Tag: Jesus

The God-Fountain

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2017

One of my favorite American poets, James Weldon Johnson, opens his book God’s Trombones with a poetic prayer, which begins like this:

O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before Thy throne of grace.
O Lord—this morning—
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
We come this morning—
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord—open up a window of heaven,
And lean out far over the battlements of glory,
And listen this morning.* Continue reading “The God-Fountain” →

Transformed (God’s Point of View, part 8 of 8)

Published on by Adam Thomas3 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, February 26, 2017 || last Epiphany A || Matthew 17:1-9

We have reached the final week of our Epiphany sermon series, in which we have been imaging our way into God’s point of view. God sees, names, and celebrates us as beloved, befriended, gifted, blessed, enlightened, unfinished, and finished. This brings us to our final word of the sermon series: God names us “transformed.” The more we practice seeing ourselves and others the way God sees us, the more we participate in our own transformation.

I saved this word for today because I knew we would be reading the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration. He goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John and there the Gospel tells us, “he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Despite what the text says, I’ve never thought that Jesus himself was changing in any way. This story has always been for me a window into God’s point of view. On the mountaintop, God gives Peter, James, and John a gift. God gives them the gift of seeing Jesus as God sees him, a luminous being awash in God’s love and grace. And I’ve always wondered if the disciples had turned and looked at each other, would they have seen each other similarly transfigured?

Continue reading “Transformed (God’s Point of View, part 8 of 8)” →

Blessed (God’s Point of View, part 4 of 8)

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 29, 2017 || Epiphany 4A || Matthew 5:1-12

I thought I hit record this week, but I didn’t, and with only one service because of St. Mark’s Annual Meeting, I failed to capture the audio for this sermon. Apologies.

Three weeks ago, we began an Epiphany sermon series in which we are imagining our way into God’s eyes and trying to see ourselves as God sees us. What is God’s point of view? What does God see, name, and celebrate about us? And how can we incorporate that divine point of view into how we interact with God’s creation?

We began with Belovedness. God sees and names us and each person we meet as God’s Beloved. Living in this reality means affirming in word and deed the dignity and value of all people. Next we talked about God befriending us. God calls us into mission alongside God, not as subjects or employees, but as partners, friends. And this friendship leads us to create strong relationships of our own. Love leads to friendship, which leads us out into the world, participating in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation. Here we claim our giftedness, not to make ourselves feel special, but to use our gifts to make others feel so. We claim our giftedness, which helps us be blessings in the world.

With this word – “blessing” – we return for a fourth time to God’s point of view. God sees, names, and celebrates us as blessed. There are two parts to blessing: sustenance and mission, and neither is particularly well understood. Continue reading “Blessed (God’s Point of View, part 4 of 8)” →

Gifted (God’s Point of View, part 3 of 8)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 22, 2017 || Epiphany 3A ||Matthew 4:12-23

Two weeks ago, we began an Epiphany sermon series in which we are imagining our way into God’s eyes and trying to see ourselves as God sees us. What is God’s point of view? What does God see, name, and celebrate about us? And how can we incorporate that divine point of view into how we interact with God’s creation?

We began with Belovedness. God sees and names us as God’s Beloved. When we enter this reality, we see, name, and celebrate that each person we meet is also the Beloved of God. Living in this reality means affirming in word and deed the dignity and value of all people. Last week we talked about God befriending us. God calls us into mission alongside God, not as subjects or employees, but as partners, friends. And this friendship leads us to create strong relationships of our own, often befriending the unlikeliest of people, many of whom are those who have received little love.

Love leads to friendship, which leads us out into the world, participating in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation. Here we return to God’s point of view because we wonder how we possibly could contribute anything meaningful to such a vast enterprise as God’s mission. We imagine our way into God’s eyes again. We discover that God sees, names, and celebrates us as gifted. Continue reading “Gifted (God’s Point of View, part 3 of 8)” →

Befriended (God’s Point of View, part 2 of 8)

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 15, 2017 || Epiphany 2A || John 1:29-42

A week ago, we began an Epiphany sermon series in which we are imagining our way into God’s eyes and trying to see ourselves as God sees us. What is God’s point of view? What does God see, name, and celebrate about us? And how can we incorporate that divine point of view into how we interact with God’s creation?

Last week we began with Belovedness. God sees and names us as God’s Beloved. When we enter this reality, we see, name, and celebrate that each person we meet is the Beloved of God. Living in this reality means affirming in word and deed the dignity and value of all people. Claiming belovedness is the best way to stoke our own reserves of compassion for those on the margins, who we’d rather ignore to make our own lives a little more pleasant. Being God’s Beloved does not allow for such a heartless option, for they are God’s Beloved, too.

