Tag Archives: Judaism

Shehecheyanu Redux

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See also our rector’s 2013 sermon of the same title.

Epiphany, Last Sunday.  2 March 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Exodus 34:29-35. The skin of his face was shining and they were afraid to come near him.
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:12. Since then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.
Luke 9:28-43a. And all were astounded by the greatness of God.

O God of faithfulness, 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.

One of the many benefits for me of sharing the pulpit of Emmanuel Church with a rabbi-in-residence and with an Ark of the Covenant in my peripheral view is that it continues to challenge and change the way I encounter Holy Scripture and the prayers and hymns of the Episcopal Church. My sensitivity to the need for corrective lenses in the Church is heightened. My desire to preach against the ways that the Christian Church has promoted supersessionist theology continues to rise. Christian supersessionism is very much like racism as far as I am concerned.   It’s systemic, oppressive, often internalized, hard for many Christians to see, and always wrong. It distorts our vision and damages our souls. 

I especially need to call this out on a day when we welcome a child with dual citizenship in the realm of God, as both a son of Israel and a member of the Body of Christ. Levi and his older sister and brother all have two spiritual passports in the realm of God; they are full citizens of both Judaism and Christianity. How is it possible? I don’t exactly know, but I do know that with God anything born of love is possible. And I know that at Emmanuel Church we have a long history of experiencing glorious impossibilities.

And so on this day on which we mark the end of the Epiphany season with stories of the transfiguration of Jesus, in light of the stories of Moses’ shining countenance, I’m drawn to preach about the Apostle Paul and his words to the Church in Corinth, because our passage today sounds as if Paul was dismissing Moses and the Israelites as old news (and he was). It sounds as if Paul was preaching the newness and better-ness of Christianity (but he wasn’t quite doing that). I have to tell you (or remind you) that Paul was not a Christian. [1] While he recruited Gentiles to follow Jesus, as a Jew through and through, he was arguing with people within his own tradition for openness and inclusivity in the realm of God, . Furthermore, neither Paul nor Jesus was inventing the ideas of openness and inclusivity. To varying degrees both of them were declaring stretched boundaries and widened gates for belonging and beloving as people of God, using the Law and the Prophets as their scriptural foundations. The Apostle Paul and the Evangelist Luke were asserting continuity and expansion of belonging and beloving in encouraging people to follow the Jesus Way.  Looking back on Paul’s arguments with corrective lenses, however, it becomes clear that he was arguing about who was out and who was in as he contended that the glory of Moses was dimming and the glory of Jesus was brightening.

Paul was reacting to rivals, whom he derisively called super-apostles, who were insisting that to be faithful to Jesus required being faithful to Torah. The Rev. Dr. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, wrote the other day that although this was an intramural argument within Judaism, it was “aimed towards Gentile Jesus believers, [and] it quickly becomes an argument that can and does fuel anti-Jewish perspective.” [2] Dan argues that this reading should not be included in the Lectionary at all. I think he’s right. We should go back to using the Episcopal Church Lectionary assignment for this Sunday, which calls for 1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13, Paul’s treatise on the primacy of love.

I know that there are those who dislike Paul, and they have good reasons. I used to dislike him, but now I like him enough to want to argue with him rather than just discount him. My seminary professor and Jewish New Testament scholar Larry Wills taught me to use a different interpretive framework or lens to know and appreciate Paul. The new framework or lens getting developed over the last several decades takes into account all of what Paul wrote (that we still have in scripture). It’s a much broader approach than the one that excludes the things that don’t fit in a more traditional Protestant Reformation framework. 

I would like to persuade you that Paul was not a phony, ignorant, or a liar, although I admit he was a bit of a jerk. I would like to persuade you that we don’t need to imagine that he was hating and rejecting himself or his tradition even as he challenged his rival apostles within it. He was a great writer, and he had a passion for welcoming folks into the beloved community by proclaiming that the God of Israel’s mercy and grace extended to all nations, i.e. all Gentiles.

