Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 6:20-31   Remembering Peg   Every summer, just before my boys go back to school, our family navigates the mountain passes between here and Breckenridge for a week of rest before the Fall swings full.   It has become a treasured tradition.   We hike paths now familiar.   We eat at restaurants that have become vacation favorites.   The adults wait as patiently as possible while the indecisive young ones try to decide on their annual souvenir.   We play Uno – the Simpsons variety.   And when clear skies allow it, we ride the gondola, higher up and further into the mountains.   This year, as we were riding the gondola, my phone vibrated that pulse that tells me I have an incoming call.   I didn’t recognize the number.   In my life, and because of my work, I am typically very plugged in, perhaps too plugged in, and so during that week away I try to screen my calls and ignore my burst...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 5:1-12   Unsung Saints   This has been a hard year, really hard.   Death, division, and discrimination have dominated the news cycle and more than a few dinner table discussions.   Arguments and anxiety are as ubiquitous as the screens on which they are featured.   The world has never been smaller and we have perhaps never felt more isolated.           And I recognize that is a strange thing to say on All Saints’ Day: that we are isolated.   Strange, because we stand today in the midst of this immense Communion of Saints, connected to a great mystical fellowship of holy ancestors.   We dine with them around this holy table; we pray with them; we feel their presence as we rehearse the very liturgical language they spoke while on this earth.   We stand haunted by this beautiful, holy mystery: soaked in the heavenly love of generations of saints.   And yet, even...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Ephesians 1:11-23 The Sea of Souls I stare out into the vast expanse, the vast expanse that is this ocean.   And my mind goes to poetry but poetry absent of words.   Because there are no words, no answers, no explanations that don’t feel crass – just feelings and impressions and dreams for which even the interpretations need to be interpreted.   And I stare because this is one place in the world in which staring is acceptable and not odd.   And I breathe.   I breathe in the air, a flavor unique to the shore – though many candles promise to capture it and to domesticate it – all unsuccessfully.   I breathe it in in slow, shallow breaths, as if a deep or suddenly intake of air might scare away the mystery before me.   The air is more than air; it carries the essence of this great sea, like how incense somehow puts form to holiness.   And as I slowly and cautiously inhale, I can feel that this ocean is now, so...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a Dreamers We are dreamers.   That is what we are.   We are dreamers.   We carry the old dreams in our blood like a primal inheritance.   We pass them down the generations like precious heirlooms.   We baptize our children in water haunted by impossible dreams and invincible hope.   We dream dreams in a world intent on shattering dreams; we cling to hope in a world that is forever trying to steal that hope.   We dream dreams – that is what we do – because we are dreamers.   And we don’t stop dreaming until the dream comes true. It would be easy to look at the passages from Isaiah and Revelation today and be discouraged.   It was, after all, about twenty-six hundred years ago when the prophet Isaiah dreamed his dream.   Twenty-six centuries have passed; twenty-six centuries is a long time.   It is a long time to keep having the same dream.   It i...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 7:9-17 All Saints' Day: baptism and burial All Saints' Day seems as if it should hold the answers. And yet instead it is like struggling to find the opening in a curtain that has no opening. Tangled up and twisted, desperate to glimpse the mysteries of the other side, to find answers to the questions that vex us, questions of life and death, of time and eternity. Here we are so close and yet no closer. What brings us here? To this place? To this day? To this place – equal parts baptism and burial. To this day – equal parts baptism and burial. What brings us here? Is there something we seek? And if so where might that something be found? In the wood of the pews – wood that wears a million fingerprints, worn into shape by a million worshipers, the living and the dead, who sit and stand and sit again and kneel and sit again, wood that holds cards and pencils but also decades of prayers whispered into the ...