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Christian Resources Library
Notes on the readings
April to June 2006
April
| May | June
Sunday 2 April 2006
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Jeremiah 31. 31-34
This was a favourite passage among early Christians, echoed for instance
in the words over the wine at the Last Supper. The prophet looks to
a day when God will, as if afresh, make the closest of bonds with his
own. So he will fulfil our deepest longings.
Hebrews 5. 5-10
The writer seizes on a verse in Psalm 110 which looks to an eternal
priest, to be in the line of Melchizedek who appeared briefly and intriguingly
in Genesis 14. Jesus, he says, fulfils the role, coming out of the blue,
mysteriously, to do the work that God assigned to him, even at the cost
of his life. See the image as strangely poetic.
John 12. 20-33
Jesus here looks to his coming death and the momentous harvest of souls
to which it will lead over century after century and in countless lands.
- How can we maintain freshness in our relationship with God?
- Jesus is both dependable and mysterious: never must we take him
for granted.
- Jesus' death is his 'glory': for it shows him in all his inner divine
splendour, for
those with eyes to see.
Sunday 9 April 2006
Palm Sunday
Philippians 2. 5-11
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.
Mark 14. 1-15.47
The Passion as told in Mark (our oldest account) is bleak in the extreme.
It stresses Jesus' aloneness, abandoned or turned on by all. He treads
the path assigned to him - for us: it is the character of God.
- Can we bear to face the story Mark gives to us? It shames us before
it brings us any peace.
- Is a sense of abandonment a hard but necessary condition to a sense
of being loved?
- Jesus' 'success' or triumph is won only at the cost of extreme loss:
can we share it?
Thursday 13 April 2006
Maundy Thursday
1 Corinthians 11. 23 - 26
John 13. 1 - 17, 31b - 35
Sunday 16 April 2006
Easter Day
Acts 10. 34-43
After the conversion of a gentile, a Roman officer, Peter gives a succinct
outline of the importance of Jesus and the gospel that flows from him.
This 'witness' is the heart of the Church's mission.
1 Corinthians 15. 1-11
This passage gives the earliest known summary of Christian faith, centring
on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul gives it to testify to
his own Christ-given role as 'apostle' or agent of Jesus to make the
faith known.
Mark 16. 1-8
This is the oldest story of the resurrection, and we note that it gives
no story of an appearance by Jesus. Indeed, it is mysterious in the
extreme, with its strange ending. It is as if we are to put no trust
in mere 'evidence', but accept God's future by faith.
- Theories are all very well, but we start from the bedrock simplicity
of the Christian story and give thanks for it.
- We give thanks for the new life that Jesus gives and for its fruit
in Paul - and in us.
- Pray not to seek to 'tie up' our faith but to leave room for God
to show us more.
Sunday 23 April 2006
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.
30 April 2006
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. 36b-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.
Sunday 7 May 2006
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.
Sunday 14 May 2006
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.
Sunday 21 May 2006
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.
Psalm 98
This psalm is almost ecstatic in rejoicing at God's greatness and his
gifts.
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.
Thursday 25 May 2006
Ascension Day
Acts 1. 1 - 11
Luke 24. 44 - 53
Sunday 28 May 2006
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.
Sunday 4 June 2006
Day of Pentecost (Whitsunday)
Acts 2. 1-21
The Spirit means: God as powerfully involved among us - and the story
gives us a striking picture of such power that it has made its mark
on the Christian imagination, especially in its promise of being for
everyone.
Romans 8. 22-27
There is always something unfinished about the gift of God, and we look
for its fulfilment in a spirit of hope - a strong virtue, essential
to our Christian life. It enables us to yearn for the perfection of
all things in God's providence.
John 15. 26-27; 16.4b-15.
We live in the time between the life of Jesus and the fulfilment we
must hope for. We must therefore come to terms with the conditions of
this 'space': in the light of the past, we can see the shape of the
future but we cannot imagine its glory. God embraces the whole. The
Spirit is the name we give to God for this time between.
- Pray for discontent with the present state of things as we look
always towards God's perfecting power.
- Pray for the gift to rejoice in what we have received from God while
embracing the Spirit that drives us forward.
- We trust that we may share the vigour of our first ancestors in
the faith.
Sunday 11 June 2006
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.
Sunday 18 June 2006
First Sunday after Trinity
2 Corinthians 5. 6 - 10, 14 - 17
Christ's effect on everything is so revolutionary that we see the whole
world and over our live with fresh eyes.
Psalm 92. 1 - 4, 11 - 14
A psalm of happy praise of God for his goodness and faithfulness to
us.
Mark 4. 26 - 34
Jesus preaches - and 'plants' among us - the sovereignty of God: not
as a mere fact but as the marvellous truth that surrounds us. This truth
will spread and spread, often unseen.
- Pray always to sense the freshness of God
- Thank God for his reliability always
- Pray for the growing spread of God's word
Sunday 25 June 2006
Second Sunday after Trinity
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.
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