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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

Seed

Genesis 25: 19-34
Romans 8: 1-11
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

“Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of what will be.”
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)

Carl Jung once said that we spend the first half of our lives building our personal kingdoms, and the second half defending them. You get to my age, and you start to think, I’ve arrived. Everything I’ve got, I think, is the pinnacle. It’s the result of my hard work. I should rest on my laurels. Change becomes viewed as a threat.

The problem is, the Gospel is all about change. Jesus came preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Repent has come today to mean, renounce your sins. But that’s not what it means in Greek. The word in Greek is metanoia, and it means change. Change, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The world is changing, because the world has to change when the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Change, because you and I have to change when the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is always at hand.Read More »Seed