Tag Archives: salvation

In the Middle of Resurrected Life

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Easter B, 31 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 25: 6-9.  Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
  • 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11.  Also you are being saved.
  • Mark 16: 1-8. So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. 

O God of life, 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.

Hello! If you love being at Emmanuel on Easter Sunday, whether in person or on livestream, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m also glad you’re here even if you’re not sure you made the right choice this morning. Of all the days to come to church, I think Easter Sunday might be the most likely day to convince you that church is really not for you:  the service is long; the stories are unbelievable. Maybe the resplendent flowers make your nose itch, our puppets seem strange and ridiculous, or the hymns are not light enough to lift your heavy hearts. I get it; I see you. You might love the cantata this morning; it has all the feels. Continue reading →

Resurrection is art and protest.

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Easter 4A, 30 April 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 2:42-47.  Awe came upon everyone.
  • 1 Peter 2:19-25. So that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness.
  • John 10:1-10.  I came that they…

O God of abundant life, 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.

We are nearly halfway through the fifty days of Easter. Have you been looking for the art of resurrection? Have you seen any signs? I think of Ralph Ellison, who wrote, “I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest.” [1] Looking for the art of resurrection seems like a form of protest to me. The art of figuring out how to turn sorrow into joy seems like a form of peaceful protest! That is the work that speaks to Jesus’ primary teaching, which was about answering the question, “Is there life before death?” If the answer to that question is, “Yes,” how do we access its abundance? Abundant life for all is Jesus’ stated mission in the Gospel of John, in the portion we have before us, which reminds us that in the shadow of the cross, a most painful and humiliating death, we are not to forget the promise of God with us: Emmanuel. Continue reading →

Begin wherever you are.

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Epiphany 4A, 29 Jan. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Micah 6:1-8.  “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
  • 1 Corinthians 1:18-31. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
  • Matthew 5:1-12. “Blessed…blessed…blessed.”

O God of the strangest blessings, 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.

When I sat down to write on Friday, I’d just received an alert from the Boston Police Commissioner about anticipating protests in response to the kidnapping and murder of Tyre Nichols by police officers in Memphis earlier this month, as the horrifying body-cam video was about to be released to the public. I’m grateful that the demonstrations have been peaceful in Boston and mostly peaceful around the country. Continue reading →

Love has the last word.

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Last Sunday after Pentecost,  Proper 29C: Christ the King.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Wentz.

Jeremiah 23:1-6. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them!
Colossians 1:11-20. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power…prepared to endure everything with patience.
Luke 23:33-43. Today you will be with me in Paradise.

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.

 On the last Sunday of our liturgical calendar, our lectionary brings us to the foot of the cross in Luke’s Gospel, lest anyone get too sentimental about what it means to follow Jesus. This Gospel lesson is appointed for today because we are celebrating the all-embracing authority of God’s Christ, that is, Love’s redeeming urge, and we sing hymns of gratefulness and praise. While we do that we can always use a reminder that our King of kings and Lord of lords was executed as a criminal with other criminals accused of crimes against the state. He was friends with criminals while he lived; and then he died with them, too. The word that Luke uses for criminal is literally evil doer. Our king, our highest earthly authority was executed for sedition, that is, for inciting resistance or disobedience to the government. Continue reading →

A Parish Where Love Lives

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Proper 26C, 30 October 2022.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Habakkuk 1:1-2:4.  Write the vision; make it plain so that a runner can see it.”
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4,11-12. The love of everyone of you for one another is increasing.
Luke 19:1-10. The Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.

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.

The short and powerful book of Habakkuk the Prophet begins with a title: The oracle that the prophet saw. The Hebrew word for oracle can also be understood as burden: the burden that Habakkuk saw. What Habakkuk saw clearly was indeed a great burden: violence everywhere, and God seemed not to see the degradation of justice and the utter devastation of well-being, of shalom. Habakkuk had two complaints, which could be ripped from our own headlines: 1) God has done nothing to stop the violence so far, and 2) it’s about to get worse. In this book, the voice of God is heard, but it’s not particularly good news. Essentially, God’s response is that the violence is due to the greed of the people and their failure to recognize the voice of the Holy One, Who pleads for loving, pleads for people to respect themselves and others. Habakkuk understands the violence as the Holy One’s punishing response. I understand violence as an entirely predictable consequence of greed, arrogance, and fear, which breaks the heart of the Divine. To the question of how can God let this suffering and devastation happen, I ask, how can people let this suffering and devastation happen?  Continue reading →

Well on The Way

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Epiphany 4C, 30 January 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 1:4-10. Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a ….
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 . The greatest of these is love.
Luke 4:21-30. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

O God of Generosity, 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.

