Society – Page 3 – Where the Wind…

The Presentation

Published on February 3, 2025February 24, 2025 by Adam Thomas1 Comment

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

Published on January 27, 2025February 17, 2025 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

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

Published on January 20, 2025February 10, 2025 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

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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The Future

Published on November 11, 2024December 9, 2024 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, November 10, 2024 || Proper 27B || The Book of Ruth

Today, I am going to begin where last Sunday’s sermon finished, with the future. I ended by saying, “And Jesus is here, walking with us into the future where God is already, always, and eternally present.” For some of us, that future looks bleaker than it did a week ago. For others, that future looks brighter. But no matter our place on the ideological spectrum, none of us knows what the future holds. And such unknowing is prime fodder for anxiety.

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God is Present

Published on November 4, 2024December 9, 2024 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Sermon for Sunday, November 3, 2024 || All Saints B || John 11:32-44

Here we are. November 3, 2024, the day we celebrate all the saints. We are two days before a momentous election that pits vastly different visions of this country against each other. The world is mired in the midst of multiple ongoing wars in which so many innocent people have died. We’re grappling with increasingly common and destructive natural disasters due to climate change. And on a personal level we are contending with issues ranging from physical and mental health to addictions to economic hardship to interpersonal relationships. Anxiety and stress are high. Time is fleeting. The future approaches, and we have no idea what it will hold. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been holding tension in my shoulders for so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to be relaxed.

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Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2022: Maranatha Meditation

Published on July 29, 2024August 19, 2024 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2022, the world was hurting in so many ways, so I wrote this musical meditation in response.

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Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2020: Why Are You Weeping?

Published on July 15, 2024August 6, 2024 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2020, I preached the following sermon on Easter Sunday, less than a month into the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2019: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Published on July 8, 2024August 6, 2024 by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2019, I wrote notes each week of my first sabbatical, and this is one about my time at the Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

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The Stories We Tell

Published on April 15, 2024May 13, 2024 by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Sermon for Sunday, April 14, 2024 || Easter 3B || Acts 3:12-19; Luke 24:36b-48

As I prepare to head off on sabbatical tomorrow, I’d like to use our sermon time today to talk about what I’m going to be doing and why. Ever since joining with a group of other local clergy two years ago to learn about faith-based community organizing, I have grown increasingly fascinated with storytelling. This may sound strange because I’ve been writing novels for a dozen years. But for some reason I’ve never linked being a writer with being a storyteller. I think this is because writing novels is a solitary experience, while storytelling happens in community. Faith-based community organizing coalesces around the stories people tell about themselves and their communities, their struggles and successes, their hopes and dreams and nightmares. These stories become the building blocks for specific justice-oriented actions that seek to improve the lives of everyone in the community.

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The Foolishness of God

Published on March 4, 2024March 25, 2024 by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Sermon for Sunday, March 3, 2024 || Lent 3B || 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

In today’s sermon, we’re going to indulge in a bit of foolishness. Now, I’m aware that no one – myself included – likes to feel foolish. Feeling foolish quickly spirals into embarrassment, into red cheeks and hot faces, and we get the urge to escape as soon as possible. We all know the awful feeling of being laughed at instead of laughing with. (Though I have always loved Robin Williams’s line in the movie Dead Poets Society: “We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing near you.”) We go to great lengths not to feel foolish, going so far as not to learn new skills in adulthood because we really don’t want to be bad at them when we’re starting out. This is why I can’t ice skate or hit my driver.

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