Tag: Risen Christ

The Other Side of the Boat

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, May 4, 2025 || Easter 3C || John 21:1-19

Let me start like this: I am not going to talk about Star Wars today. I was all prepared to write a sermon chock-full of Star Wars references because today is the unofficial Star Wars holiday, May the 4th, as in “May the Fourth be with you.” (And also with you.) But then I read the Gospel lesson for today, the story of Peter and the others fishing after the resurrection, and a powerful memory from my recent life surfaced. I feel compelled to share this memory with you instead of talking about Star Wars. And if you know me, then you know this compulsion must be pretty strong. So I’m going to spend a good chunk of this sermon sharing the story of my last conversation with a 101-year-old man the day before he died.

Continue reading “The Other Side of the Boat” →

Resting All My Weight (Updated)

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
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!”

Continue reading “Resting All My Weight (Updated)” →

The One Whom Jesus Loves

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
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.

Continue reading “The One Whom Jesus Loves” →

The Stories We Tell

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 14, 2024 || Easter 3B || Acts 3:12-19; Luke 24:36b-48

As I prepare to head off on sabbatical tomorrow, I’d like to use our sermon time today to talk about what I’m going to be doing and why. Ever since joining with a group of other local clergy two years ago to learn about faith-based community organizing, I have grown increasingly fascinated with storytelling. This may sound strange because I’ve been writing novels for a dozen years. But for some reason I’ve never linked being a writer with being a storyteller. I think this is because writing novels is a solitary experience, while storytelling happens in community. Faith-based community organizing coalesces around the stories people tell about themselves and their communities, their struggles and successes, their hopes and dreams and nightmares. These stories become the building blocks for specific justice-oriented actions that seek to improve the lives of everyone in the community.

Continue reading “The Stories We Tell” →

Faith and Unfaith

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 7, 2024 || Easter 2B || John 20:19-31

Because of my last name, I’ve always felt a bit defensive about the Apostle Thomas. There aren’t too many characters in the Bible whose names have entered into popular culture as bywords, but his is one. I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “Don’t be a Doubting Thomas.” This phrase really irks me – and not simply because Thomas and I share a name. No. Calling him the Doubter is not just unfair (why single him out?); calling him the Doubter is a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel. So this morning, let’s unpack Thomas a bit, and hopefully by the end of this sermon we will see that doubt is not a bad thing.

Continue reading “Faith and Unfaith” →

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.

Continue reading “Where is God?” →

Simon, Lazarus, Philip, Mary

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments
Sermon for Sunday, April 9, 2023 || Easter Sunday A || John 20:1-18

Good morning and welcome to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on this cold and sunny Easter Sunday. I’m Pastor Adam Thomas, and today we are celebrating our tenth Easter together in this special place on Pearl Street. During the season of Lent, I preached a four-part sermon series on the verse John 3:16, which culminated in this new interpretation of the most famous verse in the Bible: 

For God so loved the entirety of Creation that God revealed God’s own self in the gift of God’s only Child: to draw us deeper into relationship with God, to find our place in God’s story of reconciliation, and to embrace the true life of God’s presence now and forever.

I’d like to spend today’s sermon offering a bit of a coda to the sermon series and speak again about God drawing us into deeper relationship. This makes sense to do on Easter Sunday because today is the day we celebrate God’s full and eternal embrace of Creation through the power of the Resurrection of Jesus.

Continue reading “Simon, Lazarus, Philip, Mary” →

Five Easter Encounters

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 17, 2022 || Easter Sunday C || John 20:1-18

Good morning, and welcome to St. Mark’s on this glorious Easter Sunday. Today is our first Easter on-site here on Pearl Street since 2019, and I am overjoyed to see your faces. If there’s anyone here today who doesn’t know me, I’m Pastor Adam Thomas. Today is my ninth Easter as the rector of this wonderful church, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than celebrating with you on this special feast of the Resurrection.

Continue reading “Five Easter Encounters” →

Peace Be With You

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 11, 2021 || Easter 2B || John 20:19-31

Today, I’d like to talk about peace. But first, a confession. I am a total, unabashed, and excitable nerd. Most of you know this about me. I know way too much about Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and several other properties that live in nerd space. My first book, which became Digital Disciple, originally had the working title “God’s Nerd.” I even co-host a podcast called The Podcast for Nerdy Christians. I say all this to prepare you for what I am about to say next. 

When I created the world of Sularil in which to set my first ever Dungeons and Dragons game, one of the things I really wanted to do was create a language native to the world. The very first new word I created for my Elvish language was the word, “Peace” – “Fyara” in Elvish. I wanted “Peace” to be the word of greeting for the elves in my world, and so the first person would say, “Fyara” (Peace) and the other person would respond, “Fyarana” (Deeper peace).

I did this because the elves in my world are peaceful people. I wanted the first and last word on their lips to be a word of peace. Indeed, this word is also the first word on the lips of the Risen Christ when he encounters the disciples locked in the room on the night of the resurrection. “Peace be with you,” he says (or in the Elvish translation of the Gospel, “Fyara”). Three times in today’s reading, he offers them peace. Jesus offers this greeting of peace to his fearful disciples, and like so much else in John’s Gospel, even something as simple as this greeting has layers of meaning.

Continue reading “Peace Be With You” →

The Cliffhanger

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Sunday, April 4, 2021 || Easter Sunday B || Mark 16:1-8

That’s it then. That’s the end of the Gospel: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” 

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a cliffhanger to me, like the end of part one of a two-part television episode. My favorite TV show of all time, Star Trek: The Next Generation ended four of its seven seasons on cliffhangers to entice the viewer back in the fall. (That’s how television used to work, by the way.) The most memorable was the end of Season Three when Captain Picard was captured by the Borg, and the season ends when the Enterprise crew has developed a new weapon to take out the Borg cube and Commander Riker says, “Fire,” and then the picture goes dark and the words “To be continued…” flash across the screen. I had to wait all summer to see what happened when the Enterprise fired the weapon from the modified deflector dish! And I was seven-years-old. Waiting was not my strong suit.

Continue reading “The Cliffhanger” →