2024 Sermons

Sermons of The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz and others at Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston

Handle with prayer!

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Christmas 1C, 29 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD.
  • Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
  • John 1:1-18. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

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 lectionary, which assigns the prologue to the Gospel of John for the first Sunday in Christmas, baffles me. Since we’re in a Gospel of Luke year, why not the story of the presentation of Jesus as an infant in the Temple eight days after he was born? The answer, I guess, is that story will be read on February 2, which is the Feast of the Presentation. Continue reading →

Our souls tell out.

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Advent 4C, 22 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Micah 5:2-5a. And he shall be the one of peace.
Hebrews 10:5-10. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
Luke 1:39-56. Blessed is she who believed.

O God of she who believed, 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 always loved Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Godbearer, more than it seems a good Protestant girl should. It is Mary who draws me to the catholicity of the Episcopal Church. I’ve never understood her to be meek or mild, and I don’t know how anyone who reads Biblical accounts of her could understand her that way either. I don’t know how anyone who hears the words of the Magnificat, which are taken from the Song of Hannah in the Book of Samuel, could hear anything but a religious and political manifesto sung to overthrow tyrants and systems of oppression. Some years ago, the Rev. Nancy Rockwell, wrote an essay entitled, “No More Lying about Mary,” which captured what I have always believed about Mary: she was brave, and she was strong.

Rockwell writes, “God chose a spunky woman” to be the mother of Jesus. She points out that nothing in the text indicates Mary’s age or sexual status, just just that she is not married and has not previously delivered a child. Here’s her description: [1] 

Mary is unmarried when the angel comes. The angel’s invitation and her independent decision tell us Mary does not need permission of clergy –or her parents-– to become pregnant. Mary, wanted by God, according to the angel, for her bold, independent, adventuresome spirit, decides to bear a holy child – for a bold agenda: to bring the mighty down from their thrones; to scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away. This is Mary: well-spoken, wise, gritty. Traveling alone, like every prophet before her, she sets out on her …journey, to [her kinswoman] Elizabeth’s house, to declare her agenda. There will be more journeys: to Bethlehem; to Egypt and back [according to Matthew], to Jerusalem [at least several time until Jesus was]…crucified.

After Jesus’ death, according to Christian history, Mary traveled northwest to Ephesus, where she lived out the rest of her days, in a city well-known for the professional leadership of women.

 It seems to me that Mary’s courage doesn’t imply an absence of fear. I imagine that she left Nazareth and headed for the hills driven first by a desire to get out of town and to check in with Elizabeth, whom the angel Gabriel had said was also unexpectedly pregnant. Perhaps this was before Mary was convinced that any of the news she had was good. Perhaps she wasn’t sure any of her news was good until she was greeted with joy and declared blessed by Elizabeth: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Notice the circularity of the manifesto:  the poor will become rich, and the rich will become poor. “Where is the good news in that?” the rich might wonder. Well, as soon as one becomes poor, the blessings start to flow again. The description is not of a particular cataclysmic event or end, but of the circle of life. I’ve experienced this firsthand. Perhaps you have too.

This most fantastic story is of the only two pregnant prophets to have a scene in the whole Bible, and with uninterrupted dialogue! Joseph wasn’t there, and Zechariah had lost his ability to speak. Reflecting on the scene this past week as I worked on this sermon, I felt stirred to retell a story from my young adulthood.

Back in the early 1990’s, I was beginning the difficult and frightening process of coming out of the closet…as a church lady who felt called to the priesthood. Coming out as a Lesbian, even in the hostile territory south of the Mason-Dixon line, was much easier than coming out as someone imagining ordination in the Episcopal Church. Most of my straight church friends and queer unchurched friends thought I was insane. Looking back on that struggle, however, all of it seems easier than coming out of the closet as someone who has had mystical experiences, sleeping and waking.  I have never wanted people to think of me as the religious nut that I probably (okay, actually) am. Perhaps some of you have suspected it all along, but I am always reluctant to offer evidence from the pulpit.

My journey from Vice President of Human Resources for a large corporation based in Virginia to seminarian at Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts included some real danger and sizable emotional and financial cost. I risked everything, although I’m glad to say that I didn’t lose everything, I did lose a lot. I’m still paying for it; and I’m still benefiting from it. The love and support of other people made it possible, but what really propelled me forward during those early years was a series of vivid dreams. They were so compelling that I wrote them down; I studied them, analyzed them in therapy, and prayed with them. That’s not really the religious nut part. The things I had dreamed, however, started appearing in my waking life. Scenes and activities in my dreams that I had understood as symbolic, metaphorical but not real, started actually happening in the months and few years that followed.  I kept that mostly to myself. As I settled into life in Massachusetts, the memories of the dreams stayed with me.

In one of the dreams, I had returned to St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic parish school run by Franciscans in Joliet, Illinois, which my brother and I had attended for four years of elementary education. Back then, it wasn’t just my status as a Protestant that kept me from having a turn serving at the altar at daily Mass; Catholic girls were not allowed either. But in my dream, a guide encouraged me to journey into the sacristy and then to the altar. The invitation was thrilling, and I accepted with great joy. Then I was told that the whole improbable journey to being permitted to stand at the altar was powered by the surprise discovery of a spring of living water, a source of energy deep within, underneath the structure (the building); and I was invited to walk downstairs to see that wellspring. I awoke with a renewed sense of wonder and courage, well-being and thanksgiving.

Almost fifteen years after I had that dream, in 2007, when I had been a priest for just a few years, I traveled to Palestine and Israel with a group from Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester. Part of the pilgrimage included a stop at The Church of the Visitation at Ein Karem, in the Judean hill country. There in the courtyard is a stunning sculpture of Elizabeth greeting Mary, arms outstretched, with their pregnant bellies nearly touching. Behind the statue is a wall covered with ceramic plaques painted with the opening words of the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”, in more than thirty languages, which makes it abundantly clear that this song applies and belongs to everyone, to the whole world.

The Church of the Visitation stands on the site traditionally identified as the location of the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah. There are Byzantine ruins of a chapel there and subsequent buildings, which have crumbled through the centuries. In 1937 the Franciscans built on top of the ruins in order to preserve the remains of previous chapels found there. When I walked into the chapel, a guide invited me to walk down several flights of stairs to see an ancient wellspring. It was the very wellspring I had seen in my dream so many years earlier. I really don’t have words to describe my shock at seeing it. I was overwhelmed and thrilled by the holy mystery of the fulfillment of what had been shown to me in a dream.

In Luke’s story of this pair of pregnant prophets, I have always heard a story of allowing God’s blessing in difficult situations, of claiming “the privilege of doing hard things,” as one vestry member has called it. I have experienced this Gospel story as giving us an example of how we might be inspired, filled with a spirit of holiness, and how our souls might enlarge or magnify the view of God in the blessed and the stressed situations of our own lives. In this story, each of us is given words to say, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” and in our own languages to repeat whenever we receive an untimely blessing: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  I also hear this as a story of coming out, as acknowledging having received inspiration and  blessing, not only bearing it, but sharing it: telling it out loud. It occurs to me even more deeply that in gestating and giving birth to inspiration, we are called to more than a private experience. We are called also to a form of coming out.

