All that matters about God, about sin and forgiveness, and about living with integrity and freedom, flows from the human encounter with the crucified and risen Jesus.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Grace (Page 3)
A close encounter with God in Christ can make us paralysingly aware of our own sin and failure, but the experience of grace can transform that into a solidarity and gratitude that empowers us.
God’s love is passionate, attentive, tender and ardent. Jesus the bridegroom comes and woos God’s people in every generation.
The Kingdom of God can only be accepted the way a child welcomes a hug, not the way lawyers accept a divorce settlement.
The power of God is that a contagion of life—of transformation, hope, and peace—is more powerful than a contagion of death.
We live in amidst a culture of highly toxic, self-righteous, finger-pointing. Jesus calls us to a radical love which will stop the blame game but still speak transforming truth to those who oppress.
The experience of winter is God’s gift, inviting us to silence, healing and new depth of life.
The culture of God rises in defiance of the empires of this world, but it will look more like an annoying outbreak of self-sown, invasive weeds than an alternative empire.
We mostly don’t see ourselves as either terrible sinners or as gloriously Christ-like, but in the resurrection we are called to fully imagine both as world-changing truths.
God will walk with us in suffering and work redemptively within it, but God is not powerful enough to just remove it.
When our world and our hearts feel dry, cut off, and despondent, there is hope and life to be found in God’s promises.
If you’re looking for wisdom, healing, practical solutions, look to Jesus, because church leaders constantly fail when they do any more than point to Jesus.
Those who have too strong a belief in their own goodness to engage in the real, flesh and blood work of building community in the here and now, can end up struggling to accept God’s grace.
Self-interested leaders will frequently manufacture frightening images of an angry dangerous God to silence opposition and maintain their grip on power, but Jesus opens our eyes to these abuses and to the reality of a God of incorruptible love.
The stories of Moses, Elijah and Jesus on various mountain tops reveals a process of God’s self-revelation as the one who loves us and suffers for us.
The Ascension is not a story about the absence of Christ, but of Christ’s extraordinary presence with us everywhere and always.
As Woody Allen said, 90% of success is just showing up, and in the resurrection, Jesus really shows up!
The forgiveness encountered in Jesus is extravagant and all-inclusive, but those who determinedly reject and demonise the Spirit’s winds of change can cut off their own access to it.
God’s people are called to generously share their gifts, but also to humbly receive the gifts that are offered to us from unexpected sources.
When God is moving to do something new among us, it almost always seems scandalous, immoral and offensive to many, and is just as likely to involve those who are regarded as morally suspect.