Tag Archives: mystery

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 →

The Marks of Love

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Third Sunday in Lent, Year B, March 4, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Exodus 20:1-17 Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
John 2:13-22 He was speaking of the temple of his body.

O mysterious God, 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.

Many of you know that one of my life projects is increasing Biblical literacy, so I’m always on the lookout for books and articles that are accessible to people who are interested in learning about our sacred texts. Episcopal priest Lauren Winner has recently written a slim volume in the new Episcopal Church teaching series, called A Word to Live By, about engaging scripture with curiosity and confidence. It’s less than a hundred pages, less than $10, and it’s fantastic. In her introduction Winner invites readers of Biblical literature to “expect to be delighted. Expect to be discomfited… .[and] expect to be puzzled… .because the Bible is opaque, and puzzlement means you’re paying attention to, rather than filtering out, the opaque bits.” [1]
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Resolutions, Revelations & Realizations

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The Baptism of our Lord, Year B, January 7, 2018; 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 treasure trove of scripture readings have been given to us by wise men (and wise women) to celebrate a new calendar year, the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and the feast of The Baptism of our Lord! Today is about resolutions, revelations, and realizations. I have so many things I want to say to you! Where to start? How about in the beginning? The last two Sundays we heard the Gospel of John’s jazz variation on the prologue to the book of Genesis. Now we hear the original.
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Three

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Trinity Sunday (A), June 11, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 1:1-2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
2 Corinthians 13:11-13 Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace.
Matthew 28:16-20 But some doubted.

O Holy Trinity One 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 we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Are you excited?! I bet a few of you are! It’s the only Sunday dedicated to a doctrine. For those of you for whom doctrine feels like a scratchy piece of clothing, don’t sweat! It’s just one Sunday. Twentieth century theologian, Karl Rahner reportedly claimed that if the Trinity were to quietly disappear out of Christian theology, most of Christendom would not even notice its absence. (But I do think we’d miss the hymns.) Given the urgent needs of the world, the urgent needs in our own congregation, is the Trinity something that I should be spending any time preaching on? Pondering this question, I took what I imagine was one last trip to the library at Episcopal Divinity School, into the stacks to stare at the shelves of books devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity. I opened a dozen or so, and thought to myself, “this is a fool’s errand,” and I returned to my desk at home.
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Go!

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Lent 2A, March 12, 2017; The 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.

This is one of those Sundays when I have a harder time giving thanks and praise to God in response to the scripture readings when I first hear them, because it’s hard for me to hear them read without thinking about the damage humans do to one another using these passages as weapons.  The recent and dramatic rise of hateful words and actions against Jews and Muslims (or people mistaken for Muslims) is fueled by arrogance and ignorance of “Christian” teachings. The fighting happens within Christianity as well, between Catholics and protestants, between different kinds of protestants, and within our own Anglican traditions. Perhaps you have a similar experience of knowing these lessons from a standpoint of in and out, us and them, ours and not yours.  Perhaps you’ve heard these lessons as being about tests about who measures up because of what they think or don’t think.  If not, just wait for today’s cantata! All this makes many flee religious practice, and for good reason. Continue reading →

Mystery, Meaning, Risk & Relationship

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Third Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 19, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 3:12-19. You Israelites
1 John 3:1-7. We should be called children of God and that is what we are.
Luke 24:36b-48.  And the psalms must be fulfilled.

O God of Hope, 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.

You probably know that the Gospel of John, for all of its beautiful love poetry and prose, is notoriously anti-Jewish or anti-Judean in its rhetoric about the death and resurrection of Jesus, written as if it were Jews and not Romans who were the threat to Jesus. In the Gospel of John is codified one side of a late first century argument about ways to move forward socially, politically and theologically in the precarious time after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The writer of John places anti-Jewish words anachronistically in the mouths of Jesus and his friends who were, of course, all Jewish. Continue reading →

Let’s work with what we’ve got!

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A collapsing infrastructure is a time to connect and rebuild stronger.

On Monday night when the women came in for Art and Spirituality, we were greeted with a mix of excitement, eagerness, curiosity, and some mellowness. Overall I felt like everyone was glad to be back in that room with paper on the tables and art supplies ready to go. Since Art and Spirituality happens on Monday’s and so do all the blizzards in Boston, we have not been able to hold the group in four weeks. Part of our weekly opening prayer is “What we want is certainty. What we get is ambiguity.” I found myself referencing this prayer a lot in the past week. Continue reading →

The Mystery of Love

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Fourth Sunday of Advent, 4B, December 21, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 I have not lived in a house…but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Romans 16:25-27 According to the revelation of the mystery. Luke 1:26-38 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. – or Here am I.

O God of impossible possibilities, 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.

Many of you know that I grew up in a household where wrestling with Holy Scripture was one of the things we did as a family for exercise. I didn’t know that some families went on ski vacations until I was well into college! I will confess that that discovery made me feel a little jealous, but over the years my gratitude for my dad’s insistence on Biblical engagement has grown and grown. Our Gospel story this morning has been calling people to wrestle – with paint, with poetry and prose, with music, with drama since the beginning. In fact, so many have wrestled with this text before us that we might not think we have to – we might think that we must either accept or dismiss the truth of the annunciation or accept or dismiss the truth of the virgin birth. Did this happen or not? (I think the answer is yes — sometimes.)

The town of Nazareth, in the Galilee is built on a hillside in the southern Lebanon Mountains. It’s a bustling Palestinian city now with a population of about 65,000. In the mid-nineteenth century, a French order of nuns built a convent in Nazareth. The Sisters of Nazareth have exercised their ministry there ever since. When I visited in 2007, they told a story of calling a plumber to repair a leak, who, in the course of his work, fell through the floor of the convent into a well-preserved first century courtyard house where there is evidence of 1st century Jewish occupants; there is also an animal feeding trough (a manger made of stone, not wood); and a burial chamber with a huge stone disk that can be rolled to cover the opening. Continue reading →