Central Church Port Kembla

In this episode, Oran looks at Moral Influence Atonement theory, one of the 7 prime theories acknowledged by the church over the course of Christianity. Within this message, Oran briefly looks at the history and purpose of Moral Influence Theory, and discusses the resurgence in its relevance in today's day and age.

Becca shares out of James Cone’s book how through the horrific period of lynchings in America’s history, Black Christians saw in their own suffering Christ crucified with them. Becca connects this perspective with all those who have been oppressed and brutalised through history, especially here in our own context, the past and present injustices done to Indigenous Australians. Music: 'He was Numbered Among the Lawless' Steve Schallert

Caro looks at a quote from Plato written 300 years before Christ which said that if ever a truly righteous man was to walk the earth, he would be deemed unrighteous then tortured and killed. Caro uses this to reflect on humanity’s tendency to always stuff things up, and the cross as God’s response: forgiveness, grace, love and mercy.

Oran chats about how hospitality and community are expressions of God’s kingdom and how we attempt to live them out at Central. We then wrestle together with how introversion, church trauma, burn out and Covid have affected how we practice these.

Carol talks some more of our values at Central, more specifically around how we hold our theology and how we work for justice.

Through February, we’re going to be looking at some values we hold dear at Central and Caro begins by looking at our value of developing a deep and robust spiritual life. At Central we believe that each of us is responsible for our own spiritual life and that involves sending our roots down deep into the rich depths of our faith tradition and opening wide to become places of refuge and life for others.

We look at the gospel text for this Sunday, the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3 and Caro shares some reflections on what the baptism of Jesus might reveal to us about the nature of God, and she invites us to remember our own baptism and the way God first wooed our hearts.

Caro looks at the life of Mary and the ways in which we can see wisdom for the spiritual life and how Jesus regularly does unexpected things that invite Mary to change and grow.

Oran and Luke look at the life of Joseph, what we know from Scripture and what we can imagine reading between the lines and both share their thoughts around how Jesus interrupts Joseph’s life with both challenges and goodness.

Caro looks at the parable of the persistent widow alongside the other passages of the scripture that sit alongside this gospel reading in the church lectionary. Through the readings we listen to how the Bible is in conversation with itself and what common threads we can see through the passages.

Brooke Prentis helps us read this parable through Aboriginal eyes and highlights for us some of the many persistent Indigenous voices crying out for justice in these lands now called Australia.

Too often our faith life/spirituality is reduced to obedience-disobedience, saying yes or no to God. But our lives and our hearts are more complex than that. Caro offers a way for us to pay attention to the resistance we might feel in areas of spirituality, and invites us to ask a deeper question of what we might be protecting, and what Jesus might be inviting us to.

The only way we have ever been able to describe the Kingdom of God is through metaphor. In this episode, Oran looks at ways different people, and people groups, have reimagined the Kingdom of God. He discusses the need for an ever maturing understanding, so the church can better reflect the Kingdom and identify it in the world.

Caro shares some of her own experience with healing and out of that talks about the tensions of an over simplistic theology of healing. She shares how holding onto faith, hope and love might be a path between certainty and cynicism as we wrestle with our hopes for healing and the suffering we see in our world.

Shane Clifton shares with us how his reading of this passage has changed over time including both before and after an accident left him with quadriplegia. Please be advised that explicit language had been used in this episode.

We use the story in John 8 to bounce into a discussion on shame. 3 people in our church (Lynda, Michael and Fyona) bravely and vulnerably share their own experiences and insights into shame in their lives. Please be advised that explicit language had been used in this episode.

Caro, Oran and Becca have a conversation about Jesus' final words to the woman in our text this month 'go and sin no more'...we throw around some ideas about these words, how they can be read problematically and then also how they might be read as instruction and permission and promise.

Caro looks at this passage of the attempted stoning of the woman through the lens of mercy. Showing us how Jesus reveals the character and nature of God as mercy, and what it might look like for us to recognise the divine pauses for mercy in our lives.

Luke looks at the story of the attempted stoning of the woman in John 8. He looks at the passage through the lens of Rene Girard's Scapegoat mechanism.

Jesus told the story of the prodigal son during His ministry years. However, about 200 years later, a very similar parable appeared in the Lotus Sutra as part of the teachings in the Mahayana line of Buddhism. In this podcast Oran looks at the similarities and differences between both tales, and considers how the both bring glory to God.