Proper 17B, September 12, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of hope, 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 we mark the end of the liturgical (or church) year – the last Sunday in Pentecost. This day has come to be known as The Feast of Christ the King – or The Reign of Christ Sunday for folks moving away from patriarchal language. It’s a fairly new church holiday — first declared by Pius the 11^th in 1925. It was a Roman Catholic feast day; then it caught on with the Lutherans. As recently as a dozen years ago, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church described it as “kept unofficially in some Anglican churches.” As we Episcopalians have lived into our commitment to use the Revised Common Lectionary (shared with other major Christian denominations), Christ the King Sunday has become a part of our common practice, printed on our calendars (so you know it’s legit), but I’m a bit slow in my own conversion. Continue reading →

Proper 11B, July 22, 2012

O God of compassion, 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 know it’s summertime, but I’ve got homework for you both this week and next. This week’s assignment is to take the Mark 6:30-56 sheet, which you got with your bulletin and announcement sheet this morning and study the middle part when you get home. Read it out loud. See what jumps out at you. Listen to what speaks to you. Wonder what difference it might make.

Our lectionary selection for the Gospel this morning is Mark 6:30-34 and 53-36. There’s a big chunk taken out of the middle that seems pretty critical to me. We’re reading through the Gospel of Mark, fairly sequentially, so you might think maybe this missing part was read last week or maybe it will be read next week. But no. Next week there will be a feeding story, but it will be the version told in the Gospel of John. That’s completely baffling to me because Mark has not one but two perfectly good stories about huge hungry crowds being fed by Jesus’ disciples at his direction – one in Jewish territory and one in Gentile territory. But more about the loaves and fishes next week. Continue reading →

Proper 10B, July 15, 2012

O God of our dreaming, 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.

The summer lectionary has handed us some truly terrible readings for us this morning. First, the story of how the ark of the covenant came to reside in Jerusalem, which is not a nice story. Although the lectionary calls for the most troubling parts of the story to be removed, I elected to leave them in rather than to tell you about them. Then we have the story of the beheading of John the Baptist with a passage from Ephesians in the middle insisting that somehow everything is going to be alright.

It seems to me that scenes like the one from Samuel or the one from the Gospel of Mark are harder to relate to than your average Bible story for polite folks in an Episcopal Church on a midsummer day. What might they have to say to us? I mean, I’d be very surprised if, when Susanne read the Gospel just now, any of you thought to yourself, “oh yeah, that reminds me of a dinner party I went to one time when a guy got beheaded.” Continue reading →

Proper 9B, July 8, 2012

O God of compassion, 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.

A few Sundays ago a parishioner asked about the Hebrew Bible lesson for the day from Samuel and wondered what it had had to do with the Gospel (or anything else in the service that day). It’s a great question that comes from experiencing a lifetime of Episcopal Church lectionary selections that used to fit together, of what we used to call the Old Testament being co-opted in service to the Christian testament or New Testament. That has changed with the Episcopal Church’s use of the Revised Common Lectionary. Continue reading →

Proper 8B, July 1, 2012

O God of healing and restoration, 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.

You know I always begin my sermon reflections with that prayer, amended from a prayer attributed to Phillips Brooks, once Bishop of Massachusetts. It helps me find my preacher voice, as my daughter Laura calls it. Praying it is a way to locate myself in this position of privilege which you grant to me, and to give myself permission to say things from time to time that might be challenging – hard for me to say or hard for you to hear or both. And it’s a frequent reminder that truth is not predictably or reliably found, and that the seeking is what I am about. What I’m afraid doesn’t come through in this prayer is the idea that, while truth is costly, it always sets us free. That’s how we know it is truth. So the seeking for truth is not at all about fact-finding, it’s about experiencing freedom and joy. Continue reading →

Proper 6B, June 17, 2012

O startling 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.

Instead of the usual Gospel acclamation this morning, I was tempted to shout, “Hallelujah, we are back in the Gospel of Mark!” and invite you to respond, “Thanks be to God!” I don’t actually know if you all are as happy about it as I am. I am aware that I’m a Bible geek! I just love the baffling Zen koan nature of Jesus’ teachings in the earliest Gospel, and I love Mark’s aside’s like when he writes“with many such parables he spoke the word to them…but he explained everything in private to his students (or disciples).” Left unwritten, however, is the private explanation of the riddles. I think the assumption is that the readers or hearers of this Good News get the jokes. I have a strong sense that Jesus was a very funny man – that humor was a part of his medicine bag. The problem is that two thousand years later, no-one cracks up with laughter when I read this Gospel passage in church. Continue reading →

Trinity Sunday, Year B, June 3, 2012

O God increation, incarnation, 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.

If you’ve been to a professional football game or a similar event in a large venue, you might have noticed banners that say, simply, John 3:16. Or maybe you’ve noticed bumper stickers or billboards that say John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that God gave the only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” It is, in my opinion, one of the most misappropriated and misunderstood passages of scripture in the whole Bible. John 3:16 has fueled some of the most damaging and unloving impulses of those who have taken the name Christian, from the Crusades to the destruction of conquered indigenous peoples, to the Holocaust, and to our present day. Continue reading →

Pentecost B, May 27, 2012

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.

There’s something about the communal Pentecost reading from Acts that surprises me every year, even when I’m part of the planning. There’s something shocking and dramatic and wild about a bunch of people reading in different languages at once. It’s exciting and a little crazy – just the opposite of our customary buttoned down and somber liturgical presentations of scripture readings. I feel hopeful for the worship of the Church whenever when we can experience something of the Spirit and not just talk about the Spirit. We do it well in music here at Emmanuel Church, and I suspect there is so much more that is possible in readings, in prayer, in silence, while still remaining Episcopalians of course! The best news in this regard is found in our second lesson for today, from Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome. Paul writes: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” I think that Spirit is regularly praying that we might have more fun in church (although I might be projecting). Continue reading →

Easter 6B, May 13, 2012

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 we are celebrating the baptism of Emma Parker Fry. She surely won’t remember this day so I hope that her family takes lots of pictures, not just of Emma, but of the congregation too, so that as she grows up she can see evidence of the day that so many people, some relatives and friends but mostly a crowd of complete strangers, promised to support her in her life in the redeeming love of God – also known as the Christ. This is the day that a church full of people at 15 Newbury Street in Boston will assert our belief in Emma’s inherent dignity and in our own inherent dignity and renew our vows to take loving actions in response to that dignity. Emma will need evidence of this day, because she won’t always be in touch with her own inherent dignity or the dignity of every other human being. There will be days when she does not feel like the marvelously made child of God that she is, loved through and through by the Author of Life itself. Continue reading →

Easter 5B, May 6, 2012

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.

Judging by my experience at Emmanuel Church, I’m guessing that some of you had strong negative reactions to the Gospel reading just now about the pruning and the non-fruit bearing branches being thrown into the fire and burned. I’m guessing that others among you avoided the discomfort by going somewhere else in your imaginations. I hope, if you’ve heard me preach before, you know that I think it’s all going to be okay. Just stay with me and we’ll get to that! Continue reading →