Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
Acknowledging and appreciating Jesus is relatively easy, but we find it much more difficult to transform our lives in conformity with his teaching.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 12)
Most of us are addicted to achieving results and success, and it is crippling us. Jesus leads us towards an unexpected and almost unrecognisable freedom.
Jesus models for us a willingness to listen, learn and grow rather than a domineering certainty that insists on knowing who’s right and who’s wrong.
The baby whose coming is awaited will turn the world upside down (not just the lives of its parents!), and our counter-cultural observance of Advent is a necessary preparation of ourselves for that reality.
Angry prophets who tell us the hard-to-hear truth about ourselves pave the way for a new world to emerge.
The task of being changed into what God calls us to be involves a radical break with the established norms of our world.
The coming of Christ to transform the present world into the Kingdom of God will be earth-shattering, but we easily lose sight of it in our anticipation of “another Christmas”.
In the face of a politics grounded in nationalist arrogance and fake news, Jesus proclaims a ‘kingdom’ grounded in shared humanity and truth.
The collapse of the institutional church and other social structures will be painful for all of us, but it is not ultimately a threat to mission of Jesus.
Suffering raises painful unanswerable questions, but Jesus leads us into a life where the sharing of our honest questions is part of shaping a community of healing and hope.
There is nothing wrong with an eager desire for a special closeness to Jesus. Jesus is eager to fulfil such desires, but warns us of the cost of sticking with him.
When God is seeking to communicate with us, we usually need the prayerful support of others to help ensure that we remain open to hearing what God is calling us to.
When we want to know what God is like, our primary source of information is Jesus.
Sickness and sin are similar and related disorders from which Jesus comes to to heal and save us.
Children are a sign of the Kingdom, and our capacity to welcome them is a measure of our capacity to welcome the culture of God.
When we commit ourselves to following Jesus, we surrender all our personal aspirations and our share in the aspirations of our nation, in order that we might receive the life of Christ.
Jesus opens himself to the experience of those who are excluded and responds with a radical opening of the Table of God’s communion.
Sexual Intimacy is an exquisitely beautiful gift from God, but attempts to control and repress it frequently distort it into a hypocritical and malevolent force.
Jesus confronts us with our cannibalistic behaviour in order that we might follow him into a saving communion with God and one another.
Jesus calls us to choose between the old bread of hostility and death and the new bread of compassion and life.