Facing an epidemic of depression and despair, Jesus calls us to follow on a tear-stained path of prophetic faithfulness.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Grief (Page 2)
In a world that is hell-bent on self-destruction, Jesus calls us to gather to him and to love faithfully and vulnerably with him, rather than surrendering to the hate and fear.
It is not from the halls of power but from humble places that the love which offers wholeness and healing and peace erupts into life.
Suffering raises painful unanswerable questions, but Jesus leads us into a life where the sharing of our honest questions is part of shaping a community of healing and hope.
The life that Jesus calls us too will not be found and enjoyed until we give up trying to engineer the life we dreamed we were supposed to be living.
In the face of tragedy, we naturally cry out “Why?” Jesus meets us in the suffering and helps us find the path of life.
Jesus went up the mountain and was transfigured, and we assume that it was a wonderful experience. And so it was, but maybe not in the way we think. What if the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus at that moment was the face of utter human vulnerability?
Meeting us on the road of despair, Jesus reveals to us that suffering and defeat are God’s means of bringing new life and hope.
Jesus died an apparent failure, but in his resurrection, the failure’s power over us is broken for ever.
In the violence and suffering that surround the Christmas story, we find the revelation of a God who does not inflict violence and suffering, but suffers violence to bring love and peace.
Events of global chaos probably aren’t signs of God’s next big move, but we need to take seriously the call to live faithfully and courageously in the midst of them.
Honestly owning the rage that sometimes consumes us is an important part of maintaining our resistance to all that stands in the way of a Jesus-shaped life.
Sometimes God has to kill off our hopes and destroy our faith structures in order to create space for new life and truth to arise among us.
The resurrection awaits us. It awaits us now as we live into our experience of the love of God, growing in us and through us. The resurrection awaits us too, that moment when life as we know it is no more, and we enter fully into the life and love of God.
Jesus is heart-broken when we refuse his call to gather with him in a place of powerlessness, vulnerable to the hostility of a power-hungry world.
Jesus came into the world to fill us with new life, and encourage us, and show us how to grow, so if we remain focussed on the light, letting it shine into our areas of darkness, then darkness will never have the last word.
When we respond to the call to model our lives on his life, the life of the One who has seen the Father, then, like him, we must not sidestep or avoid suffering.
In times when we strive to see but cannot, when we struggle to understand and can find no satisfactory answers in the face of issues that confuse us, we can still search for communion with the one who knows all things, who understands all things.
Our anticipation of new life in Christ, though not removing all grief, allows us to find hope in the mercy and love of God.
The unfailing love of God is with us, even in the tragedy, confusion, and anguished questions and doubts.