Sermons

We invite you to enjoy these sermons of our rector, The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz and others.  Browse her latest sermons below, or look for a specific sermon by title in reverse chronological order and listed by year in the right-hand column.  Above the years is a word cloud of clickable tags for these sermons.  Also listen to her dynamic preaching about 20 minutes into our live-streamed services on our YouTube Channel.

Bear witness to the goodness of Love!

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Easter 3B, 14 April 2024. The Very 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.

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.

The Gospel of Luke is often viewed as kinder and gentler than the Gospel of John, when it comes to anti-Jewish or anti-Judean rhetoric about the life and death of Jesus. Written for Gentile audiences, Luke’s rhetoric seeks to prove Jesus as one who can stand up to and prevail against other Gentile deities or semi-deities, including Caesar. Luke insists that every claim made by Caesar was also true of Jesus, and even more so: miraculously born, son of God, Savior, God from God, Redeemer, Liberator, Prince of Peace.  Continue reading →

In the Middle of Resurrected Life

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Easter B, 31 March 2024. The Very 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.

Hello! If you love being at Emmanuel on Easter Sunday, whether in person or on livestream, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m also glad you’re here even if you’re not sure you made the right choice this morning. Of all the days to come to church, I think Easter Sunday might be the most likely day to convince you that church is really not for you:  the service is long; the stories are unbelievable. Maybe the resplendent flowers make your nose itch, our puppets seem strange and ridiculous, or the hymns are not light enough to lift your heavy hearts. I get it; I see you. You might love the cantata this morning; it has all the feels. Continue reading →

Love is bigger than anything.

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Lent 5B, 17 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Jeremiah 31: 31-34.  I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.
  • Hebrews 5: 5-10.  Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.
  • John 12: 20-33. We wish to see Jesus.

O God of our help, 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.

A year has passed in the Gospel of John since our reading from last Sunday. Suddenly, we are only a few days away from Jesus’ crucifixion. The context for our reading today is that, according to John, after spending the last few years darting in and out of hiding, Jesus has come into Jerusalem very publicly for the last time. This part of John is filled with references to the crowds who were in Jerusalem for Passover. Jesus has just ridden up to Jerusalem on a donkey, with huge crowds waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna (which is Hebrew for help us, please or save us, please). Some irritated and fearful colleagues of Jesus’ have muttered to one another about him: “You see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone over to him.”  Continue reading →

Help, like an atheist!

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Lent 4B, 10 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Numbers 21: 4-9.  Look at the serpent of bronze and live.
  • Ephesians 2: 1-10.  For by grace you have been saved.
  • John 3: 14-21.  For God loved the world like this.

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

The historical and contemporary misunderstandings and mistreatments of our Gospel lesson this morning are almost too much for me to bear. I knew when Deacon Bob read this passage to you this morning, many of you would start shutting down, going other places in your heads, perhaps leaving the building in your imagination. He had asked me if I wanted to make any edits to what he would read, but frankly I didn’t know where to begin. There are so many edits I want to make, and I’m not sure any amount of editing could solve all the problems in this passage. So perhaps I can bring your imagination back into the building with this First Nations Version rendering of John 3:14-2, a dynamic equivalence translation, which was published a few years ago. That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s a translation focused on retelling the dynamics of the story, not attempting a word-for-word translation of the original. The context for this scene is that Nicodemus, a religious leader in Jerusalem has come to Jesus in the night to learn more about him and his ministry. I’ve made a few more edits to it, so I want you to notice whether and how you respond differently when you hear the Gospel story this way: [1] Continue reading →

Not Insurrection, but Resurrection

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Lent 3B, 3 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Exodus 20:1-17.  I AM
  • 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.  Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
  • John 2:13-22. They believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

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

Sometimes when I sit down to work on a sermon, I get tripped up by the first few words of a reading and fall into a deep exegetical hole! This week the words were “The passover of the Jews was near.” Why get stuck on that, you might wonder. Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s because Passover is probably not a good translation of the Hebrew word Pesach or the Greek word Pascha. There’s a long history of rabbis arguing about the etymology of Pesach, which can mean skipping over or hopping over or even limping over. There is, however, an even older meaning: to have compassion for or to make a sacrifice of mercy. [1] So we might understand that, according to the Gospel of John, very early in Jesus’ ministry, he made a pilgrimage up to Jerusalem to observe the festival celebrating God’s compassion or mercy, a Festival of Freedom from Oppression. In Jesus’ time, the Romans had taken the place of the Babylonians, who had taken the place of the Egyptians as the oppressors. Continue reading →

If not for love, what are you for?

