A Dinner with Camp Counselors, A Feast Day that Celebrates Possibility

Late yesterday afternoon, something happened that gave me renewed hope for the future.  No, not the return of guilty verdicts in Donald Trump's NYC hush money trial; I'm still processing that bit of information, which will leave me with a huge mix of emotions.

No, for renewed hope, I highly recommend having dinner with a group of college students who are about to spend their whole summer as camp counselors.  In some ways, it will be idyllic, spending a summer in nature, around campfires, singing and talking about God and the best ways to live life.  In many ways, it won't be idyllic.  They will live in rustic cabins and even more rustic platform tents.  They will eat foods like corndogs and other food that is beloved by 8 year olds, but less so by grown ups.

And they are so excited.

Many of them come to this summer of camp counselor employment because they, themselves, were campers.  That's a great testimony to the power of camp.  Half of them have been camp counselors before.  

The group of people who live in the houses at Lutheridge and the camp counselors have dinner a few days before the first campers arrive on Sunday.  Many of us will live here will volunteer through the summer in a variety of ways.  But I don't expect the counselors to memorize our faces.  Similarly, it's a huge group, and I'm not going to recognize a non-counselor college student, should one appear during the summer.

No, the reason we do this is so that both sides can remember what a team effort camp is.  I like having a chance to talk to the next generation.  We had a great dinner conversation about musical theatre, about fairy tales, about feminism, about Shakespeare.  But even better, I got to hear about an even wider variety of interests that they all have.  One student is a double major in equestrian management and drama, for example.  It was interesting hearing about her typical day.

Today is the feast day of the Visitation, which adds an additional layer to my thoughts this morning.  This day celebrates both Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and their time together, both improbably pregnant, both facing the future that will take them in places they can't fully imagine.  And so, they spend time together, in solitude, yet together.

I love this view of community, the one offered by Mary and Elizabeth, the one offered by our dinner last night.  Some of us are older, but we are not yet finished with our glorious lives.  Some of us have the enthusiasm of those just starting a journey.  Some of us have prior experience, which may or may not equip us for what is to come.

But together, we can make a better world for the generations that are coming behind us, both the generations that we can meet, and those yet to be born.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, June 2, 2024:

First reading and Psalm:

1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

Alternate first reading and Psalm:

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Psalm 81:1-10

Second reading:

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

Gospel:

Mark 2:23-3:6

This week's Gospel asks us to think about why we adopt the religious rules and rituals that we do. We see the Pharisees, those old adversaries of Jesus, feeling and acting offended when Jesus ignores the laws of the Sabbath. We see Jesus in what seems to be a confrontational mode.

We might ask why Jesus had to take this approach. The man with the withered hand could have waited for healing for one more day. The disciples plucking grain to eat on the Sabbath seem to be doing it mindlessly. They could have found some other food.

We could ask similar questions of the Pharisees. Why do these rules have to be so rigid? It's important to remember that although we think of Pharisees as hypocrites largely because of their interactions with Jesus, this could not be further from the truth. They were very sincere and committed to what they believed, far more committed than most of their contemporaries.

And it's vitally important to remember that their motivations for keeping strict standards were very good. In The Secret Message of Jesus, Brian D. McLaren notes that the Pharisees hoped that their own purity would prompt God to send the Messiah to liberate them, specifically to liberate them from Roman oppression. Therefore it's understandable that they would try to recruit others to this cause, and that they would grow frustrated with people who couldn't meet their own requirements--the actions of those people polluted the whole population, thus resulting in more alienation from God.

Before we get too snooty about those Pharisees, before we feel too superior to them, it's important to look at our own time. Anyone who has done any kind of church work probably recognizes the Pharisees in Mark's Gospel. Whether we're fighting over big issues or small, it's always been astounding to me to see the energy that some devote to a fight. And I'm sure there are people who would say the same thing about me.

Of course, it's not just in our churches. I've also described many of our workplaces, and the larger world of international relations. Some of us may recognize our family life. Some may recognize ourselves.

Let me stress it is important to recognize our own inner Pharisee. No one is blameless here. Let's return to the one of the questions the text asks us to consider: what are these religious rules and customs for?

We live in a time period where it may seem that the very moorings of our society have come undone. Like Pharisees, we, too, may fall in love with the idea that laws can save us and either restore past glory or propel us to the deliverance that has been promised.

Christ calls us to a different vision as he reminds us again and again that too rigid a love of the law is idolatry itself. Christ calls us to create a world of open borders and solid bridges, not one of walls and impenetrable defenses. Christ calls us out of our graves of fear and sorrow.

Metaphors for the Holy Trinity

Last year for Holy Trinity Sunday, I brought an extension cord, an electric tea kettle, and water for a demonstration for the children's sermon.  This year, we had something even better:  dry ice!

It wasn't my idea.  I've been afraid of dry ice since learning of its damaging qualities; my uncle was bullied by bigger kids holding him down and burning his stomach with a chunk of dry ice.  A Sunday School leader was much more bold than I, and she was up for a quest.  She arrived with dry ice in the cooler.

We had fun before church pouring water on the ice and moving our hands through the resulting steam.  The adults did discuss whether or not the youth would remember the larger lessons of the Triune God.  Who can say?

In some ways, the rest of the day was downhill.  It's hard to compete with dry ice.  I came prepared with a different metaphor:  braids of bread, the same dough with different add-ins (red hots, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips), same essence/substance but different experiences.

At one point, I thought about having bread braids as part of the adult sermon too.  I thought about having the congregation pull the strands apart while we talked about the different ways we perceive the Divine.  In the end, I decided it would be too messy, for both youth and adults.  I decided that those who wanted to could take a loaf home with them.

I ended up with a lot of bread, and based on what was left, everyone who really wanted a loaf was able to take one home.  

