Author Archives: Elizabeth Richardson

No Ordinary Time

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Proper 6A
June 14, 2020

Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7) Sarah laughed to herself.
Romans 5:1-8 And hope will not disappoint us.
Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23) When he saw the crowds he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless…the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

O most faithful and patient God, 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.

I want to begin by taking stock of the journey we’ve been on as a community of faith since early March, when the COVID-19 pandemic started to become real in the Boston area. We have endured great uncertainty and tremendous loss, concern for the safety of others and for ourselves, a lot of fear, grief, and more than a little shame. I hear see and hear these things in our phone conversations, on your faces via video conferencing, in your emails, and I feel them too. In our worship, we have navigated (with significant technological turbulence) the second half of Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. And now we have entered the long stretch of what the Church calls Ordinary Time. 
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Unholy Trinity: Idolatry, Blasphemy & White Supremacy

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Trinity Sunday (A), June 7, 2020.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 1:1-2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
2 Corinthians 13:11-13 Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace.
Matthew 28:16-20 But some doubted.

O Trinity of blessed light, 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 Trinity Sunday everyone. I’m feeling particularly spun up by the Holy Spirit this week and I want to preach about the turbulence of civil and religious unrest. A mighty wind is blowing people out of their homes, as Bishop Gates preached last week, and into the streets, throughout our land. We are hearing the Spirit in a variety of languages. Last Sunday, because it was Pentecost, we renewed our baptismal promises, and this week I’m going to speak to those promises. I’m particularly speaking to the questions: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? And will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? Because Emmanuel Church is a predominantly white parish, not entirely, but predominately, this white priest is preaching primarily to the white people who are listening today. I think you know deep in your hearts the things I’m going to say, and yet, I have to be sure even though it feels awkward.

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Only Kindness

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Seventh Sunday in Easter, Year A
May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14 Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women…
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 (but what about 4:16?) If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.
John 17:1-11 Protect them in your name that you have given me..so that they may be one as we are one.

O sovereign of glory, 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 is the day, in our church calendar, when we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost – a sort of liturgical limbo. It lines up well with the limbo we are experiencing in the Church, between pre-isolation and post-isolation due to the covid-19 pandemic. There’s a lot of buzz about opening the churches, and I want to say that Emmanuel hasn’t closed. The Emmanuel Church building has stayed open to serve those who desperately need shelter and food and other necessities, like loving-kindness, and to allow other essential activities to take place. It never closed. Is Emmanuel Church open for worship? Well the physical pews are not full of people, the chancel is not full with a choir and orchestra, but we have not stopped worshiping together as a community. Nevertheless, we are in a sort of limbo, having left what we have held dear, not knowing when and how a new normal will be. I think it’s safe to say that many of us are feeling bereft and disillusioned, mixed with varying amounts of anxiety, anger, and despair. We are warned that we are still in the early days.

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Keeping Commandments

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Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31 For we too are [God’s] offspring.
Psalm 66:7-18 Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld steadfast love from me.
1 Peter 3:13-22 Always be ready to make… an accounting for the hope that is in you.
John 14:15-21 If you love me you will keep my commandments.

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.

One of the things that has happened in this terrible time of pandemic is that our scripture stories of courage in the midst of devastation have become so much more real to me. As I said last week, the world-wide disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic is deeply revealing, disclosing, exposing, clarifying – an apocalypse of biblical proportion. For many of us, our sense of time is all messed up, and I’m starting to think about recent chronological time as “before the pandemic era” and “after the pandemic era.” In these last eight weeks, it has seemed like time has been folding, very much like our Gospel reading for this morning – past, present and future feel particularly distorted and layered in this continuation of Jesus’ very long valedictory speech that is set in the evening before his nighttime arrest. This portion of Jesus’ parting words always reminds me of the instructions that my mother used to leave when I was in high school before my parents went away for a trip (and I always feared that they would leave us orphaned). I am the oldest child, so the list of instructions was accompanied by my mom’s admonition for me to use my best judgment. Okay, I would think, I will, but have you met my brothers and my sister?

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What Is Being Revealed

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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
May 10, 2020

Acts 7:55-60 Filled with a holy spirit.
1 Peter 2:2-10 If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
John 14:1-14 Do not let your hearts be troubled.

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.

“Do not let your heart be troubled,” Jesus says at the opening of our Gospel lesson for this morning. And then Jesus says some things that have been troubling the heart of folks ever since! Troubles with this text notwithstanding, the beginning of John 14 is often read at funerals and memorial services for solace. The promise that God has plenty of rooms prepared for us is so beautiful and comforting. Whenever possible, I leave off the second half of verse 6, because it seems to me that a burial service homily is not such a good time to be reading something that sounds so exclusionary. A burial service homily is also not such a good time to be explaining about translating and re-punctuating ancient Greek. I also have to say that the experience of countless “zoom” meetings in the last two months has helped me to see more clearly some of the many rooms where the divine makes a home with you all. 
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The Gate

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Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2020

Acts 2:42-47 They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
1 Peter 2:19-25 So that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness…
John 10:1-10 Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate

