Tag Archives: community

Bear the light as a group!

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First Sunday of Advent (A)
November 30, 2019

Isaiah 2:1-5 [When God judges] they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.
Romans 13:11-14 [love is the fulfilling of the law] let us live honorably.
Matthew 24:37-44 Therefore you also must be ready

O God of our new year, 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 our new church (or liturgical) year begins. Happy New Year! What did you all do for the Church’s New Year’s Eve last night? Did you stay awake celebrating past midnight? (Probably most of you did not, or you wouldn’t be here now!) That’s okay – staying up past midnight is overrated. Have you made any churchy new year’s resolutions about spiritual or religious diet and exercise to get ready for the Feast of the Nativity? I saw a meme the other day that said, “It’s almost time to switch from your regular anxiety to your fancy Christmas anxiety!” Isn’t that what Advent is for? What is Advent for?

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Covenant Celebration

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Covenant Celebration
November 15, 2019
Central Reform Temple and Emmanuel Church

Isaiah 65:17-25 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
Luke 21:5-19 By your endurance you will gain your souls [or lives].

In our celebration of our new covenant between Central Reform Temple and Emmanuel Church, the prayer that I usually pray at the beginning of my sermons – you know, about searching always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will, seems particularly apt, because truth is costly, both in the sense of consequences and even sacrifice, and in the sense of precious and dear (teuer in German).
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God’s Story

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Proper 23C, October 13, 2019. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
2 Timothy 2:8-15. The word of God is not chained.
Luke 17:11-19. Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’

O God of Sacred Story, 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.

This sermon is going to include a list-making exercise – and so you might want to have a pen or pencil ready – or take notes on your phone. (Yes, I’m the priest who regularly tells people to use their phones during the liturgy.) You won’t need it for a few minutes, but I want you to be ready. Before that I want to offer some commentary on the readings from our First and Second Testaments. I want to highlight the surprising instructions from God through the prophecy of Jeremiah to the people who were in exile, far from home, captives in Babylon, because maybe some of you are in a similar situation. Jeremiah wrote the Word of God in a letter to them and said: “Plant gardens. Build dwelling places. Seek the welfare of the city where you are, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” The Hebrew word for welfare is “shalom.” The same word in Arabic, “salaam,” forms the word Islam. Islam is often translated “submission,” and that is also an essential part of shalom – submission is obedience; obedience is radical listening; radical listening is what God, also known as Love, commands above all else. Listening to love, submitting to love, and well-being are all one. Seek wellbeing in the new and difficult place to which you have arrived against your will. God’s blessing continues even in exile. Contribute to the welfare of the city wherever you are. Be a blessing where you are, even if you are a captive.

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It’s true.

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Proper 18C
September 8, 2019

Jeremiah 18:1-11  Then I will change my mind.
Philemon 1-21  Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.
Luke 14:25-33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

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.

So how about those readings? We have a vision of God as a vengeful potter, angry and manipulative, devising punishing plans; a story of a runaway slave being sent back to his owner; and an admonition about being fit to follow Jesus only if one hates family and life itself and is willing to give up all one’s possessions. That’s the line that strikes fear in Episcopal congregations everywhere.

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Fixer-Uppers

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Sixth Sunday in Easter, Year C, May 26, 2019.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 16:9-15. Come and stay at my home.
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5. Gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night.
John 14:23-29.  We will come to them and make our home with them.

O God of Homecoming, 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.

More visions this week in our scripture readings: today a vision of Paul, another vision of John of Patmos, and more of the vision of John the Evangelist. What strikes me about the three visions last week and this week is that they are visions of home. They’ve reminded me that I really miss the occupation description “homemaker.” I’m sorry that it has become a bad word for progressives and I want to take it back. I also miss the name home economics as a course of study. The root meaning of the word economy is household. A household or home, in this sense, is a place where the residents (who are not necessarily related) share their meals and rest together. There is an economy.

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Love is about to do a new thing.

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Fifth Sunday in Lent (C)
April 7, 2019

Isaiah 43:16-21 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Philippians 3:4b-14 Press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

O God of gratitude and hope, 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.

