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.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Liberation (Page 2)
Until our eyes are opened to discern the dog-domination and pig-powers that oppress us from within our culture, we will continue to be trampled underfoot by them
Every coin you are holding already belongs to God: every bitterness, every hurt, every disappointment. Do not hold a single one back.
Jesus wants to lift us beyond the deadening conformity that seeks to silence us and confine us to a stunted life.
We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.
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.
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 calls us to turn away from pathways of judgement and condemnation and to follow him on the harder path of love and new life.
Jesus urges us to take stock, to recognise the sicknesses which warp us and the demons which colonise our hearts and our minds, to renounce them so that we become free to minister to one another, and to proclaim the good news in our words and our lives.
There are many stories in the Bible that can appear to portray God as involved in terrorist acts, but Jesus invites us to read them in new ways.
What would happen if violence were met with bread, with blankets, with hospitals, with forgiveness of debts?
Whether we have been the oppressor or the oppressed or both, we all have a role in God’s work against violence and exploitation; we can all participate in God’s passion for justice.
Trying to establish our own righteousness burdens us with divisiveness and hostility, but Jesus offers us rest and freedom.
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.
Jesus is the door through which we pass to receive life – life in his name – a life of authenticity, a life of freedom, a life of purpose.
God gives us the love we thirst for, even while we are still fighting against God, and in doing so, God sets the pattern for us to follow that will bring freedom to the world.
Once we recognise that all women, like all men, are made in the image of God, we catch a glimpse of God’s original vision for us, for the day when all people experience God’s radical and abundant love, and the pouring out of justice demanded by that love.
Jesus is the “Lamb of God”, a sacrifice offered by God to appease and expose the sin of the world – the sacrificial monster of human blame-shifting and scapegoating.
Jesus doesn’t come looking for ready-made heroes, but for the small, damaged and fragile people we are, so that in the company of Jesus, we can become the giants we always dreamed of.
Full-blooded Christian discipleship may cost us some precious relationships and a lot of blood sweat and tears, but we will have plenty of new supporters and it all all be well worth it in the end.