Sermons by Alison Sampson

Alison is a Pastor of our Church, but since 2016 she has been leading the establishment of a new church community in Warrnambool, known as Sanctuary. She continues to be employed by this church until such time as the new congregation is sufficiently established to employ her in its own right. As well as preaching, teaching, parent lin gan writing, Alison blogs about the spirituality of everyday life at www.theideaofhome.blogspot.com.

For Christmas hope and healing, look to the shadows

24 December 2018
Alison Sampson
Christmas, Failure, Fear, Grief, Healing, Hope, Humility, Incarnation, Jesus
Luke
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It is not from the halls of power but from humble places that the love which offers wholeness and healing and peace erupts into life.

People of All Ages Doing Faith Together: Stories from Sanctuary

3 December 2017
Alison Sampson
Children, Church, Hospitality, Mission, Worship
1 Corinthians
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Stories of life, worship and ministry from the new church we have helped to plant in Warrnambool, where more than half of the congregation are children.

Wicked Women Welcome

When we offer hospitality to, and accept hospitality from, anyone who comes – every sinner, wretch, reprobate, and wicked woman – we will encounter Christ and experience forgiveness.

How Long, O Lord, Must We Wait?

There is no more waiting; there is no more longing. The wait is over. Jesus is alive, and he lives in all those who hear his voice and follow him.

A Gift Far Too Small

Because of God’s extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.

A Gift Far To Small

13 March 2016
Alison Sampson
Abundance, Gratitude, Love, Resurrection
John, Philippians
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Because of God’s abundance, God’s never-ending supply of extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life: a life of gratitude, of loving, of belonging, out of which flows a life of service and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.

Satisfying the Hunger Within

Our lives are gift: a gift from abundance, a gift to be shared, a gift given for the life of the world, a gift we can give away because we are confident that the eternal source of life, the God who promises healing and freedom, will always replenish us.

A Future Alive with Hope

Jesus calls us in a new direction, full of strangers and dangers and turmoil and wonder. And in that vision of a new way, a new future leaping with silvery hope, we will find the courage to leave everything.

Gifts for the Common Good

It is as members of the body that you are given the gifts that are needed for this body to serve in this time and this place.

God Gives Us a Future

Jesus came into the world to fill us with new life, and encourage us, and show us how to grow, so if we remain focussed on the light, letting it shine into our areas of darkness, then darkness will never have the last word.

Not domestic, not a goddess: Mary the prophet

20 December 2015
Alison Sampson
Discipleship, Incarnation, Mission, Spirituality
Luke
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Understanding Mary as a god-bearer opens up new possibilities, for we can all be god-bearers, carrying God’s love and longing for justice into every place that we go.

Apocalypse Now?

29 November 2015
Alison Sampson
Apocalypse, Creation, Empire, Ethics, Fear, Hope
Luke
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In the fact of the climate apocalypse, we hold on to our hope: hoping and working for the radical, impossible change that is necessary.

With Open Hands

Every coin you are holding already belongs to God: every bitterness, every hurt, every disappointment. Do not hold a single one back.

#FirstWorldProblems?

In Christ we have been given a new identity that dissolves the labels of first and two-thirds world, and invites us all to be poor.

Holy Gossip

13 September 2015
Alison Sampson
Church, Grace, Hospitality, Love, Relationships, Service
James
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Good gossip, listening in love to each other’s stories and seeking the presence of God, helps us to build connection and community and to grow in love.

You Are Not Defiled

30 August 2015
Alison Sampson
Abuse, Evil, Healing, Jesus, Law, Power, sex, Suffering
Mark
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There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that another person can do to you that can make you unclean or defiled in the eyes of God.

The Wounded Body

16 August 2015
Alison Sampson
Church, Identity, Relationships, Suffering, Weakness
John, Matthew
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It is in our woundedness, this woundedness we try to avoid and would rather not acknowledge, that we find our identity as the body of Christ, our identity as the church.

The Way of the Cross

When we respond to the call to model our lives on his life, the life of the One who has seen the Father, then, like him, we must not sidestep or avoid suffering.

The Children of the King

12 July 2015
Alison Sampson
Children, Greed, Liberation, Love, Politics, Power, Violence
Mark
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We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.

The hard work and promise of love

A sermon in response to a broken relationship in the church