was lost. His body and limbs a…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Palm Sunday Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Palm Sunday: The Liturgy of the Palms Mark 11.1-11 or John 12.12-16 Gaze on donkeys plodding down arid hillsides in the Middle East or North Africa – they can still be seen today. At first they appear in the distance indistinguishable from the boulders – only their movement betra…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 10 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 10 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 10 Mark 6: 14-29 Gaze on all the Herods of this world and all the gratuitous violence they unleash. Gaze on all the ethnic cleansing that has gone on down the ages – innocents massacred, women raped and the elderly displaced, staring at us every day from our newspapers, dr…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 12 Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - Proper 12 Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
Proper 12 John 6: 1-21 Gaze on the crowd expecting to see more miraculous cures and wondering who will be healed next. They are in for a shock, for instead they all become part of a miracle, for today Jesus is not concerned for their aches and pains but for their hunger. Taste th…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Trinity Sunday Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - Trinity Sunday Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
Trinity Sunday Isaiah 6:1-8 Romans 8.12-17 John 3:1-17 John Donne, the great seventeenth-century Anglican poet, said in his Litanie that the doctrine of the Trinity is ‘Bones to Philosophy, but milk to faith’.1 Bones and milk are both provided by today’s readings. The belief that…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fourth Sunday of Lent Numbers 21.4–9 Ephesians 2.1–10 John 3.14–21 The serpent slithers its way through myth and legend, poetry and art. Too potent a symbol to be ignored, some cultures have worshipped it, while others have feared and loathed it. Freud said predictable things…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - Jane Williams
The Third Sunday Before Advent Jonah.3.1-5, 10 Hebrews 9.24-28 Mark 1.14-20 Hebrews is convinced that the work of Jesus is completed in the cross. And not just the work of the Son of God, but the whole providential work of God in creating us in the first place. The cross of Chris…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Passiontide begins) Jeremiah 31.31–34 Hebrews 5.5–10 John 12.20–33 Imagine the simple request echoing along the corridors of church bureaucracy. It is passed from office to office, from secretary to secretary. It is left on voice-mails and e-mails, faxed…
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
Gazing on the Gospels Year B - The Second Sunday of Easter Year B
by SPCK - Judith Dimond
The Second Sunday of Easter John 20.19-31 Gaze on Jesus. He looks exhausted and worn out, as if he’s been on a long journey. But there is no mistake, it is certainly him. He’s appeared when he was least expected. Gaze on the disciples, nervous and jittery. What a state the discip…
Lectionary Reflections - Year B - The Fourth Sunday before Advent Year B