The context for our passage from 2 Corinthians is this. Having founded the community of Jesus followers in the city of Corinth, Paul moved on to gather similar communities in other cities. After he was gone, some super-apostles came to Corinth and insisted that, in order to truly be people of the God of Israel, the Gentile men had to be circumcised and the Gentile people had to follow halakhah, or Jewish dietary laws and other established faithful practices. The thing is, Paul’s audience in Corinth was made up of Gentiles. He was arguing that the Torah does not apply to Gentiles. In his letter to the church in Rome, he wrote: “Do we then render Torah void? God forbid! On the contrary, we uphold the Torah!”  Torah is so much deeper and wider than our English word law.  Torah is a way of being, created before the world (as in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) Torah is the Word, the way of being, given to Jews.

So if all of this is true (and I believe it is), what does any of it have to do with us? Well, according to Paul, God’s mercy and grace extend to people even if they aren’t Jews. This is good news, great news actually! Interest in openness and inclusiveness has its roots in the Hebrew Bible and is continued in the Christian Testament. We bear witness to openness and inclusiveness at Emmanuel Church with scripture, tradition, and reason as our foundation, and with the authority that comes from engaging with the Holy One, Who is always doing a new thing.

New covenant doesn’t nullify any previous covenants from the standpoint of the God of Israel.  God was offering new covenants to God’s people throughout ancient history: the new covenant of Noah, the new covenant of Abraham, the new covenant with Moses and the people in the wilderness, the new covenant with David, the new covenant written on the hearts of the people described by the prophet Jeremiah, the new covenant proclaimed by Jesus. In her book entitled Paul was Not a Christian, Jewish New Testament scholar Pamela Eisenbaum asks the rhetorical question: “Has Jesus’ act of faith rendered the covenant between God and Israel meaningless? God forbid! On the contrary, we who are members of Israel are fulfilling the prophesies of Torah by acknowledging God’s redemption of the whole world.” [3]

Here’s what I notice about the story of Moses veiling his face and about Paul’s interpretation. Moses was radiant, brilliant, dazzling, terrifyingly luminous because of his encounters with the Divine. Since the people were afraid, he he veiled his face to avoid frightening them when he talked to them. The scripture tells us that Moses, plagued by doubt and anxiety, had sought the Divine Presence and positively glowed after his encounter. with God.   According to Paul, Moses had good intentions; but in trying to protect people from their fears, he obscured something essential: the reflection of the glory of God. According to Paul, being shielded from the reflection of the glory of God hardened the people’s minds. That’s an interesting idea. Paul was encouraging his audience to be bold and to shine with the glory of God. The Church has been wrong in making this an anti-Jewish message. The story of the transfiguration in our Gospel today, written decades after Paul’s letters, reveals and upholds that Jesus’ closest companions saw Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in relational community. Sadly, our English translation willfully obscures the word exodus when Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah about his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Jesus was speaking with them about his forthcoming exodus, i.e. liberation from slavery and journey through the wilderness to a land of well-being, a land of the well cared for.

We are all called to boldly shine with the glory of God when we encounter the power of love in community. Shining can be so much more difficult than lamenting, especially when times are tough. To express beauty and joyfulness in the midst of so much anxiety and sadness in the world is brave and hopeful. It’s not a denial of suffering, but a nevertheless gladness to be alive, gratefulness to have survived to this point. It doesn’t negate any of the sorrows prior to this day or the sorrows felt by other people. It’s bold to say it,  to pray it, to radiate with it, and not to hide it. It seems like a most fitting way to end this sermon: giving thanks to God for the joy of this gathering. If you know the Shehecheyanu, say it with me! Baruch atta Adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam, she-hecheyanu v’ki-yemanu v’higianu lazman hazeh. Blessed are you Holy One, sovereign of the universe, Who has kept us in life and sustained us and brought us to this time.

  1.  Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (HarperCollins, 2009).
  2. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski.  https://www.facebook.com/dan.joslynsiemiatkoski
  3. Eisenbaum, op. cit., electronic book edition (no page numbers).

Ponder these words in your heart!

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Christmas 2C. 5 January 2025. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Jeremiah 31:7-14 “their life shall become like a watered garden”
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”
Luke 2:41-52 “I must be in that belonging to my Father.”

