Best Sermon Ever?

My sermon for this past Sunday was one that so far has gotten the most praise, and one parishioner said it might be my best one yet.  So, let me post it here, so that I remember.

February 25, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

 

 

Mark 8:  31-38

 

 

When I read today’s Gospel, I’m shocked at the way that both Peter and Jesus respond.  Listen again:  “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”  That verb:  rebuke.  Who does Peter think he is, rebuking Jesus?  Of course, this isn’t the first time that Peter has tried to be the boss.  But Jesus’s response shocks me too.

 

Jesus says, “"Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."  Wow!  Just wow!  Peter would be an infuriating disciple at times, to be sure.  But to call him Satan?  Is Jesus saying that Peter is evil?  And if so, on the level of Satan?  Really?

 

It’s even stranger if you look at the whole chapter. In Mark 8: 29 (two verses before today’s reading), Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah.  In fact, in the Gospel of Mark, Peter is the first to declare that Jesus is the Messiah, well, the first if we’re not counting a demon or two along the way.  People have declared Jesus a healer, someone amazing whom they haven’t seen before--“Who is this man who ______ “ and we can fill in this blank any number of ways:  gets rid of demons, heals on the Sabbath, calms the sea and wind.  But no one puts the pieces together until Peter; Peter is the first to see the larger cosmic picture.

 

 

 

Peter may have recognized Jesus as the Messiah, but then he’s got a problem.  Here is Jesus who is not behaving the way the Messiah is supposed to behave.  Peter isn’t stupid.  He’s been well-trained, as all male Jews would have been, in the Law and the Prophets.  He’s heard the passage from Genesis that we heard today—he knows that God has made a covenant.  He’s part of a people who have been on the lookout for a savior for centuries. 

 

But Jesus isn’t behaving like the savior Peter expects.  Peter would have heard the Psalm that we heard today, that language of deliverance that is part of so many Psalms and so much of the ancient prophets.  Peter is expecting a Messiah, yes, and expecting deliverance, but he’s been hoping for something different than what Jesus offers.  I can’t know for sure, but I imagine that Peter has imagined what life will be like when the Romans leave.  That’s what most people long for when they live under an oppressive regime.  I imagine Peter and most of the people of Jesus’ time wanted a Messiah who was a revolutionary to restore the glory days of times past—and kick those Romans back to where they came from.

 

Let’s do a thought experiment to understand both Peter and what is unfolding, the events that lead us to Holy Week.  Let’s try to understand why Peter is so baffled and so angry in places.  If Jesus appeared today, what would he need to say to make us take him aside and rebuke him?  Or put another way:  what comes to your mind when I say say “The Salvation of the World.”

 

I imagine that your answer is very different than the answers that we’ve been studying in my seminary Systematic Theology class.  So, let’s personalize this a bit.  When I say the word “Salvation” or “Savior”—what comes to mind?

 

You might think about a cross.  You might think about Heaven, in terms of the place where we hope to go when we die.  You might think about some end time, when all of creation is finally the way God intended it to be.  You might think of various movies that have been made or maybe about Bible studies that have opened your eyes.

 

Now imagine that Jesus shows up and suddenly people around you start behaving differently.  The alcoholics stop drinking, and wonder of wonders, they don’t substitute one addiction for another—they claim the lives they’ve been denied.  All sorts of cancers—healed with just a word or two from Jesus.  People with terrible arthritis can walk with no pain.  Overweight people shed their excess pounds with no drugs, no surgery, no diets, and the joy that they’re feeling makes others want whatever they’ve experienced.

 

So far, so good, right?  But maybe you’re expecting more—you’ve seen the prelude, and you’re ready for Jesus to deliver.  Peter was expecting Jesus to deliver a world free of Romans and full of self-rule.  In our thought experiment, what would Jesus proclaim that would horrify us in the same way that Peter is shocked and revolted?  What would Jesus have to say to make us rebuke him?

Imagine that Jesus tells everyone that there is no Heaven when we die.  There’s no Hell either, but no Heaven.  All that stuff you learned about the cross and how Jesus suffered so that we get eternal life, which means a Heavenly reunion with all our loved ones—imagine that Jesus tells you that your spiritual elders lied to you.  You’ve been sold a bill of goods—Jesus says it over and over again, and not just to you and other members of the inner circle, but to everybody.

 

Imagine how upset you would be.  You might ask yourself what the point of it all has been.  It’s very fine for people to be cured of their physical ailments, but Heaven, Heaven is the ultimate goal, isn’t it?  ISN’T IT???? 

 

Continuing this thought experiment—we’ve imagined Jesus with us, and we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we’re seeing the Messiah.  And yet, he’s delivering a message that contradicts much of what you’ve always known about what salvation means.  What do you do?

 

Maybe, like Peter, you pull Jesus aside to speak privately.  Maybe you just want some answers to your questions.  Or maybe you have doubts, but you don’t want to admit you have doubts, and you hope that Jesus can explain.  Or maybe you want Jesus to fine tune the message and explain what happens after death.  Maybe you could be OK with an alternate picture, if only Jesus would explain.

 

Jesus is adamant that Peter is wrong, that so many preconceptions of what salvation looks like and what a savior should look like are wrong.  We may feel superior to Peter, but that’s because we know how Peter’s part of the story ends.  We know about salvation, don’t we?  Of course, Peter thought he did too—until Jesus came and changed everything he thought he knew.

 

Peter wants his homeland back.  We want Heaven.  Imagine Jesus telling us that Heaven is already here.  Imagine Jesus pointing to our fish fry that we had on Friday night and saying, “It’s here.  The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  Your loved ones, living and dead, are right here when you serve fried fish and the coleslaw made from Fiona’s mother’s recipe and every single one of us brought out favorite dessert, enough to share.  What more do you need?”

