Category: Sermons

A Deep Breath (updated)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 14, 2024 || Epiphany 2B || 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Today, I’d like to tell you an Epiphany story. An epiphany is a revelation of a deep truth or a recognition of the holy in one’s midst. We tend to think that epiphanies happen suddenly – like lightning striking – but, usually, what we think of as epiphanies are the shining culmination of longer treks towards discovery. The story I’m going to tell is one of those epiphany stories. It’s a story about me, but, by the time I get to the end of it, I hope you will see that it’s also a story about you. This is the story about how God called me to be a priest.

Continue reading “A Deep Breath (updated)” →

Washing with the Holy Spirit

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 7, 2024 || Epiphany 1B || Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Every year on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we read the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan. Jesus comes up out of the water after John dunks him in the river, and Jesus feels the presence of the Holy Spirit alighting on him like a dove. Our other two readings today speak of the Spirit as well. In the reading from Genesis, a “wind from God” sweeps over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul baptizes a dozen folks, and they discover the Holy Spirit’s power granting them spiritual gifts. In the Gospel, John the Baptist speaks of the difference between his baptizing with water and the one coming after him baptizing with the Holy Spirit.

That’s the line that caught me this week: Jesus baptizing with the Holy Spirit. The word “baptize” is the Greek word that means “to wash.” It makes total sense to be washed with water. But what does it mean to be washed with the Holy Spirit?

Continue reading “Washing with the Holy Spirit” →

Daunting Tasks

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, December 24, 2023 || Advent 4B || Luke 1:26-38

(I was off yesterday, so no sermon from December 31st, but I preached two different sermons on December 24th. Last Monday, I posted the Christmas Eve sermon. Here’s the one for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.)

The reading we just heard from the Gospel According to Luke is one of my absolute favorite passages in the Gospel. I find the character of Mary so utterly compelling, so much a model for our inspiration. She only shows up a handful of times in the story, so let’s take this opportunity today to talk about Mary and about how her interaction with Gabriel sheds light on our lives.

The church calls the event of Gabriel coming to Mary the “Annunciation,” with a Capital A. This event gets its own feast day on March 25th (conveniently, exactly nine months before Christmas). Few events in the Bible have been painted more often by artists than the Annunciation. If I were laying out the story of the Gospel like a novel, then the Annunciation would be the Inciting Incident of the book because Mary’s “Yes” at the end of the passage sets in motion the rest of the events of the Gospel.

Continue reading “Daunting Tasks” →

The Prince of Peace

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, December 24, 2023 || Christmas Eve || Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

I’ve been taking a lot of deep breaths lately. Leah showed me this special way to breathe that she learned in her nursing classes. You breathe in through your nose, pause, and then keep breathing in. Hold for a moment, then exhale slower than you inhaled. Let’s try it together. In, then in again, hold, exhale slowly. You might notice that the pause on the inhale enables you to fill your lungs more fully, to expand your chest, to feel extra spacious inside. I’ve been practicing this type of breathing in my more anxious moments lately and it has helped me embrace the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

That’s what I’d like to talk about tonight – God’s peace, which we hear about from the Prophet Isaiah and the angels singing to the terrified shepherds. In our world, which is constantly torn apart by war and oppression and environmental cataclysm, our embrace of God’s peace stands as a radical act of witness against all the death-dealing ways of the world.

Continue reading “The Prince of Peace” →

Practicing Awareness

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, December 3, 2023 || Advent 1B || Mark 13:24-37; Luke 1:26-38; Matthew 1:18-25

Today we begin again. We begin a new cycle of the church year, of services and celebrations, of feasts and fasts, that provide us the scaffolding for practicing our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. That’s what I’d like to talk about today on this First Sunday of Advent: practicing our awareness of God’s presence.

