Letting go of the idea that we can earn God’s favour is very difficult for most people, but it is a key to enjoying the fullness of life and grace.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Fullness of Life (Page 3)
When we encounter Jesus, we are seeing the truth about God and the truth about life as it is meant to be lived. To embrace that truth will put us at odds with the world, but on the pathway to fullness of life.
God’s love for us is so great that God will do anything to give us a way out of the self-condemnation and self-destruction of continuing to live in conformity with the world’s ways.
When we glimpse the fullness of what could be, we are called to the tough work of bridging the gap between here and there.
Jesus becomes a victim of our systems of feeding on one another in order to forgive us, set us free, and nourish us for life.
In Jesus, God is calling us to see and hear a gospel that takes us beyond rule making and sacred violence.
We are called to stop defending ourselves and fighting off the intruders in the vineyard, but rather to welcome the spirit-sent opportunities that will demand of us, but will also change us.
Our struggles against evil, temptation and suffering are all framed by the security of God’s unshakable love and resolve to bring us safely to fullness of life.
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.
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.
If we can lose ourselves in the worship of Christ, then Christ will come to fill our emptied egos with his own self which now dances in the freedom of God.
The day of Pentecost is the day when the Spirit comes to interrupt and call into question the inevitability of our despair.
God in Jesus Christ touches our grubby humanity to make it clean, so that human beings and human community might regain their colour, shape and original purpose.
The challenge of relinquishing selfish desire is a crucial key to a deeper journey into the life of Christ.
The sexy bits of the Bible point to an understanding of the sacramental nature of sexual intimacy.
Self sacrifice and asceticism are not incompatible with the call to care for oneself and live life to the full.
Christians are to be known for what they do rather than what they abstain from.
Christ has come that we might have fullness of life, and it has cost him dearly.
Our deepest yearnings are satisfied in God, and only scratched elsewhere.
Preparing the way of the Lord is not just a temporary clean-up for the visitor, but an embracing of the new possibilities that are opening to us.