 

Like Peter, we might want to pull Jesus aside and say, “That vision of salvation is not going to win you many disciples.”  And Jesus might point to a weary world and paint us a vision of more service, not less:  a world where children are cared for perhaps by adults who are missing their grandchildren who live in other towns, a world where people gather for tea and cookies and help with homework or English language classes, a world where people teach each other to play musical instruments instead of only going to concerts,   . . . on and on I could go.

 

One Bible scholar says that this passage tells us that the true cost of discipleship is relinquishing our preconceptions of what a Messiah should say and do.  Again and again, Jesus tells us that salvation looks like love, and that love looks like service, and that service to each other looks like Heaven to our souls.  Peter didn’t understand that message at first.  Do we?

 

If so, we’ll find that our crosses are easier to bear, that in sacrificing our self-interests as we serve, we will build a richer life than we ever imagined.

 

I hope there is a Heaven when we die, that we’re all sitting at the Welcome Table, eating desserts from all the family recipes, seeing all our loved ones again.  And if we’ve lived our lives the way Jesus tells us we should, Heaven will just be icing on the cake, because we’ll have already tasted it here on earth.

 

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 3, 2024:

First Reading: Exodus 20:1-17


Psalm: Psalm 19


Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25


Gospel: John 2:13-22

Ah, the moneychangers in the temple! Many of us as children (and perhaps as adults) loved this tale. Finally, a non-wimpy Jesus. A Jesus who wasn't afraid to take on the religious establishment. As a sullen teenager, I looked around church and thought, boy, Jesus would have his work cut out for him here.

Don't get the wrong idea--I wasn't going to some church that was transgressing on any large scale, and not on any small scale, that I knew about. I just looked around and saw lots of hypocrisy. Look at all this gold, I would say. We could sell the offering plates and give the money to the poor. Why do we all buy church clothes? We could come in our jeans, and give the money that we would have spent on fancy clothes to the poor. Why don't we invite the poor to our potluck dinners?

In retrospect, I'm surprised my parents still talk to me. What a tiresome child/teen I must have been, so self-righteous, so sure of everyone's faults and shortcomings.

As I've gotten older, I've become interested in this story from the moneychangers point of view. We often assume that the moneychangers were scurrilous men, out to make easy money, and I'm sure that some of them were.

However, I suspect that the majority of them would have told you that they were making salvation possible.

Under the old covenant, people had to go to the temple to make sacrifices to wash their sins away (it's a simplified version of a complicated theology, but let me continue for a few sentences). People who farmed had animals for sacrifice. Those who didn't, or those who came from far away, had to buy their sacrifice on site. And they needed help from the moneychangers and the animal sellers.

These people didn't know that Jesus had come to make a new covenant possible. They got up, went about their personal business, went to work, took care of their families--all the stuff that you and I do. They weren't focused on watching for the presence of God. They didn't know that they had been called to make way for a new Kingdom. They didn't know that the new Kingdom was breaking through, even as they showed up at their day jobs.

We might take a look at our own modern lives and institutions. In what ways do we think we're participating in God's law/kingdom/plan? Are we doing the best we can?

We might also take a look at our own modern institutions, especially religious ones. Where are we participating in God's plan? If Jesus showed up, what would he see as problematic? And how would we respond, if he pointed out something that needed some Spring cleaning, and it turned out that it was something we really cherished or thought that we were doing well?

An Old-Fashioned Friday Fish Fry at Faith Lutheran

Last night we went to an old-fashioned fish fry, the kind that a church does when it's a Friday in Lent.  We're not Catholic, but at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, we do have members who grew up in other parts of the country, so they have fond memories of the fish fries done by their local churches every Friday in Lent.

In fact, in our first meeting, we were on a Zoom call.  I was in D.C., the Synod rep was in Atlanta, and the church was in the fellowship hall, getting ready for one of the fish fries.  I was impressed then, and I remain impressed after participating last night.

We headed out about 2:15, which meant we got there early enough to do a bit of helping with the last of the set up.  

I helped put pieces of cake in plastic clamshell containers, and my spouse got the fish fry area ready.  And then we hit the ground running.

I was one of the servers on the line.  When we started, I couldn't imagine we'd serve all the food, but we ran out of rolls and green beans, which after a quick run to the store, we had more to offer.  The same was not true of the macaroni and cheese.  We had enough for most people, but the church people who waited until the end didn't have any.  We had plenty of fish, both fried and baked, and a wide variety of desserts.

The fish fry started at 5, and the biggest crowds came at 5:15, and then again at 5:30 and periodically after that.  We didn't run out of seats, and everyone was seated in the fellowship hall, which isn't a huge space.

It was great to sit at a table at the end and eat with the team that pulled it all together and did the bulk of the work.  There was no political discussion, no theological discussion--we mainly talked recipes, since all of the food was prepared from scratch, not by the chemists at Costco.

It was a fun event, and seemed to pull from many parts of the community.  The church has 3 more fish fries scheduled, and I'd be willing to go to them all.  

Infographics and How We Learn

Today I started a file to store the infographics I've been creating for my Foundations of Worship class.  I've had 3 assignments now.  They're not exactly sketches, although I don't have qualms about putting them in that file.  But it seems better to give them their own file, now that I have three of them.

I've created three of them:  a lectionary season wheel, an infographic that explains how we came to worship on Sundays (the first Christians were Jews, after all, who likely added a communion-like observance to the end of Shabbat observance), and an infographic that explains baptism.

It's an interesting assignment, both from an artistic angle and a teaching/learning angle.  Let me be clear that we're not being graded on our artistic skill, which is good.  I've been happy with what I've produced, although it's not always matched what I had in mind.  The lectionary wheel was closest to what I had in mind when I started:

For the infographic on Sunday worship, I didn't even have much in mind for the graphic part of the assignment.  I added some sunrise/sunset colors and a drawing to suggest Shabbat and called it done, even though it's more info than graphic:

I'm not going to include the baptism infographic since it hasn't been graded, and I don't want to risk that the antiplagiarism software would flag it if I post it here before my professor grades it.