O God with us, 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 lingering in Christmastide for one more day. Epiphany is coming, but not quite yet! The Gospel of Luke contains the only story of the boyhood of Jesus in the Bible, and it baffles Biblical scholars. We know that ancient biographies commonly told stories of heroes in their youth to demonstrate that there were signs of greatness early on. There are some fantastic stories about Jesus’ magical powers as a young boy that didn’t make the cut when the scriptural canon was being negotiated. None of the other three Gospels, which did make it into the Bible, have any stories from Jesus’ youth; and Luke’s intention is not clear.

Is Luke demonstrating that Jesus was just like other heroes, fulfilling a divine promise that was clear to others in his boyhood? Or was Luke demonstrating that Jesus was NOT like the others because he didn’t start out knowing everything? Is this a story that demonstrates Jesus’ human-ness early on? Was he a child prodigy, learning from and asking questions of the teachers in the temple? Or was the young Jesus an ordinary adolescent, not telling his parents where he was, doing something quite dangerous, getting separated from his family, worrying them sick for the better part of a week? The answer to any of these questions could be, “Yes.”

Luke seems to be using a literary convention that matters to him and to his cosmopolitan audience to conclude his two-chapter prologue. In this little passage, however, he works in three important ideas that he wants the hearer to understand about Jesus, which found in  his Gospel.

First, in the verses just before today’s portion, Luke goes to great lengths to describe the preparation for the ceremony of Jesus’ circumcision, his dedication in the temple, the devout and righteous blessing of Simeon, and the praise of God for Jesus from the prophet Anna. We’ll hear that story on February 2 for the Feast of the Presentation. The passage ends with, “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” Then Luke says that every year Jesus’ family went up to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover. We know that Jews living within about fifteen miles of Jerusalem were expected to go to the temple three times a year: for Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks (we call it Pentecost); and for Succot, the Feast of Booths. But Nazareth was more than four times that distance away. The image presented of the temple in Jerusalem by Luke is very positive, and Jesus’ parents are presented as very devout. 

Second, Jesus’ parents search and find him sitting among the rabbis, learning from them, asking questions, and demonstrating his own understanding of scripture. Here is a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, well-educated and well-grounded in his religious tradition. When Jesus asks his mother why she was searching for him, his question, literally translated, reads, “Did you not know that I must be in that belonging to my father?” This is the dramatic center of the story and these are the first words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Luke. The Greek words do not include the word house as in, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (NRSV), nor do they include the word business as in, “Did you know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Nor does the Greek include any indication of a proper noun (no reason to capitalize the word father). Much is made about the tension between Joseph as father and God as father, and that can be there, but not necessarily. The word father is the same, so there’s no reason to believe that what Jesus is doing doesn’t belong to Joseph as well. That Jesus must be ‘in that belonging’ to his father can mean in that Jewish tradition, or in that educational Jewish dialogue. Amy-Jill Levine points out that Father’s House is a common term in the Torah, but not used to describe the temple in Jerusalem. According to Luke, the point is that Jesus was really devoutly Jewish.

A third thing to think about in this passage is a theme Luke takes up again and again: the theme of losing, searching, and finding within an expansive idea of family. Here is a story of Jesus not being in close enough contact with his parents to know that they were leaving or to let them know that he was staying; we don’t really know which. All we know is that Mary and Joseph assumed that he was with their departing caravan, and they didn’t realize he wasn’t until they were a whole day’s journey away. If this sounds implausible to you, it’s either because you don’t come from a large, extended, chaotic family, or your family has a much better grip than most. In my family of origin, I think each one of us four children got lost or left behind at least once on a family trip. Each adult thought that a particular child was with another adult or being watched by older kids. It’s a wonder we all made it out of childhood alive!

