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Raising our Children in the Faith

 

Christmas Eve photos BH 2013 - 5

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Called

Children’s Sunday

Matthew 4:18-25

 

Jesus calls his first disciples from their narrowly defined but typically Galilean lives. They are fishermen, the sons of fishermen, the grandsons of fishermen. Their world is narrowly defined to their families and their work and the towns in which they live and the sea in which they fish. And then Jesus comes along and calls them away from all that. When James and John follow him, they not only leave their nets behind, they leave their father behind. Jesus invites them to a world larger than Galilee and a family larger than blood and kinship. And in a whirlwind, they go from their small lives as fishermen to the disciples of a man who heals the sick and casts out demons, who turns the world upside down wherever he goes. They find themselves across the sea in Syria and Decapolis, among Gentiles and sophisticated Romanized Jews. The change is dizzying. Read More »Raising our Children in the Faith

Mother of God

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Luke 2: 1-20

Christmas Eve, 2013

 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a young girl betrothed to Joseph when she found herself to be pregnant. For some reason—apparently a heavenly one—Joseph chose to marry her despite this apparent pre-marital slip-up. Jesus was her first child. It appears that she bore at least three more boys, and possibly a daughter. She helped raise one older boy, James, who was likely Joseph’s son from a previous marriage. Three other sons are identified: Joseph, Judas, and Simon (Matthew 13: 55). Certainly James was a disciple of Jesus—though not one of the Twelve apostles–and possibly Simon and Judas as well.Read More »Mother of God

Bible Study – First Gospel: Mark, Wednesdays, 12 noon

Bible Study Begins Study of First Gospel: Mark

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

Did you know that most scholars consider Mark the earliest gospel that was written, and that Matthew, Luke, and even parts of John appear to use Mark to organize their own gospels? Mark has no birth narratives, unlike Matthew and Luke; and strikingly, most scholars agree that the resurrection story in Mark was tacked on by later editors. In this gospel, Jesus seems at pains to keep his identity as The Son of God secret. Why is that?Read More »Bible Study – First Gospel: Mark, Wednesdays, 12 noon

Celtic Christ

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World Communion: Encircling Christ

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

October 6, 2013

“Lest anyone, then, be excluded from access to happiness, God not only sowed in human minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed Himself and daily discloses Himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, people cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him.” John Calvin, Institutes of Faith, I. V. i.

 Philip Newell writes that his infant son Cameron liked to take his midday nap in his carriage in the wooded backyard of their home in England. “One day, toward the end of Cameron’s nap when I thought he would soon be waking, I went out to the yard. There he was, lying on his back in the carriage, fully awake but perfectly still. He was looking at the light dappling through the leaves of a fig tree. I paused to watch him. After a while, he lifted his arms to the light in a type of response. I was witnessing a communion with the Glory that dapples through creation. As I stood watching Cameron, I remembered, perhaps the earliest memory of my life, doing exactly the same thing as an infant, lying under a tree watching light dapple.” [1]

 Read More »Celtic Christ

The Virtues: Generosity

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Psalm 150

II Corinthians 9: 4-15

 

Juanita Cowan was a child of one of the founding families of Broadway Presbyterian, our predecessor church. she was aunt to Peggy Kennedy, great aunt to Katie Hinckley, and great great aunt of Katie and Greg’s three daughters, Trinity, Emory, and Addison. Ms. Cowan was a child when the Great Southside Fire of 1909 burned down Broadway’s original building, across from the site that is now Broadway Baptist Church. Ms. Cowan wrote the history of St. Stephen, and she wrote of being a young child when the rebuilt Broadway Presbyterian Church was completed. “On January 1, 1911, the congregation gathered at the tabernacle and marched to the new building singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,” she wrote. “The new building was of beautiful red brick… The sanctuary in brown tones inspired reverence, especially in a small child; even when there was no service going on, I felt I should whisper.”Read More »The Virtues: Generosity

The Virtues: Courage

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Joshua 1: 1-9

Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

God’s people stand on the border of The Promised Land. They’ve wandered the desert forty years, and over that time they’ve been led by Moses. But now Moses is dead, and Joshua, son of Nun, is in charge. Joshua is no stranger to physical courage. He’s a warrior; he was one of the twelve spies sent to investigate Canaan when they first came upon it.

But in our passage, God is calling Joshua to a different kind of courage.

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The Virtues: Hope

The Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, a powerful image of suffering prayer.
The Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, a powerful image of suffering prayer.

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Romans 8: 18-25

The difference between hope and faith is not always clear. It comes down to this: Hope is in the future, faith is in the here and now. Hope is what we long for, what we pursue, what we dream of, but don’t have yet. As Paul says in Romans, “Hope that is seen is not hope.” Faith, on the other hand, is how we make hope visible in the here and now; it is how we put that hope into action. As Hebrews says, “Faith is the substance of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things unseen.” Faith makes our hope concrete in our lives. But our hope is the thing we’re really after. The Olympic athlete longs for the gold medal; when that hope pushes her to train harder and better, it has turned into faith.Read More »The Virtues: Hope

The Virtues: Temperance

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Psalm 107: 1-9

I Corinthians 9: 19-27

Luke 12: 13-21

“Temperance… now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the Second Cardinal Virtue was christened ‘temperance,’ it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further.” —C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 2.

 

Jesus says of the rich fool, “this is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” That could be a description of the self-indulgent man, as Aristotle describes him in his Nicomachean Ethics:  Read More »The Virtues: Temperance

The Virtues: Justice

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Psalm 85

 

In Plato’s Republic, the philosopher Socrates tells the story of the negotiations between the powerful Athenians and the weak Melians in the Peloponnesian War. The embittered Melians say angrily that “If we refused to submit to these negotiations, if we insisted on our rights and refused to submit to your rule, you’d only wage war with us, conquer us, and make us your slaves.” Shockingly, the Athenians agree. “We won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that we deserve to rule you because we are morally right and that you are morally wrong,” the Athenian negotiators tell the Melians. “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only a question between equals in power, where the stronger do whatever they can and the weaker suffer whatever they must.”

Read More »The Virtues: Justice