From a teaching/learning perspective, it's been interesting.  For the most part, we're condensing what we've read into key points, so it lets our professor see if we understand the reading.  Even if someone had absolutely no sketching or doodling skills, one could do this assignment, either by using fewer illustrations or by collaging.  And of course, there's now a whole world of computer generated stuff that one could create or find, if one had computing skills.

Could I use the idea of an infographic in my English classes that I teach?  It's obvious how I could use infographics in Literature classes.  But could I use them in a Composition class?  Let me ponder this.

Baptism Infographic without the Info

I am working on an infographic on baptism for my Foundations of Worship class.  I'm not going to post it until it's graded--I don't want antiplagiarism software to find a blog post and think that I'm cheating.

But what I really want to use for an infographic is this picture:

Yep, that's me, with the first baby I ever baptized.  It was such a joyful experience.  

Of course, I can't use it for my school work.  There's really no information about baptism with this picture.  But it brings a smile to my face every time I see it.  I should get a frame for it.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, February 25, 2024:


First Reading: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm: Psalm 22:22-30 (Psalm 22:23-31 NRSV)

Second Reading: Romans 4:13-25

Gospel: Mark 8:31-38


In Sunday's Gospel, Jesus gives us fairly stark terms about what it means to be a Christian, and it's worth thinking about, in our world where Christianity has become so distorted and used to justify so many questionable activities.

Over the last 50 or so years of the 20th century, many people came to see Christianity as just one more way to self-enlightenment or self-improvement. Many people combined Christian practices with Eastern practices, and most of them showed that they had precious little knowledge of either.

Or worse, people seemed to see Christianity as a path to riches. We see this in countless stories of pastors who took money from parishioners and, instead of building housing for homeless people, built mansions for themselves. We see this in the megachurch which is held up as an optimum model, the yardstick by which we smaller churches are measured and come up lacking. The bestseller lists are full of books which promise a Christian way to self-fulfillment or riches, while books of sturdy theology will never be known by most readers.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of a multitude of theologians who warns us against this kind of thinking, of what Christianity can do for us. He calls it cheap grace, this salvation that doesn't require us to change our comfortable lives (or worse, tells us to expect more comfort). He says, "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock" (A Testament to Freedom 308).

Jesus reminds us again and again that Christians are to strive NOT to put themselves at the center of their lives. Taking our Christian lives seriously is sure to put us on a collision course with the larger world. Christ warns us that we may even lose our lives. I suspect that he means this on several different levels, yet it is worth reminding ourselves of how many martyrs there have been, even in the late-twentieth century, people who were murdered because they dared to take Christianity seriously and called on corrupt governments to change their practices or went to places where the rest of us are afraid to go to help the poor of the world.

If we don't put ourselves at the center of our lives (and what a countercultural idea that is!), then who should be there? Many of us deny ourselves for the good of our children, for our charity work, for our bosses. Yet that's not the right answer either.

God requires that we put God at the center of our lives. Frankly, many of us are much better at putting our children first or our students or our friends--but God? Many of us are mystified at how we even begin to do that.

A good place to start is with prayer. You don't need a formal time to pray--just check in throughout the day. Go back to the practices that your parents probably tried to instill in you: say grace before meals, say your bedtime prayers, think about who could use God's assistance, and use your prayer time to remind God of those people. If you feel awkward, go back to old standards, like saying the Lord's Prayer or reading a Psalm.

Make God a daily and a weekly priority: go to church services. Lent gives you the opportunity to experience different kinds of services. Take advantage of these.

Once God is at the center of your life, then you are more well-equipped to care for the world. We are not emotionally equipped to deal with the cares of the world, especially now that we have 24 hour reporting on every catastrophe that happens. But with God at our core, we can cope.

Creating First Communion Curriculum

Yesterday was the last day of the 3 week First Communion class that I created.  I think that it went well; next week, we will celebrate the first communion of 3-4 children.

When I first started as the Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, I noticed that one child wasn't taking part in communion, but other children of all ages were.  I asked his mom if there was a reason, and she said she wanted him to have first communion instruction before participating fully.  I could respect that, but I wasn't sure that it should be me.  Still, I started thinking about how we would do that.

I assumed that there are resources out there for people like me who are leading such a class for the first time.  As much as I can tell, there are not.  There are lots of books explaining communion on a level that small children can understand, but there isn't any curriculum that I've been able to find.  And more important, I haven't been able to find any sort of teacher's guide.  I wanted something that said:  On day one, do this, discuss this, and here are some Bible passages.  On day two, do this, discuss this, and here are some Bible passages.

I am part of a Facebook group of ELCA clergy, and a few months ago, they had a thread that talked about getting children ready for first communion.  The people who contributed to the thread had some great ideas, so I cut and pasted them into a document.  I started thinking about how I'd adapt them to my context.  And thus, I came up with an idea for a shorter kind of program, just a few weeks, to help children understand what we're doing.

I've been taking notes about what I said and did, and I'll polish it, and give it to my contact at the Synod, which will be part of my internship.  My internship director will post it to several website resources.  Even if it's not useful to any other person, it will be useful to me, should I need to remember what I did and why.

I do realize that many churches have moved away from this kind of instruction.  It makes me wonder about how we do Confirmation in the larger church--and how very small churches like Faith Lutheran can do Confirmation well.  I know that there's a lot more in the way of curriculum out there--or is there?  I used to think that we had lots of First Communion resources.

