Tag Archives: alienation

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 →

The Ordering Principle

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Fourth Sunday after Epipany, Year B, January 28, 2018; The 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 They were astounded by his teaching.

O God of peace, 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.

In our reading from Deuteronomy this morning, we hear a portion of Torah teaching about maintaining the welfare of the community. It comes after this instruction, “If there is among you anyone in need within the land that you inhabit, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand…give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so…open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor.” It’s worth remembering that compassion is one of the hallmark values of Deuteronomy. [1] Compassion is an ordering principle for Torah. Continue reading →