Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
The Cross is the tree at which we come to know the fullness of good and evil, and as we choose to bear the consequences of good and evil, it becomes for us the tree of life.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 31)
God is deeply hurt and offended by our rejection of God in favour of things that are worthless, but Jesus has made possible both our forgiveness and our reconciliation.
God has given us a new identity and a new allegiance in his kingdom, and our loyalty is now to truth and compassion regardless of their consequences for the interests of any other communities or kingdoms.
The world will try to domesticate the gospel and get it to reinforce the world’s status quo and moral codes, but as people identified with Christ on the cross, we live the radical (and offensive) life of the new creation.
Christian ascetic discipline is not about earning God’s acceptance, but about banishing the demons so that we can live life more fully in the here and now.
The message of Pentecost is the message of Pascha – Christ is risen and, in him, we are liberated from our captivity to the spirits of death, fear, despair, and division, and freed to dance to the Holy Spirit’s tune.
When God accepts and gifts those who are supposed to be excluded according to our theology, then its time to change our theology to a rule of love instead of a rule of purity.
The risen Christ is extravagantly generous and excruciatingly unwilling to settle for pious platitudes in return.
The experience of the resurrected Christ may not be as instantly transformative as we’ve often thought, but those who seek Christ’s self-revelation will grow into his mission.
Repenting of our past ways and following Jesus does not guarantee us safety from disaster, but it certainly opens the way to an abundance of life that is beyond what any disaster can destroy.
Extravagant grace can be terrifying because it asks nothing of us but a complete change of life!
God consistently favours love and acceptance over purity, so when we are not sure, it is better to take a risk on love and acceptance.
It is always a shock to realise just who Jesus is and what he’s on about.
A modern paraphrase of the Nativity Sermon of St John Chrysostom, first Preached in Antioch in 386AD
In baptism, we have passed from the preoccupations of the present to the a life shaped by God’s future, and though the completion of that transformation may be painful, it is nevertheless the fulfilling of our deepest longings.
Religious ritual and ethical living are both bound up together in the journey of following Jesus into the Realm of God.
Christ is sacramentally present to heal and forgive when his people are open, honest and vulnerable with one another in seeking healing for their sickness and suffering.
Making the Church in the incarnate body of Christ is costly for God, and both challenging and salvific for us.
The answers to the questions about our future directions are not easy, but we can trust the God who holds our future in his hands.
The resurrection has broken open many old certainties, and our ethics must now be grounded in the new things God is doing, characterised by radically inclusive love, rather than in the old restrictions.