It is always a shock to realise just who Jesus is and what he’s on about.
A modern paraphrase of the Nativity Sermon of St John Chrysostom, first Preached in Antioch in 386AD
Advent faith believes in the possibility of surprise, and that our tragic and repetitive history has a punch-line which will overturn everything that we have been taught to expect.
In baptism, we have passed from the preoccupations of the present to the a life shaped by God’s future, and though the completion of that transformation may be painful, it is nevertheless the fulfilling of our deepest longings.
Advent is a time of deep paradox, a season that speaks to the reality of our world and calls us to be awake.
Jesus promises that if we will face our deepest fear – the loss of our very souls – and if we will trust in his love, then we shall live, even though we die.
Religious ritual and ethical living are both bound up together in the journey of following Jesus into the Realm of God.
Grace is the opposite of karma, that most ancient and persistent of human laws which proclaims that we get what we deserve. We do not get what we deserve, and thank Christ we don’t!
Jesus is uncompromising in his teaching about what we do with our bodies and the significance of our relationships, but also in promising a new beginning when we find ourselves lost in this way.
Christ is sacramentally present to heal and forgive when his people are open, honest and vulnerable with one another in seeking healing for their sickness and suffering.
Any political wisdom which has lost touch with the values revealed to us in the character of God is on the road to disaster. It is not wisdom at all; it is just the mouthings of wealth and power.
Making the Church in the incarnate body of Christ is costly for God, and both challenging and salvific for us.
A fortified inner self not only enables a person to offer love properly but to receive love properly, even from God, to give without strings, to receive without suspicion.
The answers to the questions about our future directions are not easy, but we can trust the God who holds our future in his hands.
If we can lose ourselves in the worship of Christ, then Christ will come to fill our emptied egos with his own self which now dances in the freedom of God.
Rediscovering the mission of Jesus is one pathway through which we might re-enter the experience of dependence on God.
The day of Pentecost is the day when the Spirit comes to interrupt and call into question the inevitability of our despair.
The resurrection has broken open many old certainties, and our ethics must now be grounded in the new things God is doing, characterised by radically inclusive love, rather than in the old restrictions.
God has promised that if we stay connected to him, then he will give us the energy and the love to go out from our comfort-zones into the alien territory of those who need God’s love most of all.
The message that salvation is exclusively in the hands of the risen Christ may be unfashionable, but it is the only message of salvation we have to offer.