Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 3C 1-23-22 Luke 4:14-21   Finding Yourself in the Story   What happens immediately before today’s Gospel story is that the Devil tries to convince Jesus to throw himself off of the pinnacle of the Temple.   What happens immediately after today’s Gospel story is that the people with whom Jesus grew up try to throw him off a cliff.   In between those two assassination attempts, Jesus took his turn as a lector. And, I’m not saying this is the point of the Gospel, but maybe those who read this morning should avoid steep heights, for at least the rest of the day.   Forty days: that is how long Jesus was alone in the wilderness.   Well, not exactly alone; I’m sure there were singing birds and curious beasts and also there was a very chatty and conniving Devil.   But there were no friends, and perhaps more significantly, no food.   And so Jesus returned to Galilee like a college freshman comi...

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 3:15-17, 21-22   Power   The Gospel of Luke has been building to this very moment.   John and Jesus: they are the miracle babies featured in the opening chapters of this book.   We know they are special; their stories dominate the seasons of Advent and Christmas.   And everything in those now ubiquitous stories tell us that these two are unique: angels and prophecies and immaculate conceptions and a host of inspired canticles.   Luke goes out of his way to show us that these two babies, Jesus and John, are a big deal – a cosmically big deal.   And so it is fair for us to expect, since the book does continue after the first two chapters, that those two extraordinary infancies will produce two extraordinary, noteworthy men.   And, that those two men will most likely feature at least somewhat prominently in the remaining twenty-two chapters of Luke’s Gospel.     Chapter three picks up decades ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 2:41-52   Losing Jesus   She couldn’t help it.   The angel’s words just kept playing in her mind, on this seemingly endless loop.   They wouldn’t stop; neither would her tears.     The image of that angelic face, burned into her maternal memory, haunted her now, as she frantically scoured the bustling city streets.   When Heaven showed up and asked her to carry a child, she responded immediately and affirmatively.   She went along with the crazy plan.   But now that she needed something from Heaven, a little help, a little guidance, she got back nothing but silence.   When a parent cannot find their child, time slows to a crawl – one minute stretches into an eternity.   And for Mary it had been three days – of searching and crying and trying to keep it together, oh, and praying unanswered prayers.   Three agonizing days.   Every minute introduced yet another dr...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 2:1-20   Immanuel   36 weeks and 4 days into Jen’s second pregnancy I returned home from a vestry retreat.   That night, as we slept, a snowstorm swept into Northwest Ohio and Jen, my wife, was awakened by contractions.   She gently and calmly roused me from my sleep to inform me that she was driving herself to the hospital, in the snowstorm.   I, of course, made a counter-offer, one that I thought was quite strong, one that she quickly and decisively rejected.   She was driving to the hospital convinced that she would return to our bed in a matter of hours with the diagnosis of false labor.   And I was to stay home with our two-year old because he was a terrible sleeper and why wake him for false labor pains.   And so, aware I was not winning this negotiation, I laid back down, phone in hand, resigned to await my wife’s promised return.   The contractions, it turned out, were not false; ...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 1:39-55   Carrying Jesus   Some women crave pickles, at least that is what I am told – mostly by sitcoms – and so I suppose it must be true. My wife craved chocolate milk – a glass a day, assuming there was milk and chocolate syrup in the house. Mary craved revolution, which is one of those pregnancy cravings one does not hear about often.   When she was with child, the young Mary, before Jesus stretched her body far enough to leave marks, before Jesus carved lines of grief into her angelic face, composed her timeless, prophetic song while running through the hill country – in the space between home and the future.   Perhaps rehearsing the lines, over and over again, praying and struggling to find the right words and then shouting them out to the wild beasts when they finally came.     Or maybe not.   Maybe she had no words on account of being so overwhelmed.   And maybe simply fell in...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Baruch 5:1-9   Stewards of Hope   More than 2500 years ago, the prophet Isaiah offered a beautiful word of hope to a community living in exile, to a people watering the shores of the rivers of Babylon with their tears.   500 years later, the author of Baruch, repackaged and reused that same word of hope for the communities of the Diaspora struggling to survive the pressures of isolation and Hellenization.   More than century after the composition of Baruch, the author of Luke’s Gospel speaks Isaiah’s word of hope to a faith community living under the oppressive rule of an Empire that lined their streets with bloody crosses.   And then almost 2000 years after the composition of the third Gospel, a 23-year old seminarian preached his first sermon about that same ancient word of hope to the one grouchy, old man who was willing to drive to church in a snowstorm for the 8 o’clock service – then for another 100 or so who c...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13   A Prayer for a New Year   This is my planner.   It is brand new.   The cover is not yet worn or dirtied.   It has not yet been mangled by the assorted contents of my backpack, the place it will spend much of this next year.   There currently is not a single mark on its pages.   Nothing has been crossed out or checked off.   It will never again be quite as pristine as it is this morning.     This planner is a little different from the planners one might find at Staples or Target because this planner begins with today, November 28, the first Sunday of Advent.   You see, it is the Episcopal Liturgical Appointment Calendar.   It is decorated with Bible verses and tiny little candles mark the feasts of the Church.   Even though, like probably many of you, I trust my phone to keep my appointments, to vibrate in my pocket 15 minutes before each meeting...