Tag Archives: suffering

Blessing for the Brokenhearted

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Lent 1B, 18 February 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 9:8-17. I will remember my covenant.
  • 1 Peter 3:18-22. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
  • Mark 1:9-15. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

O God of the spirit, 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.

We have entered the season of Lent in our liturgical year. For those of you who are newish to Emmanuel, I want you to know that, in my view, this is the season that most closely aligns with the spirituality and the ethos of Emmanuel Church. We see the sin in the world; that is, we see so many ways in which the mark of Love is missed. (The Biblical definition of sin is missing the mark.) We know our need for mercy. “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we [and others] have from time to time most grievously have committed,” as the Rite 1 Confession goes. The season of Lent, a time for self-examination and repentance, feels made for us. And you know that’s good, because it’s not fair for extroverts to get all of the holidays! 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 →

If You Want to Hear the Truth

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Advent 1B, 3 December 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 64:1-9. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down….We are your people.
  • 1 Corinthians 1:1-9. So that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • Mark 13:24-37. Keep awake.

O God of repentance, repair, and reconciliation, 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.

Hello! Happy Advent! Happy Churchy New Year! I’m so glad to be back with you after four months of time away.  I’m eager to hear about how you’ve changed and grown while we’ve been apart.  I hope you’ll find a time to talk with me so we can catch up; or if you’re new to Emmanuel, so that we can get to know one another. I have stories to tell you about my adventures learning about my Maryland ancestors and my Civil Rights pilgrimage with my wife Joy across the deep South – from Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. I’ve been learning about and reflecting more deeply on my family’s relationship with racial oppression, my Church’s (big C) relationship with racial oppression, and my government’s relationship with racial oppression. Along the way, I’ve been building new relationships with folks who are engaging in racial reckoning by learning and practicing restorative and reparative justice in meaningful and sustainable ways. My heart is full of gratitude for Emmanuel Church’s gift to me of time away for rest and restoration, and for education and inspiration. Continue reading →

Eternal Life

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Easter 7A, 21 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 1:6-14. All of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women.
  • 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 [but what about 4:16?]. If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.
  • John 17:1-11. Protect them in your name that you have given me…so that they may be one as we are one.

O God our protector, 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 in our Church calendar we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost. It’s a liturgical acknowledgement of a sort of limbo, in which Jesus has triumphed over death and but has yet to go to his heavenly reward; the comfort and the inspiration, the clarifying flame of the Holy Spirit, which he had promised to send, has not yet arrived. It’s a little bit like the in-between time at Emmanuel between the end of our cantata season and the beginning of chapel camp. 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 →

Immersion

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Proper 24B.  17 October 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Job 38:1-7, 34-41. Who?
Hebrews 5:1-10. Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.
Mark 10:35-45.  What is it you want me to do for you?

O God of Mercy and Compassion, 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 have many reasons to deck our dear souls, our dear selves, with gladness, as the famous chorale tune begins. God woke us up today and called us to this place. We have responded to our longings, whether they are barely perceptible or practically billboard-sized. God has put longings in our hearts, longings to make spiritual meaning of our lives and of our world with shared prayer, communal wisdom, and the practice of self-giving love. Now I realize that some of you might be thinking, “Oh, that’s not why I’m here! I’m just here for Diana’s baptism,” or “I’m just here for the music!” or “I’m just here because it matters to someone I care about.” My response is, “I am too! It’s all good, and I’m so glad you’re here!” Continue reading →

The Crux

Aside

Proper 19B.  12 September 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Proverbs 1:20-33. How long, O [stupid] ones, will you love being [stupid]?
James 3:1-12. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing….This ought not to be so.
Mark 8:27-38.  Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

O God of Integrity and Compassion, 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.

Before I speak about our Gospel reading for today, I want to say something about our reading from Proverbs. It sounds to me like it could be a column in The New York Times (or a sermon in Boston) addressing those in positions of influence over our climate or our white-supremacist culture, or those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19 by actively discouraging vaccines for economic or political gain, and who really and truly should know better. Wisdom, personified in Proverbs as a woman, is preaching, and she is making her strongest plea[1] to those who seem to love being stupid, willfully naïve, not simple in the sense of incapable of understanding, but those who have arrogantly rejected her insights and warnings. “How long, O stupid ones,” she says, “how long will you love being stupid?” Her laughter at the easy-to-predict catastrophe that has resulted from ignoring her sage advice may seem harsh, but it’s not unlike any of us rejoicing when an oppressor or tyrant falls because of self-induced calamity.[2] Wisdom’s laughter is not a generic form of Schadenfreude (or joy at another’s suffering). She is calling to account corrupt leaders, not innocent lambs. Continue reading →

Covenantal Connectedness

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany, B, February 14, 2021, The 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.”
2 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.

We have come to the end of the season of Epiphany, the season of celebrating sacred gifts and divine disclosures. In our Hebrew Bible lesson this morning we have the wonderful story from 2 Kings about how Elisha got the power and the authority to carry on Elijah’s work after Elijah was gone, after he was “taken up.” Elisha had been travelling with and learning from Elijah for many years. He had burned his farming equipment and slaughtered his oxen, thus destroying his means of income, his livelihood;  he had left his home so that he could travel with the prophet Elijah (much more dramatic than leaving the boats and nets with Zebedee and his hired hands to follow Jesus).

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Look up at the stars and see Who!

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Epiphany, 5B, February 7, 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Isaiah 40:21-31. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these.
1 Corinthians 9:16-23. I do it all for the sake of the Gospel, so that I might share its blessings.
Mark 1:29-39. Everyone is searching for you.

O God of Blessing, 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.

Our readings for today raise more questions than they give answers, but that’s okay with me because I love the questions. Our first reading, from the 40th chapter of Isaiah, follows the famous plea from God for comfort and consolation for a people who have been devastated and who are despairing.

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and call to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is more than fully paid…In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in a desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together. God is going to gather up the lambs and carry them and gently lead the mother sheep.

What we hear today in Isaiah is the last part of a tender overture to an opus of consolation, a love song written to bring relief to people who had been far from home, in exile in Babylon for more than half a century.
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Turn around!

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Advent 2B, December 6, 2020. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 40:1-11 Cry out!
2 Peter 3:8-15a Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
Mark 1:1-8 He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

O God of the prophets, 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.

Every year our branch of Christianity gives us a new year, advent, a new season for longing to hear and respond to lessons of prophetic wisdom and calls for repentance writ large. This morning our collect for the day gathers us as one to beg for grace to heed the prophets’ warnings and forsake our sins, our collective sins: the sins of our communities, corporations, governments, and churches. We beg for grace because we surely cannot forsake our sins without grace. If the good news is that God’s grace is abundantly available to us, all around us, completely accessible for the asking, then what? How do we drink from the deep well of God’s grace so that we heed the prophetic warnings and forsake our sins?
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