Book: John

The way to enter the life of God is found in Jesus, in relationship with the incarnate life of God.

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.

Being born of water and Spirit involves becoming as vulnerable and dependent on God as a newborn baby is on its parents.

In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.

The message of Pentecost is the message of Pascha – Christ is risen and, in him, we are liberated from our captivity to the spirits of death, fear, despair, and division, and freed to dance to the Holy Spirit’s tune.

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.

Jesus’s resurrection was a sign which declared that Jesus’ cause was God’s cause, that Jesus’ values were God’s values, that Jesus’ people were God’s people.

The risen Christ is extravagantly generous and excruciatingly unwilling to settle for pious platitudes in return.

The experience of the resurrected Christ may not be as instantly transformative as we’ve often thought, but those who seek Christ’s self-revelation will grow into his mission.

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.

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.

God has promised that if we stay connected to him, then he will give us the energy and the love to go out from our comfort-zones into the alien territory of those who need God’s love most of all.