Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 9:38-50 Word and Example As I stand here in this pulpit, and look out over this crowd of people, one thing is clear to me: no one in this room is a biblical literalist.   There are many reasons for which I am glad about that, not the least of which is the disturbingly graphic Gospel passage we heard this very morning, with all its lopped off limbs and plucked out eyes.   This is probably one of the few passages that really draws a hard line in the sand for aspiring literalists, the other being the one about giving all of one’s money to the poor. I am an Episcopal priest these days, living in a denominational land where biblical literalism is scarcely found.   But I grew up in the Pentecostal tradition and so I know a thing or two about Biblical literalism.   This will give you an idea of that landscape: I was once warned that if I did not take everything in the Bible literally I was calling the entire Bible a lie.   Literalism or bust.

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson James 3:1-12 Words Before anything else existed, there were words.   Words suspended in the formless void, in the thick darkness of God’s all-encompassing shadow.   Nothing else: just God and words.   After an eternity of silence, God spoke.   And because of words, worlds were created.   Words caused light to break through darkness.   Words moved the water so that the land could breathe.   Words set stars on fire and convinced planets to pirouette.   Words troubled the dust and it organized into organisms.   Because God spoke.   Words are powerful. And when everything else was already spoken, God chose to make beings in God’s very likeness, in the image of God. And God gave those special creatures a very special gift.   A gift that is amazingly powerful, a gift previously possessed only by the Creator: words. It was a dangerous decision, by what I assume is an infinitely curious God.   You see, those words, the ones that God gave as a gi

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Song of Songs 2:8-13 Desire It was the desperate longing in his hushed voice that she desired to hear.   It was the way in which his body held her gaze as he bounded over the hills, driven, she knew, by a burning desire to be close…a longing for her embrace, for her touch.   It was that moment their eyes met through the lattice; it was just a look but she felt it in her body and soul, if that makes sense.   It was as if that look were more like a thing, or maybe even a seismic event.   She dreamt of that moment and in her dreams her desire was more powerful than any distance that threatened to keep them apart.   She burned with desire: the ache of longing, the thrill of hope. You don’t plan for this, but it is there, tied up in what means to be human.   It is hidden somewhere inside – like heart or stomach.   But more like a flame – a thing that burns from the inside out.   It feels both dangerous and essential.   As if when the light of des