Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 16:19-31   The Beatitudes with a Plot   There is one question we must answer today at the very outset of our exploration of this unsettling Gospel passage.   If we hope to make sense of this Gospel, there is something we absolutely must determine about the finely dressed, sumptuously fed man in Jesus’ story: is he a bad man or is he a rich man?   Is he a bad man or is he a rich man?     Or perhaps we might ask ourselves: does Jesus want us to think of the man in the story as a bad man or a rich man?   At first glance, the man doesn’t look good.   Certainly, he is not presented favorably.   A poor man died, hungry and suffering, at his gate and it appears the rich man did nothing to ease his pain.   By the end of the story he is being tormented in a land of fiery agony.   He’s definitely not the hero of this story.     And yet, neither is this man presented as heartless or...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I Timothy 1:12-17   Sin and Love   So many sinners this Sunday – and not just in the pews.   There are sinners all over these Scripture passages.   Sinners making golden calves.   Sinners singing psalms.   Sinners writing letters – presumably to other sinners.   Sinners eating lunch with Jesus.   And sinners grumbling about the sinners eating lunch with Jesus.   That’s a lot of sinners.   And where there are sinners there is bound to be sin.   I grew up in a Pentecostal church and there I heard enough sermons about sin to last me a lifetime.   I knew our list of mortal sins well: strong drink, bad language, naughty thoughts, anything related to rainbow flags, and also voting for Bill Clinton.   By the way, a lot of you folks would really scandalize the Pentecostals I grew up with.   Of course there were many other sins as well, ones that we didn’t talk about quite as m...