When it comes to the Christ Event, the end is just as important as the beginning. Jesus proceeds from God, he exemplifies God, and he returns to God. Incarnation. Exemplification. Ascension. It’s not that God was only with us for the duration of Jesus' life on earth. It’s more that God has always been present to us, and Jesus helps us come awake to that truth. The ascension brings this profound moment to a necessary end, so that we can pick up the story in the realisation that WE are the body of Christ, and always have been. Like Dumbo the elephant releasing the feather in mid air, we have to ..read more

If the incarnation is about God coming to earth, then the ascension is about God leaving the earth. But was God really only with us for the duration of Jesus’ earthly life? Was our Emmanuel, our “God with us”, really that short lived? Or is there something else we can learn between the sunrise of Jesus coming to earth and the sunset of his leaving it? Could it be, that the beautiful day between the dawn of incarnation and the dusk of ascension holds the truth of every other day we’ve ever had? That God was always present to us and has never left. The only variable being the degree to which we ..read more

It was my first day at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Dublin. Taking lunch in the canteen, two earnest students deep in conversation pulled up at the table beside me. “I just think that propitiation doesn’t work for a limited atonement model based on Christus Victor,” I overheard one say to the other. Trying my best to mind my own coleslaw, I was nevertheless party to the predictable back and forth that followed. Did God offer Jesus as a kind of ‘ransom’ to purchase our freedom from the devil? Or did the death of Jesus ‘satisfy’ the honour of God impugned by a sinful humanity ..read more

The woman at the well is often misrepresented as some kind of sinful outcast who Jesus takes pity on. Spoiler alert, she’s way more than that - and so are you ..read more

Christians tend to have a complicated relationship with the bible. On the one hand many Christians claim that the Bible is the literal, authoritative, inerrant, infallible - word of God. On the other hand, the same book sits on many a shelf gathering dust - because we don’t know how to read it ..read more

“God” is not the name of the Christian deity. “God” is actually a placeholder word for that which cannot be named. Only after we drop our graven images of God, can we truly come into the presence of the One who has no image ..read more

Equality should mean equality for everyone, with no one left behind. Like most ordinary people, I was glad to see Marriage Equality finally extended to Northern Ireland. As a christian and a pastor, it has long been my strongly held religious and social conviction that nobody should be denied the right to enter into a marriage with the person they love - whatever their gender, sexuality or religious persuasion. It is becoming clear, however, that some are attempting to deny or at least delay Marriage Equality for those wishing to marry in any kind of religious context. Even though The Norther ..read more