Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
God invites us to live joyously, boldly and freely in the midst of mystery, but we are frequently tempted to grasp for something more tangible and certain.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 15)
When we use the biblical law to reinforce a worldview of sin and punishment, we doom ourselves to live in a judgemental world, a world from which Jesus offers to break us free.
The marriage equality debate raises questions about authority, but prophetic authority is not proved by fidelity to past rules, but by its power to produce a harvest of new life and love among the people.
When Jesus exposes our aversion to having others recognised as our equals, he calls us to repent and celebrate God’s generosity to all. The marriage equality debate exposes another frontier of his challenge to us.
Jesus calls us to welcome and honour each other at his table regardless of the disagreements we may have over how to apply biblical teachings.
Law typically serves to contain the expression of human desire within safe bounds, but Jesus calls us to follow him in fulfilling the law through radical love and mercy that always seeks reconciliation.
Christians are to be known for what they celebrate and affirm and encourage rather than what they are against.
Recognising what sort of sacrifices we are called to make and what sort of sacrifices we are called to refrain from making is crucial to faithfully following the way of Jesus.
Even for Jesus, and certainly for us, there is sometimes the need to be jolted into the reality of what God’s new revelation of grace is all about.
What we do with our children is one of the great tests of our faithfulness to the God of Jesus, and tragically, child sacrifice is common in our society.
In a world infested by terror and fear, Jesus tells us that becoming the victims of that world is not nearly as dangerous as becoming part of it.
Baptism is to the Christian life as a wedding is to the married life – an ongoing symbol of the vowed and relational life in God.
The Spirit of Jesus unites us across previously hostile boundaries and teaches us a language of liberating love.
Following Jesus has nothing to do with trying to be good. His love and hope are gifts, rather than demands, and they free us to love and hope freely.
True martyrs are those who are killed because their love, truthfulness and forgiveness are intolerable, not those who die killing for their cause.
Jesus gives us an abundance of all that we need, and when we learn to trust that, we are set free from rivalry and possessiveness and enabled to share generously.
Meeting us on the road of despair, Jesus reveals to us that suffering and defeat are God’s means of bringing new life and hope.
Jesus died an apparent failure, but in his resurrection, the failure’s power over us is broken for ever.
Jesus calls us to believe that he is the resurrection and the life, not just in theory, but in relation to everything that is dead or dying within us.
Jesus subverts our concepts of sin and offers to open our eyes and free us from it all.