Rev Chris Roth

Luke 21:5-19 There is a line in our Gospel that really caught my attention. Verse 13 says,  “This will give you an opportunity to testify” (Luke 21:13). The Greek word for “testify” is marturion . This is where we get the word “martyr”. When someone is martyred, they are killed because they are a follower of Jesus. We sometimes expand that word to mean someone killed for a cause, but originally it was someone who was killed for their testimony about Jesus. Jesus says that his followers should expect to be treated poorly. Jesus says,  “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.”   “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name” (Lk 21:12,16-17). Some people have a tendency to assume that when something bad happens to them that they have ...

  Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31 “Does Christianity work?” Is sort of an odd question. When people ask this question it can mean a number of different things depending on the person asking. For some it is about will Christianity get me to heaven when I die. For others it is about will Christianity make a bad person into a good person. For some it is will it make a better society. For others it is about if Christianity can lead people to experience the transcendent. … I think the best way to answer that is to look to the saints. When we use the word “saint” in the biblical sense, it refers to followers of Jesus Christ- to Christians. When St. Paul speaks about the saints he is referring to members of the church. But, in another sense it refers to those who have truly turned their entire lives over to the way of Christ, and placed all their hope in God. And God has worked through them in amazing ways. A “saint” in this sense might be more ...

  Luke18:9-14 “Virtue signaling” or “moral grandstanding” has become a topic of conversation in the last few years, especially in relation to how people behave on social media, like twitter and facebook. Brandon Warmke is a philosophy professor who co-authored the book “Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk”. He defines moral grandstanding as the act of engaging in moral talk for self-promotion and status. It is waving a flag about a particular moral or political issue in the hopes that people we like will be impressed with us. This can take a few different forms. For example, this might take the form of attacking someone online. Those who see you attacking the “bad” person, or the “bad” idea will be impressed by you standing up for what is right. This can give a sense of dominance over an enemy, especially if you can get others to gang up on them with you to humiliate and shame them. … In moral Grandstanding there is no desire to create peace or understanding with the per...

  Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8 We have a fascinating reading from Genesis this morning. The patriarch Jacob is wrestling someone. This is Abraham’s grandson, the son of Isaac. … Before we look at this particular story it is good for us to remind ourselves of Jacob’s story. Jacob was born as a fraternal twin to his brother Esau. Jacob came out of the womb grabbing the heal of his brother. Being a “heal grabber” seems to have been a Hebrew euphemism for being a cheater, or supplanter. It was like Jacob was grabbing at the place of being firstborn. This foreshadows his life as a trickster. When Esau comes in from hunting in the field, completely famished and asking for food, Jacob offers to exchange some food for his birthright as firstborn. It’s a foolish thing for Esau to agree to, but it is also a mean thing for Jacob to take advantage of his brother’s desperation. Later, with the help of his mother, he tricks his father into giving him the blessing ...

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 100; Philippians 4:4-9; John 6:25-35 Usually, thanksgiving is a time to gather with family and friends to share a big dinner. This is a good thing. We are instructed to celebrate in the Bible. Celebration is one of the spiritual disciplines. If we forget to celebrate, we can become imbalanced and overly negative. We need both fasting and feasting to have a balanced spiritual life. We need work and Sabbath. This is the rhythm we see in the Bible, and the rhythm we are encouraged to model in our lives. I don’t know if you have noticed this, but gratitude seems to be in short supply lately. If we do not have gratitude, then entitlement will replace it. We will take the good things in our life for granted. This means we will be quick to complain and focus on what is not going well- or at least what is not going our way. For this reason, I think celebrating thanksgiving might be even more important for us as a discipline- so that we can grow in gratitude. Gratitud...

  If you have anyone in your life who struggles with mental illness, I recommend reading this book about the history of psychiatry and psychology. To try to help people and their families who suffer as a result of mental illness there have been many attempts to cure and help. Sometimes these attempts have been terrible and sometimes they have been blinded by the desire for profit and prestige. Helps that have been attempted include: -inducing seizures (through chemicals or electricity) so intense that bones would break. Electroshock was also commonly used as a punishment or to keep a peaceful ward. -infecting patients with malaria to induce a fever. -Cutting out parts of the body that were believed to be infected, which were believed to cause an infection in the brain. This included pulling teeth (sometimes all of them, even healthy ones), removing the stomach, the colon, the uterus, etc. When this did not help (even when 30-45% of patients died with the more invasive sur...

Galatians 6:14-18; Matt 11:25-30 Today I would like us to look a St. Francis of Assisi. St Francis is a saint I have felt a particular drawing to since I became a Christian. We don’t often recognize a lot of Saint days, and his feast is actually on Oct 4th, but I thought it would be helpful to take some time to look at him and how he followed Jesus. It is sometimes helpful to have examples as we seek to follow Christ. It can give us a sense of what is possible. There was a time when it was thought to be impossible to run a 4 minute mile. But once Roger Bannister did it in 1954 it became more and more common. We are inspired when we see someone accomplish something we thought was impossible. Suddenly the impossible become possible. … Following the teaching of Jesus can sometimes feel impossible, but when we look at the life of someone like Francis of Assisi we might be inspired to live in a way we thought was impossible. Francis is particularly challenging because he seems to have a...