Author: Adam Thomas

For it is Written

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Sermon for Sunday, March 9, 2025 || Lent 1C || Luke 4:1-13

I’ve never been able to get over the fact that the devil quotes scripture in today’s Gospel reading. Twice Jesus defends himself from the adversary’s onslaught using words from the scriptures. Jesus is so full of the Holy Spirit that the words of life spill from him and counter the devil’s temptation. “One does not live by bread alone.” “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” I imagine the tempter was getting pretty darn frustrated. But the adversary adapts, and for the third attack, the devil uses the same tactic.

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The Imposition of Ashes

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Sermon for Wednesday, March 5, 2025 || Ash Wednesday || 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In just a few minutes we will participate in a ritual that we do exactly once a year. On Ash Wednesday, we come to the altar rail, kneel like we do for Holy Communion, and receive the “imposition of ashes.” I will scrape two lines of soot on your foreheads, making the sign of the cross. And I will say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Admittedly, this is a strange ritual, but its weirdness gives it power. Today’s service is one of the more memorable liturgies of the church year specifically because the imposition of ashes is so strange and potentially off-putting.

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Love Your Enemies

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Sermon for Sunday, February 23, 2025 || Epiphany 7C || Luke 6:27-38

(Content warning: I talk about the Holocaust in this sermon.)

Love your enemies. This is the most shocking thing Jesus says in the entire Gospel. Love your enemies. We read this and throw up our hands, thinking Jesus must have gone mad. How could we possibly do such a thing? The whole point of an enemy is that you don’t love them. Enemies are to be defeated and demeaned and destroyed, right? The history of our war torn world would say yes. But our savior says differently. Love your enemies, Jesus says. If we’re going to take Jesus seriously – take ALL of what he says seriously – then we need to wrestle with this command to love our enemies. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. What does it mean to love our enemies?

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Sinking Your Roots

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Sermon for Sunday, February 16, 2025 || Epiphany 6C || Jeremiah 17:5-10

Today I’d like to talk about roots. Where do you sink your roots? In what are you rooted? Trees weather storms and high winds both because they bend and because there’s as much of the tree rooted in the ground as there is climbing to the sky. In these days of tumult, confusion, and dislocation, where we are rooted is so vitally important. So let’s talk about roots today, and I’m going to start with a story about my parents.

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By the Grace of God

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Sermon for Sunday, February 9, 2025 || Epiphany 5C || 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Today I’m going to talk about grace. This is a word we use a lot in church, but “grace” is one of those concepts that defies easy definition. So this morning, we’re going to try to squeeze our way to an understanding of grace by looking at how we use the word in other contexts and then by looking at the story of the Apostle Paul.

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The Presentation

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Sermon for Sunday, February 2, 2025 || The Feast of the Presentation || Luke 2:22-40

Today is a special feast day in the church. We call today the Feast of the Presentation, and this feast celebrates the event in the life of Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought their infant son to the Temple in Jerusalem to present him to the Lord and make a sacrifice. Today, I’d like to focus on the practice of presenting something to God in this sacred worship space. I’m going to speak abstractly for the second half of this sermon, so let me start with the concrete moment in the service that we call The Presentation.

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To Catch Us All

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Sermon for Sunday, January 26, 2025 || Epiphany 3C || 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Multiple people asked me to expand on my sermon from last Sunday about common cause. They asked me what I thought they could do to counter the forces of fracture and disintegration in our society. So I’d like to take the time this morning to dwell on one particular call to action, which, handily, springs from today’s reading from First Corinthians. This call to action is so simple that anyone can do it, but it does take time and attention to grow into a dedicated spiritual practice. The call is simply this: with God’s help, expand and deepen your connections with other people.

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Common Cause

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Sermon for Sunday, January 19, 2025 || Epiphany 2C || 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Today’s sermon is about the Holy Spirit inspiring us to work for the common good. The word “common” is a word we use a lot in the Episcopal Church. Since the year 1549, our worship book has been called “The Book of Common Prayer.” This use of the adjective “common” embraces both of the word’s meanings. First, our prayer is “common” in that it is an everyday thing, a normal part of our routine. Walking to the bus is common. Eating a bowl of oatmeal is common. Washing the dishes is common. Second, our prayer is “common” in the sense of “shared together.” We hold things in common among people, like a shared fridge in an office. 

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Forty-Two

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Sermon for Sunday, January 12, 2025 || Epiphany 1C || Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

For this sermon, I’m going to do something a little different this morning. Today is my 42nd birthday, and if you’re even half the size nerd that I am, you know that the number 42 is a special one. In the strange and whimsical science fiction series The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. This answer was determined by the superest supercomputer that ever existed, but when the computer spit out the answer “42” no one could agree as to the content of the question that would result in such an answer. So now they had to figure out the question. The subtext of this very silly premise is that we (1) cannot outsource our own seeking and (2) we must never stop learning and growing.

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The Painting in Nazareth

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Sermon for Sunday, January 5, 2025 || Christmas 2 || Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This is a sermon about biblical role models. After the service, I would love to hear what character in the Bible inspires you like Joseph inspires me. So be thinking about for the next ten minutes while I talk.

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