Preaching the Scriptures

The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 6:14-29   A Sonnet and a Sermon on the Death of John the Baptist All Souls' Memorial Chapel, Keene Valley   It seems so terribly out of place here In the midst of this story of Jesus The grizzly end of the Baptist’s career Inserted as a sick anamnesis   A memory of casual violence A bloody tale of invasive trauma The price John paid for fervent piousness Was at this king’s party merely drama   “This John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” The sick royal act still haunted the king The prophet returned when he was amazed Until the guilt became his everything   A head on a platter would represent The lengths one will go to not repent   This story is, I think, supposed to clash, supposed to abruptly disrupt the narrative.   As it stands in stark contrast to the harp interlude that preceded its reading this morning, so does it stand in stark contrast to the surrounding peri...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 11:2-11   John the Unsure   John was born to be a prophet.   Heaven chose his vocation long before his birth, long before the angel Gabriel struck his old dad dumb.   That is what the miraculous conception meant: that he was no accident; he was destiny - a miracle born to do the miraculous.   The song that broke his father’s silence, the song that interrupted John’s bris, was all about how John was the promised prophet of the Most High.   John’s future was scripted before he could even smile, before he realized he had fingers.   His was a dramatic introduction to the world.   And folks in the village never forgot.   People glanced his way when the stories of Elijah were read in synagogue.   He wore the outsized expectations like a mantle.     And he grew into those expectations.   John looked the part.   He dressed the part.   He said prophetic things. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:15-17, 21-22   Power   The Gospel of Luke has been building to this very moment.   John and Jesus: they are the miracle babies featured in the opening chapters of this book.   We know they are special; their stories dominate the seasons of Advent and Christmas.   And everything in those now ubiquitous stories tell us that these two are unique: angels and prophecies and immaculate conceptions and a host of inspired canticles.   Luke goes out of his way to show us that these two babies, Jesus and John, are a big deal – a cosmically big deal.   And so it is fair for us to expect, since the book does continue after the first two chapters, that those two extraordinary infancies will produce two extraordinary, noteworthy men.   And, that those two men will most likely feature at least somewhat prominently in the remaining twenty-two chapters of Luke’s Gospel.     Chapter three picks up decades ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 1:4-11   That Love   John the Baptist was very much a human.   I doubt that is a controversial statement.   But I say it because I believe that is what the Gospel of Mark would like us to understand.   The man who appeared in the wilderness, the man who stood waist deep in the waters of the Jordan, was human.   Mark gives us quite the description of John.   He was a baptizer; that was his vocation.   His message was repentance.   He was magnetic – or at least his message was.   Also, he wore, what I can only imagine, was a distinctive, and probably itchy, suit of camel’s hair.   He cinched it up with a leather belt.   And he lived off of the land, eating bugs and their vomit – honey.   Mark paints for us a fairly effective picture.   According to the gospel writer, John was a rugged, focused, unique, and holy human.   And I suspect an acquired taste – with hi...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 3:1-12 Repentance The first religious leader who appeared in John’s audience was likely caught off guard – by the attention he received and the intensity of the rhetoric.   Like the person in the crowd singled out by a comedian: unaware, going in, that he was about to be featured in the show.   But the Gospel says that there were many Pharisees and Sadducees who ventured to the banks of the Jordan.   And that I find curious.   After the first guy slunk away red-faced, humiliated, each subsequent religious leader should have known better.   And still they came.   That either speaks to the overwhelmingly magnetic charisma possessed by this desert prophet.   Or perhaps to the limited entertainment options of the 1 st century.   Or, maybe, something else entirely.   The Gospel is not terribly clear on this point. But the Gospel does say that those religious leaders, the clergy folk, who s...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Eclipse I don’t presume to know what John was thinking when Jesus showed up at the river, at his river, John’s river.   But I do know that the people who were there, the crowds that journeyed all the way out into the desert, they came to see him.   They came to get a glimpse of the man wearing the camel skins, eating the locusts.   They came to experience his unique, fiery style.   They came to be pushed under the water by his rough hands, in the corner of the river he carved out for himself.   They came for John…until they didn’t.   He was the star…until he wasn’t. Until John the Baptist was eclipsed, like the secondary star in a binary system.   And then the people moved on.   And now, in our Bible, Jesus is the primary star; John is a minor character, in the story only to support the main character.   Once he had his own disciples – until they left to follow his much more imp...

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 ...