Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 10:35-45   Human   As I came to, I realized I was being cradled like a baby by Miss Deanna.   Deanna was a was a robust and refined black woman, probably 40 years my senior.   I noticed, supported by her gentle arms, that her round face looked concerned, and her cheeks glistened with tears.   It was a confusing moment.   Because I was not a baby; I was a thirty-five-year-old man being cradled like a baby and we were in the chancel of the chapel.   Why was she sweetly and tenderly holding me?   Why was she crying?   I shifted my gaze, still trying to make sense of the situation.   The small eight o’clock congregation looked a bit panicked.   Someone in the back was on the phone, calling the paramedics.   Lying in Miss Deanna’s lap, on the floor of the chapel, I started to piece things together.   The last thing I could remember was the Prayers of the People. ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 6:1-8   Chrism Mass 2024   You are here today because someone spoke a word of God into your life.   Someone planted the seed.   Someone, at some point, became the first person who was convinced you were called to be set apart.   To be a priest.   Or to be a deacon.   To be an ordained minister of the Gospel.   For me, it was my paternal grandparents: Bob and Sharon Williamson.   And they first spoke that word into my life when I was just a boy.   The dawning days of my vocation were not of biblical proportions.   I didn’t get the divine drama of the scene in Isaiah, no sweetness of temple incense or angelic vision; my lips were not singed with a live coal.   Instead, what I remember most of those early days is a very particular scent: it was this overwhelming floral perfume, wafting from the dish of decorative soaps – certainly my grandma’s addition to the home.   Th...