Home » Ministers' resources » Worship Resources » Preaching Kits » Year B Mark » Kit 5

A LECTIONARY RESOURCE FOR JUNE 8 TO JULY 20, 2003

Day of Pentecost to Pentecost 7 - The Glory of God

NB We have updated Lawrie Hampton's notes from 2000 because a family death prevented the allocated writer doing the notes this year.

To You Who Receive These Pages

Pentecost - The Glory of God, 1 June

Pentecost 1- God's glory in the man of Galilee, 8 June

Pentecost 2 - God's glory is for all people, 15 June

Pentecost 3 - God's glory astonishes

Pentecost 4 - God's glory amid chaos

Pentecost 5 - Erected to the glory of God

Pentecost 6 - God's glory in fallible mortal hands

To you who receive these pages

As I've prepared these notes and prayers, I've been trying to imagine you as you look in them for something to help you in preparing to lead worship. I couldn't do it! You are an ordained minister; you are a reluctant lay preacher. You are full of the zeal of youth; you are ripe with the wisdom of experience. You have studied the scriptures keenly for decades; you are inexperienced and uncertain in exploring the Scriptures. You are working alone as you tussle with the readings for Sunday; you are one of a group preparing a service or joining in Bible study. You are working at your preparation in the quiet of your study; you are distracted by the noisy demands of a family around you. You have a library of books on your shelves to refer to; you have little by way of background material to call on.

These notes cannot be all things to all people! So here are a few words of explanation.

1. Now eight years into retirement, although still active, I represent my generation. I have tried over the years to keep reasonably well abreast of what has been going on in the fields of theology and biblical studies, but my approach and outlook have been shaped by the academic theological training my teachers gave us in the early fifties, and by four and a half decades of parish ministry. My standard Bible commentaries are mostly the older ones. I hope that you will not dismiss these scholars of an earlier generation as "dated" and that you will find some of their comments helpful.

2. The notes on the lectionary readings for each Sunday are brief. They are intended to provide for preachers without access to commentaries some small understanding of the context and background of each passage. Ministers with access to their own commentaries are likely to find little that is new to them here.

3. No two preachers are the same. Individual personalities with varying interest and disparate theological stances will speak and act in vastly different ways from the pulpit. I have my own ways of preparing and delivering sermons, you have yours. You can deduce from the preaching suggestions something of my style. It could not be otherwise. So I outline some ways that I might go about preaching a sermon based on what the lectionary sets down for each Sunday. This is intended to be no more than a stimulus to you as you work away in your preacher's workshop to produce your own thoughts and your own words . . . even if (as may well happen) you simply decide that you disagree strongly with my interpretation, that's OK with me - provided it helps you to sort out in your own mind what you should say on that text or topic.

4. The prayers are intended to relate, though not necessarily directly, to the texts or themes of the day. They come from a stock of prayers that I have built up in preparing worship services over recent years. Some of them I wrote myself; some have been adapted from sources, which I have long forgotten; a few you may recognise as having come with little alteration from a prayer anthology well known to you. I hope you will not use these prayers in your services exactly as they appear on these pages, but that you will work through them keeping your own congregation always in mind, so that the prayers you lead will be fitting for your own situation - and in accord with your own style of conducting worship.

I have enjoyed compiling these notes. The task has been my Lenten discipline! I hope and pray that you will find them useful in fulfilling your holy, demanding, and privileged called of leading other people in the worship of God - Creator, Redeemer, and Spirit of life. All glory is his eternally.

Lawrie Hampton Lent 2000

 

Pentecost  | Pentecost 1 | Pentecost 2 | Pentecost 3  | Pentecost 4 | Pentecost 5  | Pentecost 6