Sermons

Following the living Jesus is the pathway to healing, integrity and life, and sometimes it comes into conflict with “following the Bible”.

Outrageous love is the most obvious characteristic of Jesus, and therefore it is the one thing that will make us recognisable as his followers.

Conversion to the way of Jesus is not just a matter of belief, but requires a serious reckoning with our past complicity with attacks on his way.

When we crusade against the evil of others, we end up crusading against Jesus himself, for he asks us to become givers and lovers of life.

We have been drawn into an unstoppable rumour that keeps interrupting the dominant story of fear, hostility and death.

Jesus shows us that being overly cautious about the boundaries of personal space and touch can, especially in worship, risk excluding, stigmatising and humiliating people.

Jesus sets out to reshape our view of the relationships between sin, repentance and disaster, and if possible, to call us out of our spiral into global self-destruction.

In a world that is hell-bent on self-destruction, Jesus calls us to gather to him and to love faithfully and vulnerably with him, rather than surrendering to the hate and fear.

Lent calls us to faithfulness to God and we need to assess the direction of our journey, our call to ministry and also to meet our own demons.

Acknowledging and appreciating Jesus is relatively easy, but we find it much more difficult to transform our lives in conformity with his teaching.

Most of us are addicted to achieving results and success, and it is crippling us. Jesus leads us towards an unexpected and almost unrecognisable freedom.

It is with the love of Christ taking charge of us, that we can venture into combat with the wrongs of our time without being dragged down by the very same demons that we oppose.