One of the things I’ve learned, as I reflect back on the movement for LGBTQ rights and recognition over the last decades, is that what has made all of the difference is individuals telling their stories: coming out. I believe the Episcopal Church, indeed Emmanuel Church, each one of you (whether you are here for the first time or the umpteenth time) could grow stronger and strengthen others by coming out as who and Whose you are, more and more. The song of Mary applies and belongs to everyone. And as anyone who has come out about anything knows, coming out isn’t ever a one-and-done. Once you come out, staying out becomes a lifetime practice of coming out over and over and over again.

Perhaps you remember the beautiful words of the 13th-century prophet and mystic Meister Eckhart, who wrote this:

What good is it to me
if this eternal birth of the divine Son
takes place unceasingly
but does not take place within myself?

And,
what good is it to me
if Mary is full of grace
and if I am not also full of grace?
What good is it to me
for the Creator to give birth to [a] Son
if I do not also give birth to him
in my time and my culture?

This, then, is the fullness of time:
When the Son of God
is begotten in us. 

I want to add, ‘This, then, is the fullness of time: when our souls tell out the greatness of the Lord.”

  1. The Rev. Nancy Rockwell, “No More Lying about Mary:,  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/no-more-lying-about-mary.

 

Rejoice!

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Advent 3C, 15 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Zephaniah 3:14-20. I will change their shame into praise.
Philippians 4:4-7. Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Luke 3:7-18. What then should we do?

O God of the prophets, 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.

We are careening toward Christmas on this Gaudéte Sunday of Advent (Gaudete is Latin for the imperative plural rejoice.), but we haven’t heard any biblical readings about peaceful preparation for the birth of the infant Jesus. It’s been more about leveling the landscape and reorganizing the society, and less about receiving blankets or swaddling clothes. Our ancient narratives describe nations at war, raging seas, devastation, and disaster with plenty of blame to go around. The people are anxious and afraid; they are struggling. Just to be clear, we are talking about 28 centuries of struggle. The people Zephaniah was addressing were struggling in about 625 BCE. The people the apostle Paul and the evangelist Luke were addressing were struggling in the latter half of the first century of the Common Era. And the people I’m addressing right now are struggling at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Here’s what Zephaniah, son of African descent, says: There is good news in the midst of devastation and disaster, in the midst of the indignities that have been cause for shame and reproach, that have caused hands to grow weak with fear and despair. Zephaniah laments the corruption and injustice rampant in the city of God. The covenant of living in Love has been violated and the religious leadership is implicated once again. (Some things truly do not change.) Zephaniah tells his hearers that in the midst of injustice and oppression, disaster and shame, uncertainty and fear, is the Holy One: very near is a vigorous and mighty One, Who is right now rejoicing over the people with gladness, exulting and singing loudly, and renewing the people in Love. The word here rendered renewing is better translated engraving, as a metal artist might inscribe a mark of belonging or a beautiful design. [1]. It can also be translated plough, as a farmer might cut a furrow for planting seeds. Listening to the Holy One will cause the people to be marked and prepared, opened up for Love. Zephaniah announces that Judgment Day is cancelled;  it has become Non-judgment Day. Rejoice because you are being inscribed and opened up for Love. So I wonder about the engravings or furrowings among us as the people of Emmanuel, where in the middle of the chaos, the Holy One is surely opening up new lines for Love among us. Gaudéte!

Our passage from Philippians this morning doesn’t give us the context for the writing, but the whole letter of Paul to the Jesus-followers in Philippi, was written from his prison cell (probably in Ephesus), where he was awaiting trial and a possible death sentence. He was writing to a faith community with a turbulent past, to people who had more than their share of pain. His instruction to rejoice and to not worry, then, is particularly striking and poignant to me, because he is taking a full accounting of fear and grief, of his own and theirs, of past and future. The rejoicing that Paul is encouraging is defiance, according to theologian Karl Barth. In Philippians, Paul’s joy is a defiant Nevertheless! that he sets against the Philippians’ fears that things are getting worse and not better. [2] Rejoice, Paul writes, because of the unnumbered blessings you have already received. Claiming joy is a radical and subversive form of resistance to all that colludes to oppress. I urge you to take some time today to rejoice in the blessings of your life so far. Gaudéte!

In the Gospel reading from Luke. John the Baptist is yelling out at the people who came to be baptized by him, “You viper hatchlings!” [3]. Did anyone get whiplash from today’s Gospel reading, which went from John the Baptist using a metaphor to call the people treacherous and venomous, characterized by deceit and hypocrisy, to the narrator’s best storytelling voice concluding, “With many other exhortations John the Baptist proclaimed the good news to the people.” That always makes me think, “Boy, if that’s the good news, I’d hate to hear the bad news.”

And yet, my virtual colleague Mark Davis writes in his Greek translation blog that there is plenty of good news here. We just don’t hear it, because we are conditioned to fear this language. John the Baptist talks about the wrath to come, but he does not call it God’s wrath. John’s idea of offspring of adders evokes the inherited, generational nature of broken relationships, of injustice and oppression. John is naming reasons they have come to seek the baptism of repentance. They have been participating in systems of oppression, exploitation, and extortion; and they want to stop. They have been complacent in economies that work to make rich people happy and make everyone else afraid; and that must come to an end. John is declaring that whatever tempts us to behave badly toward one another must be separated from the clean grain, the nutritious bits, the good fruit, whether it is physical, financial, or spiritual. Davis notes “There is nothing necessarily violent about a farmer cutting down a barren or soured tree and burning it, particularly if it might cross-pollenate and contaminate good fruit-bearing trees. This is a way of protecting the good trees and ensuring good fruit.” [4]

And what does good fruit mean? “What should we do?” the crowds asked. “What should we do?” the tax collectors asked. “What should we do?” the soldiers asked. John said,

Share your clothing and your food. If you have only a little, share a little. If you have a lot, share a lot. Do not take more than your portion; curb your greed and your fear that you won’t have enough. Do not extort money by shakedowns or false accusations to increase your wages. Exercise restraint. Stop victimizing people to leverage your own power by sucking up to people who have more power.

People, this is not rocket surgery, as my wife Joy loves to say. The good news is that they all wanted to be baptized or immersed in repentance. They wanted to bear good fruit! Gaudéte!

We know that Luke’s community wanted to be immersed by Jesus in a spirit of holiness and fire because the Gospel got written and widely shared. I hear the word fire as fire in the belly, energy and enthusiasm for caring for one another, especially for those who were most vulnerable. That is what being immersed in a holy spirit and fire means. What about us? What should we do? What should clergy do? What about librarians, musicians, artists, writers, office workers, teachers, and retirees?  For all of John’s fiery talk, notice he doesn’t tell even tax collectors and soldiers to quit their jobs and join him permanently in the wilderness. John had different advice for different people in varying circumstances, and he expected them to return home by a different way, transformed; and so should we.

