Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 20:1-16   Not Fair   This parable is not fair.   And this landowner, he does not appear to be great at business.     And I do hope the people in Jesus’ crowd understood that this story was a folksy parable – because if they took this as entrepreneurial advice, financial ruin was all but guaranteed.   In this strange parable, the owner of the vineyard is employing a highly questionable business model.   If the landowner followed this strange pattern daily, it would not be long before the morning shift suffered some serious atrophy; laborers would keep a lower profile at sunrise – even though the landowner, as the parable reminds us, does pay a fair daily wage.   Most of the laborers would apply in the late afternoon – knowing that their hourly rate skyrockets as the evening approaches.   As the word got out, and it would, the fields would become drastically understaffed and under-worked.   But this is a parable – and not a disastrous

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 16:21-28   Victory   And finally, since we are on a roll with these, my last announcement is this: the 2023 NFL season begins on Thursday.   And that means, once again, I will root for the Cleveland Browns to appear in their first ever Super Bowl.   Once again I will tell myself, as I have so many times before: this could be the year.   I have cheered on the Browns for as long as I can remember; the Browns are like a family inheritance: you don’t choose them as much as you get them.   And, over the years, that has, admittedly, left some scars.   As a little boy, I cried because of “The Drive.”   And then the next year, when I was seven, I cried because of “The Fumble.”   And at a young age, I developed a hatred for John Elway that required of me many prayers of repentance.     As painful as those experiences were, being a Browns fan only grew more difficult as I aged.   During high school, my team was stolen away.   They came bac