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Rian Adams
Series: Leaning into the Peace of God. Sermon, Pride, Prejudice, and Peace Sermon by Fr. Rian Adams. Proper 20, Jonah 3:10-4:11 Introduction: Let me tell you a story about how religious exclusion is born. Pride needs all the right answers. Before long, the addiction to certainty strangles love. To maintain certainty, fear requires hundreds of hours and dollars looking for authorities that agree with its position. When fear empowers pride, prejudice is born. Finally, the God of their own making gets involved. That’s when “those people” can be persecuted because they are…
Series: Leaning into the peace of God Sermon: Ignore the Pharisees A sermon by Fr. Rian Adams. Proper 21, Year A. Matthew 21:23-32 I heard a story about a marital conflict that started at a reunion. A husband and wife were sitting at a table at the husband’s 25th high school reunion when the wife noticed a lady sitting alone at a table nursing her third drink. The wife asked her husband, “Do you know her?” “Yes,” he sighed, “She’s my old girlfriend. Bless her…
Sermon for Proper 17 year A by Fr. Rian Adams Text: Matthew 16:21-28 Since February of this year, the People’s Republic of China has removed and destroyed over 900 crosses from Christian churches. If that wasn’t enough, to display a cross on a place of worship is a crime against the government. If congregants disobey, the government can try them as insurrections. The cross is offensive. I read an article in an academic journal a few months ago at Sewanee that informs this sermon. The author called for the historic Christian churches in…
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…