Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 12:13-21 They Want Your Soul! It began as no more than a whisper.   It always starts small, doesn’t it?   It was like the faintest tapping on a window, on his window, as gentle as the first drops of a light spring shower.   So light, in fact, he wasn’t sure it was even really there – maybe it was all in his head – a product of outsized aspirations and a bit too much anxiety.   Each evening the man would fall into bed, exhausted from the daily toll his farm demanded.   And yet, he was never truly restful.   He would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-tossed, sure that each night, as the darkness set in, that whisper grew louder.   If courage is the right word for it, he would summon his courage and dare look out his window.   And gaze, he would, on the field below.   The sandy soil turned to a sea of blackness by the dark sky.   In some mysterious way, he sensed that his life, his future, was h...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 22:15-22 The Things that are God's You can almost hear Jesus' eyes roll in this Gospel. One might argue that we are perfecting the art, but partisan bickering and political entrapment are not inventions of the 21 st century. Were it not for Jesus' confrontational immediate response, we might be fooled into thinking that this is a sincere inquiry on the part of the Pharisees and Herodians, but there is nothing genuine about the question these political adversaries are asking Jesus. They are trying to drag him into that old soul-crushing abyss: the partisan divide. Politically savvy as they are, they know either answer, yes or no, has the potential to compromise his base of support. Now, every preacher has been told, at one time or another, to keep the politics out of the pulpit. It's just that the Bible is chock full of politics. It's not the politics we care about, but much of the Bible, including today...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 16:1-13 A Better Investment Well, it seems that either God or the lectionary committee, or perhaps both, has decided that we are talking about money today. OK...good, no one seems to be leaving – yet. And so I thought, maybe, I could make this a very short sermon and simply remind you of Jesus' final phrase in today's Gospel: “You cannot serve God and wealth” and then invite the Stewardship Committee to take it from there. But alas, instead, I decided to drag this out a bit. Although, later in the service you will be hearing from the Stewardship Committee. We are doing that part. Today, I want to talk about this Gospel. I want to talk about it because I think it is one of the more confusing parables that Jesus tells. And I think that is the case because we, the Church, are often not very good at reading parables; we do them wrong. We read them as if they are meant to be allegories – always with God as the most ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Matthew 25:14-30 A new take on an old classic The word “ talent ” is the worst thing that ever happened to this parable.   The worst thing.   To us – especially those of us for whom English is our primary language – the word “ talent ” means an ability – an ability gifted to us by God or genetics for which we are responsible.   If one hopes to live up to his or her potential, he or she must develop that talent – take the raw material and transform it, through hard work and effort, into something useful. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition, a tradition that opts for the most literal reading of the Bible possible with little regard for literary style, the use of the   English word “ talent ” in Matthew's parable, turned this story into a very cut-and-dry allegory.   As much as an allegory can be taken literally, this one was.   And so I used to hear fairly often as a boy, “ If you don't use your talen...