Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 2 Corinthians 5:16-21   Method Acting   Daniel Day-Lewis, three-time Academy Award winner, six-time nominee, and current knight, is perhaps the most dedicated and gifted method actor in the history of film.   He doesn’t just play a part; he inhabits his characters and allows them to inhabit him.     To prepare for The Last of the Mohicans, he spent six-months living in the woods, building canoes, learning to use a tomahawk, tracking, hunting, and skinning animals for food.   During the making of Gangs of New York¸ Day-Lewis would wear only period-specific clothing, which led to him catching pneumonia.   He almost died of pneumonia because he would only take period-specific medicines; the film was set in 1862.   While filming Lincoln, Sir Daniel insisted that everyone on set, including director Stephen Spielberg, call him “Mr. President.”   He did not once break character; he lived as Abraham L...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 13:31-35   Prayer before the Sermon:   Canticle Q: A Song of Christ’s Goodness St. Anselm of Canterbury   Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; * you are gentle with us as a mother with her children. Often you weep over our sins and our pride, * tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds, * in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us. Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life; * by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness; * through your gentleness, we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead, * your touch makes sinners righteous. Lord Jesus, in your mercy, heal us; * in your love and tenderness, remake us. In your compassion, bring grace and forgiveness, * for the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us. Amen. [1]   Spread Wings   This was the cit...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 4:1-13   Trust in the Wilderness   Forty-eight hours is the longest I have ever fasted.   Two days and not even close to forty.   And I was miserable.   Sitting hungry, in the woods, in the rain, with a plastic tarp.   And the only flat, stable surface was a rock, but there was a nest on the underside, filled with, what I think were, yellow jackets, or anyway something that stung.   And I so I sat on the saturated ground.   And rather than be enlightened, or become a holier person, I cursed the skies and the rain and my pants, which were too big, and my thumb, which I cut with my off-brand Swiss Army knife.   And the devil never arrived – either because he wasn’t impressed with my two day fast, or because he saw that he wasn’t needed.   Of the two wilderness stories we are given today, I relate much more to the one in Deuteronomy.   And not just because Jesus is much better ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Joel 2:1-2, 12-17   Trembling The forces of death are at the gate and so that is why the alarm is sounded.   Like air raid sirens on the dawn of war, the trumpeter placed his instrument to his lips and the hauntingly desperate sound came bursting forth.   On another day, in another time, a better time, it might have been a song, perhaps something beautiful or maybe even happy.   But on this day there was no song – because in the killing fields no one thinks of beauty and no one hopes for happiness.   On this day, the instrument was robbed of its greater purpose.   The trumpet sounded only the sound of a terrible nightmare.     For two years, but probably much longer, we have lived with the oppressive drone of the alarm – until it became the background noise of our lives.   That a disease could sweep across the planet and kill almost six million people, almost one million of those in our own nati...