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Christian Resources Library
Notes on the readings
January to March 2006
January
| February | March
Sunday 1 January 2006
Epiphany of the Lord
Isaiah 60. 1 - 6
Originally an ecstatic statement of hope for the Israel of the prophet's
day, Christians read these words as a foreshadowing of the happiness
of the coming of Christ and his meaning for the whole world.
Ephesians 3. 1 - 12
It was a major initiative when the Christian movement first stepped
out of its original Jewish setting to offer its invitation to all people;
the apostle Paul was the man of courage who chiefly achieved it. We
are among those who owe our faith to his work.
Matthew 2. 1 - 12
Full of Old Testament echoes, the story of the Wise Men moves us by
its joining of splendour and simplicity, earthly repute (magi were the
intellectuals of the time) with timeless and divine wonder.
- We pray to join realism about the world with boundless hope for
the future under God.
- How hard it is - still - to embrace outside our own familiar circle
and culture.
- Beneath the complexity of things, there are simple choices, simple
claims to our love.
Sunday 8 January 2006
Baptism of Christ
Genesis1. 1 - 5
In the Old Testament, water is commonly a symbol of disorder, chaos
and danger. Out of it, God brings order and, ultimately, life. So the
creation story opens our minds to the truth of baptism, when, through
Christ, we start on the way of assured 'new creation'.
Acts 19. 1 - 7
Some years into the Christian mission, Paul comes across followers of
the long dead John the Baptist. Paul enables them to complete what John
had begun, as they receive baptism in Jesus' name.
Mark 1. 4 - 11
In Mark's Gospel, Jesus' baptism opens the story and strikes us with
force. This act of God unites heaven and earth: salvation is under way,
and Jesus is its accredited agent. The drama has begun.
- Can we absorb the depth of the symbolism of water, focused here
on Jesus but with meaning for the whole of creation?
- We pray for the many for whom water is a scarce luxury: is not baptism
also a privilege to recall with gratitude?
- Give thanks to God for Jesus as the chosen one who brings God to
us and us to God
Sunday 15 January 2006
Second Sunday of Epiphany
1 Samuel 3. 1 0- 10
the moving story of the call of Samuel to the service of God as the
great prophet in Israel is a familiar story of the mystery of God's
call to us, whatever form it takes.
Revelation 5. 1 - 10
Revelation, set in heaven, tells us about our own lives.
The picture here is one of unbearable tension: will the scroll (and
so its vital meaning) ever be opened? Will God ever make his truth known?
Jesus performs the deed and our salvation can take its course.
Psalm 139. 1 - 5, 12 - 18
We receive a wonderful expression of the intimacy and care of God's
love for us.
John 1. 43 - 51
This is John's story of the call by Jesus of early followers. HE refers
at the end to the story in Genesis of Jacob's ladder linking earth and
heaven. Jesus is the true 'ladder' fulfilling that very role.
- God's 'call takes many forms, some dramatic, some simple, but all
are insistent. We need to respond to what is asked of us, willingly
and faithfully.
- We all feel longing that we shall one day, somehow, 'understand'
-the world, ourselves, God. How does what we see of Jesus help us
to do that?
- To 'follow' Christ is to be ready for a deepening of our grasp of
things and of our own role in his purpose.
Sunday 22 January 2006
Third Sunday of Epiphany
Genesis 14. 17 - 20
Melchizediek appears only briefly and has always been seen as a mysterious
figure. Christians came to see him as one among many who foreshadow
Jesus in one way or another. He brought out bread and wine: so he can
be seen as a poetic sign of the Eucharist which Jesus would give as
our great priest.
Revelation 19. 6 - 10
A wedding-feast is a powerful symbol of the fulfilment we all desire
and look for. Jesus and all of us who are his followers are to be assured
of such consummation of out hopes and desires.
John 2. 1 - 11
This first 'sign' in the Gospel of John is a symbol of the new ser-up
which Jesus brings: the wine of the Gospel takes over from the water
that represents Judaism - satisfactory in it way but needing radical
renewal.
