Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 6-7 Seeing the Beautiful I must admit: sometimes I forget to see beautiful in this world, this same world that God created and calls good.   I forget that every thing, every single thing, that surrounds me is amazing, impossibly intricate, carefully crafted, a product of impossible divine love.   This entire world, our island home, is just covered in the stardust-y fingerprints of our ancient Creator.   And so in that sense: is saturated through and through with the beauty of holiness.   And somehow, most of the time, I miss it; I fail to see it.   I forget to see beautiful in this world.   Maybe it’s because I’m too focused on my calendar, too worried about my task list, too concerned with my routine.   Maybe it’s because the headlines are so packed with atrocities that it seems impossible for there to be enough room in this world for goodness.   Maybe because the history of our species is written in the blood of war and plague and con

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 12:49-56 Peace? On the night Jesus was born, there were shepherds, in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks.   And beyond those fields, more fields, empty space, the quiet stillness of a resting world.   The whole scene existing in a time before electric lights and frantic traffic and billowing smokestacks forever changed our understanding of time and space and sky.   Above them, those lonely laborers, there was only the glittering, velvety blackness.   Until, there against that familiar backdrop, the impossible: a multitude of angelic beings, so many that space became crowded.   More than sight, they were also sound.   Into that silent night, the angels began reciting their ancient songs, songs that originated beyond the world of mortals, in the hidden mystery that is God’s heavenly presence.   Sadly, we know very little of those sacred songs that filled that night sky.   Nothing of the otherworldly melodies or harmonies were rec

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 12:13-21 They Want Your Soul! It began as no more than a whisper.   It always starts small, doesn’t it?   It was like the faintest tapping on a window, on his window, as gentle as the first drops of a light spring shower.   So light, in fact, he wasn’t sure it was even really there – maybe it was all in his head – a product of outsized aspirations and a bit too much anxiety.   Each evening the man would fall into bed, exhausted from the daily toll his farm demanded.   And yet, he was never truly restful.   He would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-tossed, sure that each night, as the darkness set in, that whisper grew louder.   If courage is the right word for it, he would summon his courage and dare look out his window.   And gaze, he would, on the field below.   The sandy soil turned to a sea of blackness by the dark sky.   In some mysterious way, he sensed that his life, his future, was hidden just below that surface.   And it was calli