Science, theology and reason can often lead to a sound set of ethical behavioural conclusions which then need to be set aside because, in reality, love demands something else.
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Sermons on Discernment
Although we can’t prove that our faith isn’t another crackpot fraud, we can provide evidence by living lives of love, hope and hospitality.
God has hung a star in our sky, and called us to follow it to the Christ child, who will receive the gifts that we bring and we will return changed to our homes.
Jesus calls us to resist the satanic desire to credit violence and disaster with meaning, and instead to acknowledge meaning and truth only in God’s suffering love and mercy.
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
The abusive use of anger to manipulate other people’s behaviour is, Jesus says, on the same spectrum as physical violence, and Jesus calls this preacher to repent of it.
Jesus leads us through the confusion of transition times, into a new space with hugely expanded horizons and lives made meaningful in a global way.
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.
Jesus calls us to unite as his body around his table, and if we come to the table without seeking that unity, we dishonour Jesus.
Reading scripture with God’s people keeps us honest as we seek to interpret and live by God’s law written on our hearts.
We come to be followers of Jesus, not when we believe certain facts about him, but when we hear his voice and follow what it says (even if we don’t know where the voice comes from).
The task of being changed into what God calls us to be involves a radical break with the established norms of our world.
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.
Despite our almost idolatrous attachment to social structures like traditional family and monarchy, God wants us to live up to our calling to be a radically egalitarian community of prayerful shared responsibility.
Jesus demonstrates the need to reflect on our results and reject the easy success and popularity that are built on meeting basic needs.
Our freedom in Christ renders the law irrelevant as a factor in our relationship with God, but we are set free to grow into union with Christ, not to fall into new slaveries.
The marriage equality debate raises questions about authority, but prophetic authority is not proved by fidelity to past rules, but by its power to produce a harvest of new life and love among the people.
Allowing ourselves to be shaped by the teaching and testimony passed down from the Apostles protects us from falling for the idea that the gospel is a marketable means of gratifying our wishes.
While the final judgement of each individual is rightly left to God, we are called to ensure that we are found to be loving, merciful and trustworthy by the world around us.