I think parents have a hunger for better instruction, and they should be able to expect the leaders of their church to do that.  I also realize that church leaders are expected to do lots and lots, especially if it's a small church with no real staff.  I am in a weird position, a clearly temporary position where many of the activities I'd be doing as a full-time, permanent person are not expected of me.  Creating curriculum makes me happy, and I'm glad to have time to do it.

Ash Wednesday/Valentine's Day Sermon

I really liked my Wednesday sermon for Ash Wednesday.  I won't always be able to preach this way--Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day will be on the same day only one more time during my lifetime (2029), so let me post it here:

Here we are at a strange confluence of holidays—not Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday—that confluence goes back at least as far as medieval times, when many Christians, if they were wealthy enough to afford the items in the first place, gave up sugar and meat and fat and alcohol for Lent. So, as Ash Wednesday approached, they had to get all those items out of the house--thus, a festive party opportunity. And now, we continue that tradition with our Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers and Mardi Gras festivities.

No, I’m talking about this day when we get to celebrate both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. For some people, this mix of love and mortality might be unwelcome. But let’s sit with it a bit. We will only have Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day one more time this century, in 2029.

When I was young, I hated Ash Wednesday, which seemed to be a holiday designed to tell us that we’re worthless sinners. And to be honest, I also hated Valentine’s Day, a holiday designed to remind schoolchildren how much some are loved and others aren’t. I have fond memories of making Valentine’s mailboxes out of shoeboxes. We had classroom parties with cupcakes brought in by moms (not dads, in those days, always moms). It was a different time, and no one made sure that everyone got a Valentine’s Day card, the way that some schools do now. You might get a bundle, or you might get none, for those of us who went to elementary school in the early 70’s.

To be fair, I was in the middle range. I had no reason to hate the holiday. But it was always that fear that no one would give me a Valentine, that fear that I would have an empty box at the end of the day.

Ash Wednesday provokes a similar fear in me, with its message of mortality. Worse, it’s a fear that I know is a reasonable one. Like so many of us, I am afraid that I will be the little old lady who outlives her friends and family. Sure, I have younger friends, in addition to the ones my age and older, but I’m no dummy. I’ve already outlived some of my younger colleagues and family members. We are dust, and every day that goes by means that we are closer to returning to dust.

Our texts tonight remind us of all the ways that humans try to forget that we’re made of dust. Maybe we’ve tried to stay on the right side of God with our religious practices, praying and fasting. The words of Jesus remind us to enter into these practices with the correct spirit. We can do everything that is helps us build Christian community and still find ourselves criticized and worse. The words of Paul in Corinthians remind us that God sees what we are doing and God blesses us, even if the larger world does not.

But frankly, that’s cold comfort when I think of ending up alone with everything I love in ashes. In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus acknowledges that we live in a world where thieves can steal and moths and rust destroy. He doesn’t try to explain God’s wisdom in creating this world. He doesn’t try to convince us that we should look on the bright side of our Ash Wednesday existence. He does remind us that our hearts should be elsewhere, that we should be focused on a treasure that’s not going to leave us.

Just as Saint Valentine is credited with delivering messages between lovers, Jesus delivers a message from God. Jesus comes to tell us how profoundly we are loved by God. I imagine some of his first century audience as similar to a fourth grade child who never received a Valentine, never got an invitation to a birthday party, never felt included. We see the powerful impact of this message, as Jesus cures people of all that brings them woe and keeps them excluded. Jesus declares God’s love for all of creation, from the least to the ones that already have plenty of love. And Jesus goes many steps further by showing us how to manifest more of that love in our human lives—by caring for each other, so that we don’t have to fear being the one who has outlived all of our family and friends and connections. What an amazing Valentine Jesus delivers to our cardboard mailboxes!

It's a Valentine message that I don’t always appreciate, that in God’s design, there’s room for me and there’s room for the cancer cell. It’s a Valentine message that I struggle to emulate, this love for all of creation. Our Lenten disciplines and enrichments can help us be open to receiving this love, even if we don’t understand it fully—and our Lenten disciplines can embolden us to extend that love to others.

Our knowledge of our mortality should inspire us to form more connections, not fewer. Yes, everything we love will be lost, but God promises that a new life will emerge.

As you come forward to receive the ash, let yourself reflect on all that it means. Traditionally the ashes come from the burning of last year’s Palm Sunday fronds. In the same way, the universe recycles all—we are dust, yes, but it’s dust made of decomposing galaxies and last year’s festivals and everyone who ever walked before us. We don’t have limitless amounts of time in this human form we inhabit now, but God reaches out to us across space and time, in the words of the prophets and psalmists, in the incarnation of Jesus, in the creation that God is always making and remaking.

Yes, we are dust, and to dust we shall return. But Ash Wednesday doesn’t give us the complete picture. Ash Wednesday points us to Easter, God’s ultimate Valentine message of love where God shows us that even though earthly powers and principalities join together to defeat the ultimate message of Love that Jesus brings, those powers and principalities will not succeed. Easter gives us the promise of resurrection. Everything we love will turn to dust, but dust is not the final incarnation. From that dust will come something new, something shining, something celestial in its beauty.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, February 18, 2024:

First Reading: Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-9 (Psalm 25:1-10 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:18-22

Gospel: Mark 1:9-15

We begin Lent back in the country of baptism. Once again, we hear the story of the baptism of Christ. Didn't we just cover this material a few weeks ago?  Indeed we did.  What a versatile Gospel text, suitable for both the early days of the Epiphany season and the early days of Lent.  There's a lesson here for us.

In today’s Gospel, we see Christ going through the stages of the life of a Christian, in a sort of fast-forward filmstrip: baptism, wilderness/desert time of desolation and doubt, temptation, death of mentors, carrying on with life’s work anyway. Why should we, thousands of years later, think that life will be any different for us?

