In the City of God there will be no more night. Just the glory of the risen One. He will write his name on our foreheads, and we will worship him forever. And it won’t be much longer now.

In fact Jesus even models this process in his own life of incarnation (birth, blessing, construction), testing & crucifixion (deconstruction) and resurrection (reconstruction). It is not an easy journey for us to follow. But it is not a journey where will not be tested and doubt.

Being a ‘back-slider’ is an authentic part of the journey. Those who don’t, are stuck in fundamentalism. The Emerging church, is inspiring us to live with an emerging faith.

This homily was recorded in Easter after Sam led a Moot Community Small Service in Lent 2008.

Good Friday. How is it possible, that on this day, when we remember Jesus the man and his painful walk from Jerusalem, carrying his cross to the hill of Golgotha. When we humanity killed the incarnation of God in human flesh. How can this Friday possibly be called Good? Good Friday?

And Jesus was disturbed by the crying of Mary & Martha and the Jews that followed them … And Jesus wept … So Jesus stood before the tomb … And said … Lazarus come out … And said … loosen the bands that bind him.

There is a profound link between a spiritual thirst, prayer and encountering Christ today.

Mother Teresa put it well when after four hours at prayer, she said to a gathering of people:

“Jesus wants me to tell you again … how much is the love He has for each one of you–beyond all what you can imagine. Not only He loves you, even more–He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. Why does Jesus say ‘I thirst’? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words– … ‘I thirst’ is something much deeper than just Jesus saying ‘I love you.’ Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you–you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who he wants you to be for him.”

This is the profound mystery about the nature of contemplative forms of prayer. That through the Holy Spirit, and the power of our imagination, we too can encounter Christ - today.

To the poverty of our human minds the possibility of a destiny conceived by God, and freedom, seem contradictory. Yet it is not so. For the wisdom of God and God’s respect for each person is so great, that a destiny of ultimate fulfilment, and individual freedom, are gently married, and the glory of God and of creation flows from this union. God has the secret of loving us to freedom, inviting us to share in the creativity of love. Because so many of us have experienced a love coming from parents – or others – that is stifling or crippling or possessive, it is difficult to believe we are loved by a love that brings us to freedom, and that God’s plan goes far beyond the wonder and beauty of the creation we know … Yes the deepest song of everything in creation reflects the unity of the Trinity: three persons poured out in love for one another.

A participative model of the church requires more than just values and practices that correspond to participative institutions. The church is not first of all a realm of moral purposes; it is the anticipation, constituted by the presence of the Spirit of God, of the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God in communion with the triune God. Hence the church needs the vivifying presence of the Spirit, and without this presence, even a church with a decentralised participative structure and culture will become sterile, and perhaps more sterile even than a hierarchical church. For it will either have to operate with more subtle and open forms of coercion. Successful participative church life must be sustained by deep spirituality. Only the person who lives from the Spirit of communion (2 Cor. 13:13) can participate authentically in the life of the ecclesial community.