Monthly Archives: February 2018

Inheriting Love’s Blessing (with audio)

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First Sunday in Lent, Year B, February 18, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 9:8-17 I will remember my covenant.
1 Peter 3:18-22 An appeal to God for a good conscience.
Mark 1:9-15 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

O God of 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.

We began our service for this first Sunday in Lent, as is our practice, with The Great Litany sung in solemn procession. The first liturgy published in English, The Great Litany is intended to be used during times of great distress or danger or devastation. I think what is going on in our nation right now qualifies, don’t you? Sixteenth century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker’s defended praying the Great Litany even when a particular community is not suffering. He wrote: “if we for ourselves had a privilege of immunity, doth not true Christian charity require that whatsoever any part of the world, yea, any one … elsewhere doth either suffer or fear, the same we account as our own burden? What one petition is there found in the whole Litany, whereof we shall ever be able to say at any time that no [one] living needeth the grace or benefit therein craved at God’s hands?” [1} The Great Litany serves to remind us that we belong to one another. We share one another’s joys and we bear each other’s burdens. Continue reading →

Plans Questioned & Prayers Answered

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Fifth Sunday after the Epipany, Year B, February 4, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 40:21-31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
1 Corinthians 9:16-23 In my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge.
Mark 1:29-39 So that I may proclaim the message.”\

O God of our liberation, 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.

One of the many things I love about the Gospel of Mark is his economy of words – both the amount of information packed into a few verses, and the enormous amount of room for the reader or hearer’s imagination, because the details and definitions are not all specified. Of course, this was viewed as a deficiency by later evangelists (Matthew in particular), but I appreciate the spare and breathless prose. Our reading today picks up after just 28 previous verses in which Mark has proclaimed that the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ was that John the Baptist was calling for the heart’s transformation, citing the prophet Isaiah as his authority, John the Baptist was calling for immersion in forgiveness and amendment of life. A whole lot of people answered this call, including Jesus from Nazareth. The experience was a complete life changer for Jesus, who emerged from the Jordan River with dawning understanding that the Spirit from the heavens (the Ruach, the breath of the Holy One) was delighted in him. Without more time than a heartbeat, that same spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness for a quarantine (40 days of separation) where he was being tempted by the Accuser and divine messengers ministered to him. (All that is in just the first 13 verses.)
Continue reading →