Most Lutherans were baptized as babies.  Like Jesus, we too are welcomed into a larger context before we've done anything.  We can't prove ourselves; we can't even feed ourselves.

But we don't get to stay in the land of grace and good feelings very long.  Even Jesus faces a wilderness time, the kind of time that those of us who have been alive any amount of time at all will remember.  We feel the presence of Satan, of everything that could possibly go wrong going even more deeply wrong.  Surrounded by wild beasts, we despair.  But if we can come out of the other side of a wilderness time, we'll find ourselves in the company of angels, who minister to us in our time of need.  Maybe those angels are members of our family.  Maybe they're our church community.  Maybe it's something more clinical, a doctor or a therapist.  Or maybe, in the dark night of our souls, Divine beings care for us.

But here, too, the Gospel offers both solace and warning.  We may find ourselves put to death by the ruling authorities, the way that John and Jesus were.  Or maybe it's a more metaphorical death--the larger culture has many ways of killing us, our physical bodies and our souls.

We can't say we haven't been warned, just like Jesus must have known the forces that he would put into motion.  Still, the world has need of us, and God has need of us, to do the work of ministering to the world.  The Gospel closes with Jesus moving forward.

There is an urgency to this Gospel, a pace that seems appropriate to these days just after Ash Wednesday has reminded us that we're not here for very long.  We have lingered too long in the land of self-loathing, in the dark night of the soul with Satan's voice hissing in our ears, in the wilderness where beasts want to rip us apart.  Our Lenten journey is at hand.  It is time to do the work of discerning what is truly important.

Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day

 It is both Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day, a confluence of holidays that will only happen again once this century in 2029.  Observant folks may remember that it happened in 2018, and people like me, who do some Google searching (which is not nearly as effective as it once was) will discover that it happened in 1923, 1934, and 1945.

I need to write a sermon for tonight's worship service at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, and get the Communion bread made.  I am hoping that this blogging helps to order my thoughts.  Part of the problem with an Ash Wednesday sermon is that there are so many fruitful directions.  But since there aren't many Ash Wednesdays that are celebrated on Valentine's Day, maybe I'll use this juxtaposition.

I went to my YouTube channel and was surprised in a delighted kind of way to remember how many video sermons I made during the pandemic.  Here's a video sermon that I created for Ash Wednesday 2021--it holds up well.

I am intrigued by how many of my Ash Wednesday meditations from past years didn't reference the Bible texts at all.  But in some ways, that makes sense.  I wasn't preparing a sermon after all.  But for tonight, let me think about all of the texts.  We are using the passage from Joel, not Isaiah--drat.  I love verse 12  from Isaiah 58:  "Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in."

I am also thinking about my sermon and about how few of us need reminders of our mortality.  Most of the members that will hear my sermon tonight are over 50 years old; sadly, these days, death is not unfamiliar to us.  My seminary professors might remind me to ask myself as I'm writing:  where is the good news in this?

The good news is the animating breath of God.  We are dust, yes, galactic ash, the remains of stars and galaxies.  But it is the breath of God that transforms.  And that breath of God is love itself.

I am writing this blog post as a fire burns in the fireplace, as the bread for tonight's communion is in the oven set to proofing temperature.  The first pinks of sunrise are making their way across the mountain range that I can see through the mostly leafless trees.  Yesterday I saw a field of daffodils at the North Carolina welcome center as I drove home from teaching at Spartanburg Methodist College.  Part of me loved seeing this eruption of daffodils, but part of me thought, no, no, it's too soon.

That imagery can work for Ash Wednesday too.  Let me see what I come up with.

The Day before Ash Wednesday

Happy Shrove Tuesday!  Happy Mardi Gras!  Last week, when I mentioned to my Tuesday/Thursday classes that we'd be meeting on Mardi Gras, I got blank looks.  I still don't know whether they were blank looks because my students haven't ever heard of Mardi Gras or because they see me as an old lady who can't possibly understand the joys of cheap, plastic beads and buckets of alcoholic drinks.

I do realize that both may be true.

I usually don't have much in the way of plans for the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.  But tonight, my local Lutheran church is having a pancake supper to raise funds to send the youth to the big Gathering later this year.  And we are planning to go.

I say my local Lutheran church, which means the one around the corner from my Lutheridge house, the one with the quilt group that has become dear to my heart.  I rarely worship there anymore, because I go to my other church, Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, where we'll celebrate Ash Wednesday together; they, too, are having a pancake supper tonight.  And I'm still a member of my South Florida church, Trinity Lutheran in Pembroke Pines; they had beignets this past Sunday.

For my three classes today, I'll present three different love poems and have them write a bit.  I decided to go with love poems and not Ash Wednesday poems, and I decided to stay away from traditional love poetry.  Here's what we'll be doing, if you want to read along:

The poem that's closest to a traditional love poem is Leah Furnas' "The Longley-Weds Know."  The one with the biggest Ash Wednesday vibe is Maggie Smith's "Good Bones"--it's a hopeful Ash Wednesday vibe, but an Ash Wednesday vibe nonetheless.  And the poem that is the one that makes me feel a spark of hope in an Ash Wednesday kind of way is Naomi Shihab Nye's "Gate A-4."

I wasn't able to find much poetry with an outright Ash Wednesday theme, apart from T. S. Eliot, whom I'm not going to tackle with first year students.  And I thought about my own--I've got a series of Ash Wednesday poems, but I don't feel like including them.  I've posted some of them here in the past.  Maybe tomorrow I'll unveil a new one.  Maybe today, I'll write a new one.

My Bible Study for Lent 2024

My internship project was putting together a Bible study for Lent for the Southeastern Synod, my internship site.  I'm really happy with it.  It gives discussion questions, quotes from scholars, and ideas for ways to engage with the Sunday lectionary texts through creative projects using materials on hand and/or using activities from different spiritual disciplines.  I also inserted some photos to make it easier to see where we're moving to a new week.

