Tag: Jesus

The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Thursday, March 29, 2018 || Maundy Thursday || John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I don’t normally ad-lib in sermons, but this one has quite a bit, so I would suggest watching the video instead of reading it.

(The Story)
Jesus’ hour has come. He knows he has come from God and is going to God, and he knows the Father has given all things into his hands. He is at table with his disciples, whom he will soon call friends. He gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, and ties a towel around himself. Rather than setting himself over his disciples as his position of Lord and teacher dictates, he takes the place of a servant and washes their feet.

(The Flu)
Ten years ago this month was the last time I got the flu. It was the Thursday before Palm Sunday. It was late in the evening, and I was sitting on the futon in my dorm room at seminary. I was doing what I always did in my free time, which was playing World of Warcraft on my computer. But something was wrong. I felt feverish and sluggish. My reaction time in the game was super slow, and I thought I might throw up on my keyboard. I closed the laptop and went to bed. I slept fitfully and awoke Friday morning with the flu. A full blown case: even blinking hurt. Continue reading “The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency” →

The Way of the Cross

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, for the seventh year in a row, I have had the pleasure of presenting the Way of the Cross along with several teens from my churches. The teens present each station as a stationary tableau, each full of potential energy, but each remaining still. It’s quite a moving service, and the teens always do an amazing job. To accompany their presentation, I wrote a series of musical stations, which I present below in a slightly compact form.

I hope they bless your Holy Week observation as much as singing them blesses mine. Continue reading “The Way of the Cross” →

Magnetic Atonement

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, March 25, 2018 || Palm/Passion B || Mark’s Passion

The mystery of just what the crucifixion of Jesus Christ accomplished is too grand for any single metaphor to capture. And that’s what theories of the crucifixion are. Every one is a metaphor, a description of something using the terminology of something else. From the earliest years after the crucifixion, Jesus’ followers sought to make sense of the event, but every explanation fell short of the whole truth. So they kept adding new metaphors to the mix. Taken together, we see a clearer picture of the length and breadth of God’s love and grace displayed in the Passion of Jesus Christ. Yet the entire picture eludes us, and will always do so.

St. Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly.” But that shouldn’t stop us from looking. And so, fully aware that this is one of myriad metaphors for what is happening on the cross, I’d like to you talk about what I call “Magnetic Atonement.” There are plenty of other names for this idea, but the “magnet” is my metaphor of choice today. Continue reading “Magnetic Atonement” →

My Soul is Troubled

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Sermon for Sunday, March 18, 2018 || Lent 5B || John 12:20-33

Imagine with me the thoughts of Jesus that might have been swirling around in his head during the day of the Gospel passage I just read.

It finally happened. Word of our little movement has reached past the confines of our stomping grounds, past Jerusalem, past Galilee. Philip and Andrew brought some people from Greece to see me. From Greece! Imagine that. I did not set out to become a household name; my name is so common that you’d have to ask which Jesus someone was talking about. But our mission, our movement – that is less common. To be honest, I thought the movement had died last year after so many left me. They were looking for more miraculous signs, sure; but still, I pushed too hard. You’ll never know how it feels to have so much power at your fingertips, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could compel people to stay if I so desired.

But above all else, I want people to be free, not to trade one empire for another. I yearn for everyone to choose the light, to walk in the light, for that is where Truth lives. And the truth will make you free.1 Continue reading “My Soul is Troubled” →

The Giver

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, March 11, 2018 || Lent 4B || John 3:14-21

God has blessed Leah and me in the past few months with the opportunity to participate in the Financial Peace University class here at St. Mark’s. The nine-week course is part lesson and part support group as singles and couples gather to examine and change their financial practices. We only have two classes left, and I can’t begin to explain how much the class has changed my outlook on money and on my family’s future.

