Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 16:16-34   Paul and Silas Do Big Things St. Paul’s, Keeseville, NY   Life is full of surprises.   One never can tell what twists and turns might be just around the corner.   One morning, Paul and Silas set off in the direction of their place of prayer.   Nothing about that day’s journey was in any way noteworthy.   It was normal; something they did.   But on one particular morning, the one noted in our reading from Acts, something in their routine changed.   On the way, on that day, they met an enslaved girl.   And that too would be unremarkable except that she decided to make a scene.   Now, these things do happen; loud and obnoxious people do exist.   And they do sometimes make life uncomfortable.   But this meeting, it turns out, was more than that, more than a singular disturbance.   This meeting would forever change each individual life.   This meeting woul...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 7:9-17   Hope from the Margins St. James, Oneonta   Everything changed in the fourth century.   Historians argue the details.   Christians debate the merits.   But what is undeniable is that during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Church was thrust into the Halls of Power for the first time in its history.   When the Emperor found Jesus, he made sure everyone else did too – whether they wanted to or not.   After centuries of exclusion, oppression, humiliation, and persecution, the sudden experience of comfort and influence was as dizzying as it was difficult to resist.   The enemy Empire of the book of Revelation, Rome, abruptly affixed the cross of Christ to its weapons of war and marched out to conquer the world.   And as the years passed, and the footprint grew, the Church and its leaders began to forget the little Church of the Book of Revelation.   That Church, s...

  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 Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 20:19-31   Wounds Trinity, Gouverneur   The disciples needed to see the wounds.   They knew the stone was displaced and the tomb was empty – but that didn’t prove anything.   Some of the disciples, men in that very locked room, had even seen the discarded linen wrappings, but they did not see any life.   They had heard, and rejected, Mary’s startling testimony; she, they decided, was obviously sick with grief.   They could not deny that fantastical rumors were buzzing, but rumors are not evidence.   Impossible tales, unlikely explanations, were pestering their weary heads and their tender hearts – making things worse.   Their pain was fresh; their fear was real; they were trying to survive without Jesus – trying to get used to this sad, new normal.   They would not get their hopes up because high hopes crash hard.   And so, they decided to play it safe: they simply would not believ...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I John 3:16-24   Words and Love St. Peter’s, Hobart   If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.   Eloquent prophecies: they will come to an end; tongues: they will cease; knowledge: it too will come to an end.     You know these words; you have heard them at weddings.   They are St. Paul’s words; they are words about words.   Beautiful words; timeless words.   But also words written to articulate the stark limitation of our words.   Proclaimed to you today by a man who wrote words about a passage of ancient words, from the first letter of John, that implore us to not love in word and speech alone.   Because, while words are great, words...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 17:1-11   Beautiful and baffling   Have you ever read a poem that you know is good – it’s one of those poems that is included in all the anthologies, professors assign it in their college lit classes, it is easy to find on the internet, hundreds of MFA students make it the topic of their thesis – but you have no idea what it means?   Has that ever happened to you?   I know at least of few of you know what I am talking about; I see your faces when I read poetry during Bible Study.   Have ever read a poem that at once is beautiful and baffling?   John 17 is like that.   We know it is good.   It is in the Gospel.   Spoken by the mouth of Jesus.   Precious to generations of Christians.   Beautiful but also baffling.   I am you and you are me and they are yours so they are mine and so I will give them your words which are my words but are now their words.   Also glorify...

  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...