Tag Archives: morality

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 →

Drive like it!

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, 11 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Kings 2:1-12. “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
  • 1 Corinthians 4:3-6. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
  • Mark 9:2-10. He did not know what to say for they were terrified.

O God of revelation, 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.

This past week I had an unusually high number of harrowing experiences as I was navigating the streets in and around Boston. Last Tuesday, two cars crashed right in front of me on the Mass Pike; and on Thursday a car I was riding in nearly got T-boned by a distracted driver. I witnessed pedestrians nearly getting hit in crosswalks by drivers running red lights, bicyclists riding against traffic and traffic signs, aggressive tailgating, erratic lane changing, and gridlocked intersections. It seems to me that drivers have gotten so much worse in the last few years. I googled the worst drivers in the country and was shocked by the results; it’s very bad news. Boston is not even in the top-twenty cities with the worst drivers; we are not even close; we’re not even competitive! Continue reading →

Workin’ on a World

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Lent 2A, 5 March 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 12:1-4a. Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.
  • Romans 4:1-5, 13-17. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.
  • John 3:1-17. How can these things be?

O God of grace, 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.

Some Sundays are harder than others to give thanks and praise to God in response to the scripture readings; don’t you think? Perhaps you have an experience similar to mine of knowing these lessons from a standpoint of in-versus-out, us-versus-them, or ours-and-not-yours. Perhaps you’ve heard these lessons as being about tests of who measures up because of what they think or don’t think. If not, just wait for the end of today’s cantata! All this makes people flee religious practice, and for good reason.  As many of you know, rather than skipping over or speeding through scripture that is offensive, off-putting, or terrifying, my Bible teachers taught me that even the worst passages will bear fruit if I slow down and wonder what they have to say to me. It takes some practice (and some nerve) to learn to go from fight or flight to rest and digest. Continue reading →

Unbounded Mercy

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Proper 10C.  10 July 2022, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Amos 7:7-17. The Lord said to me, “Go prophesy to my people Israel.”
Colossians 1:1-14. Grace to you and peace from God.
Luke 10:25-37. But wanting to justify himself…

O God of mercy, 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 parable called The Good Samaritan, found only in Luke, might be the most famous parable of them all. One doesn’t have to be a church goer to have heard of it and understand something about it. Hospitals, emergency services, counseling services, laws about liability limits, and award programs, all get called Good Samaritan. With its fame comes the enormous, sometimes crushing, weight of Protestant moral theology and Sunday-school lessons, both with a hefty dose of Christian anti-Jewish bias. The preaching challenge for me seems formidable because of what we all think we already know about this story and the guilt that has been wired into most of us about seeing people who have been beaten and robbed, lying in life’s various ditches, and not doing enough, or anything at all, to help. In my time as a priest, this story has provoked more confessions and more attempts at self-justification than any other I know. It reminds me of something bell hooks said, which feels like the essence of my vocation: [1]

I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community.

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Telling the Story

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Proper 10B.  July 11, 2021

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19.  David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.
Ephesians 1:3-14. [God] set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.
Mark 6:14-29. What should I ask for?

O God of Our Dreaming, 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.

The summer lectionary has dealt us some truly terrible readings for us this morning,  readings that should give any of us pause before we say, “Thanks be to God” or “Praise to you, Lord Christ.” First is the story of how the ark of the covenant came to reside in Jerusalem, which is not a nice story, although the lectionary calls for the most troubling parts of the story to be removed. Then, we have the story of the beheading of John the Baptist with a passage from Ephesians in the middle insisting that somehow everything is going to be alright.
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A Place in This Seedpod

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Lent 1B, February 21, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Genesis 9:8-17. I will remember my covenant.
1 Peter 3:18-22. An appeal to God for a good conscience.
Mark 1:9-15. The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

O God of Love, 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.

I always love praying the Great Litany with you on the first Sunday of Lent, and I’m sad not to have prayed it chanting in a solemn procession that surrounds and enfolds the congregation in this prayer written for, and intended to be used during, times of great duress, danger, or devastation. I’ve been thinking about and hearing from some of you about how right it feels to be back in our liturgical, spiritual season of Lent. Lent is a season that aligns with much of what we are experiencing: a season of self-sacrifice, a season of recognition of when, where, and how we’ve missed the mark of Love, which is the Biblical definition of sin. Continue reading →

Answer again the call!

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Epiphany 2B, January 17, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

1 Samuel 3:1-20. Here I am, for you called me.
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. . .Come and see.”

O vision fair of glory, 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.

Last week I began my words to you with “what a week.” So how do I start this sermon? The British satire television program comes to mind from the early 1960’s, “That was the week that was,”. I can’t say that I “remember” the show, but I clearly remember that when I was growing up my parents practically wore out their vinyl record album of Tom Lehrer songs, “That Was the Year that Was”. If you’re too young to know these songs, your homework is to find them on YouTube! Those songs are still pertinent: the pollution of the environment, the threat of nuclear war, racial strife, religious conflict.
Lehrer liked to say, “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet!” And yet, listening to his satirical prophetic wisdom helped so many people clarify their purpose and organize themselves and others to join in working for a better future. Lehrer’s work was a call for a better future.

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A Remembrance & a Legacy

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In Commemoration of the Centennial of the Armistice of World War I
Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, November 11, 2018; Rabbi Howard A. Berman

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
One of the major themes of my teaching to our people at Central Reform Temple, and to all of you here at Emmanuel Church, is the importance of history as a source of spiritual truth and guidance. History, its chronicle and commemoration, and its enduring meaning and message, is a fundamental dimension of both Judaism and Christianity. The Hebrew Biblical foundation that both of our faiths share, teaches that God works through human history. The primary focus of our Scriptures is historical narrative. The events, progress, and personalities that shape history–whether global, national, communal, and even our own personal experiences–are clear revelations of God’s presence and will in the world and in our lives. We believe that the good and noble people and events in human experience have been instruments of God’s blessing, love and mercy. And yet, we also know that the evils of history, the sufferings and injustice we have inflicted upon each other, have also been signs of our failure to heed God’s will – not of Divine responsibility for suffering, but rather our human culpability for the tragedies of our past. We have been given both a clear set of moral and ethical imperatives in Torah and Gospel, as well as the innate free will to make our choices, collectively and individually, to either follow God’s law of love and justice and peace by choosing good and life or by choosing evil and death, and bringing upon ourselves, our world, and our children, the consequences of pain and suffering that have, sadly, largely marked the chronicle of human experience.

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