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Gospel commentary index Lectionary Year A

Ian Paul | August 20, 2025January 15, 2026 | Biblical Studies | 15 Comments

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.

How can we minister in deprived areas?

Ian Paul | May 13, 2026May 13, 2026 | Book Reviews | 2 Comments

John Root offers this review of Jonathan Macy Sowing Seeds with Songs of Joy: Growing God’s Garden in Forgotten Places.

Jonathan Macy’s book began as a 13,000 position paper for the Church of England Evangelical Council on Privilege, Class and Poverty, which he has extended into the present book looking at the response to class and poverty by, very largely, the Church of England. It is written both from his own experience as a minister on the Thamesmead estate in south-east London, but also from interviews and discussion with a wide group of clergy in a variety of contexts. To this he also brings a shrewd and creative awareness of social dynamics, a very thorough biblical understanding, and great discernment of the processes by which class and wealth differentials play out across the church.

It some ways it still has the rough-hewn characteristics of a privately circulated position paper. An editor in a major publisher would have noted the occasional repetitions and of the text jumbled by having been re-processed, but the informality of style effectively expresses the creativity and informality of the church context that it comes from.

My own primary interest is in issues of church and race—but this book’s relevance is that race and class are intimately entwined, with the bulk of Britain’s minority ethnic population sharing the issues facing all poor or working class communities, and noting the observation of Sunder Katwala included in the Sewell Report that ‘Britain is doing better on race than on class’. Macy’s sub-title on the book’s commitment to ‘growing God’s garden in forgotten places’ is, proportionately, more relevant to the ethnic minority population than to the white English population. (His shrewd comment that ‘it can be more expensive to be poor’ (p 24) is paralleled by the title of Bashy’s rap cd on Afro-Caribbean experience ‘Being Poor is Expensive’, the focus of an illuminating inter-disciplinary project organised by Robert Beckford).

Jesus’ prayer to the Father in John 17

Ian Paul | May 12, 2026 | Biblical Studies | 12 Comments

The lectionary reading for Easter 7, the last Sunday of the Easter Season before Pentecost, is the first part of the ‘great prayer’ of Jesus in John 17.1–11. The lectionary divides the chapter into three parts over Years A, B and C, which either assumes that preachers and people have a good memory from year to year, or perhaps suggests that we think about the whole passage, but only read one section each year.

(The epistle is the two passages from 1 Peter 4.12–14 and 5.6–11; the video discussion of that passage is here and linked below, and the video discussion of John 17 is here and also linked below.)

Our chapter divisions do, for once, follow the logic of the narrative; the end of chapter 16 concludes the farewell discourse that began in John 13.31, and John 17.1 highlights this, as John turns from the disciples to speak to his Heavenly Father. (The phrase ‘he lifted up his eyes to heaven’ is a standard indicator of prayer directed to God.) But this part of the discourse, though formally directed to God, otherwise continues the form and style of the previous discourse. There continue to be abrupt changes of subject, and a kind of circling around from one subject to another, with summary apophthegms along the way. And the prayer is marked by a distinctive mix of past and future, so that things that, within the narrative, are future are referred to in the past tense:

Standing firm in 1 Peter 4 and 5 video discussion

Ian Paul | May 11, 2026 | Biblical Studies | 4 Comments

The lectionary reading for Easter 7 in Year A is split over two chapters in 1 Peter: 1 Peter 4.12-14; 5.6-11. The first part returns to the question of suffering, and both connects with previous teaching on suffering, and adds in new striking dimensions, in particular the mention of the Spirit.

The second part includes well-known encouragements to cast all our cares on God, because he cares for us.

In both, Peter echoes the teaching of Jesus, draws on the Old Testament, but also points to the reality of suffering for his readers.

The gospel reading for this week is John 17.1–11, the start of Jesus’ so-called High Priestly prayer.

The video discussion of that is here, and the written commentary is here.

What does Jesus have against us?

Ian Paul | May 8, 2026 | Biblical Studies | 21 Comments

Each year, during November, the Morning Prayer weekday lectionary takes us through the first few chapters of the Book of Revelation. In chapters 2 and 3, we have messages to the ekklesiae in seven cities of Roman Asia, the west end of what we now know as Turkey—and I happen to be sitting in one of those cities as I write, having just led a study tour around the seven. There are some important and challenging things to note about these messages.

First, these are not ‘letters’ as they are commonly called, since they do not have the features of first-century letter-writing. In fact, the whole of Revelation is a letter, with part of the introduction looking very similar to Pauline letters elsewhere in the NT. There is some debate in scholarship about how best to characterise this section, but the most persuasive suggestion is that these are royal proclamations from the risen Jesus who, having been raised, ascended and vindicated, exercises royal power from the throne he shares with the One seated there. And they are not written to ‘churches’ in the way we often think—institutions with buildings and leadership structures. They are addressed to the collective (and occasionally gathered) new Israel of God in Jesus.

Secondly, as is easy to see, the seven messages are striking in their consistent structure of seven main elements, including opening and closing phrases which are repeated word for word:

Loser! The Art of the Insult

Ian Paul | May 6, 2026May 6, 2026 | Life & Ministry | 49 Comments

Mike Starkey writes: During the 2018 Centennial of World War I, Donald Trump was scheduled to visit the Aisle-Marne American Cemetery in France. The relentless rain made helicopter travel to the Cemetery impossible, but aides informed the President he could be driven instead. Trump’s response, according to accounts from a senior Defence Department official, was that he didn’t want to visit the cemetery, as it was ‘filled with losers’.

On the same trip, Trump reportedly said the 1,800 US marines killed in the World War I Battle of Belleau Wood were ‘suckers’ for being killed. When reports of Trump’s dismissive language about dead American service personnel appeared in the Atlantic magazine, a media storm erupted. Trump denied the reports, but in 2023 his former Chief of Staff John Kelly confirmed that Trump had, in fact, used both slurs on the French trip.

What is beyond doubt is that the language of losers and winners has long been Trump’s characteristic benchmark for evaluating humanity, the trumpian equivalent of Jesus’s sheep and goats. In interviews, social media posts and rally speeches, loser has been his insult of choice.