Love is a gift which we invited to become at home in, receiving and enjoying it, not questioning, measuring and regulating it.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Love (Page 8)
In Jesus, God is calling us to see and hear a gospel that takes us beyond rule making and sacred violence.
We are given gifts from God – faith, love and hope – to help us cope with all that is less than God – especially when ‘principalities and powers’ overwhelm us.
In the face of human evil, God has made a personal commitment to persevere in loving us and drawing us towards fulfilment.
There is no hell where the love of God in Christ cannot reach us.
Our struggles against evil, temptation and suffering are all framed by the security of God’s unshakable love and resolve to bring us safely to fullness of life.
The Cross is the tree at which we come to know the fullness of good and evil, and as we choose to bear the consequences of good and evil, it becomes for us the tree of life.
When God accepts and gifts those who are supposed to be excluded according to our theology, then its time to change our theology to a rule of love instead of a rule of purity.
God consistently favours love and acceptance over purity, so when we are not sure, it is better to take a risk on love and acceptance.
God’s love is like a refuge from the storm, like the hospitality of a generous host, like the continuing delight of a bridegroom for his bride, and like the alchemical power of the miracle-worker transforming even our fear and inconstancy into the power to love, forgive, and cherish.
Religious ritual and ethical living are both bound up together in the journey of following Jesus into the Realm of God.
Jesus is uncompromising in his teaching about what we do with our bodies and the significance of our relationships, but also in promising a new beginning when we find ourselves lost in this way.
A fortified inner self not only enables a person to offer love properly but to receive love properly, even from God, to give without strings, to receive without suspicion.
The resurrection has broken open many old certainties, and our ethics must now be grounded in the new things God is doing, characterised by radically inclusive love, rather than in the old restrictions.
Christ crucified is both a sign of the ultimate consequence of evil, and of the ultimate victory of Christ over evil through the power of suffering love.
We are called to take sides in a conflict between the prophet of love and peace and the prophets of hatred and violence.
We are called not to know, but to be known, not to see, but to be seen by God, who gazes upon us with a love so wide and long and deep that it surpasses all our imaginings.
Jesus calls us to take the way less travelled, to leave behind the sin that entangles, to be welcomed by God, that we may have power to welcome and love even our enemies.
When the world falls apart, God recognises the pain, the despair, and the anger, and gifts us with faith, with an assurance that God’s power of love will yet prevail, that God will accomplish the justice and the peace we long for.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son may really be intended by Jesus as the Parable of the Loving Father and the Angry Brother.