Preaching the Scriptures

The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 9:28-43a   Where the miracles happen Christ Church, Gilbertsville   On this day, eleven years ago, I skipped church.   I just didn’t show up.   That wasn’t the plan.   I went to bed fully expecting to preach and celebrate at both 8 and 10am.   But I didn’t.   Because, unexpectedly, something else came up.   Or perhaps, I should say, came out.   At 9:58am, on Sunday, March 2, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, in the year 2014, I met Isaiah Williamson.   And the first thing he did was scream at me.   And the first thing I did was fall in love with him.   Every year, on his birthday, we celebrate the special person Isaiah is becoming.   And also every year, in my mind and in my heart, I am transported back to our first meeting.   It is a day forever preserved in the amber of aching joy.   And something in me wants to build a dwelling in that perfect day. ...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 4:14-21   The Gospel of Mercy St. Luke’s, Cambridge   Definitely, they were not going to try to kill him.   They were excited for Jesus’ homecoming.   He was a good kid.   He came from a solid family.   They were glad he was going to be stomping his old stomping grounds again.   His parents probably busily readied his old room.   His friends made plans to catch up.   It would be just like that freshman year Thanksgiving break – the first time back after being away: late nights, great stories, mom’s cooking.   And so they definitely were not going to try to kill him.   And there was now a buzz surrounding him; that was fun.   People were praising him in the surrounding villages.   Jesus was becoming a big deal.   And a big deal Jesus was a big deal for their sleepy little village.   And so, again, they were excited and definitely not going to try to ...

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 2:1-11   Filled to the Brim St. Paul’s, Kinderhook   The servants stumbled into an awkward moment.   They were just going about their business: making sure the appetizers were circulating, the drinks poured, the dirty dishes cleared and cleaned.   They were running in the background so that the wedding reception would go smoothly, so that the guests had a good time.     They didn’t mean to walk into this family situation, this disagreement between a mother and her son.   The mother and son were talking about what everyone was talking about.   The servants already knew the situation was bleak.   Servers always know when something runs out; they live on the front lines of that disappointment; they are the ones who have to break the news.   And the wine giving out was big, bad news.   Wine was, obviously, an important ingredient in the celebration.   Sure, it made pe...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 40:21-31   By the Rivers of Babylon Zion Episcopal Church, Morris, NY   They sat, forlorn, by the rivers of Babylon.   And they wept.   Their tears fell in torrents from the dark clouds around their souls and was absorbed by the hostile land.   As they cried, they were assaulted by the smug looks and barbed taunts of their tormentors.   They sat by the rivers of Babylon: eyes burnt with sorrow, tongues pressed hard against the roof of their mouths.   Because there simply were not words.   Just a suffocating grief, a searing pain, a heart-break that felt eternal.   Even in Babylon, they were haunted by the memories.   The ghosts followed them into exile.   Once there had been good days, but they now the memories felt like thin remnants of a past life.   The first sign of their impending doom were the terrible rumors.   Then brought to life by the pulse of distan...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I Corinthians 8:1-13   Knowledge, Love, and Meat St. John’s, Essex, NY   My dad didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.   He started working as a carpenter during high school and, by default, that became his career.   It was hard and punishing work.   And the pay was not commensurate with the effort it demanded.   While he was deeply committed to his work, and excellent at it, and some days even found it rewarding, in many ways my father’s vocation was a struggle.   And that struggle extended to the family’s financial stability.   Money comes in stops and starts for a free-lance construction worker.   And we never seemed to be able to get ahead.   It was a stressful way to live.   And so my dad was always clear that he did not want me, his first born, to live that same struggle.   He wanted me to be the first Williamson to earn a college degree.   He believed that k...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 3B 1-21-24 Jonah 3:1-5, 10 & Mark 1:14-20   The Cost of the Call (Albany Deacon’s Retreat)   Simon and his brother, Andrew, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their nets and followed him.   Down the beach a ways, James and his brother, John, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their father in the boat and followed him.   No questions asked.   No hesitation.     Jonah heard the call and immediately hopped a boat headed in the opposite direction.   He did not follow; he ran away.   Jonah wanted nothing to do with the call of God.   In fact, God would have to package that call with a life-threatening storm and a vomiting fish before Jonah would even begrudgingly ascent to his divine mission.   But you wouldn’t know any of that from today’s reading from the book of Jonah.   This morning’s lectionary passage gives us the most sanitized, compl...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:15-17, 21-22   Power   The Gospel of Luke has been building to this very moment.   John and Jesus: they are the miracle babies featured in the opening chapters of this book.   We know they are special; their stories dominate the seasons of Advent and Christmas.   And everything in those now ubiquitous stories tell us that these two are unique: angels and prophecies and immaculate conceptions and a host of inspired canticles.   Luke goes out of his way to show us that these two babies, Jesus and John, are a big deal – a cosmically big deal.   And so it is fair for us to expect, since the book does continue after the first two chapters, that those two extraordinary infancies will produce two extraordinary, noteworthy men.   And, that those two men will most likely feature at least somewhat prominently in the remaining twenty-two chapters of Luke’s Gospel.     Chapter three picks up decades ...