And that’s not all.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8B, June 28, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27. Greatly beloved were you to me. Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
2 Corinthians 8:7-15. In order that there may be a fair balance…’the one who had much did not have too much and the one who had little did not have too little.
Mark 5:21-43. Do not fear, only believe.

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.


What a week. What a week of so many tears. Tears of sorrow, of anger and despair, tears of amazement, tears of joy and relief, and tears of hope and brave determination. The people of Charleston, South Carolina are still burying the nine faith-filled people massacred in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church a week ago last Wednesday while they were praying together and studying the Bible. The families of the martyrs have declared forgiveness for the shooter. They are continuing to testify and demonstrate that love is stronger than hate, and more powerful than death. Wednesday Bible Study went on as scheduled this past week with about 100 people jammed into the room where so much blood had been spilled the week before. Pastor Pinckney’s lesson the week before had been about the parable of the sower. Pastor Goff’s lesson the week after was about the power of love – full of parables from both Hebrew and Christian Testaments that reportedly had the people in that gathering laughing and crying at the same time. What powerful seeds of love are being sown by Mother Emanuel. And that’s not all. Continue reading

Homily

Fourth Sunday after the Pentecost, June 21, 2015; The Rev. Susanne George

Mark 4:35-41 Let us go to the other side.

A few days ago, after I contacted a friend on the west coast by email, I received this message back: “Thank God you are OK! The news, and you being in the church has made us nervous here.”

I thought a minute and realized that my friend had put together the fact that I serve at Emmanuel Church Boston, and that I was also in Charleston, recently, where horrific events took place at another Emanuel Church. So I could see how my friend had been concerned.

My immediate reaction to this message was to think: I am not in any danger. I’m perfectly fine. No, that is untrue – I am an optimistic person, but right now I feel the danger around me. I feel sadness and I feel vulnerable.

But I am coming from a place of relative entitlement. I recognize that I need to listen to my neighbors of color describe living with an extreme lack of security, because some neighbors have been singled out as special targets. Racism fuels the violence, even as it makes others casually dismiss its severity. Continue reading

Celebrating a Harvest

The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6B, June 14, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 The Lord looks on the heart.
2 Corinthians 5:6-17 If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.
Mark 4:26-34 With many such parables he spoke the word to them.

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.

This morning we are celebrating a harvest in the Church – the baptism of Marina Victoria Yeretsian, and the ordination of William Clayton Cruse! We are celebrating the spread of the realm of God, which is, as Jesus says, as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and wake up day after day, while the seed would sprout and grow, without the sower knowing how. Then one day the grain is ready to be harvested. This is such a day – a harvesting of growth from seeds that were planted – with Marina, some months ago, and with Bill, some years ago. This is a day to celebrate the growth that happened while we and they slept or didn’t sleep! None of us, not even the smartest scientist in the world, knows exactly how it happens. This is a day to celebrate the mystery of life and love that comes to fruition in the realm of God. Continue reading

What Difference It Makes

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

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

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

Keep coming back. It really works.

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

Mystery, Meaning, Risk & Relationship

Third Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 19, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 3:12-19. You Israelites
1 John 3:1-7. We should be called children of God and that is what we are.
Luke 24:36b-48.  And the psalms must be fulfilled.

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


You probably know that the Gospel of John, for all of its beautiful love poetry and prose, is notoriously anti-Jewish or anti-Judean in its rhetoric about the death and resurrection of Jesus, written as if it were Jews and not Romans who were the threat to Jesus. In the Gospel of John is codified one side of a late first century argument about ways to move forward socially, politically and theologically in the precarious time after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The writer of John places anti-Jewish words anachronistically in the mouths of Jesus and his friends who were, of course, all Jewish. Continue reading

Become trusting!

Second Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 12, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 4:32-35 There was not a needy person among them.
1 John 1:1-2:2 If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves.
John 20:19-31 Peace be with you.

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

 

Many of you know that one of my life projects has to do with increasing literacy, particularly Biblical literacy among progressive Christians, who have tended to cede the Bible to more conservative Christians. For example, I want people to understand that what we call “The Bible” is actually more like a library or an anthology than a book. The anthology contains more than a dozen different kinds of literature – and each kind of literature has different rules and built-in assumptions for understanding it. For instance, one would read biography differently from reading a sermon or an editorial. One would read legislation differently from poetry or a song. It helps to know what type of literature one is reading in order to understand what it might mean or how to apply it to our lives. Unfortunately, figuring out the genre is often complicated by many centuries and many miles of distance, and further complicated by modern inventions – inventions such as the English language, punctuation, customs of printing, etc. Continue reading

Looking Forward

Easter, April 5, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 25:6-9 Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Also you are being saved.
Mark 16:1-8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

O God of life, 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.

While the younger kids are engaged in the Lindsey Chapel with the Small Wonders program, I want to tell you a little story. About fifteen years ago, my wife Joy came home from a walk through Mount Auburn Cemetery with our then four-year-old daughter, Grace. They had been enjoying a beautiful summer day, looking at statues and gravestones and flowers. After being quiet for a while, Grace looked up and said, “Mom, what happened to that guy who died in church?” Joy repeated the phrase to give herself time to think, “the guy who died in church.” Her mind raced. Had there been a recent medical emergency during worship? Had there been prayers for a loved one who had died? Had Grace heard something in the news? She hadn’t been to any funerals yet. Grace repeated, “you know. The guy. Who died. In church.” All of the sudden, Joy knew who she meant. “Jesus?” “Yes!” said Grace, “Jesus! What happened to him?” As Joy was relating this conversation to me, before I could learn what she said next to Grace, I interrupted with, “did you tell her he died from listening to sermons that were too long, or from singing every verse to all the hymns?” Continue reading