Proper 23C, October 13, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of sacred story, 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.

This sermon is going to include a list-making exercise.  So you might want to have a pen or pencil ready – or your notes page on your smart phone will do also. If we were a parish that had a sign with this week’s sermon title listed out front, I’d call this sermon, “In Defense of the Other Nine.” Ten lepers yelled out to Jesus to have mercy on them. Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests. He didn’t say “okay, I do have mercy.” He didn’t say “great is your faith.” He didn’t say, “not my job,” but he also didn’t touch them – there’s nothing to suggest that he even got near them. They kept their distance, the story says. They shouted out asking for mercy. He said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” he says. “Go on.” Continue reading →

Proper 22C, October 6, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Lamentations 1:1-6 Her priests groan, her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter….nobody goes to church any more.
2 Timothy 1:1-11 I am reminded of …a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice…rekindle the gift of God that is within you.
Luke 17:5-10 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

O God of all, 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 have some show and tell for you today. While my helpers are passing out mustard seeds, I want to say something about the cantata placement today. This cantata was written to bracket the sermon. So we are offering it today as Bach intended. Thanks to everyone who made the complicated logistics work. I love that phrase “as Bach intended.” It’s not completely as Bach intended though – because Bach also intended that the pitch be higher, the lights be dimmer, the preacher to be a man and for the sermon to last for at least 45 minutes (which sounds like some good nap time)! I don’t think you’re going to have time for a nap this morning. Continue reading →

Proper 20C, September 22, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

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.

Welcome to this grand sanctuary, this haven of beauty. Welcome to this magnificent community, whose mission is to welcome you, no matter how long you’ve been here, and wherever you are on your spiritual journey, even and especially if you are not in such a good place on your spiritual journey! Welcome to a gathering of people that will love you just the way you are and will love you too much to let you stay that way! Welcome to church in the Back Bay, which often turns out to be very hard to get to, in bad weather and in good weather! Welcome to a worship service in which the readings are usually challenging and sometimes confounding, the prayers of the people are often disturbing, and the music is reliably sublime! Welcome to a church long on questions and short on answers, and yet, a church where one beggar can always show another beggar where to get some bread. Continue reading →

Proper 19C; September 15, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

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.

Our Gospel reading from Luke contains two well-known stories as a preamble to the granddaddy of all parables – the prodigal son.  But we won’t hear the prodigal son story next week – it will get skipped because it got read in church this past Lent.  I’d bet most of you know it, though.  These stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin build up to the story of the lost son.  For those of us who attended ChurchSchool as little children, they are among the first stories that we learned.  I was thinking about this the other day and remembered how when I was a child, getting lost was a clear and present danger for me.  So these stories were very reassuring.

One of my earliest memories is leaving my backyard at the age of two, to go toward a woman I thought was my mother, far off in the distance.  But as I got closer to her, like a mirage, she turned out not to be my mother and so I kept looking, wandering further away, across a busy street, more and more confused and distraught.  As I reflected on this, from my middle-aged vantage point, I realized that I was both the lost one and the seeker.  But mostly now I am the self-righteous one who grumbles, what on earth was my mother doing that she left me unsupervised in the back yard in the first place? Continue reading →

Proper 18C, September 8, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

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.

So how about those readings? We have a vision of God as an evil potter, angry and manipulative; a story of a runaway slave being sent back to his owner; and an admonition about being fit to follow Jesus only if one hates family and life itself and is willing to give up all one’s possessions. I’m just going to focus just on the Gospel because it’s more than enough!

I will start with two confessions. The first confession is that part of me hears our Gospel reading and thinks, “great, we are all off the hook – let’s end church early today and go out and enjoy this beautiful morning because none of us can be Jesus’ disciples!” And then I recall the late Archibald Epps, one time dean of students at Harvard College and stalwart member of Christ Church, Cambridge, shaking his finger at me and scolding me for making fun of Holy Scripture (that really happened). And next, I remember that it is an enormous honor to stand in this pulpit and I’d better do my best to live up to it. That leads to the second confession: the more difficult the reading, the more likely I am to go to the ancient Hebrew and Greek to see if a different translation will provide illumination. I should do both every single week, but I don’t. It takes a lot of time because I’m not a fast translator, and translation exercises are best done in conversation with other translators. Continue reading →