Christ uses his power to lift up others, but we are prone to misuse power to exalt ourselves.
Love is both a command and an eschatological promise. The promise undergirds our striving to obey the command.
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.
There are no passengers in the Kingdom – those who accept the call must go on to clothe themselves in righteousness.
The ten commandments are not a measure of our moral accomplishment, but a gift offered to God by a grateful covenant people.
The wilderness can seem harsh and threatening, but God is there, ready to nourish us with the bread of heaven.
When everything seems to be against us, God will open up for us a way to freedom and life.
Jesus commits himself to the path of redemptive suffering in preference to either fight or flight, and he calls us to follow him in that commitment.
The once and for all sacrifice of Christ and our living sacrifice of ourselves are becoming one sacrifice as we and Christ become one.
Jesus will be there for us in the midst of the storms, but we are to stay together in his boat rather than jump ship in a misguided “display of faith”.
Reconciliation begins with my ‘self’, and then, as I let go the fears, the guilt, the self justification, I might just possibly become an agent for peace.
The incoming Kingdom of God often challenges conventional social norms to such an extent that it is perceived as anarchic or even evil.
God is with us everywhere, whether we realise it or not, but there is still value in honouring special places of promise and revelation.
Jesus calls us to do the hard work to prepare the soil of our hearts an minds, ready to grow the fruits of faith, hope and love.
In Baptism, Christ has united us with himself in his death to sin and his resurrection to radically new life.
Christ’s desire to extend hospitality to us, to welcome us at his table, is so great that he will give even his own life to bring us into the experience of his love. This is the pattern for our call to hospitality too.
You might have been written off as a dead loss (even by yourself), but only respond to the call of Christ, and you will live!
The kingdom of God is celebrating our life together now and our shared hopes and dreams of a world where all might eat and drink, and we are called to do what we can to bring this world about.
Christ is so present we loose the ability to see him. We need to worship to recover our sight.
When Jesus sees us for who we really are, we are enabled to see ourselves for who we really are, without boxes and labels, and so be saved to become who we were created to be.