Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
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 …
Today is the start of the liturgical season of Lent, and it has traditionally been a period of particular spiritual discipline for Christians. Though the Didache (from the end of the first century) recommends fasting for anyone preparing for baptism, this probably wasn’t settled as a pattern until the Council of Nicea in 325. A …
The gospel lectionary reading for the so-called Last Sunday after Trinity in Year C is Luke 18.9–14, the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector, and the epistle is 2 Tim 4.6–8 and 16–18. You can see the discussion of the gospel passage here, and of the epistle here, and both are linked below. We …
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 readings for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity in Year C continue through Luke’s gospel, and we now reach Luke 11.1–13 and Jesus’ teaching on prayer. (The epistle is Col 2.6–15, and you can find the video discussion of it here, and linked at the end of this piece, along with the video …
At the beginning of Lent, it is traditional to consider taking up a spiritual discipline for the season—or perhaps giving something up. I have just read a number of posts telling me of friends who are giving up on social media until Easter. (I personally find that odd; it is like saying ‘I am giving …
A little while ago I had a curious discussion with someone online. Commenting on one of the events for Remembrance, I noted that the prayer said by the Christian leader took the form of a general invocation of a deity, but wasn’t actually a Christian prayer. ‘What do you mean by a Christian prayer?’ …
The Lord’s Prayer must surely be the central devotional text in the Christian faith. Tom Wright (in his short book The Lord and his Prayer) comments: When Jesus gave his disciples this prayer, he was giving them part of his own breath, his own life, his own prayer. The prayer is actually a distillation of …
The Sunday lectionary gospel reading for Easter 7 in Year B is John 17.6–19, the central section of Jesus’ so-called ‘High Priestly Prayer’. The reading omits the introduction and opening sentences of the prayer, and stops short before the often-quoted ‘that they might be one’; I have previously commented on the use of this phrase, …
The Sunday lectionary gospel reading for Easter 7 in Year B is John 17.6–19, the central section of Jesus’ so-called ‘High Priestly Prayer’. It continues to weave in a range of interconnected ideas from earlier in the gospel, drawing them together into a picture of Jesus’ followers sanctified in the world and sent to proclaim …
I write a quarterly column for Preach magazine, in which I explore a significant word or phrase in the Bible, or a theme or section of Scripture, and the ideas that it expresses. At the end of this piece I list the previous articles I have written for them. Here I explore what Scripture says …
