4th Sunday of Easter B

Jeff Bagnall • 13 April 2024

Acts, chapter 4, verses 8-12 go straight into another speech of Peter that Luke inserts here. The context is the very early activities of Peter in Jerusalem. Together with John and others he had been gathering interested listeners in increasing numbers in the outer court of the Temple, and many of them were anxious to become believers and followers of Jesus. He had cured a lame man in the name of Jesus and was proclaiming the resurrection and accusing the Jews (it would be chiefly the leaders) of having Jesus brought to trial and put to death. The disciples had been arrested and kept over night, till in the morning they are brought before the high priest and other leaders and interrogated – “By what power or what name did you do this?” Peter replies to his accusers, laying the guilt for Jesus’ death upon them and referring to Psalm 118, that shows this pattern of behaviour. Peter affirmed Jesus as the one who can save people from this persistent pattern of behaviour, and can lift us out of our pattern of falling short of the Christian ideal. We have this Psalm after the reading, and the passage quoted as the response: Jesus is the key-stone to the building of the kingdom, and we are the rest of the building – we are a bit like the awkwardly shaped stones in a dry stane wall.

From the opening two verses of first letter of John, chapter 3, we read again of the very basic aspect of God and of our relationship to Him. We are children of God even now, when we are loved by Him despite our inadequacies. It is quite unimaginable what it will be like when we pass over into the life after death and live even closer to God.

In the Gospel of John, (10:11-18) we are told that Jesus is like a shepherd to us. Shepherding was different then and there, from how it is now here in Scotland where we sometimes have severe weather conditions and the shepherd can use a trained dog and maybe a quad-bike as well. Shepherding was beset with problems from marauding wild animals, occasionally from rogues and thieves but always from the straying of the sheep away from safe areas and from the food they need. In the Old Testament shepherding was often used as an image of God and His relationship with the chosen people. But here in the New Testament in this gospel the emphasis is on the love and care that God has for us, on the risks taken and on the ultimate aim of uniting all the people of the earth. We must recognise in the various hazards and straying nature of the sheep something of the way our own lives pan out; but also how like the shepherd with his sheep, God is with us; in Jesus, God Himself lives for us here and now, and dies to keep us safe and secure in following Him.

Jeff's Jottings on the Good Shepherd

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

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

by Jeff Bagnall • 25 September 2025
This is the only time on Sundays that we have a reading from Habakkuk. He was a prophet perhaps around the 7 th century BC, when the people were troubled by the surrounding more powerful nations. Of the three chapters in the book, we have a few verses from each of the first two ( 1:2-3, 2:2-4 ). At first the prophet expresses the heartfelt cry of the people, “How long, O Lord” is all this going on; a feeling common among most peoples at some time or other throughout all periods of human history, especially where there is an idea of a caring deity of some kind. The phrase is also used often in the psalms . But in the verses from chapter 2 that are added into our reading, we hear that God does have a vision of the future – sometime – and so we must hang on and remain loyal because, as it ends, “the upright man lives by his faith;” and this phrase is taken up in St Paul’s way of thinking and in later Christian teaching, where the word ‘faith’ is not just ‘loyalty’ but trusting in Christ and in Christ’s way of selfless service of others. In 1947 an ancient commentary on this book was found in a cave in the Dead Sea area ( see the video ), it referred the troubles to the invasion of the Romans into their land,

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

by Jeff Bagnall • 18 September 2025
The first reading is from a section of the book of Amos ( 6:4-10 ); it is introduced with the opening words of the chapter: “alas for those who are at ease in Zion.” Strong words against the city dwellers come from Amos, the country fellow – words and woes against the northern kingdom of Israel. We hear the third and last woe against the excessive luxury in which they are living although their prosperity is declining visibly; they seem to live for the moment and care little of the future, even their own. They are, unusually, referred to as a group under the eponymous name of Joseph; this could be because of the account of Joseph’s interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream (Exodus 41) of seven years of plenty followed by seven of crop failure, and his wise management under the Pharaoh of storing up supplies for the future. The exile that will come will be the disaster that follows this decadence. In the second reading ( 1 Timothy 6:11-16 ) Timothy is addressed as a ‘man of God.’ Unlike the people of the first reading and in contrast to those addressed in this letter just before this section, Timothy is chosen and enabled by God to be a minister in the Christian community. Paul’s athletic imagery appears here also, saying “compete well,” that is, ‘run the race’ or ‘fight the good fight.’ The Christian at baptism made confession that “Jesus is Lord”, and Jesus made a similar confession before Pilate according to John’s gospel (18:37); Timothy was baptised but was also a leader in some way, and that meant not to be a covert Christian but to speak the truth even before accusers, as Jesus did before Pilate; the writer could be referring to either of these situations. The requirement to keep the commandments or ordinances is most likely not to the ten commandments of the Jewish religion but to the requirements of being a Christian or, more likely, the specific orders for acting as a minister. He must act as a servant of the King who will eventually appear, and he must be selfless in his work towards the kingdom of God. In today’s gospel reading from Luke ( 16:19-31 ) we have the parable often call that of Dives and Lazarus; but ‘dives’ is just the Latin word for rich man. In many ways the story is straightforward once we accept the different understanding of the afterlife that it portrays. However, whereas the rich man is anonymous, the beggar at his gate is named Lazarus. Luke is writing about 40 years after the resurrection of Jesus but still there are people who aren’t believers; and John’s gospel, uniquely, has the story of the raising of Lazarus which Luke’s readers may have known; but Luke’s point is not about accepting the truth of the resurrection, of Jesus or of Lazarus, because believing is more a way of living than accepting facts – of loving God and your neighbour as yourself, which the rich man in the parable didn’t do.
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