Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Joel 2:1-2, 12-17   Trembling The forces of death are at the gate and so that is why the alarm is sounded.   Like air raid sirens on the dawn of war, the trumpeter placed his instrument to his lips and the hauntingly desperate sound came bursting forth.   On another day, in another time, a better time, it might have been a song, perhaps something beautiful or maybe even happy.   But on this day there was no song – because in the killing fields no one thinks of beauty and no one hopes for happiness.   On this day, the instrument was robbed of its greater purpose.   The trumpet sounded only the sound of a terrible nightmare.     For two years, but probably much longer, we have lived with the oppressive drone of the alarm – until it became the background noise of our lives.   That a disease could sweep across the planet and kill almost six million people, almost one million of those in our own nati...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Joel 2:1-2, 12-17   Broken Hearts   The first words of the book of the prophet Joel feel eerily appropriate this year, as if the ghosts of our ancient past understand our pandemic present: “Hear this, O elders,” he shouts across the centuries, “give ear, all inhabitants of the land!   Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.”   His people were dying of pestilence; ours die of plague.   Our lives changed in Lent last year.   And here we are again.   Walking this austere season in what we hope are the waning days of a time of imposed austerity.   Lent beckons us to renewed spiritual discipline, even as we are wearied by a year of sacrifice.   Lent calls us to take up the cross, even though our spirits are buckling under the weight of a year of heavy lifting...