Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 2:1-20   Immanuel   36 weeks and 4 days into Jen’s second pregnancy I returned home from a vestry retreat.   That night, as we slept, a snowstorm swept into Northwest Ohio and Jen, my wife, was awakened by contractions.   She gently and calmly roused me from my sleep to inform me that she was driving herself to the hospital, in the snowstorm.   I, of course, made a counter-offer, one that I thought was quite strong, one that she quickly and decisively rejected.   She was driving to the hospital convinced that she would return to our bed in a matter of hours with the diagnosis of false labor.   And I was to stay home with our two-year old because he was a terrible sleeper and why wake him for false labor pains.   And so, aware I was not winning this negotiation, I laid back down, phone in hand, resigned to await my wife’s promised return.   The contractions, it turned out, were not false; ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 40:1-11   Immanuel The first word broke the silence, a silence that had lingered for far too long.   It had been a haunting silence, a painful silence, a silence heavy with lament.     That silence, it lives between the end of the 39 th chapter of Isaiah and the first word of chapter 40.   For over a century the prophet went silent.   There were no words.   Somehow more than 150 years of silence abides in the little white space of your Bible that separates the two prophetic oracles.     While the nation waited a century and a half to hear a word from God, a lot happened.   The Babylonian empire rose to power and Jerusalem fell into ruin.   The Davidic dynasty died.   The Temple was reduced to rubble.   And the people were carried away into exile and deposited by the rivers of Babylon.   And all the while the silence, that persistent, deafening silence.  ...