Preaching the Scriptures

T he Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 10:34-43   Water St. James, Au Sable Forks   We live on a world of water.   Seventy-one percent of the surface of our planet is covered in the stuff.   And that water makes life possible.   The smallest to the largest lifeforms are teeming with liquid life.   Including us.   Each person, each human being, is mostly water: babies are almost 80% water weight; adults around 60%.   Water allows us to think (the brain is about ¾ water); to breathe (the lungs are more than 80% water); to pulse with life (the heart is about 75% water and our blood checks in around 90%).   We are a water people on a watery world.   And in this big world, we happen to live and minister in a diocese very much defined by water.   Our southern border is a mountain range named after a kill, a creek – the Catskill Mountains.   Our northern border is the St. Lawrence.   Not far from here, our eastern...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 43:1-7   Love Song St. Matthew’s, Latham   This is a love song for a devastated people.   Isaiah is writing to a nation in exile, a nation that was traumatized, violated, and displaced; a nation of broken hearts and shattered lives.   The people felt lost and they had lost hope.   But in their darkest hour, it is this prophetic word that finds them.   “Do not fear.”   But they were afraid – of the nightmares in their past, of the painful present, and of the uncertain future.   They were afraid.   But God wasn’t.   And so this is where God started: Do not fear.   God understood that they were scared; God always knows.   And so like a Creator speaking a new reality into being, God whispered peace to their trembling souls; God held on tightly to their shaky hands, until they steadied.   Because God knew that a word of comfort and blessed assurance was what they ne...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 15   It matters Christ Church, Hudson   It all matters.   What you say and what you do and who you are: it all matters.   Your thoughts and your intentions: it all matters.   If today’s lessons make anything clear it is that: it all matters.   These scriptures don’t leave us much wiggle room; they take things seriously.   It matters to Moses in Deuteronomy.   It definitely matters in today’s psalm.   It matters when James explains what we must understand to be pure and undefiled.   It matters when Jesus reveals the contents of the human heart.   And it matters because there is water in the font and a baptismal covenant on today’s menu.   And I think, maybe, that feels like a lot of pressure, like today’s scripture passages are conspiring with the Baptismal Covenant to overwhelm us and weigh us down, to set an impossibly high standard.   If you listened closely t...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Ephesians 2:1-10   Love and Baptism Holy Name, Boytonville   At that point in my life, it is unlikely I would have been described as a notorious sinner – though, admittedly, I was prone to the passions of my flesh.   As I approached the baptismal font, those passions of the flesh were about all I had: a passion for sleep, for nourishment, and the selfish desire to have other people meet my every want and need.   I was one month old when I was baptized.     Like many of us, I am a product of infant baptism.   My grandfather, a United Methodist pastor, baptized me in a font not far from the Ohio River, in a village almost exactly the size of this one.   He had no sense, as he poured sacred waters over my head, how my life would go.   He did not know that I would spend my teenage years leading worship in Pentecostal churches; or that I would discover the Book of Common Prayer while attending a ...

  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 Mark 1:4-11   That Love   John the Baptist was very much a human.   I doubt that is a controversial statement.   But I say it because I believe that is what the Gospel of Mark would like us to understand.   The man who appeared in the wilderness, the man who stood waist deep in the waters of the Jordan, was human.   Mark gives us quite the description of John.   He was a baptizer; that was his vocation.   His message was repentance.   He was magnetic – or at least his message was.   Also, he wore, what I can only imagine, was a distinctive, and probably itchy, suit of camel’s hair.   He cinched it up with a leather belt.   And he lived off of the land, eating bugs and their vomit – honey.   Mark paints for us a fairly effective picture.   According to the gospel writer, John was a rugged, focused, unique, and holy human.   And I suspect an acquired taste – with hi...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 5:1-12   Unsung Saints   This has been a hard year, really hard.   Death, division, and discrimination have dominated the news cycle and more than a few dinner table discussions.   Arguments and anxiety are as ubiquitous as the screens on which they are featured.   The world has never been smaller and we have perhaps never felt more isolated.           And I recognize that is a strange thing to say on All Saints’ Day: that we are isolated.   Strange, because we stand today in the midst of this immense Communion of Saints, connected to a great mystical fellowship of holy ancestors.   We dine with them around this holy table; we pray with them; we feel their presence as we rehearse the very liturgical language they spoke while on this earth.   We stand haunted by this beautiful, holy mystery: soaked in the heavenly love of generations of saints.   And yet, even...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51c-60   The saint we have chosen to haunt us   Today is a martyr feast, our martyr feast – a perpetual day of mourning.   As red as the blood that stained that ancient stone and dust.   As red as the blood that stains our history.   We are called Grace and St. Stephen’s: we have adopted this feast, the one we celebrate today.   We have adopted this martyr.   We are the ones who keep his death alive.   Stephen is our ghost.   He is the saint we have chosen to haunt us.   His story is our story; his life our possession.   It is 2000 years later and we are sitting in the shadow of his shrine, listening to the shadow of his story – or at least what is left of his story.   Time is polishing him down so that he fits nicely into a couple of chapters – chapters still too long to read in one church service.   Even his truncation has been truncated.     ...