Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
In baptism, the Holy Spirit is ordaining us (all of us) for mission.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 5)
God reaches out to us through babies and elderly folks with a message of love and redemption that cuts through the theological justifications of empire and warmongering and calls us to peace.
The the birth of Jesus we see the beginning of a peace mission that is not based on force but on patience, forgiveness and presence.
Discovering who we are called to be is an ever-evolving journey as we follow Jesus in changing circumstances.
Though we are to strive for righteousness and justice now, what we achieve now is a mere shadow of what will be fulfilled in the day of the Lord.
Jesus calls us to a new world in which the lives of nations revolve around bringing the previously marginalised to the centre of our national way of being. Nations that fail to do that collapse into self-destruction.
While many have a passive-aggressive relationship with God, the gospel gives us a vision of God that liberates us to live freely, expansively and joyously.
Many parts of the Bible can be and often are weaponised as tools of oppression, but when we read it critically, with and through the teachings and example of Jesus, it calls us to liberation and life.
We we allow God’s word to work in us, it lifts the burden of oppressive teaching from us.
Living the beatitudes is tough and dangerous, and we will need the inspiration and company of the saints, before us and beside us, if we are going to make it.
If we keep imitating one another, paying back violence with vengeance, the world will be consumed in an escalating fury, but Jesus rescues us and gives us a life-giving example to follow.
There is life and nourishment hidden in the depths, and through Jesus the rock it is accessible to us.
In order to recognise and cooperate with what God is doing, we often need to recognise and see past the assumptions that come with our own privilege.
God’s offer of unlimited forgiveness creates a new world in which we are free to stop judging one another and turning on one another and spiralling into violence and hatred.
Our true identity is only found when we discover that it is not about us, but that we are only truly anyone in relation to the God who is everything, and who is not the opposite of anything.
Jesus did not come with the goal of making some gentle improvements to the status quo, but to disable the status quo by exposing its lies and revealing its victims. Without our culture being radically converted by that, the result is escalating chaos, to which Jesus offers himself as a victim and calls us to do the same.
Jesus calls us to follow him in being a contagious force for love and mercy rather than fearfully quarantining ourselves from bad influences.
When God closes one chapter before opening another, the time in between is a time for prayer and entering into the life of God.
Jesus calls us to look to the new things God is doing and seeks to humbly cooperate with them and bear witness to them.
In the face of the cultural call for an all-tolerating lack of conviction, we are called to be a particular people who follow and champion a distinctive way – the way found in Jesus.