Paul’s word play on drunkenness is both a useful contrast and a useful comparison for Christian living.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Hospitality
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.
When theology and discipleship follow the path of God, they take us beyond an obsession with borders to a new engagement with the kingdom of God, present and tangible in all the earth.
God’s coming does not reinforce our social norms and hierarchies, but breaches them to reconcile and re-dignify those who the social order has sacrificed and cast aside.
El Espíritu de Jesús nos une a través de límites previamente hostiles y nos enseña un lenguaje de amor liberador.
(The Spirit of Jesus unites us across previously hostile boundaries and teaches us a language of liberating love.)
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.
Christ’s gratuitous forgiveness and acceptance always manage to scandalise us, but it is our willingness to embrace them that saves us.
Lived faith is the way to life in God, but it passes through a baptism of fire.
I want to look today at the story Jesus told in today’s gospel reading. It’s a story set on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and apart from the usual interpretations we bring to it, it is for me a story about chance encounters and being open to what happens. I’d like to start by…
The instinct to call down fire on those we perceive as God’s enemies is a “fruit of the flesh” that must be supplanted by the fruits of love.
The new humanity formed in the death and resurrection of Jesus speaks a language of love and compassion that transcends linguistic and cultural differences and celebrates unity in diversity.
Jesus possesses an astonishing freedom in God and will not be used to justify causes of nation, religion, status quo, or even his own family and friends.
Children are a sign of the Kingdom, and our capacity to welcome them is a measure of our capacity to welcome the culture of God.
Jesus opens himself to the experience of those who are excluded and responds with a radical opening of the Table of God’s communion.
Pretending to be better than we are alienates us from God and one another. Being open and real about our weaknesses and failures open us to God and one another.
Rather than close the book on who can and cannot be accepted into the church, the Bible calls us to follow Jesus on a path of continually expanding inclusion.
God has promised the whole world to all God’s children, but not exclusive rights to some bits of it to some people.
The culture of God is emerging in our present world, confronting us with a choice – do we cling to our allegiance to the cultures that have raised us or let go of them and embrace the culture of God.
The light of Christ reaches the world through those who will bear the wounds of love.
The nativity story proclaims the basic themes of the gospel message; God enters into our suffering world as a victim of our violence, and is rejected by most but recognised by the nobodies.