Tag: resurrection

Fearing Death

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Sermon for Sunday, May 11, 2025 || Easter 4C || Psalm 23

Today, on this beautiful Sunday morning in springtime, when plants are growing and animals are having babies, we’re going to talk about…death. Now, as you can probably tell, I am not dead. So I have no special information to impart to you about what happens after we die. I have only my hope in the resurrection, that the essence of who God created us to be embraces new and abundant life in a way that we cannot even imagine in the midst of our physical existence. I have only this hope in the resurrection and my faith in the promise that Jesus makes to prepare a place for us and bring us to himself, so that where Christ is, we may also be.

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Resting All My Weight (Updated)

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Sermon for Sunday, April 27, 2025 || Easter 2C || John 20:19-31

Today we are going to do Part Two of last Sunday’s sermon. We’re going to dig into the meaning of the word “believe” because it is central to the story of the disciple Thomas and to our stories as well. Let’s start with the scene in which the Risen Christ encounters Thomas a week after standing amidst the others. Jesus invites Thomas to touch his wounds, saying, “No more disbelief. Believe!” Thomas immediately responds with the highest form of adoration in the entire Gospel: “My Lord and my God!”

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The One Whom Jesus Loves

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Sermon for Sunday, April 20, 2025 || Easter Day || John 20:1-18

Good morning and welcome to St. Mark’s on this Easter Sunday morning. I am so glad to be here worshiping with you today on this most sacred of all Feasts of the Resurrection. On this day, we proclaim that nothing in all creation, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in the power of the Risen Christ. On this day, we celebrate the emptiness of the tomb and the fullness of new life granted through the Resurrection. On this day, we run alongside Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter to witness the miracle of miracles.

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Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2023: The Funeral Homily

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During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2023, my church was in the midst of an unprecedented number of deaths and funerals in the parish. This sermon was a response to that reality and is now one of the most often viewed posts on this website.

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Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2020: Why Are You Weeping?

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During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2020, I preached the following sermon on Easter Sunday, less than a month into the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Noli Me Tangere

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Sermon for Sunday, March 31, 2024 || Easter Day B || John 20:1-18

Good morning and welcome to St. Mark’s Church for this special Feast of the Resurrection. Every Sunday is a feast of the Resurrection, but this one happens to fall on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (That’s how you figure out when Easter is, by the way.) Yep, we date Easter by the movement of the celestial bodies that shine energy upon this planet and create the Earth’s heartbeat in the motion of the tides. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool, but it’s not what I want to talk about this morning. Rather, I’d like to zoom in on a single line of dialogue that Jesus speaks to Mary Magdalene in this morning’s beautiful reading from the Gospel according to John. “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus says. That’s the line we’re going to unpack on this special Feast of the Resurrection.

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Where is God?

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 23, 2023 || Easter 3A || Luke 24:13-35

One of the most common questions people ask me in my role as priest is, “Where is God? Where is God in all of this?” I usually turn the question back on the other person and ask where they think God is. And this usually elicits a sigh or a raised eyebrow – they like had asked their doctor for a diagnosis and the doctor had said, “Well, what do you think you have?”

So, today, outside of any particular situation or context of a person asking me this question – Where is God? – I thought I’d share with you my answer. This answer may or may not speak to you, which is why I’m sharing it in a sermon and not a one-on-one conversation. Or maybe it will. First off, we need to talk about prepositions.

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May Not Perish But May Have Eternal Life

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, March 19, 2023 || Lent 5A || John 11:1-45

(Part Four of Sermon Series on John 3:16 – Part One – Part Two – Part Three)

Today we finish up our sermon series on John 3:16 – “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.” Three weeks ago, we talked about God loving every nook and cranny of creation. Two weeks ago, we said that God gave the gift of God’s only son to show us how to enter into the story God is telling. Last week, we looked at the concept of belief as “abiding in relationship” with Jesus. And that brings us to the final phrase of John 3:16 – “may not perish but may have eternal life.”

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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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Peter and Jesus

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Sermon for Sunday, May 1, 2022 || Easter 3C || John 21:1-19

I can only imagine the maelstrom of thoughts roiling in Simon Peter’s head in the weeks following Jesus’ resurrection. At the last supper, he promised Jesus: “I will lay down my life for you.” He was willing to draw blood when they came to arrest Jesus in the garden. He followed Jesus all the way to the gate of the high priest’s house. And then everything fell apart. People began recognizing him and he felt afraid and in his fear he did something he never dreamed he would do, not even in his worst nightmare.

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