Book: John

Jesus says to each one of us “I am the new wine. Feed on me”.

God blesses us with much more than we need, but instead of throwing away the excess, we are to take what we don’t need and do something with it.

Our One God and Father feeds us with one bread so that we might grow up into Christ and be the missional community the Spirit is leading us to become.

Jesus reveals that God is a God of abundance who will lovingly provide plenty for all, but the common perception of scarcity easily corrupts us and leads to treachery and abuse.

When we encounter Jesus, we are seeing the truth about God and the truth about life as it is meant to be lived. To embrace that truth will put us at odds with the world, but on the pathway to fullness of life.

The knowledge that we are loved by God and the tenacious sharing of that love break the power of the world’s systems to lock us in to destructive cycles overwork, over consumption, and compliance with injustice and war.

God’s love for us is so great that God will do anything to give us a way out of the self-condemnation and self-destruction of continuing to live in conformity with the world’s ways.

Jesus is angered by our trivialising of religion that inoculates us against the claims of a holy God, and calls us to clean out the crassness and commercialism and approach God on God’s terms.

We have become exiled from our destiny as God’s children, but Jesus has been born among us to reveal to us and restore us to that destiny.

When Jesus sees us for who we really are, we are enabled to see ourselves for who we really are, without boxes and labels, and so be saved to become who we were created to be.

God calls us to new beginnings, and we have to let go of old certainties to embrace them.

The unity of the churches, as an expression of reconciliation, is integral to the message of good news in Christ.