Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson James 3:1-12   Speaking of Tongues St. Augustine’s, Ilion, NY   One smoked cigarette, thoughtlessly and carelessly tossed aside, can burn an entire city to the ground.   A blown tire, metal beads dragging the dark asphalt, can send a tiny spark careening into the dry road-side brush and set a mountain range on fire.   A bolt of lightning, a fire cracker, a smoldering camp fire: how great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!   This is what I learned living in Colorado Springs.   Every summer in the Rockies smells like smoke.   As the snows melt, the fires light up the western half of our nation.   Most are contained before they consume civilization, but not all.   And so, residents of the west, must be ready to flee the flames.   Our home in Colorado was close to a large city park called Palmer Park.   While not as famous as the Garden of the Gods, Palmer Park, at 730 acr...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I John 3:16-24   Words and Love St. Peter’s, Hobart   If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.   Eloquent prophecies: they will come to an end; tongues: they will cease; knowledge: it too will come to an end.     You know these words; you have heard them at weddings.   They are St. Paul’s words; they are words about words.   Beautiful words; timeless words.   But also words written to articulate the stark limitation of our words.   Proclaimed to you today by a man who wrote words about a passage of ancient words, from the first letter of John, that implore us to not love in word and speech alone.   Because, while words are great, words...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Wrangling Over Words The great St. Francis, of Memorial Garden fountain fame, famously once might have said, “Preach the Gospel, and, if necessary, use words.”   It’s a catchy saying – short, punchy, memorable.   And it is a saying Episcopalians really want to believe a good saint actually did say because we like that it justifies us not talking to our friends about Jesus.   It’s like a saintly permission slip: St. Francis said we don’t have to talk about God.   When I hear a good, popular quote like this one, I sometimes wonder, “What inspired such a profound thought?”   Like, there had to be something.   I doubt St. Francis was just sitting at his desk one day brainstorming sassy catchphrases and this was his aha moment.   And so what was it; what inspired him?   At first I thought, well maybe, St. Francis was so impressed with the Christian deeds the Christians in his medieval villag...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson James 3:1-12 Words Before anything else existed, there were words.   Words suspended in the formless void, in the thick darkness of God’s all-encompassing shadow.   Nothing else: just God and words.   After an eternity of silence, God spoke.   And because of words, worlds were created.   Words caused light to break through darkness.   Words moved the water so that the land could breathe.   Words set stars on fire and convinced planets to pirouette.   Words troubled the dust and it organized into organisms.   Because God spoke.   Words are powerful. And when everything else was already spoken, God chose to make beings in God’s very likeness, in the image of God. And God gave those special creatures a very special gift.   A gift that is amazingly powerful, a gift previously possessed only by the Creator: words. It was a dangerous decision, by what I assume is an infinitely curious God. ...