Progressive reflections on the lectionary #34
Monday 9th September 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 8:27-38: The turning point of the whole gospel
There’s a
huge amount we could say about the gospel passage set for this week by the common
lectionary. Not only does it contain one of the most famous phrases
in the Bible - certainly a ‘top forty’ entrant, if perhaps not quite a ‘top
ten’ - but it functions as the key pivot point for the Gospel, packed full of
symbolism.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #33
Monday 2nd September 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 7:24-37: Reading the story of the Syrophoenician Woman with Strain theory
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #32
Monday 26th August 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 - Who's unclean anyway?
One of the
main differences between the gospel of John, where we’ve been for the last few
weeks, and the gospel of Mark to which we now return, is the way that the book
is written. ‘John’ is highly schematic, it has styles and themes, and uses
clever storytelling techniques.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #31
Monday 19th August 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 6:56-69: Who cares about popularity anyway?
The
several weeks that the lectionary readings have spent in John’s gospel is
nearly over, and with that, in the UK at least, the summer holiday season also
draws to a conclusion. Soon we’ll be back to Mark’s breathless prose and to
school too.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #30
Monday 12th August 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 6:51-58 - eating and drinking
The gospel reading this week is part of the ‘bread of
life discourse’ which is a continuation of the last couple of weeks
readings from the gospel of John. The discourse follows directly after the
‘sign’ of the feeding of the 5000, and this part of the passage has at its
heart one of the famous 'misunderstandings’ that are so characteristic of the
writing found in ‘John.’
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #29
Monday 5th August 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 6:35, 41-51: The bread of life - theme and variations
“Who are the Christians that really like the gospel of John?” My youngest asked me one day, after coming home from a trip away during which there had been an encounter with some street evangelists. “They kept saying, ‘the gospel of John, the gospel of John…’” I was told, as the whole conversation was played back in detail.
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Diana Butler Bass writes about the importance of politics in church
Wednesday 31st July 2024
| Author: ProgressiveChristianity.org
I always liked religion and politics. Religion and politics made my childhood Methodist church interesting. The grown-ups got mad when young preachers from places like Yale came in and told them that Dr. King was right and that we were killing people in a jungle in a place called Vietnam. Mostly, adults seemed polite and restrained in that old world. But you could count on a passionate preacher in a formal robe creating a family argument over Sunday lunch.
Even in my working-class, non-college educated neighborhood, we heard sermons quoting writers whose work I’d later read for myself — Martin Luther King, Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, the Niebuhr brothers, William Sloan Coffin, Thomas Merton, and Harvey Cox. Indeed, people talked about the Niebuhrs so much that I thought they lived in our neighborhood. Theologians were among the first intellectuals I knew (novelists would also be on this list).
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #28
Monday 29th July 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 6:24-35 Bread of heaven
There are
seven ‘I am statements’ attributed to Jesus in John’s gospel, among them ‘I am
the bread of life’ - which appears at the end of this week’s gospel passage.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #27
Monday 22nd July 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 Messing about in boats
The lectionary gospel passage this week is basically the second half of the sixth chapter of Mark, with the exciting middle bits removed. Those exciting middle bits being, of course, the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus walking on the water.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #26
Monday 15th July 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 6:14-29 - Enter the villain
The gospel passage this week, which narrates the
story of the death of John the Baptiser, takes us into the world of, arguably,
the biggest villain of the Jesus tradition: Herod Antipas.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #25
Monday 8th July 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 6: 1-13 - The rejection at Nazareth
My family say that I’m a Bible nerd, and they don’t mean it kindly. They say it not because I’m an expert in the Bible - I’m definitely not, but because I find these texts endlessly interesting. Any old passage seems to have a whole host of rabbit holes you can disappear down, the passage this week is no different.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #24
Monday 1st July 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 5: 21-43 - death and the daughters
This week the gospel passage is the version of the famous story of the woman with ‘issue of blood’, interwoven with that of Jairus’ daughter, in the gospel according to ‘Mark’.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #23
Monday 24th June 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 4:35-41: Storms and stones
There is a
good pairing, in the lectionary this week, of the ‘stilling of the storm’ from
Mark’s gospel, and the David and Goliath story from 1 Samuel. A ‘plain reading’ (surface
level) take is easy - something along the lines of having faith, trusting that
God can/will do miracles. In other words, that reading insists that faith alone
is enough - that solves all our problems.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #22
Monday 17th June 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 4:26-34 Mustard seeds, birds, and all that.
In the passage from Mark this week we have the
famous story of the mustard seed - preceded by a slightly less famous story
about sowing seeds. The mustard seed story is famous because its colourful:
Jesus basically says ‘the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, it starts off
tiny but then it grows massive and birds come and nest in it.’ On a number of
levels, the birds bit is a nice touch, I think.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #21
Friday 14th June 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 3:20-35 - Resisting violence while denying shame and honour
The Gospel reading this week is one of the more obscure, and even dense, parts of ‘Mark’ - it takes a typically concentric shape, beginning with Jesus’ family who are convinced he has gone out of his mind.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #20
Monday 10th June 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Mark 2:23-3:6 Keep the Sabbath special?
I’m not very old (depends who you ask, I guess), but I’m old enough to remember vigorous campaigns to ‘keep Sunday special’ and other initiatives that tried to stem the tide of ‘creeping secularism’. I suppose that perhaps there are similar initiatives today, but they don’t seem to make a ripple - that boat has well and truly sailed.
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #18
Monday 27th May 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 3:1-17 - Trinity Sunday
There’s an
embarrassment of riches for anyone due to preach on this Trinity Sunday,
The
readings offered from the Hebrew Scriptures are Isaiah 6:1-8 and Psalm 29 - each proposing dramatic visions of
the divine, then Romans 8:12-17 speaks of the Spirit of God,
while the gospel passage is ‘sonship’ focussed, telling the story of Jesus’ meeting with the pharisee Nicodemus and
the subsequent confusion over being ‘born again.’
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #17
Monday 20th May 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 Pentecost
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Progressive reflections on the lectionary #16
Monday 13th May 2024
| Author: Simon Cross
Luke 24: 44-53 An opened mind
The
lectionary, this week, has two routes one might follow - and I’ve chosen to
follow the readings which relate to ‘ascension’ which include the gospel passage from ‘Luke’ - the author of
which is also understood to be the author of ‘Acts’.
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