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.

Eternal Life

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Easter 7A, 21 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 1:6-14. All of these were 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 God our protector, 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.

Today in our Church calendar we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost. It’s a liturgical acknowledgement of a sort of limbo, in which Jesus has triumphed over death and but has yet to go to his heavenly reward; the comfort and the inspiration, the clarifying flame of the Holy Spirit, which he had promised to send, has not yet arrived. It’s a little bit like the in-between time at Emmanuel between the end of our cantata season and the beginning of chapel camp. Continue reading →

Love at the End

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Easter 6A, 14 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 17:22-31. For we too are [God’s] offspring.
  • 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, 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.

When I graduated from college and moved to Northern Virginia, I started looking around for a church. Just as I’d always had a toothbrush for oral hygiene, I’d always had a church for spiritual hygiene. I grew up in the church; and I went to church through college (it was a church within walking distance). My big college rebellion, when it came to practicing faith, was not to quit attending, but to become an Episcopalian! Although my dad was an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, his ecumenical and mostly non-parochial work meant that’d I’d grown up as something of a religious mutt – a mix of UCC, Lutheran, and Presbyterian for worship, Roman Catholic for school, and vacations with the Episcopalians. In my early twenties I had a car, making my reach considerably wider, so I went church shopping for an Episcopal parish. Continue reading →

Our Only Way

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Easter 5A, 7 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 7:55-60. But they covered their ears.
  • 1 Peter 2:2-10. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
  • John 14:1-14.  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

O God of our redemption, 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.

When I was in seminary, I took a class called “Teaching and Preaching Texts of Terror.” The idea behind the title was that there are passages in scripture that scare the daylights out of people; and this was a course designed for us to face our terrors with some companions. We each had to pick our top-two-most-terrifying Biblical texts. (Picking only two was the hardest part!) Our Gospel lesson for today was one of the two that I picked because of Jesus’ claim that no one comes to the Father except through him. I do love Jesus, but I’m terrorized by the idea of Jesus as the only way: Jesus, the gatekeeper, rather than the gate; Jesus holding all the tickets; Jesus, the anti-Jewish Jew; Jesus on the shields of the Crusaders; Jesus, the champion of the Doctrine of Discovery; Jesus, who became definitively white in Warner Sallman’s ubiquitous depiction in 1940 of “The Head of Christ” with blond-hair and blue-eyes; Jesus on the minds of those who commit all kinds of hate crimes and enact hateful legislation; Jesus in the prayers of the “in groups” as they justify the exclusion of others. Isn’t it ironic, then, that this passage begins with “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Do not give in to your distress. Continue reading →

Resurrection is art and protest.

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Easter 4A, 30 April 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 2:42-47.  Awe came upon everyone.
  • 1 Peter 2:19-25. So that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness.
  • John 10:1-10.  I came that they…

O God of abundant life, 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.

We are nearly halfway through the fifty days of Easter. Have you been looking for the art of resurrection? Have you seen any signs? I think of Ralph Ellison, who wrote, “I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest.” [1] Looking for the art of resurrection seems like a form of protest to me. The art of figuring out how to turn sorrow into joy seems like a form of peaceful protest! That is the work that speaks to Jesus’ primary teaching, which was about answering the question, “Is there life before death?” If the answer to that question is, “Yes,” how do we access its abundance? Abundant life for all is Jesus’ stated mission in the Gospel of John, in the portion we have before us, which reminds us that in the shadow of the cross, a most painful and humiliating death, we are not to forget the promise of God with us: Emmanuel. Continue reading →

How Sorrow Turns to Joy

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Easter 3A, 23 April 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 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 (or constantly) from the heart.
  • Luke 24:13-35. Were not our hearts burning within us?

O God of our aching and burning hearts, 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.

