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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?

Enough God?

What is the What?
By Rev. Fritz Ritsch
September 14, 2014
Exodus 16: 2-16

In Exodus, a couple of chapters before the chapter we’re reading today, Pharaoh watches his former slaves, the Hebrews, starting to leave Egypt, and cries: “what is this we have done, releasing Israel from our service?” (14:5). But on the other end of the spectrum are the Hebrews themselves, free at last from slavery, but wandering seemingly lost in the desert, and they demand of Moses, who freed them, “What have you done to us?” (14:2) “Why are you crying out to me?” responds God, frustrated. “What shall we eat?” the people complain, and Moses and Aaron, his co-leader, respond in disgust, “What are we that you should grumble against us?” Once the Israelites have escaped their Egyptian slave masters, they have a serious case of corporate Buyers’ Remorse: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt?” they cry. And Moses responds, “Why are you in a contest with me? And why do test God?” Then Moses turns to God in exasperation: “What am I to do with these people?” (Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Particulars of Rapture. New York: Shocken Books, 2001. P. 206.)Read More »Enough God?

Remember

Remember and Do Not Forget
Communion, September 7, 2014
Exodus 12:21-28

In our Old Testament scripture for today, Moses is telling the Israelites how to remember something that hasn’t even happened yet. God is going to do something terrible and something wonderful. God is going to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, the people who have enslaved the Israelites and whose King will not let them go. That’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s hard to understand.  Even though the Israelites have suffered terribly—even though Pharaoh had murdered the firstborn of the Israelites himself—somehow it’s different when it’s God who instigating it.Read More »Remember

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

THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

Warner M. Bailey

               Genesis 1:21 states: “So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm.”  I always wondered why the author of the first creation story called out the “great sea monsters” for special mention when describing God’s creating the marine life of the world.  The scholarly explanation is that these creatures symbolized power that could strike fear in the breast of whoever encountered one of them.  The creation story writer was careful to point out that even those animals who make us afraid are God’s creatures.

               But I have another take on these great sea monsters.  Recently my son David took me on a fishing trip off the coast of upper British Columbia.  We were part of a larger party of 12 couples who lived for a week on a converted coastal patrol boat, one of the few remaining wooden tugs still in service.  Every day we would venture out in skiffs to try our luck and skill at catching salmon, halibut, and ling cod.  It was a most congenial make up of guests and a superb crew of captain, cook, hostess, and two guides.  Read More »THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR

HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR  Acts 17.26-34 

Warner M. Bailey

                The day Mary and I climbed the hill to the Acropolis we had not yet been in Athens 24 hours.  It was truly overwhelming and surreal.  The awesome proportions of the temples, the beauty of the statuary and carving, the stark white of the stones and the cobalt blue of the sky—not to mention the fact that we were still suffering from jet lag—made the experience distinctly disorienting, awesome. 

               I wonder if the Apostle Paul felt a similar disorientation when he visited Athens in its original splendor and was stunned as he looked up at the Acropolis upon which the Parthenon soared?  The story in the Acts of the Apostles of his stay in that capital city of wisdom, philosophy, and beauty does show us that the Acropolis had an effect on him, too.  He “was provoked” at all the idols he saw, and he argued with Athenians in their market place, the agora as the Athenians called it, a building fronted with Doric columns still standing today at the base of the towering Acropolis.  He preached about the resurrection of Jesus to this audience of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and his preaching got a mixed response which betrayed just how drastically the Christian good news was misunderstood by these Athenian philosophers..  Read More »HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR

LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE

LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE

Micah 6.1-8  

                When God’s Spirit takes the words off the pages of the Bible and burns them into your hearts, you become a different person.  You see things differently.  You act differently.  Listen again to God’s words from the prophet Micah.

O my people, what have I done to you?

In what have I wearied you?  Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

and redeemed you from the house of bondage;

and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

O my people, remember…

that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.

 

               O my people, what hardship have I put on you?  O my people, what requirement did you have to fulfill, what test did I require you to pass, in order to be eligible?   How many merits did you have to earn?  Answer me!    And of course, our answer to God is None!  Nothing!  It is all God, God, God. God brings out.  God liberates.  God nurtures and shapes.  A life of freedom begins with a gift of freedom.  And woe betides the person who forgets the gift part of their freedom.  The word from the Bible is that life with God starts with a gift that you could not have gotten by yourself.  Remembering that you live from a gift always must be the place from which you start as you plan on how you are to live.  Micah now talks about the “how” of the living.Read More »LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE