Tag: Jesus

For God so Loved the World…

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Sermon for Sunday, March 5, 2023 || Lent 2A || John 3:1-17

Today we’re going to talk about the most famous verse in the Bible. I read it a minute ago. Did you hear it? How does it start? For God so loved the world…

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

This verse, this famous verse, is tricky for three reasons. First, people tend to isolate it by itself, far from the context of the verses around it. This happens even in the way English translations of the Bible lay out the text; they make John 3:16 its own paragraph for absolutely no discernible reason. Second, people tend to focus on the second half of the verse and decide (because they haven’t read it in context) that John 3:16 is a verse of exclusion. You have to “believe” to have eternal life, and that usually means in practice that you have to assent to a certain set of doctrines that a denomination or a charismatic pastor lists out for you. And third, people tend to make God smaller than God is, in order to fit God inside our limited human understanding. Rather than expand ourselves through prayer and spiritual practice, we instead shrink God to conform to our meager expectations.

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The Lens of Love

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Wednesday, February 22, 2023 || Ash Wednesday

I’ve been preaching a lot lately about belovedness: the Beloved Community, God calling Jesus the “Beloved,” God calling us “Beloved” because we, too, are children of God. This idea of belovedness has stuck to my heart like glue, and so I can’t imagine it will leave my preaching any time soon. And that’s because belovedness is not just an idea, but a lens – a lens through which we see the world.

And as I turn this lens of love onto today’s service of Ash Wednesday, I realize just how tender this service is. I know that sounds strange. “Isn’t this service all about our sinfulness and our transience?” you might think. “Aren’t we preparing for a Lenten season of self-denial and repentance? How could this service possibly be tender?”

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The Vision

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, February 19, 2023 || Last Epiphany A || Matthew 17:1-9

Imagine with me the disciple Peter near the end of his life, reflecting back on that surprising journey up the mountain that we just heard in today’s Gospel reading. He’s speaking to a group of young followers of Jesus, who have just asked him to recall something about his days with Jesus and the other disciples.

Jesus knew I wasn’t a big fan of hiking. We walked everywhere, so why would I want to walk during my free time, too? I suppose that’s what growing up around boats does for you. Not a lot of places to walk around on a small fishing boat, and that’s just fine with me. But Jesus – Jesus loved to walk. He told me once he loved to walk because his mother walked all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem while he was still in her womb. And when he went hiking, he thought of her. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about today. How you all let me wander.

Jesus convinced me to go on a hike once with him, James, and John. They were fishermen too, but they liked hiking more than I did. I agreed because I never wanted to be too far from Jesus, no matter what we did. Less than a week earlier, he had told us what was going to happen to him, and I was dead set against letting anyone hurt him. So I went along as more of a bodyguard than a willing participant. Well, Jesus had quite the hike in mind. This wasn’t just a stroll by the seashore. We went straight up a mountain. My knees were killing me by the time we reached the top. The view was nice, but not worth the effort. And my knees still had to make it down again.

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New Ministry

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

This weekend, I preached at the Celebration of New Ministry for a friend and colleague instead of preaching at St. Mark’s. Here is the sermon I offered at the service on Saturday.

I’m so glad to be back at St. Ann’s worshiping with you today. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Adam Thomas. I’m the pastor of St. Mark’s Church in Mystic, and I was the priest-in-charge consultant here at St. Ann’s while you all were discerning the evolving nature of the parish’s relationship with the Rev. Anita Schell. That process began way back in pre-pandemic days of 2019 and continued doggedly through the scary and interminable months of the worst of the pandemic. And now here we are – four years on from Anita’s arrival – celebrating a new ministry.

If that sounds strange to you – celebrating a new ministry after the priest has been here longer than many priest-parish relationships last in the first place – if that sounds strange to you, then believe me, I’m right there with you. I had to puzzle out what I thought about it in order to write this sermon. And what I realized is that today we have the opportunity to celebrate two seemingly opposite realities, that, in the end, are both ways that we encounter God’s movement in this world. Our God is a both/and kind of God, and today we celebrate a both/and reality here at St. Ann’s.

