Tag Archives: glory

Be joyful in Love, all you peoples!

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Easter 7B, 123 May 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 1:15-17.  The crowd numbered about one hundred..
  • 1 John 5:9-13.  So that you may know that you have eternal life.
  • John 17:6-19. So that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.

O God of our complete joy, 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 the church year, we are now as deep into the Easter Season as we can go. We have just passed the Feast of the Ascension, which is a Principal Feast Day in the Episcopal Church, but a celebration that is perhaps a little embarrassing for many progressive Christians. I mean, it’s a little embarrassing to commemorate a day when, according to the writer of Luke and Acts, a full forty days after he was raised from the dead, Jesus opened their minds to the scriptures and gave his final blessing. He then was lifted up off of the ground, and a cloud took him out of his disciples’ sight. But as my friend Brother James Koester, the Superior at St. John the Evangelist across the river in Cambridge, recently wrote: [1]

The Ascension is not rocket science, and it loses its power if we reduce it to a literal description….Instead, the Ascension is about the mystery of Christ’s present reality: risen, ascended, and glorified. This not only shall be ours one day but it is ours today. Continue reading →

Love is bigger than anything.

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Lent 5B, 17 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Jeremiah 31: 31-34.  I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.
  • Hebrews 5: 5-10.  Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.
  • John 12: 20-33. We wish to see Jesus.

O God of our help, 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.

A year has passed in the Gospel of John since our reading from last Sunday. Suddenly, we are only a few days away from Jesus’ crucifixion. The context for our reading today is that, according to John, after spending the last few years darting in and out of hiding, Jesus has come into Jerusalem very publicly for the last time. This part of John is filled with references to the crowds who were in Jerusalem for Passover. Jesus has just ridden up to Jerusalem on a donkey, with huge crowds waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna (which is Hebrew for help us, please or save us, please). Some irritated and fearful colleagues of Jesus’ have muttered to one another about him: “You see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone over to him.”  Continue reading →

Biblical Marriage

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Epiphany 2C, 16 January 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 62:1-5 . For the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married….So shall your God rejoice in you.
1 Corinthians 12:1-11. Now there are varieties of gifts…of services…of activities…for the common good.
John 2:1-11. The first of his signs…revealed his glory…his disciples believed in him.

O God of Justice, 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 readings appointed for the second Sunday after the Epiphany in the third year of our lectionary cycle always provoke a rant inside my head that threatens to come out in the pulpit in an Andy Rooney style of commentary (for those of you of a certain age). But it’s not a rant about the lectionary (this time). This time it’s a rant about biblical marriage. Now if I asked random people walking up Newbury Street what the definition of biblical marriage is, I feel confident that, no matter what their religious background, most would respond with some version of one man and one woman. They probably wouldn’t know that marriage descriptions in biblical times, which span more than 1,000 years, differ widely (and even wildly) in terms of expectations:  of polygamy or monogamy; parent-arranged or husband-initiated; endogamy or exogamy (that is, within one’s clan or outside of it); the obligation for a man to marry his brother’s widow; not to mention the estimations of perceived time until the end of the world. There are also major considerations and differences in the Bible when it comes to property, procreation, strategic political alliance, and divorce. A man “taking” a wife literally means procuring, buying, and the acquisition is called betrothal. And Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried.” Continue reading →

Wishing to See Jesus

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Lent 5B, March 21, 2021.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 31:31-34. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.
Hebrews 5:5-10. So also Christ did not glorify himself.
John 12:20-33. We wish to see Jesus.

O God of our help, 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.

A season of time has passed since our reading from the Gospel of John last Sunday. Suddenly, we are only four days away from Jesus’ crucifixion. The context for our reading today is that Jesus has spent the last several years darting in and out of hiding, but has come into Jerusalem very publicly for the last time. Jesus has just ridden up to Jerusalem on a donkey, with huge crowds waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna (which means help, please or save, please). Some irritated and fearful colleagues of Jesus’ have muttered to one another about Jesus, “You see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone over to him.”
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Only Kindness

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Seventh Sunday in Easter, Year A
May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14 Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women…
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 (but what about 4:16?) If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.
John 17:1-11 Protect them in your name that you have given me..so that they may be one as we are one.

O sovereign 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.

This is the day, in our church calendar, when we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost – a sort of liturgical limbo. It lines up well with the limbo we are experiencing in the Church, between pre-isolation and post-isolation due to the covid-19 pandemic. There’s a lot of buzz about opening the churches, and I want to say that Emmanuel hasn’t closed. The Emmanuel Church building has stayed open to serve those who desperately need shelter and food and other necessities, like loving-kindness, and to allow other essential activities to take place. It never closed. Is Emmanuel Church open for worship? Well the physical pews are not full of people, the chancel is not full with a choir and orchestra, but we have not stopped worshiping together as a community. Nevertheless, we are in a sort of limbo, having left what we have held dear, not knowing when and how a new normal will be. I think it’s safe to say that many of us are feeling bereft and disillusioned, mixed with varying amounts of anxiety, anger, and despair. We are warned that we are still in the early days.

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