Tag Archives: anti-semitism

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 →

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 →

The realm of heaven has come near.

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Advent 2A:  Dec. 4, 2022.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Isaiah 11:1-10.  With the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (That’s some powerful bad breath!)
Romans 15:4-13. On behalf of the truth of God.
Matthew 3:1-12.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

O God, hope of the prophets, 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.

For our Second Sunday of Advent this year, our scripture lessons begin with the second half of a beautiful oracle or poem in Isaiah. Maybe the first half is omitted from our lesson because it is not as charming as the second half. The first half describes how the mighty have fallen like tall trees in a forest that has been clear cut. It’s a wasteland. There are only stumps left where there had been a beautiful forest. The context is the collapse of the Assyrian occupying military, which was itself in control as the result of the total failure of the dynasty of King David, which had utterly miscarried its obligations to care for those who were most vulnerable and weak: aliens, widows, orphans, and other impoverished people. The government of the people of God had neglected its duties to be morally responsible for doing no wrong, no violence, to the neediest people. Continue reading →

Entering the Gates of Holy Week

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Palm Sunday C, 10 April 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 50:4-9a. It is the Lord God who helps me.
Philippians 2:5-11. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
Luke 23:1-49. Watching these things.

1.  They had been enemies.  
You know, each of our four canonical Gospels tells its own story of the Good News of Jesus as the Christ. Each has its own voice, its own intended audience, its own character. I believe that we hear and understand best when we hear the distinctive voices telling different stories, when we do not try to make a puree by blending all of the ingredients of the four Gospels, seasoned with church traditions. Continue reading →

Beginning Our Holiest Week

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Palm Sunday (C)
April 14, 2019

Isaiah 50:4-9a It is the Lord God who helps me.
Philippians 2:5-11 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
Luke 23:1-49 “????” (So many questions.)

…they had been enemies…

1: All other Sundays we begin the service inside. Why do we begin outside on Palm Sunday?

Every year at least one person tells me how much they dislike our Palm Sunday ritual of blessing and processing with palms – and it’s never been a complaint about how, in the old days, that is, in medieval times, the procession used to be from one church to another and back again, and now it’s just out one door and in the other. “Why do we do it at all?” is the question behind the objection. My response is not intended to stifle the grumbling – grumbling is usually okay with me because it’s a sign of engagement; it’s a sign of intelligent life! My response is that I prefer embodied liturgy and there just aren’t nearly enough opportunities for folks in the congregation to move and pray, or move and sing, between our boxy seating arrangements and our Anglo-Saxon religious heritage, which is pretty buttoned up. I do understand that going outside and coming back in is disorienting and chaotic and chews up time, and it separates those who are willing and able to do it from those who aren’t. Besides, this Palm Sunday is also a day when we have visitors who are in town for the marathon. On the other hand, church is a place where we regularly have the chance to participate in things that we don’t necessarily like, with the assurance that the thing that one person dislikes is the very thing that someone else in the community loves. When we’re doing it right, we take turns liking and disliking things in this community. Sometimes we are giving by our participation, and sometimes we are receiving. Sometimes it’s both.

Continue reading →