Love is our purpose; we are not abandoned, not fearful, judgemental or self-righteous, for we are made in the image of God, who is gentle and wise, witty and loving, generous, forgiving, compassionate and kind.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Acts (Page 3)
Because we really don’t have the whole truth, the Spirit will be heard only when we are together, listening to one another in love.
With every step we take towards God’s economy, we will become more powerful in our witness to God’s saving action and love for the world, and be filled ever more deeply with God’s good grace.
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.
The ‘death of the self’ in baptism, modelled in Jesus, enables us to live openly and generously instead of fearfully and defensively.
Salvation is about being set free to live life in all its fulness, even in the midst of conflict and suffering.
The reputation that matters is a reputation for loving as Jesus loved and, like him, that will be seen as disreputable.
The Holy Spirit is poured out on us so that the liberating presence of Christ may be with us all everywhere, freeing us from fear to live and speak boldly of the new life we have tasted.
The Church is one body, sent into the world to live the life Jesus has begun, a life of love, reconciliation and mercy.
With Jesus we are baptised into a Spirit-inspired costly life of living the new culture of scandalous reconciliation.
The Spirit is there for us where ever we gather in the one place for that one purpose.
Jesus offers himself to the world from a vulnerable place on the margins, and he calls us to trust the Holy Spirit and do likewise.
God invites us to say “yes” to the Spirit, to be open to seeing ourselves beyond the constraints others place on us and to be open to forming new community with God and with God’s world.
We are called to privilege the God of love and liberation over the economic realities of dog-eat-dog capitalism, and prevent that ‘reality’ colonising the truth of love with its divide-and-conquer business plan.
The Spirit of God is acting to bring life out of death and hope and vitality out of despair.
The risen Christ and his word are often revealed in the words and actions of a stranger. Sometimes we are called to welcome and heed the stranger; and sometimes we are called to be the faithful stranger to others.
The decision to repent and accept Christ’s gift of forgiveness and life involves a life change which includes a new willingness to honour and serve Christ in the stranger.
The message of Pentecost is the message of Pascha – Christ is risen and, in him, we are liberated from our captivity to the spirits of death, fear, despair, and division, and freed to dance to the Holy Spirit’s tune.
When God accepts and gifts those who are supposed to be excluded according to our theology, then its time to change our theology to a rule of love instead of a rule of purity.
The day of Pentecost is the day when the Spirit comes to interrupt and call into question the inevitability of our despair.