It's free and available for everyone to use;  go here where it's on the website if you scroll down, or go here to access it directly.

I enjoyed creating all of it, but going through photos to add. I used my own photos because I know I have the rights to them.  I liked thinking about the surrounding material and choosing photos to match.  For example, one of the spiritual disciplines to try is walking a labyrinth.  I chose this photo:

It was also a delight to go back and use the pictures to reflect on the wonderful experiences I've had.  Even though I haven't had a once in a lifetime trip, like going to Iona or the Holy Land, I've taken advantage of a lot of opportunities that came my way.

Sketching for Schoolwork

I am really enjoying my Foundations of Preaching class.  I'm impressed with the wide range of activities that we do to show that we've learned the material.  

I'm also surprised by which parts take the most time.  A few weeks ago, we had to make a PowerPoint to teach others about the worship traditions that formed us.  Not only did that project take less time than I had budgeted (hurrah!), but it also made my inner artist happy, although my inner tech person was exasperated with the deficiency of the software (and unwilling to learn a new system like Canva in short order).

The project for last week seemed like it would be solidly in my skill set:

A creative activity! Imagine you are trying to explain Christian concepts of time for a child/youth.

 

1) Draw your own lectionary wheel, with informative notes on each season. 

 

2) Draw an infographic on the Christian concept of time, including how "Sunday" was established as a tradition.

 

3) Upload drawings as your activity submission.

 

*You will not be graded on your artistic talent. ;) 

I spent so much time on this one.  Part of it was my fault; I didn't sketch with a pencil, so once I made a mistake, I had to start over.  It was hard for me to figure out how to divide the lectionary wheel, since some seasons like the time after Easter and the time after Epiphany vary widely from year to year.  And I wasn't sure what an infographic should include, the proportion of pictures to words.

I'm not going to post my work here, not until it gets graded.  I would hate for the plagiarism detection software to flag the work that I turned in, because the software found it here.  Plus, it speaks to another issue I had:  the photo isn't as good as the work itself.  I'm not sure that here you would be able to see it clearly.

Now it's off to Faith Lutheran, where in addition to preaching, I am leading a several week session to get children ready for First Communion.  It's an interesting endeavor, and I'm really enjoying it.

Creation Theories

Yesterday, I posted this picture, with this Facebook post:  "One of these things does more to affirm my belief in a benevolent God than the others (the cup contains coffee from a pod, and the graham crackers contain chocolate frosting). Discuss."

Yesterday was a day of modest revelations.  I read God in Creation while waiting for students to come for their individual conferences.  Moltmann is the Systematics theologian around whom we're structuring our two semesters of Systematic Theology.  So far, my reaction has been a shrug, but I really liked yesterday's reading.

As I was getting ready to go to school, I wished I had a pen with purple ink and a finer tip.  And I remembered the Copic multiliner pens I bought a few years ago.  They worked perfectly, for both writing on student papers in a conference and for underlining as I read.  I bought a variety of colors, and I should really use them before they dry up.  And now I have some ideas about how to do that--they aren't useful for sketching, the way I thought they would be.

But no, the real revelation was the graham cracker and chocolate frosting concoction.  When I got to campus, the glass walled conference room was being set up for the weekly Academic Affairs meeting.  As I walked back and forth to the only working printer, I kept my eyes on the graham cracker treats.  Were they sandwiching peanut butter or chocolate or Nutella?

I have noticed that the treats from the weekly meeting are often set out in the break room after the meeting, and sure enough, later in the morning, there they were.  The break room has a Keurig and pods, so I helped myself.  What a delicious treat.

I told the admin assistant how much I had enjoyed them, and lo and behold, the Vice President for Academic Affairs had made them; his mother used to make them when he was a kid.  I asked if she thought it was just frosting from a can, and she said that she thought it was from scratch:  "He cooks a lot--he even makes his own pasta!"  I thought it tasted better than canned frosting.

In fact, it tasted so good that I had three of them.  I was relieved to see that they were all gone when I came back from class.  Here's a close up of one of them:

I finished the day by going to class by way of Zoom, a good Systematic Theology class; I am intrigued by what some of my classmates assert about Adam and Eve and that garden.  Once again, I think about what a strange seminarian I am, with my poet's sensibility, my academic training/Ph.D. in literary criticism, my decades of rebellious rejection of much of traditional Christianity.  

As we talked about Adam and Eve and other creation myths (familiar to me, but not to everyone) from both that time period and much, much earlier, I started this sketch:

Why did I give Eve wings?  I didn't start with that intention.  But Eve's upper back and left shoulder had a feathery look, and I thought it worked in some ways--plus, I was covering a mistake (there's a life lesson in here somewhere).  In some ways, I think I've drawn Eve that looks more like a muppet than a human.  I'm OK with that too.

So, yes, a good day, a day that left me tired, but in a good way.

Circuit Riders for the Twenty-first Century

Friday night, we had a pastor friend over for cheese and wine and/or hot apple cider.  She owns the cabin beside us, but it's a summer cabin, with no heat, so she was staying up the hill at camp.  We talked about the challenges facing the church.  And yet, because of the challenges, some churches are thinking about exciting options.

One church has created, with the approval of their bishop, a position called a preaching fellow.  Ordained pastors come to preach for 4-12 weeks at a time.  What a cool idea.  The church doesn't have to support a pastor in all the other ways (like insurance and retirement) that can be so unaffordable, and it gets to hear from a wide variety of preachers throughout the year.

Of course, there are other logistics:  where will the pastor stay, for example.  If a church member has room, that could be a possibility.  But if it's a guest bedroom and not a cottage, that could be an issue on either side.  Four to twelve weeks is a long time to have a guest.

