Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 6:27-38 What if we try it?   What if it doesn’t work?   What if you try it, try everything that Jesus asks of his followers in today’s Gospel, every single thing, and it doesn’t work?   What if you walk this way of love, give your heart to this crazy code of ethics, do all of these hard things that no one really wants to do, and the world is still is mess?   What if you try it, and it doesn’t work?   Today’s Gospel is what Jesus says to those who made it through the woes.   You might remember last week’s Gospel; it was the Lukan version of the beatitudes.   You might also remember that after all of the more memorable happy blessings at the beginning of that little sermon, Jesus issues a series of woes that are decidedly less pleasant than what precedes them.   And that probably is why he opens this portion of the sermon by basically saying, “And now for those who are still listening, here are so...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Luke 5:1-11   Believing in Miracles   Always a crowd; always pressing in on Jesus.   Before, in the previous chapter of Luke’s Gospel, it was the angry hometown crowd, trying to press Jesus right off a cliff.   And today it is a lakeshore crowd pressing Jesus into the choppy waters of the lake of Gennesaret, aka the Sea of Galilee.   Even in the best of times, this Jesus’ work is dangerous business.     Fortunately for Jesus, the mood has changed since his visit in Nazareth.   This crowd, the one by the water, is not angry, not jealous, not even murderous, they are desperate.   They are pressing in to hear the Gospel, to hear Jesus preach the Good News.     If it is possible to be overly eager to hear a sermon, this crowd is that.   They press in so hard that Jesus is forced to make alternative pulpit arrangements.   He decides to find his safety in an empty boat. ...

  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...