Why
By Rev. Dr.Fritz Ritsch
October 21, 2012
Job 38: 1-7, 34-41
Job is a righteous man of God whose children have been killed, whose wealth has been taken away, and whose health is shattered, and he wants to know WHY? Why, God, why is there suffering in the world?Read More »The Gospel According to Job: Why
Din Torah
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
October 7, 2012
World Communion Sunday
Job 1:1, 2: 1-12
Yaffa Eliach, a highly respected Jewish historian who is herself a survivor of the Holocaust, tells the story that in 1979, she was a member of President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust. The commission, who would ultimately lay the groundwork for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, had visited sites of countless atrocities and collected stories from Holocaust survivors. After visiting Auschwitz, the commission held evening services at the ancient Rema Synagogue in Cracow, Poland. In the middle of the worship service, “Miles Lerman, a former partisan and sole survivor of a large Jewish family,” stepped forward, banged his fist on the bema, the pulpit, “and declared that he was calling God to Din Torah—summoning God to court!” Read More »God on Trial
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Mark 4: 1-20
September 30, 2012
The most bizarre thing about the farmer in the parable of the sower is that she throws the seeds anywhere, just willy-nilly, like she doesn’t care where they land. So some seeds land on the path, some in rocky soil, some in thorns. And of course, some lands in good soil, and thrives.Read More »Seeds and Soil
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
September 23, 2012
Mark 9:30-37
Here’s something I’ve seen happen in every church I’ve ever served in. Families with children join the church, or start coming back after a long hiatus. They are sitting in the pews with their children. The children get antsy and a bit distracting, as children do. And one of the “long time” members leans over and whispers to the family, “You know, there’s a nursery.”
And as often as not, the family never returns.Read More »Childlike Church in a Grown-Up World
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
September 16, 2012
Mark 8: 27-38
Jesus and his disciples are in Syro-Phoenicia, modern-day Syria, north of their normal stomping grounds in Galilee. They are in Gentile territory, headed to a place called Caesarea Philippi, where monuments stood to honor most of the gods honored in the Greco-Roman world. So it’s telling that this is the place where Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am?” In this place where so many gods vie for human attention, who do people say Jesus is?
Well, once again we Americans are in an election season. In a lot of ways, election season is our Caesarea Philippi, with candidates presenting all sorts of variations of God as the true candidate of choice. Everybody claims God is on their side, and the question is, which version of God will we elect?Read More »What Do Politicians Say Jesus Thinks?
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth,TX
Communion Sunday and the Baptism of Eunice Kang
Mark 7: 31-37
James 1: 17-27
Today we’re baptizing Eunice Kang, the daughter of JC and Jung Kang. JC is the seminary student we’re sponsoring at Columbia Seminary. But we’re also performing the Lord’s Supper, which means we’re performing both the sacraments that Presbyterians believe in.
Now when yours truly was in seminary, I was taught that one of the main purposes of the sacraments is drama. When I heard that, a little light went off in my head. See, I was an actor for quite a while myself. The sacraments are dramatic—of course! When we do the sacraments, we are actors in a play. Read More »Sacramental Drama
By The Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
September 2, 2012
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
James 1: 17-27
I would like you to hear and consider this re-writing of our Gospel lesson for today. It doesn’t apply, of course, to St. Stephen:
“Now when the leaders of the church and those who did all the real work around here had gathered around Jesus, they noticed that the new members and the youth and the homeless were eating with defiled purpose, that is, that they hadn’t done anything to earn their meal. (For the Presbyterians, and all Christians in those days, believed you were not taking Christianity seriously if you didn’t serve on at least five committees, thus observing the conventions of their society; and they did not eat anything from the market unless it was free-range and safe from causing environmental hazard, and there were many other traditions they observed: that church members had their own pews, on which no one else, even visitors, could sit; the correct washing and placement of Tupperware containers in the church kitchen; the correct order of worship; that all should bring a dish to the pot-luck or else not come; and that those who were most like them were the ones most truly welcome and that everyone else was ‘the least of these,’ who were to be helped, but otherwise avoided.)”Read More »“Found Difficult and Not Tried”
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
August 26, 2012
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Ephesians 6: 10-20
John 6: 52-71
As a pastor I’ve seen a few folks die. And yet, because of their faith they are still alive. One is remember is Alice, a dear lady from my last church, who had for years been a hard worker for the church, generous, hospitable, kind. She came down with cancer, and the most difficult thing for her was the realization that she could no longer “do” as she once did. She became very anxious about the state of her soul; how could she please God if she couldn’t “do” anymore?Read More »Shield Aflame
A Canterbury Tale
By the end of my sophomore year at Hampden-Sydney College, Inter-Varsity, our official campus fellowship group, was becoming more exclusionary and judgmental. There were standards that brooked no room for questions or disagreement. I was increasingly frustrated for my friends in IV who had questions, or were troubled in their souls, or who didn’t toe the fundamentalist line, or who weren’t quite pretty enough, cool enough, or secure enough in their faith to fit the IV model. Don’t get me wrong, there were many good, faithful people in IV–but the tenor of the group had become increasingly “Us against Them”–us against the “liberal religion professors,” us against the fratty boys, us against the Creeping Religion of Secular Humanism. Us against the world.Read More »A Personal Journey, 8: God’s Kingdom of Forgiveness
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Proverbs 9: 1-6
August 19, 2012
The book of Proverbs depicts Wisdom as a respectable woman, who prepares a beautiful table and invites you to feast with her. In contrast is “the foolish woman,” who “sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high place of the city, to call passers-by who go their way: ‘Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
The contrast is simple. It makes sense. Wisdom invites you. Foolishness tempts you.Read More »Wisdom–Proverbs 9: 1-6
