Tag Archives: Episcopal Church

Blessed Pauli Murray

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Feast of Pauli Murray.  9 July. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Sirach 15:1-6. They will lean on her and not fall.
  • Galatians 3:23-29. There is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male and female.
  • Mark 12:1-12.  The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone [or keystone]; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing.

O God of reconciling 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.

Today is a long-anticipated, special day at Emmanuel Church because we are celebrating the Feast Day of The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray with the unveiling of a statue of her, beautifully rendered by our Artist-in-Residence Ted Southwick. The statue is installed on the sanctuary pulpit, from which Dr. Murray preached. We are thrilled and honored to welcome her niece Rosita Stevens-Holsey, who will speak with us after the service. While Dr. Murray’s feast day is July 1, the day that she completed her earthly mission, today is the 112th anniversary of her baptism at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Just prior to being ordained, she had described herself as: woman, Christian, seminarian, poet, lawyer, person of color, and senior citizen. Last week in Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in the bigoted-website case, she recalled Murray’s pioneering work with regard to public accommodations.[1] I want to assure you that Pauli Murray is still speaking to us all. Continue reading →

The realm of heaven has come near.

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Advent 2A:  Dec. 4, 2022.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

Isaiah 11:1-10.  With the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (That’s some powerful bad breath!)
Romans 15:4-13. On behalf of the truth of God.
Matthew 3:1-12.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

O God, hope of the prophets, 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.

For our Second Sunday of Advent this year, our scripture lessons begin with the second half of a beautiful oracle or poem in Isaiah. Maybe the first half is omitted from our lesson because it is not as charming as the second half. The first half describes how the mighty have fallen like tall trees in a forest that has been clear cut. It’s a wasteland. There are only stumps left where there had been a beautiful forest. The context is the collapse of the Assyrian occupying military, which was itself in control as the result of the total failure of the dynasty of King David, which had utterly miscarried its obligations to care for those who were most vulnerable and weak: aliens, widows, orphans, and other impoverished people. The government of the people of God had neglected its duties to be morally responsible for doing no wrong, no violence, to the neediest people. Continue reading →

Keep your hand on the plow and hold on.

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Proper 8C, 26 June 2022, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

1 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14. You have asked a hard thing….(Keep your eyes on me as I am taken).
Galatians 5:1,13-25.  The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Luke 9:51-62. Follow me.

O God our help and our hope, 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.

Buckle up. On Friday, I was listening to a recording of Mahalia Jackson singing the African American spiritual “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on,” when the news came that the Supreme Court of the United States had overturned Roe vs. Wade, eliminating the Constitutional right to the bodily autonomy of people who are pregnant. It hit me like the news of a loved-one’s death after a prolonged illness. The news seemed sudden and felt devastating, even though I expected it. It’s like a gut punch or, to put a finer point on it, for some of us it’s a uterine punch. The majority decision that reproductive autonomy, when it comes to pregnancy, is a states-rights issue rather than a human-rights issue, will immediately eliminate access to legal abortions in 20 states, for about 25.5 million people with a uterus who are of reproduction age (which starts at about 12, by the way, and can go beyond 50). Continue reading →

Your love changes everything.

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Epiphany 3C, 23 January 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10. Do not be grieved; the joy of the Lord is your strength.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Luke 4:14-21. Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

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.

Before I address Luke’s signature story about the miraculous beginning of the ministry of Jesus, I want to make sure you noticed that two verses are omitted from our lectionary-appointed reading of Nehemiah this morning: verses 4 and 7. I hope you wondered what was missing when you looked at the citation. Maybe you even guessed that I would tell you? (I will!) The verses contain long lists of names. Verse 4 lists the names of the thirteen people who stood with Ezra as he read the Torah, on a wooden platform, which had been made for the purpose. He was standing with his leadership team. [1] And then in verse 7 is a list of thirteen other people, who were there to help the congregation to understand the sacred text. [2] Let’s not miss the idea that the scripture has always been challenging to understand, and that it’s best engaged in conversation, in community. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth, has also left us a pep talk about what it means to be a part of a gathering – one body with many members with a variety of gifts, who have great need of one another. The passage we heard this morning tees up his treatise on love, which we will hear next Sunday. 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 →

