Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
The Christmas story includes a message of God’s solidarity with and care for children and families who live in fear and who flee to seek refuge. We corrupt the message if we make it about our children and not all children.
When God is moving to do something new among us, it almost always seems scandalous, immoral and offensive to many, and is just as likely to involve those who are regarded as morally suspect.
Jesus probably won’t meet our expectations, but will instead set out to convert our expectations and lead us into a new world that exceeds anything we could have expected.
The “things” we so readily put our trust in, or find our identity in, will all fall, and only God’s love and care for us will remain.
God’s mission is much bigger than us, and to play our part in it, we need to live freely and fearlessly and maintain a humble and faithful connection with the traditions and wisdom of the wider Church.
The Bible can be used to justify anything, but when it is approached humbly as a place of prayerful encounter with the risen Christ, it is alive with the breath of God and leads us to life.
We can take our salvation and just return to normal life, but God calls us beyond normal into a wholeness that grows from praise, prayer and service.
Forgiving the way Jesus does will always be seen as not just disreputable, but even dangerous and criminal.
God sees us as trapped in the rubble of a collapsing world and is desperately seeking to find and rescue us before it is too late.
Thanks be to God, we are in safe hands. God who has been the author, will also be the finisher of our faith.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
God is all ready to heal and free us, but organised religion is not always so quick to agree.
Full-blooded Christian discipleship may cost us some precious relationships and a lot of blood sweat and tears, but we will have plenty of new supporters and it all all be well worth it in the end.
Believing and following Jesus is about faith because certainty is impossible and doubts are unavoidable.
God has created us for relationships, and any values or priorities that are willing to sacrifice relationship for something else will cripple us.
Answers to prayer are not a controllable formula, but we are called to pray as part of our participation in God’s quest to bring healing, wholeness and life to a world of chaos.
When we follow Christ in being pain-bearers, we are participating in the reconciliation of the world.
God is always reaching out to those who we have cast off as nobodies, treating them as beloved somebodies, and calling us to follow in doing the same.
Jesus has freed us to be all we were created to be and to live life to the full, not to indulge the impulses that will lead us straight back into captivity.
Those who, in Christ, have been set free to love as Jesus loves will no longer have their relationships with God or one another bounded or understood by law.