Preaching the Scriptures

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Psalm 51   Repentance   When this season opened – Lent, we call it – I remember there was unexpected snow. We came to this place, to this lawn, to be marked with the dust of death; we walked to our cars drenched in the water of life.   The snow was another symbol, washing us as we were cleansed – white flakes mixed into our black ashes.   Something about how In the midst of life we are in death.       And as we received our mixed messages from the heavens, we committed ourselves, once again, to a holy Lent.   We said words about repentance.   And mourned the 40-day loss of chocolate.       In the snow and ashes, our souls once again tried to digest the heaviness of the Lenten Exhortation, with its complex invitation and its intimidating expectations.   And the choir was singing, from the inside out, Psalm 51.     Today is the fifth Sunday of this season, the fifth ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson John 3:14-21   At Home in the Dark   Are you afraid of the dark?   I must admit: when I was a child I was.   I was afraid of the dark for the very reason Jesus gives in today’s Gospel.   Because darkness gives cover to the evil deeds of nefarious people.   And when I was a child I was afraid one of those depraved individuals would break into my house while I was sleeping.     You see, we lived beside a junkyard, actually shared a driveway with the junkyard.   And from my bedroom, which was at the end of the house closest to the drive and farthest from my parents, I could hear the cars creeping over the gravel through the darkness.   In those chilling moments of the night my body would tense, my breathing would slow, my ears would become as attentive as those of potential prey: I wanted be ready in the event that my house was indeed the intended destination.   Most importantly, I ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16   The Miracle that Matters Most   At this point, even the promise is old.   You see, this isn’t the first time Abram, better known as Abraham, heard from God.   This is just the latest in a series of conversations – each one substantially the same.   It is a testament to Abram’s stubborn hope that he even answers the third call.   The devastating lack of divine follow-through suggests that perhaps this God is all talk.   See, nothing ever happened.   The first time Abram heard the voice of God he was a younger man, virile, ready to sire a future, ready to fill a tent with the children of his beloved.   But that was a long time ago.   He had listened intently to that mysterious voice; it gave him hope – contagious hope; even Sarai, better known as Sarah, started to believe they might one day have what they had only dared to dream.   Abram left his family, his homeland, ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 9:8-17   The True Story of Noah   What people always want to know about the oldest stories is: are they real?   Are they true?   And the answer is, that of course they are true.   The best stories, the stories that stick in the soul, are always true – even if they don’t belong in the history books.   How I know they are true is that though they are old they continue to be remade and relived.   You likely haven’t built an ark to ride upon the primordial          chaos.   But I suspect you have surveyed the wreckage that chaos left behind in your life and felt the cold empty weight of despair.   You see, everyone talks about Noah’s flood, but they never think about what it feels like to live with the emptiness left behind by the receding waters.   This story is marketed to children.   It has cute animals and a boat.   It has a co...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Joel 2:1-2, 12-17   Broken Hearts   The first words of the book of the prophet Joel feel eerily appropriate this year, as if the ghosts of our ancient past understand our pandemic present: “Hear this, O elders,” he shouts across the centuries, “give ear, all inhabitants of the land!   Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.”   His people were dying of pestilence; ours die of plague.   Our lives changed in Lent last year.   And here we are again.   Walking this austere season in what we hope are the waning days of a time of imposed austerity.   Lent beckons us to renewed spiritual discipline, even as we are wearied by a year of sacrifice.   Lent calls us to take up the cross, even though our spirits are buckling under the weight of a year of heavy lifting...

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 1 Corinthians 8:1-13   What would YOU not do for love?   What would you not do for love?   That is the question.   More specifically: would you not eat the meat, you know, for love’s sake?   The Apostle Paul posed this question to the Christians in Corinth: are you willing to say no to some delicious idol meat – not the flesh of idols, of course, but animal flesh first offered to idols – if it really mattered to the person in the next pew?   That is the question of this morning’s epistle reading.   And people think the Bible isn’t relevant to our lives…   Probably you have had this very conversation with your friends a hundred times.   Likely a cousin has blocked you on facebook because of your out-spoken opinion on this very touchy tenderloin topic.   Perhaps a little background information would be helpful. In the first century, Corinth was a prominent city within the Roman Empire...