Rev Chris Roth

Romans 12:1-8 When I think of human sacrifice what comes to mind is the movie Joe Versus The Volcano.  Tom Hanks plays a man who works in a dreary factory. One day Joe is diagnosed with a terminal disease that will kill him within 6 months. Joe quits his job and tries so spend his remaining time well. He is approached by a man who says he has been trying to extract a certain element from an island, but the islanders will only let him put a mine on their island if he provides a human sacrifice for them. The rich industrialist promises to pay for whatever Joe wants for him to live his last days as long as he jumps into the volcano as the needed sacrifice so he can start mining. … I won’t ruin the ending for you in case you haven’t seen it.   It is probably one of the more humorous examples of human sacrifice that come to mind.  That is what it would mean to be a dead sacrifice- to throw yourself into a volcano. … What does it mean to be a ...

Matthew 15:10-28 In Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th we were reminded that racism is far from dead. Some of us are privileged enough to tell ourselves that it is a thing of the past, but when we are confronted with young white men waving swastikas that becomes an impossible story to believe. They shouted slogans like “blood and soil” which is a translation of a German phrase having to do with racial national identity that became particularly popular just before the Nazis rose to power in Germany. There were a number of white supremacist groups represented in Charlottesville protesting the removal of a confederate statue. People were seen doing the Nazi salute. These people were not hooded. They showed their faces and came with protective armor, and shields. In case we think this is something that is only in the United States. Alberta has been called the center of the white supremacist movement in Canada. I remember being 20 years old in Red Deer and making a new friend w...

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 Joseph’s story is one of the greatest stories ever told. like all great stories, we can’t predict the end from the beginning. Things often seem to get worse before they get better. What happens to Joseph doesn’t match what we think he deserves, which builds up a cry for justice within us. Joseph doesn’t seem to deserve any of the awful things he gets. He gets thrown into a pit, then he is sold into slavery. He is falsely accused of trying to rape his master’s wife and then is thrown into jail. (I’m skipping ahead in the story a bit, but I think Joseph’s story really can only be told with the end in mind). The story of Joseph is for all those who struggle to see God’s action in their lives. Joseph’s story is a reminder that just because things are difficult and messy it doesn’t mean that God has forgotten about us. Joseph’s story is also a reminder that God’s will is bigger and more complicated than we can understand. Our ideas of God’s will are often over...

Genesis 32:22-31 I think sometimes we present the Christian life a bit too simplistically. We can sometimes make it sound like becoming a Christian will solve all your problems. We can respond to people’s complex problems with cliché’s like, “Let go and let God”. We can walk away feeling like we have reassured the person, but they are still left with their problems. When we oversimplify life with God we can run the risk of becoming like Job’s friends who tried to give Job simplistic explanations for his suffering. However, at the end of the book God says to Job’s friends that only Job spoke rightly about God, while the friends spoke falsely. Job brought his complex troubles and questions to God. We need to be careful about oversimplifying the Christian life. Sometimes things do seem to go well and simply. We have moments in our lives when it seems like there is a flow. Our prayers are constant and easy. We read our Bibles and we are grounded and inspired. We meet life with ...

Matthew 9:35-10:23 There is a quote by Teresa of Avila, who was a 16th century Spanish mystic. She said,  “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”  In the Ascension, Christ brought his body into the dimension of heaven. The Church- Christians- followers of the way of Jesus- are now the Body of Christ in the world. You and I, if we consider ourselves followers of Jesus, are now the body of Christ in the world. What does that actually mean? It means that we go out to do as Christ would do. When Jesus saw how much work had to be done- how big the harvest was- he gave his disciples  “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, a...

Genesis 1:1-2:4 Psalm 8 2 Corinthians 13:11-14 Matthew 28:16-20 I'm not going to preach the sermon the Lectionary wants me to preach today. It is Trinity Sunday, so I could talk about God at creation and the Spirit of God hovering over the water. I could talk about God speaking in a plural voice- "us", "our". We could go to Collossians 1 or John 1 and read about Jesus being one with the creator in a way that he is the creator-  "[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col 1:15-17) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him w...

Numbers 11:24-30   Acts 2:1-21  John 20:19-23 Pentecost was a Jewish festival that had two facets to it. First, it was the second of three harvest festivals. It was the completion of the grain harvest. It is also sometimes called the Feast of Weeks because it took place seven weeks or 50 days after the Passover (Pentekostos means ‘fiftieth’). It eventual began to have a second facet and was observed as the anniversary of the giving of the Law and the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai, which was believed to have happened 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. People would gather at the temple to celebrate and make offerings. Jerusalem would have been filled with people from all over since the temple was the only place you were allowed to make sacrifices. It would have also been a time to renew the covenant (maybe in a similar way to how we renew our baptismal vows). So no doubt the story was told about how the first covenant was made between God and...