Aristotle – St. Stephen Presbyterian Church

The Virtues: Generosity

by revfritz
09/23/2013

To Listen to this Sermon, Click Here -> http://sermon.net/ststphnfw/sermonid/1200108094

Psalm 150

II Corinthians 9: 4-15

Juanita Cowan was a child of one of the founding families of Broadway Presbyterian, our predecessor church. she was aunt to Peggy Kennedy, great aunt to Katie Hinckley, and great great aunt of Katie and Greg’s three daughters, Trinity, Emory, and Addison. Ms. Cowan was a child when the Great Southside Fire of 1909 burned down Broadway’s original building, across from the site that is now Broadway Baptist Church. Ms. Cowan wrote the history of St. Stephen, and she wrote of being a young child when the rebuilt Broadway Presbyterian Church was completed. “On January 1, 1911, the congregation gathered at the tabernacle and marched to the new building singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,” she wrote. “The new building was of beautiful red brick… The sanctuary in brown tones inspired reverence, especially in a small child; even when there was no service going on, I felt I should whisper.”Read More »The Virtues: Generosity

The Virtues: Courage

by revfritz
09/03/2013

To Listen to this Sermon, Click Here -> http://sermon.net/ststphnfw/sermonid/1200094715

Joshua 1: 1-9

Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

God’s people stand on the border of The Promised Land. They’ve wandered the desert forty years, and over that time they’ve been led by Moses. But now Moses is dead, and Joshua, son of Nun, is in charge. Joshua is no stranger to physical courage. He’s a warrior; he was one of the twelve spies sent to investigate Canaan when they first came upon it.

But in our passage, God is calling Joshua to a different kind of courage.

The Virtues: Temperance

by revfritz
08/12/2013

To Listen to this Sermon, click here-> http://sermon.net/ststphnfw/sermonid/1200081956

Psalm 107: 1-9

I Corinthians 9: 19-27

Luke 12: 13-21

“Temperance… now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the Second Cardinal Virtue was christened ‘temperance,’ it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further.” —C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 2.

Jesus says of the rich fool, “this is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” That could be a description of the self-indulgent man, as Aristotle describes him in his Nicomachean Ethics: Read More »The Virtues: Temperance

The Virtues: Justice

by revfritz
07/28/2013

To Listen to this Sermon, click here -> http://sermon.net/ststphnfw/sermonid/1200072559

Psalm 85

In Plato’s Republic, the philosopher Socrates tells the story of the negotiations between the powerful Athenians and the weak Melians in the Peloponnesian War. The embittered Melians say angrily that “If we refused to submit to these negotiations, if we insisted on our rights and refused to submit to your rule, you’d only wage war with us, conquer us, and make us your slaves.” Shockingly, the Athenians agree. “We won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that we deserve to rule you because we are morally right and that you are morally wrong,” the Athenian negotiators tell the Melians. “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only a question between equals in power, where the stronger do whatever they can and the weaker suffer whatever they must.”

The Virtues, Part I: Humility

by revfritz
07/07/2013

To Listen to this Sermon, click here -> http://sermon.net/ststphnfw/sermonid/1200068295

2 Kings 5: 1-14

This is the first of a series on the virtues.

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.” Thomas Merton

This past week we heard about the tragic deaths of nineteen Granite Mountain Hot-shots, top firefighters who were killed in a forest fire in Arizona. We are all moved by their bravery and by their sacrifice. These are men who demonstrate arête, the Greek virtue of excellence—they strived and succeeded at being the best of the best, part of a world-wide elite of firefighters. They died doing what they believed in and what they trained for, and so, according to the Greek heroic tradition, they died a good death, and therefore lived a good life.