Will congregation members remember the bread or will it inspire deeper thoughts about the Trinity?  I think about the words of Jesus in the Gospel for the day, John 3:  8:  “8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Memorial Day 2024

Today is Memorial Day, and through the years, I've come to realize how many different things this holiday can mean to people.  I've met people who won't celebrate it because of its roots in memorializing the Civil War Union dead.  My dad was an Air Force officer in the Reserves until he retired, so Memorial Day was personal for him.  I don't think I know anyone who was killed while on active duty, but I do want to honor those who died.  Some people I've known seem to have no inkling that the holiday has anything to do with soldiers at all--for them, it's about getting a good deal on a holiday sale or opening up the vacation home or having a cook out.

I remember feeling desperate for Memorial Day, for a day off, but during my days of working as an administrator, I was always desperate for a day off, a day off that didn't require me to use up any of my paltry allotment of vacation time.  For the past several years, Memorial Day as a three day week-end was not top of my mind.

I also know that many people don't get to have time off.  All of our grocery stores are open today, for example.  When I taught in community colleges in South Carolina, we didn't have Memorial Day off.  Our nursing students needed every scrap of time in the summer, so that holiday had to be sacrificed so that we stayed in compliance.  Or maybe it was because of the Civil War; I got different explanations. In past years, I've used the day off to catch up on grading for my online classes.  This year, my summer classes don't start for a month, so I'm not teaching at all this holiday. 

This year, I'm thinking about past years, when war seemed far away.  Could we really be at a place where peace was the norm?

This year, that doesn't seem to be the case.  This year, I'm hoping for containment of threats, for dictators to be defeated.  When I say that, I'm thinking of Putin.  This year, of course, the war in the Middle East is the one that most people are contemplating, if they are contemplating war at all.  This year, I am willing to admit how much I do not know, while trying not to dread what may be coming in the next year or two.

But let me circle back to the intent of this holiday.  On this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:

God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day, we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday

May 26, 2024, Holy Trinity Sunday
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


John 3:1-17


Today we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday, which comes just after the season of Easter, just after the festival of Pentecost. Today, we contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Christians have been contemplating the mysteries of the Holy Trinity since the earliest centuries of the faith.

Unless you’ve studied the first several centuries of Christian history, you might not realize how deeply the doctrine of the Trinity has divided the faithful. In fact, we have the Nicene Creed because in 325 A.D., the ruler of the Roman empire, Constantine, called an assembly to settle the question of what Christians believe. Did the Father create the Son and the Holy Spirit? Did they all exist together? Are they made of the same stuff? Do they have equal authority? Questions about gender would come much later.

I do realize that most of us here in this worship space spend our time thinking about issues other than Trinitarian theology. We may think that the identity of God has been established, and we may wonder why we return to it each year. We might say the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed on Sunday and not realize the bitter history that brought about these creeds.

What does it mean to worship a God who is three Gods in one? Why does it matter? Why do we have a special Sunday to talk about the Trinity?

Our texts for today aren’t very helpful. On a day like today, I yearn for a text where Jesus tells us in a more straight forward way what he’s talking about. Instead, we get Jesus asking Nicodemus a variation of this question: “What? You, a scholar, don’t understand? You’ve done all this studying and you don’t understand what I’m saying?” Jesus might say that to me, too: “You’ve had Systematic Theology class for 9 months, and you still can’t explain the mysteries of the Trinity?” Well, no, not in a short sermon I can’t. Systematic theologians often take 10 or more books to explain theology completely.

When I think about my need for explanations, I think about what Jesus says in verse 8 of the text for today, “8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And yet, Jesus spends a substantial amount of time trying to help people understand what it means to be part of the inbreaking Kingdom of God that he announced wherever he went.

Nicodemus takes Jesus literally, asking about a literal rebirth, how we can climb back into the wombs of our mothers. Jesus is talking about a spiritual rebirth, as he often is. As I think about the text for today, I’m struck by how often Jesus talks in figurative language. Jesus often talks about a mystical process, and so many of us talk about the process in literal terms.

Let’s take that most famous passage, John 3: 16. Many Evangelicals can tell you the exact time that they invited Jesus into their hearts to be their Lord and Savior, the exact way that they were born again. Many Christians proclaim this passage as the one that tells us that Christians are saved and others are damned. Many of us treat Jesus as our “Get out of jail free” card, the “Go to Heaven when You Die” card.

Jesus doesn’t see this world as our jail, though, certainly not creation itself, not creation as made by the creator. To be sure, there are parts of this world that imprison us, and Jesus does come to set us free from those. Some of us are in literal jails, but many more of us are incarcerated in cells of society’s making: the tangle of injustice that can leave us feeling powerless, the hopelessness that tells us not to bother with trying to believe anything but our own worthlessness, the death of joy that comes from hearing the relentless beat of doom that comes from every corner. Maybe it’s the doom of economic inequality or the doom of climate change or the doom of various forms of corruption. On and on the list could go.

Jesus comes to give us new life. We must be born again—but not so that we get to go to Heaven when we die. God comes to us in the form of Jesus to proclaim that we can experience divine love right here, right now. We don’t have to wait. We don’t have to complete a list of tasks. In fact, parts of today’s reading from John lead some scholars to say that being born again is something that the Spirit does, not something that we choose to do.

God is at work in the world, as much as the Creator was at work in the world in the creating of this planet that we call home. God is at work in the world today as much as the Redeemer was at work in the world when Jesus taught Nicodemus and others. God is still moving through the land, in the same way that the Holy Spirit motivated those first Christians to go out and preach the same Good News that we proclaim today.

The Good News is so much more than life after death, eternal life; if we stop there, we, like Nicodemus, have misunderstood what Jesus meant. Jesus is about so much more than a ticket to Heaven. Jesus comes to transform the very lives we’re living. Jesus talks about the quality of the lives we’re living, and so many of us hear him talking in terms of quantity.

Although it happens much less frequently now, occasionally, someone still asks me if I’ve been saved. My first response, although I don’t usually blurt it out, is to ask, “Saved from what?” Jesus might ask us that same question—are we saved, and if we are saved, as we believe that we are, then what are we saved for?

Holy Trinity Sunday celebrates God who lives in community, and this God who believes in community invites us into this communal relationship. The braided bread that I created for today’s Eucharist is the simplest kind of braid; there are some bread braids that incorporate 5 or 7 or more strands woven together.

