Kingdom Living – Morning Sermon series

As January begins, we’re going to spend five weeks looking at some of the parables in Luke’s gospel. Each of these gives us a picture of what life in the kingdom of God is like, our calling as a church, and our commitment to be “disciples who make disciples.”

The new year in particular is a time to re-orientate and re-calibrate. Are our inner lives becoming more healthy? Does our church life more fully reflect the kingdom of God? Are we living up to our purpose and passions as a parish?

As we look again at these parables, we’re reminded that Jesus invites us to imagine a reality other than the one we know. That reality is the Kingdom of Heaven. We are invited into the topsy-turvy reality of the kingdom in which those who serve and are treated as lowly or shameful or insignificant by the world are blessed and valued by God. They are shown a world in which the categories of neighbour and enemy or family member and outcast become meaningless, a world in which it is possible to imitate God and share abundance rather than hoard what the world deems valuable. They consistently show – as one writer puts it – an “Upside Down Kingdom.”

Some of these stories are all too familiar to us: sowers, Samaritans and stingy farmers. My hope is that as we look through these passages once more we will more fully live out what it is to be “living for Jesus, loving one another, and setting a table for the world.” Join us as we do that.