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Missing A Kingdom Moment: It’s Past Time for Presbyterians to Do Relational Politics

Missing A Kingdom Moment
It’s Past Time for Presbyterians to Do Relational Politics

This article was published in the Presbyterian Outlook, vol. 196, no. 25, Dec. 8, 2014.

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Pastor, St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, TX

Recent events in the Middle East have torn at many Presbyterians’ hearts. Threats to both Israelis and Palestinians are real, but the overwhelming majority of casualties are Palestinian civilians. I worked against the PC(USA)’s recent decision to divest from companies perceived as supporting Israel’s activities in the Palestinian Territories, but I am deeply troubled by Israel’s indiscriminate use of force.

These events have only solidified my belief that the PC(USA)’s commitment to the Palestinians is poorly served by divestment. Unfortunately, we seem to have rejected the option best suited to making actual change on the ground: relational politics.

This past June, I spent a week in Detroit working with Presbyterians and Jews to redirect the 221st General Assembly from voting to divest. Conservative and liberal Presbyterians put aside other differences and worked together with Jewish activists to try, unsuccessfully, to turn the tide. We built new and lasting relationships that transcended our differences, which is what relational politics is all about. It was glimpse of the Kingdom.Read More »Missing A Kingdom Moment: It’s Past Time for Presbyterians to Do Relational Politics

Appointments: The Story of Jonah

Appointments
Jonah 4

We know Jonah, right? He’s the prophet who got swallowed by a whale and after three days the whale threw him up on the shore. Actually, in the story, it’s not a whale exactly but a “Leviathan,” a mythical sea beast that embodied everything ancient people feared about the seas—the unknown, the hidden depths, the belief that the sea was the edge of chaos and a boat could sail off into space, the fact that it was uncontrollable, and even, from an ancient perspective, kind of a Demi-God, and God’s enemy.Read More »Appointments: The Story of Jonah

Witness of Resurrection for Charlie Bourland

Psalm 34
First Corinthians 13
Mark 10:13-16

Jesus loved children. In those days, children were treated as just slightly a higher life form than animals, but Jesus saw something different in them. It was consistent with Jesus’ approach to everything and everyone. The self-important, those that the world considers successful and important–those people Jesus considered irrelevant, often evil, and certainly lost and in need of direction. It was the poor—the marginalized—the disabled—the diseased—the low class—the humble—the least of these that He thought were the most important. And so he didn’t consider adulthood to be of much account either. Childhood is what matters. “To such as these belong the Kingdom of God.”

To such as Charlie.Read More »Witness of Resurrection for Charlie Bourland

Mark Scott’s Sermon

Mark’s Sermon

by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

Phil. 4: 4-9
John 15: 1-13

Mark’s sister Sue says that when Mark was about 11, he decided he wanted a desk for his room. He cut a deal with a local furniture store to buy himself a very nice desk for which he’d pay a dollar a week. So far as I know it’s paid off. Anyway, his mom wanted to check his desk drawers to find out what was in them, I suppose for the usual reasons moms do such things; and discovered to her chagrin that even though there was no lock on the drawer, she could not open it! And though she demanded an explanation, or a key, Mark never let her open it. It turned out that Mark had taken a drill, drilled holes on both sides of the drawer from underneath, and stuck nails in either side so it couldn’t be opened.Read More »Mark Scott’s Sermon

Seeing God’s Back and Seeing God’s Face

Seeing God’s Back and Seeing God’s Face
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
October 19, 2014
Matthew 22: 15-22
Exodus 33: 12-23

Moses is disgusted. He was up on the mountain, receiving the tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, from God. When he came down, he found, to his horror and outrage, that in his absence the people had constructed a Golden Calf, a false god that they worshipped because they thought Moses would never return; that he was consumed by the fire and smoke on the Holy Mountain. In his rage, Moses threw down the two tablets of the Law thus becoming the first person to break all Ten Commandments at the same time. He orders the ringleaders killed. Then, perhaps most painfully for the people, he turns his back upon them. They watch Moses walk away from the Tent of Meeting toward the mountain, away from them. They are horribly, horribly ashamed.Read More »Seeing God’s Back and Seeing God’s Face

Law and Transcendence

Law and Possibility
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
Exodus 20:1-4; 7-9; 12-20
October 5,2014

“We are not alone.” You may recall that was the tag line for the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in the late ‘70s. Richard Dreyfus plays a man who has had a “close encounter” with a flying saucer and he begins to act crazy, building mountains out of mashed potatoes and so forth. It turns out that the mountain he is imagining is the meeting place—the point where aliens at last reveal their presence to the Human Race. It is ultimately a benign encounter, but what the movie gets at so well is the confusion—the sense of being mad, of cracking up—that one would experience when first confronted with that terrifying reality—and the sense, most of all, that you will be forever changed, that the individual, and humanity itself, will transcend its limitations when we discover that “we are not alone.”

Read More »Law and Transcendence

If

If
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
September 28, 2014

Exodus 19: 1-7

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can… watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools…”
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), “If”

The children of Israel wander in the desert, led by a crotchety, opinionated, and often glorious man. He tells them about a new god, named Yahweh, who is actually the true God, and who has been their savior and protector, leading them out of slavery in Egypt, defeating the Egyptians, feeding them and finding water for them in the wilderness. And now they come to Sinai, and now they will meet this god. It sounds promising: a personal relationship with God.
Read More »If

Is God With Us?

On the Shoulders or On the Rock

Exodus 7: 1-7

If you’ve been following the story of the Exodus so far, then it will come as no surprise to you that the children of Israel wandering in the desert are complaining. This time, they want water! Once again Moses is on the spot. But God reassures him. Strike the rock with your stick, and water will come out of it. What God actually says, is: “Here, I stand before you on the rock at Horev. You are to strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people shall drink.” Moses does what God says and the people drink. And Moses calls the place Massah and Meriba, “testing” and “quarreling,” because of the contentious questioning of the people, who wondered, according to scripture: “Is God among us, or not?”[1]Read More »Is God With Us?