Tag Archives: prophets

The Harvest of Righteousness

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Advent 2C.  19 December 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Baruch 5:1-9 Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on the robe of righteousness.
Phillipians 1:31-11. 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, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God
Luke 3:1-6 All flesh shall see the salvation of God.

God all merciful and all compassionate, 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.

As I said last week, Advent is a season for communal and institutional reflection and repentance, for collective atonement and reparations. Our readings for this second Sunday in Advent are so full and big with calls for repentance and reparations; it is almost as if they are pregnant with possibility. The prophet Baruch and the evangelist Luke are both reminding their hearers about the words of the prophet Isaiah. And Luke draws a picture of John the Baptist that is just like the prophet Jeremiah, consecrated before he was born, and just like Elijah by the Jordan in the wilderness. Luke also has already explained that John’s work was so closely related to Jesus’s work, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they must have known one another before they were even born. Continue reading →

Answer again the call!

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Epiphany 2B, January 17, 2021, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.

1 Samuel 3:1-20. Here I am, for you called me.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God and that you are not your own?
John 1:43-51. “I saw you. . .Come and see.”

O vision fair of glory, 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.

Last week I began my words to you with “what a week.” So how do I start this sermon? The British satire television program comes to mind from the early 1960’s, “That was the week that was,”. I can’t say that I “remember” the show, but I clearly remember that when I was growing up my parents practically wore out their vinyl record album of Tom Lehrer songs, “That Was the Year that Was”. If you’re too young to know these songs, your homework is to find them on YouTube! Those songs are still pertinent: the pollution of the environment, the threat of nuclear war, racial strife, religious conflict.
Lehrer liked to say, “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet!” And yet, listening to his satirical prophetic wisdom helped so many people clarify their purpose and organize themselves and others to join in working for a better future. Lehrer’s work was a call for a better future.

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Turn around!

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Advent 2B, December 6, 2020. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Isaiah 40:1-11 Cry out!
2 Peter 3:8-15a Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
Mark 1:1-8 He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

O God of the prophets, 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.

Every year our branch of Christianity gives us a new year, advent, a new season for longing to hear and respond to lessons of prophetic wisdom and calls for repentance writ large. This morning our collect for the day gathers us as one to beg for grace to heed the prophets’ warnings and forsake our sins, our collective sins: the sins of our communities, corporations, governments, and churches. We beg for grace because we surely cannot forsake our sins without grace. If the good news is that God’s grace is abundantly available to us, all around us, completely accessible for the asking, then what? How do we drink from the deep well of God’s grace so that we heed the prophetic warnings and forsake our sins?
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