Category: Sermons

Living the Wisdom of the Ten Commandments

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Sermon for Sunday, October 8, 2023 || Proper 22A || Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

Our first reading today from the book of Exodus recounts God speaking to Moses what we call the Ten Commandments. Whenever I read the Ten Commandments, I think of that great gag in Mel Brooks’s wildly inappropriate film History of the World, Part One, when Brooks, playing Moses, comes down the mountain with three tablets and says, “The Lord has given unto you these fifteen…” but then he drops a tablet and it shatters on the ground… “Ten! Ten Commandments!”

It’s pretty telling that this joke from an old movie is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the commandments. To be honest, for a long time they weren’t all that central to my practice of Christianity. I’ve always known them in the same vague way that you sort of know the words to old folk songs – you can sing along with them, but probably not do a solo.

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The Mind of Christ

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Sermon for Sunday, October 1, 2023 || Proper 21A || Philippians 2:1-13

I’ve preached many, many times over the years about the famous words we heard this morning from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Many biblical scholars regard these words about Christ’s descent to be one of us and his subsequent ascension as one of the first Christian hymns in existence. It’s an important passage that I’ve read over and over again, but this time a few words caught me that I hadn’t noticed before: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Another translation says, “Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” A third says, “Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus.”

That got me thinking. In what ways can we live into this mindset, this attitude of Christ? So, I’ve compiled a Top Ten list for this morning’s sermon. Each one of these deserves its own entire sermon, but instead of dwelling on one particular piece of the mind of Christ, I thought I’d share ten in the hopes that one or more will set a fire in you for further reflection and action. All right. Ready for the Top Ten ways to embrace the mindset of Christ?

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Generous Justice

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Sermon for Sunday, September 24, 2023 || Proper 20A || Matthew 20:1-16

This is one of those Gospel passages that leads to some very…spirited…discussions at Bible studies. There’s just something about this parable that rubs people the wrong way. We get all hung up on the fact that the various groups of workers in the vineyard don’t seem to be getting treated fairly. Some only work one hour, and they get the same pay as those who worked twelve hours! What?! We get stuck on that way of reading the parable and miss the larger point that Jesus is making. We miss the point that the generous vineyard owner keeps coming out and welcoming people into the vineyard all day long and treats even those who only had the opportunity to work one hour as if they had worked all day. That’s what the kingdom of heaven is like, says Jesus. 

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77 Times

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, September 17, 2023 || Proper 19A || Matthew 18:21-35

This sermon is about forgiveness. And we enter into this discussion, as we have several times recently, through the experience of Saint Peter. I’ve been talking a lot about Peter over the last few months, and that’s because he appears more in the Gospel than any other character besides Jesus. In Matthew’s account of the Gospel, which we’ve been reading this year, Peter is even more prevalent. Peter is something of the spokesperson for the disciples; he doesn’t seem to have a filter of any kind. He has no problem asking Jesus questions or answering Jesus’ questions, which he always seems to do with gut responses.

In today’s Gospel reading, Peter has just heard Jesus talk about what to do when there is conflict among the faithful. And now Peter wants to pin down how many times he has to forgive someone. Knowing that Jesus is the generous sort, Peter shoots high. Seven times. Seems a bit excessive, but still in the ballpark of reasonable. And it’s a nice number that, in Peter’s culture, evoked a sense of completion.

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In My Name (updated)

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Sermon for Sunday, September 10, 2023 || Proper 18A || Matthew 18:15-20

This morning I’d like to talk about one of the reasons we share Holy Communion during our Sunday worship services. But first, I’m going to talk about the movie Shakespeare in Love for about three minutes.

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I Will Be With You

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Sermon for Sunday, September 3, 2023 || Proper 17A || Exodus 3:1-15

After such a heady and confusing sermon last Sunday, I thought today would be a good time for something completely different. About twice a year, I preach from the perspective of a character in the scripture. Today, I am going to be Moses. Please imagine with me Moses near the end of his life, talking to his protege Joshua, who is fretting about taking on the role of leader upon Moses’s death.

“I will be with you.” That’s what God promised me all those years ago. “I will be with you.” The memory is as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. God spoke to me, called me to my life’s work, and made me that singular promise: “I will be with you.”

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What We Mean When We Say “God”

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, August 27, 2023 || Proper 16A || Matthew 16:13-20

I want to start today’s sermon off with a preemptive apology. I’m pretty sure it’s too early in the morning and too hot in here for the amount of heavy thinking I’m about to ask you to do. But I hope you will forgive me for the possible confusion I am about to place in your brains. This confusion has to do with what we mean when we say the word: “God.”

There are two big challenges that we must confront when we talk about what we mean when we say “God.” First, God, as a concept, is too big for us to define in a way that does not limit that which is, by definition, limitless. And second, we can only speak about God from our own perspective, which is narrowed by our particular identities and socialization. There is no way to speak about God without speaking from our collective stockpile of metaphors and stories.

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Mini-Sermons: “Lectionary Teaching” and “Irrevocable”

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Sermon for Sunday, August 20, 2023 || Proper 15A || Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

This morning’s sermon is really two mini sermons stuck together – the first is a teaching about the way we read the Bible in church and the second is a look at today’s lesson from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. They teach you in seminary only to preach about one thing per Sunday, but I’m breaking that rule today because these two things fit together pretty well.

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Right Here

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, August 13, 2023 || Proper 14A || Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Out of all the characters in the Gospel, Peter has got to be the most relatable. At various points in the story, Peter is impetuous and confused and terrified and insightful and ignorant and, in today’s story, waterlogged. Across the narrative, Peter rarely comes off as a hero. I’ve always found Peter’s characterization fascinating because Peter was one of the most powerful people in the early church. If he had wanted to, he could have rewritten his own history to make himself appear more heroic. But he didn’t. He let the record stand, warts and all. This most powerful person in the early church shows up in the story of the Gospel as a regular guy, who’s stumbling around trying to follow Jesus, just like the rest of us.

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Scattering Seeds

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, July 16, 2023 || Proper 10A || Matthew 13:1-19, 18-23

Jesus says some pretty strange stuff in the Gospel. At least this stuff is strange when we try to fit it into the way the world is instead of allowing these strange things to help us imagine a better world, a new world made more beautiful by the love, peace, and justice of God.

We try to ignore the strangeness because it’s Jesus saying these things, and we’ve had two thousand years to get used to them. But if we cast ourselves back into the sandals of those folks piled on the shore beside the sea, those folks listening to this weird, yet charismatic and compelling itinerant preacher, we hear the strangeness anew. And we realize that Jesus speaks like this because he’s trying to get people to shift their perspective, to see that new, more beautiful world.

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