Thus, imagining how God sees us is not an entirely pleasant exercise. Being beloved is at once comforting and conflicting. We rest in God’s love, and we feel the pinch in our souls that so many out there feel no love at all. And so we decide to do something about that. This decision leads us back to God’s point of view. God befriends us, calling us into mission alongside God, not as subjects or employees, but as partners, friends. And this friendship leads us to create strong relationships of our own, often befriending the unlikeliest of people. Continue reading “Befriended (God’s Point of View, part 2 of 8)” →

Beloved (God’s Point of View, part 1 of 8)

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 8, 2017 || Epiphany 1A || Matthew 3:13-17

Two years ago I did a sermon series during the season after Epiphany, and I enjoyed writing it so much that I thought I’d give it another shot this year. When I was putting together the materials for our pledge drive last fall, I wrote a paragraph that really energized and focused my share in our collective ministry. The words appeared on the back of the stewardship brochure, and they read: “At St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, we see, name, and celebrate the presence of God in our lives, our church, and our neighborhoods.” The paragraph continued on in a missional vein, but that first sentence, especially the verbs “see, name, and celebrate,” really sparked for me.

See. Name. Celebrate. Wonderful verbs at first glance, but then I started living with them. I don’t know about you, but my eyes don’t work very well, even when I’m wearing my corrective lenses. So seeing is hard. Naming involves gaining intimate awareness of something, and who has time for that? Finally, celebrating often feels like betrayal – with some much wrong in the world, how could we possibly find cause for celebration? Continue reading “Beloved (God’s Point of View, part 1 of 8)” →

The Best Christmas Pageant Never (A New Christmas Pageant Script)

Published on by Adam Thomas6 Comments
Performed at St. Mark’s in Mystic, CT on Sunday, December 18, 2016

In an homage to the preferred story-telling method of one of my writing heroes, Aaron Sorkin, this new Christmas pageant takes place during a rehearsal for a traditional Christmas pageant. Over the course of the play, the traditional elements of the pageant get untangled from each other and we distill the stories as told by Matthew and Luke. Continue reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Never (A New Christmas Pageant Script)” →

Halfway Out of the Dark

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
On the Effects of the Planet’s Axis on Religion
and a few words about the season of Advent

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain. (Isaiah 40:3-4)

As we move through Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, the fact that Christianity is a religion begun in the northern hemisphere becomes incredibly obvious. Advent begins in the darkest days of the year when the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. The days are short and getting shorter. But a few days before Christmas, the shortest day of the year happens, and everything turns around. The BBC’s Dr. Who opines that we celebrate because, “We’re halfway out of the dark.” Continue reading “Halfway Out of the Dark” →

The Words on Jesus’ Lips

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, November 20, 2016 || Christ the King C || Luke 23:33-46

I was at the Annual Convention for the Episcopal Church in CT this Sunday, so a pair of dedicated parishioners delivered these words for me. Thanks, John and Craig.

Today, on this final Sunday of the church’s year, we celebrate the “kingship” of Christ or (put another way) the “reign of Christ.” The eternal “reign of Christ” stretches out from Christ the King and supplants the lesser things that attempt to reign in this world and in our lives. When we turn our attention away from these lesser (yet louder) things – power, money, fame, and the like – we can see and participate in the greater (yet quieter) reality of Christ’s reign.

The territory over which Christ reigns encompasses the whole of Creation, and yet we tend to cede our personal territory to the lesser things that seek to rule because it seems like the normal and acceptable thing to do. But there’s the rub: Jesus never did the normal or the acceptable thing, so, of course, his reign subverts the expectations of the world. Continue reading “The Words on Jesus’ Lips” →

Mr. Trump, You Surprised Me

Published on by Adam Thomas9 Comments

Dear Mr. Trump,

You surprised me last summer when you entered the large field of Republican candidates for president. I expected you to make a little news and then fade back to the outskirts of punditry.

You surprised me last fall when your candidacy did not shrivel after you made more than a few of what I thought were disqualifying comments. I expected your flippant statements about war heroes and women’s menstrual cycles to end your run.

You surprised me when you started winning Republican primaries. I saw no substance in your positions, only your overwhelming charismatic bravado.

You surprised me when you captured the Republican nomination for president. You surprised me when your general election campaign remained firmly in the environment you crafted during the primaries instead of moving to more neutral, centrist waters.

And you surprised me on Tuesday night when you gained enough electoral votes to claim the presidency of the United States.

And now, I beg you, please keep surprising me. Continue reading “Mr. Trump, You Surprised Me” →