In my nearly two decades of preaching, I have ranted many times about the story we just heard our deacon Bob read from the Gospel of John. My chief complaint is about the way the lectionary and Sunday School lessons privilege the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair, rather than the older (and I think truer) story of an unnamed uppity woman anointing Jesus’ head with costly perfume, the way a prophet anoints a king. If you haven’t heard my rant, or want to hear it again, speak with me at coffee hour![1] I have also ranted many times about the Church’s misuse of Jesus’ response to the complaint about extravagance that “you always have the poor with you.” When a complaint about extravagance comes out of the mouth of one who is stealing from the common purse, we know to suspect that the complaint is not legitimate and Jesus’ response is not about ignoring those who are poor whether he is with them a little while or not. It’s just the opposite.

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From Solitude to Community to Ministry

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Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (C)    

February 3, 2019

Jeremiah 1:4-10   Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a ….
1 Corinthians 14:12b-20  Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.
Luke 4:21-30  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

O God of healing, 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.

Last week, we heard the first part of the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry, according to Luke. Jesus, filled with a spirit of holiness, announced that, like the prophet Isaiah, his ministry was about setting people free – free from hunger, illness, disability, poverty, prison, debt, and from all kinds of oppression. Luke’s reports Jesus asserting that God’s promise in Isaiah was true in the distant past of the Babylonian exile, perhaps true in some unforeseeable future, but most importantly, true in the hearing of those listening (and that includes us). In this second half of the story, things take a sudden turn from amazing good to amazing bad, as my daughter Grace once said in despair.

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All Saints Sunday

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All Saints Sunday, (26B), November 4, 2018; The Rev. Susan Ackley

Ruth 1:1-18 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land…
Hebrews 9:11-14 But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come.
Mark 12:28-34 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another.

When I was a little Catholic girl I was invited by some church friends to meet a saint. We met on a rainy Saturday at church and walked a mile or so to the saint’s house. She was lying in bed. I remember she was plumpish and very pale and that the room smelled odd.
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Revealing the Love of God

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Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (11B), July 22, 2018

2 Samuel 7:1-14a Are you the one to build me a house to live in?
Ephesians 2:11-22 You are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 He had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

O God of compassion, 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.

If you were in any other church service where the Revised Common Lectionary is used for the appointed Bible readings today, you would have heard a short Gospel lesson about Jesus’ lovely invitation to his disciples to have a little R&R in a deserted place, and the compassion that Jesus had on the crowds that messed up their retreat plans. Then, skipping almost twenty verses, you would have heard that people from all over brought friends and family who were sick to Jesus, hoping to have them touch even the fringe of his cloak because all who came in contact with it were healed. Usually when verses are skipped like that, I mention something about them in my sermon, but this week I really wanted you to hear the whole story for yourselves because the skipped verses are about Jesus’ disciples. When those verses get taken out, the story becomes solely about the power and popularity of Jesus. Of course that matters, but Mark’s Gospel is not so much about how magical Jesus was. What matters much more is that Jesus’ followers fully engage, fully participate in the Rule of Love, which is another name for the Reign of God. [1]
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This Kind of Community

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Third Sunday after Pentecost (5B), June 10, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

1 Samuel 8:4-20; 11:14-15 We are determined to have a king over us.
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 So we do not lose heart.
Mark 3:20-35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

O God of glory, 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.

Sometimes the lectionary just puts much too much on a preacher’s plate. This morning feels like something of a dog’s breakfast – a confused mash up of 1 Samuel, 2 Corinthians, and a peculiar section of the Gospel of Mark. (Well it confuses me, anyway.) The story in 1 Samuel of Samuel’s warning that the people’s desire to be like the other nations and have an autocrat is going to backfire (the more things change…). Then we hear the Apostle Paul’s encouragement that enduring affliction is going to be rewarded by God. According to the notes for this passage in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Paul was articulating a Rabbinic Judaism idea that overcoming adversity reveals the presence of divine power, and Paul was taking it one step further asserting that affliction of those that God loves assures their greatest reward in the next life. [1] I’d say that idea has backfired too. It’s one thing to offer encouragement and comfort to not lose heart, which I think is what Paul was doing. It’s quite another to start glorifying suffering. Continue reading →