Tag: Faith

Faith and Unfaith

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Sermon for Sunday, April 7, 2024 || Easter 2B || John 20:19-31

Because of my last name, I’ve always felt a bit defensive about the Apostle Thomas. There aren’t too many characters in the Bible whose names have entered into popular culture as bywords, but his is one. I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “Don’t be a Doubting Thomas.” This phrase really irks me – and not simply because Thomas and I share a name. No. Calling him the Doubter is not just unfair (why single him out?); calling him the Doubter is a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel. So this morning, let’s unpack Thomas a bit, and hopefully by the end of this sermon we will see that doubt is not a bad thing.

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The Lighthouse

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Sermon for Sunday, March 10, 2024 || Lent 4B || John 3:14-21

When I went to high school football games as a kid in Alabama, people were always holding up signs that said, “John 3:16.” Not the words of the verse, just the citation, which was almost something of a brand in and of itself. “John 3:16” signs were everywhere. Years later while in seminary, I became a scholar of the Gospel of John. And I had this silly desire to head back to my high school, go to a football game, and hold up a sign that said, “John 3:17.” Perhaps, the person next to me would ask me why my sign was wrong and I could say that the sign wasn’t wrong, but a different verse entirely. The verse after the most famous verse of the Bible says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” This sermon starts with 3:17 and moves into the verses that follow it as we contemplate walking in darkness and walking in light.

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The Foolishness of God

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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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Worthiness and Grace

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, February 25, 2024 || Lent 2B || Romans 4:13-25

(Content warning: childhood trauma in the fourth paragraph.)

One of the most common conversations I have with people in my role as a pastor has to do with their fear over their perceived unworthiness. They don’t think they’re good enough. They don’t think they’ve done enough to earn God’s grace. They believe God has weighed and measured them and found them wanting. The prayer we’re going to pray right before communion called “The Prayer for Humble Access” seems to reinforce this. I’m going to spend our entire sermon time this morning talking about this perception of unworthiness, but I want to start by skipping to the end and saying this: God blesses us with grace, and this blessing is independent of our worthiness. Stick with me while we talk this through and we’ll get back to this good news at the end.

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Trust This Good News

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Sermon for Sunday, February 18, 2024 || Lent 1B || Mark 1:9-15

On this First Sunday in Lent, we always hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. If you’re wondering if you nodded off during the Gospel reading and missed the details of the temptations, don’t worry. You didn’t nod off. The Gospel According to Mark skips the details in favor of moving the story along quickly from one beat to the next. And that gives us the opportunity to focus on a different element of the story this morning. As Mark moves us swiftly past Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, the Gospel writer tells us, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

I’d like to spend our sermon time today breaking down this single sentence because there’s a lot in it. By the time we’re done, I hope you will have an understanding of the concept of “good news” as Jesus is using the term.

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The Spiral

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Sermon for Sunday, February 4, 2024 || Epiphany 5B || Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39

A single, solitary verb in today’s Gospel reading got stuck in my mind this week, and this entire sermon has spun out from this one verb. It’s a sermon about the spiritual life, a sermon about how the spiritual life is not walked in a straight line, but in a spiral. 

I’ll get to this special verb in a minute, but first let’s talk about Godly Play, this beautiful way we introduce the life and language of faith to the children of this church. Rather than teaching didactic lessons, Godly Play shares stories. The children sit in a circle with the storyteller and pay attention to the words of the story; the motions; the physical elements like sand, felt, and wooden figures; and even the silence in the midst of the story. After the story is finished, the adult mentor leads the children in a round of wondering, asking open-ended questions that purposefully do not have single correct answers in order to invite the children to put themselves into the story.

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Ten Years of Thanksgiving

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Sermon for Sunday, January 28, 2024 || Epiphany 4B || Psalm 111

My heart is full this morning, my friends. My heart is full of thanksgiving for God’s presence in the midst of this assembly. Today is our tenth annual meeting together. Ten years. Sometimes I can hardly believe it has been that long. Then I look at my children and remember they were in utero ten years ago, and now they can reach the cups in the upper kitchen cabinet. On a ten-year anniversary such as this, the first verse of today’s psalm speaks to me: “Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, in the congregation.”

So that’s what I’m going to do this morning. I’m going to give thanks to God with my whole heart in the midst of the congregation. As I share with you stories from the last ten years that make me thankful, I invite you to remember your own way into thanksgiving. For thanksgiving is a posture for generous living, an attitude of abundance that leads us to notice God’s presence everywhere we look.

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Tarshish and Nineveh

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Sermon for Sunday, January 21, 2024 || Epiphany 3B || Jonah 3:1-5, 10

In last week’s sermon, we talked about discerning God’s overarching call in our lives, about looking within ourselves for the Holy Spirit’s flame illuminating what brings us most fully alive. Today’s sermon is an extension of last week’s, but today, instead of talking about God’s overarching call, we’re going to talk about God’s movement through our daily walks. We’re going to talk about God inviting us and shaping us into the truest versions of ourselves. And to enter this discussion we’re going to start with the prophet Jonah.

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Washing with the Holy Spirit

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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?

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Daunting Tasks

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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.

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