Rev Chris Roth

As you know, Halloween was last Friday. We saw children running around in costumes, and it seemed like everywhere you turn you are confronted by skeletons and tombstones. Death, and all that is associated with its mysteriousness, is brought to our minds. We see caricatures of the dead in various forms- vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s monster, ghosts, and skulls. Along with these ghouls come every creepy and crawly thing that might keep company with such creatures. It is a time when we are confronted with the mystery of death. However, this season is also playful. The skeletons dance. The monsters are cartoons. The coffins are full of candy, and the tombstones have funny sayings like “Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake; Stepped on the gas instead of the brake”, or “I told you I was sick”, or “He was so brave, he was so cute, too bad he forgot his parachute”. I have come to appreciate the connection between Halloween and the Church's celebration of All Saints Day. ...

Matthew 22:34-46 Hear the sermon here Jesus is nearing the cross and has entered Jerusalem in triumph on a donkey as the crowds cheered (21:1-11). He then prophetically attacks the temple administration as he overturns the money-changers’ tables (21:12-17). Then Jesus is confronted by a series of public confrontations and those hostile to Jesus ask him question after question to try to trip him up and expose him as a fraud, or get him in trouble with the authorities. So they come at him with the major controversies of the day- Is it right for faithful Jews to pay taxes to the oppressive occupying Roman forces? Is there an afterlife as the Pharisees believe, or is there none as the Sadducees believe? They test him with yet another question. A Pharisee expert in the Law asks, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" There are 613 commandments of the Old Testament. 248 positive “thou shalts” and 365 prohibitive “thou shalt nots”. The question is rea...

Hear the sermon here Today we are celebrating the feast of St. Luke who was referred to by St. Paul as “the beloved physician”. Tradition tells us that he was a physician of the body, but the Gospel and the book of Acts he wrote also shows us that he was a physician of the soul. Today we pay particular attention to the ministry of healing as a part of our mission as Christians. Healing was a continuous part of Jesus’ ministry. Wherever Jesus went he healed the sick as a sign of God’s compassion and a sign of the wholeness that comes with the kingdom of God. It seems like wherever he went he was healing people who suffered from a variety of illnesses. Healing was also a part of the ministry of Jesus’ disciples. We read in Luke chapter 10 that Jesus sends out the 70 into the surrounding towns. Jesus says to them, “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you;   cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God h...

Exodus 32:1-14 Hear the sermon here I remember a professor teaching a class on anxiety and I remember them saying something very interesting. They showed a list of things that cause anxiety, and on the list was the word “change”. The professor explained that it can be bad change (like the death of a loved one), or it can be good change (like a better job).  Change (good or bad) produces anxiety. Something that is new, is a change. (does that make sense?). If something is new then it is different than what had been. A new car, a new technique, a new dance, a new relationship, all of these are changes that can provoke a bit of anxiety in us. So something that is new, can automatically produce anxiety. So what we try to do to get rid of the anxiety is to get rid of the new thing and go back to something familiar, old, and comfortable. This is actually one of our problems with God. Our God is constantly up to something new. This also means that for many of us God is goin...

Early in the 13th century Pope Innocent lll had a dream. He dreamt that the cathedral in Rome was beginning to collapse, but there was a young man who held it up and kept it from collapsing. He recognized the man as the leader of a group of dirty beggars he had dismissed the day before. The man was Francis of Assisi. Before becoming the leader of this group of beggars Francis also had a vision about a building. Francis was in an old church, San Damiano. While he was praying he heard Jesus speak to him from the crucifix at the front of the church. The voice said, "Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins." Francis was a man of simplicity and he was learning obedience so he began repairing the old church and raised the funds by selling some of his father’s fabric. (His father was a wealthy cloth merchant). The pope’s dream was not about the actual cathedral building needing a carpenter, and Francis’ vision was not really about f...

Read the passage here Phil 2:1-13 Hear the sermon here It’s amazing to see the power of celebrity on some people. I remember seeing old news footage of the Beatles and watching girls in the crowd go absolutely bananas. They are screaming and fainting and jumping up and down. It looks like they are on the verge of a riot. To them the Beatles were larger than life. The power some rock stars and movie stars have over people is amazing. We see them on TV, in movies or hear them on the radio. We see them in magazines as we buy our groceries and it is as if they are from another world. They are beautiful and rich and talented. We see the royal family in palaces, and they almost don’t seem human. They can seem more than human to us mere mortals. In the ancient would it was like this too. A great military leader like Alexander the Great (who conquered most of what he knew as “the world”) or the Roman Emperor Augustus (who ended a major civil war) was considered divine. (See NT...

Matthew 20:1-16 Hear the sermon here A common phrase used in advertising is, ”you deserve it”. I’ve seen it in car commercials- “you deserve a car this good”. I’ve seen it in bank ads, fast food ads, and beer ads. This phrase is everywhere. Why? Because it works on us. There is a part of us that feels entitled . Part of us is always feeling like things just aren’t fair and we deserve something more than we are getting at the moment. We have become hyper-sensitized to fairness . So we look at those who have more and we start to think we deserve what they have too. Be begin feeling entitled . This way of thinking can sometimes creep into the church too. We can start to feel like we have been mistreated by God. We can think about how much money we have given to the church, or how much time we have given volunteering at the church, and then we reach some difficult patch in our life and we get upset at God as if God owes us something better for the way we have s...