Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 16:1-8   Do Not Be Afraid The Cathedral of All Saints, Albany, NY   Of course they were afraid.   This is a scary world.   You heard tonight’s Scriptures.   In this world, though created good, predators stalk gardens of paradise, even Eden.   In this world, the innocent are enslaved and pursued to the point of hopelessness.   In this world, exiles long for home, sometimes long for what is left of home.   In this world, the path to the tomb can be treacherous and, because the shadows are so long, people have to travel in groups.   Even in the pages of the Scriptures.   Even in the earliest hours of Easter.   And then there is death.   In this world.   In the Easter Scriptures.   These women, the ones who walked to the tomb, they carried spices.   The spices were their gift for the dead, to cover the unpleasantness, and to give distraction to their unpleasa...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 24:1-12 Fear in the Age of Resurrection It was Easter Sunday and the tomb was empty.   And while the wide world struggled under the weight of those same ancient foes – fear and pain, sorrow and death – God had just whispered a word into the darkness, the darkness that would soon give way to the dawn.   It was a word much more powerful than any terror that stalked the human race.   The world waited and wondered and God had the answer.   The women, the first to see the stone rolled away, had stumbled into, rather unexpectedly and unawares, this new age of Resurrection.   When they willed themselves out of bed on that first Easter morning, nothing seemed different except the heaviness in their hearts.   And yet, everything was different, because the tomb was empty.   Everything was different because resurrection was in the air; everything was different because Jesus was alive and on the move.   They j...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 4:35-41 & I Samuel 17 Heroes in the Time of Fear I still remember it vividly – because fear is like that; it sticks in the soul.   When I was a child, we lived in a dodgy neighborhood, close to a junk yard.   Our house was a long, brick ranch – and my bedroom was at one end, while my parents’ room was at the opposite end.   A long hallway separated us. And I had this fear that, in the night, someone was going to drive down our long driveway, the one between the junk yard and our home, and break into our house and take me or hurt me – me at the end of the long hallway.   Any time I heard a noise late at night, fear washed over me, whispered its dark secrets into my frantic mind.   And I would pull the red quilt, the one decorated with the birds of Ohio, the one from my grandmother, over my head and I would try my best not to move a muscle.   I would slow my breathing so that no intruder could hear me hidin...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 9:8-17 What About Fear? I know it doesn ’ t seem like it, but this part of the Noah story is about what is left when fear is no longer in the picture. You should know, I am not a seafaring man.  I knew the fields and hills of Ohio as a boy.  On those rare occasions, when I would gaze over the vastness of Lake Erie – or even rarer still, the impossible expanse of the Atlantic Ocean – those bodies of water seemed to me strangers.  But not kindly strangers, not friends one has just not yet met, but mysterious strangers, foreboding strangers.  I suspected danger was lurking just below the surface. I am still suspicious of water that has not yet been domesticated.  I am very fond of the water that comes from a tap, that courses through the copper pipes of my house.  But I prefer to keep the water that fills lakes, rivers and oceans at an arm's length.  There is simply too much unknown in there. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 17:1-9 Do not be afraid It started out as a normal day in first century Palestine. The disciples were shooting the breeze, maybe arguing about rank and order, maybe retelling the stories of feeding miracles and amazing healings. Everyone in the crew had mostly forgotten about the uncomfortable incident from six days earlier – or at least they were pretending to have forgotten. It is embarrassing still for Peter, so I won't get into it, except to say that no one likes being called “Satan” – especially by Jesus. But the thing about Jesus is: even a serious rebuke is colored with love. And so on this perfectly ordinary day, when Jesus felt like a hike, he personally invited Peter, along with James and John. It seemed like a good day for a hike and so the guys strapped on their boots, grabbed their water, I don't know, satchel, pouch, probably not bottle, and hit the trail. They followed Jesus up the mountain. I mean, up the...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Philippians 1:3-11 Overflow I'm not sure in what year it happened, but I know it happened during the Great Vigil of Easter.   And so of course it was dark in the church.   Only the Pascal Candle lit the chancel – a single flame dancing in the font's metallic silver bowl. That night we would welcome into the Church a new Christian – a little person we would lay on the altar of Love.   As I prayed the baptismal prayer, recounting the ways in which we Christians track salvation history through water, I picked up the ewer, the liturgical pitcher, and started to pour.   And pour.   And pour.   It was so dark that I could not see that the font was growing quite full, each drop challenging capacity.   I did not realize just how full was the font until the water started to overflow – out of the font and all over the floor. It was messy.   It was a little dangerous, that baptismal water all over the floor...