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Christian Resources Library
Readings April to June 2003
April
| May | June
13th April
Palm Sunday
Isaiah 50.4-9a
The passage is a haunting description of one,who suffers for the cause
of God. It is no wonder that Christians soon saw it as helping to make
sense of what happened to Jesus, and bringing it within the scope of
God's mysterious purposes.
Philippians 2.3-11
We should probably read this passage as an early Christian hymn, summing
up (rather like a kind of creed) the career of Christ: from God's highest
place of esteem and dignity to the degradation of death by crucifixion,
and then to glorious vindication.
Matthew 26.14 - 27.66
Matthew tells the familiar story of Jesus' arrest, trial and death,
much as the earlier Gospel of Mark had done; but adding his own vivid
touches, like Pilate washing his hands and leaving all responsibility
to the Jewish authorities, and then Judas' suicide out of remorse.
- That suffering can be beneficial and the only routeto some great
benefits is a hard pill for us to swallow. Here w ' e see the principle
at work on the grandest of scales.
- We wonder at the sweep of Christ's self?humbling and rejoice at
his vindication.
- We should identify in imagination with characters in the story ??
and make what we can of ourselves.
20th April
Easter Day
Acts 10.34-43
Peter gives a summary of the story of the salvation broughfby Jesus,
but the crucial point here is the universal scope of that work; it is
for gentiles as well as for Jews. A major step in theChurch's life and
the spread of the good news.
Colossians 3.14
To become a Christian is to enter a whole new sphere of life, with Christ
as its principle, indeed its true setting. This is the real fruit of
Easter.
John 20. 1-18
Two stories of Easter Day, telling first of the abandoned tomb and then
of Jesus' meeting with Mary Magdalene: a new world is born and the old
is put behind. And love and recognition are the marks of the new.
- To contemplate the story of Jesus is itself an act of thanksgiving
to God.
- We pray not to forget the revolution that being a Christian must
mean for us.
- Each of us should identify and cherish the events and experiences
that clinch Christian faith for us.
27th April
Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 4.32-35
The earliest Christian community in Jerusalem bound itself together
to the point of sharing all its property. Christians have not always
been happy with this generous impulse. Should they be readier to welcome
it?
1 John 1.1-2.2
This letter is a precious pastoral statement of the precious gift of
God to us in Jesus and the forgiveness that is so important a part of
it.
John 20.19-31
The story of Thomas reassures many who 'have not seen yet have come
to believe'. Faith comes by many routes and does not depend on proof
- which can indeed be its very opposite and its enemy. It is an act
of self-giving love.
- Christian common life needs to have practical expression: how far
can we take it?
- To be a Christian is to know the renewal of life.
- Pray for purity of faith, for the sake of God alone.
4th May
Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 3.12-19
Peter addresses a hostile audience in Jerusalem. He both excuses those
who attack and who killed Jesus (they acted in ignorance) and presents
them with the gospel hope: for God has vindicated Jesus, his great agent
for our good.
1 John 3.1-7
The promise of the vision of God himself is one of the most wonderful
in the whole of the Scriptures. Our destiny is no less than the closest
fellowship with God that we can imagine.
Luke 24.36-48
In this appearance, Jesus places his mission in the context of God's
age-old promises and his work for his people. But a whole new stage
of fulfilment has now arrived.
- We give thanks for the gift of faith given through Jesus but have
no space for
hostility to those who reject it.
- Pray for grace to grasp the promise of the closest intimacy with
God.
- We thank God that always he directs his goodness towards us.
11th May
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 4.5-12
Peter uses the evidence of a healing to support his claim for Jesus
as the key to salvation. Hardly enough by itself, it is a way in to
making the case for Jesus: small doors can lead into large rooms.
1 John 3.16-24
The intimate relationship of Christians with Christ centres on love:
his gift to us and our readiness to share and spread it. This is the
basis for our seeking after virtue: not an individual quest but a common
pursuit.
John 10.11-18
The key to this easily sentimentalised picture is the sheer value of
sheep to their owner. This accounts for Jesus' self-offering on our
behalf and for the sake of the growth of the flock. It is his God-given
task.
- Pray to seize small clues to lead us on to faith and love for God.
- Pray for the gift of openness to one another which is the beginning
of love.
- Thank God for Jesus' dying as an act of sheer generosity - even
for us.
18th May
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 8.26-40
This is the first instance of anyone reading the passage about the suffering
servant of God in Isaiah 53 as a picture of the meaning of Jesus. It
leads this foreigner (or perhaps marginal Jew) to baptism by the act
of Philip.
1 John 4.7-21
'God is love.' Familiar to the point of cliché; but a major breakthrough.
God might be chiefly just or even vengeful or endlessly demanding. But
it is not so. Love is the
key to his whole being, through and through.
John 15.1-8
The image of the vine sets out a picture of the Christian community
as, first, hanging together totally, and, second, as wholly dependent
on Christ who is himself the vine as a single thing. There is of course
a task and a way of life: to be fruitful.
- Give thanks to God for the strange circumstances that can bring
us to God.
- Can we accept God as totally marked by love?
- Pray to embrace our dependence on one another as Christian people.
25th May
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10.44-48
This passage marks a decisive moment in the Church's life: when Jewish
Christians were challenged to accept gentile converts for the first
time. The move was made - with difficulty. Such moments are always difficult
- down to our own day.
