When Jesus calls us to love each other as we have been loved, what sort of love is he talking about? Just what does his love for us look like?
In the Anglican church there can be a lot of pressure – for clergy at least - to pick a team; to choose a side in the various divisions into which the church has fractured. That isn’t just the church, of course. This is a whole of society – whole of world – problem. We are always being told to get in our box and stay there. In the church, this is particularly devastating because it goes against our very identity. If we are called to be people who love one another as we have been loved – then how can we refuse to love people who disagree with us - people in some other box? If we are the body of Christ, then how can the body function when the feet refuse to have anything to do with the hands?
I John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18; Psalm 23 What do you get when you combine 1 John with the Gospel of John? You get: Sisters and brothers, love one another. Love one another. Just get on with it! Love one another. Oh, for goodness sake, you have one job! Love one another. Over and over, at varying levels of intensity and frustration.
Rev Pam Hynd's sermon for Easter 2
The characters from Palm Sunday and Good Friday have been present on all of history's battlefields. • The would-be messiahs calling for violent resistance. • The oppressed populace, desperate enough to follow them. • The anxious leaders who foresee the worst and compromise their integrity to limit the destruction. • And the ones who hold the real power and are desperate to keep it. Again, and again and again, this has played out. All the characters come back again and again. All the characters, but one. On Palm Sunday, the script changed, because a new character entered the drama. See, your king comes to you Humble and riding on a donkey.
Light brings healing. Always!
If we think of all God’s interactions with humanity as a book – how do you think we might go about reading that book?
A million ordinary events pass in and out of our awareness every day, but sometimes things happen that are so significant that they become chapter headings in our life story: dividing our lives into the time before that event and the time after.
Covenant is a big theme in the Bible. Do you know who God makes the first covenant of the Bible with? Not Abraham. Not Noah. Let's see... Well, I guess the title has given it away
Everything was going his way Until suddenly it wasn't! You have to feel for Peter!