Resources - Written - Search Results
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Snake on Malta
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - The Snake on Malta
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Snake on Malta Acts 28.1-10 It was only when I got back from the walk that I realized I was foolish not to have taken a stick. The hills up by the Scottish border, where I was walking by myself, were known to have plenty of adders, and the fact that the previous year they had…
2 Corinthians - The Smell of Life, The Smell of Death
2 Corinthians - The Smell of Life, The Smell of Death
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Smell of Life, the Smell of Death 2 CORINTHIANS 2.12-17 ‘What does that remind you of?’ The smell came strongly to me, a dark, heavy but essentially friendly aroma. I thought for a while. Pictures flashed to and fro in my memory. I sniffed again. Then, as though from far away…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Sign of Life
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Sign of Life
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sign of Life 2 John 1-6 When I was doing research on life after death, and on what people believed about it, I came across some disturbing material from the nineteenth century. People had realized that sometimes the doctors made a mistake, supposing someone to be dead when th…
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Sign of Jonah
Matthew for Everyone Part 1 - The Sign of Jonah
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sign of Jonah Matthew 12.33-42 We all like to play at being amateur detectives. Every year another crop of novels appears, and sometimes plays and movies as well, in which a wicked deed has been performed and nobody can figure out who did it. Some of the greatest names in fic…
Luke for Everyone - The Sign of Jonah
Luke for Everyone - The Sign of Jonah
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sign of Jonah Luke 11.29-41 The great church is completely dark. It is almost midnight, and the little crowd outside the west door shuffles round and stamps to keep warm in the chilly April air. Then, as the clock strikes, the fire is lit, with a sudden glow on all the watchi…
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year C
Twelve Months of Sunday year c - The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year C
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 16.9–15 Revelation 21.10, 22—22.5 John 14.23–29 No Temple, no sun or moon, and no uncleanness either. A world without evil is, to us, as inconceivable as a world without sun and moon – or, for first-century Jews, a holy city without a Temple. In th…
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Temple and the Fig-Tree
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Temple and the Fig-Tree
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Temple and the Fig-Tree Matthew 21.12-22 Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to give his country a new lease of life. He decided to capture a city that none of his people had lived in before, and make it his capital, so that no one would feel either proud that their …
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - The Third Sunday before Advent Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday Before Advent Jonah 3.1-5, 10 Hebrews 9.24-28 Mark 1.14-20 ‘Once, only once, and once for all.’ The hymn that starts thus withdraws with the left hand some of what it gives with the right, hinting that Christ’s unique sacrifice is still somehow present in the e…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Thessalonians' Faith
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - The Thessalonians' Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Thessalonians’ Faith Thessalonians 1.6-10 ‘Well,’ I said last week when my son came home from a movie, ‘did you enjoy it?’ I knew the answer as I asked the question. The movie was OK, but not that great. If he’d really enjoyed it, I wouldn’t have had to ask. He would have com…
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Temple Tax
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - The Temple Tax
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Temple Tax Matthew 17.22-27 Jesus told them they were going to be fishers of men, not of money (4.19)! This is one of the most peculiar little stories in the whole New Testament. What on earth does it mean? One day the bishop parked his car, as usual, outside his house. He kn…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Third Sunday of Easter Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - The Third Sunday of Easter Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Third Sunday of Easter - Year A Acts 2.14a, 36–41 1 Peter 1.17–23 Luke 24.13–35 Today’s readings bubble over with the excitement of the new moment that has dawned in Israel’s story, in the world’s story, with the resurrection. It isn’t merely that God is offering a new kind o…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Third Sunday of Advent Year A
Twelve Months of Sundays Year A - Third Sunday of Advent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
Third Sunday of Advent - Year A Isaiah 35: 1-10 James 5: 7-10 Matthew 11: 2-11 One of the recently edited Dead Sea Scrolls (no. 521 of the Cave 4 collection, if anyone out there wants the reference) contains a portrait of the coming Messiah that, like Matthew 11, looks back to Is…
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - The Work of the Spirit
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - The Work of the Spirit
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Work of the Spirit ROMANS 8.5-11 Imagine rummaging around in an old attic and coming upon what looks like a standard lamp. It has a very strange type of bulb, but an elegant stem; and the shade, though a bit dusty, is quite attractive. You bring it down into the house and con…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - The Words of This Life
Acts for Everyone part 1 - The Words of This Life
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Words of This Life Acts 5.17-26 When our second child was born, we had decided on names. If it was a boy, it would be Oliver; if it was a girl, it would be Emily. Well, it was a girl (we got our Oliver later); but when we looked at her, we both knew she wasn’t Emily. Who was …
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Word that Goes to Work
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - The Word that Goes to Work
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Work that Goes to Work James 1.19-27 Human wisdom regularly produces proverbs. ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’ And so on. One of the proverbs I learned very early in life went like this: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will n…
Hebrews for Everyone - Tho Old Tebernacle Points Forward to the New
Hebrews for Everyone - Tho Old Tebernacle Points Forward to the New
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Old Tabernacle Points Forward to the New Hebrews 9.1-10 The taxi driver was resigned to things being this way for a long time. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’ve just got to put up with it. Boston will be a great city if they ever get it finished.’ We were stuck in what seemed like an im…
Mark for Everyone - The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod
Mark for Everyone - The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod
by SPCK - N T Wright
Mark For Everyone MARK 8.11–21 The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod... ...Think of your schooldays. What was your worst subject – the one you always dreaded, the one you longed to give up? Now try (if the memory isn’t too painful) to remember what it was like sitting in a desk wi…
Lent for Everyone Mark Year B - Tuesday Holy Week Year B