Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
The Sunday lectionary gospel reading for Trinity 18 in Year C is the Parable of the Unjust Judge and the Persistent Widow from Luke 18.1–8. A surface reading, confirmed by most online comments on it, is that basically we need to be nagging God before he will answer our prayer! But a more careful reading, …
The Sunday lectionary reading for Trinity 16 in Year C is Luke 17.5–10, and it offers some serious challenges to our understanding and practice. (The epistle is 2 Tim 1.1–14, a passage full of fascinating ideas and startling metaphors; you can find the video discussion of that passage here, and video discussion of Luke 17 …
The Sunday lectionary gospel for Trinity 13 in Year C is the first two of the three ‘parables of the lost’ in Luke 15, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. We don’t go on to read the third, the parable of the prodigal son, since we read that …
In the gospel reading for Trinity 12 in Year C, Luke 14.25–33, we complete our navigation through this section of Jesus’ intermingled teaching and action until we hit the landfall of the ‘parables of the lost’ next week in Luke 15. The double focus on the crowds and discipleship, the drawing together of teaching found …
The lectionary gospel reading for Trinity 11 in Year C, Luke 14.1, 7–14, continues to engage with material that is unique to Luke, arranged in Luke’s distinctive order, and bridging the worlds of the original context of Jesus and Judaism and Luke’s context in wider Roman culture. (You can watch the video discussion of this …
The lectionary gospel reading for Trinity 11 in Year C, Luke 14.1, 7–14—though the whole passage should be read—continues to engage with material that is unique to Luke, arranged in Luke’s distinctive order, and bridging the worlds of the original context of Jesus and Judaism and Luke’s context in wider Roman culture. The passage comes …
The lectionary gospel reading for Trinity 10 Year C is Luke 13.10–17, a short but remarkable account, unique to Luke, of Jesus healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath. For video discussion of the issues here, together with a new discovery about the text, watch here. There are multiple layers to the meaning of this …
What is the connection between Jesus’ name and the number eight? Why was it significant that Jesus was raised on the eighth day? And what is the theological meaning of this for his followers? To consider this, we need to think about the culture of the first century and how people understood numbers. In the …
The lectionary reading for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity in Year C is the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12.13–21. It is one of several parables that is unique to Luke, and includes features that connect it with other Lukan parables. The video discussion of this passage can be found here (and is …
The lectionary reading for Trinity 1, Year C, is Luke’s version of Jesus meeting and healing the demon-possessed man in the ‘region of the Gerasenes’ (Luke 8.26–39). See below for commentary on this passage. The epistle for this week is Galatians 3.23-29, and you can watch the video discussion of that passage here, and the …
The Sunday gospel lectionary reading for the Second Sunday before Lent in Year C is Luke 8.22–25, the concise account by Luke of Jesus stilling the storm. (It is worth noting that the ecumenical lectionary has a different set of readings; apparently for the Church of England it was thought that there was not enough …
