Tag Archives: God
Don’t mismanage your miracle.
Hosea 11:1-11. My compassion grows warm and tender.
Colossians 3:1-11. The wrath of God is coming on whose who are disobedient.
Luke 12:13-21. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.
O God of abundance, 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 morning we have scripture readings that take the clichéd and inaccurate characterization of Old Testament god of wrath and New Testament god of love and turn it on its head. You might know that one of my life goals is to stop as many Christians as possible from thinking that the First Testament or Hebrew Bible depicts an angry God and the Second or Christian Testament depicts a loving God. I also want those people who finally learn to spread the news to others. Alas, it’s like the work of coming out: my work is never done.
Continue reading
Getting Our Own Paragraph Right
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10B, July 12, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Ephesians 1:3-14This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of [God’s] glory.
Mark 6:14-29 What should I ask for?
O God of our future, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
This is one of those Sundays when “Praise to you, Lord Christ,” just doesn’t seem like the right response after a Gospel reading. Actually, all three of our readings this morning get my dander up. In 2nd Samuel, what gets me is almost a throw-away line about David’s wife Michal, the party-pooper of the story, who saw him leaping and dancing and despised him in her heart. What’s Michal’s problem, you might wonder (if you noticed her at all). Well, Michal has been used and abused by her father King Saul and his successor King David, but according to tradition, she loved David and did not think he should be recklessly prancing around, scantily clad, before the throne of the Holy One. (I’m with her.) Continue reading
Disclosing Compassion
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, 25A, October 26, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Philippians 2:1-13. But this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.
Matthew 21:33-46. Listen to another parable.
O God of grace, 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 in our reading from Deuteronomy, we heard the very last part of the Torah. Last weekend was the joyful Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah (simchat means rejoicing). On Simchat Torah, this portion of Deuteronomy is read in synagogues, followed by a reading of the first portion from Genesis. On Simchat Torah, as many people as possible ascend to the blessing of reading, rather than just the usual two or three readers. Afterwards, the congregations dances and sings. It’s the celebration of endings leading to new beginnings. Continue reading