A few years back the BBC ran a program where they asked leading international figures to identify the defining moment of their lives. One of the interviewees was Desmond Tutu. He took us back to a day when he was just nine years old, to when he was a young black boy living under South Africa’s apatheid regime. Desmond and his mother were walking down the street when a tall white man dressed...
What will God do now? That’s the question swimming in our heads when we get to the end of Genesis chapter 11. In eleven brilliantly constructed chapters the writer of Genesis sums up the human predicament: created to construct communities of faith, justice, generosity and grace as we multiply and fill God’s earth, we instead create communities of faithlessness, injustice, greed and...
One of my favourite songs is the “Logical Song” by Supertramp. Or if you’re a generation younger than me you might remember it as a cover by the German techno band Scooter. When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, it was beautiful, magical And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily, joyfully, playfully, watching me But then...
The bible teaches that human beings are created in the image of God. We rarely image God perfectly. Rather we are like the crazy mirrors at Luna Park. Stand in front of them and you’ll appear unnaturally tall, short, fat or thin. Nonetheless however imperfect the image may be, at our best we see glimpses of the divine in each other. I suspect we see something of how God is toward us in how...
Last year my eldest brother gave a speech at my father’s funeral. My other siblings and I had rhapsodised about Dad’s virtues. But my elder brother talked about Dad’s imperfections. He recognised that Dad was flawed like the rest of us. But the thing that impressed him about Dad was Dad’s determination to be a better man. He was a good man, but he wanted to be more than a...
Jesus invites us to relate to God as "our Father". In this sermon series we explore what this means. In the latest sermon, March 4 2012, we ask what it is for God to be our disciplining Father.
What happens when we die? In this four part series we explore the biblical vision of heaven, judgement and the afterlife and discover it is both far removed from popular thinking and profoundly relevant for life.