Rev Chris Roth

  Deuteronomy 8: 7-18; Psalm 65; 2 Corinthians 9: 6-15; Luke 17: 11-19 There's a modern type of psychology that is sometimes called Positive Psychology. When you go to a psychologist generally you go because you are treating a problem of some kind, and so you'll go to a psychologist to help you with your anxiety, or your depression, or grief, or a trauma you've experienced. Positive Psychology differs from the usual approach in that it tries to look at how to develop and maintain a healthy psychological state. So it's not looking at the problem as much as it's looking at creating general psychological health. One aspect of Positive Psychology has to do with learning to grow in gratitude. These psychologists have found that learning to be grateful reduces negative emotion and improves life satisfaction. They recommend practices such as gratitude journaling, listing things that you're grateful for, and writing letters to people you're grateful for. The neurosc...

Exodus 20:1-20 Today I would like to take a look at the Ten Commandments because it's such a famous part of the Exodus story. I thought that maybe what I would do is to go through these commandments and just say a little bit about each one. Just as an overview, the Ten Commandments are a part of the larger set of laws that were given as a part of the covenant with Israel. So why look at these particular commands and make them stand out from the rest? One reason is that Jesus actually pointed to these when a wealthy man came to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" And Jesus replies by listing the 10 commandments. So, if Jesus pointed to these, then they are obviously worth our attention. They seem to have been understood as a kind of summation of the law. Another reason we might pay attention to these is because from early times the church was trying to figure out how the laws applied in the New Covenant. For Jewish Christians, most ...

Exodus 17:1–7; Philippians 2:1–13 Over the past few Sundays we have watched the Hebrew people be rescued from slavery through the Red Sea and into the wilderness. We read about the Passover and how the blood of the unblemished lamb was put over the doors to mark the people of God to protect them from the final plague (Ex 12). We read about the angel of God and the pillar of cloud standing guard, protecting God's people from Pharaoh's army. And we read about Moses stretching his hand out and God driving the sea back so that the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. We read about the waters covering Pharaoh's army. The Hebrew people were miraculously saved from through God's miraculous intervention (Ex 14). You'd think that after being saved in such miraculous ways, your trust in God would be unshakable. But then we read in Exodus 16 that  “the whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”  They said,  "If ...

Matthew 20:1-16 In our Gospel reading today Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who hires people to work in his vineyard. Young men who had no other work would wait at a particular location, hoping to be hired for the day. This is still something that happens regularly around the world. They would usually work hard because they would hope to be hired again and maybe even get a regular job. If they weren’t hired by noon the young men would usually head home, but they would have to meet their families with the fact that they hadn't earned anything for that day, which might mean not eating anything that day. In the parable, the landowner went in the morning and hired people to work his land for the usual daily wage- a denarius. He would know how many people he needed, so it's strange that he keeps returning to hire more. The vineyard owner went again at noon, and then 3:00 in the afternoon and then again at 5:00. Quitting time was around 6:00 or 7:00, as the sun was starting...

  Romans 14: 1-12 What I want to focus on today is our reading from Romans 14. Here Paul is talking about differences in practices among believers. The strong are those who are considered more spiritually mature. They understand what Christ has done and how all-pervasive his work has been. Who he calls “the weak” are those who are less spiritually mature, and so their conscience is more vulnerable to what might seem like a violation of Torah instructions regarding things like the Sabbath observance. In the sense that they don't see Christ's work as being as pervasive. Last week I spoke about conflicts and disagreements in the church and I think that flows very naturally into what Paul is saying here in Romans. The church in Rome was probably a mixed body. You would have Gentiles who are former pagans who are now following Christ, and you would have Jewish people who have come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, who are still following the cultural practices of their people and ...

As I was writing my sermon this week, I was thinking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together . I started writing and I got a little bit carried away so I ended up writing a bit more about Bonhoeffer than I did about the Gospel; but I thought maybe I would share what I was ruminating on anyway.  One of the most powerful little books about Christian community was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's called "Life Together." I was reminded of his words when I was thinking about the Gospel passage today, which has to do with conflict in the church . In Life Together he says: “He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” “God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.” We have to be careful with how we use these words because, of course, we have a vision for the church. We have an idea about...