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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.

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

The Beatitudes: Extraordinary Virtues

 

 

 

 

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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

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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

Joseph, Jesus’ Father ‘According to the Flesh’

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Matthew 1: 18-25

Romans 1: 1-7

“… In Matthew, Joseph plays an important role…. His ‘doing what was right’ can hardly mean his ‘fidelity to the Law’ but his compassion… The one has come in whom God in person dwells among mortals (Immanuel) and who thus will be the salvation of his people (Jesus). The importance of Jesus’ subsequent life, not his birth, is the reason for placing such stress on the obedience of Joseph, who, in the light of God’s great promise, can give up his previous moral principles to fulfill God’s command literally.” The Good News According to Matthew, Eduard Schweizer.

We know Joseph, the husband of Mary, is Jesus’ father “according to the flesh,”  as Paul puts it in our reading from Romans.This is important because it is through Joseph that Jesus is established as being a descendant of David, “according to the flesh.” Of course, “according to the Spirit,” God is Jesus’ father. But we know Joseph from the stories of the birth of Jesus. The last appearance he makes in Scripture is in Luke, when 12-year-old Jesus disappears while they are on a trip to Jerusalem. His parents search for him frantically and find that he is at the Temple, teaching the elders, who are amazed at his wisdom. We don’t have any more stories about Joseph after that. Scholars generally assume Joseph dies while Jesus is still quite young.Read More »Joseph, Jesus’ Father ‘According to the Flesh’

OBSERVATIONS ON THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, By Dr. Rev. Warner Bailey

The brave face of youthful pride.  Example, the calling card with the complete name.  The incongruity of this placement.

The abandonment of youthful love.  Jim and Della.  How many of us started out in similar circumstances?

The adoration of Della for Jim and her consuming desire to find a Christmas gift that adequately conveyed her adoration of him.  And by the end of the story we discover that Jim adores Stella just as much and is driven by a similar desire to find a gift which measures up to this adoration.Read More »OBSERVATIONS ON THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, By Dr. Rev. Warner Bailey