- Pray for the gift of hope that our earthly worship may life us to
the God of whom they speak.
- we are to refuse to rest content with our present sense of God and
to be ready to 'see' more.
- Is there not always scope for our daily plod to be raised to a new
level of meaning?
Sunday 29 January 2006
Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Deuteronomy 18. 15 - 20
Old Israel was full of hope that God would send faithful messengers
to his people, leading them in righteous paths.
1 Corinthians 8. 1 - 13
In the world of Paul, meat at the butchers usually came via prior sacrifice
in a temple to a pagan God. Paul says that as these gods are nonsense,
Christians should eat without fear, but if they feel queasy we should
give them our sympathy. Parallels today?
Mark 1. 21 - 28
Jesus' fight against all evil shows itself here in the healing of one
who is mentally sick.
- Pray to recognise genuine spokesmen for God.
- How far should we indulge people's scruples?
- Pray for all in mental turmoil
Sunday 5 February 2006
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple
Malachi 3. 1 - 5
The final prophet in the Old Testament is poised on the brink of great
new disclosure, which will both delight and terrify. Here is always
cost and danger in receiving what is both new and good.
Hebrews 2. 14 - 18
The letter to the Hebrews insists more that any other book in the new
Testament on Jesus being 'one of us' - fully human and so able to fulfil
his unique task of representing us before God.
Luke 2. 22 - 40
Luke is keen not to make too much of a divide between old Israel and
the new set-up which Jesus inaugurates. So in his infancy he fulfils
the old rules, and Simeon tells what is to come. For us too there is
never a clean break with our past, but we take it and renew it in our
growth towards God.
- Can we incorporate disaster and crisis into our hope for what is
new? Our tragedies and setbacks are the raw material of our growth
- Pray to see Jesus not as remote and 'different' but as accessible
to us as we are.
- Pray for all who assist us as we grow towards God.
Sunday 12 February 2006
Epiphany 6
2 Kings 5. 1 - 14
It is a favourite spectator sport to see important people put in their
place, even humiliated. But it does none of us any harm to be humbled
from time to time: provided it makes us get real with God.
1 Corinthians 9. 24 - 27
In our inner lives, as in our physical selves, discipline - about prayer
and service - is a necessity for our health
I mark 1. 40 - 45
Socially undesirable ills and features are the hardest to accept. Jesus
knocks away such taboos - we should do the same.
- Pray for the grace of humility
- We resolve to grow in self-discipline in faith.
- Pray for the inclusive acceptance of those around us.
Sunday 19 February 2006
Second Sunday before Lent
Proverbs 8. 1, 22-31
In a poetic passage, God's 'wisdom' speaks as his helper in creation.
The point is that the world is, despite some appearances, neither chaotic
nor random: it is the fruit of God's infinite wisdom.
Colossians 1. 15 - 20
In this passage, Jesus is seen as stepping into the shoes of 'wisdom'
as depicted in a passage like that in Proverbs8: he is the mediator
of God's purposes from beginning to end, and our God come to us 'Jesus-shaped'.
Psalm 104. 25 - 37
We are urged to praise God for the wonders of his creation and never
to cease from loving amazement.
John1. 1 - 14
John uses the image of speech ('word'), which, like wisdom, stands for
God's deliberate purpose in all that he has done, always and in every
way. Jesus brought this glorious purpose before our eyes and we behold
it with gladness.
- Pray to see the world as bearing the mark of God's good purpose.
- Jesus makes God known to us and through him we 'see' God.
- We thank God for the order of his gift and resolve not to frustrate
it.
Sunday 26 February 2006
Sunday Next before Lent
2 Kings 2. 1-12
Together with Moses, Elijah was one of the two greatest figure in the
Old Testament, and the New took care to show that Jesus was greater
than both (see today's Gospel). Here we have the story of Elijah's 'special
treatment' by God as he is carried direct to heaven, with his disciple
Elisha left as his heir as God's true prophet to his people in hard
times.
2 Corinthians 4. 3-6
Paul writes as Christ's 'apostle' or agent. In Christ, God brings to
its climax the work of bringing 'light' to the world that goes back
to creation itself, and light stands for all that is true, honest and
good.