I want to tell you a story of Emmanuel Church, which a few of you witnessed, but many of you probably haven’t heard before. Back in the olden days of my time as your priest, early-Tuesday-morning Bible study took place in person at 15 Newbury Street. It was an odd-numbered month (we continue to meet in odd months) and the weather was very chilly, so my guess is late November or early March. Six or seven of us had finished our conversation when someone knocked on the door of the Emmanuel Room. It was a man who was wearing summer clothes with no jacket. I immediately sized him up as someone who had probably just been released from incarceration. If you don’t have family or friends to bring you clothing, you leave prison with the clothes you were wearing when you arrived, no matter what the season. It’s so awful and shameful. The man asked if Emmanuel had a thrift shop with clothing. I shook my head sadly and said, unfortunately we don’t. Meanwhile, Betsy Bunn was also sizing him up and without skipping a beat she just took her jacket off and gave it to the man. It was a perfect fit. He thanked her profusely. I looked at her, awestruck. She said, “I have more than one coat.” I want you to know that there are countless similar stories of generosity, resilience, and well-being that emanate from the many communities who call 15 Newbury Street home, communities where belonging is the way to helping each other grow in generosity, resilience, and well-being. Gaudéte!

You may have noticed our collect for the day pleading for speedy delivery of grace and mercy to help and deliver us. I am here to tell you that the grace of God, the compassion and mercy of God, are already all around us. We are soaking in the bountiful blessings of God. We have cause to rejoice. It is up to us to speedily honor these blessings with gratitude and to speedily respond in kind by sharing our resources and extending the mercy and compassion of God in our every interaction. If that seems daunting because of your circumstances, just start with the people you encounter between now and noon! If that seems too easy, then see how far you can get into this day or this week, and report back! Gaudéte!

  1. Charash can mean keep still or silent. The NRSV translation of renew makes no sense to me at all, but I might not know enough to understand.
  2.  Karl Barth in his commentary, The Epistle to the Philippians, found at www.goodreads.com/quotes.
  3. Sarah Ruden’s translation in The Gospels: a New Translation (New York: Modern Library, 2021), p. 174.
  4. D. Mark Davis, posting for the third Sunday in Advent to his blog www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

 

 

 

 

With the Depths of Our Hearts

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Advent 2C, 8 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Baruch 5:1-9. Put on the robe of righteousness that comes from God.
Philippians 1:1-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.
Luke 3:1-6. Prepare the way of the Lord.

O disturbing 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.

This Advent, like most every Advent, I find myself wishing for some pre-holiday quiet;  but John the Baptist is always loud. It’s hard to get a sense of just what kind of loud he is from the first six verses of Luke, Chapter 3, when, in many of our heads, the prophet Isaiah’s words are accompanied by beautiful music from Handel’s Messiah. But in verse seven, which we will hear next week, John the Baptist shouts to folks who have come out to be baptized by him (mind you, they have come to receive the very baptism of repentance that he was calling for), and he yells at them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. If you don’t, you are like a tree that is cut down and thrown into the fire.” John the Baptist is loud, and he’s in a very bad mood. He’s wild-eyed and hopping mad. H is not the patron saint of sitting quietly sipping cocoa through a peppermint stick for a straw, dreaming of a white Christmas.

And so, liturgically, we are deliberately setting the context for our celebration of the Nativity in two weeks and two days, not with quiet reflection, but with disturbing visions from the Gospel of Luke. We began last week looking through Luke’s lens at the brink of the Passion. This week and next week we look back a little further at John the Baptist. Luke draws a picture of him as a cousin to Jesus. Perhaps they were blood relatives, but none of the other Gospels mention it; and I don’t think Luke is trying to portray a familial connection. I think, for Luke, John’s and Jesus’ work were closely related, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they had known one another since before they were even born. 

Luke’s audience would have immediately recognized John the Baptist as a prophet who was using words from Isaiah. And Luke’s audience would have immediately recognized him as a prophet just like Jeremiah. Both consecrated before birth, they predicted judgment at the end of the age, proclaimed God’s saving grace, and announced that God’s new covenant was available to everyone who repented. The books of Isaiah and Jeremiah are set in the contexts of specific points in history with references to the reigns of particular kings. So Luke dates the moment of this story of John the Baptist: It was in the fifteenth year of the domination of Emperor Tiberius, when the notoriously cruel Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,  treasonous and insecure Herod ruled Galilee, Herod’s rival and brother Philip ruled Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruled Abilene. If that’s not enough, Luke adds to the context the corrupt and complicit high priesthood of the retired Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas. Into this period of deepest despair a word of God came to John, son of Zechariah.

A word of God came to John in the wilderness (not the word; there’s no definite article here). Notably, a word of God didn’t come to anyone on the Who’s Who list of rulers of government or temple, but to John, out in the middle of nowhere in the year 26 or 27 CE . Isaiah heard a word of God in something like 738 BCE, which the compiler of the book of Isaiah put on a scroll more than a century after that, a word that Luke recorded two generations after John’s ministry, a word coming to us nearly two millennia later! Here is a word of God for all people for all time.

John was in a particular middle of nowhere at the mighty Jordan River; and he was in every place that is wilderness. Wilderness is the place of formation for God’s people, a place of disorganization and dispute, of loss and grief, of surprising beauty and even intermittent joy, of vulnerability and dependence on God (in other words, a long spiritual journey). Here is a word of God for our particular place on our particular spiritual journey. Here is a word of God for all people for all time in all places, all kinds of nobodies in all kinds of nowheres,  all flesh.

Rather than being a claim in the literal meaning of the term, that all flesh will see the salvation of God, this word of hope is echoed in a voice in every situation of despair. Commentator Mark Davis writes, “Its meaning may lie not so much in how it is fulfilled in any given moment in time, but in how true it is in every moment in time.”[1] A word of hope, a word of love is always and eternally being spoken by the Holy One. A word of hope, a word of love, is without limits to those who can hear.

It seems to me that being able to hear a word of hope, a word of love, has to do with immersing ourselves in repentance. Baptism is about immersion. The words baptize and immerse are synonymous in the New Testament. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in repentance, to bathe in repentance? It means to change. Repentance is not about being sincerely sorry, regretful or ashamed. Repentance is about changing thinking, direction, and action:  returning to God, returning from alienation to reintegration, from estrangement to reconciliation with God, remembering our citizenship in the realm of God. What does it mean to immerse ourselves in repentance for the forgiveness of sin? Forgiveness of sin here literally means to divorce sin, to send sin away. It means to give ourselves and others a future. It means freeing ourselves and freeing others to move forward in a new direction toward God, which is the direction of Love. It’s not easy, and we need help (a lot of help), but the cost of not doing it is so much greater than the cost of immersing ourselves in repentance, and turning again toward Love. 

If you’ve heard me preach before, you know I’m drawn to the practice of weaving together strands of theology, scripture, liturgy, and parish ministry in ways that provoke and motivate us to live out our mission in the world. I recently read about Gus Speth, an environmental lawyer who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth has said he used to think the most pressing environmental problems were the loss of biodiversity, the collapse of ecosystems, and climate change. He thought 30 years of good science could address and even solve those problems. Now he believes the most pressing environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy; and to deal with those, he says, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. Scientific methods don’t know how to address that, but people of faith do. Our scriptures and ethical teachings know about cultivating community where people learn to practice loving others, even complete strangers, to give with an open hand rather than grasp with a clenched fist, and to cultivate empathic and compassionate actions. 

