Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 2:1-20   Immanuel   36 weeks and 4 days into Jen’s second pregnancy I returned home from a vestry retreat.   That night, as we slept, a snowstorm swept into Northwest Ohio and Jen, my wife, was awakened by contractions.   She gently and calmly roused me from my sleep to inform me that she was driving herself to the hospital, in the snowstorm.   I, of course, made a counter-offer, one that I thought was quite strong, one that she quickly and decisively rejected.   She was driving to the hospital convinced that she would return to our bed in a matter of hours with the diagnosis of false labor.   And I was to stay home with our two-year old because he was a terrible sleeper and why wake him for false labor pains.   And so, aware I was not winning this negotiation, I laid back down, phone in hand, resigned to await my wife’s promised return.   The contractions, it turned out, were not false; they were very real.   And not long after my very

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 1:39-55   Carrying Jesus   Some women crave pickles, at least that is what I am told – mostly by sitcoms – and so I suppose it must be true. My wife craved chocolate milk – a glass a day, assuming there was milk and chocolate syrup in the house. Mary craved revolution, which is one of those pregnancy cravings one does not hear about often.   When she was with child, the young Mary, before Jesus stretched her body far enough to leave marks, before Jesus carved lines of grief into her angelic face, composed her timeless, prophetic song while running through the hill country – in the space between home and the future.   Perhaps rehearsing the lines, over and over again, praying and struggling to find the right words and then shouting them out to the wild beasts when they finally came.     Or maybe not.   Maybe she had no words on account of being so overwhelmed.   And maybe simply fell into a trance while Elizabeth was still praisi

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Baruch 5:1-9   Stewards of Hope   More than 2500 years ago, the prophet Isaiah offered a beautiful word of hope to a community living in exile, to a people watering the shores of the rivers of Babylon with their tears.   500 years later, the author of Baruch, repackaged and reused that same word of hope for the communities of the Diaspora struggling to survive the pressures of isolation and Hellenization.   More than century after the composition of Baruch, the author of Luke’s Gospel speaks Isaiah’s word of hope to a faith community living under the oppressive rule of an Empire that lined their streets with bloody crosses.   And then almost 2000 years after the composition of the third Gospel, a 23-year old seminarian preached his first sermon about that same ancient word of hope to the one grouchy, old man who was willing to drive to church in a snowstorm for the 8 o’clock service – then for another 100 or so who came at 10, once the roads wer

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13   A Prayer for a New Year   This is my planner.   It is brand new.   The cover is not yet worn or dirtied.   It has not yet been mangled by the assorted contents of my backpack, the place it will spend much of this next year.   There currently is not a single mark on its pages.   Nothing has been crossed out or checked off.   It will never again be quite as pristine as it is this morning.     This planner is a little different from the planners one might find at Staples or Target because this planner begins with today, November 28, the first Sunday of Advent.   You see, it is the Episcopal Liturgical Appointment Calendar.   It is decorated with Bible verses and tiny little candles mark the feasts of the Church.   Even though, like probably many of you, I trust my phone to keep my appointments, to vibrate in my pocket 15 minutes before each meeting or counseling session, I still use my planner to list, and scratch o

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 1:4b-8   Christ the King Sunday   It is not lost on me that this letter, what we call the book of Revelation, was written by a lonely prisoner, about a God who seemed to be losing, and a King whose obituary had been published about seven decades earlier.   And so we could dismiss this whole thing as wishful thinking or even the delusions of an underfed exile.   And that is fair because John, the writer of these visions, imagines all kinds of unrealistic things: like tears wiped dried and no more death and a broken world made into heaven on earth.   Or we can choose to believe in the unbelievable.   And remember that it is the work of God to plant dreams in the very places hope goes to die, like an island prison in the middle of the Aegean Sea.     I am not sure how this strange series of apocalyptic visions escaped the island and found its audience on the shore, but the ecstatic dreams of that solitary man gave the Church, li

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a   Living Dreams   Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.   But what if they don’t?   What if dreams never die?   What if they ride the ever-rolling stream of time, passed down through the ages like the most precious of family heirlooms?     Today, on this All Saints’ Sunday, we look to the heavens and we marvel at those who blind our eyes with their dazzling halos; they stand before us like guiding stars leading us to the crèche of Christ but at a seemingly impossible distance.   We hang them in the sky, light years above our human toil.   Untouchable.   Beyond reach.   Imagining they possess, like comic book heroes, supernatural abilities with which we are simply not blessed.   But in truth the only thing that separates the saints of old from us, besides the veil of eternity, is the stunning vibrancy of their dreams.

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 12:28-34   Our Return to the Nave   Well, we’re inside.   This is an exciting day, one we have long awaited.   Today, for the first time in many months, I can gesture with both hands while I preach, like God intended, without having to worry about my pages flying off into Tejon Street.   I don’t to have to wonder if the altar book will turn its pages in the middle of a chant.   I will no longer spend my Sunday mornings envious of your bundled heads and sunglassed eyes and supported backs.     Because we are, after many months, back in the nave.   I want to thank you for your patience, for your understanding, and for your trust.   I know it wasn’t always easy.   But I do appreciate your willingness to be inconvenienced for the greater good, to love our members more than your comfort.   I know today that I don’t need to say too much about the Gospel lesson, because I have seen so many of you live this Gospel during these challenging times