Jesus comes to reweave this loaf of life that humans are only too happy to rip apart again and again. Happily, the Holy Spirit continues the work done by the Creator and Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes and enables us to be part of the great re-weaving, right here, right now. And tomorrow, the Holy Spirit will still be here, inviting us to be part of the inbreaking Kingdom of God, inviting us to be part of the braided community, many strands, coming together, woven into one community.

The End of Spring Term 2024

In some ways, this week has been the first week of summer break.  In some ways, it's felt more like the end of spring semester.  I've been waiting for grades, and this week, the last of them finally came in.

I've had some grades for several weeks.  My internship class was pass-fail, so once I completed the assignments, it was easy for my instructors to submit the passing grade.  My paper for Systematic Theology was graded a day or two after I turned it in, and I was happy to get my grade of A.  Even after 9 months of Systematic Theology class, I still wasn't completely sure that I was creating Systematic Theology.  And in fact, creating a complete systematic theology, in the way that the best systematic theologians have done, would mean I'd be writing multiple volumes of books, not just a paper or two.

This week, I got my Foundations of Worship class grades.  I had gotten grades throughout the term, so I was fairly sure all would be well.  But it was a relief to get grades for the last assignments I turned in.  I had to go back to the assignments to even remember what I wrote, so that I could fully appreciate the comments, that's how long it had been for some of them.  I was happy with what I had written, and so was my professor.

I turned in my last big paper three weeks ago.  It was for Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class, and in some ways, I was covering some of the same territory as I did for my Systematic Theology class.  I wanted to talk about the ways that Substitutionary Atonement Theology has failed us.  For the EHC class, I talked about how our ideas of salvation leave us willing to let the planet die, since we're just waiting to go to Heaven.  I got an A on that paper.

But more important to me, I restored my hope.  In my paper, I talked about our failure of vision, but I reminded the reader (and myself) that we worship a God who takes the worst kind of brokenness and transforms it into beauty.  I found myself asking myself if I really believed in the possibility of resurrection--not the specific resurrection of Jesus, but resurrection in general.

The answer:  yes, yes I do.  Here's how I concluded my paper:

Throughout the centuries, Christians have declared their faith in a God who can work miracles and bring redemption to the grimmest of situations. We are facing such a situation now. Christians have looked at the history of the planet and pointed out the places where God takes brokenness and transforms it into beauty. Our faith is built on those stories of transformation, and the world is desperate to hear these stories too. Christians have preached and proclaimed that they believe in the powers of God and the powers of resurrection, and the coming century will test that faith. Christians can create the rituals and theology that will help explain and guide humanity through desperate times. Christianity is a religion that has supported humans through the biggest challenges throughout history. We are called to do likewise now.

We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.

The Bread Braid of the Holy Trinity: A Sermon for Youth (and Adults?)

Last year, Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, was the first Sunday where I was the Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  I knew I needed to do a children's sermon, but I hadn't met any of them yet.  I thought about all the ways of explaining the idea of a Triune God.  I finally settled on water-ice-steam as a good demonstration (for more on last year's sermon, see this blog post).

I still think it was a good sermon and a good way to introduce myself to the youth and to the congregation.  It was more than just me droning on; although some of my youth sermons are just me, droning on, that wasn't the first impression I wanted to give.  But I no longer think it was as original as I might once have thought.

But maybe originality isn't the goal.  It certainly isn't this year.  This year, we'll be thinking about the Trinity as a braided community.  I thought about fabric, about something for everyone to take with them.  Then I thought about bread.  My church community seems to love the homemade bread that I bake and bring for communion, the youngest ones most of all.  And it's easy to make different colored bread dough.

I could make three different doughs:  pumpernickel, oat, and white/egg.  Or I could use food coloring for something dramatic.  I could have different flavorings, maybe made with chips like chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and red hots--and those would also color the dough.

Three bread doughs, one substance--if I created a Systematic Theology, it would be anchored in bread dough.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 26, 2024:

First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm: Psalm 29

Second Reading: Romans 8:12-17

Gospel: John 3:1-17

Ah, Holy Trinity Sunday.   Lately, as I've been thinking about community, I return to the idea of the Trinity--we worship a communal God who desires to be in community with us. I've always liked the symbolism of a braid, and Trinity Sunday seems a good time to return to that symbol. In a braid, each strand can stand alone--but what a more intriguing shape they make when woven together.

We might look again at the story of Nicodemus, a man who was a serious scholar. Jesus tells him, and us, that we must be born anew. We might look at our place in the braid of the Kingdom and wonder how we might be born anew. We are not that far from Pentecost. We should be listening for the Spirit.

I love verse 8, which says, "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit." My rational mind rebels. My rational brain demands that we make a plan, a plan for each day, a 5 year plan, a 10 year plan. My rational brain makes lists and wakes me up at 3:00 in the morning with worries.

I like the mystical promise of the Spirit. We do not have to know what we are doing; we do not need a plan--we just need to be open to the movement of the Spirit, a task which is not as easy as it might sound. God invites us to be part of the work of creating the Kingdom, right here and right now. But Christ tells us that we need to be born anew.

The evangelical movements have done a lot with John 3:16, which may be one of the most famous Bible verses. Many evangelicals can tell you the exact day and time that they were born again. However, many of us find this model lacking. Being born again is not a one-step process, when we invite Jesus into our hearts and we're done. Most of us need to be born again each day, day after day.

Now is the time for a different approach to this effort of being born again. We could greet each day, asking our Triune God to help us be born anew to be braided into community and Kingdom building. We could end each day by thanking our creator for the ways that we've been shaped that day.  

Our Triune God--God in community--invites us to be part of community:  Divine community, human community, planetary community.  Today and every day, I hope we find ways to accept that invitation.

Feast Day of Saint Helena

Today is the feast day of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine. You may or may not remember that Constantine was the Roman ruler from 306-337.  Constantine gets credit for being the first Christian Roman ruler (although some historians would point out that he was not solely Christian) and for making the spread of Christianity possible.  We could spend time debating whether or not Constantine co-opted Christianity for personal gain or because of his deep faith--both answers are probably true.

