Monthly Archives: July 2014

Come down, O Love Divine!

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Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 12A, July 27, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 29:15-28 This is not done in our country.

Romans 8:26-39 We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 Have you understood all this?O God of grace, 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.
Everyone take a deep breath and blow it out twice as slowly as you took it in. Do it again, breathing in the gift of oxygen; breathing out your gift back to the plants of carbon dioxide. Breathe the Divine Love come down – the breath of life – in and out. You know, in biblical terms, the word for breath, and wind, and spirit are all the same: ruach in Hebrew. I thought we might start with feeling thankful for breath – because — Continue reading →

For the Love of God

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Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 10A, July 13, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 25:19-34 If it is going to be this way, why do I live?

Romans 8:1-11 Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

Matthew 13:1-23 In one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.

O God of grace, 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.

There is an old Jewish wisdom teaching that God created humans because God loves stories. It follows that God is the Word – we make the narratives with the Word. Two of our three readings this morning are stories – we have the story of Esau and Jacob and the most expensive bowl of red lentil soup there ever was in the history of the world. Our Gospel story is famously known as the Parable of the Sower. I so often wonder if the Apostle Paul’s letters might have been more comprehensible and, thus persuasive, as folk stories rather than high rhetoric – elegant as it is. Continue reading →

Dat Guy

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Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9A, July 6, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 Please give me a little water.

Romans 7:15-25a For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.O God of mercy, 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.

You know that desert island question, if you were stranded on a desert island and could have only one book, which would it be? My tricky answer, since at least the third grade, (geek that I am) has been The Bible, because that’s when I learned that there were 66 books in the Bible (that is, the Christian Protestant Bible, or the real Bible, according to my Protestant father). Imagine my delight when I arrived at college and got my hands on the Bible that the Episcopal Church uses with 16 more books in it for a grand total of 82! Bonus! But it’s not only because there are so many books bound into one that I love the literature of the Bible – it’s that there’s hardly a part in which I cannot lose myself and find myself in the stories of the chances and challenges of the people of God. Continue reading →