O Source of life abundant, may we have the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may, and cost what it will.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but one of the first things that the Mayor of Boston did when it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic would hit Boston hard, was to invite the leaders of faith communities in the City to meet with him via conference call. It was a surreal St. Patrick’s Day in the City of Boston when Mayor Walsh acknowledged that faith leaders had always been there for him and for the city, but the reverse had not always been true.  Since that day, his senior staff has been working more closely than usual with religious leaders to identify people who are most vulnerable and to direct our combined resources to serve them. Weekly conference call meetings begin and end with prayer, led by participants on the call: Muslims, Jews, Christians and others. Thus surrounded by prayer, the content of the meetings focuses on food, water, access to bathrooms, safe shelter for the days and nights, public safety, children, elders, racism, xenophobia, domestic violence, addiction treatment, protecting undocumented immigrants, and financial relief through the Boston Resiliency Fund. After each meeting, the mayor’s office sends a follow-up email with resources, reminders, answers to questions and sometimes requests. Thursday we were asked to remind you to please complete the census reporting so that we get the federal funding that we need for the next ten years. I tell you this in a sermon because it is an example of good shepherding on a day known in church tradition as Good Shepherd Sunday.

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Courage & Compassion

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Third Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2020

Acts 2:14a, 36-47 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away.
1 Peter 1:17-23 …Love one another deeply from the heart.
Luke 24:13-35 Were not our hearts burning within us?
O God of our aching and burning hearts, 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.
Three weeks into Eastertide, we are still hearing stories of the first day after the Sabbath, the day when the women found the tomb where Jesus had been laid to be empty. It’s a different Gospel from the last two weeks, and the stories are different. In Luke, Jesus’ first appeared not to Mary Magdalene, but to two of his followers who were headed out of Jerusalem to a place called Emmaus – one was named Cleopas. The other, a woman, I imagine….what was her name? Oh, it doesn’t say. Well, anyway. It’s a beautiful account of the art of resurrection, about how, even when we don’t understand it, we can’t imagine it, and we certainly are not looking for it, we can come to recognize that the Risen Lord can be walking along with us; the Risen Lord can be right in front of us without our knowing it, opening our eyes to the scriptures and opening our hearts to thanksgiving for shared meals. When they hurried back to Jerusalem to tell the eleven, they heard that the Risen Lord had also appeared to Simon (presumably Simon Peter), but there’s no story about that.
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Ready to love

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Second Sunday of Easter – A
April 19, 2020

Acts 2:14a, 22-32 Deeds of power, wonders, and signs.
1 Peter 1:3-9 So that the genuineness of your faith…may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
John 20:19-31 Peace be with you…Peace be with you.

O God of grace, 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.

Today’s Gospel reading is a little like watching episodes of a tv show where the story leaves off at the end of one episode and picks up a moment later the following week. This passage begins, “later on the same day” – the same day that the tomb was found empty, the same day that Mary had mistaken the risen Lord for the gardener. The same day Jesus made Mary Magdalene the apostles to the apostles. And the Gospel says that she did go and tell the others that Jesus had said these things to her. That didn’t seem to do anything to assuage their fears because later on the same day, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors because they were afraid. 

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Hallelujah anyhow!

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Easter A
April 12, 2020

Jeremiah 31:1-6 I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Colossians 3:1-11 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed.
John 20:1-18 I have seen the Lord.

 O God of mystery and meaning 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.

Every Easter for the last dozen years, I’ve read the story of The Three Trees from the steps to the chancel, surrounded by children of many ages. As I weighed whether to read the story in our livestreamed service, I realized that sitting alone on the empty steps seemed truer to the Easter story than ever before. I imagine you who are watching and missing the physical experience of being together in a full and carried-away church are having mixed feelings much truer to the Easter story too. 

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Repentance & Right-Relationship

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Palm Sunday
April 5, 2020

 

Isaiah 50:4-9a I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
Philippians 2:5-11 He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.
Matthew 27:11-66 “ .”

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew §1 – congregation is seated

Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, “Are you the King of [these people]?” Jesus said, “You say so.” But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer. Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?” But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed. Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” All of them said, “Let him be crucified!” Then he asked, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

Meditation I 

For those of you who are joining Emmanuel Church for worship for the first time, or for whom this is your first Palm Sunday with us, I want to explain that we made a decision in 2014 to stop engaging in the custom of reading the Passion Narrative on Palm Sunday as a play script with members of the congregation taking various dialogue parts, and the congregation as a whole representing the crowd. Although it may be edifying to understand that we too are capable of the denial and betrayal of Love, and of being bystanders while brutal and deadly force is used against others, I’d rather we not practice any of that bad behavior in church! I do not believe that it is at all edifying to re-enact the highly implausible scenario that Pontius Pilate or any other Roman authority would have even permitted a large crowd to gather in the occupied capital of an occupied country during the time of a great feast celebrating the notion of freedom from oppression, economic exploitation, and political enslavement. It is not edifying to pretend that a Roman governor would have given people a voice vote about whom to crucify. Biblical scholars and historians have known this for a long long time, and yet much of the Church blithely carries on this libel in the name of tradition or custom or piety, with deadly consequences to Jews.[1] 
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