Preaching the Scriptures

  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 see...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 126   The Final Sunday on the South Lawn   Sometimes I see old pictures, pictures from a time that no longer exists, pictures from way back in the year 2019.   And in those old pictures the world looks different.   There are no masks, of course, very little concern about personal space, and an alarming lack of distancing, and that is always a bit striking.   But more than that, I see in those old pre-pandemic pictures a people who have not yet lived under the cloud of disease.   They have no idea that life is about to stop.   And change.   And change.   And change.   And scar them in ways still not entirely known.   They have no idea how many people they will bury, hundreds of thousands of people killed by a virus of which they have not yet heard.     Those pre-pandemic people had no idea how a world would respond to a global pandemic of this magnitude.   They co...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 2:18-24   Making Things Good   In the beginning, God was pleased – at least that is the impression one gets when reading the creation story that opens our Bible.   God made and God liked what God made.   Everything is evaluated and called good.   Water = good.   Dry land = good.   Plants yielding seed = good.   Lights in the dome of the sky = good.   Winged birds, great sea monsters, even creeping things = good.   God makes things and those things are good.   But it gets better; God decides that the whole is actually greater than the sum of the parts.   After stepping back and evaluating all of those good things together, God decides that the whole of creation is, in fact, very good.   God is pleased.   But in all of that goodness, there is still something amiss; something is not quite right.   God continues to look around at this very good creation until ...