2019 Sermons

Unless noted otherwise these sermons were preached by Emmanuel’s Rector, the Reverend Pamela L. Werntz.  For other years, please see the links on Sermons.

Don’t leave here without love!

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Second Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2019

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 I am your shield.
Psalm 27 Be strong and of good courage. (Jewish Publication Society translation)
Philippians 3:17-4:1 He will transform the body of our humiliation.
Luke 13:31-35 How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

O God of our longing, 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.

At the beginning of the Ash Wednesday service, the presiding minister invites the congregation to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. The spiritual purpose is named in the beginning of our Eucharistic Prayer during Lent: to respond to the bidding of the Holy One to cleanse our hearts and prepare with joy for Easter, and to experience the fullness of grace prepared for those who walk in Love. In Lent, we are urged to prepare for Easter by focusing our attention on our hunger and thirst for right-relationship with one another and with God. According to the Bible, God is Love, and I find that saying Love (capital L) in place of the word God is a helpful Lenten discipline.

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Building up Belovedness

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First Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2019

Deuteronomy 26:1-11. You, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you.
Romans 10:8b-13. The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.
Luke 4:1-13. It is written … it is written … it is said.

O God of our many songs: 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.

Earlier in the week, when our Deacon Bob suggested that our Gospel lesson be read by both of us, to emphasize the dialog, I jumped at the chance to read (and embellish) the lines given to the devil because, in my experience, the voice of the devil always sounds reasonable, and I am nothing if not reasonable. You might know that the Greek word for devil, diabolos, or the Hebrew word, satan, can refer to anyone who brings charges or challenges against someone else. It’s the role of prosecutor. According to Luke, Jesus had just experienced at his baptism, a voice assuring him that he was the beloved child of the Holy One. Then, curiously, Luke adds Jesus’ 78 generation genealogy. It starts with: He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi…and so on, about 50 more generations through David, back to son of Judah, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Terah….and back 16 more generations to son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God. According to Luke, Jesus is (by adoption) “son of God” because he is a direct descendant of Adam, who was the son of God. The point is, Jesus has heard a voice from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved,” and Luke has listed Jesus’ lineage, back to son of Adam, son of God.
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Subversive Alleluias

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany,
March 3, 2019

Exodus 34:29-35. Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone.
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:12. Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry we do not lose heart.
Luke 9:28-43a. And all were astounded by the greatness of God.

O God 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.

Those of you who have heard me preach before will know that my desire to preach against the ways that the Christian Church has promoted supersessionist theology (that is, the idea that Christianity supercedes Judaism) gets stronger every year. Supersessionism is very much like racism – it’s systemic, it’s oppressive, it’s insidious, it’s often internalized, unexamined, and always wrong. It distorts our vision and injures our souls.
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A Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

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Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 17, 2019
Jeremiah 17:5-10 In the year of the drought it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20 The first fruits of those who have died.
Luke 6:17-26 Blessed…blessed…blessed….blessed….woe….woe…woe…woe.

O God of healing, 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.

With the beautiful Brahms motet and the brain-scrambling passage in 1 Corinthians about resurrection, I don’t know if you could hear the connections between Jeremiah and Luke, but I want to call them to your attention. This is a lectionary pairing that is striking to me – possibly because we haven’t heard it read in church for a dozen years. (Having a sixth Sunday in Epiphany in our lectionary year C turns out to be rare because of church calendar idiosyncrasies.) The prophet Jeremiah is addressing his nation with judgment and lamentation for its apostasy – its abandonment of its covenant relationship with the Holy One. He says the ways in which the nation has missed the mark (of Love) are engraved on the hearts of the people because their obstinate and cowardly behaviors go so deep, they are marred to the core. Jeremiah employs the metaphor of a dried-up shrub to describe the nation that has turned toward its own strength and away from the Holy One. The nation is so compromised that it will not even see when relief comes – when good comes. It’s an ancient way of saying, “they wouldn’t know a good thing if it knocked them in the head.”

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Always a Catch

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Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany (C)
February 10, 2019

Isaiah 6:1-8[9-13]  Keep listening but do not comprehend.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Luke 5:1-11  Put out into the deep water.

O God of the deep, 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 heard a part of Isaiah that I bet most of you are not familiar with. The verses that follow the famous call story of Isaiah, explain just exactly what Isaiah is being called to do: say to the people “listen but don’t comprehend, look but don’t understand,” so they will not turn and be healed. “How long, O Lord?” Isaiah asks. Until the desolation is complete, says the Holy One. Until there’s nothing left. If Isaiah agrees to be sent, this is what he can expect if he does his job: God’s Word will not be comprehended. People will not repent. I hear echoes of this story in Luke and in our own time. Is this prescriptive or descriptive? I don’t know – but I find it true.

