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| End the Week with the DTP - May 20, 2011 | 20th May 2011 | View Full Story | Download |
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'See Athens and die' might have been one of the tourist slogans of the first century AD. A glorious past lay behind the city, the birthplace of our understanding of art, philosophy and politics in a unique flowering that lasted just fifty years in the late 5th century BC. But since then it had faded. By the time Paul visited, around 51AD, it had virtually become a museum, celebrated for what it had been and no longer was. Filled with derelict Temples and decaying sculptures, grass grew in its main streets and rats infested its houses. Elaborately carved coffins were one of its main exports. It was a city stuck in the past, looking backwards, in love with death. (more...) |
| End the Week with the DTP - May 13, 2011 | 13th May 2011 | View Full Story | Download |
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'Alleluia! Christ is Risen!' Our celebrations of Easter day still echo the wild joy of the early Church at the astounding and mind-blowing truth of the resurrection of Jesus, the conquest of death, and vanquishing of evil. The early Christian community in Jerusalem, caught in the euphoria of the aftermath of resurrection, proclaimed the message and lived the life, as we have seen in the readings set for the last few weeks (Acts 2.22-32, 36-41, Easter 2 & 3, Acts 2.42-end, Easter 4). (more...) |
| End the Week with the DTP - May 6, 2011 | 6th May 2011 | View Full Story | Download |
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This week I'm going to do something slightly different, and instead of focussing on a whole passage, look instead at one word. The word in question is the one which most English versions tend to translate 'devoted'. Luke tells us that the very early Church in Jerusalem, in the aftermath of Pentecost, 'were devoting themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers' (Acts 2.42), and that they also 'devoted themselves with one mind in the Temple' (Acts 2.46). Because New Testament Greek has fewer words than contemporary English, one often has to do the work of many, leaving a richer range of reference and room for ambiguity. That's certainly the case here. (more...) |
| End the Week with the DTP - April 15, 2011 | 15th Apr 2011 | View Full Story | Download |
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We're pretty sure we know the date – Sunday 9 April, 30AD. Some women walked through the grey twilight of an early Jerusalem dawn to the place where the body had been hastily buried two days before. When they got there the tomb was empty. They, and others, later said that they had seen the dead man, that he had talked with them and eaten food with them. This man, their friend and companion Jesus of Nazareth had, they said, returned to life. And they were his witnesses. (more...) |
| End the Week with the DTP - April 8, 2011 | 8th Apr 2011 | View Full Story | Download |
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When Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was crushed by the Antarctic ice in 1915, he and his crew were forced to take with them only absolute essentials. Shackleton tore the ship's Bible up before his men. He allowed them to take only three pages each. If you could only take three pages of the Bible, which ones would they be? (more...) |
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