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St Thomas

Sermon for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

By Rector's Corner, Sermons

Christopher Thomas Sermon for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – 9/27/20 Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21:23-32 “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” – Philippians 2:1-2, NRSV Joy seems such an elusive thing these days, a commodity in short supply. It’s a subject that is in the forefront of my conscious mind, and weighs heavily on my heart, each and every morning, as I go to God in my personal, most private prayer time. I pray, this fervent prayer, each and every morning, before my feet ever touch the floor, “God, please let me feel your joyful presence within me today, so that I may be your joyful presence in…

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September 27, 2020

2020 Virtual LifeWalk | Oct 11

By Upcoming Events

Join the St. Thomas 2020 Virtual LifeWalk Team to Raise Money and Save Lives! The St Thomas Virtual LifeWalk 2020 team has raised over 25% of our $1,000 goal this year. Thanks so far to Jean Edwards, Rusty Rippamonti, and James Brown for their donations to date. To help St. Thomas reach our goal to assist folks struggling with HIV, join our parish team and donate at https://www.lifewalk.org/event/lifewalk/team/868326/ Your help and participation in LifeWalk is vital, and it’s needed now more than ever. Did you know: $25 provides a free HIV Test $40 provides a week of meals $100 provides one hour of Behavioral Health Care $250 provides a week of safe and clean housing Join our Doubter’s team in “walking virtually,” so individuals living with HIV can continue to access and maintain treatment during this critical time. The virtual walk is October 11, 2020 and will take place online. All…

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September 24, 2020

Folk like you and like me

By Rector's Corner

“…for the saints of God are just folk like you and like me…” I sat captivated as they carried the casket of Ruth Bader Ginsburg up the steps of the majestic Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. I found myself thinking how appropriate, and how ironic, and how fitting, that such a diminutive physical frame, was coming to rest, and be honored, in such hallowed, majestic halls. Because, after all, she lived her life in what appeared to be, at least from this vantage point, some very majestic ways. Unique, individual, and yet so similar, to the emotions stirred as I watched John Lewis’ funeral caisson pass gracefully over the Edmund Pettus bridge less than two months earlier. These two lives, lived so fully, distinctly, humbly, and yet mightily, for the cause of equal rights, indeed liberty and justice for all. These two seemed to be able to think universally…

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September 24, 2020

Blessing of the Animals

By Upcoming Events

Mark your calendars! Everyone is invited to join our annual Blessing of the Animals on Sunday, Oct 4 at 4pm. Look for us gathered outside, beneath the oak tree, in the North parking lot. (Masks required for humans.)

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September 24, 2020

Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

By Rector's Corner, Sermons

Christopher Thomas Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – 9/20/20 Exodus 16:2-15 Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16 “…do not be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, hold fast to those things that shall endure…” Episcopalians have the most elegant, eloquent way of stating the seriousness of the situation. For this collect must surely have been written about our very condition today, tossed in this chaotic morass we call the year 2020. Do not be anxious about earthly things. Do not be anxious about earthly things?!? Almost 7 million of our fellow Americans are infected and 200,000 dead from an earthly thing called COVID-19. At the very height of the economic collapse from this earthly thing called COVID-19, 20.5 million folks are forced out of the work force, some out of homes,…

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September 20, 2020

The ministry of urban social justice work

By Rector's Corner

My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, It is amazing when I stop and consider that only one brief year ago (and yet a lifetime), I had my first conversation with the Search Committee of the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. I remember telling you in our first Sunday together that my time with you, our time together, while sometimes seeming painfully slow, as in a pandemic, would in reality, be fleeting. And so, if we had business to attend to, we’d best be about that business! I was clear in my interviews as to the kind of ministry that God was (and is) calling me into, the ministry of urban social justice work with a particular emphasis on race, reconciliation, and healing. And I believed that was something that St. Thomas would be particularly good and gifted at, based on the leadership and hard work this place has…

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September 17, 2020

Sermon for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

By Sermons

Bishop Smith Proper 19 Year A St. Thomas the Apostle September 13, 2020 The putting back together of broken things on this fragile earth is God’s purpose for the church. Just as God put Jesus back together, only more so, after they killed him. The resurrection is our template for mission. That’s why there is a St. Thomas. That’s why there is a Church. We are here to participate in God’s project of restoration and renewal. Because, we humans have a way of falling apart and falling to pieces. (I’ll spare you my fabulous rendition of the great Patsy Cline.) If something can be broken, then someone will break it. It is poignant that the gospel today is Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness, seventy-seven times over, if that’s what it takes, and a parable about two people who desperately need forgiveness themselves. In God’s cosmic project of putting together broken things,…

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September 13, 2020

The Courage to Change What We Can

By Christian Formation

September is National Recovery Month. Through the years, I have been inspired and learned so much from my friends in recovery. Recently several of them have shared with me that what they have learned in their journey of recovery is serving them well as they now face the many losses and challenges brought about by the pandemic. A few weeks ago, a friend told me that he printed the first three lines of the Serenity Prayer, a prayer that is beloved by many people in recovery, and posted them next to his computer. Because his work requires him to spend so much time on his laptop, these words are a constant reminder to accept the limits of what he can control and what he cannot. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference….

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September 11, 2020

And With the Fall Comes Change!

By News

Labor Day marks the giving way of summer to the beginnings of fall, even in the age of “Corona-tide,” and as is the custom of St. Thomas the Apostle, we mark that passage with changes to our liturgy. There are several things that deserve your knowledge and attention. Our Song of Praise will be Canticle 13, “Glory to you, Lord God of our fathers,” which we will initially speak, but in the coming weeks will be sung by all. We will reintroduce the intonation of the psalms, led by a cantor. In conjunction with the book study we are undertaking on Monday evenings (“Caste,” by Isabel Wilkerson), we are reintroducing Prayers of the People composed by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, at the request of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, written specifically to address the issue of racial reconciliation and social justice. And, this Sunday, it…

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September 10, 2020