Ash Wednesday, 2020. Nigel Bunce On Ash Wednesday, we begin Lent. For forty days, excluding Sundays, we will follow Jesus from his ministry in Galilee towards Jerusalem, where he will be arrested and crucified. Inevitably, this places a pall of gloom over the season of Lent, which begins today. But we know that the culmination […]
Scripture: Matthew 4: 12-22; 1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 Is the call of Jesus’ first disciples a good model for discipleship for modern Christians? The Church tells us that we must give up everything to follow Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.” But most of us […]
Scripture: Genesis 2-3; Matthew 4: 1-11 We usually read the account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness on the first Sunday of Lent. The susceptibility to temptation is present within each of us. It is part of our human make-up. But humanity has eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good […]
Scripture: Matthew 2: 13-23 The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents is not just a Biblical story; it is our story today. The Holy Family became refugees, when King Herod’s fear and anger at the thought of a rival King of the Jews led him to carry out that atrocity. I was quite young when […]
Scripture: Annunciation; Matthew 1: 18-25 Two different predictions of the Christmas miracle In Luke’s Gospel, an angel announces Jesus’ birth, the Christmas miracle, to Mary; Matthew has an angel announce it to Joseph. Their world was one of myth and miracle, whose truths we can no longer recognize. But like Jesus, we are all part […]
Scripture: Isaiah 65: 17-25; John 8: 1-11 Throwing the first stone can lead to terrible consequences. Jesus avoided a woman’s death when he challenged the Temple officials on throwing the first stone at a woman taken in adultery. But this is more than a Biblical story. This Advent, my thoughts have been on what kind […]
Scripture: Luke 18: 9-14 Pharisees and tax collectors were at opposite ends of society in Jesus’ day: examples of fat cats and thin cats. The story has much relevance for today, when we consider social unrest around the world. In today’s Gospel, a Pharisee and a tax collector are praying in the Temple. The Pharisee […]
Shrewd or Dishonest? Scripture: Luke 16: 1-13 In many Bibles, this chapter is headed the Parable of the Dishonest Manager and in others the Parable of the Shrewd Manager. Or in some cases, steward, which is just another way of referring to the manager. If we read the parable carefully, we notice that the parable […]
Scripture: Jeremiah 18: 1-11; Psalm 1; Luke 14: 25-33 What a rich collection of readings today! There’s Jeremiah and the potter’s wheel; Psalm 1; and the difficult Gospel reading which my Bible titles, “The cost of discipleship”. The cost of discipleship In the Gospel passage, Jesus says that the mark of a true disciple is […]
Scripture: Luke 10: 25-37 Who is my neighbour? This is the crux of the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is just as relevant to society today as it was when Jesus told the story. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell versions of a story in which someone questions Jesus about eternal life or the […]