God meets us in the midst of our worst nightmares, calling life out of death, but seldom in the ways we might most wish for.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Suffering (Page 3)
Salvation is about being set free to live life in all its fulness, even in the midst of conflict and suffering.
The vision of the Trinity reveals some of the most important characteristics of God: radical mutual love, radically open hospitality, and transformative engagement with the suffering of the world.
Jesus calls us to love and care for the world’s victims, and to refuse to participate in making more of them (even from among the victimisers).
In the face of a major disaster, Jesus’ call to not worry is both challenged and illuminated.
Jesus’s unique priesthood ensures that he is able to help us, and his solidarity with us in suffering ensures that he will help us.
The unfailing love of God is with us, even in the tragedy, confusion, and anguished questions and doubts.
Jesus commits himself to the path of redemptive suffering in preference to either fight or flight, and he calls us to follow him in that commitment.
The impossible love and grace of God invite us to participate in the life of God despite our circumstances, but we often get stuck in trying to find meaning in the circumstances.
God will wound us if necessary to bring us into the full blessing intended for us.
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 revelation of what God is on about in Christ will always upend our expectations and disrupt our lives.
In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.
Repenting of our past ways and following Jesus does not guarantee us safety from disaster, but it certainly opens the way to an abundance of life that is beyond what any disaster can destroy.
Grace is the opposite of karma, that most ancient and persistent of human laws which proclaims that we get what we deserve. We do not get what we deserve, and thank Christ we don’t!
As the victim of the ultimate in human evil, the risen Christ is the One who can offer the complete forgiveness, to us, and through us to the rest of the world.
God invites us to be immersed in another possible reality, to look at the world with the dark and contrary light that comes from the cross of Jesus.
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.
Lent can be a dark night filled with tears and mourning and loss, but it is worth it, for God’s joy comes in the morning.