Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Romans 8:22-27   An Ancient Song   This story, like most stories, starts in the beginning.   It starts in the deep silence of a formless void – the long, breathless pause of anticipation.   And then, just like that, everything happened: an eternity of silence shattered by a single, startling note.   The opening aria of the divine triune being, the God who created all things with a song.   And as the song played the Spirit, the holy Spirit, danced over the face of the deep, floated on the waves of the delicate melody.   At first alone, a solo act: God created a chorus.   And each newly made voice was invited to sing along, to layer rich, hauntingly beautiful harmonies beneath the ancient, timeless melody.   The howling planets and the rhythmic crash of plasma waves in interstellar space.   The rocking wash of the sea and the gentle babble of a brook.   The drone of the lurching earth ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 2:1-21 Doors, walls, and ceilings If you think about it, the Easter season is, to a certain degree a rather damning critique of the effectiveness of doors, walls, and ceilings.   One has these items for a very specific reason: to keep things out and to keep things in.   And generally, I think we find they are actually quite useful.   Without doors, walls, and ceilings our habitations would be reduced to a stack of windows in a field, plus some rather weathered books and items of clothing, also probably some dangerously emboldened squirrels.   And yet, for all of their general effectiveness in our own lives, doors, walls, and ceilings continually let the disciples down following the resurrection.   By the day of Pentecost, if pressed, they might have been inclined to admit that these items no longer properly functioned in the post-Resurrection world. It started on Easter morning when the rock door of the tom...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 2:1-21 PENTECOST: A Holy Spirit Poem (in 50 Lines) Holy Spirit, I can't put my finger on you I can't get my mind around you. But every time I charge into you, O Formless Mist, collapse into your abyss,       a little piece of you becomes lodged in my chest – reduced by an elusive Lover,       yet filled: with the heartbeat of God, with breath, with life. I am Jacob wrestling the air, hip displaced all the same. I am Abram in the presence of a divine stranger,       but what does one give a ghost? Probably not a fatted calf I am Elijah utterly devastated by a whirlwind and yet here I stand still. Shaken and stirred, shaken and still – is this what you call peace or upheaval? You have no name by which to address you – only adjectives –       insufficient, incomplete, inconsequential? Maybe There is no sacred name ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 2:1-21 Dreaming Through the End of Days It must have felt like the end of days.   The labor pains: they were growing more and more intense.   And whatever was coming would change their lives, would change the world, forever.   The signs were all there – one paradigm-altering event after another.   First the crucifixion, all black skies and earthquakes and the Temple veil torn in two.   Then the resurrection – the most impossible event in the history of the world.   The nail holes and the pierced side and that moment Jesus gave up his spirit: all of that happened.   But then they saw him, after the crucifixion, and he was alive again; they saw the wounds; they heard his voice.   He lived with them for forty days of unimaginable bliss, and then, like being roused from the perfect dream, Ascension Day came, and he just floated out of sight.   And after Jesus, because things were not quite surreal ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 2:1-21 Spirit Possession They'd been warned.   Many times.   But most recently as Jesus was ascending out of their sight.   From the clouds above, he warned them: There will be a Spirit.   It's coming.   Upon them.   To over come them.   And, yes, to possess them.   There will be a Spirit.   It's coming. That kind of warning would be enough to keep me up at night.   Just sitting nervously in the upper room.   Praying.   Wondering when the Spirit will enter.   What day?   What hour?   Holy Ghost.   Speaking for myself: I'm not comfortable with the idea of being visited by a Spirit – like some Ebeneezer Scrooge, lying frightened in his bed clothes.   I'm even less comfortable with the idea of possession – a Spirit moving me, directing me, living in my body.   They make horror movies about stuff like this. Maybe the issue is control: who is in c...