Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 9:1-20   Saul and Ananias Emmanuel, Little Falls   He was well within his rights and he was sure he was right.   Saul was a man possessed by a passion for law and order.   The law justified the order he intended to impose upon his world.   It was God’s work.   He was sure of that.   He was convinced that his mission – his mission to hunt down religious deviants and root out their bad theology – was divinely inspired, the commission of an exacting and merciless deity.   And so he marched proudly into the office of the high priest and demanded a blessing.   And he received that blessing.   He was formally deputized to rid the world of blasphemy.   This would be Saul’s legacy, how he was going to be remembered, why he would be known throughout the Empire: he was going to end the Way.     And that would make him a hero to both his religious authorities and their ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 9:1-20   The Conversion of Saul   Saul was not the kind of guy you want to know.   I’m not saying he didn’t have friends; he did.   You didn’t want to know them either.   Saul and his friends were the bad guys; the kind of guys who are fueled by hatred and the cruelest brand of prejudice; the kind of guys who believe the worst conspiracy theories and spread the vilest rumors.   Saul and his friends, on the road to Damascus, were a first century lynch mob, breathing threats and murder, gleefully terrorizing the early Church, men on the forefront of an attempted religious cleansing.   Hatred was their business, maybe even their chosen hobby.   Saul, the ringleader of this violent band, had a reputation – and it was not a good one.   Ananias, in today’s passage from Acts, shares with God what he has heard about Saul.   Saul, from Ananias’ lips to God’s ears, had done much evil to the sa...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 9:1-20 Don’t Say It If you want a lesson, a takeaway from today’s sermon, I suppose it is this: If the Lord calls your name, do not, under any circumstance, respond, “Here I am, Lord.”   Just don’t do it.   Now you might be surprised to hear me say that.   Priests are supposed to encourage their members to listen for the voice of Jesus, to follow the great call of God.   But here’s the thing, I’ve read some Bible, quite a bit actually, and so I know how this goes down.   And, generally speaking, it’s not good. For example: Back in the book of Genesis, old father Abraham responds, “Here I am, Lord.”   And God tells him to kill his son.   Not good.   In the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, Moses responds, “Here I am, Lord.”   You might remember that story, the story of the burning bush.   And God tells him to go back into Egypt, the land he had just fled, and confront the m...