Some part of me thinks, wait, didn't the church do this in the past?  Didn't we call these people circuit riders?  Yes, and I wonder why we don't have some version of that today.  I can't be the only one who finds it appealing.

I arealize that there may be few pastors who are in a position to leave their other responsibilities for 4-12 weeks.  But then I thought, what if the larger Church creates an even wider variety of career paths than already exist?  If someone loves to travel and gets energized meeting new people and having new experiences, that person could be a traveling preacher, going places where needed, getting real training to be that kind of preacher--instead of the "You are retired, so you can be an interim" kind of assignment we see now.

I write about new possibilities while feeling sorrow:  we're not doing a great job supporting alternate career paths now.  Woe to the person who feels called to campus ministry or outdoor ministry.  I know that campuses all over the state of Florida are having to cut back on student support because of the state's inane anti-diversity laws.  Wouldn't it be great if the Church was ready with alternate support?  Sadly, I don't see that happening--not yet.   

Holy Spirit, I'm willing to be surprised and trying to stay open!

For the Anonymous ones, the Simon Peter's Mother-in-Laws

On Sunday, I preached a sermon about Simon Peter's mother-in-law, healed from a fever, rising from her sickbed to serve.  Instead of the kind of feminist outrage I would have channeled in my younger years, I decided to talk about Simon Peter's mother-in-law as one of the first to understand the appropriate response to the miracle of new/healed life that Jesus offers:  to serve others.

Later in the Gospel text for Sunday (Mark 1: 29-39), Simon Peter and his companions hunt for Jesus, who has retreated to pray.  Note that verb:  hunt.  It's much more hostile in the original language than how we might interpret it:  the disciples are concerned because Jesus didn't leave a note about where he has gone.  No, it's not that at all.  One Bible scholar posited that it shows that Simon Peter wants to control Jesus, and since we see this behavior throughout the Gospels, I'm inclined to believe it.

We have two people bookending the Gospel text, and I pointed out that the Church has prioritized Simon Peter, who goes on to fame as one of the church fathers.  But what's unspoken is the people who did the work along the way, people who might have been women:  by hosting the travelers, by paying for the ministry, by opening their homes for church meetings, by staying behind and caring for the community that the apostles formed. Perhaps Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is the first one of these.

I didn't come up with a satisfactory conclusion until Sunday morning.  I had thought about going with a reminder that we are called to serve.  But then, I thought about all the ways that the people of Faith Lutheran already serve and how they might feel by me exhorting them to serve.  So I concluded this way, a way that felt immensely better:

This lectionary text comes to us in a time when many of us are creating annual reports for places where we work or worship. It’s a time when many of us are assembling documents to pay our taxes. It’s a time of Super Bowls, of remembering that human societies celebrate the rich, the famous, the big in number, the powerful. Along comes this text to remind us that God does not raise us from our sick beds so that we can go out and earn more money. Jesus does not cast out and silence the noisy demons so that we can tell ourselves how worthless we are.

I spent last week reading Faith Lutheran’s annual report, and I continue to be impressed with how much this worship community does. I know that in the metrics of both the ELCA and the larger Church world, we are a very small congregation. I know that there are Simon Peters who would wish for bigger and better things. But I when I look out, I see Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, the people who serve each other and serve the larger community. Like Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, we may feel like we are overlooked and even nameless. But rest assured, God’s mission is being fulfilled here, right here, in this place in the mountains of Tennessee. Keep up the good work—may your light continue to shine as you serve.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, February 11, 2024:

First Reading: 2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm: Psalm 50:1-6

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Gospel: Mark 9:2-9


I often approach Transfiguration Sunday by thinking about ways to transfigure myself. In just a few days, we enter the season of Lent, that season of ash and penitence. I often discover that people are Christian when they announce what they're giving up for Lent; how sad that I can't tell in any other way that they're Christian.

Many of us approach Lent as a time to recalibrate in deeper ways. Many churches add additional study or worship opportunities during Lent. Many individuals adopt a Lenten discipline that asks us to add a spiritual practice to our lives that we haven't tried before.

Some of us are too tired to even come up with a transfiguring plan. Maybe we envy the Peters of the world, with their shaggy enthusiasm. Maybe we wish that Jesus would call us the Rock upon which he will build his church, even as Christ has to correct Peter again and again.

Maybe we are feeling like sand, the former rock of faith abraded away by the difficulties of life. We know that a house built on sand will wash away with a big storm or with the daily movement of the waves.

But take heart: concrete mixed with sand will be stronger. And where do those of us who are sand find concrete? Often we don't even have to look. Often our family and friends are in their concrete phase when we're in our sand phase. We strengthen each other, even when we're unaware that we're doing it. But how much stronger we could be if we were more intentional.

If we're lucky, we've found larger networks that strengthen us too. Maybe it's a church full of people who can be concrete when we're sand. Maybe our colleagues at work help us to be our best selves.

Jesus knew the value of community. He knew the human tendency to rush towards transfiguration. We yearn to be different, but so often, we shun the hard work involved. We might embrace transformation before we stop to consider the cost. But if we are surrounded by community, the work transforms into something more festive. If we stay on top of the mountain after the light fades, we may come to feel stranded.

Jesus reminds us again and again that the true work comes not from telling people what we’ve seen, but by letting what we’ve seen change the way that we live. Our true calling is not to be carnival barker, but to get on with the work of repair and building of the communities in which we find ourselves.

We can be the rock, the concrete, the sand. Christ's vision is big enough to transfigure us all.

The Feast Days of Anna and of Simeon

Today we celebrate the lives of Simeon and Anna. Yesterday was the feast day that celebrates the presentation of Jesus at the temple 40 days after his birth. Simeon was the priest at the temple that day. God had promised Simeon that he would not die without seeing the Messiah, and at the end of Simeon's life, God fulfills the promise.

