Philippians 3.17 - 4.1
17 Brothers and sisters,
join in imitating me,
and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.
18 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ;
I have often told you of them,
and now I tell you even with tears.
19 Their end is destruction; their god is the belly;
and their glory is in their shame;
their minds are set on earthly things.
20 But our citizenship is in heaven,
and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
21 He will transform the body of our humiliation
that it may be conformed to the body of his glory,
by the power that also enables him
to make all things subject to himself.
1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
whom I love and long for,
my joy and crown,
stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
Reading for Sunday 7th March - Third Sunday of Lent
1 Corinthians 10.1-13
1 I do not want you to be unaware,
brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were
all under the cloud,
and all passed through the sea,
2 and all were baptized into
Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
3 and all ate the same spiritual food,
4 and all
drank the same spiritual drink.
For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed
them,
and the rock was Christ.
5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them,
and they were struck down in the wilderness.
6 Now these things occurred as examples
for us,
so that we might not desire evil as they did.
7 Do not become idolaters as
some of them did;
as it is written,
‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they
rose up to play.’
8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality
as some of them did,
and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
9 We must not put Christ to the test,
as some of them did,
and were destroyed by serpents.
10 And do not complain as some
of them did,
and were destroyed by the destroyer.
11 These things happened to them
to serve as an example,
and they were written down to instruct us,
on whom the ends
of the ages have come.
12 So if you think you are standing,
watch out that you do
not fall.
13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.
God is
faithful,
and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength,
but with the testing
he will also provide the way out
so that you may be able to endure it.
Reading for Sunday 14th March - Mothering Sunday
2 Corinthians 5.16-21
From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew
Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
So if anyone
is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything
has become new!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling
the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting
the message of reconciliation to us.
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God
is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled
to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.
Reading for Sunday 21st March - Fifth Sunday of Lent
Philippians 3.4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised
on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the
church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these
I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
More than that, I regard everything
as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish,
in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having a righteousness of
my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness
from God based on faith.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow
I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this
or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ
Jesus has made me his own.
Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;
but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what
lies ahead,
I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God
in Christ Jesus.
Reading for Sunday 28th March - PALM SUNDAY
Philippians 2.5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the
form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but
emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point
of death -
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave
him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.