Tag: Faith

Decency

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Sermon for Sunday, December 15, 2024 || Advent 3C || Luke 3:7-18

On June 9, 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy sat in a hearing room and attacked a young lawyer named Fred Fisher for communist sympathies. Fisher was a member of Joe Welch’s law firm, and Welch did not take kindly to McCarthy bringing up Fisher, considering Welch had a deal with McCarthy’s own lawyer, Roy Cohn, that neither Fisher’s past nor Cohn’s own dubious history of missing the Korean War draft would be brought up at the hearing. But McCarthy could not help himself. And so Joe Welch spoke words that have gone down in history, thanks both to their televised nature and their puncturing of McCarthy’s indestructible aura. “Have you no sense of decency?” Welch asked. “At long last have you left no sense of decency?”

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The Dawn from on High

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Sermon for Sunday, December 8, 2024 || Advent 2C || The Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79)

There’s a wonderful scene in the movie The Two Towers, which is the middle film of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I know I talk a lot about Star Wars in sermons, but my love for The Lord of the Rings is even greater than my love for Star Wars. So stick with me while I describe the scene. The people of Edoras have left their homes to take shelter in the great bastion known as Helm’s Deep. A few days before the flight to the supposedly impregnable fortress, the wizard Gandalf raced out of Edoras on his majestic steed Shadowfax in order to round up the cavalry spread across the country of Rohan. “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day,” Gandalf told Aragorn. “At dawn, look to the east.”

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Love and Good Deeds

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Sermon for Sunday, November 17, 2024 || Proper 28B || Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25

Every night at dinner at my house, my family shares a simple ritual before we say grace. We go around the table and say where we saw kindness that day. When Leah and I take our turns, our kindness is often that the other person made dinner. Many times, mine also come from people at this church whose kindness ripples out in a multitude of ways. Every kindness we share at dinner stems from a small, simple act, and each alone doesn’t seem like it amounts to much. But when we collect the kindnesses together, we add them, like stitches, to a great tapestry of goodness and love.

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The Future

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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

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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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Listening Well

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Sermon for Sunday, October 27, 2024 || Proper 25B || Mark 10:46-52

This sermon is about the art of listening, specifically about how Jesus listens and how we can emulate his practice. Our ability to listen impacts every relationship we have: our spouses and families, our friends and neighbors, our church and community members, our political and ideological opponents, and our partners in God’s mission.

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A Loving Prescription

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Sermon for Sunday, October 13, 2024 || Proper 23B || Mark 10:17-31

Two weeks ago, we talked about clinging to the impediments that stand in our way of the abundant life that God yearns for us to live. Last week, we talked about Jesus’ desire for everyone to find deep, meaningful connections and build loving, mutual relationships. And today, we are going to tie those two ideas together as we talk about Jesus meeting someone on the road. Notice that I’ve just said that Jesus met “someone” on the road. I’m saying “someone” here for a specific reason. I know it’s not like me, but I’m being vague on purpose. 

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Letting Go the Grail (Updated)

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, September 29, 2024 || Proper 21B || Mark 9:38-50
My sermons are now available in podcast form. Click here for Apple Podcasts or search
“WheretheWind.com Sermon” on your podcast app of choice.

Just so we’re on the same page, I want you to know that this sermon is about idolatry, but that is the only time I will use the word in the whole thing. And I’m going to spend the first third talking about Indiana Jones. So here’s the scene:

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Openness

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Sermon for Sunday, September 8, 2024 || Proper 18B || Mark 7:24-37
My sermons are now available in podcast form. Click here for Apple Podcasts or search “WheretheWind.com Sermon” on your podcast app of choice.

I was in my twenties before I consciously decided to open myself up to trying new foods without any of my previous suspicion. I was a notoriously picky eater as a kid, and one of the supreme ironies of my life has been the advent of digestive health issues happening at the same time that I started wanting to try new foods. It all began at my first church in West Virginia when I realized that I loved every kind of soup. Shirley Schwork was a master soup maker, and I liked everything she made for a monthly soup and sandwich group, no matter if the individual ingredients included foods I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole – like squash and zucchini and spinach. If they tasted good in soup, it stood to reason, then maybe other foods I had never given a proper chance might taste good too.

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Breathe in the Holy Spirit

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Sermon for Sunday, September 1, 2024 || Proper 17B || Mark 7:1-23

Today we’re going to spend the bulk of the sermon breathing through a guided meditation. We’re going to invite the Holy Spirit in through our inhalations; then, with our exhalations, we will breathe out into the world the values of a life lived following Jesus. But before we get to the meditation part, just a little background.

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