True worship, which honours and pleases God, is a seamless combination of ritual praise and a life lived in doing good for others.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Worship (Page 2)
But the call is to be “Fair Dinkum” with each other, to be open and trust who we are to this community.
Christ is so present we loose the ability to see him. We need to worship to recover our sight.
If we can lose ourselves in the worship of Christ, then Christ will come to fill our emptied egos with his own self which now dances in the freedom of God.
The experience of resurrection results in joy and mission.
The Advent season is a gift that illumines our present with light from our promised goal, to shape us as a people of patient and vigilant faithfulness.
There is no such thing as a ritual-free space, and performed well or performed badly, rituals change things, change people’s lives.
The resurrection of Jesus is about the in-breaking of something which is so new, so different, so unheard of, that it changes things so entirely that we will never again become captive to all that is predictable, or ‘necessary,’ or ‘fated’.
Our liturgical expression of faith can nurture but not substitute for putting our faith into action.
In our worship we drink in the vision of heaven and earth made one so that our yearning might be fuelled; strengthening us against despair and empowering us to strive for the renewal of the world.
Our worship is a part of a cosmic liturgy of praise to the One who was slaughtered in reconciling a suffering universe to God.
When we truly encounter God in worship, we see everything in all its splendour and horror and are transformed for mission.
Celebrating God is not to be a denial of reality, but a faith-filled reaching out for a new reality.
The sexy bits of the Bible point to an understanding of the sacramental nature of sexual intimacy.
The measure of the value of our worship is the measure of the transformation of our lives.
What God has done and is doing is cause for celebration.
You can’t define or dictate how people will experience God, even within the service of worship.
Icons, as representations of the incarnation rather than images of God, can serve to open us to God rather than becoming alternatives to God.
Being saved can be painful, but its goal, becoming a purified people who can worship rightly without fear, is the ultimate reward.
There is an illuminating contrast between the response of the pagan magi and the response of the biblical scholars, and between the kingship of Jesus and the kingship of Herod.