Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
In calling us into the culture of God, Jesus calls us to give up our addictions to tribalism, competitive grief, and selective compassion.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton
Jesus calls us to embrace God, life, and one another with joy, delight, hope, and grace, not with heartlessness cloaked in legalities.
The book of Esther is like a joke that has aged badly, enabling us to see how righteous anger at anti-semitism can become its horrifying mirror image.
Jesus offers himself to us to serve and bless us, and calls us to do the same in serving and blessing others.
Jesus carries and embodies the Biblical tradition of wisdom, calling us to let go of our self-focussed lives and expand into new lives of wisdom, love and compassion.
God’s gracious acceptance is so free from favouritism that we find it scandalous and daunting.
God’s love for us is so all-consuming that he accepts us as soon as we accept him and is happy for our behaviours to be sorted out in the transforming experience of love.
While a dedicated building can serve a valuable role in our worship, God calls us to follow far beyond the confines of the building.
Worshipful singing together helps shape our communal identity as a people who can live for love, joy and reconciliation in a world of hostility and oppression.
The measure of the value of our worship is the measure of the transformation of our lives into imitations of the love and kindness of Jesus.
When misunderstood, being “the chosen” can mutate into a toxic culture of entitlement that produces horrific criminal behaviour, and Jesus calls us to join him in challenging that culture.
Healing the world’s tribalism and uniting us as one human family is the central goal of the gospel, the mission of salvation, the realisation of the kingdom of God.
In his suffering death, Jesus calls us to solidarity with all who suffer, and in his complete lack of vengefulness, the risen Christ offers the hope of healing from our violence.
God is most likely and able to work through those who accept their own weakness and don’t try to forcefully assert their own power and influence.
Though the experience of grief often feels like an absence of God, it is a deep experience of the heart of God, and is symbolised as such in the brokenness of the Eucharist.
Despite our almost idolatrous attachment to social structures like traditional family and monarchy, God wants us to live up to our calling to be a radically egalitarian community of prayerful shared responsibility.
Those who faithfully follow Jesus and proclaim his message are flawed human beings who will not often appear successful or impressive.
The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us how to take sides when the Bible brings us conflicting voices, especially over persistent issues like ethno-nationalism, racism, war, and genocide.
The Holy Spirit, poured out on the church, opens pathways of communication, breaking down barriers to enable us to communicate with one another and with God.
Christ is always stretching the boundaries beyond what we can comprehend, and his ascension stretches his presence to encompass even what seem to us to be his absence.