Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 13:10-17   Set Free   This is not the first time Jesus teaches in a synagogue.   This is not the first time Jesus teaches himself into some hot water in a synagogue.   The first time he stood in the pulpit, back in his hometown of Nazareth, the gathered assembly, the audience of his sermon, tried to throw him off of a cliff.   That is admittedly a pretty extreme reaction…to a sermon.   More typically, offended listeners might just walk out in the middle of the sermon or send a strongly worded email the next day.   These folks tried to kill Jesus.   That is a rough debut.   But you know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed…   And so Jesus tries again; this second attempt is what is described in today’s Gospel passage.   This time, the second time around, does go better; this time Jesus is only heckled by the leader of the synagogue – presumably the very person who invited him to spe...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 5:21-43   Desperation   The late, great Henri Nouwen once wrote, “While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, “You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.” [1]   I suspect, perhaps, Jesus agreed more whole-heartedly with this sentiment than did Jairus.   Because when Jesus stopped, then so did the little girl’s heart.   It is true that Jairus witnessed a beautiful miracle in that moment of interruption.   But also that same interruption cost him the miracle for which he so desperately longed.   And therein lies the tension: the interruptions are the work, but so too is the task list. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 1:29-39   Big Expectations; Little Miracle   The author of the Gospel of Mark sets the bar incredibly high from the get-go.   Verse one of this book is a theologically dense sentence fragment and the lens through which every moment in Jesus’ life is meant to be viewed.   It reads, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”     It is difficult to set the expectations much higher than that.   Messiah.   Son of God.   The readers’ hopes, informed as they are by the messianic expectations articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures, are impossibly high from the outset.   If, in fact, this Jesus is the Jewish messiah for whom they have long waited, is there anything that he cannot do?   This is the question the opening begs.   Mark tells us, before we even have the pleasure of meeting Jesus in his Gospel, that Jesus is the Messiah.   Mark tells us, in verse one of ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 9:1-41 A Beautiful Mystery In her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass shares an experience writer and Episcopalian Phyllis Tickle had while speaking to a large crowd at one of our Southern cathedrals: “[After her talk,] during the question-and-answer period, someone asked what she thought about the Virgin Birth. As such questions...do, this one devolved into a discussion of whether the Virgin Birth was a matter of scientific and historical fact. As the discussion got more heated, Phyllis noticed that a young man, about seventeen years old, who was helping set up refreshments...had stopped his work to listen. She could see him...listening intently to the exchange. When she closed her lecture, he came up to talk with her privately. 'Ma'am,' he said politely, 'there's something I don't understand.' In her...generous way, Phyllis asked him, 'What don't you understand?' She ...