Tag: Righteousness

The Armor of God

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Sermon for Sunday, August 22, 2021 || Proper 16B || Ephesians 6:10-20

Today I want to talk about the armor of God, this evocative set of images the writer of the letter to the Ephesians uses in this morning’s second lesson. Now when I say the “armor of God,” you might be overcome by a negative visceral reaction. Many who grew up in fundamentalist churches will remember the armor of God being deployed as a strictly militant concept, one that went hand in hand with drilling Bible verses for use as ammunition in proselytizing encounters. In this worldview, the fundamentalist church is a last bastion in the spiritual warfare between an angry, vengeful God and the Enemy – Satan – who has bolstered his ranks with humans who don’t belong to that church. Back in high school in Alabama, I was the target of some of these encounters because I was practicing Christianity in ways that were not acceptable to the big conservative church nearby.

So I’m fully aware that the phrase “armor of God” is loaded with baggage. But that’s why I want to talk about it today. When I read Ephesians 6, I don’t see a passage about combat or warfare. I see a passage about vulnerability, about giving ourselves over to God, about trusting that God is present when we face moments in our lives that test our inherent goodness and our impulse to love.

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Righteousness and Grace

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, January 12, 2020 || Epiphany 1A || Matthew 3:13-17

Today, I’m going to talk about the concept of righteousness. The word “righteousness” is tricky because we almost never hear it decoupled from the word “self.” We all know it’s not a good thing to be self-righteous. It is, however, good to be righteous. But self-righteousness has such a monopoly on the concept of righteousness that we never take the time to understand what righteousness really is. So that’s what we’re going to do this morning. And we’re going there because of an odd exchange between Jesus and John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading.

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Be Angry

Published on by Adam Thomas3 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, August 12, 2018 || Proper 14B || Ephesians 4:25–5:2

It is so good to be back with you here at St. Mark’s after my three weeks of vacation. I’ve never been much for adventurous vacations; I seek only rest, and I got rest in spades during my time away. I also spent much time with my children, who turned four during my vacation. They received their first soccer ball from their Nana and Papa, and I had a great time teaching them how to kick it. I also continued my personal project of reading books that are helping me understand my place in the reality of race and racism in the United States. I read two excellent books during vacation: Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey and The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. If you’d like to learn more about what I’m reading right now, let me know after the service.

All that being said, I’m so happy to back, so let’s talk anger. Continue reading “Be Angry” →

Dona Nobis Pacem

Published on by Adam Thomas3 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, December 10, 2017 || Advent 2B || Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

The second semester of my sophomore year of college, the choir of Sewanee performed in concert an extraordinary piece of music that I bet most of you have never heard of. The Dona Nobis Pacem by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams is a work for choir, soloists, and orchestra in a similar vein as something like Handel’s Messiah but with a more eclectic text. The words of the Dona Nobis Pacem come from the Bible, a political speech, the church service, and the poetry of nineteenth century American poet Walt Whitman. Written in 1936 as fascism was on the rise in Europe, Vaughan Williams work acknowledges the horror and heartbreak of war even as it cries out for peace. Dona nobis pacem: give us peace.

Now, the choirmaster at Sewanee, Dr. Robert Delcamp, programmed the music for the entire school year the summer beforehand. So he could never have known what would happen the same week we sang our song of peace. It was the spring of 2003: Shock and Awe, the bombing of Baghdad, the beginning of the Iraq War. And here we were, a little choir at a little college, tucked away on a mountaintop in Tennessee, singing our plaintive cry for peace while the drums of war sounded both within the music and out in the world. Continue reading “Dona Nobis Pacem” →