Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we are reconciled to God, made free to be the person that God created us to be, and we live into it by embracing a positive culture of love, mercy and consideration.
God may not always give us what we want in answer to our prayers, but will always be with us through the Spirit to help us face whatever it is that life puts before us.
A sermon on Luke 10: 38-42 by Sylvia Sandeman Some of you may be wondering how I got to preach on this story of Martha and Mary. I have to say from the start it is not a story that I would choose to preach on. It is a story that I have always struggled with – knowing that I am sure…
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 lectionary reading I’ve decided to focus on today is the reading from 2 Kings 5:1-14. I’ll be honest I chose this passage because of its unfamiliarity. Because of its strangeness. In undergrad I studied anthropology, the study of cultures, be it subcultures within our own culture or cultures more foreign. There’s a saying in anthropology that describes much of what the…
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 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.
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.
Whenever we are invested in the status quo, we are at risk of being caught up in seeing the liberation that Jesus brings as a threat to be opposed.
In Christ’s ascension onto the mysterious cloud, we are gathered together into his mysterious presence.
Following the living Jesus is the pathway to healing, integrity and life, and sometimes it comes into conflict with “following the Bible”.
Outrageous love is the most obvious characteristic of Jesus, and therefore it is the one thing that will make us recognisable as his followers.
Conversion to the way of Jesus is not just a matter of belief, but requires a serious reckoning with our past complicity with attacks on his way.
When we crusade against the evil of others, we end up crusading against Jesus himself, for he asks us to become givers and lovers of life.
We have been drawn into an unstoppable rumour that keeps interrupting the dominant story of fear, hostility and death.
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.
Jesus sets out to reshape our view of the relationships between sin, repentance and disaster, and if possible, to call us out of our spiral into global self-destruction.
In a world that is hell-bent on self-destruction, Jesus calls us to gather to him and to love faithfully and vulnerably with him, rather than surrendering to the hate and fear.
Lent calls us to faithfulness to God and we need to assess the direction of our journey, our call to ministry and also to meet our own demons.
Acknowledging and appreciating Jesus is relatively easy, but we find it much more difficult to transform our lives in conformity with his teaching.