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Sermons

Stranger

by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

St. Luke 24:13-35

“You have to be a stranger yourself. There has to be an intentional marginality, an intentional experience that becomes part of our spiritual discipline.  One can’t claim the role of host all the time; … it is a gift also to be willing to be guests and to share in people’s lives.”–Christine D. Pohl, Professor of Social Ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary

 It’s been almost ten years since I preached my first sermon here at St. Stephen. It’s been almost ten years since I arrived here a stranger, and you welcomed me.

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Easter: Jesus Rose

 

by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

John 20: 19-31

 

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.  That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.”—N. T. Wright (b. 1948), Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church

 

Today we celebrate Easter. Easter is the most important Christian holy day, because this is the day that we remember that Jesus rose from the dead. He was dead, but God raised Him from the dead.  This past week We have been reflecting on Jesus’ suffering and death. Often our focus is his life and teachings. none of that is in itself particularly unique. Other wise people have taught. Other miracle workers have healed. Other martyrs have suffered and died. Perhaps He should have been remembered, if He was remembered at all, as one among many great teachers of history.

But He rose from the dead. That changes everything.Read More »Easter: Jesus Rose

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

“I Thirst”

The Last Words of Jesus: “I Thirst”

John 19:16-20

Last week, one of our scriptures was a story from the Exodus. The Hebrews, having escaped slavery in Egypt, were now wandering in the desert, feeling lost and confused and suspicious of their leader Moses. They were thirsty. They demanded that Moses gives them water. Moses cries out in frustration to God, and God tells him to strike his staff on a stone. When he does, water pours out. The people have enough to drink. But Moses calls the place massah and meribah, because the people questioned, “Is God among us, or not?”Read More »“I Thirst”

The Last Words of Jesus: “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

On the cross, Jesus stands in for us all. At some level, most of us have been taught this.  For instance, you may have been taught that when Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it is because He has been quite literally abandoned by God, because Jesus has taken on the sin of all humanity, and scripture assures us “God cannot look upon sin.”Read More »The Last Words of Jesus: “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

“This day, you will be with me in Paradise”

The Seven Last Words of Jesus:

“This day, you will be with me in Paradise”

by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

March 16, 2014

Genesis 12: 1-4

Luke 23: 32-43

 

“The criminal begs Jesus for remembrance in the unknown future that awaits them all.  The crucified jesus, the one soon to die on the gibbet of infamy, replies to this criminal, ‘Believe me, today you shall be with me in Paradise.’ As Ambrose put it centuries later, ‘More abundant is the favor shown than the request made.’”—Joseph Fitzmyer, Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV

 

It’s the most compelling and memorable of the Taize songs we sing: “Jesus, remember me/ when you come into your kingdom.” It’s compelling because, quite simply, it’s what you and I want. The thief on the cross is speaking for us. He represents all of us. But at the same time, he’s not like us at all. Luke, writing to a Roman audience, puts these words in the mouth of the lowest of the low. At bare minimum, the thief is a lawbreaker of the worst sort, and Rome was a law-and-order state. The average Roman would assume, as we generally do, that someone who’s broken the law doesn’t deserve much leniency.

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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

Raising our Children in the Faith

 

Christmas Eve photos BH 2013 - 5

To Listen to this Sermon, Click Here -> http://ststphnfw.sermon.tv/9834761

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