Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I Corinthians 8:1-13   Knowledge, Love, and Meat St. John’s, Essex, NY   My dad didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.   He started working as a carpenter during high school and, by default, that became his career.   It was hard and punishing work.   And the pay was not commensurate with the effort it demanded.   While he was deeply committed to his work, and excellent at it, and some days even found it rewarding, in many ways my father’s vocation was a struggle.   And that struggle extended to the family’s financial stability.   Money comes in stops and starts for a free-lance construction worker.   And we never seemed to be able to get ahead.   It was a stressful way to live.   And so my dad was always clear that he did not want me, his first born, to live that same struggle.   He wanted me to be the first Williamson to earn a college degree.   He believed that knowledge could lift me out of the struggles our family knew all too w

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 3B 1-21-24 Jonah 3:1-5, 10 & Mark 1:14-20   The Cost of the Call (Albany Deacon’s Retreat)   Simon and his brother, Andrew, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their nets and followed him.   Down the beach a ways, James and his brother, John, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their father in the boat and followed him.   No questions asked.   No hesitation.     Jonah heard the call and immediately hopped a boat headed in the opposite direction.   He did not follow; he ran away.   Jonah wanted nothing to do with the call of God.   In fact, God would have to package that call with a life-threatening storm and a vomiting fish before Jonah would even begrudgingly ascent to his divine mission.   But you wouldn’t know any of that from today’s reading from the book of Jonah.   This morning’s lectionary passage gives us the most sanitized, complimentary picture of Jonah possible.   This is the airbrushed sup