The theme of losing, searching and finding gets reprised in Luke (in stories that only appear in Luke) in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and of the prodigal son. Later in this Gospel Jesus rejoices about a rich man named Zacchaeus promising to give half of his possessions to the poor and pay back four times the amount if he has defrauded anyone of anything. Jesus says in response to Zacchaeus, that the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost. The theme of family gets defined and redefined in stories about leaving home, or not being welcome at home. It is in Luke that Jesus’ disciples let him know that his mother and brothers are searching for him and he famously replies, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” This is hugely comforting to people who have left or been rejected by their families of origin because of their understanding or misunderstanding of who (and Whose) they are. 

Jesus’ wider definition of belonging is Good News to any who need, or long, to be welcomed into a more expansive, a more inclusive household of God. In Luke, Jesus employs an ever-larger definition of family, a definition of belonging and beloving that doesn’t depend on biology or inheritance, but on adoption by grace of those who listen deeply and behave lovingly toward one another. In Luke it’s clear that love makes a family. Maybe getting a glimpse of the idea that we belong and are beloved in the household of God is gift enough for this twelfth day of Christmas; or maybe it’s more than we could have thought to ask for.

At Emmanuel, I often think of the cantata as our fourth reading as well as our musical sermon. Today’s cantata text picks up the themes of losing, finding, and belonging to Jesus; or maybe it’s more about Jesus belonging to us, promising not to leave us bereft and panicked. Here we are all invited to identify with Mary searching for her dearest Jesus, her desire and joy. Here Jesus responds that he can and will always be found in the Love of God, in the love that is God. One of my colleagues, Steve Garnaas-Holmes wrote this in his poetry blog, Unfolding Light.[1] While it’s called, “Losing Jesus,” it’s more about finding Jesus.

Sometimes it feels like we’ve lost him.
Even so soon after Christmas
the magic is gone.

But we find him eventually
in the true temple:
not some place of special power or mystique,
but that sacred place within.
Where is the temple
but in that silence in the holy of holies
in you?

When you can’t find the Holy One
you may be looking too far afield.

Treasure these words and ponder them in your heart.

  1. www.unfoldinglight.net

G-AWE-D

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Epiphany 5B, 4 February 2024. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 40:21-31. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? [Yes!]
  • 1 Corinthians 9:16-23. In my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge.
  • Mark 1:29-39. So that I may proclaim the message.

O God of wonder, 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.

I’m going to interrupt my preaching on the Gospel of Mark this week to spend a few moments to talk with you about our Hebrew Bible lesson from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, because it’s one of my favorites. Actually it’s Second Isaiah, which is what Chapters 40 through 55 get called, because they were so clearly written at a different time by a different author than the first thirty-nine chapters or the last eleven. The writer of Second Isaiah might be considered the great poet, rather than the great prophet. This writer never once refers to herself as a prophet. I imagine her words might have come to Jesus’ mind sometimes, especially when he was able to find a deserted place to pray while it was still very dark. Continue reading →

Eternal Life

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Easter 7A, 21 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Acts 1:6-14. All of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women.
  • 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 [but what about 4:16?]. If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.
  • John 17:1-11. Protect them in your name that you have given me…so that they may be one as we are one.

O God our protector, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Today in our Church calendar we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost. It’s a liturgical acknowledgement of a sort of limbo, in which Jesus has triumphed over death and but has yet to go to his heavenly reward; the comfort and the inspiration, the clarifying flame of the Holy Spirit, which he had promised to send, has not yet arrived. It’s a little bit like the in-between time at Emmanuel between the end of our cantata season and the beginning of chapel camp. Continue reading →

Need

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Lent 1A, 26 Feb. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7. You will not die.
  • Romans 5:12-21. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
  • Matthew 4:1-11. Away with you, Satan!

O God all gracious and all merciful, 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 have just crossed the threshold into the season of Lent in the Church, for period of forty days, not including Sundays (hence our special reception after our service today)! The forty days are set aside for Christians to examine our estrangement from the grace and mercy of the Holy One and to return to right relationship with God and one another. Although each person is called on to do their own Lenten practice, as a congregation we come together for mutual support and encouragement as we go through a this period of intensified self-examination with a call to increased generosity in almsgiving, praying, fasting, and studying scripture. Continue reading →

Your love changes everything.

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Epiphany 3C, 23 January 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10. Do not be grieved; the joy of the Lord is your strength.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Luke 4:14-21. Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

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.

