6th Sunday of Easter Year B

Jeff Bagnall • 22 April 2024

In ( Acts 10), Luke tells us how Peter realised something new about being a follower of Jesus. It follows most suitably after the much limited beliefs of Peter that we read about last Sunday. Peter was a Jew and Jews believed that they were God’s people, which, they thought, meant that God didn’t have any regard for non-Jews. These beliefs were expressed in the everyday practices of eating – some foods were approved but others were judged to be unclean (ritually defiling). But before this section of Luke’s story, he tells us that while Peter was cooking for himself at his seaside lodgings in Joppa (not the place in East Lothian), he came to realise ( see here) that these views were not in line with God’s wishes. This visionary message enabled him to welcome the Greek speaking friendly non-Jew Cornelius, and to preach to the assembled (not all Jewish) crowd and to witness the Spirit of God enthusing them. His view of God’s will for people had radically changed from what it had previously been.

The second reading ( 1 John 4:7-10) , as previous readings from this New testament book read during the period celebrating the Resurrection, focuses on God’s love and the core of the requirements for being a Christian – we should love one another. It says that God shows his love by sending his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. The word for sacrifice (‘ιλασμος in the Greek original) is used twice in this letter of John’s and nowhere else in the New Testament, and rarely in the Old Testament. Whereas the church over the centuries has sometimes seen the crucifixion as an appeasement of God’s wrath against human sin, this interpretation does not sit well with the overall tone of the letter which so much stresses the love of God – a God who would not make such a requirement of us or of His Son. The passage re-enforces the new expansive vision, that God’s love is not limited to the Jews but extends to absolutely all people to the extent that they themselves show this kind of love to others. This attitude supersedes the O.T. ten Commandments by including their core statements and raising the standard of what God wants of us in our lives.

The reading from the Gospel of John follows on from the image of the vine in last week's reading. It is about the Father and the Son loving us, and how we are to remain in God’s love by keeping the commandments. But these ‘commandments’ are just the personal challenges that God as a friend, makes of each of us in our own particular circumstance: for Jesus this was that He should lay down his life for this kind of message. We each need to discern what God’s love calls on us to do with our lives: whatever, it will come under the umbrella of the commandment that Jesus spells out in our passage today – “to love one another” and that is where the reading ends.

See Jeff's jottings: Lost for words

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Jeff Bagnall was a lecturer for many years at Craiglockhart College teaching RE to many future Catholic Primary teachers.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 8 October 2026

The first reading is a very upbeat announcement of the good times that the Lord will bring about for all nations. This is not just about the freedom of the Jews who have been in captivity, but it is a universal message of good times, with plenty of all the fruits of the earth and no fear of troubles. The destruction of death might be seen by Christians as the announcement of life after death, but when this message was first delivered, probably in the 6 th century BC, it meant no more will enemies kill each other. All these wonderful gifts from God are, however, delivered to all peoples “on this mountain,” a phrase that initially refers to the city of Jerusalem which is centred upon and around a prominent hill in the countryside; though the phrase was used symbolically to refer to all the people of Israel. So we see in this passage the basis for a future view of what God will do for all people on earth, but with the restriction of it being centred on the people of Israel; it is the vision of a prophet who sees the future darkly, reading it from the worldly state of affairs that he interprets from the standpoint of his assured belief that his is also the god of those who share his faith. We know ourselves that many of us Christians are caught in similar limitations in our vision of God’s relationship with the whole world and its people.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 30 September 2026

In the first reading we have a very good illustration of a successful approach to delivering bad news when you are a prophet and that is your job. The book of Isaiah has been heavily edited, and our reading from chapter 5 is very likely the first public appearance of the prophet. If you want the crowd to listen to you, you don’t want to be known as a prophet of doom. So Isaiah draws a crowd by saying he is going to sing a song, like a street busker setting up his spot. It’s a song, he says, about his friend; it’s told as though it is about a man setting up a new vineyard, but it is really about unrequited love. He did everything one should for the vineyard to be successful, but it just produced (literally) stinking grapes. The friend then questions the crowd: “is there anything more I could have done?” And he tells them he is going to completely wreck the area and make it a wasteland. Then, when the crowd has grown and is listening intently, like a punch-line the prophet announces: “this song is about the Lord and you Israel!” The image of the vineyard became quite popular in the sayings of prophets and even among the people themselves; one of their hymns is the psalm that follows the reading for today.