Tag Archives: Hebrew

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 →

Help, like an atheist!

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Lent 4B, 10 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Numbers 21: 4-9.  Look at the serpent of bronze and live.
  • Ephesians 2: 1-10.  For by grace you have been saved.
  • John 3: 14-21.  For God loved the world like this.

O God of love, 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.

The historical and contemporary misunderstandings and mistreatments of our Gospel lesson this morning are almost too much for me to bear. I knew when Deacon Bob read this passage to you this morning, many of you would start shutting down, going other places in your heads, perhaps leaving the building in your imagination. He had asked me if I wanted to make any edits to what he would read, but frankly I didn’t know where to begin. There are so many edits I want to make, and I’m not sure any amount of editing could solve all the problems in this passage. So perhaps I can bring your imagination back into the building with this First Nations Version rendering of John 3:14-2, a dynamic equivalence translation, which was published a few years ago. That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s a translation focused on retelling the dynamics of the story, not attempting a word-for-word translation of the original. The context for this scene is that Nicodemus, a religious leader in Jerusalem has come to Jesus in the night to learn more about him and his ministry. I’ve made a few more edits to it, so I want you to notice whether and how you respond differently when you hear the Gospel story this way: [1] Continue reading →

Say I love you, too.

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Epiphany 1B, 7 January 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 1:1-5. Beginning.
  • Acts 19:1-7. We have not even heard that there is a holy spirit.
  • Mark 1:4-11. He will baptize you with the [sic] holy spirit.

O God of beginning again, 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.

Today is the day that the Church celebrates the Baptism of Our Lord. Jesus’ baptism is considered the beginning of his ministry; and so we have three scripture readings before us today that speak of new beginnings. “In the beginning,” goes our first reading from the first book of the Bible. “In the beginning God created” are the first words of Genesis, the first words of the Torah.  Actually in Hebrew they say something more like, “When God began shaping.” There is no completed action. Rather, there is a strong sense of ongoing, incomplete shaping. Continue reading →

Song-Infused Days

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Easter 3C, 1 May 2022. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 9:1-6 (7-20). Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen.
Revelation 5:11-14. And the four living creatures said, “Amen!”
John 21:1-19. Come and have breakfast.

O God of resurrection, 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.

Many of you know that Emmanuel Church is between parish administrators in these weeks after Easter, so I am getting an eye-opening and humbling opportunity to serve as both your rector and your interim parish administrator. I’ coordinating and supporting the generous offerings of volunteers and learning about the endless and perplexing challenges of the ministry of the front office, which I’d only heretofore imagined or knew second hand. I have always appreciated the ministrations of administrators, and my admiration is surging at the moment! Administration, at Emmanuel anyway, is jammed full of details and procedures that are always in service to our mission of radical hospitality, advocacy and alliance, spirituality and the arts, and good stewardship of resources entrusted to our care. Continue reading →

Ha Ruach, Ha Kodesh

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Proper 5B. June 6, 2021

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 blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.

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.

I hope you heard our Deacon Bob’s sermon last week for Trinity Sunday. If not, I encourage you to go to the YouTube recording of our service on May 30. Bob had my rapt attention as soon as he mentioned three-tab file folders! I’ve been thinking all week about how much my sense of well-being has to do with my documents, paper and electronic, being neatly filed and easily retrievable. And the Church has a long history of trying to label and contain and define the mystery of the Divine. Bob reminded us that the Holy One doesn’t fit in file folders or books or whole libraries, or bricks and mortar or wood frames or even bread and wine. The Holy One cannot be reduced to words or equations, and certainly not things.

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Coming Clean (with audio)

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Epiphany 7A, February 19, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23 Do you not know that you are God’s temple?
Matthew 5:38-48 Give to everyone who begs from you.

O Holy 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.

Today seems like a good day to make sure you know some things about the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Torah, because we just heard the only passage that ever gets read in our three-year lectionary cycle. Chapter 19 of Leviticus is sometimes called the mini-Torah because of how comprehensive it is in its summary of what it will look like to be the people of God. In a three-year cycle of readings, this lesson gets read on the 7th Sunday of Epiphany in Year A, when the calendar permits seven Sundays in Epiphany, which is to say almost never.
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Come closer! (with audio)

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Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, 24B, October 18, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 53:4-12 It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
[Job 38:1-7, 34-41 Who.]
Hebrews 5:1-10 He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Mark 10:35-45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.

O suffering 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.

Our Rabbi-in-Residence, Howard Berman, is fond of asking me whenever he preaches at one of our services, “Why do I always get the hard texts?” I say, I wonder the very same thing! Why do I always get the hard texts?” (I think the answer might be that they’re almost all hard.) When it comes to the Isaiah reading, I’ll admit that I did it to myself when I agreed to take a week away from our reading of the story of Job in the interest of Ryan Turner’s request for the lovely Distler motet.
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Welcome (with audio)

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The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20B, September 20, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Proverbs 31:10-31 Give her a share in the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the city gates.James 3:13-4:3, 7-8 Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

Mark 9:30-37 Welcomes…welcomes…welcomes…welcomes.

O God of radical welcome, 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.

Hello! I’m so glad you’re here! Happy New Year! Part of the fun of living in an interfaith family like the family Emmanuel Church makes with Central Reform Temple is that we double our holidays! This sanctuary is still humming with the celebrations of the Jewish New Year that began last Sunday evening. So we enter this place today in the midst of the prayers of the Days of Awe – the high holy days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The themes of the Days of Awe are hope, reconciliation and repair – in individual lives and in the world – the Days of Awe are days of reflection, renewed commitment, and action. Continue reading →

It is I.

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The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12B, July 26, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

2 Samuel 11:1-15. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…David [stayed home].
Ephesians 3:14-21. The power to comprehend…what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ.
John 6:1-21.  Ego eimi mey phobeisthe.

O God of Wonder, 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.

We have, for our edification this morning, two fantastic stories, so famous that you certainly don’t have to be a Christian to know them – stories of abundance out of scarcity in the loaves and fishes and of walking on water in some rough weather. The stories get larger and more profound with each iteration in the four Gospels. By the time that the Gospel of John was written, the hunger of the crowds and the threatening storm have become less problems to be solved by Jesus and more lessons to be taught by Jesus, who knew all along, according to John, what he was going to do to try to impress on his followers the meaning of the presence, the power, and the promise of God. The Gospel of John has the biggest fish story of all! Continue reading →

Come down, O Love Divine!

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Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 12A, July 27, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 29:15-28 This is not done in our country.

Romans 8:26-39 We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 Have you understood all this?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.
Everyone take a deep breath and blow it out twice as slowly as you took it in. Do it again, breathing in the gift of oxygen; breathing out your gift back to the plants of carbon dioxide. Breathe the Divine Love come down – the breath of life – in and out. You know, in biblical terms, the word for breath, and wind, and spirit are all the same: ruach in Hebrew. I thought we might start with feeling thankful for breath – because — Continue reading →