Rev Chris Roth

  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45 Our readings point us to the reality of death and God’s power to overcome it. In a vision, Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones that represent Israel, and God gives back life to what is completely and undeniably long dead. Psalm 130 is a sinner’s cry from the depths, hoping for God’s mercy and redeeming love- It is a kind of spiritual death. And our reading from Romans teaches that the way of fallen flesh is the way of death, but life in the Spirit frees us from the death-bound mindset of the flesh. … So, our readings lead us to consider death. The hopelessness of a destroyed community that seems doomed to the dust, more a part of the past than the future. And we are invited to consider the deep pit of our own sin and our inability to get out of it on our own. And this brings us to our Gospel reading. Here, the finality of death is felt by Mary and Martha, who are grieving the death of their brother Lazarus. His body is...

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41 Most of our readings today are related to sight. In our reading from the first book of Samuel, the prophet is looking for a new king to anoint over the people of Israel. He is directed to the sons of Jesse, and he initially considers the oldest Son, who seems like the obvious choice. But Samuel hears God say to him,  “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).  The son who gets selected is the youngest, David, who they didn’t even think to bring with them. … How people see things, is not how God sees things. In the letter to the Ephesians, we read about darkness and light, and being asleep or being awake. Again, we have this theme of sight, of vision. Obviously, we see best in the light, and it is hard to see in the darkness. We have an ancient ...

Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42 We have some very interesting readings today. First, we have our Exodus reading, which is about the people becoming thirsty while wandering in the wilderness and grumbling against God. The thirst for water is a theme we will see in our Gospel reading. We also see that Psalm 95 mentions Meribah and Massah, which connect to the Exodus story with a warning against testing the Lord with our grumbling. Psalm 95 is also known as the Venite, which is usually said as a part of Morning Prayer. It is a Psalm that draws us into worship. It shows us the proper attitude to take towards God, as opposed to the grumbling and complaining against God that happens in our Exodus reading. And our reading from Romans adds to this in an interesting way. Not only do we not complain and grumble against God in the midst of our difficult circumstances, but Paul says,  “we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endu...

  John3: 1-17  Most of us have had the experience of being somewhere in public, and you’ve had someone come up to you and ask if you’re a Christian. If you reply, “yes, I am a Christian.” The follow-up question will often be something like, “But, are you ‘born again’?” The term “born again” describes a kind of Christian who can give a day (and sometimes a time) when they had a powerful personal spiritual conversion experience, that they sometimes describe as being “born of the Spirit”. This is a powerful inner experience of transformation. More traditional Christians usually have two responses to being asked if they are “born again”. One is plain dismissal. They roll their eyes and say to themselves “oh, you’re one of those”. They label them as extremists, unsophisticated, overly emotional, religious nuts. They dismiss them and don’t take anything they say with much weight. The other reaction from more traditional Christians is often self-doubt and anxiety. Am I “born again...

Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11 Lent is 40 days (minus Sundays) in imitation of the 40 days Christ spent in the wilderness. 40 is a symbolic number that represents preparation. So, this is a time for Christ to prepare for his public ministry. He is led into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil and he is tempted in three ways. I thought it might be interesting to consider how some of the Church Fathers looked at this. (There were Mothers, but they didn’t really write anything that we still have). Generally, The Church Father saw Scripture as having a layered interpretations. So you could read a passage literally, which means the plain meaning of the text- (we might say the surface reading). Then there was the moral sense, which was a way of applying the passage to the individual believer’s life, often this meant a moral lesson learned. And the spiritual sense is a symbolic way of reading the text that might connect with other parts of Scripture...

  Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17; Matthew 6: 1-6, 6-21 As you know, Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent. Lent was originally a time for people to prepare for baptism at Easter. In the early Church, these were people who were leaving Paganism. We tend to think of Pagans as a bunch of nature worshipping hippies. But when you look into it, there was some pretty dark stuff happening there. (There’s stuff that just isn’t even right for me to repeat here.) So, those who were coming to be baptized had to be prepared. They were going to be washed outwardly, but they also need to be washed inwardly, and part of that was learning a new way to be in the world. This is sometimes called a Phronema- this means something like “mindset”. When Paul talks about having the “mind of Christ” in Philippians 2, this is what he is talking about. It is a new way of seeing the world. It means replacing old patterns of thinking with new ways of thinking. It means replacing old assumptions with new assumptions. … It takes...