Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 24:36b-48   Sunlight   I wonder if there was a window in the room, that room in which the remaining eleven disciples were hidden.   When I hear this story, that’s just what I always wonder.   One might think I would puzzle over the immense theological implications of this post-resurrection passage, but honestly, I’m usually just trying to figure out the lighting.   In the imaginations of my mind there is always this rogue beam of light, pouring in through the stubborn space between two ragged, sun-bleached curtains.   And it spotlights the lazy, suspended dusts, hanging in mid-air like unfortunate abductees caught in a tractor beam.   And then, without a sound, without warning, Jesus enters from stage left, but no one knows how he got in because that spotlight is fixed, illuminating an unremarkable floor tile, rather than the living miracle greeting the stunned occupants.   There is nothing exceptional about the sunbeam, or the way

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 20:1-18   Show Me Your Resurrection   Easter first happened in a cemetery.   Not under the sparkling sunlight of a spring morning.   Not on the stunning verdant hills of a fantasy.   Not in a field of pastel tulips.   Not tangled in a prolonged cellophane celebration.   Easter happened in a cemetery.   Surrounded by death.   Incubated by stubborn shadows.   Carried in a broken heart.   Greeted quite unexpectedly by a woman who no longer dreamed dreams.   Mary Magdelene:   About women, no one can know. There are some, Like this one, whose pain is a locked sepulchre; Their pain is buried in them, there is no fleeing From it and no casting it off … … Deep calls unto deep, a grave for a grave, A carcass drawing a carcass in that unhappy morning; Three days was this one in a grave, in a world that died In the cry in the afternoon. It is finished, The cry that drew blood from her like the barb of a sword. It is finished. Finished