Regardless of his own faith, he helped foster the spread of the faith by bringing an end to religious persecution. The Edict of Milan, which set Christians free to worship as they chose, also gave freedom from persecution to other religions too; everyone was set free to worship whichever god(s) they wished.

Today we celebrate his mother, St. Helena (although if you're Catholic, you'll have to wait until August 18). Did she bring up Constantine in the faith? We simply do not know.

St. Helena has come to be associated with holy relics, and perhaps we might find the roots of the Reformation with her. If she had not so vigorously asserted the power of these relics, would their power have continued into the medieval time period? If there had been no relics, no selling of indulgences, would Martin Luther have felt strongly enough to write his 95 theses and post them on the Wittenberg door?  Did she even assert the power of relics?  It's uncertain: t we're talking about legend, not history that's been written down.

If this stretch is too much for you, let's just celebrate St. Helena as the mother of Constantine, and one of his influences. Under Constantine's rule, Christianity came to many of our ancestors, and for that, we can be grateful.

It's important to remember how much influence we may have on future generations as parents, as relatives, as concerned adults. You may have days where you despair, where you wonder what your life means as you endure useless meetings, bullying colleagues, pointless work. But God can use it all. In the life of someone like Helena, we see that we don't all have to be a Constantine.

The Day After Pentecost

This morning I'm thinking about the morning after Pentecost--not so much my day after Pentecost, but that day after the first Pentecost of rushing wind and tongues of flame.  When the disciples woke up the next morning, what were their thoughts?  What happened on day 2?

Acts 2 gives us a general idea in very broad strokes:  42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

But I wonder about the individual who was there:  the disciple, the woman follower, a member of the crowd.  Did they wake up on the morning after and think, what happened yesterday?

As I was getting ready for Sunday worship yesterday, I thought about past Pentecosts, about years when we had a crew of confirmands and years we didn't.  I thought about people who might be ordained.  I thought about banners we created at my Florida church years ago and wondered if Trinity Lutheran would be using them.  They lasted longer than I thought they might--they were made out of tissue paper and fabric and glue.

We had fewer worshippers yesterday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, where I am the Synod Appointed Minister, but we did have two visitors.  They were people from the community, so perhaps they will be back.  Our worship yesterday wasn't different from our normal worship, so it's not like visiting a church on Christmas Eve or Easter, where you don't get a very representative experience.

Yesterday when I got to Faith Lutheran, I was alone in the sanctuary.  I was struck by the simple Pentecost beauty of the space:

The windows are perfect for Pentecost!  I started my SAM experience almost a year ago, on the Sunday after Pentecost, and one of the first things my spouse and I noticed was the windows.  It's unusual to see church windows that are just one color of glass like the ones above.  We talked about how they would be perfect for Pentecost.

I'm glad to still be here, so that I could see for myself.

Pentecost Sermon 2024

May 19, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


Pentecost Sermon

• First reading
  • Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm
  • Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
• Second reading
  • Romans 8:22-27
• Gospel
  • John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Pentecost is the 3rd great festival of the Church, and as most of us know, the other two festivals are Easter and Christmas. Pentecost has been the overlooked festival, in most of our churches. It never slips by without notice, but it’s not a church festival that comes with traditions that we anticipate for months. We don’t have gift giving traditions or special foods—at least most of us don’t. We don’t necessarily go out of our way to get together with far flung family members. We don’t have time off.

For all these reasons, we may assume that Pentecost isn’t the most important of the Church holidays. But consider what we are celebrating. At Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation, God coming to live with us, alongside us, or, as The Message version of the Bible says, “Moving into the neighborhood.” But as a specific person during a specific time, God can only be with a few of us at a time. Pentecost celebrates a new possibility, a way that God can be with all of us, all at the same time, all part of a large community.

When we think of Pentecost, we may think of it as the beginning of the Church, where the Holy Spirit takes control and those hapless disciples are transformed. The Church spreads far and wide, despite the differences in cultures, language, and beliefs. Books have been written dissecting all the reasons for the success of Christianity. Even more books have been written explaining to us modern disciples how we, too, could harness the power of the Holy Spirit, if we just believed enough. We may have been told about how the book of Acts is called the book of Acts, not the book of waiting, not the book of sitting on the sofa, so we, too, should go out and act.

As I read the texts for this week, I’m struck by how differently people experience the Holy Spirit are in today’s collection of texts. I had a similar reaction during my 9 months of Systematic Theology class, a sense of wonder about the different ways that we understand the different aspects of the Triune God. Today, we focus on the Holy Spirit.

Our reading from Acts ( Acts 2:1-21) is a traditional understanding of the Holy Spirit. There’s wind, tongues of fire, the ability to speak in languages previously unknown. It’s a reading that shows us that the arrival of the Holy Spirit can be more chaos than comfort. This chaos may explain why the Church has focused on the other two big holidays, Christmas and Easter, and not focused on Pentecost. Our reading from Acts shows us that the Holy Spirit loose and moving in the world can be both transformative and scary, putting us on a collision course with people who like the status quo. But that’s not the only depiction of the Holy Spirit that we have, even if it’s the one we hear most about.

In the Gospel of John, the arrival of the Holy Spirit is a much more intimate happening. In the twentieth chapter, Jesus breathes on the disciples, and that’s how they receive the Holy Spirit. In today’s reading, which is a few verses earlier, before the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus tells the disciples what to expect. It’s a comforting kind of relationship, a way to move beyond the grieving that comes with the loss of Jesus and his physical presence. Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit as a guide, the one who will lead us to the Truth.

From there, if we didn’t know the complexities of the story, we might assume that everything ends happily ever after. Jesus rises from the dead, showing that God doesn’t have to be constrained by the powers and principalities of our current world. Jesus gets to go to Heaven and the Holy Spirit stays behind to lead us all to Truth and having the right words to say. We may assume that we’ll be like Peter, with the courage to confront those who were besmirching the disciples when they spoke in different languages.

