As we head with Jesus towards the cross, carrying the pain and injustice of the world, God does not hide his face from us but hears our cries for justice.
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Seeking and Sharing the Fullness of Life
Sermons on Discipleship
Like the Magi and generations of pilgrims, our COVID generation has had to adapt and find ways to pursue sincere worship amidst challenging circumstances.
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.
All creation waits impatiently for humanity to work and pray its way into the fullness of our identity in Christ, for only then will all creation be safe and free.
God knows our tribulation and will keep us in the right way if we will trust to do right without fuss and without favour.
Jesus calls us to face hostility, not as doormats, but by boldly and creatively standing in our freedom and extending unexpected love and generosity.
Jesus reinvigorates the Covenant so that his Word of liberation and life is integrated into our lives, & we can live the Covenant in a new way in the world.
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.
The COVID-19 scare can reinforce our Lenten call to prepare our hearts by facing up to our mortality and the real limits of our control over the world.
Jesus calls us to follow his lead in bringing healing, hope and positive leadership to others, and not to be too worried about anxious and vexatious criticism.
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.
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.
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.
A sermon on Hosea 11:1-11, Luke:13-21, Col 3:1-11 by John Fowler 4 August 2019 The Colossians reading – which I am going to focus on tonight – goes like this – Nathan’s paraphrasing: “If you are fair dinkum when you say you have been raised to new life with Christ, then commit yourself to the things that belong to such a life.…
It’s all about Women 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 that Jesus would have said…
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).
Conversion to the way of Jesus is not just a matter of belief, but requires a serious reckoning with our past complicity with attacks on his way.