Third Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 10, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of resurrection, 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 are well on our way into the Great Fifty Days of Easter, the extended Feast of the Resurrection. I’m always grateful that the Church calendar gives 40 days for Lent, but 50 days for Easter. Lent is easier for many of us – we can believe in the need for increased focus on penitence, discipline, prayer, study, and almsgiving. Many of you tell me that Lent is your favorite church season. A season of increased focus on resurrection – on rising from the dead – is what trips people up. So the Church gives us extra time – an extension – to observe, to celebrate new life for what has died, ended, been forgotten or lost! (Some of you might be thinking that ten days is not long enough. That’s okay – this is a group project, not an individual assignment, just stick with us.) This morning I want to offer you an understanding of resurrection that is scripturally based. Our readings for today illuminate an understanding of resurrection for us. Thanks to my colleague, Bruce Epperly, who points out that, according to our lessons, resurrection is universal, mystical, and behavioral.[1] Continue reading →

Second Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 3, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of life, 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 morning we have a trifecta of truly terrible theological ideas: the first in The Acts of the Apostles, a charge against high priests that they were the ones who had Jesus killed. Second, we have the idea of Jesus’ death as a blood atonement from John the Divine in Revelation. And to top it off, we have the story of “Doubting Thomas” from John the Evangelist (somehow bad to doubt?), which will be retold in a beautiful musical form later in Cantata 42. No doubt it will sound better than what I just read, but oy! You know, sometimes our lectionary gives choices – but not today. This Gospel reading is the only portion of all our four Gospels that gets read every single year on the Sunday after Easter, without rotation or options. That’s awfully heavy-handed, in my opinion. Perhaps the only good news about that is that many people take the Sunday after Easter off from attending church! But we’re here, so what are we to do?
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Easter Sunday (C), March 27, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of life, 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.

Whenever I prepare a sermon, I begin with the questions that I have about the assigned reading. In our Gospel lesson, some of my first questions are: Why was the stone moved? To let Jesus out, or to let “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them” in? Why did the men think the women were telling them an idle tale? Did men not believe reports of the experiences of groups of women back in the olden days? Why were Jesus’ burial clothes left behind? What is the Risen Lord wearing? I imagine you have questions also. Continue reading →

Fifth Sunday in Lent (C), March 13, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our heavenly calling, 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.

Many of you know how endlessly fascinated I am by our assigned lectionary readings and by the narrative differences across our four canonical gospels. This being Lectionary Year C, we have been going along just fine, hearing about Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem according to the Gospel of Luke. Suddenly our assigned Gospel reading lurched off into the Gospel of John for this story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet, set in the very few weeks between when Lazarus and Jesus were raised from the dead. It’s a fine story, and I guess Luke thought so too, but he used it in an entirely different way: different woman, different place and a different time. The differences between the stories of a particular woman wiping feet with her hair are not reconcilable in my opinion, and the variations and diversity of Gospel “truth” give us all kinds of elbow room, which is something for which I am always looking — for all of our sake.
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Fourth Sunday in Lent (C), March 6, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O reconciling God, 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.

Earlier this week, I briefly entertained the notion that I would preach about our First Testament Bible lesson from Joshua or our Second Testament lesson from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians – you know, something different. Then I experienced our Tuesday early morning Bible study, which was so lively that folks were late to work because they were so stirred up that they didn’t want to stop talking. The parable that gets called, “The Prodigal Son” is a narrative that provokes strong and animated responses. I cannot say the same about either of our other two passages of scripture this morning, although their themes of Passover in Joshua, and being ambassadors for Christ in 2^nd Corinthians are certainly appealing. I decided that I shouldn’t attempt to steer around our Gospel story. So we’re going in! Continue reading →