Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 9:1-41 What They Saw As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. The man, blind from birth, could see nothing. Obviously. He was blind, from birth. The disciples, those walking along with Jesus, they saw sin. The man was blind, born blind; that, they observed was a bad thing. The man's blindness, in that ancient society, limited his future trajectory; he was born without hopes, dreams, or options. His life was planned for him by his lack of sight. The text tells us this when his neighbors say about him, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” That was the life this man was born into. He could beg or he would die. Budding theologians that they were, they were concerned with the “why”. Why was this man, this particular man, born blind? There must be a reason. They did not feel terribly comfortable placing the responsibility on God; working from their biblical perspective, they understood that God s...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 4:5-42 Christ in the Face of the Stranger More than four decades ago, Henri Nouwen wrote: “In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women, and obligatory for Christians, to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 4:1-11 Starve It I guess you gotta starve it, if you want to kill it. And for Jesus, who remember was as much human as he was God, it took him forty days and forty nights. Probably felt like forever. In that wilderness, Jesus wasn't starving his body. Sure, he was fasting; he was physically famished. But the desert days were not a weight loss plan; this wilderness time was not a spa retreat. Jesus, you see, wasn't prone to obsess over his trim figure in the Gospels – as his opponents will later point out, calling him a glutton and a drunk. Jesus was in that wilderness because you gotta starve it, if you want to kill it. And it had to go. Jesus was out there to starve his ego – that piece of us that longs to be great, to be right, to be in control – that thing in us that longs to be God. Because he understood that the temptations would only intensify beyond the wilderness. Each healing, each adoring crowd, each ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Free Ashes Back when I was involved in campus ministry, I was told repeatedly that to draw the people in, I needed to give things away. People generally, college students specifically, I was advised, love free stuff. And so, we would buy drinks at the campus coffee shop or offer pizza or give away color-changing cups inscribed with the ministry's information. And it is true: people do love free stuff. I mean, I get it: I love free stuff. And as I look out at this assembly, it seems that you do as well. And apparently, when the price is free, we can offer just about anything. Today we are giving away free face ashes and here you are, ready to get some. And, let's be honest, ashes are not your typical giveaway for a reason; they are not nearly as fancy or flashy as, let's say, a color-changing cup. And yet, here you are, foreheads ready, to receive your free gift. And I gotta be honest: I won...