Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Christmas Eve 2023 Luke 2:1-20   Emmanuel in a world that is not safe   What I remember most vividly of our first moments together are his perfectly round head and the clarion cry that belied the smallness of his body.   Isaiah, my youngest son, came into the world on a Sunday morning and, as he continues to do, made his presence known.   It snowed on Saturday night, the night preceding his birth – a thick, Spring snow.   And Jen went into labor, before we were ready, twenty-three days in advance of Isaiah’s Annunciation due date.     That Sunday evening we sat in our hospital room with our newborn baby.   And, in that strange mix of exhaustion and euphoria, we looked out the window, a few stories above the nearby park.   The oaks had not yet turned green.   It was early in the month of March and the snow still fell, though now gently.   Like in a snow globe, as it begins to settle.   And for a moment, on the other side of birth, with

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 126   A Retrospective   I first started dreaming when you talked to me about your nightmare.     It was late in the summer of 2015. The sound of toddlers trying to be quiet filled the nervous air.   I straightened my interview best and whispered a centering prayer.   I was sitting at my dining room table, laptop open, Skype on the screen.   And, for the first time, I was seeing the faces of Grace and St. Stephen’s – a parish far away, in Colorado Springs, that I knew only from their on-line profile.   It was that profile that first piqued my interest.   It was lovely and excellent and exciting – words that I now know describe this parish perfectly.   When I first looked through its digital pages, I started to imagine standing in this pulpit, watching my children sing with the St. Nicholas choir, staring up at the lighted tower on a crisp December night.     I stumbled upon that profile one July evening, during one of those rare

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 64:1-9   And come down   Marty McFly slyly swipes the sports almanac from a devious young Biff.   Sarah Connor and Arnold protect the future savior of the human race from Skynet and a speedy shape-shifting Terminator.   Bill and Ted scour the past for history homework help.   In each of these time-travel movies, the heroes journey into the past with an important mission: to prevent a dystopian future.   Time-travel fantasies are often preoccupied with intervention: stopping Hitler before the onset of the Holocaust, evacuating a building before a horrific attack, using one’s historical knowledge to prevent a catastrophe.   In every case: using one’s power for good, to save innocent lives, to decrease human suffering, to make the world a better place.   If we had the power to prevent bad things, wouldn’t we be morally obligated to use our power to do just that?     Standing in the dust of a world of rubble, the prophet Isaiah es