Our identity as a community of Jesus’s followers is primarily expressed in love, gratitude and hospitality, not in compliance with a negative code of conduct.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Identity (Page 2)
It is human nature to think that our ways are God’s ways, and so to shun those whose ways seem alien or disgusting to us, but Jesus calls us to recognise God at work in others, however different.
As creatures made in the image of God, imitation of God is the pathway to fullness of life.
The self-emptying of Jesus reveals both his divinity and the pathway to our full humanity.
Pray for all people and let God do the judging. The world may be an evil place but you are God’s children and evil has been overcome.
Our allegiance to Christ and our citizenship of his Realm take priority over those to our local culture, but that doesn’t rule out a continuing love of our homeland and tribe.
God comes to us, in seemingly insignificant places and borne by easily overlooked people.
But the call is to be “Fair Dinkum” with each other, to be open and trust who we are to this community.
The risen Christ and his word are often revealed in the words and actions of a stranger. Sometimes we are called to welcome and heed the stranger; and sometimes we are called to be the faithful stranger to others.
When greed and fear demand that we give our attention to money, Jesus calls us to reclaim the image of God within us, and offer ourselves to God.
With Jesus as our pattern, we find a new identity in our uncompromising allegiance to God’s ways.
When we know ourselves as known by God, the demonic power of violent naming is broken and new life dawns.
In the encounter with Jesus, our self-delusion and our scapegoating are painfully exposed, but with the possibility of forgiveness and freedom.
God has given us a new identity and a new allegiance in his kingdom, and our loyalty is now to truth and compassion regardless of their consequences for the interests of any other communities or kingdoms.
Jesus’s resurrection was a sign which declared that Jesus’ cause was God’s cause, that Jesus’ values were God’s values, that Jesus’ people were God’s people.
A fortified inner self not only enables a person to offer love properly but to receive love properly, even from God, to give without strings, to receive without suspicion.
In baptism we are joined to Christ and we now live as he leads, and celebrate the freedom of others to do so also.
The Trinitarian stories resemble the dreaming of Australia’s Aborigines, for both imagine the divine as a community of being in which we are invited to participate, and so find our true being.
Praise and prayer enable us to find our true identify in Christ, and it is as we find out who we are that we find our true strength.
The childhood picture of Jesus’ development calls us to ensure that our relationship with God is our primary allegiance, our first responsibility and the foundation of our identity.