But what about those days when we don’t have that courage? How do we keep going when we don’t have visions to sustain us? It’s in the reading from Romans that we get a Pentecost message that feels most life affirming to me in our current day and time. Here we have an image of the Holy Spirit praying the prayers that we do not know how to pray.

I don’t always feel like Paul’s letters are written for those of us in the twenty-first century, and indeed, they were not. Paul was writing to specific groups of believers about specific local problems. But what makes his writing continue to be relevant is the way that he captures the human condition. This week, I’ve been thinking about creation groaning in labor pains. Creation groans, and we groan. We have hope in that which we have not yet seen. But it can be tough, these times of pain and hope.

 

We have to remind ourselves that we are not the Messiah, that we do not have all the answers. We may not even be asking the right questions. In these times, when we’re not sure what to pray, how to pray, it’s a comfort to think of the Holy Spirit as a kind of intercessor.

Our reading from Psalms reminds us of the larger picture. Humans have a tendency to get snarled up in any number of ways, and most of them won’t matter when we’re dead. They don’t even matter now. Like so many of the Psalms, our Psalm for today, reminds us of the glory of God’s creation, of how humans are just a part of that glory, and often a small part. Here we see the Holy Spirit as a co-creator, working with God to renew the face of the earth. In this Psalm, we’re reminded that we are not the ones in charge. I touch the mountains, my own little piece of them, and nothing happens. God touches the mountains, and they smoke. The open hand of God fills us all with good things—not only humans, but all of creation. The Holy Spirit working in the larger cosmos is a much larger manifestation of the Holy Spirit that the disciples experience as tongues of flame and rushing wind.

Pentecost is a more varied festival than I had been trained to expect. We’ve got Holy Spirit as life giving force in the Psalm, Holy Spirit as transformative force in Acts, and the Holy Spirit as a comforter and a coach in John. And when we don’t know what to do with all of this, Paul promises that the Holy Spirit will intercede for us, will pray the words that we can’t quite figure out.

The future of this new creation doesn’t depend on us having the right words or the right answers. Thank God for that.

Feast Day of Saint Brendan

Today is the feast day of Saint Brendan, often called "The Navigator" and "The Voyager."  If you're like me, you might not have grown up hearing about him.  You might not have ever heard about him.  I only discovered him when I read Christine Valters Paintner's Illuminating the Way:  Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics with a reading group--none of us had heard of this Irish saint.

To be fair, not much is known about him.  He lived from roughly 484-577, mostly in Ireland, although he did go on a voyage to discover a more Edenic place.  Some legends have him making North America.  There's the mythology:  celebrating Easter Mass on the back of a whale, not once but seven times.  Eventually he realized the place he'd been looking for was right at home.

Paintners gives him credit for the idea of the Earth as our original monastery.  She uses his voyage as a way to talk about how pilgrims need to be pilgrims in community, not pilgrims sailing alone.  She talks about pilgrimages being non-linear; Brendan and his monks often sailed to places they'd been before, moving in circles "spiraling again and again to familiar places from new perspectives" (p. 101).  She also talks about pilgrimage including times of waiting and not knowing what's ahead.

Saint Brendan shows us that pilgrimage is more of a mindset than a place/goal/destination.  For those of us who don't have the luxury of picking up and looking for paradise, it's good to remember.  We may have people counting on us, but that doesn't mean we can't take on elements of pilgrimage.  Zen folks might refer to "beginner's mind," which Saint Brendan seemed to adopt regularly.

We can too. 

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel and the Feast of Pentecost

The readings for Sunday, May 19, 2024, Pentecost:

• First reading
  • Acts 2:1-21 or Ezekiel 37:1-14
• Psalm
  • Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
• Second reading
  • Romans 8:22-27 or Acts 2:1-21
• Gospel
  • John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

It's been an interesting experience, saying the doctrinal creeds each week at church, after a week of reflecting on them for Systematic Theology.  It will be interesting celebrating Pentecost after having spent significant amounts of time exploring the Trinity in Systematic Theology, asking questions like, who precedes from whom?  Does Jesus have power because the Holy Spirit overtakes him at baptism?  Does Jesus release the Holy Spirit by breathing on the disciples or is the Holy Spirit working independently in the form of flame and wind?

I do realize that most of us will not be thinking about Trinitarian theology as we approach this holiday.  We'll wear the red clothes that we keep for Pentecost and Reformation.  Maybe we'll take part in a multi-lingual reading.  Maybe there will be confirmation and/or cake.  But how many of us will reflect deeply on the beginning of this church holiday?

It's worth considering.  The festival day of Pentecost reminds us that great things can happen when the Holy Spirit takes hold of a community. If we need a reminder of that, all we need to do is to look at the state of the church on Pentecost morning, and then think about the spread of Christianity in the decade after Pentecost.

And Christianity was spread by regular people--sure, there were some superstars like Paul. But Paul came and went, and then regular people had to keep the vision alive.

They did. Pentecost both celebrates that fact and invites us to welcome the Holy Spirit in to our modern communities.  The idea of the Holy Spirit coming to our 21st century communities might inspire fear--or perhaps weariness.  We've had so many years of thinking about how the Church is faltering or failing.  We worry about dwindling membership.  We worry about what will happen to our buildings and cemeteries when support finally dies.

Christmas tells us that God loves us so much that God comes to be with us in human form.  Easter tells us that God defeats the forces of death that want to crush us.  Pentecost tells us that we don't have to have a five year plan, that the Holy Spirit is loose in the world, and that transformation awaits.

Pentecost reassures us with the mystical promise of the Spirit. We do not have to know what we are doing; we just need to be open to the movement of the Spirit. Pentecost promises daring visions; we don’t have to know how we’re going to accomplish them. God will take care of that.

God became incarnate to prepare humans to carry on the work of Kingdom creation. And Pentecost reminds us of our job description, to let the Holy Spirit blow into our hollowed out spaces and to fill us with the fire to dream and the resources to bring our visions to life.

