God wants love rather than sacrifice, but in a fallen world love that is genuine will often be sacrificial.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Mark (Page 5)
In the sacraments, Jesus constantly calls us to follow him in giving up conventional notions of honour and offer ourselves for the life of the world.
Jesus’s abolition of “us” and “them” categories is so radical that it seems almost impossible for us to comprehend and put into practice.
It is human nature to think that our ways are God’s ways, and so to shun those whose ways seem alien or disgusting to us, but Jesus calls us to recognise God at work in others, however different.
Like the disciples, we stumble, but we too can pick ourselves up and re-orient ourselves to the transformed landscape that Jesus is slowly mapping out for us.
Jesus breaks down the barriers that divide us into pure and impure and removes the cause for the fear that marginalises people.
On our own we are powerless to deal with many of the things that confront us, but when we recognise that and make ourselves available for whatever God wants to do, all kinds of scary things may actually be possible.
Unquestioning allegiances to family and nation keep us bound to satanic systems, but Jesus binds the satan and breaks us free to be the new family of God.
The resurrection of Jesus is the most confronting and terrifying news imaginable, and all we can do (after trying to run) is surrender ourselves to his grace.
In Christ we are set free from all that would oppress us in order that we might be free to live in gracious and life-giving service of God and others.
With Jesus we are baptised into a Spirit-inspired costly life of living the new culture of scandalous reconciliation.
A growing incidence of cataclysmic violence is not a sign of God’s activity, but it does call us to hold on to our hope and look for God’s action in small signs of life coming from death.
We remain blind to much of what Jesus would have us see until we allow him to open our eyes to see through the eyes of others.
True greatness comes in devoting ourselves to recognising and liberating the greatness in others, and that will often come at the cost of misunderstanding, sniping and rejection.
Taking up your cross is about a willingness to pay the price of following Jesus and living out your baptism. It is not a generalised stoicism.
God is doing and saying far more than we can see or hear, but God is always ready to penetrate the presumptions and complacencies that are closing our eyes and ears.
God created everything and destined everything to be part of the one glorious story of God’s love and grace, and through Jesus, God draws us back into the story.
When things are desperate, God calls us only to be faithful and committed, because the outcomes are in God’s hands, not ours.
When we glimpse the fullness of what could be, we are called to the tough work of bridging the gap between here and there.
Jesus meets us with not just words of hope, but with actions of authority and integrity.