A few weeks ago I mentioned novelist and essayist Cara Hoffman. Her latest piece in the New York Times yesterday responds to the voices of people who want to flee this country rather than live under the coming administration. She cautions that she knows from her own experience that it’s nearly impossible to live somewhere in the world where the US doesn’t have influence, positive or negative. Also, the far right is on the rise in many parts of the world. Hoffman’s advice is, “Don’t let the politics of fear displace you. It’s much more important to find your compatriots and to create a life worth living, no matter where that is…imagining what it is [you] want instead of reacting to what [you] fear.” That is the message of the whole Gospel. That is what we are doing here this morning, imagining what it is we want instead of reacting to what we fear, and not just imagining, but enacting. We are building a beloved community right now.

In light of our scripture, this compels me to ask, what repentance, what particular change, are we being called to on this December morning? What repentance for forgiveness of sin might we be immersed in today? What direct ways or level paths are we being called to prepare? What needs to be cleared or smoothed out so that all flesh will see the salvation of God? What joy can be a quiet subversion in the face of despair? This Advent, let us once again immerse ourselves in repentance, change our direction, and head again towards Love. Let us immerse ourselves because we have work to do. We have work to do to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Once again, the final chorale of today’s cantata sums it up beautifully, so I’m paraphrasing: we will succeed if (and whenever) we believe (and behave) in Love from and with the depths of our hearts.

  1.  D. Mark Davis, “All Flesh Shall See the Salvation of God,”  Left Behind and Loving It, 1 Dec. 2024.

Would you like to hear it again?

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Advent 1C, 1 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 33:14-16. Justice and righteousness in the land.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.
Luke 21:25-36. Then he told them a parable.

O unsettling God: 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.

Whether we are ready or not, it’s time to wake up. Rise and shine! With the advent of a new church year our liturgy changes colors, music, and prayers to mark this season of communal preparation and repentance. Our Gospel readings also mark a change; we’ll hear mostly from Luke in Year C. Last year’s Gospel of Mark was terse and spare prose, covering the most basic facts of the ministry and teaching of Jesus and telling the circumstances of his death. The language of Luke is expansive and poetic, dramatically and outwardly focused, mission-oriented. Ironically, we begin each liturgical year with Jesus teaching about the end of the world as it is known. This is no coincidence. All the Gospels were written through the lens of the crucifixion and the experience of Love more powerful than death, the ending of one world and the longing for a new world, where the compassion, mercy, and peace of God would reign once and for all: all time and all people.

The writer of Luke reminds Jesus’ followers that, along the way to the reign of the glory of God, there will be confusion among the nations because of the roaring of the sea and waves. The powers of the heavens will be shaken, and people will get the wind knocked out of them with fear and foreboding. (This sounds ripped from the headlines.) Jesus says when you see these things happening, don’t hunker down or hide; stand tall and raise your heads because your redemption  (that is, the revaluation of your dignity) is drawing near! This is a pep talk: heads up! Be on your guard that your hearts are not weighed down with the worries of this life, so you have the strength to avoid the turmoil and to stand facing the Son of Man (for us that is Jesus), the one who came to demonstrate the love of God, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

And then Luke’s story goes that Jesus told them a parable. Unlike other parables, this one is so short that, if anyone’s mind wandered for a minute, they missed it entirely. It always reminds me of a scene from one of my family’s favorite movies: Joe versus the Volcano, an early Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy, in which Meg Ryan plays the three female-lead roles. Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks, who is on a spiritual journey away from a colorless, loveless existence. In one scene, one of Meg Ryan’s characters, Angelica Graynamore, has driven Joe to the hills outside of Los Angeles the night before he embarks on a sea voyage to an island where he will offer his life for the good of the islanders. At a scenic overlook, they see millions of twinkling lights of the city. It looks and feels to the earnest Joe Banks, as if the stars have fallen or the world has been turned upside down. After several moments of quiet, Angelica asks, “Would you like to hear one of my poems?” “Sure,” Joe relies.

Long ago
the delicate tangles of his hair
covered the emptiness of my hand.

After a moment of silence, Angelica asks a puzzled Joe, “Would you like to hear it again?” That’s what I think of when I read the part of this Gospel passage from Luke that says, “Then Jesus told them a parable.” “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.”  I imagine Jesus looking at his earnest audience, in a long pause that did not get recorded in the Gospel narrative, and then asking, “Would you like to hear it again?”

What sense can we make of this one-sentence parable? I think an interpretive clue comes from how the parable is placed in the Gospel of Luke, which is extraordinarily symmetrical in the way it is constructed. The writer of Luke is employing the finest rhetorical devices in this composition. The narrative, the sayings, the miracles, and the parables are all told in a writerly version of synchronized swimming! You have to map it out and stand back to see how it works. Fortunately for me, I have a friend who did that once on yards of butcher paper!

This shortest parable, the parable of the fig tree, is the last one in Luke, at the end of Jesus’ life. It is balanced and illuminated by Luke’s first parable, which is the parable of the sower. By contrast, the parable of the sower is long, and its story covers an expanse of time, whole seasons of planting, growing, and reaping. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, there is plenty of time; at the end, time collapses. In the parable of the fig tree there is no expanse of time. There is only the present moment: right now. There is a way in which Jesus is teaching about not getting so preoccupied with what did or didn’t happen, or what might happen, that one misses the power of what one can know in the present moment. New life is very near right now, within reach.

Advent is all about calling our attention to the power of the present moment. Advent is a season of repentance, but not the Lenten repentance of wallowing in regret for our sins, personal piety, or private salvation. Advent’s sacramental purpose is about effecting corporate accountability and modifying communal behavior. The Advent calls for change and promises of redemption are directed to communities, institutions, societies, and nations. Likewise, our liturgical changes are designed to be unsettling, agitating, and provocative to the whole community. Perhaps more than any other time in the church year, our Advent work is to offer affliction for the most comfortable as we work to change, so that we can better provide comfort for those who are most afflicted.

The power of the present moment can too easily be given up or given away in at least three ways: one is to live in the past, blame the past, or feel guilty about the past. But regretting our past is about as effective as regretting gravity. We can (and should) learn from the past, but wishing that our past were different or that it still existed is a way to give up the power of the present moment, the now. Another way of giving up now is to live in the future. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have visions, goals, hope, or imagination. But spending our now wishing rather than taking action, or spending our present moments worrying, feeling anxious or afraid, will rob us of our powerful now so fast we won’t know where it went. And the last way we give up now is to try. Trying is not doing; if we try to pick up a binder, nothing happens.

This Advent see if you can eliminate your use of the word try when it comes to what you are talking about doing. When you hear yourself say try, stop and listen deeply to yourself, because you probably have just said in a very polite way that you are not doing it yet, or that you probably won’t do it. Know that if you say you’ll try to do something, you have just let yourself know (and now anyone else that is in this room) that you haven’t made a commitment to do it. Telling truth about that will give you back your now.

So whenever we want to engage in transformative action, start. Do a small piece of it. Then be glad when you say, “We are changing X (whatever it is).” Maybe it’s not as much as we’d like, but it’s more than before. Listen to the powerful difference between saying that Emmanuel Church is trying to witness to God’s mercy and justice and Emmanuel Church is witnessing to God’s mercy and justice. We are feeding and housing people who need physical nourishment and shelter, while providing food and a safe haven for all kinds of people who are spiritually hungry and in need of spiritual shelter. We are digging deep for the spiritual and material resources to be the change we want to see in the City of Boston.