As the beginning of the church year, Advent is a time of recommitment. We recognize that in all the changes and chances of life, we often fall asleep in our lives of faith. We start sleepwalking through life, going about our days in a fog of tasks and to-dos, and we don’t pause often enough to practice God’s presence in the midst of everything. In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus implores his disciples and us to keep awake for the signs of God’s presence. You know by the blooming fig tree that summer is near, he says. You can read the signs of nature, but only if you keep your eyes open to seeing them. Therefore, keep awake!

Continue reading “Practicing Awareness” →

The Shepherd and the King

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, November 26, 2023 || Reign of Christ A || Ezekiel:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46

Next Sunday we begin again – another new year in our cycle of celebrations of God’s presence in our midst. But as the 90s band Semisonic reminds us, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” That end happens today. Today we end the current church year with the feast that marks this ending. For years now, I’ve been calling it “Reign of Christ” Sunday instead of its more common name, “Christ the King” Sunday. This morning, I’d like to explain why I made that shift because its theological implications are important for our walks of faith. My apologies ahead of time since this sermon is going to be pretty heavy on history. Hopefully, I have risen far enough from my tryptophan coma to make the next ten minutes make sense.

Continue reading “The Shepherd and the King” →

We Will Serve the Lord

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, November 12, 2023 || Proper 27A || Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

I began my very first paid job when I was fifteen. I worked at the independent bookstore, which my mother managed. I served the customers by offering recommendations, ringing up their orders, and gift-wrapping their purchase. I loved that job. My second job was waiting tables at the Logan’s Roadhouse, which is one of those steak restaurants where customers are encouraged to throw their peanut husks on the floor. I served the guests by taking their orders, refilling drinks, and sweeping up those countless peanut shells. I did not love that job. I worked at Olive Garden as a busser, as a camp counselor, and as an assistant at my seminary’s teaching library. Then I got ordained and started serving as a priest. Serving in the church is the only, what I would call, “adult” job I’ve ever had.

Continue reading “We Will Serve the Lord” →

A Better World, with Help from Star Trek

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, November 5, 2023 || All Saints A || Revelation 7:9-17; Matthew 5:1-12

All of this morning’s readings from Holy Scripture point us towards a vision of a better world: a world of mutual understanding, equal justice, and creative peace, all knit together by the God who brings all things back into right relationship with each other. I see this vision in scripture and it brings me, weeping, to my knees at the knowledge that fulfillment of this vision is simultaneously so close – as close as God’s presence in our midst – and seemingly so far, as we humans choose again and again paths that lead away from understanding, justice, and peace. Today, as we celebrate the lives of all the saints who have led humanity towards fulfillment of God’s dream for creation, I’d like to talk about this vision because only by proclaiming it from the rooftops will we ever be able to help make God’s dream a reality.

Of course, to enter into this discussion, I’m going to start with something intensely nerdy. Star Trek.

Continue reading “A Better World, with Help from Star Trek” →

What We Mean When We Say ‘Love’

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, October 29, 2023 || Proper 25A || Matthew 22:34-46

Today’s sermon is about love, and I’m going to throw in a few movie quotes to spice it up, okay? In this morning’s Gospel reading, a group of Pharisees gathers together and comes up with what they think is a doozy of a question to test Jesus. One of them (and here Matthew makes sure we know the questioner is a lawyer) asks Jesus, “Teacher, what commandment in the law is the greatest?”

Jesus doesn’t hesitate. He borrows from the book of Deuteronomy when he says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’” Then Jesus takes this commandment to its logical conclusion: “This is the greatest and first commandment,” he says. “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Continue reading “What We Mean When We Say ‘Love’” →

The God of Peace

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, October 15, 2023 || Proper 23A || Philippians 4:1-9

In this week of bullets and bombs, of terror and retaliation, of so many dead in a part of the world that always seems one explosion away from the end, I began writing this sermon with zero words on my lips or in my heart. So I did what I always do in that situation. I read poetry, because poetry does not ask you to make sense of the world, only to see the world with new eyes that might, in time, retrain your heart towards beauty. I’m going to begin and end this sermon with poems and we’ll see how the middle shakes out.

Continue reading “The God of Peace” →