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You are the Light

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, February 5, 2023 || Epiphany 5A || Isaiah 58:1-9a; Matthew 5:13-20

“You are the light of the world.” Jesus says these words to his disciples as a great crowd listens in to his teaching that we now commonly call “The Sermon on the Mount.” You are the light of the world. In John’s account of the Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the Light of the World”, but here in Matthew, he’s not talking about himself. He’s talking to his followers and to the readers of the Gospel and (a few thousand years later) to us.

You are the light of the world. And Jesus keeps going with two more images – the city on the hill and the lamp on the lampstand – as things that, like the light, should never be hidden. And then he says, to make sure everyone understands his meaning: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

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The Funeral Homily

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Sermon for Sunday, January 29, 2023 || Epiphany 4A

On this day of our Annual Meeting, I’d like to spend this sermon time fulfilling a request from a number of people over the last few months. Today, I am going to share with you some of the elements of the funeral homilies I have preached over the last year. Because funerals are mostly attended by family and close friends, very few of the members of our church have heard me preach at a funeral. And yet we are all grieving in one way or another the deaths of so many of our church family – 23 of whom we have buried in the last year. A funeral homily is my chance to set the life (and new life) of the person who died within the greater context of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So today, on this day of our annual gathering, we are going to remember those who have died, and I am going to share with you some thoughts on heaven and the eternal love of God.

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The 26-Foot U-Haul

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 1, 2023 || Feast of the Holy Name || Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21

This sermon is about emptying ourselves of all the junk inside us so there is more room for God to fill. And boy do I have a good example to start with. My family moved this week. We bought a house here in Mystic and moved out of the rectory. Our new house is quite a bit smaller than the rectory, so we needed to downsize in a hurry. Every Tuesday and Friday for the last few weeks, we have filled the garbage and recycling cans and watched the truck’s grabber arm scoop up all our accumulation. We’ve made several trips to Goodwill with books and toys and games and clothes. We’ve put pieces of furniture up on Facebook Marketplace. And still our new house is full.

How did we end up with so much stuff?! When I moved out of my dorm after grad school, I could fit everything I owned in my compact car. But I needed the 17-foot U-Haul for the move out of my townhouse in West Virginia, then the 20-foot U-Haul for the next move, then Leah and I needed the 26-foot U-Haul when we moved to Mystic. Then the kids were born, and our stuff, you know, **Explosion Noise**.

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O Magnum Mysterium

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Saturday, December 24, 2022 || Christmas Eve || John 1:1-14

Tonight, I’d like to share with you a great mystery. It is the mystery of God’s movement in creation in the singular way that we call the Incarnation; that is, the presence of God coming among us in the flesh and blood person of Jesus of Nazareth. Notice, I said I’d like to share this mystery with you. I’m using the verb “share” on purpose, because it is way above my paygrade to try to “explain” this mystery. 

This isn’t the type of mystery one can explain. This isn’t like the kinds of mysteries my mother loves to read – Whodunnits. In those books, a mystery is set forth: say, how does the killer manage to murder someone in a room locked from the inside? The plot revolves around the detective attempting to solve the puzzle. In the end, the detective figures out that the bell rope used to call for the maid is replaced with a poisonous snake, which somehow slithered unnoticed out of the room in the ensuing hubbub of discovering the body. Mystery solved. No more mystery. 

The mystery of God’s presence in creation is not this kind of mystery. The mystery of God cannot be solved. It cannot be grasped. But the mystery of God can be embraced. My prayer for all of us this Christmas is that we embrace this mystery of God’s movement, even as God embraces us with God’s love.

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Joseph’s Letter

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, December 11, 2022 || Advent 4A || Matthew 1:18-25

Imagine with me a letter written by Joseph to his father on the night Joseph had the dream of the angel that today’s Gospel reading narrated.

Joseph, eldest son and protégé, to Jacob, my father, mentor, and confidant: Blessings and peace to you, my mother, and my brothers and sisters.

By the time you read this letter, I will have left home. I awoke in the still hours of the night to write it, and I imagine that when I leave, the sun will be many hours from rising. I hope someday you will welcome me back into this house. I know it will not be tomorrow or the next day. But someday, I hope.

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