In today’s Gospel portion, we heard the Easter story of two on the road to Emmaus – one named Cleopas and the other is unnamed, which allows me to understand that the other was a woman. It’s a beautiful account of the art of resurrection, about how, even when we doubt it, we don’t understand it, we can’t imagine it, and we certainly are not looking for it, we might come to recognize that the Risen Lord can be walking along with us when we are overcome with grief and deeply afraid. The Risen Lord can be right in front of us without our knowing it. The Risen Lord can be in the midst of us when we share our food. Before I go further down this Road to Emmaus, however, I must go back to our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Continue reading →

Look for things that go right.

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Easter (A), 9 April 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Jeremiah 31:1-6. I have loved you with an everlasting love.
  • Colossians 3:1-4, 5-15. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
  • Matthew 28:1-10. Go and tell.

O God of new life, 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 wish you could see yourselves, the way you look from this pulpit; you look beautiful! I was hoping that you would be here, and I am so glad that you are. I’m glad for those of you who are with us via live-stream, too, even though I can’t see you! Thank you for celebrating Easter with Emmanuel Church! Welcome to those of you who are here for the first time, those of you who have been here more times than you can count, and  all of you who are somewhere in between. Continue reading →

Depth Perception

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Lent 4A, 19 March 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 1 Samuel 16:1-13. The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul?”
  • Ephesians 5:8-14.Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
  • John 9:1-13, 28-38.  So that God’s works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of [the One] who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.

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.

Today’s lessons hold special power for me; they were the appointed readings for a pivotal moment in seminary, when I was learning to grapple with difficult Biblical texts (as it turns out, most Biblical texts are difficult if we’re taking them seriously). They were the appointed readings for my first Sunday as your priest, 15 years ago, when I asked our head usher Steve Babcock to pass out red pencils with the bulletins. I’ll get back to that in a moment. Then three years ago, these were the readings on the first Sunday of the pandemic shutdown, when my wife Joy live-streamed the service on Facebook using her phone. And here they are again, in this strange time being called post-pandemic, but certainly not post-COVID. Continue reading →

Thirst

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Lent 3A, 12 March 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Exodus 17:1-7. The people thirsted there.
  • Romans 5:1-11. God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
  • John 4:5-42. Give me a drink.

O God of water and thirst, 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 theme for the day that I hear in our scripture readings is thirst. Maybe you know Mary Oliver’s poem called “Thirst,” in her book by the same name. [1] When I first read the poem, I heard it in Mary Oliver’s voice; this time around the I hear two voices in dialogue. The first part of the poem seems like the voice of the Samaritan woman.  Continue reading →

Workin’ on a World

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Lent 2A, 5 March 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 12:1-4a. Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.
  • Romans 4:1-5, 13-17. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.
  • John 3:1-17. How can these things be?

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.

Some Sundays are harder than others to give thanks and praise to God in response to the scripture readings; don’t you think? Perhaps you have an experience similar to mine of knowing these lessons from a standpoint of in-versus-out, us-versus-them, or ours-and-not-yours. Perhaps you’ve heard these lessons as being about tests of who measures up because of what they think or don’t think. If not, just wait for the end of today’s cantata! All this makes people flee religious practice, and for good reason.  As many of you know, rather than skipping over or speeding through scripture that is offensive, off-putting, or terrifying, my Bible teachers taught me that even the worst passages will bear fruit if I slow down and wonder what they have to say to me. It takes some practice (and some nerve) to learn to go from fight or flight to rest and digest. Continue reading →

Need

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Lent 1A, 26 Feb. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7. You will not die.
  • Romans 5:12-21. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
  • Matthew 4:1-11. Away with you, Satan!

O God all gracious and all merciful, 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.

We have just crossed the threshold into the season of Lent in the Church, for period of forty days, not including Sundays (hence our special reception after our service today)! The forty days are set aside for Christians to examine our estrangement from the grace and mercy of the Holy One and to return to right relationship with God and one another. Although each person is called on to do their own Lenten practice, as a congregation we come together for mutual support and encouragement as we go through a this period of intensified self-examination with a call to increased generosity in almsgiving, praying, fasting, and studying scripture. Continue reading →