God’s coming does not reinforce our social norms and hierarchies, but breaches them to reconcile and re-dignify those who the social order has sacrificed and cast aside.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Hope (Page 3)
In the face of global suffering, we continue to give praise for the power that is working on the side of love, and we unite our power with God’s power until we see God’s will being done.
We are often afraid to face what must be faced in order to enter the new world God has promised, but God continues to promise an abundance of blessings when we overcome our fears and obey.
All creation waits impatiently for humanity to work and pray its way into the fullness of our identity in Christ, for only then will all creation be safe and free.
Jesus calls us to prayerfully persevere for what is right and what is good, to never give up on our quest for the promise of life, and to always hold on to hope for the fulfilment of God’s will and purpose for our lives.
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.
Jesus leads us through the confusion of transition times, into a new space with hugely expanded horizons and lives made meaningful in a global way.
The Ascension is not a story about the absence of Christ, but of Christ’s extraordinary presence with us everywhere and always.
In the worldwide lockdown, we stand on an uncomfortable threshold and wonder where God is. God responds to our need, sending the Holy Spirit to stand with us.
True martyrdom involves suffering even unto death. But, no less important, the martyr sees what other people may not be seeing, and opens their eyes to it.
Like the Emmaus travellers, Jesus calls us to pay attention to what is happening in these strange times, to what makes our hearts burn within us, and so to be changed ready to live differently.
Jesus’s encounter with Thomas and the first disciples can show us a thing or two about living under lockdown and hoping for a miracle to save us.
As Woody Allen said, 90% of success is just showing up, and in the resurrection, Jesus really shows up!
Jesus leads the way towards a new experience of life that is so utterly alive that death is powerless to threaten, limit or constrain it.
The COVID-19 scare can reinforce our Lenten call to prepare our hearts by facing up to our mortality and the real limits of our control over the world.
Jesus calls us to neither conservatism nor iconoclasm, but to a faithful reckoning with the gifts and the sins of the past as we welcome and adapt to the new.
In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.
The Christmas stories assure us that Jesus is the one who brings light into our darkness.
Faithful waiting for for the fulfilment of God’s promises can leave us feeling compromised and alienated in the world around us.
The coming kingdom culture confronts the world’s violence by redemptively suffering and absorbing it, not by reciprocating it with even greater violence.