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Cry and Response

Moses Begins
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
August 24, 2014
Exodus 1: 8-14; 22; 2: 1-10

“[Rabbi] Reshi gives credit to [the Egyptian Princess’] way of seeing; she ‘sees It, the Presence of God, with the child.’ Her way of seeing makes room for the ‘hidden sphere,’ the ‘complex ferment’ that is The Presence of God in the crying voice of a child.” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture

If you noticed that the title of this sermon sounds a lot like “Batman Begins,” there’s a reason for that. Moses Moses is the first true hero of two faiths. Even Jesus based his ministry on Moses’ model. Moses begins it all. Before Moses, there was no Hebrew people. Before Moses, the Hebrews had no coherent identity. Sources from Egyptian times, sources far more ancient than the Bible, tell us that a group of disparate tribes arrived in Egypt about the time of the Great Famine. They may not have seen themselves as connected to one another at all. But the Egyptians referred to them as a collective, much as we tend to call all people from the south of the border Hispanic or Latinos, whether they are Mexican or Guatemalan or Colombian. The collective term the Egyptians used was Habiru. And it’s likely that is the source of the term Hebrew for the people who Moses saved.Read More »Cry and Response

Faithfulness Builds Hope

The Kingdom Come: God’s Beloved Community
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52

“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” 1956

A story very familiar to long-time St. Stephen members but which may be new to the rest of you is the story of The Hole. You see, the idea of this gothic cathedral has been around since the forties, when the session of old Broadway Presbyterian Church first dreamed of moving here. Plans were drawn up, some of which we have framed on the wall in the church office. The original sanctuary, what’s now the Parish Hall, was built immediately after the church moved to this site in the 1950s.Read More »Faithfulness Builds Hope

The Cosmic Do-Over Button

Fall and Creation
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
July 20, 2014
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX

Romans 8:12-25

“Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we’ll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we’re promised is much more interesting than that. It’s new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in.”—N. T. Wright

I’m a year out from the 30th anniversary of my ordination in 1985. Don’t worry, I’m not fishing for another party like the one you threw me for my 10th anniversary. Frankly, the 30th anniversary of my ordination only reminds me of how old I am. But I do often have a fantasy. I sometimes wish I could go back to those first early years of my ministry, when I was a solo pastor of a small but wonderful little inner city church in Virginia, and start over again, but with all the knowledge that I’ve garnered from the past twenty-nine years. There were many good things about my years there, but many things that didn’t go so well either because of my personal shortcomings or because I simply didn’t know enough. That church in 1985 would benefit so much from what I know today in 2014 about pastoral care, preaching, worship leadership, community engagement, and social justice.Read More »The Cosmic Do-Over Button

Joy

Genesis 24:58-67
Romans 7:15-25
St. Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis talks about one of three particular experiences in his life that gives him joy. It is, he says, “the memory of a memory.”

As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House [in which I grew up,] when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation of desire; but desire for what?… Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased.Read More »Joy

God of the Absurd

Genesis 22:1-14
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

“All the while Abraham had faith, believing that God would not demand Isaac of him, though ready all the while to sacrifice him, should it be demanded of him. He believed this on the strength of the absurd; for there was no question of human calculation any longer. And the absurdity consisted in God’s, who yet made this demand of him, recalling his demand the very next moment.” –Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

I spent a bit of time early in my life as a stringer for the Roanoke Times & World News in Christiansburg, VA. On the staff room bulletin board there was an article prominently displayed that had an attention-grabbing headline. It was called “First, Kill Your Babies.” It was not about homicide, but about writing. It was a variation on the quote often attributed to William Faulkner: “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Stephen King—an expert on killing one’s darlings—put it this way: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even though it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill all your darlings.” The point, of course, is that often it’s the clever little touches, the ones we most enjoyed, that need to be brutally excised from an article or story in order for it to be a good article or story.

I thought of that as I reread Soren Kierkegaard’s striking interpretation of the story of Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac. It may seem at first an odd comparison. After all, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is not light-hearted writing advice but easily the most disturbing story of the Bible.Read More »God of the Absurd

Presbyterians and Middle East Peace

Further Insights from My Recent Middle East Trip

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

This June, I will be attending the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Detroit, MI. I’m not going as a delegate, but rather as an advocate. I will be trying to convince commissioners to vote “no” to the several motions that will be before the assembly this year to use economic sanctions and other tools to punish Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. I will be there in cooperation with an organization called “Presbyterians for Middle East Peace” (PFMEP), whose stated mission is to promote investment in peace rather than divestment in Israel. They sponsored my trip this past February to Israel and the PalestinianTerritories. It was an eye-opening trip that confirmed my opinion that boycotting, divesting, or sanctioning Israel is a bad idea for Jewish-Christian relations, Palestinians and Israelis, and peace in the Middle East. Read More »Presbyterians and Middle East Peace

The World As It Should Be Meets the World As It Is

 

By The Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Philippians 2:5-11

St. Matthew 21:1-17

“It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.”

The Talmud, Pirkei Avot, 2.2

 Several years ago someone in a bible study I was doing expressed a concern a lot of Christians feel. She said, “I’m uncomfortable with saying that Jesus is Lord of everything, of the whole universe. It sounds so closed-minded and prejudiced toward a Christian point of view. What about the other religions, and good people who don’t believe in Jesus?”

We had been looking at biblical passages about the Cosmic Christ, passages such as Ephesians 1: 8-10, “With all wisdom and insight (God) has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth,” or the passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians that we just read: “Therefore God also highly exalted Jesus?and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus?every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess?that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  These passages give absolute Lordship and authority to Jesus, which is bound to make any open-minded person uncomfortable.Read More »The World As It Should Be Meets the World As It Is

Father, Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

St. Luke 23:44-49

“The many preeminent gifts with which the human mind is endowed proclaim that something divine has been engraved upon it: all these are testimonies of an immortal essence…Relying on such clear testimonies, in dying let us not hesitate, after Christ’s example, to entrust our souls to God.” John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, 1.15.2 and 3.25.6.

Ezekiel, the first human that the Bible calls “Son of Man,” stands in an empty valley, strewn with the scattered bones of a battle lost long ago. “Son of Man, can these bones live?” asks the voice that Ezekiel knows belongs to God. “Lord, you know,” Ezekiel says, judiciously, thus avoiding giving the wrong answer.

Bones rattle and fly together. Flesh appears. Fully formed human beings stand, but they are silent, unmoving. Then, the wind blows. The wind of the Spirit. The breath of God.

And they live.Read More »Father, Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit

The Beatitudes: Extraordinary Virtues

 

 

 

 

To Listen to this Sermon, Click Here -> http://srp.alldigital.net/B5B1FC01/12667319/audio/20011632_32kbs__usrsiteshtmlB5B1FC011266731901protectedmediabankSemon20140202N.mp3.mp3

Matthew 5: 1-12

 

Over the front entrance of Westminster Abbey, across the street from the Parliament building in downtown London, are statues of ten 20th Century martyrs, installed in 1987. Some you may have heard of, some not: “Maximillian Kolbe from Poland, Manche Masemola from South Africa, Janani Luwum from Uganda, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Martin Luther King, Jr. from the USA, Oscar Romero from El Salvador, Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Germany, Esther John from Pakistan, Lucian Tapiedi from Papua New Guinea and Wang Zhiming from China.” (http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/maximilian-kolbe)Read More »The Beatitudes: Extraordinary Virtues