Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 9:38-50 Word and Example As I stand here in this pulpit, and look out over this crowd of people, one thing is clear to me: no one in this room is a biblical literalist.   There are many reasons for which I am glad about that, not the least of which is the disturbingly graphic Gospel passage we heard this very morning, with all its lopped off limbs and plucked out eyes.   This is probably one of the few passages that really draws a hard line in the sand for aspiring literalists, the other being the one about giving all of one’s money to the poor. I am an Episcopal priest these days, living in a denominational land where biblical literalism is scarcely found.   But I grew up in the Pentecostal tradition and so I know a thing or two about Biblical literalism.   This will give you an idea of that landscape: I was once warned that if I did not take everything in the Bible literally I was calling the entire Bible a lie. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson James 3:1-12 Words Before anything else existed, there were words.   Words suspended in the formless void, in the thick darkness of God’s all-encompassing shadow.   Nothing else: just God and words.   After an eternity of silence, God spoke.   And because of words, worlds were created.   Words caused light to break through darkness.   Words moved the water so that the land could breathe.   Words set stars on fire and convinced planets to pirouette.   Words troubled the dust and it organized into organisms.   Because God spoke.   Words are powerful. And when everything else was already spoken, God chose to make beings in God’s very likeness, in the image of God. And God gave those special creatures a very special gift.   A gift that is amazingly powerful, a gift previously possessed only by the Creator: words. It was a dangerous decision, by what I assume is an infinitely curious God. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Song of Songs 2:8-13 Desire It was the desperate longing in his hushed voice that she desired to hear.   It was the way in which his body held her gaze as he bounded over the hills, driven, she knew, by a burning desire to be close…a longing for her embrace, for her touch.   It was that moment their eyes met through the lattice; it was just a look but she felt it in her body and soul, if that makes sense.   It was as if that look were more like a thing, or maybe even a seismic event.   She dreamt of that moment and in her dreams her desire was more powerful than any distance that threatened to keep them apart.   She burned with desire: the ache of longing, the thrill of hope. You don’t plan for this, but it is there, tied up in what means to be human.   It is hidden somewhere inside – like heart or stomach.   But more like a flame – a thing that burns from the inside out.   It feels both dangerous and e...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a Bathsheba Samuel warned them.   He warned the people.   A king, he said, will take and take and take.   But the people wouldn’t listen.   They wanted a king; they demanded a king; they voted for king. And so they got one. Elections do matter. The warning, in the context of 1 Samuel, seemed to be rather specific, seemed to pertain only to the reign of King Saul.   Saul was the chosen one, their first king; initially everyone was excited; he was oozing with potential; he looked the part; he had great endorsements.   But things devolved quickly.   Saul took and took and took from the people; he exploited their loyalties; he neglected the Law of God.   And early in his reign he had already become the very thing Samuel feared, the very thing about which he had warned the nation.   But David, his replacement, he was different. He was a man after God’s own heart and so surely the old...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Ephesians 3:14-21 With and Without Long before the introduction of the Doomsday Clock, before weapons were capable of mass destruction, back when the world had four corners and the seas were populated with monsters, a man called Paul, well Saul, but then Paul, thought the world was about to end.   With a blast, not of bomb but of trumpet.   And not into oblivion but into something new – like rebirth, like resurrection.   Any day now…   The clock was ticking; creation groaning; redemption coming.   Any day now… I stood still and just stared at a wall.   Is that pilgrimage?   Halfway between me and Paul lived a man named Herbert, a monk who bought the Episcopate and built a cathedral.   The very cathedral in which I stood and stared at the wall.   I was looking at his name.   One thousand years stood between Herbert and Paul.   One thousand years stands between Herbert and me – me, ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 6:1-13 Listening I will never, ever forget the first time I preached – because it was super weird.   I had started a couple months earlier as the seminary intern at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chatham, New Jersey.   I was still fairly new to the Episcopal Church, having been raised in the Pentecostal tradition.   And Elizabeth, the Rector for whom I worked, gave me a couple months to immerse myself in the community before assigning me Advent 2, Year C. I had taught classes at the parish; I had given talks.   But the sermon is different.   There is really nothing quite like it.   A sermon begins as something incredibly intimate – at its best, a private conversation between the preacher, the Holy Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit – one person’s fumbling attempt to say something true, to preach something faithful, to relay what it seems God wants the congregation to hear that week.   And then, that immen...