Preaching the Scriptures

  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 Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 7:9-17   Great Multitude   It might just be that we are all standing on the edge of the apocalypse.   That perhaps apocalyptic vision belongs not only to entranced prophets and the writer of the book of Revelation; that apocalyptic talk is not strictly the domain of street-corner preachers and fervent Pentecostals; that apocalyptic experiences are not reserved for the movie screen.   But for those who are permanently stained with baptismal waters, those who sway to the songs of the dead.   The word “apocalypse” is widely misunderstood in our culture and even in the Church.   For most it brings to mind cataclysmic disaster, unprecedented trauma, Rapture anxieties, even the end of the world.   But the apocalypse is not the end of the world; the apocalypse is not made of earthquakes and hurricanes. But it is an act of God: it is the moment God opens our eyes so that we can see the world for what...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 1:4b-8   Christ the King Sunday   It is not lost on me that this letter, what we call the book of Revelation, was written by a lonely prisoner, about a God who seemed to be losing, and a King whose obituary had been published about seven decades earlier.   And so we could dismiss this whole thing as wishful thinking or even the delusions of an underfed exile.   And that is fair because John, the writer of these visions, imagines all kinds of unrealistic things: like tears wiped dried and no more death and a broken world made into heaven on earth.   Or we can choose to believe in the unbelievable.   And remember that it is the work of God to plant dreams in the very places hope goes to die, like an island prison in the middle of the Aegean Sea.     I am not sure how this strange series of apocalyptic visions escaped the island and found its audience on the shore, but the ecstatic dre...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a   Living Dreams   Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.   But what if they don’t?   What if dreams never die?   What if they ride the ever-rolling stream of time, passed down through the ages like the most precious of family heirlooms?     Today, on this All Saints’ Sunday, we look to the heavens and we marvel at those who blind our eyes with their dazzling halos; they stand before us like guiding stars leading us to the crèche of Christ but at a seemingly impossible distance.   We hang them in the sky, light years above our human toil.   Untouchable.   Beyond reach.   Imagining they possess, like comic book heroes, supernatural abilities with which we are simply not blessed.   But in truth the only thing that separates the saints of old from us, besides...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 25:6-9 & Revelation 21:1-6a Dreamers We are dreamers.   That is what we are.   We are dreamers.   We carry the old dreams in our blood like a primal inheritance.   We pass them down the generations like precious heirlooms.   We baptize our children in water haunted by impossible dreams and invincible hope.   We dream dreams in a world intent on shattering dreams; we cling to hope in a world that is forever trying to steal that hope.   We dream dreams – that is what we do – because we are dreamers.   And we don’t stop dreaming until the dream comes true. It would be easy to look at the passages from Isaiah and Revelation today and be discouraged.   It was, after all, about twenty-six hundred years ago when the prophet Isaiah dreamed his dream.   Twenty-six centuries have passed; twenty-six centuries is a long time.   It is a long time to keep having the same dream.   It i...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 7:9-17 No More Nightmares It turns out that that first Easter morning was not the end of the story. It wasn't the pretty bow on the top of the tidy box of salvation history. Now, that would have made sense; it would have been a great ending, a strong climax, end it all with the resurrection of Jesus – just like the end of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ: you end it on the high note, then roll the credits. But alas, it was not the end. It is not even the end of Easter; it is actually the beginning of a new season in the life of the Church – and I mean that in every sense. But new does not mean tidy. Nothing in the post-Easter world was tidy. This has been evident in our Easter season Gospels. In a post-Easter world Jesus is still sporting open wounds, Mary Magadelene was still crying and confused, the disciples locked all their doors because they were so afraid, and Peter and his friends went back to their f...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Revelation 21:1-6a No Escape There is no escape.   And, you know, that is not such a bad thing.   So many people place their Christian hope in the big get-away – the idea that someday we will escape the confines of this earth.   It is not difficult to see why this is.   Life can be tough.   Every man, woman, and child on this planet know too well the salty taste of tears.   We all have felt the sting of pain.   We mourn because we lose those whom we love.   And we live knowing that somewhere in the future death lies in wait. Which of course is not to say that life on earth is all bad.   Of course, it is not.   As we journey through our days many of those days will be wonderful.   We will experience joys unimaginable, pleasures inconceivable.   We will witness beauty that confounds the mind.   We will hold the miracle of new life in our hands – a newborn baby, a little p...