When we expected to be shamed as we have shamed others, we are shocked and saved by the unexpected mercy of the crucified and risen Jesus.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Forgiveness (Page 2)
God invites us to live joyously, boldly and freely in the midst of mystery, but we are frequently tempted to grasp for something more tangible and certain.
True martyrs are those who are killed because their love, truthfulness and forgiveness are intolerable, not those who die killing for their cause.
Jesus subverts our concepts of sin and offers to open our eyes and free us from it all.
Our deepest thirst will never be satisfied by cautious morality and religious compliance, but it will be abundantly quenched when we drink deeply of the living water of joyous intimacy that Jesus pours out freely.
Before your past catches up with you, Jesus will try to blindside you with scandalous grace.
A healthy self-esteem is not one that thinks itself better than others, but one that, in solidarity with others, accepts the merciful gift of life and love that Jesus offers us.
God longs to welcome and bless us far more than we deserve, but if we don’t contribute to a culture of extravagant grace, we are unlikely to be able to receive it.
History will end with the unbridled joy of a loving shepherd who celebrates the neighbourhood filling up with dead losers who don’t deserve to be there.
If we delight in shaming and punishing wrongdoers, we will not recognise the scandalous love and mercy revealed in Jesus, but instead find ourselves being harshly judged by an outraged condemning god who we have created in our own image.
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.
Only when the world models itself on the self-sacrificial love and mercy we have seen in Jesus will it be saved from the cycles of apocalyptic violence and chaos.
Forgiving the way Jesus does will always be seen as not just disreputable, but even dangerous and criminal.
True forgiveness, which we encounter most fully in the risen Christ, does not gloss over the past but revisits it fully and carefully that we may be fully set free from it.
The resurrection of Jesus is the most confronting and terrifying news imaginable, and all we can do (after trying to run) is surrender ourselves to his grace.
Are we, individually and together, focused on the things that we can be doing, that will enable us to embrace and nurture the growth of Christ’s values, withstanding opposition to them?
We are called to confront and oppose the abuse of power, but also to continue to love and offer forgiveness to those whose actions we are opposing.
We are bringing upon ourselves a global catastrophe, but the prophet Joel assures us that ultimately God will save his people.
Jesus becomes a victim of our systems of feeding on one another in order to forgive us, set us free, and nourish us for life.
God’s new culture of forgiveness is entered by faith, and sometimes it is even vicarious faith.