1 John 5.1-6
Obedience as a Christian is no burden because it springs from love,
which comes in turn from God's love for us made plain in the offering
of his life by Jesus.
John 15.9-17
The Gospel of John gives us only one command to obey and it is to embrace
all the 'duty' that we take on: that we love one another. It sound simple
but it only becomes so if it really embraces our whole way of life.
- Pray for courage to accept new developments where needed for the
sake of the gospel.
- Thank God for the simplicity of obedience that underlies what sometimes
seems the complexity of Christian life.
- Pray that we may accept ourselves as truly 'friends' of God, high
status indeed.
1st June
Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1.15-17, 21-26
The story of the choice of Matthias seems at first sight just a matter
of organization. But the point is to ensure the continuity of what Jesus
had set in motion. Christians live in 'the real world', and the task
is not to shun it but to fill it with the gospel.
1 John 5.9-13
This passage is a kind of summing up of leading themes of the First
Letter of John; so it is written in a set of brief headings. 'Life'
is a gift of God to be found through Jesus: only so can we truly relate
to God and each other as we are meant to do.
John 17.6-19
In this final chapter before the Passion, Jesus prays to God for those
whom God 'has given him'. In so doing, he binds them into his own union
with God; and nothing can be deeper or more thorough than that.
- Pray to see behind the ordinary things of church life to the things
of God that must fill them and give them life.
- Exclusiveness and superiority are not our way: but pray to accept
what God gives to us.
- Give thanks that God has united us to himself through Jesus our
Lord, who is God to and for us.
8th June
Day of Pentecost (Whitsunday)
Acts 2: 1 - 21
This spectacular happening knits past, present and future. It looks
back to the prophets and to God's age-old purposes. It shows his present
power among his people. And it assures the coming spread of the gospel
of Jesus to the whole human race.
1 Corinthians 12: 3b - 13
It is the Spirit of God himself that alone unites all in the Christian
community, for all their diversity. He alone inspires and validates
the rich variety of gifts which together give the Church its reality
and its strength.
John 20 : 19 - 23
The gladness of Jesus' followers is met by the gift of authority to
banish sin. Sin is, after all, whatever spoils joy and peace among God's
people.
- Give thanks for the power of God, waiting to be tapped by all of
us.
- We are to learn to identify and then to value our own particular
gifts.
- Pray to rejoice in the strong peace of God that banished all wrong.
15th June
Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6.1-8
The dramatic call of the prophet Isaiah takes us to the heart of what
it means to feel seized by God and to have no option but to respond
and give oneself to his service. It is an act of love, a real giving
of oneself, but all the same, there is a kind of glad compulsion.
Romans 8.12-17
For Paul, 'spirit' and 'flesh' do not quite mean soul and body but rather
twin forces to which we are subject: on the one hand we can be directed
towards God ('spirit') or else on the other hand towards ourselves and
the ordinary horizons of this world. God can draw us to himself and
then we truly know him as 'Father'.
John 3.1-17
Nicodemus cannot make sense of the idea of 'rebirth'. Jesus has to explain
the poetry: it is all about starting again from our foundations and
entering a new sphere of life that centres on God as made known, visibly,
through and in Jesus.
- God's call can be truly dramatic as an experience, but in any case
we pray for its
reality in our lives.
- We thank God that he raises us to such a high status in his company:
may we live up to it.
- Pray to recall the true meaning of our baptism and to live in its
light.
22nd June
First Sunday after Trinity (Proper 7)
Job 38.1-11
The long poem, chiefly a discussion between God and Job about the terrible
ills he has suffered, ends in God crushing him: who is Job to have an
opinion? Not a satisfactory modern answer, but we can think out whether
there is a point in it!
2 Corinthians 6.1-13
Paul has suffered much misunderstanding in his work as apostle, even
from those to whom he has been the bringer of the gospel and who owe
him so much. He feels the pain but tells them of his own God-given resources:
his love is not stifled.
Mark 4.35-41
The story of the calming of the storm by Jesus must have been heard
by its first hearers as a picture of the fact that they were to trust,
purely and simply, through all sufferings and torments that might come
to them. Jesus is greater than all such ills.
- Pray never to turn away from the sheer wonder and greatness of God.
- To stand for the gospel is to take risks: pray not to shirk them
out of fear.
- Give thanks for the calm that can lie beneath our sufferings.
29th June
Second Sunday after Trinity (Proper 8)
Peter and Paul
Zechariah 4.1-6a, 10b-14
This is an imaginative interpretation of Zechariah's image of the twin
olive-trees. Let them remind us of Peter and Paul, twin founders of
the Christian mission. At the time, they stood for somewhat different
emphases in seeing the faith, but from our distance we can understand
the key contributions of both in their day.
Acts 12.1-11
This story of Peter's miraculous release from prison is told in such
a way as to remind us of Christ's release from the tomb: it is Peter's
Easter. We can ponder how this has its own message for any Christian.
Matthew 16.13-19
Matthew is clear in his admiration for Peter and his sense of his key
role: not, realistically, as first bishop of Rome - that is a later
thought - but as the founding father of church life in its practicality,
with discipline to exert and struggles to endure.
- Pray to rejoice in the many-sided and universal character of the
gospel's spread.
- Pray to recognize the Easter element in our own experience of our
faith.
- We can share both in Peter's recognition of Jesus' mission and his
taking of the
burden of the church's life.
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