Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
Jesus Christ is the coming one who will fulfill the hopes and yearnings of the world, but we will imperil our faith and hope if we keep trying to set the agendas for him.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 16)
God’s visions of the future are often dismissed as unrealistic because our limited vision causes us to expect only more of the same.
Floods of hostility and violence sweep people away, but we are called to prepare ourselves to stand firm with Jesus, and be left behind as those who will not succumb to the angry flood.
Events of global chaos probably aren’t signs of God’s next big move, but we need to take seriously the call to live faithfully and courageously in the midst of them.
Being truly alive is a gift so extravagantly rich and wonderful that it can’t even be meaningfully contrasted with simply not being dead.
God’s self-giving is to all of humanity, all of the time, and we are called to lift our eyes beyond our immediate concerns and stand in solidarity with the faithful who have gone before us.
Before your past catches up with you, Jesus will try to blindside you with scandalous grace.
A healthy self-esteem is not one that thinks itself better than others, but one that, in solidarity with others, accepts the merciful gift of life and love that Jesus offers us.
Living in hope-fuelled anticipation of God’s promised future does not mean withdrawing from the life of the world around us.
Honestly owning the rage that sometimes consumes us is an important part of maintaining our resistance to all that stands in the way of a Jesus-shaped life.
Jesus offers us vision of the future which sharply differs from that offered by modern economics, and we need to intentionally nourish that vision.
God longs to welcome and bless us far more than we deserve, but if we don’t contribute to a culture of extravagant grace, we are unlikely to be able to receive it.
The culture of God is so radical in its loving embrace of everyone that mainstream society will see it as a dangerous rejection of all it holds dear.
If we construct our identity around a pursuit of social esteem, we will degrade our true selves, but if we model ourselves on the generosity of God, we will find true life where few look for it.
The people who blame Jesus for increasing violence may be right. He has kicked out the foundations of our peace-keeping strategies, and now violent chaos will grow unless we learn the ways of love and mercy.
There are numerous competing claims about what a faithful Christian life looks like, and sometimes the truth about following Jesus may be the least palatable of them all.
If we delight in shaming and punishing wrongdoers, we will not recognise the scandalous love and mercy revealed in Jesus, but instead find ourselves being harshly judged by an outraged condemning god who we have created in our own image.
Election week sheds new light on how we can participate with Jesus in bringing satanic principalities and powers crashing down.
Sometimes God has to kill off our hopes and destroy our faith structures in order to create space for new life and truth to arise among us.
The gospel of love and grace revealed by Jesus is always at risk of being distorted into a false gospel of ‘holy’ hostility.