Preaching the Scriptures

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Mark 8:31-38   Following Jesus St. Thomas’ Pakistani Episcopal Church   Jesus was not oblivious.   He was well aware of the excitement that followed him – a blossoming expectation that threatened full bloom.   The conversation in today’s Gospel passage follows on the heels of a miraculous banquet, the feeding of four thousand people, in the desert, with just a few loaves and fish.   Not long after the leftovers were cleared and collected, Jesus performed the stunning healing of a blind man.   Jesus was doing miracles.   And miracles make people talk and ask questions and even hope.   The disciples were not immune to the contagious excitement.   They could feel it; they were in it.   They witnessed so many miracles with Jesus, and by Jesus, that the sheer quantity could make the miraculous feel almost mundane.   They watched as Jesus’ words captured large crowds; his love transforme...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Genesis 9:8-17   Relentless mercy and fierce love St. Boniface, Guilderland   According to the book of Genesis, death came into this world, not through disease or atrophy, but through violence.   Brother against brother.   A clash of two creatures made in the divine image.   And that shattered God’s heart.   The pain vibrated through the universe.   God laid that pathos at the feet of Cain, the first killer, saying, “Your brother’s blood is crying out to me.”   And in that horrible early moment of human history, God recognized our fatal flaw and tried to stop it.   God inscribed Cain with a mark of protection in hopes that the cycle of violence might stop.   But it didn’t and we didn’t.   The violence continued, in thought, word, and deed.   Until God gave up and made a flood.   The reason God offered Noah for the watery disaster was human violence.   Genesis tells u...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Isaiah 40:21-31   By the Rivers of Babylon Zion Episcopal Church, Morris, NY   They sat, forlorn, by the rivers of Babylon.   And they wept.   Their tears fell in torrents from the dark clouds around their souls and was absorbed by the hostile land.   As they cried, they were assaulted by the smug looks and barbed taunts of their tormentors.   They sat by the rivers of Babylon: eyes burnt with sorrow, tongues pressed hard against the roof of their mouths.   Because there simply were not words.   Just a suffocating grief, a searing pain, a heart-break that felt eternal.   Even in Babylon, they were haunted by the memories.   The ghosts followed them into exile.   Once there had been good days, but they now the memories felt like thin remnants of a past life.   The first sign of their impending doom were the terrible rumors.   Then brought to life by the pulse of distan...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson I Corinthians 8:1-13   Knowledge, Love, and Meat St. John’s, Essex, NY   My dad didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.   He started working as a carpenter during high school and, by default, that became his career.   It was hard and punishing work.   And the pay was not commensurate with the effort it demanded.   While he was deeply committed to his work, and excellent at it, and some days even found it rewarding, in many ways my father’s vocation was a struggle.   And that struggle extended to the family’s financial stability.   Money comes in stops and starts for a free-lance construction worker.   And we never seemed to be able to get ahead.   It was a stressful way to live.   And so my dad was always clear that he did not want me, his first born, to live that same struggle.   He wanted me to be the first Williamson to earn a college degree.   He believed that k...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Epiphany 3B 1-21-24 Jonah 3:1-5, 10 & Mark 1:14-20   The Cost of the Call (Albany Deacon’s Retreat)   Simon and his brother, Andrew, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their nets and followed him.   Down the beach a ways, James and his brother, John, heard the call of Jesus and immediately left their father in the boat and followed him.   No questions asked.   No hesitation.     Jonah heard the call and immediately hopped a boat headed in the opposite direction.   He did not follow; he ran away.   Jonah wanted nothing to do with the call of God.   In fact, God would have to package that call with a life-threatening storm and a vomiting fish before Jonah would even begrudgingly ascent to his divine mission.   But you wouldn’t know any of that from today’s reading from the book of Jonah.   This morning’s lectionary passage gives us the most sanitized, compl...

  The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Christmas Eve 2023 Luke 2:1-20   Emmanuel in a world that is not safe   What I remember most vividly of our first moments together are his perfectly round head and the clarion cry that belied the smallness of his body.   Isaiah, my youngest son, came into the world on a Sunday morning and, as he continues to do, made his presence known.   It snowed on Saturday night, the night preceding his birth – a thick, Spring snow.   And Jen went into labor, before we were ready, twenty-three days in advance of Isaiah’s Annunciation due date.     That Sunday evening we sat in our hospital room with our newborn baby.   And, in that strange mix of exhaustion and euphoria, we looked out the window, a few stories above the nearby park.   The oaks had not yet turned green.   It was early in the month of March and the snow still fell, though now gently.   Like in a snow globe, as it begins to se...