Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
The self-giving love of the Trinity, contrasted with the experience of a toxic love triangle, calls us to a new non-possessive love that always seeks the glory and delight of the other.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 17)
God’s Holy Spirit gathers us into one body where our differences are not erased or downplayed, but boldly offered in love and service of one another.
The Revelation’s surprising image of the absence of church buildings in the fulfilled holy city is a helpful reminder that they have always been a risky concession and that their dangers need to be carefully avoided.
The love of God seeks us out, even when we least deserve it, and then calls us to love others similarly.
Doubts and questions, far from being a threat to faith in the risen Christ, are its normal starting point and constant companion.
Jesus is heart-broken when we refuse his call to gather with him in a place of powerlessness, vulnerable to the hostility of a power-hungry world.
Whether we think of the devil as a personal being or as a metaphor, our call to put our trust in Jesus to strengthen our resistance to the temptation of expedient short-cuts is the same.
We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.
In an us-and-them world, people hope to find a way to get God on their side, but Jesus confounds our expectations of God siding against others.
The refining fire made known in Jesus is not targeting “morality” issues, but our hatreds, hostilities and inhospitableness.
In a world increasingly divided between violent powers, Jesus leads a kingdom that is a radical peaceful challenge to both of them.
Only when the world models itself on the self-sacrificial love and mercy we have seen in Jesus will it be saved from the cycles of apocalyptic violence and chaos.
Jesus wants to lift us beyond the deadening conformity that seeks to silence us and confine us to a stunted life.
Most suffering is random and unfair, but Jesus has joined us in it to lead us into new life.
Jesus’s invitation is radically open and inclusive, and we need to guard carefully against our own culturally conditioned instincts to start narrowing and policing it.
The things that make Jesus the perfect leader to lead us into new life are probably the same things that would make us turn our backs on him and seek to follow others.
God promises the best for us if we follow the way of Jesus, and faith is actively trusting that that pathway will indeed be the way of life.
En Cristo somos uno con toda la carne y la sangre, y por lo tanto nuestra lucha no es contra ningunas personas, sino contra los espíritus y los principados y los potestades que dividirían a la gente y les harían enemigos.
Jesus rejects the opportunity to fulfil our hopes and expectations in order that he might give us more than we thought possible.
Building impressive buildings can be about a desire to monopolise and contain God, whereas God wants us to break down any walls that divide and exclude anyone.