Pray for all people and let God do the judging. The world may be an evil place but you are God’s children and evil has been overcome.
Christ calls us together into a spirit-filled body in the face of demonic forces that would seek to drive us apart and trick us into the fatal error of going it alone.
We are called to confront and oppose the abuse of power, but also to continue to love and offer forgiveness to those whose actions we are opposing.
When drought and death threaten to destroy us, God will bring us through the barren times and raise us back to life, for doing so is the defining sign of God’s presence.
God invites us to say “yes” to the Spirit, to be open to seeing ourselves beyond the constraints others place on us and to be open to forming new community with God and with God’s world.
We are called to privilege the God of love and liberation over the economic realities of dog-eat-dog capitalism, and prevent that ‘reality’ colonising the truth of love with its divide-and-conquer business plan.
Jesus sends the Holy Spirit as a Defence Counsel to defend us against the demonic accusations that trouble and disempower us.
The glory of Christ’s love is seen when it perseveres with those who shun it, betray it, or abuse it.
Salvation belongs to Christ alone, but those who have fought and died for other forms of salvation are among those with whom Christ identifies himself; fellow victims of the atrocity from which Christ is saving us.
The whole story of the universe, from creation to ultimate redemption, is held in God’s hands and revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, and all our stories are gathered safely into that larger story.
A sermon for the Great Paschal Vigil preached by the Revd Andrew Woff
The life Christ call us to is not found by seeking to recover the past or escape from the past, but by opening ourselves to the new things God will do.
The story of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son is a crucial part of the message of grace.
Our allegiance to Christ and our citizenship of his Realm take priority over those to our local culture, but that doesn’t rule out a continuing love of our homeland and tribe.
Demonic temptations do not usually look demonic, but are usually a subtle undermining of our sense of who we are that cause us to grasp for quick fixes.
In a moment of transfiguration we glimpse the weightiness of Jesus and his mission, and we are ourselves transfigured, becoming people of greater substance.
God speaks prophetically through the Church and through some individuals, and the prophetic task is inseparable from humility, constructiveness, graciousness, love, patience and generosity.
The reading of scripture is one of the most important places where God has promised to become present and known to us.
Jesus says to each one of us “I am the new wine. Feed on me”.
An adaptation of the First Kontakia on the Life of Christ, a sung or chanted sermon by the great sixth-century poet and singer, St Romanos the Melodist.