Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 126   The Final Sunday on the South Lawn   Sometimes I see old pictures, pictures from a time that no longer exists, pictures from way back in the year 2019.   And in those old pictures the world looks different.   There are no masks, of course, very little concern about personal space, and an alarming lack of distancing, and that is always a bit striking.   But more than that, I see in those old pre-pandemic pictures a people who have not yet lived under the cloud of disease.   They have no idea that life is about to stop.   And change.   And change.   And change.   And scar them in ways still not entirely known.   They have no idea how many people they will bury, hundreds of thousands of people killed by a virus of which they have not yet heard.     Those pre-pandemic people had no idea how a world would respond to a global pandemic of this magnitude.   They co...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 146 Praise A lot has changed over the course of a few psalms.   Not long before this hymn of praise we recited today, a psalmist was leading the community of the faithful in a different song, a lament, a song of a heartbreak and sadness: “How can we sing the Lord's song in this strange land?” But today it is the voice of another singer, a voice that cuts through the pain of a people, of a people who know the hurt of slavery in Egypt, who know the pain of exile in Babylon, who lived under years of toil and oppression.   It is a different song: Hallelujah!   Praise the Lord, O my soul!   I will praise the Lord as long as I live.    It is that “non-stop, never-quit, no-doubt, every-moment-of-every-day, bone-deep” kind of praise.   It's that “shout-it-from-the-mountaintop-I-don’t-care-who-hears-it” kind of praise.   It is that kind of praise that moves your body to dance, moves your tongue to shout...