Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52   The Kingdom of Heaven   The crowd was skeptical, because the evidence was lacking.   Despite Jesus’ prayer for the kingdom to come, everywhere they looked it appeared to be business as usual.   The Roman soldiers still harassed them; their taxes still funded an enemy empire; the roads were still lined with cruel, bloody crosses.   Jesus prayed for the arrival of a new kind of kingdom, but nothing changed.   Jesus talked a lot about what could be, about a future better than their present, but, as far as anyone could tell, there was nothing to see.   It is actually the problem with all things God: the obscurity of it all.   An invisible God haunting this physical world, occasionally lighting a bush on fire, infrequently knocking a bloodthirsty zealot off of a horse.   But those are the splash moments, the outliers; mostly everything else is pretty quiet; mostly God is f...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 28:10-19a   The God of our Ancestors   I never met Lemuel Menear.   And I never will.   Because he died a long time ago.   He died far away from home and family.   He died in Andersonville, Georgia, in Camp Sumter.   Lemuel was one of 13,000 Union soldiers, prisoners of a civil war, who died surrounded by unbearable human suffering, amidst sickness and starvation.   He died in a prison historians have called “hell on earth.”   He was fifty-five years old.   Lemuel left behind his wife and daughters and all he loved.   To fight.   For his nation?   For unity?   For the ideals of freedom and equality?   For the future?   Because he had no other choice?   I’ll never know his reasons.   But I do know that he departed the rugged mountains of West Virginia never to return.   I never met Lemuel, but when his great-grandson died, I wept. ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson   Matthew 1 1 :1 6 - 1 9 , 25-30     Something light in a heavy world     I recently decided to convince myself that being stressed out is not an essential aspect of my personality .  I am trying to believe that I could live, and even thrive, and still be good at things, without constantly feeling stressed .  I’m not sure if myself is yet convinced .  But, on good days, I am trying .     But , the truth is: w e live in a heavy world .  Each person you enc ounter each day of your life is navigating a litany of stressors; everybody is weighed down something or some things : weighed down by injustice, violence, hatred, division ; w eighed down by frayed friends hips and broken relationships; weighed down by isolation and alienation; weighed down by existential crises and apocalyptic fears; w eighed down by outside p ressures and internal voices; weighed down by legalistic demands and mercil...