Lived faith is the way to life in God, but it passes through a baptism of fire.
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Sermons on Hebrews
When God is seeking to communicate with us, we usually need the prayerful support of others to help ensure that we remain open to hearing what God is calling us to.
When we want to know what God is like, our primary source of information is Jesus.
The life that Jesus calls us too will not be found and enjoyed until we give up trying to engineer the life we dreamed we were supposed to be living.
In the violence and suffering that surround the Christmas story, we find the revelation of a God who does not inflict violence and suffering, but suffers violence to bring love and peace.
There are numerous competing claims about what a faithful Christian life looks like, and sometimes the truth about following Jesus may be the least palatable of them all.
Only when the world models itself on the self-sacrificial love and mercy we have seen in Jesus will it be saved from the cycles of apocalyptic violence and chaos.
God wants love rather than sacrifice, but in a fallen world love that is genuine will often be sacrificial.
A growing incidence of cataclysmic violence is not a sign of God’s activity, but it does call us to hold on to our hope and look for God’s action in small signs of life coming from death.
Jesus’s unique priesthood ensures that he is able to help us, and his solidarity with us in suffering ensures that he will help us.
God offers to make us his children, a position that may not appeal to our autonomous ambitions, but which offers honour and security.
Jesus promises that if we will face our deepest fear – the loss of our very souls – and if we will trust in his love, then we shall live, even though we die.
Religious ritual and ethical living are both bound up together in the journey of following Jesus into the Realm of God.
Jesus calls us to accept forgiveness and get on with a life and faith that do not revolve constantly about trying to make up for mistakes.
Christ is our high priest, the sole mediator between the world and God, but as the body of Christ we share in Christ’s task of reconciling earth and heaven.
Because of who Jesus is, we are both naked and vulnerable before him, and confident to approach God. Our only fear is of ourselves!
The need for liberation for the poor and oppressed is obvious, but for the comfortable and successful, the enslavements to consumerism, power and hardness of heart are harder to discern and take the intervention of God to break free from.
The Word of God is constantly calling us to fullness of life, and frequently pierces through our facades to illuminate the ties that hold us back. This is nearly always uncomfortable!