As God’s people, we celebrate life in the face of death, because we know that the victory of life has been secured.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Hope (Page 5)
For both God and us, time can drag when waiting for change, but patience is salvation when forgiveness is offered as a means of change rather than as a reward for change.
Christians are to be known for what they celebrate and affirm and encourage rather than what they are against.
In a world infested by terror and fear, Jesus tells us that becoming the victims of that world is not nearly as dangerous as becoming part of it.
Following Jesus has nothing to do with trying to be good. His love and hope are gifts, rather than demands, and they free us to love and hope freely.
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.
We make a devilish mistake when we project the origins of hell onto God. Jesus calls us to follow him into a new way of life that will save us from plunging into the hells of our own making.
Jesus Christ is the coming one who will fulfill the hopes and yearnings of the world, but we will imperil our faith and hope if we keep trying to set the agendas for him.
God’s visions of the future are often dismissed as unrealistic because our limited vision causes us to expect only more of the same.
Floods of hostility and violence sweep people away, but we are called to prepare ourselves to stand firm with Jesus, and be left behind as those who will not succumb to the angry flood.
Being truly alive is a gift so extravagantly rich and wonderful that it can’t even be meaningfully contrasted with simply not being dead.
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.
The Transfiguration is not about the remoteness of God, but about a promise that through the exodus of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we might with him shine, transfigured, with the blazing glory of God.
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.
In the fact of the climate apocalypse, we hold on to our hope: hoping and working for the radical, impossible change that is necessary.
Despite our often minimal vision for ourselves, and our feeling of not being important to God, Jesus Christ is committed to bringing us to the fullness of life and wholeness.
The feeling of distance and separation from God – which we all feel – is perception not reality… it is the fruit of our fear and our holding-back.
Joseph models a courageous willingness to be stripped of his sense of entitlement that he might become all God wanted him to be.
Preparing ourselves for the coming Lord is not a matter of rigorous rule keeping, but rules can help us learn the appropriate new way of being.