Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:1-6 Nobodies There are some important people mentioned in today’s Gospel.   There is Tiberius – the most important.   He was Emperor of the Roman Empire.   He ruled an Empire that covered more than 2 million square miles; as much as a quarter of the world’s population lived within its borders. [1]   He was powerful.   He was feared. He was a brutal man.   He so despised Jewish people that he deported all Jews who were living in the capital city of Rome.   Whether they liked him or not, to those living in the Empire, he was the most important person in the world. John the Baptist was a nobody. Pontius Pilate was the prefect of the Roman province of Judea.   According to Jewish sources, he was “’inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness,’ [a ruler] whose administration was marked with briberies, insults, robberies…, frequent executions without trial, and endless savage ferocity.” [2] ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 1:39-55 Advent IV: A New Hope A long time ago, in a hinterland far, far away... It is the period of their engagement. A young girl betrothed to a man named Joseph – he a descendant of Israel's greatest king. But that matters little now. His people, her people, are once again an occupied people, struggling to follow the God of their forebears in the days of the Empire, Rome. Their story matters to us now.   But not then, not there, not in the Empire.   This couple, they were not wealthy.   They were not powerful.   They were not important.   She was an unmarried, pregnant teen. He worked with his hands, a common laborer. They were nobodys, lost in a vast Empire that, at that time, spread from northern Africa all the way to the British Isles, spread beyond even the reaches of their imaginations. They were unknowns – certainly unknown to those who mattered, obviously unknown to the Emperor; and yet, the...