Tag Archives: love

This Kind of Community

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Third Sunday after Pentecost (5B), June 10, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

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 does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

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.

Sometimes the lectionary just puts much too much on a preacher’s plate. This morning feels like something of a dog’s breakfast – a confused mash up of 1 Samuel, 2 Corinthians, and a peculiar section of the Gospel of Mark. (Well it confuses me, anyway.) The story in 1 Samuel of Samuel’s warning that the people’s desire to be like the other nations and have an autocrat is going to backfire (the more things change…). Then we hear the Apostle Paul’s encouragement that enduring affliction is going to be rewarded by God. According to the notes for this passage in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Paul was articulating a Rabbinic Judaism idea that overcoming adversity reveals the presence of divine power, and Paul was taking it one step further asserting that affliction of those that God loves assures their greatest reward in the next life. [1] I’d say that idea has backfired too. It’s one thing to offer encouragement and comfort to not lose heart, which I think is what Paul was doing. It’s quite another to start glorifying suffering. Continue reading →

Sabbath Delight

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Second Sunday after Pentecost (4B), June 3, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

1 Samuel 3:1-20 The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
2 Corinthians 4:5-12 We have this treasure in clay jars…so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies…in our mortal flesh.
Mark 2:23-3:6 The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.

O God of our delight, 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 Emmanuel Church is celebrating an abundant harvest, the ordinations yesterday of Helen McKinney to the permanent diaconate and Tamra Tucker to the transitional diaconate. Helen and Tamra were both sponsored for ordination by Emmanuel Church and so we are blessed and thrilled that they’re both able to be here today to worship with us in their new roles in the Episcopal Church. Following our service and a bit of refreshment, I invite those of you who are able and interested, to join in a conversation about the ordination process. Helen and her sweetheart, Rebecca are going to have to dash to catch a plane back to Albuquerque, but Tamra will have time to stay and talk – she’s staying in Boston!
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Creative, Embodied, Inspired

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Trinity Sunday, Year B, May 27, 2018; 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 Children of God.
John 3:1-17 God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world.

O God ‘increation,’ incarnation, inspiration, 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 our Gospel lesson contains one of the most misappropriated and misunderstood passages of scripture in the whole Bible, in my view. “For God so loved the world that God gave the only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16 has fueled some of the most damaging and unloving impulses of those who have taken the name Christian, from the Crusades to the destruction of conquered indigenous peoples, to the Holocaust, and to our present day, where the idea of the common good is endangered. If folks would just focus on what comes next, multitudes might have been spared. Verse 17 says: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (or by him or because of him or for the sake of him. Being saved here means healing, integrity, and dignity. Being saved means being rescued from danger, liberated from oppression, being restored to right-relationship.
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Enlarging the Circle

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Sixth Sunday after Easter, Year B, May 6, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 10:44-48 Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?
1 John 5:1-6 And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is truth.
John 15:9-17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

O God of love, 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 are celebrating the baptism of a little boy with a big name. Samuel Dennis Warren, VII, also known as Micah. Maybe you recall that Micah is the name of the Biblical prophet, who famously reminded the people that what is required of us is only to do justice and to love kindness and to walk modestly or humbly with the Holy One. That might be the best description of what it looks like to love one another and love God in all of scripture.
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Let Love become us!

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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 29, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L.Werntz

Acts 8:26-40 (This is a wilderness road.)
1 John 4:7-21 God is love.
John 15:1-8 Abide in me.

O God of the wilderness roads, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it.

During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, our schedule of scripture readings, called “The Revised Common Lectionary,” eschews readings from the First Testament of our Bible in favor of stories from the Book of Acts, which is the sequel or companion volume to the Gospel of Luke. Many of you know that I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I appreciate that readings from Hebrew Scripture are not explicitly being employed to prop up resurrection narratives (the way I think they get used to prop up Jesus’ birth narratives during Advent). And I love the portions of the fantastic stories from the Book of Acts of people who were completely carried away by the inspiration of spreading the Good News that even the most horrific death had not destroyed the mighty Love of Jesus in God. However, without reading the wisdom of the Tanakh – that is, the Torah or the Prophets or the Writings of Hebrew scripture – we risk not understanding the content and context of this Good News.
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Diving into the Wreck

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Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B, March 11, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Numbers 21:4-9 So Moses prayed for the people.
Ephesians 2:1-10 And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
John 3:14-21 Those who do what is true come to the light.

