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CHRISTMAS AND FATE Ecclesiastes 9.1-12 Galatians 3.23-4.7 Luke 1.57-79 Rev. Dr. Warner M. Bailey Everywhere you look on your TV guide these days, you are… Read More »

Christmas

CHRISTMAS CATASTROPHE Isaiah 60.1-6 Psalm 72.1-7, 19-14 Ephesians 3.1-12 Matthew 2.1-18 December 16, 2012 Rev. Dr. Warner M. Bailey The Wise Men stopped for directions… Read More »Christmas

Hope, Realism, and Faith

Here’s an intriguing observation, learned from a book by a prominent expert on the biology of the brain and how it relates to mental disease. The book is A First-Rate Madness, and the author is Nassir Ghaemi, MD, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts University.

He says that studies have shown that the average, non-neurotic person is more optimistic than he or she has a right to be. Read More »Hope, Realism, and Faith

Why Attend Church?

Where Is Everybody?

Hebrews 10: 19-25

Recently a long-time parishioner shared a story about an even longer-time parishioner. It dates from a few decades back, when the storyteller was a young mother who’d only recently joined St. Stephen. She overheard the older woman say that she and her husband were often so financially challenged in raising their large family that sometimes they had to go to the bank and take out a loan so that they could pay off their pledge to the church. “I have never forgotten that,” the storyteller says. “I have never forgotten that.”Read More »Why Attend Church?

Let Us Go to the Other Side

November 11, 2012
St. Mark 4:35-41

Several years ago when I lived in Virginia, I paid a visit to an interesting little church, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, VA. Fifth Avenue is a historically African American church, founded over a hundred years ago. When I visited, it was a small struggling church, and maybe it still is, but when I was there I was struck by a stained glass window in its sanctuary. It’s a picture of a beautiful, calm, river scene with, of all things, Civil War tents on one side and a wooded area on the other. I asked what it was and discovered to my surprise that this stained glass window depicted the Rappahannock River going through the Civil War battlefield of Chancellorsville, and that the window was dedicated to one of the Confederacy’s greatest generals, Stonewall Jackson.Read More »Let Us Go to the Other Side

All Things New

Revelation 21: 1-6

All Saints Sunday

All things new.

That’s what we believe as Christians.

A new heaven. A new earth.  Everyone of our loved ones who has died in the faith, possibly a whole lot of others, maybe even everybody, made completely new. You and me, made completely new.Read More »All Things New

The Gospel of Job, II: Redemption

The Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, by William Blake.
The Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, by William Blake.

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

October 28, 2012

The Book of Job, Chapter 42

 Job ends on a bizarre, uncomfortable note. God “rewards” Job by giving him NEW wealth, NEW property, most bizarrely, NEW CHILDREN.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a biblical scholar, to step back and say, “Wait a minute.” This is a reward? New children can be wonderful and beloved, but they can’t possibly make up for children who’ve died. Is this how God thinks?Read More »The Gospel of Job, II: Redemption