Today, we heard Jesus tell his hearers what to do whenever it seems like the world is getting turned upside down. When confusion and fear are colluding to reduce us to passivity and despair, knocking the wind right out of us, we are not to squander our energy, create distance or indulge our anxieties. We are to stand up, raise our heads, and know that redemption, the revaluation of human dignity, is near. We are to look at what is right in front of us right now. Truly I tell you that a generation did not pass away until all things had taken place, and this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place either. As John Crossan and Marcus Borg have written, the Biblical idea of end times: “Is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather, it is about the end of…war and violence, injustice and oppression. It is about the earth’s transformation, not about its devastation. It is about a world of justice and peace.” [2]

What did you read on the front page of the newspaper this morning or see on the news last night about distress among nations? Of people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world? How are confusion, fear, and foreboding happening in our nation, in our city, on the other side of your desk in your office, in school, at home, in your extended families, or even in this room? Where is the drama of giving up the power of now playing out in our relationships, institutions, or bodies? And what redemption or re-valuation might be near right now? What would it take for us to stand up and raise our heads? [3]  As Lee Pelton of The Boston Foundation said last week, “Where we see a wrong, we seek to right it; where we see a hurt, we seek to soothe it; and where we see a broken heart, we seek to mend it. This is not the time to rest. It is a time to be restless…in this pursuit of what is right and just.”

It’s been said that no tree looks more dead than a fig tree in the Palestine winter. Imagine noticing little leaves sprouting out of buds on the branches, tiny hopeful signs of growth , of change, of new life. Jesus seems to be saying that in the middle of whatever is turning the world upside down, pick your heads up, look for, see, and be the signs of hope that are right in plain sight, right now. Christian hope, according to Jurgen Moltman, is not an “opium of the beyond;” rather it is, “The divine power that makes us alive in this world.” It’s not a hope that things will return to the way that they were, that the past will be different, or even that a bad thing will never happen in the future. It’s hope that right now, Love (another word for God) is redeeming and revaluing what seems dead, shameful, worthless, wasted, or hopeless in us and through us, in here and out there. Advent is a season of change and hope that right now Love can do that. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is making a way where there is no way. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is very near. As we will hear, and then sing together, in the final chorale of today’s cantata: “No eye has ever perceived, no ear has ever heard such joy as our happiness, io, io, eternally in dulci jubilo!” May it be so.

  1. 1 John 3:18.
  2.  Borg and Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p. 240.
  3.  Thanks to Bill Dols for this line of questioning in The Bible Workbench 17:1.

Please, God, ….

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Proper 26B. 3 November 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 25:6-9.  The disgrace of [God’s] people [God] will take away from all the earth.
Revelation 21:1-6a. See I am making all things new.
Mark 12:28-34. You are not far from the realm of God.

O God of our salvation, 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 morning we are observing the great Feast of All Saints’ Day. But I have to tell you that rather than reading the assigned reading from the Gospel of John for All Saints, about the raising of Lazarus, I have substituted the Gospel lesson appointed for this Sunday, which is the lesson Bob just read from the Gospel of Mark. I did this because we are not just remembering and celebrating all the saints of the Church, that great cloud of witnesses, known or unknown, and honoring the souls of those dear to us who have died since last All Saints Day. We are also on the eve of Election Day eve (erev erev Election Day) and it feels to me like we are on the precipice of what feels to me might be like an abyss. but we can’t see what’s immediately ahead of us. This past Thursday morning, our next-door neighbor created a great cloud of unknowing that enveloped the fronts of the houses of his immediate neighbors while he tested out his new dry ice fog-making machine for Halloween. The front of our house was completely in a thick blanket of fog while the back of our house was all clear. I thought, “huh! That’s a metaphor!” We couldn’t see ahead, we could only what was behind us!

You might know that polls suggest that more than half of voters have already voted or expect to vote before election day. Slightly less than half of voters are very worried about post-election violence and about misconduct among election officials. Those worries seem to be evenly spread among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. [1] So if you are very worried, you have a lot of company. That’s some good news. And slightly more than half are not very worried. That might be good news, or they might just not be paying attention! In any case, the way forward is in progress but we just can’t see it yet.

We hear from two prophets this morning, from Isaiah in the late 8th century BCE, and from John the Divine near the end of the 1st century CE with very similar visions, set in texts like mighty oratorios, singing about visions of peace for all peoples, for all nations. Walter Brueggemann writes that for Isaiah, a welcome feast of rich food and fine wine is already coming into being in a place where healing and emancipation happen. Death, in this passage, means not just the end of life, but stands for whatever limits or diminishes well-being and prevents communion with our neighbors or with God, who is also known as Love. In Isaiah’s radical vision of complete transformation, Bruggeman says, “Biblical faith…is not a mode of holding on or staying in control. It is rather an act of yielding in the present…to the assurances given for [Love’s future where the] disgrace of being helpless, powerless, and exploited; the shame of being stepped on…all will be overcome.” [2] 

What is clear for Isaiah and John the Divine, as well as for us right now, is that we have to wait. On that day, when the Holy One will remove and destroy the shroud of shame and the pall of mourning, and swallow up the pall that covers all the nations, it will be said, “this is the Holy One for whom we have waited.” That word “wait” can also be translated “trust” and get this: the root of the word has to do with twisting in tension. This is not about idly passing the time, trying to distract ourselves. It’s not passive; it’s active. This waiting is actively stretching. What kind of stretching? The kind that happens when we are loving our neighbors, with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our understanding, and with all of our very muchness. (That’s how my Hebrew teacher liked to translate strength or might.)

Here’s something to notice about our Gospel lesson in Mark. Jesus is in the temple precinct a few days before his arrest and in the middle of considerable conflict and disagreement. Some people are mad enough or afraid enough to wish he were dead, and he will be dead before the week is over. In the midst of this, a Biblical scholar, a scribe, heard the priests arguing with Jesus about the lawfulness of paying taxes to the emperor, and about marriage in the resurrection. You probably know that, according to Mark, Jesus got asked a lot of questions and if he answered at all, he usually responded with another question or a mystifying parable. Rarely did he give a clear and direct answer. His disciples rarely understood what he was talking about. But in the middle of a big crowd, a scribe asked Jesus, “which is the first commandment of all?” And Jesus answered the question directly, maybe for the only time in Mark: “The first is, ‘Hear, O god-wrestler [that’s what Israel means] the Holy Name is our God, the Holy Name is one.” “Shema y’srael, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echad.” Hear. Listen deeply. Understand. That is the first and greatest command. That is the starting point for all other commands. “Hear” is an imperative. What comes next is a verb that is indicative of the future. When you hear, when you listen deeply, you will love. It’s what will happen when you listen very carefully. You’re going to be loving the Divine and you’re going to be loving your neighbor with all your heart, with all your person, with all your understanding, and with all your very-muchness. The command is to listen and the loving will follow. It’s not theoretical. It requires muscles that are loosened by stretching.

