Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Christmas Eve 2016 Luke 2:1-20 One Tiny Flame I can't explain this. I hope you understand. It all came out of God like poetry instead of prose – beautiful but hard to make sense of. How did the one who spoke creation into being get caught up in the small town drama of a pregnant teen who see angels? How did the God who spilled the stars across the universe like marbles become enclosed in the cramped, black space of a virgin womb? See I can't explain this. I hope you understand. Christmas presents us with more questions than answers. Christmas, I think, means to leave us tongue-tied, at a loss, in awe and wonder, clinging desperately to whatever faith gives us the eyes to see God in that manger. Christmas means to leave us breathlessly pondering all these things in our hearts. So Christmas is, of course, mysterious; it is, after all, God wrapped in packaging much, much too small. But also Christmas is teaching me

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 35:1-10 Hope in the Desert Hope needs a desert in which to bloom. This is what Advent tells us. Elizabeth and Mary, John the Baptist and Jesus: new life born in impossible places; hope blooming in the desert. This also reminds us, this season of Advent, that we don't come by hope easily. It is not mere optimism, born of some dishonest naivety, like a cheap salve more likely to bring infection than healing. Hope digs in deep; it has to. Henri Nouwen makes the distinction saying, “While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone.” 1 And so, in that sense, maybe the chasm separating the two is filled with trust. Optimism justifies our lack of trust. Hope needs trust to survive. But like most things in the desert, hope is also dangerous. So whi

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 11:1-10 Visions of the Messiah Today is the second Sunday of the Advent season. And we have yet to catch a glimpse of the pregnant Virgin Mother or of the dazed and confused Joseph. We have yet to see angels. It seems, surely by now,, we should have arrived at the gates of Bethlehem. And yet, our readings have yet to speak of any of those most familiar Advent nouns. Instead we get guesses, the predictions of prophets and poets – prophets and poets peering into a hazy future their eyes would never see. The visions of Isaiah and the Psalmist – visions as ominous as they are thrilling as they are hopeful – speak of the world as it might be. But not only that, they speak also of the Messiah – long promised, long expected – who will finally make the dream the reality. The prophet Isaiah dreams of the peaceable kingdom. A world in which the wolf snuggles the lamb and leopards nap with baby goats. He dreams of a world in w