Rev Chris Roth

Job 2:8-3:1; Ps 22; 2 Cor 12:1-10; Mk 14:32-43 We are continuing our series on Christian Caregiving this week. Last time we spoke about listening to someone we are caring for. This week we are speaking about caring for someone who is suffering. Suffering can be one of the most difficult issues we deal with as Christians. I have found it helpful to deal with suffering on two levels. One level is the theological reality where we try to understand why suffering exists in the world. The other level is the emotional reality of the person who is suffering. On a philosophical/theological level you may have encountered the following train of thought. In a world where there is suffering, we can’t have both a God who is all-loving and all-powerful. … So, God is powerful enough to do something about suffering, but isn’t loving enough to do anything about it. … Or, God is all-loving and would like to stop suffering, but isn’t powerful enough to do anything about it. … This is a famous dilemma ...

Prov 17:27-28; Ps 81; James 1:19-27; Mark 4:1-9 Today we are continuing our sermon series on Christian Caregiving. This week we will be looking at the topic of listening as a Christian Caregiver. … Listening is a constant theme in the Bible. In our readings today we heard  “Whoever restrains his words has knowledge … . Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” (Prov 17:27-28).  In Psalm 81 God laments that His people don’t listen-  “Hear, O my people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me! ... But my people did not listen to my voice … Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!” (81:8, 11a, 13).  St. James gives direction saying,  “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger… If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless” (James 1:19, 26).   La...

  Gen 2:5-9, 15-25; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:19, 5:16-26; Matt 5:13-16 In the letter to the Romans St. Paul says,  “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Rom 12:5-6).  God gives gifts to the Church so that the church will be strengthened and for the church to accomplish her mission in the world (1 Cor 12:7). All of us have God-given abilities that are to be used in the service of God. The church hasn’t always been very good at helping people understand their gifts, and the church hasn’t always made room for people to use their gifts. Sometimes the church can function as if the clergy are the ones with all the gifts, but if you’ve known very many clergy you know this isn’t true. The church is healthiest when Christians know what their gifts are, they develop them, and they are free to use them. Some people have a God-given ability in a particular area,...

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14 Last week we dealt with Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath at a synagogue, and this made the synagogue leader upset.  In our Gospel reading today, we are with Jesus once again on the Sabbath. This time he has been invited to supper at the home of the leader of the Pharisees. … It might look like they are extending a hand of friendship, but Luke lets us know that they were all watching him carefully. Just before our reading, but at the same dinner party, Jesus heals someone. Again, this is on the sabbath. It feels like a trap. They want to see this for themselves. So, they make sure someone who needs healing is visible on the sabbath at this dinner, and everyone at the party sees him heal the man. Jesus gives a similar teaching in the context of healing the man, saying,  “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?”  He is essentially saying there is a catego...

Luke 13:10-17 In our Gospel reading Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. In the congregation there was a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. She is described as having a spirit of weakness or infirmity. She is bent over and unable to stand up straight. St. Augustine asks us to see ourselves as this woman. She is the whole human race, bent over by the infection of sin. [1] She has been robbed of her original beauty and dignity. The human race has similarly been robbed of the dignity we were created with. We have been disfigured by the weight of sin, by enslavement to a false reality. We are crippled by our anxieties, our fears, our doubts, our despair. Our vision is constrained to the ground around our feet. Our lives become small and cramped. We are unable to raise our heads to the sky- unable to see the horizon. The response of Christ to seeing this poor woman is to immediately heal her. He doesn’t wait until after the synagogue service is done. He does...

2 KINGS 5:1-14; PSALM 30; GALATIANS 6:1-16; LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20 In our reading from 2nd Kings we encounter a powerful man, a commander of an army- and an enemy of Israel. This powerful man, named Naaman, contracts a skin disease. All his warrior strength, and wealth, and political power were unable to protect him from this. … This powerful man was powerless against this skin disease. In this powerful man’s house there was a little girl. She was not powerful. She was kidnapped by Naaman’s army, and he gave her as a slave to his wife. This powerless little girl becomes the key to healing this powerful man. … This little slave girl speaks to Naaman’s wife, and this little girl seems to have compassion for this man who has enslaved her. … She says,  "I wish my master would go and see the prophet who is in Samaria. He would heal my master of his skin disease." Naaman takes these words seriously. His king sends him with an official letter addressed to the king of Israel, who is an ...

    This is the book we used to guide our parish retreat. Dee Pennock was converted to Christianity in her twenties by two volumes of the "Philokalia" that landed on her desk at The Macmillan Company in New York City, where she was working after her graduation from Stanford University. Later study of the Bible and early church fathers alerted her to the Adam Complex―the patristic description of human souls and their "passions," based on the scriptural Adam and Eve account. She found that ancient patristic theology analyzed the make-up of all human nature in terms of the behavioral patterns of Adam and Eve. It described symptoms of the three major passions of the soul that characterize the Adam Complex. The patristic physicians of the soul gave detailed instructions on how to overcome these inborn passions, and how to restore a soul to spiritual and mental health. Dee Pennock worked as an editor in three publishing houses and was the manuscript editor for the facu...