Another noteworthy thing in this lesson from the Gospel of Mark is that the scribe and Jesus are demonstrating mutual regard. The scribe calls Jesus’ response to his question right. And in response to the scribe’s affirmation, Jesus calls the scribe “wise” and adds that he is very near to the realm of God. It is a reprise of what Jesus started saying in the beginning of this Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Turn around, change your ways and lean into the good news.” The kind of listening that leads to loving is much more important than all offerings and sacrifices made to and for the Holy One. I also want to make sure you hear what Jesus did not say. In the midst of the crowd in the temple precinct, Jesus did not say, “above all, keep safe; stay pure; keep clean; be holy; say your prayers.” He did not say, “first and foremost, figure out who is and who is not worthy of your consideration and care.” First and foremost, hear that the Holy is our God and the Holy is One. I wonder who told this story after Jesus’ death. Was it the disciples? Was it the scribe? Was it other witnesses? In the months and years after folks experienced Jesus’ resurrection, who remembered the command to listen? To hear?

Perhaps it was easy to remember because the Shema is prayed in every Jewish liturgy and in daily prayer. Perhaps it is the first commandment and most frequent prayer precisely because it is so difficult to do. In order to listen, in order to hear the Oneness of the Holy, we have to be still to remember that God is God and we are not God. We have to pause from talking to God or to ourselves or talking to others and get really quiet. I’m aware of the irony of speaking about the value of silence. I also know from experience that some have a greater capacity for silence than others. If it’s hard for you, start with a minute and work your way up. In an era where trumpets of advertising and misinformation blare from every device, silence requires practice and discipline. It’s a stretch while we wait for whatever happens next. While we listen and wait for whatever happens next we will love as fiercely as we are able. And I believe that Loving will make us real. Loving will make us brave. And Loving will make a way where there is no way, because it always has. That’s what I can see clearly looking out my back door! 

As a post-script to this sermon, here’s something to keep in mind if you are a praying person, or a praying person by proxy! (That means that you are close to a praying person.) It’s a poem by a retired United Methodist minister named Steve Garnaas-Holmes, who writes daily reflections. Martha Tucker sent this poem to me last week and I wanted you all to hear it. It’s called, “Please, God…”

We plead for God to intervene,
even “just this once…”
But I don’t think that’s how God works;
the Holocaust would have been a good time to do so.
No, God doesn’t stop the tyrant,
or nudge the car on the icy road.
God’s not a Big Guy with a magic finger
he [sic] deploys now and then (but not always).
God is the Love at the heart of all being,
as constant as gravity, infinitely attentive,
and can’t be more present or active than right now.
When we ask for God’s help,
what we mean is to align ourselves
with the great power of God’s grace already at work.
Like musicians in perfect tune,
we create harmonies, notes that sound
though none of us is producing them.
Our harmony with God creates an energy field
that does indeed change things.
In troubled times it takes great concentration
to align ourselves with grace instead of force,
with love instead of fear.
We begin by allowing ourselves to be loved,
along with the rest of creation,
and then we fall into that love,
and let that love flow through us into the world.
I think that’s what we mean when we pray,
“Please, God…”

  1.  Zachary Karabell writing on Thursday, October 31, 2024 for edgyoptimist@substack.com
  2. Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 199-20.

 

 

Blessing When the World is Ending

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Proper 28B. 17 November 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

1 Samuel 1:4-20.  I am a woman deeply troubled.
Hebrews 10:11-25. Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.
Mark 13:1-8. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

O God of enduring and eternal 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.

We are nearing the end of our liturgical year. This is the last we’ll hear from the Gospel of Mark for another three years. It’s highly ironic to me to pray the beautiful words of the opening collect about scripture – to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest – on a day when our appointed Gospel lesson is the beginning of the apocalypse in Mark. Episcopalians generally don’t like dwelling on the fact that we have apocalyptic scripture. We don’t know what to make of it and we’d rather not have to try. 

But this week, and this year, the Gospel lesson seems teed up to address our current dystopian circumstances. In today’s Gospel reading we hear a part of a speech – a kind of farewell speech – that Mark reports Jesus delivering in the last few days of his life. Like Jacob and Moses and King David before him, Mark’s Jesus gave his hearers instructions for how to live – how to go on, facing whatever comes their way, after he’s gone. And he’s instructing his followers about how to respond in the midst of catastrophic endings. Although his prediction that not one stone would be left upon another at the great temple in Jerusalem was something of an exaggeration, life as they knew it surely came to an end when Jesus died. And life as they knew it surely came to an end when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in response to the Jewish uprising in what we call 70 CE. 

 Perhaps wondering how best to prepare, Peter, James, John and Andrew interrogated Jesus privately about when the end would come and what the signs of the end would be. I hear them longing for certainty. As is so often the case, Jesus’ response does not answer their questions. He seems to be saying again, without so many words, that they’re asking the wrong questions. Jesus seems to be much more about questioning the answers than he is about answering the questions of his followers in the Gospel of Mark! Instead, he says, “see that no one leads you astray by using my name.” Astray from what? Well my guess is astray from the feeding and freeing work that they are called to be doing: casting out polluted spirits and restoring health, widely proclaiming and enacting the love of God, and building up the beloved community. Don’t be led astray from provoking one another to love and good deeds as the author of Hebrews writes. Don’t be led astray from loving your neighbors. Don’t let wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in various places or famines disturb or startle you and keep you from loving one another and loving God. 

The fascinating thing to me about this speech is that Jesus uses the metaphor of childbirth here. That’s a metaphor that really resonates with me! Jesus talks of the labor of birthing. I have to say I take great issue with the translation of a word “odeen” in Greek that means intense and unavoidable suffering, severe distress, and even death into the word “pang” that sounds like a twinge or stitch or a sting. Jesus is saying the pain is going to be bone-splitting agony. Jesus was not really addressing why labor hurts, just that it does – that it’s one of the signs of change –of a new life struggling to be born – about to be delivered through a process of extreme suffering. And let’s be clear, back then and even now, birth is very risky for both the mother and the baby. Survival is uncertain. His stated purpose in his farewell speech is to reduce emotional anxiety. Jesus’ followers are not to be alarmed. The pain is normal. It most assuredly does not feel good – and that can lead to fear. But “do not be alarmed” is Jesus’ refrain. Pay attention, keep alert, use your eyes and ears – and don’t worry. You have what you need. You know what you need to know. He’s like a birth coach! Keep breathing, he says.

People will come along and try to convince you that you don’t really have to behave lovingly toward “those” people. Voices will try to persuade you that the message of love is thin and facile, the opposite of mighty, that good deeds are too small to make a difference, or that unethical behavior is now justified. Keep your hearts and minds in the love of God and of one another, even in the midst of catastrophes, violence and great suffering, Jesus’ followers are to continue to live in love knowing that love is always more powerful than death. Jesus’ followers are to remember that anytime scripture is cited to defend behavior that’s not motivated by the law of love, something is seriously wrong.

We know that Jesus is talking about love because of the part of Mark’s Gospel just before the farewell speech begins. The wise scribe says it and Jesus affirms it. I’ll tell it to you – but I know that you already know it: “Hear, O Israel (or translated differently, “Listen deeply you god-strugglers”): Listen, O my wrestling people: the [name which is too sacred to pronounce] is our God, the [Holy Name] alone; (and when you listen deeply) you are going to love the Holy Name your God with all your heart, and with all your life force, and with all your mind, and with all your very muchness. (When you do that) you are going to love your neighbor as your self.” That’s it. That’s all you need to know. Indeed, that’s all we need to know.

