Podcast – Where the Wind…

Being Saved

Published on March 15, 2021April 5, 2021 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, March 14, 2021 || Lent 4B || Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

The writer of the letter to the Ephesians says something in today’s second lesson that makes my heart sing: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

This is one of those verses that makes me take a deep breath after reading it, a cleansing breath of the Holy Spirit who is so vibrantly present in those words. “For by grace you have been saved through faith…”

Today I want to talk about being saved. And I have to start, as I have before, down in the Deep South.

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One Step Behind Jesus

Published on January 11, 2021March 14, 2021 by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Sermon for Sunday, January 10, 2021 || Epiphany 1B || Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

I was in the middle of exercising late Wednesday afternoon when I received panicked texts from a friend and from my mother at the same time. Do you see what’s going on at the Capitol right now? We are very shaken. Are you all okay? I immediately switched over from YouTube to live coverage on CBS and left it on until well past sundown, unable to tear my eyes away from the ugly spectacle. In one way, the events of Wednesday were shocking: after all, a hostile force has not breached the Capitol since the War of 1812. But in all other ways, Wednesday was the natural outcome of years of lies, incitement, manipulation, demagoguery, and (most pertinent for this sermon) heresy. That’s not a word I use very often, but it is important, especially in tumultuous times like these, to use the right words for things. I’ve been thinking and praying for three days about how to address the events of Wednesday in this sermon, and the only way I can wrap my head around them after so little time is to begin with the heresy on display this week and then counter it with Gospel.

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My LEGO Jesus

Published on December 28, 2020January 18, 2021 by Adam Thomas2 Comments

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The people at the churches where I have served as a pastor know how much I love LEGO. New sets were always my favorite birthday and Christmas presents growing up (still are), and I still have about 99% of my childhood LEGO bricks from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, LEGO minifigures all had yellow heads and hands. They all had the same two black dots for eyes and small smile. The first minifigures debuted in 1978, and variable facial expressions appeared first in 1989, and….

Yikes. I had to stop myself from going on a long ramble about the history of LEGO minifigures. Here’s a great infographic from LEGO which tells it way better than I can.

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Sent by God (or Bible Hero Syndrome)

Published on December 14, 2020January 4, 2021 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, December 13, 2020 || Advent 3B || John 1:6-8, 19-28

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Did you know that you have been sent by God? It’s true. We don’t often think about this reality because our lives stumble down winding roads on their way to various intermediate destinations that we might not even be aware of when we arrive at them. That last sentence was itself a circuitous adventure. But I really mean this. Each one of us, God has sent. Here. Now. This is not an ego thing. This is not someone claiming to be “God’s Gift” because he thinks he is “all that and a bag of chips,” as we used to say. No. This is the Gospel truth. God has sent each of us for a purpose that is written on our hearts, just waiting for our passion to speak it to the world.

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Season 3 of the Podcast for Nerdy Christians

Published on November 30, 2020November 30, 2020 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

In August 2019, Carrie Combs and I launched the Podcast for Nerdy Christians, and we’ve had a blast ever since sharing discussions at the intersection of our faith and our nerdiness. Sometimes we joke that we created the podcast so we could talk about all the nerdy things that we can’t fit into our sermons. Then again, I recently talked about Stranger Things in a sermon, to go along with my copious Star Wars references.

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An Instructed Service of Morning Prayer

Published on November 16, 2020December 14, 2020 by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Today, in lieu of a sermon, I’d like to offer an “instructed” service of Morning Prayer. We’ve done this in the past with services of Holy Eucharist, which was our principal act of communal worship before the pandemic moved us online. While we could continue to worship God following our normal Eucharistic service, our inability to share Holy Communion with one another at a distance led me to shift our weekly gathering to the other type of service found in the Book of Common Prayer. This is the service of Morning Prayer, one of two services of what is called the “Daily Office.” Today, we are going to walk through the elements of the service as we engage in them, and I will share a few historical, liturgical, and theological thoughts as we go.

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The Upside Down

Published on November 2, 2020November 23, 2020 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, November 1, 2020 || All Saints A || Matthew 5:1-12

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There are many ways to describe the overarching narrative of the Bible, the connective tissue that weaves through the many and varied voices and genres that make up the library of our Holy Scriptures. One theme describes God’s love and grace restoring all of creation back to God. Another tells a family story and invites all who read it to share in that story. A third way of viewing the thrust of the biblical narrative is what I’d like to focus on today. This third way sees our holy texts speaking to an upside down world – speaking God’s yearning for justice and peace in order to empower people to partner with God to turn the upside down world right side up.

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Prayer and Anxiety

Published on October 19, 2020November 2, 2020 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, October 18, 2020 || Proper 24A || Exodus 33:12-23

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Today I’d like to talk about prayer and anxiety. You can probably figure out why these things are on my mind since we are less than three weeks from a presidential election, cases of covid-19 are spiking in our county, millions of people are out of work, many are on the verge of eviction, and the governor of Michigan was recently the target of an attempted kidnapping by a group by domestic terrorists. And that’s like ten percent of the stuff I wanted to put in this introduction. Whew. Deep breath.

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Three Kinds of Power (With a Lot of Help from Star Wars)

Published on October 5, 2020October 26, 2020 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, October 4, 2020 || Proper 22A || Philippians 3:4b-14

Today, I want to talk about power. Like the word ‘love,’ we use the word ‘power’ to mean several things, which makes any discussion about power challenging. I’m going to move through three understandings of power, and I hope you will stick with me because the third one is the one we are aiming for. Also, I’m going to use Star Wars to illustrate the three types of power. (I’ve only used one Star Wars reference this year, so I’m well within my limits.)

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Surge Capacity

Published on September 21, 2020October 22, 2020 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, September 20, 2020 || Proper 20A || Exodus 16:2-15

At the end of this sermon, I’m going to talk about the prophetic voice of the movie Frozen II, but first let me talk about the church hymn board affixed to the wall to my left. This is the attractive wooden rack into which our altar guild slides in the numbers that correspond to particular songs in our hymnal. At the top of the rack, we display the particular Sunday of the church year. I haven’t touched the hymn board since the last time we used it. I’ve left it alone as a memento from our last in-person gathering. Right now the hymn board reads the “3rd Sunday in Lent.” Half a year ago.

I remember the anguished discussion the vestry had about closing the church building back in March. We had no idea how bad the pandemic would get, but the writing was on the wall. Thankfully, the vestry made the hard choice in that moment of uncertainty. Now, six months later, we are faced with the opposite hard choice: how and when to invite people back to in-person services as we balance our need for physical proximity with our collective goal of deterring the spread of the virus.

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