Mother's Day Sermon with Julian of Norwich

May 12, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


John 17:6-19


For many reasons, I’m always intrigued by depictions of Jesus praying. My brain first goes to Trinitarian questions: who does Jesus pray to? Himself? As we say the Nicene Creed later, let your mind think about the Trinity—really think about what we proclaim. And then next week, we’ll talk about the third aspect of the Trinity as we celebrate Pentecost.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent time with a friend who is creating a progress report for her department chair, but today I’m struck by the HR aspect of this final prayer of Jesus. Just before his death—and in the Gospel of John, more than any other Gospel, Jesus knows that death is coming for him—he reports back to the boss. He explains how he’s trained the disciples and now they are ready to be on their own. Our first reading from Acts has the same kind of effect, with Peter explaining how the ministry came to be.

But today is Mother’s Day, and I’m also struck by the idea of Jesus taking a nurturing role in praying for those he would leave behind—it’s definitely less an HR document than a parental kind of tone. As he prays to God as Father in the Gospel of John, it’s intriguing to look at Jesus as a mother.

I’ve spent many decades contemplating God as Father images, and trying to enlarge the concept we have of God. I’ve searched the Bible for images of the Creator that are female, and they are there, but they are fewer than images of God as male. Often when we get a female image for God the Creator, it involves mothering, like a bird sheltering little baby birds under her wing.

I haven’t ever thought about Jesus as a mother. He has a definite gender, after all. It’s harder to expand our metaphors for Jesus—at least it is for me. For some of our mystics, it hasn’t been.

This week on May 8, we celebrated the life of Julian of Norwich, who lived in the 1300’s. She was an anchoress, which meant she lived in a small cell attached to a cathedral, in almost complete isolation, spending her time in contemplation. She had a series of visions, which she wrote down, and spent her life elaborating upon. She is likely the first woman to write a book-length work in English.

And what a book it is, what visions she had. She wrote about Christ as a mother--what a bold move! After all, Christ is the only one of the Trinity with a definite gender. She compared Jesus’ agony on the cross with the agony of bearing a child, lots of bleeding and ripping of flesh. When she talks about the Eucharist, she uses imagery of Jesus breast feeding us.

She also stressed God, the creator, is both mother and father. Her visions showed her that God is love and compassion, an important message during the time of the Black Death.

The idea of a deity that is mothering goes back even further than a 14th century mystic like Julian of Norwich. Catholic theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson traces imagery of birth in the book of John, and she traces words that evoke birth imagery, and she looks at words that derive from the word from “womb” and how these words are used both to talk about God in the book of John and the birth process of becoming a believer.

I do realize how problematic the imagery of God as parent of either gender can be. Our own human relationships are complicated, and that can affect how we see these metaphors. Not all of us have a good relationship with our parents or with our children. Some of us have pain surrounding our parenting choices or our lack of choices. Happily there are other options for metaphors for how we see God. There are other lessons for how we are to live our lives as believers. If not children, if not subordinates, then what does today’s Gospel teach us?

Let’s return to today’s Gospel text that shows Jesus praying. This passage reminds us that we are sanctified, consecrated, and sent out into the world. The not yet message of the Gospel reminds us that we have work to do. And this Gospel passage reminds us of the stakes: Jesus prays that we will be protected from the evil one.

In many ways, our most basic task is to confront evil. Everything we do, everything we create, needs to be a challenge to evil. Perhaps it is evil, the way that horror movies show evil, as a force that is out to undermine us or even kill us. Perhaps it is a more mundane evil, the kind that whispers in our ear that we don’t really need to concern ourselves with the troubles in the world that we see. Perhaps it is the soul sapping evil of despair that tells us that nothing will ever be different.

But Jesus tells us over and over again, we are not to go through the world with our business as usual selves. We are not to have a self that we bring out on Sundays, in church, and our week day self, and our Saturday self. Our task is to live an integrated life, a life that lets the message of the Good News shine through us and our actions.

How do we do that? Here again, Jesus shows us the way. We are to care for everyone, and we can start by praying for them. If we read the Gospels, we see Jesus modeling many types of prayer, from the familiar Lord’s Prayer that we’ll pray just before communion to the less familiar prayers that he offers as he withdraws into solitude.

Here we have another prayer, one that we can offer too. Each day, pray the prayer that Jesus prayed so long ago, that his joy may be fulfilled in you (verse 13). Each day, look for ways to bring that joy to others. Each day, work for beauty and peace and the defeat of evil. In this way, you’ll be a force that helps create the new world that Jesus proclaims is arriving, the Kingdom of God that is both here and not yet born.

Feast Day of the Ascension

Today is the Feast Day of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter, 10 days before Pentecost. This feast day commemorates Jesus being taken up into Heaven.

In the church of my childhood, we must have celebrated this festival on a Sunday. I have memories of hearing the story in church; I don't have much memory of celebrating Pentecost as a child. Now, Ascension can go by without a peep, especially in a year like this one, where I would bet serious money that more churches will be talking about mothers than ascension, since this Sunday will be Mother's Day in the U.S.

Imagine it from the eyes of those who have followed Christ from traipsing around Galilee, Crucifixion, and then Resurrection. You have just gotten your beloved Messiah returned to you, and then, poof, he's gone again. What a whipsawed feeling they must have had.

How do we celebrate this day, so many thousands of years later? Many churches have chosen to simply ignore it. We march on to Pentecost.

By the point that the disciples witness the Ascension, are they used to these sorts of wonders? Their savior has risen from the dead, after all. Maybe being scooped up into heaven wasn't as wonder inducing--and yet, I suspect it was.

When I think of the events of Holy Week, Easter, and the time up to the Ascension, I wonder if any of them came close to a breaking point. I think of the Pentecost story, where once again we find the disciples holed up in a room. I wonder if some of them were rocking themselves in a corner, muttering about how the world had cracked open, and not in a good way.

