Tag Archives: community

Shehechyanu

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Proper 27A
November 8, 2020

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. So that you may not grieve as others who have no hope
Matthew 25:1-13. Keep awake therefore

I don’t know how many of you heard the Gospel passage that Bob just read and felt a sense of vague anxiety or maybe even stronger – a sense of indignation or anger about who is in and who is out. It’s striking to read this in the context of our nation, divided nearly in half politically. It sounded different to me at the beginning of the week compared with the end of the week. Maybe some hear this Gospel passage and feel secretly smug because you are someone who is always prepared – you know, who never lets your gas tank in your car go below half full. Maybe you are elated by the results of the presidential election. I will confess to you that I am someone who is often driving on empty, and I’ve been on the losing side of votes many times.
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Take the encouragement!

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Proper 23A.  11 October 2020.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Exodus 32:1-14. And the LORD changed his [sic] mind.
Philippians 4:1-9. there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Matthew 22:1-14. Invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet or friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?

O God of compassion and justice, 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.

This morning, as I reflect with you on the Gospel lesson from Matthew, I do so influenced and encouraged by the Torah story from Exodus. It’s a story of what happens to the people when there is a scarcity of visible leadership, plenty of deep anxiety, and considerable impatience with unknowing. While there is no doctrine of original sin in Judaism, commentator Gunther Plaut tells about a midrash that “all ills which have befallen the people since that time are in part traceable to the sin with the golden calf.” [1] Divine anger threatened to utterly destroy the unfaithful nation, but Moses stood up for God’s people and reminded God of God’s promise of abundant life and God changed God’s mind.
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A Gentile and a Tax Collector

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Proper 18A
September 6, 2020

Exodus 12:1-14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.
Romans 13:8-14 Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Matthew 18:15-20 Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

O Divine presence, 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.

It’s Labor Day weekend, our secular signal that the summer is ended. That brings Jeremiah’s lament to my mind: “the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” say the people. The Lord responds: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” …“It is because the people do not know me,” says the Lord of Love. That’s not the Hebrew Bible reading that our lectionary offers us this morning, but you might read chapters 8 and 9 in Jeremiah later on for extra credit.
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No Ordinary Time

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Proper 6A
June 14, 2020

Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7) Sarah laughed to herself.
Romans 5:1-8 And hope will not disappoint us.
Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23) When he saw the crowds he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless…the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

O most faithful and patient 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.

I want to begin by taking stock of the journey we’ve been on as a community of faith since early March, when the COVID-19 pandemic started to become real in the Boston area. We have endured great uncertainty and tremendous loss, concern for the safety of others and for ourselves, a lot of fear, grief, and more than a little shame. I hear see and hear these things in our phone conversations, on your faces via video conferencing, in your emails, and I feel them too. In our worship, we have navigated (with significant technological turbulence) the second half of Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. And now we have entered the long stretch of what the Church calls Ordinary Time. 
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Keeping Commandments

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Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31 For we too are [God’s] offspring.
Psalm 66:7-18 Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld steadfast love from me.
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, 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 of the things that has happened in this terrible time of pandemic is that our scripture stories of courage in the midst of devastation have become so much more real to me. As I said last week, the world-wide disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic is deeply revealing, disclosing, exposing, clarifying – an apocalypse of biblical proportion. For many of us, our sense of time is all messed up, and I’m starting to think about recent chronological time as “before the pandemic era” and “after the pandemic era.” In these last eight weeks, it has seemed like time has been folding, very much like our Gospel reading for this morning – past, present and future feel particularly distorted and layered in this continuation of Jesus’ very long valedictory speech that is set in the evening before his nighttime arrest. This portion of Jesus’ parting words always reminds me of the instructions that my mother used to leave when I was in high school before my parents went away for a trip (and I always feared that they would leave us orphaned). I am the oldest child, so the list of instructions was accompanied by my mom’s admonition for me to use my best judgment. Okay, I would think, I will, but have you met my brothers and my sister?

