The physicality of the resurrection is a mystery that assures us that God values and honours us as whole, embodied humans, even if our bodies are damaged or worn out.
The physicality of the resurrection is a mystery that assures us that God values and honours us as whole, embodied humans, even if our bodies are damaged or worn out.
Following Jesus in ministering among the needs around us is not a call to do everything ourselves.
God reaches out to us through babies and elderly folks with a message of love and redemption that cuts through the theological justifications of empire and warmongering and calls us to peace.
In Jesus, the truth about God’s ways and means is brought to light and we are called to so reflect that light that all might be drawn to it.
The particularity of Jesus’s identity scandalises our tribal sensibilities, but our attempts to erase such details in favour of a more “universal” truth inevitably fail to convey the good news of God with us.
God comes to us in unexpected ways, and the break with conventional religious respectability is even more earth-shattering than the break with conventional reproductive biology.
A sermon on John 1: 1-18 by Audrey Kateena A video recording of the whole liturgy, including this sermon, is available here A transcript of the sermon will be available here soon
A modern paraphrase of a homily for the Feast of the Nativity by Ephraim the Syrian (306-373CE) taken from his second Christmas hymn.
The child of God became a human, so that humans could become children of God.
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.
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.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mathematical puzzle, but an invitation to an experience of relationships, sharing in the life and mission of God.
As Woody Allen said, 90% of success is just showing up, and in the resurrection, Jesus really shows up!
In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.
The Christmas stories assure us that Jesus is the one who brings light into our darkness.
When God calls us to invest in the places we live, it is a call to active agents of positive change, not compliant patriots.
The God revealed to us in Jesus and experienced through the Holy Spirit is so dynamic and multi-facetted that we may find it hard to believe that we are always dealing with the one God.
Jesus shows us that being overly cautious about the boundaries of personal space and touch can, especially in worship, risk excluding, stigmatising and humiliating people.
It is not from the halls of power but from humble places that the love which offers wholeness and healing and peace erupts into life.
The baby whose coming is awaited will turn the world upside down (not just the lives of its parents!), and our counter-cultural observance of Advent is a necessary preparation of ourselves for that reality.