Before I address Luke’s signature story about the miraculous beginning of the ministry of Jesus, I want to make sure you noticed that two verses are omitted from our lectionary-appointed reading of Nehemiah this morning: verses 4 and 7. I hope you wondered what was missing when you looked at the citation. Maybe you even guessed that I would tell you? (I will!) The verses contain long lists of names. Verse 4 lists the names of the thirteen people who stood with Ezra as he read the Torah, on a wooden platform, which had been made for the purpose. He was standing with his leadership team. [1] And then in verse 7 is a list of thirteen other people, who were there to help the congregation to understand the sacred text. [2] Let’s not miss the idea that the scripture has always been challenging to understand, and that it’s best engaged in conversation, in community. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth, has also left us a pep talk about what it means to be a part of a gathering – one body with many members with a variety of gifts, who have great need of one another. The passage we heard this morning tees up his treatise on love, which we will hear next Sunday. Continue reading →

Peace at the Last

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Proper 27B.  7 November 2021. The 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 Peace, 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.

Being within the Octave or eight days of November 1, we are observing the celebration of All Saints’ Day today. Eight is a sacred number in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In our sacred texts, eight represents a fullness of time, more than complete, a time for new life and new beginning, entrance into the eternal. In Islam, there are eight gates to heaven. The Arabic numeral 8 on its side stands for infinity. For Christians, there are traditionally eight sides on a baptismal font recalling the Torah command to circumcise on the eighth day, the Torah command to observe the feast of Passover, and the Gospel account of the resurrection of Jesus on the eighth day. Today we are sacramentally full to the brim. Liturgically, our cup is overflowing with Jane Harte’s baptism and with our celebration of Holy Eucharist. Our Great Thanksgiving will memorialize and honor those on the heart of our parish who have died since All Saints’ Day in 2020, and the beautiful Ruehr requiem will commemorate Ruth Ann Richwine Ruehr and all who died in 2020. Continue reading →

Respond, repair, rebuild!

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Proper 26B.  31 October 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Ruth 1:1-18. Do not beg me to leave you anymore, woman.
Hebrews 9:11-14. Purify our conscience from dead observances for worship of the living God.
Mark 12:28-34.  You are not far from the Realm of God.

O God of our redemption, 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 that the formal name of our educational and artistic collaboration program with Central Reform Temple is Emmanuel Center. You’ll see our statement of purpose in the back of your bulletins. Essentially it says that faithfully rooted in our distinct religious traditions and shared spiritual heritage, we model compassionate encounters between Judaism and Christianity that affirm the difficult challenges of history and aspire to new levels of understanding. The Emmanuel Center Board comprises leaders from the parish and the synagogue to plan activities that explore spiritual and ethical perspectives on our shared human experience. When the board met this past Tuesday, we spent considerable time talking about the history being made right now with regard to the tens of thousands of refugees of rapacious militarism coming into the US from Afghanistan to be resettled here. Afghani people are living in refugee camps on five military bases in this country; the pictures of Fort Bliss (a highly ironic name) in New Mexico show about 100 huge tents holding 6,000 people. Our conversation on the board had to do with our moral obligation to respond with welcome and assistance, and the process of figuring out how. Where to begin? Continue reading →

Pharisees

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Proper 22B.  3 October 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Job 1:1, 2:1-10. Do you still persist in your integrity?
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12. Someone has testified somewhere.
Mark 10:2-16.  Receive the kingdom of God as a little child.

O God of the Pharisees, 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? One of the things that my clergy colleagues and I often do when we see each other in the week before particularly troublesome readings is ask one another, “Are you preaching on Sunday?” And if the answer is no, the response is, “lucky!” If the answer is yes, the follow up question is, “What are you going to do with those readings?” I usually keep this to myself, but I’ll confess to you that I actually feel lucky to engage and even debate challenging scripture texts. I think of the ways that People of the Book turn to one another for perspective, guidance, sympathy, insight, and sometimes in the form of an argument. It’s not always respectful, but I think we all know that it’s supposed to be. Continue reading →