Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 2:1-5   Dream Bigger St. Paul’s, Greenwich   Once again we welcome the advent of a new year.   This sanctified new year comes with considerably less fanfare than the one that will begin on January first.   We celebrate this new year around an altar instead of a television, at a respectable hour, not in the middle of the night.   This morning, we lit a single candle instead of dropping a gaudy, luminous ball.   Moments from now, we will drink consecrated wine rather than bubbly champagne.   And I am the only person who dared to wear a festive, pointy hat at this New Year’s celebration.     A short month from now, when the ball does drop, we will muster up our courage and make our resolutions: new dreams to wrap around our old lives.   But today, at this dawning, we do something a little different.   Recognizing that our resolve is always and forever a bit too thin, we dar...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 10:44-48           Afternoon Dreaming Church of the Holy Spirit, Schenevus   It all started with a dream.     Peter just couldn’t keep his eyes open; they were so heavy.   I don’t know about you, but I can relate.   Sometimes prayer makes us sleepy.   It’s just true.   Good intentions and dogged devotion are, at times, simply not enough.   And in the midst of a pious moment, we find ourselves drifting into a slumber.   It happens to the best of us – including St. Peter.     In his dream, Peter saw the heavens open – an exciting beginning, to be sure.   And then from that celestial rift descended…bedding – specifically a large sheet.   Jacob got angels climbing a ladder; Joseph: thin cows eating fat cows.   Peter gets a sheet.        It turns out the sheet, as you might remember from this sto...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Deuteronomy 10:17-21   True Story   I have a family story, as do you.   I suspect mine is neither better nor worse than your own.   Because my family story, like all family stories, is one of riches and poverty.   It is a story of both sorrow and beauty, of shame and pride, of love and pain.   I, at times, embrace this rugged history; and then, just as intensely, try to distance myself from the most dismal of its chapters.   But what I cannot deny is that the story is mine; it marks my soul in the best and worst ways.   It shapes me even as I hope to shape its destiny into something of which my children and my children’s children can be proud.   There is always a temptation to tell an edited version of our stories, to hide away the darkest and most devastating chapters.   But the power of a family story is found in our willingness to tell it as a true story – as painful and, at times, as embarra...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Acts 2:1-21 The Wind They immediately noticed the mighty, rushing wind because, generally speaking, a mighty, rushing wind does not happen indoors.   That is why that wind was so noteworthy, why we are still talking about it so many centuries later.   It was impossible – and yet it happened.   There were no ceiling fans wobbling above their flaming heads in the first century.   There were no industrial strength hair dryers blowing in the upper room.   There was no David Watts standing over a smoking thurible with his gigantic fireplace bellow in that ancient gathering place.   They were inside; and that is not where one typically finds a violent breeze. Inside, behind closed doors, is not where a mighty, rushing wind even belongs.   It doesn’t work.   It is simply too disruptive.   It messes things up.   It stirs the curtains and twists the sheets.   A mighty, rushing wind rustles the pag...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 20:19-31 A New Reality It was not hard to identify the moment in which life changed for the remaining eleven.   It was, of course, Friday.   On Friday, just a few days earlier, a few short days before our Gospel story takes place, they watched, from a distance, as Jesus was executed.   That harsh, abrasive sound of hammered metal echoed through their minds still.   The image of his dying body was burned into their memories.   The sounds of his last gasps for air were the stuff of their nightmares.   As Jesus died, so did their dreams, so did the triumphant future which they so surely expected.   They had imagined his fame and popular appeal might translate into a royal throne.   Everything they had seen –from the divine encounter on the mount of Transfiguration to the feeding of the masses, the way he could heal the sick and his power to calm even the turbulent waters – suggested that they had hitc...

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 Mark 10:2-16 Talking about Divorce in Church So, I don’t really want to talk about divorce.   You probably don’t want to talk about divorce.   Jesus doesn’t really want to talk about divorce, although folks won’t stop asking him about divorce in today’s Gospel, so he does.   Nobody really wants to talk about divorce.   But we talk about tough stuff here. So, I guess we’re talking about divorce today.   It is difficult to talk about divorce in the Church because the Church has such a rotten history around the subject.   Mostly the Church has been the place where folks going through a painful divorce go to add insult to injury.   Historically, the Church has mostly indiscriminately condemned divorced persons, treating them like second-class members, barring them, in some cases, from even receiving the healing sacrament of Holy Communion.   Sometimes, and in some places, the stigma in the Church is so inte...