Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
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.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 15)
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.
Our deepest thirst will never be satisfied by cautious morality and religious compliance, but it will be abundantly quenched when we drink deeply of the living water of joyous intimacy that Jesus pours out freely.
Lent is a recurring reminder of the fragility of our discipleship in the face of tempting shortcuts and instant gratifications.
While the final judgement of each individual is rightly left to God, we are called to ensure that we are found to be loving, merciful and trustworthy by the world around us.
Although often dismissed as utopian nonsense, Jesus’s teachings about non-retaliation and love of enemies are the key to the salvation of the world.
We make a devilish mistake when we project the origins of hell onto God. Jesus calls us to follow him into a new way of life that will save us from plunging into the hells of our own making.
The world finds the message of Jesus almost incomprehensible because it seems too simplistic and unrealistic to be taken seriously.
Jesus did not come to be the ultimate sacrifice that would appease God, but to show us, once and for all, that God does not want sacrifices at all, but lives of love, mercy and compassion.
In the violence and suffering that surround the Christmas story, we find the revelation of a God who does not inflict violence and suffering, but suffers violence to bring love and peace.
Jesus is the Word – what God has to say – who reveals true humanity and illuminates our path to becoming fully and truly human.
In Joseph we see an impressive example of someone with the integrity and courage to embrace God’s new directions despite considerable personal cost.