Gospel commentary index Lectionary Year A
On this page, you can find an index to all the commentary articles on the gospel lectionary readings for the whole of Year A, together with links to the video discussions between Ian and James. The articles will be reposted with updates during the year—but they are listed here for convenience and planning ahead.
Donald Trump’s Bible Reading and the Blessing of God
Yesterday, US President Donald Trump took part in ‘America Reads the Bible,’ a week-long event where the whole Bible is read in public, including by well-known politicians and church leaders. The aim of this movement seems laudable enough:
Just as Ezra read the Word aloud to the people of Israel (Nehemiah 8:1–3), awakening revival and repentance, inspiring them to rebuild the temple, and working with Nehemiah to mobilize the people to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, America Reads the Bible is a sacred opportunity to call our nation back to its spiritual foundations. Through a public, continuous reading of the entire Bible in our nation’s capital by our national leaders from all spheres of influence, we believe God can spark revival in individual hearts and inspire Americans to carry the Word forward in their lives and communities into the next 250 years of our national story.
And I think if, in the UK, ‘national leaders from all spheres of influence’ committed to a public reading of Scripture here, I would be very excited!
It appeared to be no accident that Donald Trump was asked to read a passage from 2 Chronicles (probably not the best-known book of the Bible) which included this verse:
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chron 7:14)
(You can watch him read the passage here.) This verse has been central for those wanting to see America rediscover itself as a ‘Christian nation’.
What is marriage for?
In our church we have a Spanish-speaking congregation, who join in on Sundays (where we have songs and readings in different languages and simultaneous translation) but who also have their own Spanish-language service on a Tuesday evening. We have been given funding for a Spanish speaking pastor, but also seek to integrate ministry across the congregations. So I preached at the service last night—and did so in Spanish! This is my sermon, in English and Spanish, and I conclude with some reflections on the challenge.
Today, I am going to be courageous! I am going to try to speak to you in Spanish, and I am going to talk to you about marriage! So please be kind to me!
The subject of marriage is very important—in the West, we have a crisis of marriage. Young people are not getting married, and fewer than ever are having children. As a culture, many have lost confidence in married and parenting.
When Jesus was confronted with a practical problem about marriage—the question of divorce and remarriage—his response was fascinating.
Instead of answering the question head on, he went back to the real question behind the question that was being asked. What is marriage? Why do we have it? And what was it for? To answer these questions, he went back to God’s intention in creation. So we are doing the same today.
When we read the story in Genesis 2 about the creation of the first woman, we must notice four things.
Jesus is our good shepherd in John 10
The lectionary gospel readers for the Fourth Sunday of Easter take the three parts of John 10 in turn; being in Year A, we are reading the first ten verses. You can watch the video discussion of the passage here, and it is linked below. The epistle is 1 Peter 2.19–25, a challenge passage both for what it appears to say about slavery, and the teaching on enduring suffering. The video discussion is here and also linked below.
John 10 this is a good example of where our modern chapter divisions (first created by Stephen Langton, the 13th-century Archbishop of Canterbury who helped to write the Magna Carta) hinder rather than help our reading, for two reasons.
First, John 10 actually straddles a fairly major division in the narrative. The events of chapter 6 are clearly situated near Bethsaida and around Lake Galilee—the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus walking on the water, and the dispute about Jesus as the bread of life. But in John 7.10, Jesus heads off ‘secretly’ to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles in the early autumn, one of the three Pilgrim Festivals (with Passover and Pentecost), and the action of chapters 7, 8 and 9 until 10.21 is set around this time. (Note the mention, for example, of the ‘people of Jerusalem’ in John 7.25 and the ‘temple guards’ in John 7.45; this is a reason why we might interpret the language of ‘the Jews’ (Judaioi) here as either ‘Jewish leaders’ or ‘Judeans’.) But in John 10.22, we have now moved to The Feast of Dedication (Hannukah), around two months later, without any note of the time passing. The intense focus on Jerusalem is one of the things that makes sense if we believe that the author of the gospel is a Jerusalem disciple, rather than one of the Galilean Twelve.
Enduring suffering like Jesus in 1 Peter 2 video discussion
The lectionary epistle for Easter 4 is 1 Peter 2.19–end. Peter sees out a challenge call for us to endure suffering following the example of Jesus.
But to make proper sense of this, we need to read it in its context, and notice the different language that Peter uses of us as slaves of God, living in obedience to him, and servants of others, submitting ourselves to their authority.
The gospel reading for this week is John 10, Jesus as the good shepherd. The video discussion is here,
and written commentary is here.
What can we learn from Herod Antipas?
John Hudghton writes: Jesus and the Rat King I am sometimes shocked at how little knowledge there is amongst clergy and congregations of the geopolitical context of Jesus’ ministry. Maybe…
Meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24
The lectionary readings for the Third Sunday in Easter ignore the particular gospel for the year, and instead cycle round Luke 24 and John 21: in Year B we have…
The impartiality of God’s love in 1 Peter 1 video discussion
The lectionary epistle for Easter 3 in Year A is 1 Peter 1.17–23. In this section, Peter begins by reflecting on the significant of the impartiality of God’s love—he is…
The gender of Jesus in the Book of Revelation
At the Society of Biblical Literature annual conference in Atlanta in 2015, I attended several papers on the Book of Revelation. The one that I have continued to think about—and…
Truth, history, the Church Commissioners, and reparative justice
Professor Richard Dale writes: KICKING IN THE CATHEDRAL DOOR How the Church Commissioners relied on bogus history to denounce their predecessors and vilify their own Church It is over three…
Having our doubts about Thomas in John 20
The Sunday gospel lectionary reading for the Second Sunday in Easter is John 20.19–31, which includes Jesus’ encounter with so-called ‘doubting Thomas’. It is the set reading for this week…
The experience of Easter
He’s gone. The, the tomb….the stone’s rolled away! Jesus….He’s not there….I’ve just run the whole way back…. I had to tell you. This is mad. Completely crazy. You’re all looking…
