Rev Chris Roth

The cell phone is an amazing invention. I can speak or whisper into a little microphone in my cell phone and it will transform my speech into a radio wave that can be sent to my brother’s phone in Vancouver, or just about anywhere else on the planet. When my brother lived in London, England, I could speak to him as if he was standing right in front of me. But there is a strange transformation that has to happen to my voice in order for my brother to hear it. My voice, which is audible to those standing near me, has to be transformed into radio waves, which are invisible and inaudible. In fact my voice becomes completely imperceptible when it is transformed into radio waves. If you came from the past and saw me speaking into my cell phone you might think I was crazy. And I would not help them to think I was sane by explaining that my voice was being transformed into invisible radio waves and sent half-way across the planet to someone else with a little plastic rectangle who would th...

1 John 5:1-6 We have been spending the last number of weeks dwelling in the first letter of John. It’s not the easiest letter to read. There is a lot of repetition and it can be complex, so we really need to slow down to be able to read it. We almost have to read it like poetry- letting each line soak in before moving on to the next, and then reading it over again and allowing the last line to shed light on the first line. This letter uses a lot of the same themes as the Gospel of John, which is at least one of the reasons the letter is associated with John. It seems to be written by a wise elder to those who were under his care and guidance- in other words it was written to his spiritual children. In the letter the elder gives a number of insights into common topics that marked the Christian community. In particular, the elder is concerned with teaching about love. The elder teaches us in the letter that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), and “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, but h...

1 John 4:7-21 Since around the time I became a Christian our reading from John’s first letter has been very important to me. I’ve told my story before, but maybe there are a few who haven’t heard it before. As a teenager I didn’t like Christians or Christianity much as all. In fact, I was very negative about it all. I felt pretty sure that there was something out there that we might call “God” or “the Force” or the “Divine”, but I was also pretty sure that the church didn’t get it and didn’t really have anything to offer in terms of getting to know that “something out there”. I actually suspected Christians and the Church might have been in the way of getting to know that “something out there”. I did search. The idea of life being only what we see was not really all that attractive to me. I believed we were more than just molecules and DNA trying to replicate. I believed there was something more to reality than what we normally saw and felt. Two things happened to me that d...

1 John 3:16-24 We live in a world where we are surrounded by words. There are words on billboards, on our computer screens, in magazines, on signs. You go into the bathroom and there is advertising and graffiti. As we drive through the city words pour over us through the radio and from billboards. At home they spill out through the TV and computer. Words are used to manipulate us into buying things, to persuade us to vote a certain way, to inform us of news and of what they believe to be truth, to entertain us, and you name it. We seem to swim in a sea of words with very little silence, and if there is silence we are likely reading words.    A downside to living a life swimming in words that are often used to manipulate and persuade us is that we have become suspicious of words. We don’t really take them very seriously. We say things like “Words are cheap” and “put your money where your mouth is”. We know words are easy to say- Even words we don’t really b...

1 John 3:1-7 I would like you to close your eyes for a minute or so. … I want you to imagine Jesus in front of you. … Just take a moment to solidify him before you in your mind. Imagine different moments in his life- teaching the crowds, healing diseases, dying on the cross, resurrected and standing among his disciples. … Now I would like you to describe his character.   What is he like? What words come to mind? …     In John’s first letter he says,  “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him… .”  The words you just used to describe Jesus is what God is wanting to transform us into- “we will be like him”. In Christian theology this is called sanctification, or theosis. It is becoming holy by reflecting something of God’s character. It is the broken image of God in us becoming whole and powerful. God wants us to learn to be like Jesus ...