Tag Archives: interfaith

Hold the salt, and pass the peace!

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Proper 21B.  26 September 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Esther 7:1-6,9-10; 9:20-22. Days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
James 5:13-20. Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.
Mark 9:38-50.  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

O God of Beauty, 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.

Well, nothing says, “Let’s begin a program year” like our Gospel reading from Mark today! As one vestry member asked the other night when we were talking about this passage with its gruesome illustrations of maiming and fiery hell, “Remind me, who makes the calendar of readings?” One answer is that the Episcopal Church’s enormous, bicameral, legislative branch meeting in convention in 2006 voted in favor of adopting the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year calendar of scripture readings. The RCL, as it is called, was developed and tested by an ecumenical group of English-speaking liturgical scholars and denominational representatives from around the world. The practice of a liturgical calendar of readings goes back to ancient Judaism. Continue reading →

The Temple in a Church

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Celebrating 13 Years of Love & Friendship

Sunday, October 15, 2017; Rabbi Howard A. Berman

 

This morning, in my first sermon of both this new church program season, as well as our Jewish New Year,  5778,  I want to share some reflections on a very special shared milestone for all of us — of both Central Reform Temple and Emmanuel Church. The New Year, that we have just celebrated, is indeed a momentous one for all of us of the Temple, as we mark the 13th Anniversary of the Founding of our Congregation!   Just three weeks ago,  our celebration of Rosh Hashanah inaugurated what we are calling our Kehilat Mitzvah Year– an egalitarian Hebrew variant on the Bar and Bat Mitzvah 13th birthday tradition, which means “ A Community of the Commandments.” In this very symbolic way, we seek to frame and reaffirm many of our Temple’s core values as we celebrate this milestone. Continue reading →

2017

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  • Feb. 5.  At our annual meeting we voted to update our Parish By-Laws.
  • Oct 15.  Rabbi Howard Berman preached about the 13th anniversary of our relationship with Central Reform Temple (formerly Boston Jewish Spirit).
  • Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosiland Rosenberg is published by Oxford U. Press.  Amazon’s record describes her contribution:  “Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country.”  

    Book jacket, Oxford U. Press

Its last chapter deals with Pauli’s call to ordained ministry. On p. 356, Rosenblatt notes that in 1967 Pauli began to attend Emmanuel, where then rector Alvin Kershaw advised her and referred her to The Rt. Rev. John W. Burgess, who was our diocesan bishop and the first African American episcopal bishop.  

See also Timeline entries for Pauli Murray: 1944, 1951, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

See also Timeline entry 2007 about the restoration of our former organ:  Casavant Frères Opus 700.

 

Grapes

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First Sunday after Christmas B, December 28, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 61:10-62:3 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest.
Galatians 4:4-7 So that we might receive adoption as children.
Luke 2:22:40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

O God with us, Emmanuel, 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 Gospel portion that I just read is only told in the Gospel of Luke. It follows immediately after the verse which says, “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child, and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. If it had been a little less chaotic at Emmanuel Church in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I might have remembered to expand our Gospel reading in your bulletins to include this verse, because of the reference to Jesus’ naming ceremony. Only Luke tells anything about Jesus before he reached later adulthood. So I wonder, what is it that Luke wanted to demonstrate with these stories of Jesus’ infancy and boyhood?

I think the first is that Jesus was a real human, according to Luke. He was born to human parents, with a genealogy that went back to Adam — earthling (who Luke calls the Son of God). The Good News of Jesus Christ in Luke is that God anointed a human being to fully embody God’s intention of freedom and right-relationship for God’s people. Jesus increased in wisdom as he increased in years. According to Luke, Jesus didn’t land on earth knowing it all. Jesus learned as he went. According to Luke, Jesus was fully, really human. Continue reading →

2004

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Ball team with The Rev. Sara Irwin (front left), The Rev. Bill Blaine Wallace (back row, orange shirt) & Emmanuelites*

June 4. Boston Globe reported that The Rev. Dr. Willliam Blaine-Wallace had performed same-sex marriages despite The Rt. Rev. Thomas Shaw‘s proscription of such in the wake of a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in May, which had made them legal.

June 20. Boston Globe quoted Bill Blaine-Wallace, who supported the Rev. I. Carter Heyward in her retirement from out diocese saying,  “I want the wider community to know that a straight priest and mainstream parish are participating in constructive disobedience.”

July. Our vestry endorsed our rector’s disobedience with a statement, “Support for Same-Sex Marriage”.

Summer. Emmanuel fielded a team* for an interfaith wiffle-ball match on the Boston Common with First Church (Unitarian Universalist). Behind them are Polish freedom fighters in a sculpture called The Partisans, which has since been moved to the intersection of Congress & D Streets.

Rabbi Howard A. Berman

Bill Blaine-Wallace invited the nascent congregation Boston Jewish Spirit to hold its services as guests at Emmanuel.  Rabbi Howard A. Berman became Rabbi in Residence.  The first meetings of what would later become Central Reform Temple were held in our library.

*If you know any missing members of this line-up, please advise us:  archivist@EmmanuelBoston.org.

  • Back row from the left:  Margo Risk (seated), ??, Donald Langbein, Jimmy Tirrell (straw hat), ??, Bill Blaine-Wallace, Marianne Iauco & Mary Blocher
  • Front row:  Sara Irwin, Kelly Reed, Hugh Doherty?, Victoria Blaine-Wallace & David York.

1988

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  • June.  Organist Michael Beattie joined Emmanuel Music for rehearsals in our Music Room of Peter Sellars‘ version of Mozart’s opera Le Nozze di Figaro, which played that summer in the PepsiCo Theater in Purchase NY.  Craig Smith conducted; Frank Kelley sang the part of Basilio; Jayne West, the Countess; and Susan Larson, Cherubino.
  • In her “Peace Pentecost” sermon at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul, poet Denise Levertov (1923-97) emphasized the connection between contemplation and action:  “If we neglect our inner lives, we destroy the sources of fruitful outer action.

    Thanks to U. of California Press for this image.

    But if we do not act, our inner lives become mere monuments to egotism.” At Emmanuel she founded a Peace Group to foster the links between spiritual thought and action among her fellow parishioners.

Earlier in the decade she had been attracted to Emmanuel by our social-justice activities, beautiful music and liturgy, and rector Al Kershaw, who counseled her.  “He assured her that doubt was part of spiritual growth and the darkness she encountered might increase her sense of dependence and lead her to God,” says her biographer Dana Greene citing Denise’s diary entry for June 13, 1988.

Denise’s father, Paul Philip Levertoff (1878–1954), born in Belarus, an early proponent of Messianic Judaism, took holy orders in the Anglican Church and preached wearing an alb with a tallit and kippa.

The Rev. Paul Philip Levertoff

In 1922 he become director of what is now the London Diocesan Council for Work among the Jews and edited its quarterly journal, The Church and the Jews. He was a prolific writer on theological subjects in Hebrew, German, and English and translated into English the Midrash Sifre on Numbers (1926) and the Zohar  (1933).

See also:

  1. Dana Greene.  Denise Levertov:  A Poet’s Life.  Urbana IL:  U. of Illinois Press, 2012.
  2. Denise Levertov.  Making Peace.  Breathing the Water.  NY:  New Directions, 1987.
  3. Donna Hollenberg.  A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2013.
  4. Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey, eds.  The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov.  NY: New Directions, 2013.
  5. Paul Philip Levertoff. Love and the Messianic Age.
  6. Timeline: 1994