And with that knowledge, we have the ability to do something great today – every single one of us, whether you are worshiping with us on-line or you’re sitting in the pews. If you’ve already done something great this morning, fantastic, you probably still have time to do another great thing. If you are alert – if you use your eyes and your ears and you pay attention, the Holy One will provide an opportunity to put aside your worry or your fear of war or rumors of war, of earthquakes in various places, and of famine, to go with only the clothes on your back, yes, empty-handed, open-handed, and to share who you are, and what you have, and what you know about the love of God, using words only if necessary. You can let your life speak, as the Quaker saying goes.

In his parting words, Jesus is making it clear that whenever the stones come tumbling down, it’s not the end with a capital E; it’s an opportunity for transformation. So, in the words of the writer of Hebrews, “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another, all the more.” According to Jesus, God does not invite us into abundant life by urging us to play it safe. [1] Do not be alarmed – love one another. I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking about enacting compassion and kindness, gentleness and patience, leaning into the disarming power of love that is mightier than death. I mean enacting this love with annoying members of your own family, with your friends, with acquaintances, with complete strangers, with other drivers or commuters (I see you, Boston), even with those who wish you harm.

Perhaps you saw the piece in the Boston Globe on Friday by novelist and essayist, Cara Hoffman, writing about how to respond to authoritarian rule. [2] She wrote, “When the state fails or turns against us, penalizing us, denying us resources, restriction our speech and freedom of movement, and attacking the weakest among us, all we have is each other: our bravery, our competence, our delight, our anger, our refusal to back down or see another harmed.” She was writing about a neighborhood of Athens where she lives, but I immediately thought of Emmanuel Church and our long history of subverting the dominant paradigms through radical hospitality and advocacy, through sanctuary, through extravagant engagement with the arts. I thought of the steady stream of generosity that flows in and out from this place.

Howard Thurman wrote about how to respond to turbulent times, wisely and bravely saying, “there is no need to fear evil. There is every need to understand what it does, how it operates in the world, what it draws upon to sustain itself…the real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of [hu]man[s] and to give to [their] soul[s] the contagion of inner disintegration.” Thurman concludes: ”To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life in simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the Spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the working of the human mind – this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”[3]

Our primary concern is being and becoming more and more living testimony to the Gospel, which is to say, food for those who are hungry, water for those who are thirsty, healing for those who are ailing, release for those who are captive, welcome for those who are alien, and reparation for those who have been wronged. Christianity has been formed and reformed in times of intense distress, when what seems like weakness becomes the very thing that strengthens us to go where the Love is and to be the people and the place where Love is. What we do matters. I’m going to close with a prayer from Jan Richardson, called “Blessing When the World is Ending”.  [4]

Look, the world is always
ending somewhere.
Somewhere the sun
has come crashing down.
Somewhere it has gone
completely dark.
Somewhere it has ended
with the gun, the knife, the fist.
Somewhere it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.
Somewhere it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone, the television,
the hospital room.
Somewhere it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break your heart.
But, listen, this blessing means
to be anything but morose.
It has not come to cause despair.
It is simply here because
there is nothing a blessing
is better suited for than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing than when a world
is falling apart.
This blessing will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come, gathering itself
about you as the world begins again.

  1.  Thanks to Bob Eldan at http://preachingtip.com
  2. The Boston Globe, November 15, 2024.
  3. Howard Thurman, “Life Goes On,” in Meditations of the Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953), p. 109-10.
  4. Jan Richardson, “Blessing When the World is Ending”, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. Orlando FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, 2015.

Love is enough.

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Proper 27B. 10 November 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17.   I need to seek security for you.
Hebrews 9:24-28. Not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Mark 12:38-44. She … has put in everything she had.

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.

Well the fog that I spoke about last Sunday cleared for a bit and what we could see was a shattering loss for nearly half of our country. It wasn’t just an election lost, but a particular vision of the future lost that now we’re going to have to figure out how to enact in other ways, but only after we create some space for grief, and acknowledge our fears. For some it will take longer than others, but we will stick together.

On Wednesday morning, I drove into the city and realized when I arrived at the church that I had forgotten my office key. When I finally got in and pulled up my computer screen, the message I saw said, “insufficient memory.” I said to the computer, “You’ve got that right!” And it’s not just about my own memory, it seems like half the world. And then on Thursday morning, my sorrow became very particular when I learned about a devastating personal and parish loss in the death of Jim Bartlett, who has contributed mightily to the well-being of this parish in the last 15+ years in many ways, but particularly as a vestry member and on the finance commission, and with his beloved wife, Hanna, as an advisor and supporter of my ministry among you at Emmanuel Church. He loved Emmanuel Church so much. And I am reminded of what another important mentor taught me: when we are grieving or in pain, stay close to the scriptures. And for Christians, I’d say, stay close to Jesus.

The Gospel lesson that we just heard is a very familiar story about the woman who put two copper coins, approximately enough money to buy one meal, in the offering in the temple. It’s a story many of us learned in Church School. People know it by the title, “the widow’s mite” (mite meaning a tiny little bit). It’s a nice story for little children who are learning about mite boxes and putting coins in offering plates. I’m aware that when the story gets told about Jesus commending the woman for giving everything she had, especially during pledge stewardship season (probably no coincidence, by the way), many of us adults kind of seize up inside. We kind of brace ourselves for what’s coming next.

But you can relax (a little) because I’m keenly aware of Jesus’ stern warning at the beginning of this Gospel reading to educated religious folks “who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the places of worship and places of honor at banquets — [who] devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation,” because they are the ones that should know better than to exploit poor people. They are the ones with memory of the law that insists on providing for poor people. 

There’s scholarly debate about whether Jesus really approved of the kind of giving he outlined in verse 44. It’s not at all certain whether the widow is modeling generosity in a way that should be admired, or Jesus is illustrating what a victim of religiosity run amok looks like. [1] This story appears in the context of a larger passage about Jesus’ teaching against excessive piety – so clergy should beware when we take this particular story out of context and use it to promote sacrificial giving at stewardship time. It’s possible Jesus is making an observation about the impoverished widow who has been exploited by some religious leaders to give what she needed to live on and he’s not praising her as much as he is condemning wealthy people who scorn the offerings of those who are poor. There are other ancient rabbinic teachings about asserting the dignity of the offerings of people who are poor.

In any case, it is completely wrong to hear this reading and assume an anti-Jewish or even anti-Temple agenda, because the scribes who exploit widows are described as being in marketplaces and banquets, not in the Temple. Furthermore, Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine points out that Jesus did nothing to stop the woman from offering everything she had – she was doing exactly what Jesus has instructed the rich young man to do a little while back. Levine calls this a story about how even the poorest woman could make a meaningful contribution, and says that for Christian preachers to turn this into condemnation of the Temple is just wrong. [2] So I’m in tricky territory here, and fool that I am, I’m going to press on a bit (or a mite) about sacrificial giving because I think it demonstrates great dignity. You can take everything I say with a big fat grain of salt since I’m the one wearing the long robe, and I teach about this at my own risk of greater condemnation!

