You might have been written off as a dead loss (even by yourself), but only respond to the call of Christ, and you will live!
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Conversion (Page 3)
God calls us to new beginnings, and we have to let go of old certainties to embrace them.
Recognising Jesus as Lord requires such a reversal of conventional values that it cannot but dangerously transform us.
God offers to make us his children, a position that may not appeal to our autonomous ambitions, but which offers honour and security.
In baptism we are adopted into a new family that is radically inclusive of those who have been cut off.
God will do great things with us, but will not impose them on us, so we have to relinquish control before God brings about the growth we crave.
The coming Christ will continually confound our expectations, no matter how well informed or righteous they may be.
When we detach from things, God comes to fill or possess us by God’s Spirit, and suddenly the world is full of life once more.
The risen Christ is extravagantly generous and excruciatingly unwilling to settle for pious platitudes in return.
Lent can be a dark night filled with tears and mourning and loss, but it is worth it, for God’s joy comes in the morning.
The story of Jonah nurtures our own life of faith, revealing that God can work his purposes out even in and through people like Jonah and us.
The resurrection of Jesus is about the in-breaking of something which is so new, so different, so unheard of, that it changes things so entirely that we will never again become captive to all that is predictable, or ‘necessary,’ or ‘fated’.
The impossible life of peace, joy, justice centred in the other, only becomes possible because God makes it possible.
God calls us to detach, to empty ourselves of desire, to die with Christ, so that we may truly welcome Christ when he returns to his appointed home in our hearts and souls.
Summing up the previous section of the gospel, Bartimaeus is a model disciple – one who sees who Jesus is, has no pretensions to power, leaves everything, and follows Jesus on the way.
Although the choice to repent can be characterised in black and white terms, it usually feels like a choice for one risky joy over several safer ones, but it’s worth it!
The need for liberation for the poor and oppressed is obvious, but for the comfortable and successful, the enslavements to consumerism, power and hardness of heart are harder to discern and take the intervention of God to break free from.
All that is required to inherit all the fullness of the Kingdom is to accept the invitation and throw yourself wholeheartedly into the celebration.
There are all sorts of things that can make us look impressively Christian, but the only thing that matters is to deeply know Christ and to enter with him into the experience of his suffering and resurrection.
Our doubts and questions are welcome to God so long as we are not using them to avoid Christ’s question to us – “Will you follow me?”