Get Out of the Boat: Finding Faith in Fearful Times Watch the sermon on YouTube: By Fr. Rian Adams, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church August 9th, 2020. This story is one of those few times in the Gospels, where the disciples are not with Jesus. Matthew says that Jesus told the disciples to get in a boat and go to the other side of the sea of Galilee while he went to pray and rest. That sounds simple, but it’s not. The sea is 8 miles wide and 13 miles long. Eight miles is a long way…
By Rian Adams Have you ever noticed that this farmer doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing? Jesus says he went out to plant a field, but he missed the mark 75% of the time. If you only succeed at your job 25% of the time, my guess is that you’re preaching sermons or a politician. Now, I’m not a farmer, but I am well educated in the agricultural sciences. I was the top graduate in my 9th grade Agriculture class at Blountstown High School. Among the lessons I learned that year…
Why Spiritual Self-Care? I bet you’re a lot like me; you’re feeling some spiritual cabin fever. In this blog entry, I want to suggest a few ideas that can provide spiritual self-care during the coronavirus isolation. We’ve been cooped up for a few weeks thanks to coronavirus, and it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy spiritual life. COVID-19 has shaken up our spiritual lives, and taken away many of the systems we rely on to keep us centered and grounded. There’s a lot of information and creative…
What does it mean to be born again Sermon by Fr. Rian Adams There’s been a lot of fighting about this passage over the centuries. Churches have even split based on how to interpret John 3:16. So I decided to stay away from the theological debate. I decided to preach one of the many points found in the text and avoid the “born again” theology. I wanted to preach that Nicodemus was a religious leader, a scholar of the Law, yet he didn’t understand the Law of Love. That’s a good sermon…
Matthew: 5:20-37 Counterfeiters make over a billion dollars a year, making fake designer clothes and handbags. That billion is from the United States, not the rest of the world. These are not cheap knock offs from street vendors; they are well-made fakes. There’s an underground black market where you can pay $450 for a well-made handbag that’s impersonating a $6k Chanel. In 2018 The New York Times ran an article about customs seizing enough counterfeit handbags, shoes, and belts to fill 22 shipping containers. They estimated the loss to American retailers to…
Sermon from the Fifth Sunday after Ephiphany I Saw the Light The man was drunk and out of his mind when his mother led him to the car. She knew he’d pass out in the back seat like he did every other time. She helped him in the car and set out to drive him home. It wasn’t an isolated occurrence, it always happened when he traveled. He would sleep most of the way home. Then she would wake him when they were about fifteen mins away from his house so he would wake up enough to…