When he held Jesus, he said the words that many of us still use as part of our liturgies: "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel."

On this day, we also celebrate Anna the Prophetess, who was also there for the presentation. Like Simeon, she's at the end of her life, and she's spent much of her life in the temple, doing the support work that keeps religious work running smoothly. It's interesting that I assume she did the support work--the text says she spent her days worshiping God and fasting and praying. My brain filled in the rest: that she did the sweeping and the care of the candles/lamps and the feeding of everyone.

We have the song of Simeon; I wonder if Anna sang a song? I wonder what it would be?

I am fairly new to this pair of feast days; in fact, I only realized a few years ago that Anna and Simeon share the same feast day. I love feast days that celebrate humans at the end of life, humans who haven't done anything particularly remarkable--although staying faithful for a lifetime is fairly remarkable.

The churches of my childhood didn't spend much time on the old people in any story. The lectionary readings focus on Jesus and the disciples, who are often presented as men in the youthful prime of their lives.

I'm forever grateful to feminist scholars who have returned to these texts and given them a new spin as they imagined what would happen if we moved women to the center of the narratives--or, if not the center, at least out of the marginal shadows.

I feel a need to do something similar with the stories of the old folks. Elizabeth, Simeon, and Anna are great places to start.

Today, let us remember that God makes us a similar promise to the one that Simeon receives. We need but open our eyes to see the presence of the Divine. And if we're faithful to the best of our abilities, we may find out we've been holding the Divine in our hands all along.

Festivals Halfway through Winter

We are at the halfway point of winter--halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Today is Candlemas, where Christians celebrate the presentation of Jesus at the Temple (also known as the Feast Day of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple), and pagans long ago celebrated the goddess Brigid (and the feast day of St. Brigid was yesterday), and some Wiccans today will be celebrating at Imbolc, or a variation of any number of pagan holidays. It's also Groundhog's Day. It's one of those times when we can almost perceive the shifting of the seasons. It's not spring yet, but it will be soon.

Candlemas is the feast day that speaks to me. Candlemas celebrates the presentation of Jesus at the temple. It's the last feast holiday that references Christmas. We could see it as the final festival of Christmas, even though most of us have had the decorations packed away since even before Epiphany.

This article by Eleanor Parker tells us about the long history of Candlemas, and she focuses on the medieval time period, where the Christmas celebrations extended throughout January:  "Short days and bad weather limited the work that could be done anyway, and the general gloom made festivity all the more welcome — much more cheerful than Dry January."

Even though electricity has made us feel we need to be just as productive in January as in July, the natural light moves in its own seasonal cycle.  I have always wished that Christmas came in late February, so that we had the lights and the festive decorations for consolation throughout all the darker months in the northern hemisphere.




Some churches and monasteries will bless the year's supply of candles.  In past times, according to this article by Diana Butler Bass, Christians would bring their candles to the church for blessing and then there would be a candle lit procession through town.  In a more agricultural age, it's a time of lambing, a time of getting ready for spring planting, a time where we might see snowdrops poking out through the snow/ground.

It's good to have these holidays that remind us of illumination; I'm a fan of the growth that can happen in the dark, too, but that's a different blog post.  We live in a time of despair, and the gloomy weather doesn't help us feel cheerful.  Being surrounded by the glow of candles can lift our spirits, and it's a cheap fix.

And it's also a reminder that God is at work in the world, even when we don't always see that happening, that spring is on the way if we can just hold on a bit longer.

A Poem for the Feast Day of Saint Brigid

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland.  She is one of the early Christians who stood at the intersection of Christianity, Druidism, and the other pagan religions of Ireland.  She is also one of those extraordinary women who did amazing things, despite the patriarchal culture in which she lived.

She founded founded some of the first Christian monasteries in Ireland, most famously the legendary one in Kildare.  She also founded a school of art that focuses on metal working and illumination.  The illustrated manuscript, the Book of Kildare, was created under her auspices.  Unfortunately, it's been lost since the Reformation, so we know it by its reputation only.

Monastic, administrator, artist--it's no wonder that her story calls to me from across the centuries.

I didn't really know much about Brigid until about 2011 or 2012, when I read several blog posts about her.  In 2013, I drove all the way to Mepkin Abbey on her feast day.  I thought about her life as I drove across cold landscapes.  I finally wrote a draft of the poem that appears below.

Years ago, I wrote this:  "I will try to imagine Saint Brigid through a more realistic lens.  I will write a poem where she tells me that she accomplished all sorts of things along the way, while all the time struggling to create her great illuminated work.  I will imagine something that she did that we know nothing of.  I will imagine that she will feel sad when she realizes that modern people don't even know of her great work, but instead of her institutions at Kildare and beyond.

I will think about a woman at midlife 1500 years from now, a woman who reads about my life.  What will amaze her?  How will she see the ways that I did, indeed, live an authentic life, even as I lost sight of that fact in the daily minutiae?  If she blogged about me, what would seem important enough to include?  How would she finish this sentence:  In the last half of her life, Berkey-Abbott accomplished ______________  ?"

I have yet to write about Brigid's lost work, but I did write the poem that imagines Brigid through a more realistic lens.  It was published in Adanna, and I'm happy to repost it here.  If you want additional background on Brigid, see this blog post.


The True Miracle of Saint Brigid


You know about the baskets
of butter, the buckets of beer,
the milk that flowed
to fill a lake.

You don’t know about the weeks
we prayed for the miracle
of multiplication but instead received
the discipline of division.

I managed the finances to keep us all fed.
By day, I rationed the food.
At night, I dreamed of a sculpture
manufactured of metal.

I didn’t have the metal
or the time, but in the minutes
had, I illuminated
any scrap of paper I could find.

Lost to the ashes:
The Book of Kildare, but also
my budget ledgers, flowers
and birds drawn around the numbers.