Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
If the message of Christmas is real, then our preparations for it need to be radically life-changing.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 3)
Faced with the decline and disintegration of the Church, we are called to offer ourselves to God as the new branch who faithfully carry God’s love and mercy into a new era.
Perhaps amidst the increasingly depressing state of the world, Jesus is calling us to learn the path of faithfulness from those who never win.
Jesus affirms generous giving, but he also condemns the religious exploitation of generous givers.
Jesus’s primary aim was not saving us for heaven after we die, but establishing a culture of whole-hearted loved in the here and now.
Christ’s grief gathers up our griefs and achieves the promise of a day when tears will be no more.
The capacity to understand and follow the way of Jesus is a miraculous gift.
In calling us into the culture of God, Jesus calls us to give up our addictions to tribalism, competitive grief, and selective compassion.
Jesus calls us to embrace God, life, and one another with joy, delight, hope, and grace, not with heartlessness cloaked in legalities.
The book of Esther is like a joke that has aged badly, enabling us to see how righteous anger at anti-semitism can become its horrifying mirror image.
Jesus offers himself to us to serve and bless us, and calls us to do the same in serving and blessing others.
Jesus carries and embodies the Biblical tradition of wisdom, calling us to let go of our self-focussed lives and expand into new lives of wisdom, love and compassion.
God’s gracious acceptance is so free from favouritism that we find it scandalous and daunting.
God’s love for us is so all-consuming that he accepts us as soon as we accept him and is happy for our behaviours to be sorted out in the transforming experience of love.
While a dedicated building can serve a valuable role in our worship, God calls us to follow far beyond the confines of the building.
Worshipful singing together helps shape our communal identity as a people who can live for love, joy and reconciliation in a world of hostility and oppression.
The measure of the value of our worship is the measure of the transformation of our lives into imitations of the love and kindness of Jesus.
When misunderstood, being “the chosen” can mutate into a toxic culture of entitlement that produces horrific criminal behaviour, and Jesus calls us to join him in challenging that culture.
Healing the world’s tribalism and uniting us as one human family is the central goal of the gospel, the mission of salvation, the realisation of the kingdom of God.
In his suffering death, Jesus calls us to solidarity with all who suffer, and in his complete lack of vengefulness, the risen Christ offers the hope of healing from our violence.