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What Is Being Revealed

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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
May 10, 2020

Acts 7:55-60 Filled with a holy spirit.
1 Peter 2:2-10 If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
John 14:1-14 Do not let your hearts be troubled.

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.

“Do not let your heart be troubled,” Jesus says at the opening of our Gospel lesson for this morning. And then Jesus says some things that have been troubling the heart of folks ever since! Troubles with this text notwithstanding, the beginning of John 14 is often read at funerals and memorial services for solace. The promise that God has plenty of rooms prepared for us is so beautiful and comforting. Whenever possible, I leave off the second half of verse 6, because it seems to me that a burial service homily is not such a good time to be reading something that sounds so exclusionary. A burial service homily is also not such a good time to be explaining about translating and re-punctuating ancient Greek. I also have to say that the experience of countless “zoom” meetings in the last two months has helped me to see more clearly some of the many rooms where the divine makes a home with you all. 
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A sign is not the thing.

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Lent 5A
March 29, 2020

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14 O my people.
Psalms 130 Out of the depths have I called to you.
Romans 8:6-11 To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
John 11:1-45 Jesus began to weep…. he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’….Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

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.

 

The past two weeks I have wrestled with whether to livestream a service of Holy Eucharist, keeping as much of our customary service in tact as possible, or move to leading a service of Morning Prayer, wholly unfamiliar as a Sunday worship service at Emmanuel Church, although many Emmanuelites pray Morning Prayer as a daily practice, and have practiced Morning Prayer in other places. Continuing with the rite of Holy Eucharist is both comforting for some and painful for others, but for many of us, it is both comforting and painful at the same time: comforting to recognize the rhythm and the shape of the service, and painful to face what we are missing by not being able to be physically present with one another and with the elements of our sacrament. But then I think Eucharist means thanksgiving, and while bread and wine are signs of our thanks, they are not our thanks. While physical presence is a sign of being Church, it is not the Church.
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The Place

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Lent 3A
March 15, 2020

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.

Good morning. I hope that our attempt to live-stream our service this morning is adding to your sense of connectedness with a community that loves you and is not adding to your sense of isolation and frustration. Technology can and does work both ways. Please know that, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, the power of prayer transcends walls and web connectivity. I am grateful for your prayers and I am keeping you in mine.

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Worth Our Salt and Light

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Epiphany 5A
February 9, 2020

Isaiah 58:1-12 You will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
1 Corinthians 2:1-16 So that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Matthew 5:13-20 You are the salt…you are the light.”

O God of mercy and salt and light, 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.

I don’t know about you, but from time to time someone tells me that they don’t believe in or that they don’t like “organized religion.” My knee-jerk response is to shake my head and say, “yes, church is often completely unbelievable and we’re really not that organized.” But if I can keep quiet a minute and ask what it is the person doesn’t believe in or doesn’t like, it’s usually hypocrisy, and I can eagerly affirm that I share the feelings of disgust for hypocrisy. And then, if the person is willing to continue the conversation, I muse out loud that much of the Bible – both testaments – is devoted to calling religious people to account for hypocrisy. The Bible may have been written by and for the people who need the most help. (I believe I am one of them.)

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Networking

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Epiphany 3A
January 26, 2020

Isaiah 9:1-4 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
1 Corinthians 1:10-18 I appeal to you…that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you.
Matthew 4:12-23 Follow me, and I will make you fish for people….Immediately they left.

Merciful and generous 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.

I want to begin by acknowledging that our lesson from Isaiah this morning sounds like it is teeing up the Gospel lesson. It sounds like Isaiah was anticipating Jesus. But Isaiah wasn’t anticipating Jesus any more than Isaiah or Jesus were anticipating what George Frederic Handel might do with this beautiful poetry. Actually, it is exactly the other way around. Matthew was living and growing in the stories of Jesus, at least two generations after Jesus’ death. Matthew was retelling those stories toward the end of the first century of the common era and thinking, “these stories sound so much like the stories that Isaiah told eight hundred years ago!” Isaiah was delivering an oracle of hope to the people of Judah who were in deep distress, danger, and despair.

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