Ephesians 2:8-9 (Funeral - Terrance Adamson)
St. Mark, Lake Jackson 10/10/26
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Obituary

    Pastor Terrance Adamson, “Pastor Terry,” as he was known, was born on March 15, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Donald and Patricia Adamson. He went home to his father in heaven peacefully as he was sleeping on September 16, 2026. Terry leaves behind his wife of 35 years, Claudia Acosta, his step-children Lita Rowles, David McGuire and their children, Huck, Mason, Harper and Riverly. Terry is survived by his sister Vicki Lee Becker and her husband Donald, as well as his brother, Patrick David Adamson and his wife Cindy. He also left his congregation, St. Mark Lutheran Church in Lake Jackson, Texas, as well as, friends and students around the world.

    Claudia, family and friends of Terry, friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    Please accept my deepest condolences as you grieve Terry’s passing today and in the days ahead. Thanks be to God that, your grief, though deeply heartfelt and profound, is, by God’s grace and mercy in Christ, tempered by Jesus’ death and resurrection for the sins world. The word of God, given to us through His servant, St. Paul, is especially pertinent to us today. “We do not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep…The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

    Claudia and all who knew and loved Terry, all who have been cleansed and redeemed by the blood of Christ, brought into His kingdom through the water of Holy Baptism, there awaits a yet more glorious day, the day when the “saints triumphant (will) rise in bright array.”

    I knew Terry for about 11 years, having worked with the Call committee that brought he and Claudia here to St. Mark’s in 2015. But, as is often the case with pastors, I knew Terry more for his theology and how good of a pastor he was to the congregation he served, than I knew him as a person. I was honored to sit down with Claudia a week or so ago and talk about Terry and about their life together as husband and wife. I was particularly interested in how Terry came to be a pastor in the Church, and what it was that brought him to that point in his life.  

    Claudia mentioned something about Terry that stuck with me. Perhaps some of you have heard this story. If so, please bear with me, because I think it has bearing on how God was working in Terry’s life even from a very young age. Before I tell you that little story, I want to repeat a couple of verses you heard earlier in the service. I repeat those verses here because they were formative in Terry’s life, having been given to him on the day of his confirmation in the Lutheran Church. The passage is from Ephesians 2. The Apostle wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”  

    Ultimately, our Christian faith comes down to God’s grace and forgiveness of us in Christ Jesus, which is to say, none of us have done anything in life that would merit God receiving us into His eternal Kingdom. As some of you may know, Martin Luther was a man with a very sensitive conscience. In fact, his father confessor, Johann Staupitz, once told him that in all the time he came to him to confess his sin, he had never confessed anything even remotely interesting. When Luther died, a little folded note of paper was found in his pocket. The note simply said, “we are all beggars before God.” He understood that all of the goodness of God that we receive in this life and in the next, is purely a gift from God Himself. “You are saved by grace through faith, and this not of yourselves.”

    I know that Terry knew what Luther knew. God is good to us, not because we deserve it, but because He loves us and He covers everyday of our lives in the forgiveness and grace that He poured over us in our baptisms and He continually gives to us as we receive His body and blood at the altar.

    It was a long time ago. Terry was about five or six years old. He was intrigued by those bulk bins lined up one after another in the grocery store. One particular bin though caught his eye. It was a bin full of peanuts. He walked over to the bin and took out a single peanut and put it in his coat pocket. After he got home, he thought about what he had done, and he was mortified. He had stolen from the grocery store. Mind you, it was a peanut. Still, what he done troubled him.  

    Over time, he forgot about the peanut in his coat pocket. The next winter though, he put on his coat and stuck his hand in his pocket only to find the peanut was still there. The whole sordid event came back to him. He tried to flush the peanut down the toilet, but it kept floating back to the surface. Finally, after the third flush the peanut relented and went to a watery grave.

    Again, it was a peanut. Still, God sometimes uses the simplest things in our lives to form us as His child in the faith. Terry knew God’s forgiveness and grace in Christ Jesus. He studied theology, not simply to amass knowledge, but to teach others God’s grace and mercy in Christ. He learned French, German, Latin, Hebrew and Greek, to enable him to better teach others the wonders of God, that He forgives all of our sins, from the smallest, or the least of them, like the theft of a peanut, to the greatest.

    It is in that forgiveness and grace of God, that we gather here today. Our grief tempered, as it were, with joy, because Terry’s soul now rests in the presence of God. A passage he, no doubt, peached on many times as a faithful servant of God, is now a reality for him. “Today (Jesus said), you will be with Me in paradise.”

    Like all those who have gone before us in the faith, Terry’s body will rest, sleep, as the Scriptures tell us, and wait for the great and glorious day of our Lord. Indeed…

The golden evening brightens in the west; 
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest; 
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day:
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of Glory passes on His way.

    “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +