Nathan has been a pastor of our Church since 1994.
The faithful who have gone before us are held securely in the powerful gracious memory of God, where their love and prayers for us live on until we are united with them in resurrection.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton (Page 7)
Jesus seeks out and embraces the outcasts, taking upon himself the hatred and hostility that had been directed at them.
God invites us into a journey of healing, growth and reconciliation, and values our engagement with that journey far above our individual accomplishments.
God has promised a time of resurrection and renewal, and has given us guidance for living faithfully in the meantime.
When you know yourself truly beloved by God in Christ, you are freed from fear and shame to live fully and generously and courageously.
The cross of Jesus can teach us to recognise the innocence of suffering, and so enable us to recognise our own dependence on God’s mercy and to stop digging our own hells.
Our unwitting abusive treatment of the Royal family is a symptom of our entanglement in systemic persecution.
Adversity, violence, and suffering can come as a consequence of not just sin, but of radical love, but with love it can strengthen and sharpen us for fullness of life.
When we read scripture through the eyes of Jesus, we find a way free of the violent abusive images of God in some of the ancient texts.
The Lord’s Prayer is a manifesto for a whole new way of relating to God and the world.
Those who are insiders in the life of God are characterised by their love and compassion for all, especially those deemed unworthy of it, and by the humility to be schooled by outsiders.
We live in uncertain times, unsure of the future shape of the church, but Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to us, not to give us certainty, but to guide and sustain us in the uncertainty.
Living out the unity we have in Christ, is more difficult and more important when we are at odds with one another.
Much traditional morality is based on the idea of separation into binary categories, good and bad, but the Bible also points a path towards a liberating non-binary future in God.
We come to be followers of Jesus, not when we believe certain facts about him, but when we hear his voice and follow what it says (even if we don’t know where the voice comes from).
The resurrection of Jesus opens a path and calls us to follow into a life that is no longer dominated by the crucifying powers that destroy some of us and dehumanise others.
When God is doing new things, our familiar signposts are no longer helpful, and our capacity to follow is dependent on our living relationship with Jesus.
In Christ, God has made an agreement with us, offering us everything and demanding nothing, but if we offer nothing we will be at risk of squandering it all.
Christian spirituality is full of yearning and hungering and reaching for a God who can never quite be satisfyingly grasped.
God’s generosity provides the context for our worship and the model for our living, especially when we are faced with hostility.