Christ’s grief gathers up our griefs and achieves the promise of a day when tears will be no more.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Isaiah
Following Jesus in ministering among the needs around us is not a call to do everything ourselves.
God reaches out to us through babies and elderly folks with a message of love and redemption that cuts through the theological justifications of empire and warmongering and calls us to peace.
Discovering who we are called to be is an ever-evolving journey as we follow Jesus in changing circumstances.
Though we are to strive for righteousness and justice now, what we achieve now is a mere shadow of what will be fulfilled in the day of the Lord.
In times of rupture, we, like Isaiah, can pour out our words, images and even anguished songs as we try to gather up the pieces and make some sense.
In baptism we surrender to God’s claim on us and enter a vowed relationship and life which will have its ups and its downs but in which God is forever faithful.
In Jesus, the truth about God’s ways and means is brought to light and we are called to so reflect that light that all might be drawn to it.
Jesus asks us to assess the legitimacy of any ministry by its transforming and liberating outcomes for the world and its peoples.
Our sure hope of a new future brought to fulfilment in the coming Christ inspires and empowers us to live now in ways which resist the despair and selfishness of our age and anticipate the peace and righteousness of the coming age.
The Advent break in of God in Christ is underway, bringing disruption of a status quo that our world needs to be free of, and liberation from the imprisonment of sin.
The global social breakdown of which Jesus speaks is caused by the failure of our old oppressive ways of maintaining peace, but God has promised us a better way on the other side.
Adversity, violence, and suffering can come as a consequence of not just sin, but of radical love, but with love it can strengthen and sharpen us for fullness of life.
Imagination, fed by Jesus, enables us to grow and stretch, to make a way from what is to what could be, for the sake of worlds of hope God is already excited about.
When God is doing new things, our familiar signposts are no longer helpful, and our capacity to follow is dependent on our living relationship with Jesus.
Christian spirituality is full of yearning and hungering and reaching for a God who can never quite be satisfyingly grasped.
A close encounter with God in Christ can make us paralysingly aware of our own sin and failure, but the experience of grace can transform that into a solidarity and gratitude that empowers us.
The recognition that in Jesus we see the exact likeness of the Father rescues us from fear and slavery and invites us to live as the beloved children of God.
When our world and our hearts feel dry, cut off, and despondent, there is hope and life to be found in God’s promises.
Like the Magi and generations of pilgrims, our COVID generation has had to adapt and find ways to pursue sincere worship amidst challenging circumstances.