We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.
We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.
In an us-and-them world, people hope to find a way to get God on their side, but Jesus confounds our expectations of God siding against others.
In a world increasingly divided between violent powers, Jesus leads a kingdom that is a radical peaceful challenge to both of them.
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.
Jesus wants to lift us beyond the deadening conformity that seeks to silence us and confine us to a stunted life.
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.
Jesus’s invitation is radically open and inclusive, and we need to guard carefully against our own culturally conditioned instincts to start narrowing and policing it.
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.
En Cristo somos uno con toda la carne y la sangre, y por lo tanto nuestra lucha no es contra ningunas personas, sino contra los espíritus y los principados y los potestades que dividirían a la gente y les harían enemigos.
Jesus rejects the opportunity to fulfil our hopes and expectations in order that he might give us more than we thought possible.
Despite our often minimal vision for ourselves, and our feeling of not being important to God, Jesus Christ is committed to bringing us to the fullness of life and wholeness.
A sermon in response to a broken relationship in the church
Because we really don’t have the whole truth, the Spirit will be heard only when we are together, listening to one another in love.
With every step we take towards God’s economy, we will become more powerful in our witness to God’s saving action and love for the world, and be filled ever more deeply with God’s good grace.
When we approach God’s way of life and the Sabbath not as punishment, but as gift, the experience becomes a chance to rest from work and from striving; and to allow space for God through contemplation and re-creation and play.
In our desire to see mercy and compassion expressed for the needy, we must beware of falling into desiring the exact opposite for those who have not shown mercy and compassion.
God’s grace is so extravagant that it will offend us as long as we are measuring our worth in comparison to others.
God does not judge people’s capacity to respond and focus love and care only on the productive, but gives gifts with wanton freedom and extravagance and calls us to do the same.
Trying to establish our own righteousness burdens us with divisiveness and hostility, but Jesus offers us rest and freedom.
God and religion misunderstood can be the cause of hostility, division and violence, but the God made known to us in Jesus is a God of grace who generously gives us life, freedom and reconciliation.