Rev Chris Roth

Matthew 9:35-10:23 There is a quote by Teresa of Avila, who was a 16th century Spanish mystic. She said,  “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”  In the Ascension, Christ brought his body into the dimension of heaven. The Church- Christians- followers of the way of Jesus- are now the Body of Christ in the world. You and I, if we consider ourselves followers of Jesus, are now the body of Christ in the world. What does that actually mean? It means that we go out to do as Christ would do. When Jesus saw how much work had to be done- how big the harvest was- he gave his disciples  “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, a...

Genesis 1:1-2:4 Psalm 8 2 Corinthians 13:11-14 Matthew 28:16-20 I'm not going to preach the sermon the Lectionary wants me to preach today. It is Trinity Sunday, so I could talk about God at creation and the Spirit of God hovering over the water. I could talk about God speaking in a plural voice- "us", "our". We could go to Collossians 1 or John 1 and read about Jesus being one with the creator in a way that he is the creator-  "[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col 1:15-17) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him w...

Numbers 11:24-30   Acts 2:1-21  John 20:19-23 Pentecost was a Jewish festival that had two facets to it. First, it was the second of three harvest festivals. It was the completion of the grain harvest. It is also sometimes called the Feast of Weeks because it took place seven weeks or 50 days after the Passover (Pentekostos means ‘fiftieth’). It eventual began to have a second facet and was observed as the anniversary of the giving of the Law and the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which was believed to have happened 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. People would gather at the temple to celebrate and make offerings. Jerusalem would have been filled with people from all over since the temple was the only place you were allowed to make sacrifices. It would have also been a time to renew the covenant (maybe in a similar way to how we renew our baptismal vows). So no doubt the story was told about how the first covenant was made between God and...