The power of God is that a contagion of life—of transformation, hope, and peace—is more powerful than a contagion of death.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Culture
The culture of God rises in defiance of the empires of this world, but it will look more like an annoying outbreak of self-sown, invasive weeds than an alternative empire.
In a world dominated by arrogant and exploitative leaders, Jesus models a gentle shepherding leadership that prioritises the reintegration of the broken over the drive for “success” and “efficiency”.
Until our eyes are opened to discern the dog-domination and pig-powers that oppress us from within our culture, we will continue to be trampled underfoot by them
Where affluence creates consumers, abundance creates neighbours. It is the ethic of possessions which Jesus commends to us as a promise of how God deals with us.
In the culture of Jesus, the very conditions that create discomfort, struggle, suffering and even scorn, paradoxically are transformed into the essential ingredients to inherit and inhabit the kingdom of God.
The forgiveness encountered in Jesus is extravagant and all-inclusive, but those who determinedly reject and demonise the Spirit’s winds of change can cut off their own access to it.
Our generation is very good at identifying evils and calling them out, but if our hearts are not occupied by God’s love and mercy, the results can be disastrous.
Jesus calls us to neither conservatism nor iconoclasm, but to a faithful reckoning with the gifts and the sins of the past as we welcome and adapt to the new.
Faithful waiting for for the fulfilment of God’s promises can leave us feeling compromised and alienated in the world around us.
The culture of God’s beloved Son is born at the cross and takes root amidst a hostile world, spreading forgiveness and hospitality.
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.
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.
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.
Love names, creation, joyful service and gifts for the common good can be signs of the nature and culture of God.
The baby whose coming is awaited will turn the world upside down (not just the lives of its parents!), and our counter-cultural observance of Advent is a necessary preparation of ourselves for that reality.
Angry prophets who tell us the hard-to-hear truth about ourselves pave the way for a new world to emerge.
In the face of a politics grounded in nationalist arrogance and fake news, Jesus proclaims a ‘kingdom’ grounded in shared humanity and truth.
The collapse of the institutional church and other social structures will be painful for all of us, but it is not ultimately a threat to mission of Jesus.
Jesus’s primary aim was not saving us for heaven after we die, but establishing a culture of whole-hearted loved in the here and now.