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From Solitude to Community to Ministry

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Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (C)    

February 3, 2019

Jeremiah 1:4-10   Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a ….
1 Corinthians 14:12b-20  Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.
Luke 4:21-30  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

O God of healing, 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, we heard the first part of the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry, according to Luke. Jesus, filled with a spirit of holiness, announced that, like the prophet Isaiah, his ministry was about setting people free – free from hunger, illness, disability, poverty, prison, debt, and from all kinds of oppression. Luke’s reports Jesus asserting that God’s promise in Isaiah was true in the distant past of the Babylonian exile, perhaps true in some unforeseeable future, but most importantly, true in the hearing of those listening (and that includes us). In this second half of the story, things take a sudden turn from amazing good to amazing bad, as my daughter Grace once said in despair.

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Freedom!

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Third Sunday after the Epiphany (C)
January 27, 2019

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 Do not be grieved; the joy of the Lord is your strength.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a We were all made to drink of one spirit.
Luke 4:14-21 Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

O God of freedom, 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 Gospel writers were each very careful about how they began their accounts of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. And, like siblings, each account about where and how it all began is different! Here are four different answers to the question of what was the most important inaugural moment. Mark begins by telling of Jesus exorcising an unclean spirit in the synagogue in Capernaum. Matthew’s first story of Jesus’ ministry is about a large body of teaching that Jesus did in front of crowds on a mountain. John’s story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is the water to wine extravaganza at the wedding in Cana. And Luke begins the story of Jesus’ active ministry by telling about Jesus making a visit to his home synagogue in Nazareth.

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Vision & Compassion

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Second Sunday after the Epiphany (C),
January 20, 2019

 

Isaiah 62:1-5 Your land married for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married.
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 Varieties of gifts…of services…of activities…for the common good.
John 2:1-11 (Though the servants who had drawn the water knew)

 

O God of the servants, 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 have before us a scripture passage from the first testament, that lies at the very heart of the part of Isaiah that gets called “third Isaiah.” Your land shall be married – so shall your God rejoice in you. The land shall be called Beulah – the Hebrew word for “married to” means “properly governed” or “valued and cared about” (they all mean the same – here is a Biblical definition of marriage for you to cite if that ever comes up in your conversations about heteronormative monogamy! Or does that only come up in my conversations?) Beulah Land or properly governed land, or valued and cared about land, here, is about encouraging people to rebuild what has been utterly devastated – in this case, the devastated city of Jerusalem, the city of peace. The people are crying out in fear and pain, feeling utterly forsaken. Isaiah’s message to them is about rebuilding hope and about creating signs or signals of hope for others. And it lies at the very heart of a part of scripture that contains radical proposals for an inclusive community – it’s a treatise written to defend an inclusive and expansive group against the actions of those who wanted to strictly limit the access and benefits of the community. Every three years, when this passage gets read in church, I think, “oh we need to hear this now more than ever.”

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Baptism of Our Lord: Unquenchable Fire

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The Baptism of our Lord (C)
January 13, 2019

Isaiah 43:1-7 I will.
Acts 8:14-17 They received the Holy Spirit.
Luke 3:15-17; 21-22  You are my…beloved; with you I am well pleased.

O God of unquenchable fire, 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 is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, so this morning we heard the Gospel of Luke’s account of what happened when Jesus was baptized. Actually, we heard a little more than the Gospel verses that were appointed for today. Maybe you noticed the brackets around verses 18-20. That’s my way of indicating that I added verses that weren’t assigned. I don’t know why the three verses get left out – they’re not very long. I guess they seem like an interruption to the flow of the story. But for Luke, at least as it was handed down to us, they’re essential. They are very much a part of the story. They are the verses that end up with John the Baptist going to prison. They read: “So with many other exhortations, he [that is, John] proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.”

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The Seventh Story

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Feast of the Epiphany
January 6, 2019
Isaiah 60:1-6 Arise, shine; for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Ephesians 3:1-12 The Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 2:1-12 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.

O God of our epiphanies, 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 are observing the Feast of the Epiphany, the beginning of our churchy season of celebrating manifestations, realizations, indications, and expressions of the Holy One in our midst. We start with the story of the magi.  If you’re new to Emmanuel Church, or you’re visiting, buckle up, because the way we engage Holy Scripture here can be a bumpy ride. Here’s what I mean. The word magi (or magoi in Greek) never meant wise, and never meant exclusively men. The word refers to Persian astrologers or sorcerers or magicians, a word that comes from the term magoi.  Furthermore, there’s no mention of how many there were. They brought three gifts, but there’s no telling how many of them it took to pool their resources to offer gold, frankincense and myrrh. Why not think of them as many who included women?

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