Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 1:1-18   Here   In the turbulent days of the Vietnam War, as the sky and the streets flashed with apocalyptic fantasies, Madeline L’Engle wrote a Christmas poem called The Risk of Birth:   This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late.   That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn– Yet here did the Saviour make his home.   When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on the planet earth, And by a comet the sky is torn– Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.   What the poet captures is the great scandal of the Incarnation – namely that it happens here.   Here: where there is never made enough room.   Here: where the rooms are too dusty and the hearts too often in...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24   Rejoice Always   Joy.   Joy is the theme of this Third Sunday of the Advent season.   This has long been the case in the Church.   On this very Sunday, at the mid-point of this season of anticipation, each year, the introit of the old Latin mass would break the penitential silence of western Christendom with the stirring cry of “Guadete,” rejoice.   Joy is the reason we don pink vestments today (vestments that we call rose-colored), on this third Sunday of Advent.   Joy is the reason we light a pink candle today (we call it rose-colored), on this third Sunday of the Advent season.   Joy is the reason this morning’s epistle lesson, taken from the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, is chosen for this particular Sunday – because it begins with the word that sets the tone: rejoice!     Rejoice!   Christmas is coming!   The angels are about to ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 40:1-11   Immanuel The first word broke the silence, a silence that had lingered for far too long.   It had been a haunting silence, a painful silence, a silence heavy with lament.     That silence, it lives between the end of the 39 th chapter of Isaiah and the first word of chapter 40.   For over a century the prophet went silent.   There were no words.   Somehow more than 150 years of silence abides in the little white space of your Bible that separates the two prophetic oracles.     While the nation waited a century and a half to hear a word from God, a lot happened.   The Babylonian empire rose to power and Jerusalem fell into ruin.   The Davidic dynasty died.   The Temple was reduced to rubble.   And the people were carried away into exile and deposited by the rivers of Babylon.   And all the while the silence, that persistent, deafening silence.  ...