"Jewish religion is based on the home, Christianity is based on the church." The Sunday morning programme on BBC Radio Leeds is how I wake up before church. Then it's either get up immediately if I am a playing some instrument or other in the service or have a coffee and a lie in for …
Category: God
Matthew 22:15-22 4 questions 1) Paying Taxes to Caesar
The King’s defence After three parables where Jesus said the chief priests had been shown up before the people for rejecting God Matthew's account moves on to three questions to attack Jesus, followed by a question to them by Jesus. I have mentioned a few times in this series how Matthew likes to group things …
Continue reading Matthew 22:15-22 4 questions 1) Paying Taxes to Caesar
Holy nudity?
Nakedness and the Bible. Let's get the Jesus question out of the way first. Jesus is depicted implicitly as naked five times in scripture. The first is his birth, we are all born naked, the second at his circumcision, then his baptism, crucifixion and his resurrection. The resurrection is explicit, we are told the grave …
The wedding — Matthew 22:1–14
The King’s judgements Jesus cleared the temple and the chief priests, who ran the temple, did not like this, so on Jesus' next visit they ask Jesus where his authority to do this came from. Instead of giving a direct answer Jesus tells three parables against them — in the first, the parable of the …
The truth
Whistle blowers and the church When I was in secondary school one of the teams we played against was from the Verona Fathers, a Roman Catholic seminary where boys were being trained as prospective priests. We cheered our team and jeered theirs during the game but before and after the game things were OK between …
Vineyard — Matthew 21:33–46
The King’s judgements Following Jesus clearing the temple of market traders, Jesus was asked by the Temple authorities where he got his authority. The answer seems to be evasive until you realise that the three parables that follow form the bigger part of the answer. The first was covered in the last post, the gist …
God
40 Names of Jesus in 40 days of Lent — Day 45 Trinity 2022 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was …
It’s not what you say, it’s what you do — Matthew 20:28–32
The King’s judgements Matthew has a thing about the number 3 when it comes to parables. The parables in chapters 8 and 9 are grouped in three groups of three, and here there are another three parables. The context is that Jesus has come back into Jerusalem. The last time he overturned the tables of …
Continue reading It’s not what you say, it’s what you do — Matthew 20:28–32
The sender of the Holy Spirit
40 Names of Jesus in 40 days of Lent — Day 44 Pentecost 2022 John the Baptist saud: 11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, …
Reality, testimonies and eternity
Psalm 119 The hidden courtroom in Surrey County Hall, in the County Council's Kingston headquarters, where Downton Abbey has been filmed.Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) Licence. Copyright Surrey News. Psalm 119 is a great acrostic poem, the longest psalm and also the longest chapter in the Bible. The 22 stanzas …
Making an ass of myself 