Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Good Friday 2023   The Body Burden   Jesus’ hands were tied.   In the garden, where they found him, they bound him, bound his wrists.   So much happens to Jesus’ body in this Good Friday story – so much pain, so much trauma, so much horror, even death.   But the first thing that happened to that body, on Thursday night, was that it was bound.     Those who hated Jesus, and those who simply needed the work, took hold and control of his body – a humble body in which dwelt, mostly unknown, the fullness of God; they tamed his bones; they subdued his muscles; they stopped his precious hands – from movement and miracle.   Before everything that happened on Good Friday, before the crown and the nails, they bound him.   But we know the Good Friday story and so we know that wasn’t enough.   It wasn’t enough to simply stop him; they wanted to punish, punish that body that encroached on their ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Body Someone in this room, in the very room in which we are now gathered, is a kidney.   Someone else in this room is an eyeball.   Or at least that is what the Apostle Paul would have us believe, that is the analogy he spins in today’s reading from his first letter to the Corinthians. There are many metaphors and analogies used to make sense of the Church – this mysterious mystical Christian community of which each baptized person is a member.   The image of the Body of Christ is one of the most enduring – perhaps because we all have bodies and each of those bodies is made of basically the same parts.   Being embodied is a universal human, and divine, experience. We all have kidneys, or at least one.   And, from here at least, it appears we all have eyeballs.   And I think we can all admit that those parts are better when they are firmly connected to the other parts of our body; that ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 6:51-58 Part Four: Eating Jesus Well, forget the bread.   Everyone has lost their appetite.   For a fleeting moment Jesus seemed like an amazing man. He worked miracles.   He fed the crowd.   He waxed poetically without a script. Had they never followed him across that lake, they could have held on to that beautiful image forever: five thousand people, sitting on a grassy hill, eating miraculous food until their bellies were full.   In their heads floated dreams of his kingly reign – a reign of health and wealth, security and power.   And Jesus, their miracle man, his compassionate gaze just warmed their hearts.   It was idyllic, perfect. But they stuck around too long.   After the meal, things devolved pretty rapidly.   First he left them.   He rebuffed their advances and slipped away under the cover of night.   Then he started talking.   And things got really confusing...