But I must confess to a fairly large dose of hubris going into the course. I knew the developer of the class, financial guru Dave Ramsey, purported to use “biblical principles” to guide his thinking about money. I assumed such principles would consist of half-baked theology used to prove his points, or else his principles would rise out of the muck of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” which is anathema to true Christianity. Boy, was I wrong. Continue reading “The Giver” →

Always the Same, Yet Always New

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Sermon for Sunday, March 4, 2018 || Lent 3B || John 2:13-22

One of the great joys of parenthood is getting to go back and watch movies with your children that you yourself loved as a child. We’ve done this a little bit with the twins, and there are many, many more to come as they get older. When you watch a children’s movie as an adult, you realize the filmmakers have an incredibly difficult job to do. They have to make a movie that appeals to children and that keeps parents from tearing their hair out while watching it. They do this by adding into their movies a layer of humor that sails right over kids’ heads and makes parents laugh out loud. And if not humor than deep meaning; and sometimes, in those rare movies, both humor and depth.

Disney’s Zootopia is a great example. Little kids love watching all the anthropomorphized animals walking around and talking to one another. Perhaps they might understand a little of the message of the movie, which celebrates stepping outside of one’s comfort zone and living in harmony in a diverse society. But there’s no way they’re going to get the joke about the mob boss Godfather character being a tiny rodent. Or the joke about sloths being employed by the DMV. Or any of a hundred other jokes that make Zootopia one of my favorite Disney movies. I watched it a few weeks ago without my kids.

Continue reading “Always the Same, Yet Always New” →

A Bird’s Eye View

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Sermon for Sunday, February 18, 2018 || Lent 1B || Mark 1:9-15

The Gospel of Mark differs from the other accounts of the gospel by telling a sparer story. Mark provides less detail, less dialogue, and less delay in his sixteen chapter account. Everything in Mark happen immediately after everything else. Each scene rushes headlong into the next without a chance for us readers to catch our breath. This Sunday’s lesson is no exception. If you were expecting the story of Jesus’ temptation today, you got it; at least, you got the ten words Mark devotes to that particular story. This is an example of Mark’s style: his gospel often gets right to the point, no frills. If Mark’s gospel were a car, it would have been the first car I ever owned: a 1992 Mazda Protege with a manual transmission, roll down windows, and only two cup holders. But hey, I loved that car.

Continue reading “A Bird’s Eye View” →

Spiritual Topography

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Sermon for Sunday, February 11, 2018 || Last Epiphany B || Mark 9:2-9

Our spiritual lives are topographically interesting. Two of the most enduring images of walking with God are the mountain and the valley, the high place and the low. You’ve heard of the proverbial “mountain top experience,” which can spark faith for the first time or renew the well-trodden paths of faith. And you’ve prayed the immortal words of Psalm 23: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…thou art with me.” The mountain and the valley: these are the peaks of our spiritual lives and the troughs. Continue reading “Spiritual Topography” →

Live Deep, Live Wide

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, January 28, 2018 || Epiphany 4B || Mark 1:21-28

One of the enduring images of my childhood is my father never taking off his cross necklace. He wore that cross under his clothes close to his heart. He wore it (and still wears it) all the time: while sleeping, while exercising, even while showering. I can see him in my mind’s eye at the beach wearing just swim trunks and a three-inch by two-inch piece of silver metal.

I wanted to be like him so badly that I asked for a cross of my own to wear. So my parents gave me one for my birthday when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I tried to wear it all the time like my dad, but the chain would chafe my neck while I slept, so I took it off at night, and sometimes I’d forget to put it back on. It was against the rules to wear jewelry on the soccer field, so off came the cross then too. I lost it in the depths of my car for a few months my senior year of high school. Then one day during my first semester of college the chain broke, and I lost the cross for good. I had wanted to wear the cross to be like my dad, but I had failed. He never took his off, never lost it.
Continue reading “Live Deep, Live Wide” →

They Could Not Take Your Pride

Published on by Adam Thomas3 Comments

Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride.

U2 continues with the chorus: “In the name of love / What more in the name of love.” They repeat these words over and over again, astonished and overwhelmed by the lengths to which love calls us to go. From 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, the song bears the title “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and easily slots into my Top 10 list of all-time favorite U2 songs. It’s one of those songs that I never skip when those first rifts from The Edge’s guitar bloom on my radio.

I love this song because it is about a profoundly misunderstood concept, but which U2 understands profoundly in their lyrics. The song is about martyrdom* and the reason someone would die in witness to a cause. For U2, there is only one reason that could ever lead someone down the martyr’s path, and that is Love. Continue reading “They Could Not Take Your Pride” →