Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 5:1-11   Believing in Miracles   Always a crowd; always pressing in on Jesus.   Before, in the previous chapter of Luke’s Gospel, it was the angry hometown crowd, trying to press Jesus right off a cliff.   And today it is a lakeshore crowd pressing Jesus into the choppy waters of the lake of Gennesaret, aka the Sea of Galilee.   Even in the best of times, this Jesus’ work is dangerous business.     Fortunately for Jesus, the mood has changed since his visit in Nazareth.   This crowd, the one by the water, is not angry, not jealous, not even murderous, they are desperate.   They are pressing in to hear the Gospel, to hear Jesus preach the Good News.     If it is possible to be overly eager to hear a sermon, this crowd is that.   They press in so hard that Jesus is forced to make alternative pulpit arrangements.   He decides to find his safety in an empty boat. ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 24:36b-48   Sunlight   I wonder if there was a window in the room, that room in which the remaining eleven disciples were hidden.   When I hear this story, that’s just what I always wonder.   One might think I would puzzle over the immense theological implications of this post-resurrection passage, but honestly, I’m usually just trying to figure out the lighting.   In the imaginations of my mind there is always this rogue beam of light, pouring in through the stubborn space between two ragged, sun-bleached curtains.   And it spotlights the lazy, suspended dusts, hanging in mid-air like unfortunate abductees caught in a tractor beam.   And then, without a sound, without warning, Jesus enters from stage left, but no one knows how he got in because that spotlight is fixed, illuminating an unremarkable floor tile, rather than the living miracle greeting the stunned occupants.   There is nothin...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 6:1-8 Call Stories It was a truly stunning moment of beauty.   Isaiah the prophet, but not yet a prophet, was in the Temple.   And in that holiest of places, the world suddenly melted away.   Around him no longer stone, no more parachuting specks of dust floating lazily through the sunlight, no more stubborn sacrificial bulls bellowing out in panicked protest, all of it gone; until there was just God, with a robe that spilled from the heavenly throne like a lava flow, unavoidable and encompassing.   Divine presence: not in the way one assumes or theologizes that God is always with us but silent and unseen; this was divine presence in that thick, tangible way, like when a dream becomes true.   It was a vision but it was as real as anything or maybe more real than everything.   Sometimes life pivots on something that cannot be touched, cannot be held, can only be experienced soul-deep.   And this was li...