Rev Chris Roth

  Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11 The liturgical seasons generally reflect on the life of Jesus. During Lent we focus on Jesus fasting for 40 days in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry. In the early church, adults who were preparing to be baptized on Easter spent time in intense spiritual preparation. As they prepared for their new life as Christians, they would focus more intensely on disciplines like prayer, fasting, study, generosity, service, and renunciation of sin. … Christians (who were already baptized) realized that it was helpful to join those who were preparing for baptism at Easter, so they could re-dedicate themselves to Christ through a time of self-evaluation and spiritual discipline. This turned into the season of Lent. As Lent ends, at the Easter Vigil, a renewal of baptismal vows is a part of that service. We are blessed today to also have a baptism. So, as these baptismal vows are made over Zachary today, as we begin o...

Song of Songs 3:1-5 ; Psalm 2 ; Gal 4:21-31 ; Matthew 17:1-9 Today we finish our Epiphany sermon series that is based on questions that have come from our congregation. Today’s question is  “How do you choose which Bible passages are to be taken literally and which are spiritual?”  So sometimes passages of the Bible are to be read literally. For example, we would say that Jesus was an actual, literal, historical person. … The Prodigal Son from Jesus’ parable was not a literal person. He is a character in a story that Jesus tells, who symbolizes those who turn away from God. These examples are fairly obvious based on genre. But, there are some that aren’t so obvious. This can get to be a pretty complicated topic.   Let’s look at a few more examples. Our first reading today is from the Song of Songs , which is sometimes called the Song of Solomon. A famous Rabbi, Rabbi Akiva was once questioned by his students who were doubting the Song’s holiness. He gave a surprising...

Gen 1:24-31; Psalm 139:1-18; Rom 12:1-8; Matt 18:1-9 We are continuing our Epiphany sermon series based on questions that have come from our congregation. Today’s question is,  “Are we a pro-life church?” This question opens a number of different pathways that we can explore. This question touches both on abortion and on assisted suicide (or what is more commonly known as M.A.I.D.). And the question also asks about the church’s position, which might mean the Anglican Church of Canada or our particular church (St. Leonard’s). For the sake of time I’m going to focus on abortion (which is more connected to the phrase “pro-life”), though, there will be implications for how to think about assisted suicide. … I’m also going to focus on what I think the best Christian response is to this, rather than try to show where the Anglican Church of Canada stands. I am also not going to deal with pregnancy due to rape or incest which (combined) is about 1% of abortions. And I’m also not going...

Is 58:1-9; Ps 37:1-15; James 2:14-26; Lk 10:25-42 We are continuing our Epiphany sermon series today. We are dealing with questions that have come from our congregation and today’s question is,  “Why do so many people focus on themselves and their ‘relationship’ with God rather than on Jesus’ message to love others and to strive for equality/justice/etc? Where did things go wrong? Is it that humans are inherently selfish and that was the purpose of Jesus’ message, to try to counter that?” Maybe we can look at this through two extremes. This is a bit of a false dichotomy, but it can help is explore the issue a bit. On one extreme, we can focus on worship and ignore justice. That is what Isaiah is talking about in our reading today. The people are worshipping. They are fasting and praying, but they feel like God is not connecting with them. Through Isaiah, God points out that they are oppressing their workers, and quarrelling and fighting. Then He says,  “Is not this the fast ...