Monthly Archives: July 2024

Pauli Murray’s Reflections on Issues Dividing the Church

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July 29,2024

Following our Chapel Camp on the eve of the ordination of the Philadelphia 11, we turn to listen to Pauli Murray’s reflections on the issues that were dividing the Church at the time. From her March 18, 1977, conversation with Heather Huyck (on audiotape streamed by the Schlesinger Library), we learn about her activism prior to the vote on ordination in 1976.

She regularly supported the women seeking ordination, attending the major events from 1973-1976, writing letters to bishops, and participating in the conferences and discussions leading up to the 1976 General Convention. Pauli said that she chose not to attend that convention. She had just entered seminary and was refreshingly candid about her position. She said she told herself, “It’s your business to prepare yourself for the priesthood… and then when you’re prepared you have something to say… I thought the best thing was for me to stay home and pray.” Continue reading →

Doing the Next Brave & Compassionate Thing

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Proper 12B, 28 July 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Samuel 11:1-15.  As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.
  • Ephesians 3:14-21.  That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
  • John 6:1-21. Ego eimi mey phobeisthe.

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.

Today we hear the two stories that were left out of last week’s Gospel lesson from Mark. For some reason, the lectionary assigns the Gospel reading for today from John’s version. If you’d like a homework assignment, read all six feeding stories in the four Gospels side by side! Given how very different the four Gospels are, the versions of these stories are remarkably similar. Mark’s version is characteristically a little rougher, John’s is more polished. Mark’s Jesus is in the thick of conflict and confusion all along; for John, Jesus’ feet never really touched the ground. The story of Jesus feeding a huge, hungry crowd is one of the most significant stories about Jesus. It’s rare that a miracle story appears in all four Gospels. I still think that the lectionary should have stuck with Mark this week, though, because it’s complicated and confusing to mix and match Gospel stories. It means shifting gears rather wildly from one literary world to another, each with different assumptions, strategies, purposes, and even audiences. [1] Some may wonder whether the repetition and similarities of the feeding stories make them more likely memory and less likely metaphor. I don’t know; but for me, the stories are equally powerful either as memory or metaphor.  Continue reading →

Pauli Murray on Women’s Ordination

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July 24th, 2024

Our upcoming Chapel Camp on July 29, 2024, will mark the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women as priests in the Episcopal Church. The first ordination of women took place on July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.

The litany written by our Assistant Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Carol Gallagher, for this commemorative year emphasizes both the struggles and firmness of faith of the Philadelphia 11 and the brave women who followed the path to ordination.

We write today about Pauli Murray’s contributions to the movement for women’s ordination a few years leading up to 1974. Pauli actively championed women’s issues before considering her own ordination as the first African American woman to become a priest in 1977. She described her efforts in this way:

“The burgeoning women’s movement absorbed much of my energies, for I was serving on a faculty committee to improve the status of women at Brandeis, on the national board of the ACLU to win support for the ERA, and on the Commission on Women organized by Church Women United and chaired by my good friend Thelma Stevens.” (Song in a Weary Throat, p. 545) Continue reading →

Don’t skip the verses!

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Proper 11B, 21 July 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Samuel 7:1-14a. I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day.
  • Ephesians 2:11-22.  He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.
  • Mark 6:30-34, 53-56. You give them something to eat.

O God of 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.

I hope you noticed that our Gospel portion for this morning is missing quite a few verses, nineteen to be exact; and then it acts like nothing happened. These verses, in my view, are essential to the story, so I’m chagrined that they never get read in church, not next week or any week. They are the Gospel of Mark’s particular version of Jesus telling the weary twelve, who were anticipating a needed rest, to use the five loaves and two fish that they had between them to feed to a crowd of 5,000. After dinner they got back in the boat without Jesus, who had gone up the mountain to pray. Then early the next morning, straining against an adverse wind, they saw Jesus walking on the water. Jesus intended to pass them by, Mark writes, but he saw their terror and told them not to be afraid. When he got in the boat with them, the wind ceased. They were astounded; indeed, they did not understand about the loaves, for their hearts were hardened. In other words, Jesus has just walked on water and calmed a storm, but the disciples are still grumbling about the loaves. Continue reading →

Nesting Stories

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Proper 10B, 14 July 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19.  David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD with all their might.
  • Ephesians 1:3-14.  We should be called children of God, and that is what we are.
  • Mark 6: 14-29. What should I ask for.

O God of the stony roads watered with tears, 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 past few weeks, the opening collects have really been speaking to me and influencing my preaching. This morning, for instance, we prayed that we may know and understand what things we ought to do and have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them. That’s a lot to ask for, isn’t it? Especially when our Gospel lesson is the kind of story that makes many of us hesitant to say “praise to you, Lord Christ” in response to its proclamation. This gruesome story of John the Baptist’s incarceration and execution as a macabre party favor is unusually long and detailed for the Gospel of Mark. And our lectionary doesn’t include the verses just before and after this grim tale, so we’re not made aware that this is one of Mark’s story interruptions. Continue reading →

Juneteenth Reflection

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July 8, 2024

We thank Alden Fossett, seminarian at Yale Divinity School and postulant in the Diocese of Massachusetts for this meditation. It was written with Juneteenth in mind and is a worthy reflection for any day of the year.

And since it is because within this sheet of paper you now hold the best of the South which is dead, and the words you read were written upon it with the best (each box said, the very best) of the new North which has conquered and which therefore, whether it likes it or not, will have to survive, I now believe you and I are, strangely enough, included among those who are doomed to live.

— From the fourth chapter of Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner

First, there was the Watch Night service. December 31, 1862, also known as Freedom’s Eve: that vigil held in secret and sustained by profound faith. Enslaved people huddled and alive, praying in the sanctuary or else in the brush, keeping watch on the threshold, waiting for the sun to rise and usher in 1863, when “all persons held as slaves …  are, and henceforward shall be free.”1 Continue reading →

Remember and imagine!

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Proper 9B, 7 July 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10. King David made a covenant with them..
  • 2 Corinthians 12:2-10..  My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.
  • Mark 6:1-13. Jesus left that place and came to his home….Then he went among the villages teaching.

O God of grace, 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 our Gospel reading for today, Mark tells us that Jesus left the place where the hemorrhaging woman was healed and Jairus’ daughter was raised, and came to his hometown. I used to assume that Mark meant Nazareth when he said that Jesus came to his hometown, but now when I read this story with what comes before and what comes after, it seems clear to me that it’s not Nazareth at all; Jesus and his disciples are along the Sea of Galilee, and Mark has already mentioned in chapter three that Jesus, originally from Nazareth, was at home in Capernaum. Jesus had made a new home, a bigger home to accommodate not just his biological kin, but his kin in the kin-dom work of repentance, reconciliation and right relationship.  Continue reading →