True martyrs are those who are killed because their love, truthfulness and forgiveness are intolerable, not those who die killing for their cause.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Law (Page 2)
While the final judgement of each individual is rightly left to God, we are called to ensure that we are found to be loving, merciful and trustworthy by the world around us.
The world finds the message of Jesus almost incomprehensible because it seems too simplistic and unrealistic to be taken seriously.
True Christianity is not transactional but transformational. It is not a series of prescribed actions intended to please God, but the formation of a culture of grace and other-centred love.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that another person can do to you that can make you unclean or defiled in the eyes of God.
The glory of God is most fully revealed in Jesus’s willingness to suffer death at the hands of the law.
When we approach God’s way of life and the Sabbath not as punishment, but as gift, the experience becomes a chance to rest from work and from striving; and to allow space for God through contemplation and re-creation and play.
Jesus leads us into a joyous and healthy way of living that avoids both constricting legalism and destructive libertarianism.
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.
The Ten Commandments are not about creating a system of law and punishment. They are a window into the stories and the lifestyle of the culture of God.
God and religion misunderstood can be the cause of hostility, division and violence, but the God made known to us in Jesus is a God of grace who generously gives us life, freedom and reconciliation.
Those who, in Christ, have been set free to love as Jesus loves will no longer have their relationships with God or one another bounded or understood by law.
The commandments cannot be imposed, but are what result when people have learned to love and their desires have merged with God’s.
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.
The ten commandments are not a measure of our moral accomplishment, but a gift offered to God by a grateful covenant people.
The incoming Kingdom of God often challenges conventional social norms to such an extent that it is perceived as anarchic or even evil.
God’s love for us is so all-consuming that he accepts us as soon as we accept him and is happy for our behaviours to be sorted out in the transforming experience of love.
In Jesus, God is calling us to see and hear a gospel that takes us beyond rule making and sacred violence.
Perhaps when law and order perpetuate injustice, God is on the side of the scammers and swindlers.
Love is both command and promise and is what gives meaning to all our offerings to God.