Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:7-18 The Prophetic Goal “ So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.”   Did he?   Is this what we are calling “good news”?   You brood of vipers?   Calling a crowd a slithering pile of baby snakes does not sound like much of a compliment.   The axe is lying at the root of the trees?   That’s not good news for the trees.   Chaff burning with unquenchable fire?   Good news for cold hands, I suppose, but you don’t want to be the fuel for that fire; it’s unquenchable. Why are people even showing up to hear this so-called good news?   And they are showing up.   I mean, it’s not like you just stumble across this guy on the way to work.   He’s not standing on the street corner outside of the cool new camel milk café.   (I don’t know what people drank on the way to work back then.)   John the Baptist, you might remember from last week, was out in the wilderness – well off the beaten path.   If you wanted to

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:1-6 Nobodies There are some important people mentioned in today’s Gospel.   There is Tiberius – the most important.   He was Emperor of the Roman Empire.   He ruled an Empire that covered more than 2 million square miles; as much as a quarter of the world’s population lived within its borders. [1]   He was powerful.   He was feared. He was a brutal man.   He so despised Jewish people that he deported all Jews who were living in the capital city of Rome.   Whether they liked him or not, to those living in the Empire, he was the most important person in the world. John the Baptist was a nobody. Pontius Pilate was the prefect of the Roman province of Judea.   According to Jewish sources, he was “’inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness,’ [a ruler] whose administration was marked with briberies, insults, robberies…, frequent executions without trial, and endless savage ferocity.” [2]   His territory was a backwater filled

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 21:25-36 Strange Hope Christmas is a mere twenty-three days away.   So it seems like this Gospel reading should be Joseph and a very pregnant Mary and a weighed-down donkey.   We should be standing at the edge of Bethlehem.   And yet here we are standing at the edge of the apocalypse. Advent is supposed to be romantic, nostalgic.   Advent is Mary saying yes to the angel in the intimacy of her bedroom.   And Joseph honorably standing by his gal as rumors swirl.   And shepherds huddled around a warming fire.   And a cozy manger flanked by a fuzzy lamb.   Advent is as quaint as a nativity scene that seems to have misplaced that tiny baby Jesus.   Advent is a sepia-toned arrival that arrived so long ago it now feels like a fairy tale, one that spills into our lives every Christmas before Happy New Year’s returns it to storage. But we, today, begin our Advent not on the dusty road to Bethlehem but in the roaring sea.   We find not the pe