In our current time, we may have lost our sense of wonder. When I watch us talking or tapping on our cell phones, I sometimes remind myself of the miraculous developments that the cell phone represents. For better or worse, it provides phone coverage to places that once were remote. It puts an enormous amount of commuting power in a very portable container. Satellites circle the earth to assist with these processes.

Sure, we might use them in the most mundane way: to coordinate the car pool pick up or dinner plans or to find each other in a crowd. And yet, maybe it's profound, in ways we don't acknowledge. We ascend by way of satellites to find each other, to tell each other of our love.

I think of Jesus and all of the others who have ascended before us. I think of the love that is our mission. I think of times I've watched the moon rise. I think of satellites, the ones we've made of metal and the ones that existed long before we hurled things into space. All of us, circling, all of us lost in both our daily orbits and our larger obsessions.

On this feast day of the Ascension, let us keep our eyes on the Savior who has gone before us. Let us stay grounded in the love that declares us wondrously made. Let us go forth and love similarly.

Prayer for the Feast of the Ascension:

Ascending God, you understand our desire to escape our earthly bonds, to hover above it all, to head to Heaven now instead of later. Remind us of our earthly purpose. Reassure us that we have gifts and talents that are equal to the tasks that you need us to do. Help us close our gaping mouths and get to work.

The Feast Day of Julian of Norwich

Today is the feast day of Julian of Norwich, at least for Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Anglicans; Catholics will celebrate on May 13.  I thought of her today as I maneuvered around my tiny writing space, my grandfather's desk wedged in between house remodeling supplies and tools, a drying rack, and the contents of a closet that's under reconstruction.  Of course, once I get around the desk, I have significantly more space than Julian of Norwich did, in her small cell off of a cathedral, where she was an anchoress, a type of monastic.

I've been interested in Julian of Norwich for a long time.  When I first started teaching the British Literature survey class in 1992, the Norton Anthology had just added her to the text used in so many survey classes.  Why had I not heard of her before?  After all, she was the first woman writing in English, at least the first one whose writing we still have.

My students and I found her writing strange, and I found her ideas compelling.  She had a series of visions, which she wrote down, and spent her life elaborating upon. She wrote about Christ as a mother--what a bold move! After all, Christ is the only one of the Trinity with a definite gender. She also stressed God is both mother and father. Here in the 21st century, we're still arguing about gender and Julian of Norwich explodes the gender binary and gives us a vision of God the Mother, God the Wife--and it's not the Virgin Mary, whom she also sees in her visions.

Her visions showed her that God is love and compassion, an important message during the time of the Black Death.  She is probably most famous for this quote, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well," which she claimed that God said to her. It certainly sounds like the God that I know too.

Although she was a medieval mystic, her work seems fresh and current, even these many centuries later. How many writers can make such a claim?

A few years ago, I read her complete works, which I didn't enjoy as much as I thought I would.  The writing seemed circular, coming back to many ideas again and again, with lots of emphasis on the crucified, bleeding Jesus, lots of focus on suffering and sin. The excerpts that most of us read, if we read her at all, are plenty good enough.  I was both disappointed to discover that, and yet happy.

Not for the first time, I wonder what's been lost to history in terms of writing. If she was thinking about some of these explosive ideas, might others have been even more radical? What happened to them?

I'm grateful that we have her work--at least there's something that gives us a window into the medieval mind, which was more expansive than we usually give credit for.  And I'm grateful that so many people have discovered her in the decades since the Norton Anthology first included her.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 12, 2024:

First Reading: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Psalm: Psalm 1

Second Reading: 1 John 5:9-13

Gospel: John 17:6-19


In today’s Gospel passage, we see Jesus close to the end of his mission. We get to watch him pray. And notice that Jesus prays for those people whom he has called to continue the work he has set in motion.

This passage reminds us that we are sanctified consecrated, and sent out into the world. The not yet message of the Gospel reminds us that we have work to do And this Gospel passage reminds us of the stakes: Jesus prays that we will be protected from the evil one.

In many ways, our most basic task is to confront evil. Everything we do, everything we create, needs to be a challenge to evil. We are not to go through the world with our business as usual selves. We are not to have a self that we bring out on Sundays, in church, and our week day self, and our Saturday self. Our task is to live an integrated life, a life that lets the message of the Good News shine through us and our actions.

The thought of living an integrated life can drive some of us to distraction. How can we be sure that we are? Some of us are so distracted that we never really make the attempt.

As humans, we have a tendency to make these things more complicated than they need to be. Here again, as he so often does, Christ shows us a path towards a life of integrity.

We can pray. We are to care for everyone. We can start by praying for them.

We can begin with the easy prayers: the ones for our families and friends. And then we can move on to the difficult people. You say you have a boss who is driving you crazy, making you redo work 5 times, only to arrive back at the place you started? You could growl and grumble. But you'd use your time far more wisely by praying for your boss. Your neighbors play their music too loud and fight through the night? Pray for them. You disagree with your leaders? Pray for them. As you drive home, let yourself notice the homeless people, the ones who wait for the bus, the teenagers who look to be loitering with no place to go. Pray for them.

As you move through the day, be on the lookout for ways to be the yeast in the bread, the salt that flavors the soup. Look for ways to show Christ's love. You can do it quietly--in fact, there are plenty of Gospel passages that say you must do it quietly. You don't want to be that pious Christian that makes people feel squirmy; you don't want people to accuse you of being a typical hypocritical Christian on the days when your light flickers and dims. Radiate love, as often as you can, and you will be a far stronger advocate for God, and a person who is far better equipped to fight evil.

Each day, pray the prayer that Jesus prayed so long ago, that his joy may be fulfilled in you (verse 13). Each day, look for ways to bring that joy to others. Each day, work for beauty and peace and the defeat of evil.

World Labyrinth Day 2024

Yesterday was World Labyrinth Day, a day when we were encouraged to walk our local labyrinths at 1 p.m. local time in hopes of unleashing a "a rolling wave of peaceful energy."  A few weeks ago, I thought about organizing something, but my various semester endings submerged me, and before I knew it, it was Saturday.  

