Trying to establish our own righteousness burdens us with divisiveness and hostility, but Jesus offers us rest and freedom.
God and religion misunderstood can be the cause of hostility, division and violence, but the God made known to us in Jesus is a God of grace who generously gives us life, freedom and reconciliation.
Jesus calls us to give up the illusion that we own God’s blessing, invite others in, and be despised for doing so, giving up our privileges to build a world that all can share.
Understanding God as a relational trinity can guide us into the deep loving relationships with God and one another for which we were created.
We are to witness to this incredible, unbelievable, but very real truth: that in God’s reality, love crosses every divide, even the chasm of death.
We are a ragtag bunch, but in witnessing to God’s mercy and love, we become the people of God together.
Jesus is the door through which we pass to receive life – life in his name – a life of authenticity, a life of freedom, a life of purpose.
The crucified and risen Jesus teaches us to interpret the whole Bible through his eyes.
The message of Easter was that the disciples would find Jesus – not at the empty tomb – but going ahead of them into Galilee – on the mission field.
God’s refining work is done not through judgement and punishment, but through the transforming power of love.
God gives us the love we thirst for, even while we are still fighting against God, and in doing so, God sets the pattern for us to follow that will bring freedom to the world.
Jesus calls us to entrust ourselves into the care of the Spirit who will carry us into the unknown future of God.
Once we recognise that all women, like all men, are made in the image of God, we catch a glimpse of God’s original vision for us, for the day when all people experience God’s radical and abundant love, and the pouring out of justice demanded by that love.
The stories of Moses, Elijah and Jesus on various mountain tops reveals a process of God’s self-revelation as the one who loves us and suffers for us.
Jesus calls us to model ourselves on him to embrace a new pattern of full humanity rather than just constrain the worst excesses of an old failed humanity.
The righteousness give to us in Christ, and which we grow into in our following of him, fulfils and exceeds the trajectory set by the biblical law and prophets.
Jesus honours, commends and models a set of attitudes, or stances toward the world, which can and will change the world, but embracing them is no small challenge.
The “fishing for people” to which we are called is not about being pushy and manipulative marketers, but being open and generous in our sharing of the light that has brought us life and healing.
Jesus is the “Lamb of God”, a sacrifice offered by God to appease and expose the sin of the world – the sacrificial monster of human blame-shifting and scapegoating.
The ‘death of the self’ in baptism, modelled in Jesus, enables us to live openly and generously instead of fearfully and defensively.