We are called to stop defending ourselves and fighting off the intruders in the vineyard, but rather to welcome the spirit-sent opportunities that will demand of us, but will also change us.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Matthew (Page 10)
God will open the way through the world’s chaos, and it will be grounded on extravagant mercy.
God will wound us if necessary to bring us into the full blessing intended for us.
Perhaps when law and order perpetuate injustice, God is on the side of the scammers and swindlers.
The Church will always contain more than its fair share of maliciousness, pettiness and nastiness, but the temptation to try to weed it out is a temptation to abandon the way of Christ and make things worse.
God calls us to live out the gospel, not just to think about, not just to pray about it, but to live it. Jesus called us to action, not to change their thinking but to change their lives.
The power of sin over us will not be broken by trying harder, but by pursuing Christ and Christ alone.
When hopes have been extinguished and all is despair, God comes back.
The revelation of what God is on about in Christ will always upend our expectations and disrupt our lives.
The coming Christ will continually confound our expectations, no matter how well informed or righteous they may be.
It is always a shock to realise just who Jesus is and what he’s on about.
The hope that empowers us to maintain our counter-cultural obedience to Christ, is that the One who will eventually rule over all is the One who offers himself as a suffering servant of all.
The Coming Christ will reward and celebrate with those he finds having a go and making the most of all they have been given, not those who fearfully play it safe.
Authority in the Christian community derives not from worldly status or popularity contests, but from a humble willingness to imitate Christ in his devotion to God and his service of others.
Our faith is about grace – that God comes to meet us in the truth of who we are. God is far less threatened by the darkness in our lives than we are!
At the deepest level of our need, we are called to rest in the love and righteousness of God, which can never be forced.
There is no such thing as a ritual-free space, and performed well or performed badly, rituals change things, change people’s lives.
Many of us want the faith story to go according to our script, but the call of Jesus crashes through our dominant religious and cultural understandings and aspirations.
Jesus is opening our eyes and widening our focus to allow God’s ‘unbiased grace’ to break through.
The only thing which proves to be worth anything at all, the only thing that proves able to continually redeem our lives from the brink is faith in the crucified and risen one.