The marriage equality debate raises questions about authority, but prophetic authority is not proved by fidelity to past rules, but by its power to produce a harvest of new life and love among the people.
The marriage equality debate raises questions about authority, but prophetic authority is not proved by fidelity to past rules, but by its power to produce a harvest of new life and love among the people.
When Jesus exposes our aversion to having others recognised as our equals, he calls us to repent and celebrate God’s generosity to all. The marriage equality debate exposes another frontier of his challenge to us.
Jesus calls us to welcome and honour each other at his table regardless of the disagreements we may have over how to apply biblical teachings.
Law typically serves to contain the expression of human desire within safe bounds, but Jesus calls us to follow him in fulfilling the law through radical love and mercy that always seeks reconciliation.
Christians are to be known for what they celebrate and affirm and encourage rather than what they are against.
Jesus went up the mountain and was transfigured, and we assume that it was a wonderful experience. And so it was, but maybe not in the way we think. What if the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus at that moment was the face of utter human vulnerability?
In a world infested by terror and fear, Jesus tells us that becoming the victims of that world is not nearly as dangerous as becoming part of it.
The Spirit of Jesus unites us across previously hostile boundaries and teaches us a language of liberating love.
Following Jesus has nothing to do with trying to be good. His love and hope are gifts, rather than demands, and they free us to love and hope freely.
True martyrs are those who are killed because their love, truthfulness and forgiveness are intolerable, not those who die killing for their cause.
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.
Although often dismissed as utopian nonsense, Jesus’s teachings about non-retaliation and love of enemies are the key to the salvation of the world.
The world finds the message of Jesus almost incomprehensible because it seems too simplistic and unrealistic to be taken seriously.
The culture of God is so radical in its loving embrace of everyone that mainstream society will see it as a dangerous rejection of all it holds dear.
True Christianity is not transactional but transformational. It is not a series of prescribed actions intended to please God, but the formation of a culture of grace and other-centred love.
When we fear for our own safety, we condone the violence that promises to protect us, and we use religion to justify it, but Jesus wants to free us to rise above the fear without resorting to hatred and violence.
The self-giving love of the Trinity, contrasted with the experience of a toxic love triangle, calls us to a new non-possessive love that always seeks the glory and delight of the other.
The love of God seeks us out, even when we least deserve it, and then calls us to love others similarly.
Because of God’s extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.
Because of God’s abundance, God’s never-ending supply of extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life: a life of gratitude, of loving, of belonging, out of which flows a life of service and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.