Sermons

We invite you to enjoy sermons of our rector The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz and others., which are collected by year with links in the column on the right. Our earliest sermons are posted in an archive covering the years 2000-09 include sermons by the late Rabbi Howard Berman, The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, The Rev. Dr. Maureen D. Kemeza, The Rev. Dr. James M. Weiss, The Rev. Christiaan A. Beukman, and others.

In 2022 we began to broadcast her sermons in our livestreamed services.  Please listen to her dynamic preaching about 20 minutes into our live-streamed services on our YouTube Channel.  Her sermons preached in Lindsey Chapel are not available in video.

One Day

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1st Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 8, 2012

Genesis 1:1-5  “Beginning”
Acts 19:1-7  “We have not even heard that there is a holy spirit.”
Mark 1:4-11 “He will baptize you with the [sic] holy spirit.”

O God of new beginnings, 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. Amen.

One of the peculiarities of the Western Christian liturgical calendar in these post-modern times is that the glorious Feast of the Epiphany, which always falls on January 6, the 12th day of Christmas, doesn’t get much purchase in our parish churches unless January 6 happens to fall on a Sunday. And the first Sunday after the Epiphany is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. That is the feast we observe today. And the problem, at least for our organist Nancy Granert and me (and probably others), is that that leaves no proper place to sing the most exquisite hymn setting of “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,” except for maybe a hymn-sing in the summer. And so, as we did our usual weekly collaboration on music, we noted with regret that it would seem out of place to sing this hymn on a day that celebrates the Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist at the Jordan River some three decades after his infancy. But I couldn’t let it go. I asked if it would be too weird to sing it. And Nancy’s enthusiastic response was “it would be weird and fab!” And I thought, “hey, that’s just like us – weird and fabulous!” Continue reading →

When a Commandment is not a Command

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Preached on May 29, 2011.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our new songs, 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. Amen.

Chronological time comes nearly to a stop in the four chapters of the Gospel of John that get called “The Farewell Discourse.” One-fifth of the whole Gospel of John takes place in the evening time before Jesus’ arrest. Jesus’ parting words remind me of the instruction list that my mother used to leave before my parents went away for a trip (and I always feared that they would leave us orphaned). The long list was accompanied by their admonition for me to use my best judgment. Okay, fine, I would think, but do you know my brothers and my sister? Continue reading →

Baptizing in the Strong Name of the Trinity

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Preached on June 19, 2011

Creating 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.

I hope you liked the reading of the beginning of Genesis. We don’t hear it very often in our liturgy – scheduled, as it is, for a summer Sunday every three years. I wonder if you noticed how many times God beheld the goodness of creation – six times God saw what was good. And when it came to humankind, God saw that humankind was very good. (Not perfect, but very good!) Continue reading →

Hard Learning

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Proper 28A
November 15, 2020

Judges 4:1-7. And the Israelites came to Deborah for judgmentor God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . therefore encourage one another and build up each other
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . therefore encourage one another and build up each other.
Matthew 25:14-15, 19-29 Weeping and gnashing of teeth

O God of our learning, 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.

Our Collect for today is one of my favorites and maybe yours too – a prayer in which we assert that all holy scriptures were caused to be written for our learning – the ones we love and the ones, well, not so much. We pray that we not just hear them, but that we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them – for the purpose of holding fast to hope of union with the Holy One, which is another way of saying everlasting life. With some readings from scripture, I think, we need digestive aids – some spiritual bi-carb perhaps while we are learning.
Continue reading →