2021

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  • 1 Jan. Orbis Books published When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community by our 11th rector, The Rev. Dr. William Blaine-Wallace.
  • 21 Jan.  Boston Sun article by Seth Daniel, “Made for This Time: Surprisingly Emmanuel Church Was Engineered for COVID-19”, discussed the efforts of Michael Scanlon and Julian Bullitt to monitor air quality throughout our building, which was designed in the time of tuberculosis.
  • March.  The Rev. Tamra Tucker and our rector formed two mixed groups of parishioners from common cathedral and Emmanuel to follow The Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground dialogue series on race and faith.
  • July 29.  Kevin Neel retired as organist and parish administrator par excellence.
  • 26 Sept. We celebrated the retirement of Pat Krol, who had served as Executive Director of Emmanuel Music and greeter since 2006.  We funded the cantata and dedicated in her honor these doors, which she held open every Sunday while our choristers and liturgists to processed into the Sanctuary.
  • 31 Oct.  Memorial service for The Rev. Dr. David J. Siegenthaler (1926-2020), former priest in charge, was held in our well-ventilated sanctuary.  After leaving Emmanuel, Dr. Siegenthaler had served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Duxbury MA, and then as archivist at the Episcopal Divinity School, where he taught for four decades.

Valued & Cared about (with audio)

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Second Sunday after the Epiphany (C), January 17, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 62:1-5 Your land married for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married – so shall your God rejoice in you.
1 Corinthians There are varieties of gifts.
John 2:1-11 First of his signs…revealed his glory…his disciples believed in him.

O God of justice, 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.

By now many of you have seen the news of the Anglican Communion. This past week the Primates of Anglican and Episcopal Churches around the world met in England to talk about marriage in the Church. While I don’t want to make light of the lives that are at stake with regard to treatment of LGBT people all over the world, it does strike me as a little funny that leaders of our particular expression of church have been arguing about marriage since King Henry VIII. As luck (or the Holy Spirit) would have it, we have three scripture readings teed up for our prayerful consideration on this Second Sunday after the Epiphany that have some things to say to us about discerning a way forward with generosity and humility, with compassion and hope. Continue reading →

2012

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Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

Photo credit: UNC. Carolina Digital Library and Archives via WikiCommons.

The 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church resolved to add The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray to Holy Women, Holy Men and the Calendar of the Church Year, which now commemorates her life on the day of her death, July 1.

Murray attended Emmanuel in the early 1970s and served on our vestry (1973-75).  In her autobiography (1987) , she credits former Rector Al Kershaw with encouraging her to leave her faculty position at Brandeis University and pursue ordination in The Episcopal Church.  In 1977, at the age of sixty-six, she became The Church’s first black-woman priest.

See also

 

 

 

1976

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  • 27 Jan. Craig Smith & Edward Simone conducted a free concert in celebration of Mozart’s 220th birthday.  With standing-room only in our sanctuary, soprano Jane Bryden brought the house down with Popoli di Tasaglia (K.318), which Globe correspondent Richard Buell deemed “flabbergasting [and] insouciant”. They celebrated Mozart’s birthday with a concert for years to come.

  • Pauli Murray received a Master of Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary.  She was then ordained a deacon in The Episcopal Church by The Rt. Rev. Morris F. Arnold, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts.

  • The Episcopal Church, at its General Convention in Minneapolis, voted to ordain women as priests, beginning January 1, 1977.

1974

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  • The Rev. Mark Harvey began his jazz ministry and founded the Jazz Coalition (later the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra), which sponsored concerts, liturgies, and festivals here over the next four decades.
  • March 3.  As our sponsored seminarian, Pauli Murray preached from our pulpit her inaugural sermon on a passage she had selected (Isaiah 61: 1-4), entitled ” Women Seeking Admission to Holy Orders: As Crucifers Carrying the Cross”.* Saying that Emmanuel “sent me forth as a member of your congregation with your blessings and prayers to begin my training for the Sacred Ministry”, she asked:

Why in the face of the devastating rejection at the Louisville General Convention of last October, 1973–a rejection which Bishop Paul Moore of NY has called the violation of the very core of their personhood–[have the women seeking ordination to the priesthood] only increased their determination to enter the higher levels of the clergy?

Then paraphrasing Isaiah 53:3, she prophesied:

I believe that these women are in truth the Suffering Servants of Christ, despised and rejected, women of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  They are answering to a higher authority than that of the political structures of our Church, and in the fullness of time God will sweep away those barriers and free the Church to carry forward its mission of renewal as a living force and God’s witness in our society.

* Reprinted in Daughters of Thunder:  Black women preachers and their sermons, 1850-1979, Bettye Collier-Thomas (NY: Jossey Bass, 1998),  pp. 240-44.  Please see also About Pauli Murray and our Timeline entries about her:  1951,1970, 1973, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.