It seems to me that many things that seem impossible to do as individuals, like giving everything one has to live on, are possible in a community of faith like Emmanuel Church. It’s possible in a parish like this, for example, to aim for what William Temple, one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, called “the fullest possible development of individual personality in the widest and deepest possible fellowship.” [3] In this parish, as a parish, it is possible to whole-heartedly give everything we’ve got. And we not only do it, we survive and even thrive! There are times when we give everything we have in terms of effort and energy – when we try as hard as we can; when we work as hard as we can. There are times when our ability to exert effort or our capacity to work is very strong. Yes, but what about times when we hardly have any energy left? Times when we are nearly out of steam? Times when we are close to exhausted? It might feel like what we have left to offer in terms of effort is very small – a very little bit – and it’s a huge stretch and still we offer it on behalf of others. I see it every day, and I see a long history of this kind of gift of effort and energy on behalf of others at and through Emmanuel Church.

This parish gives whole-heartedly everything we have when it comes to time. There are occasions when we have plenty of time for what is needed, and giving some of that time, even a lot of that time, is really no big deal, because we have it to give. And there are times when we don’t have much time at all, when there’s really no slack in our schedule, and the time we are able to give looks puny in comparison to what other parishes are giving – and, as small as it is, it’s more than we can afford and still we offer it. We offer everything we have on behalf of others. I know that we’ve done this throughout our history.

And we whole-heartedly give everything we have, and we survive and even thrive, when it comes to money. Some of you know that the predictions that Emmanuel Church would not survive began before we ever really started. This church was planted “so far out of town” we had to assert our belonging in our name, “Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston.” People said nobody would want to go to church so far out of town, and vendors claimed “it’s not really in the City of Boston” so they could charge us extra for deliveries. There are times when we have had plenty of money for what is needed and giving some of our money is easy. And there are times when we don’t have much money at all, and what we have to offer is a very little bit – and it’s really more than we can afford and still we give it on behalf of others. I’ve seen Emmanuel do this as a parish throughout our history.

I was wondering the other day about what compels us to make offerings on behalf of others, when all we have is a very little bit. What moves us to give all we’ve got for someone else? For a community? I’ll tell you, I do not think it’s ever duty or guilt that moves us to give all. I think it’s love. Love is what persuades people to make sacrifices for others. I imagine love being behind the widow’s gift in our Gospel story. And then I thought about what 1st John says about God. “Those who live in love, live in God because God is love.” “God is Love.” As our former Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, says again and again, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” That’s why I often encourage exchanging the word Love for the word God in our praying or singing or reading. I also encourage exchanging the word Love for the word Blood (when blood is used as a metaphor for life poured out in love). Today in our communion hymn, I’ve also substituted the word Love for Christ so as not to malign other spiritual paths that I believe are every bit as holy as our Way, our Truth, and our Life.

For those of us who are not so sure what God is or whether God exists, I encourage us to talk about listening deeply to Love and Loving Love with our whole heart and our whole mind, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. We can talk about believing in Love. We can imagine and even experience the almighty and immortal power of Love. We can with confidence assert that Love is creative, redemptive and inspirational. We can affirm that Love is liberating, saving, sustaining and comforting. We can offer to Love a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Perhaps we can understand more deeply that the Holy Name is both an eternal entity and an eternal action into which we are called, invited to tap; into which we are beckoned, encouraged to participate more and more fully and deeply. My experience is that Love grows when we trust in it. Love grows whenever we give everything we’ve got to give on behalf of others. And when we make those offerings that seem small in comparison to others, but they are all we have, the offerings are large in Love’s eyes; and the offerings become the hands and feet, the arms and legs of almighty Love in the world. Our offerings become Love redistributed. Biblical Love is so much about action and not so much about feeling. Loving, or as one of my seminary professors would have said, “godding” is an incomplete, ongoing action. It’s not about surviving. It’s about thriving.

When we welcome people into this building, into this community, into this parish, we offer extraordinary and extravagant welcome into our way of loving (or godding) — that incomplete, ongoing action. We are offering extraordinary and extravagant worship with worship leaders who are giving everything we’ve got to live on — prayers, readers, singers, players. As a parish, we are offering all we’ve got to live on. Can we find room for one more 12-step group that needs a welcoming and safe place to meet? Can we share our beautiful garden with someone sleeping on a cardboard box? Can we also be a center for musicians and artists and provide a home for Bach cantatas to live and breathe on Sunday mornings? Can we provide daytime hospitality and overnight accommodations for people who have physical and mental illnesses, or who are suffering from the scourge of addiction, who have been discarded by our government? Can we house a synagogue – not just as renters but in a covenanted relationship? Can we welcome to a weekly luncheon GLBT seniors whose lives depend on re-building beloved community? Can we create intentional housing communities that enrich their neighborhoods and their parishes? Can we find meaningful ways to engage in the work of reparations? Can we as a parish give away more than a tithe of our much-needed income to others and thrive? Can we give all that we have to live on and thrive? Can we have sufficient memory? Yes, we can and we must. We are doing it, and we will continue to do it, together, with Love’s help, cost what it will. As we’ll hear, and sing, later in today’s final cantata chorale: Es ist genung.

  1. Michael A. Turton.  “There is no support for historicity in this pericope.” Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark.
  2. Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007), pp. 149-157.
  3.  Excerpted by Richard H. Schmidt in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), p. 264. William Temple’s feast day is Nov. 6.

Be joyful in Love, all you peoples!

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Easter 7B, 123 May 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 1:15-17.  The crowd numbered about one hundred..
  • 1 John 5:9-13.  So that you may know that you have eternal life.
  • John 17:6-19. So that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.

O God of our complete joy, 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 church year, we are now as deep into the Easter Season as we can go. We have just passed the Feast of the Ascension, which is a Principal Feast Day in the Episcopal Church, but a celebration that is perhaps a little embarrassing for many progressive Christians. I mean, it’s a little embarrassing to commemorate a day when, according to the writer of Luke and Acts, a full forty days after he was raised from the dead, Jesus opened their minds to the scriptures and gave his final blessing. He then was lifted up off of the ground, and a cloud took him out of his disciples’ sight. But as my friend Brother James Koester, the Superior at St. John the Evangelist across the river in Cambridge, recently wrote: [1]

The Ascension is not rocket science, and it loses its power if we reduce it to a literal description….Instead, the Ascension is about the mystery of Christ’s present reality: risen, ascended, and glorified. This not only shall be ours one day but it is ours today. Continue reading →

Fruit That Will Last

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Easter 6B, 5 May 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 10:44-48.  Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
  • 1 John 5:1-6.  The Spirit is the truth.
  • John 15:9-17. I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.

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.

You know, it’s still Easter, in the Church’s 50-day season for praising God and reveling in God’s grace so abundantly given, which transforms the horror of the crucifixion into the power of the Risen Lord. We’re still in that Great Fifty Days of celebration. I don’t know about you, but apart from worship at Emmanuel, often the details of my life and the details of the world weigh me down. I feel weighed-down by what looks like too much to do and not enough time, too much need and not enough resources being directed to the right places, news of people at war and of militaristic aggression at home and abroad, layer upon layers of damage done by white supremacy, corruption and famine, climate change, all kinds of oppression, and on and on. It all seems to conspire to keep me from reveling in the abiding love of God for more than a few hours on a Sunday. Today’s Gospel makes it clear to me that abiding in love and bearing fruit are part of the same thing: of reveling in God’s unearned and abundant grace. How can we celebrate Good News when we get so weighed down by bad news? Continue reading →