Mark 9. 2-9
The experience of the Transfiguration is a foretaste of Jesus' high
status as God's full representative for all humankind becoming plain
in his death and resurrection.
- Pray for the gift to discern true from false spokespersons on God's
behalf.
- Pray to see below the surface - and so to recognize in Christ the
full glory of God.
- Pray to hold on to our experience of the depth of Christ's true
self.
Wednesday 1 March 2006
Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58. 1 - 12
2 Corinthians 5. 20b - 6.10
John 8. 1 - 11
Sunday 5 March 2006
First Sunday of Lent
Genesis 9. 8-17
The idea of the 'covenant' between God and his people finds here its
first clear example. We think of ourselves as God's servants, but he
is equally bound to us, for our eternal good.
1 Peter 3. 18-22
Noah and family were saved 'through water': the writer sees this as
a picture of Christian baptism, our route to salvation in face of a
godless and directionless world.
Mark 1. 9-15
The baptism of Jesus is not like ours: it is the giving of his unique
role on God's behalf, as his agent to right all wrongs and make his
rule plain, with all urgency.
- Water threatens but also saves life: pray to know God as our dependable
rescuer.
- Give thanks for baptism as the route to our deepest good.
- Let Jesus' preaching of God's rule keep ringing in our ears.
Sunday 12 March 2006
Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 17. 1-7, 15-16
God's covenant with Abraham marks out our faith as being rooted in real
people who follow one another through real time, and being together
through thick and thin.
Romans 4. 13-25
Paul saw the essence of God's relationship with Abraham to be one of
faith -- trust in God, come what may, with salvation as God's doing
not man's. The birth of Isaac, against all natural odds, was a picture
of the death and lie of Jesus who, one more against all odds, unites
us to God through his dying and rising.
Mark 8. 31-38
Jesus' picture of what 'following' him entails is uncompromising: there
must be a real choice to enter the new world which he makes available,
with its unknown risks and surrenders of life's familiar props.
- Thank God for his constant faithfulness to his people.
- We rejoice to be joined to God by faith, not by any power of our
own to earn his
love.
- What does it mean for us to 'take up the cross'?
Sunday 19 March 2006
Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 20. 1-17
The Ten Commandments have a venerable place in Christian life and once
stood in the sanctuary of all our churches. They began as the core of
the law of Israel long ago. Now, some of them are basic morality, others
need interpreting and discussing to apply to modern life.
1 Corinthians 1. 18-25
The death of Jesus seems at first sight to be pure tragedy and to make
anything else of it seems foolish; but look again, its very weakness
is the sign of God's wisdom.
Psalm19
The psalm invites us to praise God for his moral provision for the good
of our lives together.
John 2. 13-22
The so-called 'cleansing' of the Temple is put forward in John's Gospel
as a sign pointing to Jesus' own death and resurrection, whereby he
does fully the task of linking us to God which the old Temple aspired
to achieve.
- The Ten Commandments point to simple decency. Ought we not to aim
higher than that?
- From Christ's weakness God's power comes before our eyes.
- Jesus occupies for us the central place given to the Temple in old
Judaism and meets all our needs before God.
Sunday 26 March 2006
Mothering Sunday
Exodus 2. 1?10
Male Hebrew babies had to be drowned in the Nile, so~ Moses' mother
acted shrewdly to save his life. In due course, he in turn was God's
agent to save his people from slavery. It is a picture of Jesus' role
for us all: salvation hangs by a (golden) thread, does it not?
Colossians 3. 12?17
Here is Paul's ideal picture of the Christian community: a generous,
kindly people, devoted to God's praise, all for the sake of Christ.
Luke 2. 33?35
Like the mother of Moses, Mary has a crisis ahead. Jesus will be a man
at risk as well as the giver of life and freedom.
- Is it hard to accept that the triumph of good is never plain sailing?
- How hard it is for church life to live up to so attractive an ideal.
- Pray for grace to share Mary's pain and suffering for the ultimate
good of us all.
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