Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

Blessing for the Brokenhearted

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Lent 1B, 18 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 9:8-17. I will remember my covenant.
  • 1 Peter 3:18-22. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
  • Mark 1:9-15. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

O God of the spirit, 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 entered the season of Lent in our liturgical year. For those of you who are newish to Emmanuel, I want you to know that, in my view, this is the season that most closely aligns with the spirituality and the ethos of Emmanuel Church. We see the sin in the world; that is, we see so many ways in which the mark of Love is missed. (The Biblical definition of sin is missing the mark.) We know our need for mercy. “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we [and others] have from time to time most grievously have committed,” as the Rite 1 Confession goes. The season of Lent, a time for self-examination and repentance, feels made for us. And you know that’s good, because it’s not fair for extroverts to get all of the holidays! 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 →

Love at the End

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Easter 6A, 14 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 17:22-31. For we too are [God’s] offspring.
  • 1 Peter 3:13-22. Always be ready to make… an accounting for the hope that is in you.
  • John 14:15-21. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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.

When I graduated from college and moved to Northern Virginia, I started looking around for a church. Just as I’d always had a toothbrush for oral hygiene, I’d always had a church for spiritual hygiene. I grew up in the church; and I went to church through college (it was a church within walking distance). My big college rebellion, when it came to practicing faith, was not to quit attending, but to become an Episcopalian! Although my dad was an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, his ecumenical and mostly non-parochial work meant that’d I’d grown up as something of a religious mutt – a mix of UCC, Lutheran, and Presbyterian for worship, Roman Catholic for school, and vacations with the Episcopalians. In my early twenties I had a car, making my reach considerably wider, so I went church shopping for an Episcopal parish. Continue reading →

Need

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Lent 1A, 26 Feb. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7. You will not die.
  • Romans 5:12-21. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
  • Matthew 4:1-11. Away with you, Satan!

O God all gracious and all merciful, 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 just crossed the threshold into the season of Lent in the Church, for period of forty days, not including Sundays (hence our special reception after our service today)! The forty days are set aside for Christians to examine our estrangement from the grace and mercy of the Holy One and to return to right relationship with God and one another. Although each person is called on to do their own Lenten practice, as a congregation we come together for mutual support and encouragement as we go through a this period of intensified self-examination with a call to increased generosity in almsgiving, praying, fasting, and studying scripture. Continue reading →

In Honor of Trans Day of Remembrance

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Today (11/20) is Trans Day of Remembrance. This year in the United States, we remember at least 32 transgender people who were murdered, with over 4/5th of them being trans women and 85% of them people of color. [1] Something else I am reflecting on today is how immense the contributions of trans* people have been and continue to be in our culture. From the Black drag queens who modeled the original chosen families, to the movement leaders today who continue to use their unique experiences to direct our energy as change-makers, alternative and organizing spaces would not be what they are today without trans and nonbinary people. Today I honor the trans people who were lost, and celebrate those who are living.

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Claim Check

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Proper 12C, 24 July.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Hosea 1:2-10. Children of the living God.
Colossians 2:6-19. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit.
Luke 11:1-13. Because of his [lack of shame or honor].

O God of dignity, 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 love that our hand fans proclaim that Emmanuel Church is prayer conditioned on a very hot day when our Gospel lesson is about Jesus’ teaching about how to pray. His answer to the disciples’ request to teach them to pray, the way John taught his disciples, is: ask, search, knock. Claim your honor and your dignity. Notice, though, that what is being sought is learning to pray, and what is being offered in Jesus’ response and words of assurance is a holy spirit, a spirit of holiness. In the original text, there is no definite article, and there are no capital letters. (This is long before the theological idea of Trinity got codified.) If you ask for a spirit of holiness, if you search for a spirit of holiness, if you knock on doors asserting your right to enter into a spirit of holiness, it will be given to you; it will be opened for you. 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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Pickled

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The Baptism of Our Lord, January 10, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Genesis 1:1-5. God saw that light was good.
Acts 19:1-7. No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
Mark 1:4-11. People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem…[and] Jesus came from Nazareth

O God, manifest in us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

What a week. I’ve been reflecting more than usual on the history of Emmanuel Church, organized by a group of religious progressives, abolitionists whose wealth had come largely from the economics of enslaving people, though they were not slaveholders themselves. They formed Emmanuel in the spring of 1860, just eight months before states seceded from the United States, one year before the Civil War began. Our cornerstone was laid at the same time as the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Many in the North thought the conflict would be resolved quickly. They were so wrong; yet, their hope for the future represented by their church planting has produced so much good fruit, and it’s still producing today.

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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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What Difference It Makes

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Trinity Sunday, Year B, May 31, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 6:1-8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!
Romans 8:12-17 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
John 3:1-17 How can anyone be born after having grown old?

O God incarnate, 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 I told you that the Feast of Pentecost is my favorite church holiday. It’s always followed by Trinity Sunday – not my favorite. It’s the only Sunday in the church year entirely devoted to a doctrine – that’s the good news I guess (that there’s only one). Even though it is the most beautiful of doctrines, I doubt if it’s possible (for me) to preach on Trinity Sunday without accidentally tripping over some orthodoxy and falling headlong into heresy. One option, I guess, is to just choose the alternative lessons for the first Sunday after Pentecost, or focus on the Feast of the Visitation, which falls on May 31 (and is the twelfth anniversary of when the Church named me a priest). The thing is, though, I love the Trinity hymns. I love St. Patrick’s Breastplate – the name of our processional hymn this morning. It’s frequently playing in my head. I love the hymn we will sing at the offertory – Holy Holy Holy – called Nicaea. In the hymnal of my childhood, it was number one in the book and in my heart. I still remember the time about thirty years ago when I first heard someone read Isaiah 6:1-8 in Hebrew, demonstrating the power of the poetry and the mystery – Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. Continue reading →