Monthly Archives: May 2015

What Difference It Makes

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Trinity Sunday, Year B, May 31, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 6:1-8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!
Romans 8:12-17 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
John 3:1-17 How can anyone be born after having grown old?

O God incarnate, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Last week I told you that the Feast of Pentecost is my favorite church holiday. It’s always followed by Trinity Sunday – not my favorite. It’s the only Sunday in the church year entirely devoted to a doctrine – that’s the good news I guess (that there’s only one). Even though it is the most beautiful of doctrines, I doubt if it’s possible (for me) to preach on Trinity Sunday without accidentally tripping over some orthodoxy and falling headlong into heresy. One option, I guess, is to just choose the alternative lessons for the first Sunday after Pentecost, or focus on the Feast of the Visitation, which falls on May 31 (and is the twelfth anniversary of when the Church named me a priest). The thing is, though, I love the Trinity hymns. I love St. Patrick’s Breastplate – the name of our processional hymn this morning. It’s frequently playing in my head. I love the hymn we will sing at the offertory – Holy Holy Holy – called Nicaea. In the hymnal of my childhood, it was number one in the book and in my heart. I still remember the time about thirty years ago when I first heard someone read Isaiah 6:1-8 in Hebrew, demonstrating the power of the poetry and the mystery – Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. Continue reading →

Getting Chased around the Lake

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Pentecost, Year B, May 24, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Ezekiel 37:1-14 Can these bones live?
Acts 2:1-21 I will pour out [from/of] my Spirit upon all flesh.
John 15:26-16:15 I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling.

O Holy Source of inspiration, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Happy Pentecost everyone! I am very glad that you’re here – amazed and delighted, really. I expect people on the Feast of the Nativity (Christmas) and the Feast of the Resurrection (Easter), but when the Feast of Pentecost falls on a beautiful Memorial Day weekend, well, I just never know. Pentecost is my favorite church holiday. I love our parades of puppets in procession at Emmanuel, bracketing the Great Fifty days of Easter. I love the Pentecost scripture readings: the rattling dry bones re-animated by the spirit of holiness, the breath of God. I love the sound like the rush of a violent wind of the Acts story – not a gentle breeze, not a still small voice, but a complete cacophony of the Good News of the powerful Love of God being told in at least 17 languages (we managed 10 languages this morning –wasn’t it perplexing and thrilling?) And I love the promise of the “one called alongside to help” – parakletos is the Greek word, champion, [1] here translated advocate. Perhaps, more than anything, I love baptisms and Pentecost is one of four days specially designated for baptisms. Continue reading →

So That

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Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B, May 17, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Become a witness with us to his resurrection.
1 John 5:9-13 So that you may know that you have eternal life.
John 17:6-19 So that that they may be one…so that the scripture might be fulfilled…so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves…so that they also may be sanctified in truth.


O God of holiness, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

If I asked you to think of an important holiday that always falls on a Thursday, what would you say? (Maybe you would think first of Thanksgiving.) What if I asked you to name two important holidays that always fall on Thursdays? (Thanksgiving and since we’re in church, maybe someone would think of Maundy Thursday in Holy Week.) Do you know where I’m going with this? I wonder how many of you would have thought of Ascension Day — always a Thursday forty days after Easter Sunday. Did any of you take the day off this past Thursday to observe Ascension Day with your friends and family?
Continue reading →

Witnessing

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One of the greatest challenges that I have faced at my internship this year at Emmanuel is of an interpersonal nature and relates to a challenge that I am working with outside of the internship realm. It has to do with my tendency toward leadership, my need for being seen, and my addiction to creating intended results. I am someone who likes to enter a space and influence an outcome that I can imagine being positive in nature. I am a change agent and have been identified as someone who possesses leadership abilities for as far back as I can remember. (My first dream when I was a child was to be the president.) At Emmanuel this year one of the main things that I have gotten to practice is putting my tendency toward leadership on the shelf and, instead, showing up as just another member of the group or simply as a witness to what is happening to those around me. It has been through these experiences that I have been able to practice the dance of therapeutic presence. Continue reading →

Attunement

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As my time at Emmanuel is coming to an end, I feel like I’m just getting started. I’m in a place where I feel comfortable taking risks, stepping outside the box, and sharing my ideas. Over the course of the week I have been reminded that it is okay to try something new, no matter how far along in the process I am.

On Thursdays, I lead a movement group with the folks from Café Emmanuel. I have had so much fun with this group. The participants vary from week to week, and there is one person who has not missed a session. Each week we dance and move with multicolored scarves to different songs, most recently Broadway tunes. The returning participant is always trying to get others to stay and dance with him. I feel his desire to have more than just me and a volunteer. So, in an attempt to entice folks to participate I played the music earlier than normal, gathered a few scarves and placed them in people’s hands. I physically invited people and resisted the urge to be complacent and just accept that folks are not interested in movement. It worked! We added people to our group, and I think it was the most enjoyable session yet! Continue reading →

Keep coming back. It really works.

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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B, May 3, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 8:26-40 This is a wilderness road.
1 John 4:7-21 God is love.
John 15:1-8 Abide in me.

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning I want to preach about everything – the humanitarian crisis in Nepal; Baltimore and the widespread damaging effects of racism in the United States; my discoveries sifting through family archives when I was in Denver for my aunt’s funeral last week; the huge number of people who go hungry in Massachusetts, where the poverty rate is at its highest since 1960 (the year I was born); the pending jury decision about the sentence for Johar Tsarnaev; and the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, and that’s just for starters. Bishops and scholarly theologians in the Anglican Reformation had a remedy for this kind of challenge: they wrote approved homilies to be read at sermon time. Article 35 in the 39 Articles of Religion, pages 874 and 875 in the Book of Common Prayer (the red prayer book in your pews), states that homilies from an authorized book are “to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.” But then in 1801 as the Episcopal Church was being organized in the post-Revolutionary War era, the requirement was suspended “until a revision of them may be conveniently made, for the clearing of them, as well from obsolete words and phrases, as from the local references.” We are still living in that suspension! Continue reading →