Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 4A 1-29-23 Micah 6:1-8   What does the Lord require of you?   What does the Lord require of you?   That’s a big question.   But what if I told you: the answer to this highly consequential question is actually in this text – hidden in the sixth chapter of this twenty-seven-hundred-year old book.   Is it even possible that a minor prophet, who lived and worked more than 700 years before the birth of Jesus, clued us in to the secret of life and the heart of God ages ago?     This portion of Micah chapter 6, the one we heard this morning, is sometimes read as a court transcript, the record of a legal contention between God and Israel, with the mountains presiding.   And given the nature of the Hebrew Bible it is not surprising that one might go there.   It is certainly not without precedent; in fact, much of the prophetic canon is shaped by the legal process.     The passage opens mid-argument, with a divine response, a response

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 49:1-7   In Vain   I shouldn’t have been mad at them but I was.   Our neighbors across the alley are very nice guys, a lovely older couple.   They greet us warmly when we pass on family dog walks.   They say kind things about our boys.   They hand out lots of candy on Halloween.   Every time I see them they flash me a kind smile and an enthusiastic wave.   And still I was fuming.   It was Spring of 2020.   And I was trying to record a sermon in my back yard, in the shadow of a blossoming lilac bush.   And take after take after take were interrupted by the sudden screech of a power saw.   Little did they know that their woodworking project was ruining my life and I about to absolutely lose it.   Three years ago, in January of 2020, things were going really well.   I had been at the church for four years.   And those four years had been exciting and encouraging.   Each of those first four years together saw our average Sunday attend

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 3:13-17   Origin Story   When my boys were younger, back in the days when bedtime stories were five minutes long, rather 500 pages long, they loved this book of superhero origin stories.   The book was a collection of the earliest tales of famous comic book protagonists such as: Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Black Widow.   They were tales of tragedy and triumph, conflict and resolution.   And of course they featured enough radiation to turn every turtle on this planet into a ninja.     What struck me, though, about these stories is that each was no more than a beginning, the first chapter of a much longer story.   Those beginnings mattered, were significant, because of everything that followed.   If Peter Parker’s spider bite healed up nicely and he went on to have a very fulfilling career in the insurance industry, his school field trip to the Hall of Science is nothing more than an amusing anecdote dusted off for a high school reunion.