So, even though it was too late to invite others to walk with me, it wasn't too late to walk it myself.  So up the hill I headed to the Lutheridge labyrinth, created on an old tennis court where my mother played tennis when she was a counselor in the 1950's.

I thought there might be others, but no, I was on my own.  But that was O.K. too.  It was cloudy, the kind of cloudy that means rain is coming soon.  But that, too, was O.K.  I walked, thinking about labyrinths I've walked, people who have walked them with me, and the times I've walked them alone.  

As I walked home, I thought about the first time I read about labyrinths and yearned to walk one.  It was probably 2000 or 2001.  One of the earliest books was Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen.  Back in the early years of this century, I wasn't able to find as many labyrinths; there was only one in Broward county, at the local U.U. church.  It was a beautiful outdoor labyrinth, but I didn't walk it much, because it took me over half an hour to drive there.

Now I have a labyrinth in my own neighborhood, and in the past year, yesterday was the first time I've walked it.  In the coming year, I'm going to walk it more often.  What a gift it is to have a local labyrinth!

The Feast Day of Saint Monica

Today we celebrate the life of St. Monica, the woman who taught us to patiently pray for children who would by all outer appearances seem to be lost causes--she's the mom of St. Augustine, one of the important early church shapers.  In fact, one of my textbooks for Church History class in seminary called Augustine the most important Christian theologian; not one of the best, but THE best. 

St. Monica had a difficult marriage, and by modern standards, I'd guess that most women until very recently had difficult marriages. Monica is the patron saint of abused women, abused children, victims of unfaithfulness, those who have difficult marriages, and those who have disappointing children.

I'm lucky that I've rarely been in circumstances that would prompt me to ask St. Monica to pray for me.

I'm interested in the early church and women. I'm interested in the early church women that are recognized, the ones that have been canonized. In my younger years, I'd have been rather shrill about the sexism of canonizing women whose primary attribute seems to be their patient endurance of abuse. In my older years, I recognize that people can change, the way that Augustine changed. In my older years, I recognize the value of praying, even if it takes decades for change to come.

If we could time travel back to 1985, I'd have told you that Nelson Mandela would die in jail, that South Africa would devolve into civil war, that the Soviet Union would control Eastern Europe forever. I was convinced we would all die in a nuclear holocaust.

For reasons I can't explain logically, those events didn't happen. I know that plenty of people across the planet pray for freedom and justice. I know that those prayers can be answered. I know that betrayal can lead to reconciliation. I know that God has a powerful vision for this creation, and I believe that redemption is underway.

Of course, we're not there yet. So please, St. Monica, pray for us as we struggle to create a world that is free of abuse and abandonment.

A More Welcoming Church--The Methodist Edition

Long, long ago, during grad school days, one of my friends came home quite angry.  "Do you know that you can't be gay and be a Lutheran pastor?"

I replied, "You do know that I'm not in charge of that, right?"  At that moment, I would have described myself as non church going, even though I was part of a Lutheran group that met on the campus of the University of South Carolina.  That student group was more inclusive than I imagined the larger church could ever be.

Decades have passed since then, and the Lutheran church, the ELCA variety, is more inclusive, although there is still a way to agree to disagree.  Pastors who are not white, male, and heterosexual may still find it tough to find a church willing to have them as a pastor.  Individual churches still have latitude to discriminate, and that doesn't make me happy.

I thought of these decades of changes that seem impossible and then seem to happen in a flash.  I was paying some attention to the national gathering of United Methodists in Charlotte, NC.  I knew that they hoped to resolve the issues that have been tearing them apart for the past several years when they couldn't meet in person.  And so, yesterday, I was happy to hear that the UMC voted to become a more inclusive church.

I know a bit more about the background because I go to a Methodist seminary, and last year, I attended an information session that occurred after chapel during lunch.  A year ago, as some of my fellow seminarians were graduating and taking calls in Methodist churches, I listened to their fears of what would happen if this vote went a different way.

I am so glad that my former classmates aren't waking up this morning with difficult decisions to make.  I am so glad that the United Methodist Church voted to become more inclusive.

Solidarity Forever: May Day and Feast Days

Here we are in the merry month of May--how can it already be May? The first day of May has ancient roots as a celebration of Spring and new growth and the return of warm weather. More recently, the first day of May has become a celebration of workers.

So let's think about some ways we could make the day special:

--The traditional way would be flowers, traditionally flowers that we would leave on dark porches for people to discover when they woke up. It's probably too late for that approach, but it's not too late to appreciate flowers. You could buy some flowers or a flowering plant. Or, for future enjoyment, you could do what we did: buy some seed packets, plant them, water them, and see what happens.

--It is probably also too late to weave long ribbons around a Maypole. But we could braid ribbons or strips of cloth and meditate on the types of joy we'd like to invite into our lives.

--Today is a good day to think about workers, workers of all sorts. We're having more of a national conversation these days about work, about gender, about who takes care of children and elders while people work, about the locations of work. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out--I'm holding onto hope for positive change, even as I'm afraid we can never make the improvements that need to be made.

--If we're one of the lucky types of workers, the ones who aren't under threat by bosses or by globalization or by robots, we can support those who aren't as lucky. Send some money to organizations that work for worker's rights. I'm impressed with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which works to protect the migrant workers in the fields of Florida, but you certainly have plenty to choose from.

--Can't afford to make a donation? Write letters on behalf of the unemployed, the underemployed, everyone who needs a better job or better working conditions. Write to your representatives to advocate for them. What are you advocating? A higher minimum wage? Safer worksites? Job security? Work-life balance?

--Today, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans celebrate the feast day of Philip and James; others will celebrate May 3. These are not the most well-known disciples. Today you could reread the Gospels, a kind of literary Easter egg hunt, to try to find them.

--Can you create something that weaves these strands together? Here are some possibilities: a sculpture made out of ribbons that explores the world of migrant workers. A poem that celebrates flowers and contemplates the ways that we love some blooms (flowers) but not others (algae, cancer). A painting that uses weaving in some ways to think about the past century of efforts to enlarge the workplace and make it safer. A short story that updates the story of Philip--who would he be today?