God’s coming does not reinforce our social norms and hierarchies, but breaches them to reconcile and re-dignify those who the social order has sacrificed and cast aside.
God’s coming does not reinforce our social norms and hierarchies, but breaches them to reconcile and re-dignify those who the social order has sacrificed and cast aside.
The Ascension is not a story about the absence of Christ, but of Christ’s extraordinary presence with us everywhere and always.
Like the Emmaus travellers, Jesus calls us to pay attention to what is happening in these strange times, to what makes our hearts burn within us, and so to be changed ready to live differently.
The Christmas stories assure us that Jesus is the one who brings light into our darkness.
The culture of God’s beloved Son is born at the cross and takes root amidst a hostile world, spreading forgiveness and hospitality.
Global chaos marked by war, terror and injustice is growing inevitably, and as followers of Jesus we stand in witness against it, knowing that God is with us to the end.
The biblical pictures of marriage reflect our struggle to live our way into the vulnerable intimacy and relational fruitfulness that God wants for us and with us.
Christ’s gratuitous forgiveness and acceptance always manage to scandalise us, but it is our willingness to embrace them that saves us.
The saints of God are engaged in a war between conflicting empires battling for control of the world, but Jesus has radically transformed our understanding of how we fight.
God delights to welcome everyone, and is not interested in who is better or worse, but we imagine God to be an elitist who mirrors our tendency to pick and choose and only accept the best.
The threat of extreme climate change can only be averted with a major spiritual transformation, and Jesus shows the way.
Faithfulness to God means sticking to the ways in which Jesus has led us, but we are constantly tempted to idolise his name while avoiding his ways.
Lived faith is the way to life in God, but it passes through a baptism of fire.
God may not always give us what we want in answer to our prayers, but will always be with us through the Spirit to help us face whatever it is that life puts before us.
A sermon on Luke 10: 38-42 by Sylvia Sandeman Some of you may be wondering how I got to preach on this story of Martha and Mary. I have to say from the start it is not a story that I would choose to preach on. It is a story that I have always struggled with – knowing that I am sure…
I want to look today at the story Jesus told in today’s gospel reading. It’s a story set on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and apart from the usual interpretations we bring to it, it is for me a story about chance encounters and being open to what happens. I’d like to start by…
The instinct to call down fire on those we perceive as God’s enemies is a “fruit of the flesh” that must be supplanted by the fruits of love.
We have been drawn into an unstoppable rumour that keeps interrupting the dominant story of fear, hostility and death.
Jesus shows us that being overly cautious about the boundaries of personal space and touch can, especially in worship, risk excluding, stigmatising and humiliating people.
If you set yourself against the other, you also cut yourself off from the Father who loves you both. You diminish yourself, cut off the other, and break the Father’s heart.