Tag Archives: compassion

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 →

Extravagantly Kind

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Proper 10A, 16 July 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 25:19-34. If it is going to be this way, why do I live?
  • Romans 8:1-11. You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.
  • Matthew 13:1-9 [10-17] 18-23. Hear then the parable of the sower.

O God of grace, 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.

There is an old Jewish wisdom teaching that God created humans because God loves stories. Two of our three readings this morning are stories. We have the story of Rebekah bearing twins, Esau and Jacob, and of the most expensive bowl of red-lentil soup there ever was in the history of the world. Our Gospel portion includes a memorable story, parable. I often think that the Apostle Paul’s letters might have been more comprehensible and less objectionable, if they focused more on stories than high rhetoric, elegant as it is. 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 →

Love has the last word.

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Last Sunday after Pentecost,  Proper 29C: Christ the King.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Wentz.

Jeremiah 23:1-6. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them!
Colossians 1:11-20. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power…prepared to endure everything with patience.
Luke 23:33-43. Today you will be with me in Paradise.

O God of mercy, 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.

 On the last Sunday of our liturgical calendar, our lectionary brings us to the foot of the cross in Luke’s Gospel, lest anyone get too sentimental about what it means to follow Jesus. This Gospel lesson is appointed for today because we are celebrating the all-embracing authority of God’s Christ, that is, Love’s redeeming urge, and we sing hymns of gratefulness and praise. While we do that we can always use a reminder that our King of kings and Lord of lords was executed as a criminal with other criminals accused of crimes against the state. He was friends with criminals while he lived; and then he died with them, too. The word that Luke uses for criminal is literally evil doer. Our king, our highest earthly authority was executed for sedition, that is, for inciting resistance or disobedience to the government. Continue reading →

Being Faithful

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Proper 20C, 18 September 2022. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1. The summer is ended and we are not saved.
1 Timothy 2:1-7. “First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone.
Luke 16:1-13. You cannot serve God and wealth.

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.

Welcome to this grand sanctuary, this haven of beauty, whether it is surrounding you because you are here in person, or you’re seeing it online again through the lenses of cameras. Welcome to this magnificent community whose mission is to welcome you, no matter how long you’ve been here, no matter how long you’ve been away, and wherever you are on your spiritual journey, even and especially if you are not in such a good place! Welcome to a gathering of people whose mission is also to love you just the way you are and love you too much to let you stay that way! Welcome to a church that is very likely to change you for the better. Welcome to a worship service in which the readings are usually challenging and sometimes confounding, the prayers of the people are often disturbing, and the music is reliably lovely! Welcome to a community long on questions and short on answers, and yet, one where one beggar can always show another beggar where to get some bread. Although we may have been apart for a time, this is not, “Welcome back”; this is, as I like to say, “Welcome forward”. Continue reading →

Unbounded Mercy

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Proper 10C.  10 July 2022, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Amos 7:7-17. The Lord said to me, “Go prophesy to my people Israel.”
Colossians 1:1-14. Grace to you and peace from God.
Luke 10:25-37. But wanting to justify himself…

O God of mercy, 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 parable called The Good Samaritan, found only in Luke, might be the most famous parable of them all. One doesn’t have to be a church goer to have heard of it and understand something about it. Hospitals, emergency services, counseling services, laws about liability limits, and award programs, all get called Good Samaritan. With its fame comes the enormous, sometimes crushing, weight of Protestant moral theology and Sunday-school lessons, both with a hefty dose of Christian anti-Jewish bias. The preaching challenge for me seems formidable because of what we all think we already know about this story and the guilt that has been wired into most of us about seeing people who have been beaten and robbed, lying in life’s various ditches, and not doing enough, or anything at all, to help. In my time as a priest, this story has provoked more confessions and more attempts at self-justification than any other I know. It reminds me of something bell hooks said, which feels like the essence of my vocation: [1]

I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community.

Continue reading →

Non-Hate

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Epiphany 7C, 20 February 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 45:3-11 & 15. He kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50. Someone will ask, “How are the dead raised?”
Luke 6:27-38. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap.

Most Merciful and Compassionate, 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.

As I began the process of preparing my sermon for you over the last ten days or so, I found myself surprised by our readings and wondered if you’d recognize them. It’s rare to have a 7th Sunday in Epiphany; I don’t think that there has been one in lectionary Year C in my 20 years of ordained ministry! My first clue that there was something unusual going on was the lesson from Genesis about Joseph encountering his brothers in Pharaoh’s court. We’ve been hearing portions from Isaiah and Jeremiah through Epiphany and, suddenly, unexpectedly, stunning high drama of the end of Genesis falls into our laps? I wonder, how many of you even know the back story. If Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat wasn’t a part of your cultural experience in the 1970’s, or you didn’t have at least half a dozen years of Sunday School, how would you know? Continue reading →

The Crux

Aside

Proper 19B.  12 September 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Proverbs 1:20-33. How long, O [stupid] ones, will you love being [stupid]?
James 3:1-12. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing….This ought not to be so.
Mark 8:27-38.  Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

O God of Integrity and 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.

Before I speak about our Gospel reading for today, I want to say something about our reading from Proverbs. It sounds to me like it could be a column in The New York Times (or a sermon in Boston) addressing those in positions of influence over our climate or our white-supremacist culture, or those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19 by actively discouraging vaccines for economic or political gain, and who really and truly should know better. Wisdom, personified in Proverbs as a woman, is preaching, and she is making her strongest plea[1] to those who seem to love being stupid, willfully naïve, not simple in the sense of incapable of understanding, but those who have arrogantly rejected her insights and warnings. “How long, O stupid ones,” she says, “how long will you love being stupid?” Her laughter at the easy-to-predict catastrophe that has resulted from ignoring her sage advice may seem harsh, but it’s not unlike any of us rejoicing when an oppressor or tyrant falls because of self-induced calamity.[2] Wisdom’s laughter is not a generic form of Schadenfreude (or joy at another’s suffering). She is calling to account corrupt leaders, not innocent lambs. Continue reading →

Covenantal Connectedness

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany, B, February 14, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

2 Kings 2:1-12. “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
2 Corinthians 4:3-6. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Mark 9:2-10. He did not know what to say for they were terrified.

O God of Revelation, 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.

We have come to the end of the season of Epiphany, the season of celebrating sacred gifts and divine disclosures. In our Hebrew Bible lesson this morning we have the wonderful story from 2 Kings about how Elisha got the power and the authority to carry on Elijah’s work after Elijah was gone, after he was “taken up.” Elisha had been travelling with and learning from Elijah for many years. He had burned his farming equipment and slaughtered his oxen, thus destroying his means of income, his livelihood;  he had left his home so that he could travel with the prophet Elijah (much more dramatic than leaving the boats and nets with Zebedee and his hired hands to follow Jesus).

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Compassion is the ordering principle.

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Epiphany 4B, January 31, 2021, 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 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.

This past week I was reminded in our scripture readings for today of a poem from Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart, entitled “Life Goes On.” He wrote it in 1953. Like our scripture readings, it seems to have been written for 2021. [1] It begins:

During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that life goes on.
This we are apt to forget. The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms; the purpose of life outlasts our purposes; the process of life cushions our processes. The mass attack of disillusion and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great deception. By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace. Let us not be deceived.

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