Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
There are forces conspiring to keep us in the dark, but Jesus opens our eyes so that we can see that our deepest yearnings are satisfied only in God.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton
Being born of water and Spirit involves becoming as vulnerable and dependent on God as a newborn baby.
Whether or not you can accept the idea of a personal devil, there are forces of evil in the world that are bigger and more powerful than our own inner flaws, but conscious and united, we are stronger still.
Stunning moments of spiritual clarity can be life-changing, but the real measure of our faithfulness is in how we live for the rest of the time.
The world finds the message of Jesus almost incomprehensible because it seems too simplistic and unrealistic to be taken seriously.
In the encounter with Jesus, we realise how radically different the world is and how completely we need to change.
The place of belonging that we are looking for is found when we find where Jesus belongs.
In baptism we surrender to God’s claim on us and enter a vowed relationship and life which will have its ups and its downs but in which God is forever faithful.
In Jesus, the truth about God’s ways and means is brought to light and we are called to so reflect that light that all might be drawn to it.
In the Christ-child we encounter God responding to our suffering and leading us into the promised land of new life.
The particularity of Jesus’s identity scandalises our tribal sensibilities, but our attempts to erase such details in favour of a more “universal” truth inevitably fail to convey the good news of God with us.
God comes to us in unexpected ways, and the break with conventional religious respectability is even more earth-shattering than the break with conventional reproductive biology.
Jesus asks us to assess the legitimacy of any ministry by its transforming and liberating outcomes for the world and its peoples.
Our sure hope of a new future brought to fulfilment in the coming Christ inspires and empowers us to live now in ways which resist the despair and selfishness of our age and anticipate the peace and righteousness of the coming age.
Jesus comes to break us free from oppressive understandings of God and of God’s expectations of us.
The global social breakdown of which Jesus speaks is caused by the failure of our old oppressive ways of maintaining peace, but God has promised us a better way on the other side.
The faithful who have gone before us are held securely in the powerful gracious memory of God, where their love and prayers for us live on until we are united with them in resurrection.
Jesus seeks out and embraces the outcasts, taking upon himself the hatred and hostility that had been directed at them.
God invites us into a journey of healing, growth and reconciliation, and values our engagement with that journey far above our individual accomplishments.
God has promised a time of resurrection and renewal, and has given us guidance for living faithfully in the meantime.