O God of infinite 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.

When I’m writing a sermon, I often think of songs or poems. For today it was Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” The connection in my mind is our gospel lesson from John – the wreck of misunderstandings and mistreatments of this text – it’s almost too much for me to bear. I knew that when our Deacon Bob read this passage to you, many of you would start shutting down, going other places in your heads, perhaps leaving the building in your imaginations. I’m not going to recite the whole poem, but listen to these lines from the middle:

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail…

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth [1]

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The Ordering Principle

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Fourth Sunday after Epipany, Year B, January 28, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 This is what you requested.
1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Love builds up.
Mark 1:21-28 They were astounded by his teaching.

O God of peace, 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.

In our reading from Deuteronomy this morning, we hear a portion of Torah teaching about maintaining the welfare of the community. It comes after this instruction, “If there is among you anyone in need within the land that you inhabit, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand…give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so…open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor.” It’s worth remembering that compassion is one of the hallmark values of Deuteronomy. [1] Compassion is an ordering principle for Torah. Continue reading →

Calling for a Better Future

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The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B,January 14, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
January 14, 2018

1 Samuel 3:1-20 The Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God and that you are not your own?
John 1:43-51 I saw you.

O God of our hope, 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.

 

Sometimes our lectionary seems to lob softball pitches for helping us to make meaning of current events and equipping us to better navigate our future. In our first reading from the first Book of Samuel, we read that in the old days, the word of the Lord was rare, and the ability to see clearly was not widespread. Back in the year 1100 BCE, Israel was going through a time of immense societal change. Biblical scholar Bruce Birch calls it “a time of spiritual desolation, religious corruption, political danger, and social upheaval.” [1] Eli the priest and his sons were responsible for guarding the Ark of the Covenant and its holy oracle. Eli’s sons did not behave well at all and Eli wasn’t able to get them to change their violent ways. This is a story of the transfer of authority from Eli to Samuel that highlights Eli’s wisdom and integrity, and Samuel’s responsiveness and bravery. The word of God, here, is like a light that is both harsh and bright – exposing what is shameful and shining like a beacon to light the way. The call that Samuel hears is to prophetic work of declaring both judgment and hope, both repentance and return to the way of obedience to Love (which is another word for God). It’s a call for a better future.
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And the story isn’t finished.

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First Sunday after Christmas, Proper 1B, December 31, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3. For the sake of Zion I will not be silent. For the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest.
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
John 1:1-18. And the Word became flesh and lived among us.

O God of our story, 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.

First, a poem by Padraig O Tuama, called “Narrative Theology”.  [1]

And I said to him

Are there questions to all of this?

And he said

The answer is in a story

and the story is being told.

 

And I said

But there is so much pain

And she answered, plainly,

Pain will happen.

 

Then I said

Will I ever find meaning?

And they said

You will find meaning

Where you give meaning.

 

The answer is in the story

And the story isn’t finished.

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Angels, Virgins & Cousins

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Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 24, 2017, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 I will not take my steadfast love from him.
Romans 16:25-27 Amen.
Luke 1:26-38 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

O God in whom is heaven, 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 our liturgical calendar is giving us the Fourth Sunday of Advent in the morning and Christmas Eve in the evening. Buckle up! For the past three weeks, our scripture readings have been full of prophetic calls to vast numbers of people for large scale civil engineering projects, leveling mountains, filling in valleys, and making travel easier for God. Today, in a dramatic downshift, we are invited into intensely intimate scenes between David and Nathan, between Mary and Gabriel. You can almost hear our theological engine revving as we slow down to make this big turn.
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