Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 16:19-31 Cross the Chasm The chasm was always there, it's just that it never went away. It is explicitly noted in death, it's fixed in death, but it started long before the poor man fell into Abraham's bosom. The chasm appeared when the poor man was left to rot away by the gate and the rich man was too busy Scrooge-ing through an ocean of gold coins to notice. Or maybe he noticed but didn't care. Or maybe crossing the chasm just felt like a bad investment. If last week's parable was confusing, and it was, today's is much less so. There are a lot of hiding spots in the ambiguity of last week's parable; we are not so fortunate today. But that doesn't mean it is impossible to distract ourselves from Jesus' intense, confrontational message about wealth and possessions. We could easily get bogged down in the peripheral details of the story; we could easily, as some have done, turn this para...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 16:1-13 A Better Investment Well, it seems that either God or the lectionary committee, or perhaps both, has decided that we are talking about money today. OK...good, no one seems to be leaving – yet. And so I thought, maybe, I could make this a very short sermon and simply remind you of Jesus' final phrase in today's Gospel: “You cannot serve God and wealth” and then invite the Stewardship Committee to take it from there. But alas, instead, I decided to drag this out a bit. Although, later in the service you will be hearing from the Stewardship Committee. We are doing that part. Today, I want to talk about this Gospel. I want to talk about it because I think it is one of the more confusing parables that Jesus tells. And I think that is the case because we, the Church, are often not very good at reading parables; we do them wrong. We read them as if they are meant to be allegories – always with God as the most ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 15:1-10 Waiting for the Guests to Arrive Today's Gospel takes place in a high school cafeteria, apparently. And Jesus, how embarrassing for him, is sitting at the wrong table. And that is a real problem for the Pharisees, who, in this story, are playing the cool kids, the in-crowd. Jesus has potential; before he doesn't, at the end of the Gospel, he has a pretty strong following; so, he maybe could be one of them, one of the popular guys. But the problem is: he is sitting with the losers, with the outcasts, with the social pariahs. It's a bad look. He spends way too much time with people who don't matter. And, if we're being honest, not enough time with them. The Pharisees are jealous, angry, put out that Jesus would actually choose to grace those people with his presence. They don't understand how Jesus could possibly be interested rubbing elbows, breaking bread, with sinners. They don't un...