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Lent 2B, 25 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16. Then Abram fell on his face.
  • Romans 4:13-25. Hoping against hope.
  • Mark 8:31-38. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

O God all sufficient, 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.

Last week, on the first Sunday in Lent, we learned that the spirit of holiness can drive a very hard bargain. Jesus, perhaps, in order to understand his mission, was pushed hard into the wild for a quarantine. Then, upon hearing of John the Baptist’s imprisonment and picking up where John had left off, Jesus proclaimed the good news of the realm of the Holy One and taught  that the time is now to turn around (or, to change your channel to see and understand that love is the only way). This week we get a glimpse of why the good news was so dangerous. Continue reading →

Blessing for the Brokenhearted

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Lent 1B, 18 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 9:8-17. I will remember my covenant.
  • 1 Peter 3:18-22. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
  • Mark 1:9-15. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

O God of the spirit, 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.

We have entered the season of Lent in our liturgical year. For those of you who are newish to Emmanuel, I want you to know that, in my view, this is the season that most closely aligns with the spirituality and the ethos of Emmanuel Church. We see the sin in the world; that is, we see so many ways in which the mark of Love is missed. (The Biblical definition of sin is missing the mark.) We know our need for mercy. “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we [and others] have from time to time most grievously have committed,” as the Rite 1 Confession goes. The season of Lent, a time for self-examination and repentance, feels made for us. And you know that’s good, because it’s not fair for extroverts to get all of the holidays! Continue reading →

Drive like it!

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, 11 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Kings 2:1-12. “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
  • 1 Corinthians 4:3-6. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
  • Mark 9:2-10. He did not know what to say for they were terrified.

O God of revelation, 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.

This past week I had an unusually high number of harrowing experiences as I was navigating the streets in and around Boston. Last Tuesday, two cars crashed right in front of me on the Mass Pike; and on Thursday a car I was riding in nearly got T-boned by a distracted driver. I witnessed pedestrians nearly getting hit in crosswalks by drivers running red lights, bicyclists riding against traffic and traffic signs, aggressive tailgating, erratic lane changing, and gridlocked intersections. It seems to me that drivers have gotten so much worse in the last few years. I googled the worst drivers in the country and was shocked by the results; it’s very bad news. Boston is not even in the top-twenty cities with the worst drivers; we are not even close; we’re not even competitive! Continue reading →

G-AWE-D

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Epiphany 5B, 4 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 40:21-31. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? [Yes!]
  • 1 Corinthians 9:16-23. In my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge.
  • Mark 1:29-39. So that I may proclaim the message.

O God of wonder, 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.

I’m going to interrupt my preaching on the Gospel of Mark this week to spend a few moments to talk with you about our Hebrew Bible lesson from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, because it’s one of my favorites. Actually it’s Second Isaiah, which is what Chapters 40 through 55 get called, because they were so clearly written at a different time by a different author than the first thirty-nine chapters or the last eleven. The writer of Second Isaiah might be considered the great poet, rather than the great prophet. This writer never once refers to herself as a prophet. I imagine her words might have come to Jesus’ mind sometimes, especially when he was able to find a deserted place to pray while it was still very dark. Continue reading →

A Beautiful, Terrible Day

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Epiphany 4B, 28 January 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Deuteronomy 18:15-20. This is what you requested.
  • 1 Corinthians 8:1-13. Love builds up.
  • Mark 1:21-28. A new teaching – with authority!

O God of compassion, 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.

This past week an angel of the Lord sent me a book about how to live in these terrible days and, at the same time, how to live in these beautiful days. The book is by theologian Kate Bowler:  Have a Beautiful Terrible Day: Daily Meditations for the Ups, Downs, & In-Betweens. She writes about living with an apocalyptic (that is, revelatory) awareness of the catastrophic — globally, nationally, communally, and personally. Many of us are living, she says, with a heightened sense of precarity, a state of dangerous uncertainty. Insisting that we can be both faithful and afraid at the same time, she maintains, “There is tremendous opportunity here, now, for us to develop language and foster community around empathy, courage, and hope in the midst of this fear of our own vulnerability.” [1] Continue reading →