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 ...

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] ...

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 ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Timothy 2:1-7 A Very Episcopalian Thanksgiving Perhaps you saw the cartoon, in the newspaper or on facebook.   In it a man and woman, both wearing combat helmets, are considering their Thanksgiving gathering – no small consideration in such a divided and partisan time.   They have everything pertaining to the big family meal laid out on a giant white board – where they will seat the liberals, and the Trump supporters, and the even the vegans – under the title Operation: Seating Chart. The man in the cartoon articulates their ultimate strategy for us, the audience, saying: “Aunt Millie is an Alt-Righter & cousin Jimmy is a Socialist, but if we sit the Episcopalians between all of them, I think we have a shot at keeping the peace.” I love it because I think it says something really profound about our Episcopal tradition.   And it is not that Episcopalians are naturally neutral.   We’re Episcopalians and so we know Epis...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Samuel 1:4-20 Hearts on the Altar The flickering flames of the holy place gave her away.   The way they exposed her silently moving lips, the way they caught their reflection in the tears that she could not control.   She wasn’t looking for an audience; she wasn’t trying to attract the attention of the cynical priest.   The flickering flames did that.   She was simply there to pour out her heart before God.   On this day, in her pain, that was the truest offering she could bring.   The silently moving lips, the tear stained face, they were part of that offering.   They were signs of the prayer that rose up from the deepest well of Hannah’s soul: both complaint and vow, lamentation, tinged with as much hope a shattered woman could muster.   You don’t show up if you don’t believe at least a little bit.   It wasn’t just that her pride was bruised by the constant taunts of the other wife in the h...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a Dreamers We are dreamers.   That is what we are.   We are dreamers.   We carry the old dreams in our blood like a primal inheritance.   We pass them down the generations like precious heirlooms.   We baptize our children in water haunted by impossible dreams and invincible hope.   We dream dreams in a world intent on shattering dreams; we cling to hope in a world that is forever trying to steal that hope.   We dream dreams – that is what we do – because we are dreamers.   And we don’t stop dreaming until the dream comes true. It would be easy to look at the passages from Isaiah and Revelation today and be discouraged.   It was, after all, about twenty-six hundred years ago when the prophet Isaiah dreamed his dream.   Twenty-six centuries have passed; twenty-six centuries is a long time.   It is a long time to keep having the same dream.   It i...