In the portion of the Gospel we heard this morning, Luke tells us that a group of people in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, who had been pleased and even astonished by Jesus, got so angry with him that they threw him out of the house of worship, ran him out of town, and wanted to throw him off the cliff. That is angry! Luke says that Jesus’ reputation as a spirit-filled leader had spread around the country prior to his return to Nazareth. Last week we heard that all in Nazareth spoke well of him, when he read from, and commented on, the scripture at the religious gathering in Nazareth. So what made them turn on him? Luke tells us what Jesus said to make them so angry; but it doesn’t sound that bad, does it? So we are left to debate what provoked them so about the story of Elijah being sent to a widow (probably a Syrophoenician) at Zarephath in Sidon and about Elisha healing the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. Jesus was reminding them of stories that were part of their own tradition, and it made them so mad that they wanted to annihilate him. It wasn’t new stuff he was telling them; it was old, and it was a main Bible theme, not an obscure part of their tradition. The reading we just heard from the prophet Jeremiah tells about how Jeremiah understood himself to be sent to proclaim that God’s message was not just for Israel but for all nations. So what is the problem? Continue reading →

The Harvest of Righteousness

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Advent 2C.  19 December 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Baruch 5:1-9 Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on the robe of righteousness.
Phillipians 1:31-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God
Luke 3:1-6 All flesh shall see the salvation of God.

God all merciful and all compassionate, 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.

As I said last week, Advent is a season for communal and institutional reflection and repentance, for collective atonement and reparations. Our readings for this second Sunday in Advent are so full and big with calls for repentance and reparations; it is almost as if they are pregnant with possibility. The prophet Baruch and the evangelist Luke are both reminding their hearers about the words of the prophet Isaiah. And Luke draws a picture of John the Baptist that is just like the prophet Jeremiah, consecrated before he was born, and just like Elijah by the Jordan in the wilderness. Luke also has already explained that John’s work was so closely related to Jesus’s work, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they must have known one another before they were even born. Continue reading →

Respond, repair, rebuild!

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Proper 26B.  31 October 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Ruth 1:1-18. Do not beg me to leave you anymore, woman.
Hebrews 9:11-14. Purify our conscience from dead observances for worship of the living God.
Mark 12:28-34.  You are not far from the Realm of God.

O God of our redemption, 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.

Many of you know that the formal name of our educational and artistic collaboration program with Central Reform Temple is Emmanuel Center. You’ll see our statement of purpose in the back of your bulletins. Essentially it says that faithfully rooted in our distinct religious traditions and shared spiritual heritage, we model compassionate encounters between Judaism and Christianity that affirm the difficult challenges of history and aspire to new levels of understanding. The Emmanuel Center Board comprises leaders from the parish and the synagogue to plan activities that explore spiritual and ethical perspectives on our shared human experience. When the board met this past Tuesday, we spent considerable time talking about the history being made right now with regard to the tens of thousands of refugees of rapacious militarism coming into the US from Afghanistan to be resettled here. Afghani people are living in refugee camps on five military bases in this country; the pictures of Fort Bliss (a highly ironic name) in New Mexico show about 100 huge tents holding 6,000 people. Our conversation on the board had to do with our moral obligation to respond with welcome and assistance, and the process of figuring out how. Where to begin? Continue reading →

Saving Space for Outsiders

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Lent 3B, March 7, 2021.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz


Exodus 20:1-17. I AM.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
John 2:13-22. They believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

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.

My three-year-old granddaughter asks a version of the universal question of why, which effectively blocks the response, “Because I said so,” or “because that’s the rule.” Instead of asking why, she asks, “What will happen; what will happen” if I do this thing that you’ve told me not to do? What will happen if a kid on the playground doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do; what will happen? What will happen; what will happen? She’s learning about rules, expected behaviors, desired outcomes, and consequences. Sometimes we don’t know the answer; sometimes there is a range of possibilities. This is frustrating to her; she wants to be know; she wants us to be sure of the consequences. On this Third Sunday in Lent, we have lessons about the consequences of being God’s people, of not loving Loving, of proclaiming Christ crucified, and of fidelity to Jesus.
Continue reading →

Clear Vision

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Christmas 2B, January 3, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Jeremiah 31:7-14 Their life shall become like a watered garden . . . and my people will be satisfied with my bounty.
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which [God] has called you.
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 We observed his star at its rising.

O God of our dreams, 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. Amen.

Before the year 2020 began, I thought a lot about the idea that 20/20 is a term to express visual clarity. 20/20 is what optometrists strive for when prescribing corrective lenses, and did we ever see more clearly in this past year. We have seen “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened” where we have missed the marks as a society when it comes to the equitable distribution of resources, and we have seen “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, what is the hope to which God has called us.” We have risen to previously unthought of challenges, and we have acknowledged our vulnerabilities. We have seen (in others and in ourselves) foolishness and bravery, self-absorption and self-emptying, grasping and giving away. Since hindsight is 20/20, it might take a little time before we are completely clear about all that we’ve seen and what it means for us going forward.
Continue reading →