Settling into a Seminary Schedule

All of my seminary classes are up and running, and it's hard for me to remember that we've only been in session for a few days.  I'm at that stage of the semester where I go back to course shells several times a day, just to make sure I haven't missed anything that's due this week.  I haven't settled into the rhythm of those classes yet.

I've had a few moments where I've thought, oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into--how will I ever get all of this done?  But I know that I will get it all done.  I won't have much free time, but that's O.K.

Yesterday, I had two ENGL 100 classes with an in-class writing day.  I got a book read for my Missional Church class while they were writing.  It will be that kind of term, with me snagging every scrap of spare time so that I get everything done, and so that I have some time for the other events I have planned, like Quilt Camp.

At the back of my mind is fear of illness, both my own and illness in loved ones.  But if that happens, I'll remember that I have options.  I feel fortunate that I am not in my first year of seminary.  I know a bit more about how it all works, and I have the good will of my professors.  I likely always had that good will, but it was harder for me to know/trust that fact when I was in my first year.

Let me shift my writing time to getting a sermon pulled together for tomorrow.  I want to get a rough draft done before heading out for brunch.  We're going to the house of my mom's cousin near Charlotte and then back this afternoon.  It will be one of the last times that I schedule a Saturday like this one--until December, that is.

It's good to remember when I feel overwhelmed, that this schedule is only for a term.  It's good to remember that it's good to get these last required seminary classes completed when they're in a modality that works for me.

What Is Worship For?

I have been thinking about the future of worship. Let me post a semester end reflection that I wrote for the seminary Foundations of Worship class in the spring.

My ideas of what worship is/should be/must be began to change when I was part of an ELCA (Lutheran) church in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Our pastor was working on a DMin degree which gave him all sorts of interesting ideas for how to make worship more interactive. But the pandemic really opened my mind to all the larger ways we could be a faith community, as we all recorded parts of worship in creative ways. In 2022, we had a native plant sale, which opened my mind again. The plant sale happened right after worship, in the parking lot of the church. We had three times as many people in the parking lot waiting for a chance to buy plants as we had in worship. There was talk of plants and care of creation and God. I remember thinking that we should serve brunch and round out the worship experience, a mimosa mass and garden day. In the intervening years, my mind has returned to that possibility that we could incorporate the places/events where people yearn to be on Sundays (brunch, outdoors, in the garden dirt) and not insist on what people don’t want as much (creeds, long sermons, hymns that are no longer relevant).

In short, I think that worship at its best is a place to meet God. Ideally, we should also hear the narratives of God and God’s people at work in the world: that might be through Scripture, through drama, through sermons, through song, and through the stories we tell in other ways. We also hear that narrative through our Eucharistic practices. All of these practices can offer spiritual formation, along with spiritual sustenance, by molding us into a faith community. When I think about the kind of faith community I want to be part of and be part of creating, I feel even more compelled to create worship that is meaningful on many levels.

Ideally, our worship gets us ready to go back out into the world. Some of us will go into the world to fight for a more just vision of society. Some of us will go into the world to care for others. Some of us will go into the world to educate or to heal in other ways. Often the work we do in the world is draining—and living in the world is draining even if we’re not interacting with it much. If a person has a drop of compassion and pays attention to current events, it’s hard not to sink into depression and despair. Meaningful worship reminds us that the forces of empire and death do not have the final say in the world. Meaningful worship not only repairs the world but repairs us too.

As I think about two thousand years (plus a few) of Christian worship, two thousand years of encountering God in times that are troubling and in times that are peaceful, it’s not surprising that we have such a variety of worship practices. I’ve enjoyed learning about them, and if I were to use any of them, I’d want to be careful to be respectful and not to appropriate/colonize. For example, singing one of the old spirituals that an enslaved person on a U.S. plantation might have sung—that seems respectful and appropriate, while including jumping the broom wedding ritual might not, especially if we’re not the descendants of enslaved people. I imagine we’ll be creating liturgies like the one described in this week’s reading by Lisa E. Dahill more frequently as we head into a future of more and more climate crisis. Times of past tragedy can inform our worship creation and remind us that humans are more resilient than we might believe, especially if we’re struggling in the midst of crisis. Hearing the resurrection story reminds us that when a time seems bleakest for a community, God breaks through in surprising and life-giving ways. Every time I create worship experiences, that’s the story I want to remember to stress. When a parishioner asks, “What is the Good News in all this hellishness?”—that’s the answer I want to be prepared to give.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 1, 2024:

First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Psalm: Psalm 15

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 45:1-2, 6-10 (Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9 NRSV)

Second Reading: James 1:17-27

Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

You don't need me to tell you that humans are a rule-bound people. I've often wondered why this would be. I suspect people get to Heaven and try to create new rules. Many of us are committed to rules that make us unhappy. I have a friend who irons rather obsessively, for example. She complains bitterly about her family's ironing expectations. Why doesn't she just buy clothes that don't need such care? Why doesn't she pull clothes out of the dryer after about 10 minutes and hang them up? Why doesn't she accept wrinkles?

My favorite science fiction writer, Octavia Butler, had a theory that humans are both excessively intelligent and excessively hierarchical, and these two traits are often in opposition. It is our tendency towards hierarchy that so often gets us into trouble. We divide the world into the pressed and the wrinkled, between the vegetarians and the meat eaters, the drinkers and the A.A. folks: essentially between the people who live right (which means according to the rules we accept) and those who don't.

We often think that the Pharisees in Jesus' time were rule-bound people who couldn't see that God walked among them, even as Jesus was right there before them. While that is true, it's also important to realize that the Pharisees thought that following the rules to the letter was the trait that would save the Jews. We must not forget that the Jews of Jesus' time were under threat from many sides. We forget that Rome was a brutal dictatorship in so many ways, and that the peace that the Jews had found could have been (and eventually was) easily overturned.

We fail to realize how similar we are to the Pharisees. How much time do we consume wondering why people live the lives they do?  What we're really saying is "Why won't they act right? If they'd just act the way we all should act, life would be so much easier!" Of course, they probably say the same thing about us.

We look back to past periods of humanity, and we shake our heads over the things with which they were obsessed. We can't imagine the ritual purity laws that were in place in Jesus' time. We can't imagine the rigidly stratified societies that most humans have created. We can't imagine a time when women couldn't get credit in their own name or a time when blacks and whites had separate bathrooms, but those days aren't that far away from our own.

Jesus reminds us that so many of our rules come from humans, not from God. We think that God ordained the rules that we embrace, rules which so often tell us what not to do, but Jesus reminds us that there's one essential rule: love each other. God will judge us on the quality of our relationships. I've seen all sorts of relationships. I suspect that God would prefer the lesbian couple who still genuinely loves each other to the heterosexual relationship where the couple is cold and condescending to each other.

But more to the point, I suspect God is baffled by our constant desire to rank these things. God probably wonders why we can't just get it together and help each other to become more loving people. God probably wonders why we are so judgmental, even as we engage in all sorts of harmful behaviors.

Jesus reminds us again and again that love is our highest nature and that the actions that move us towards being loving humans are the ones that we should take. We can operate from a place of love or we can act from a place of fear. As we act out of love, we will find ourselves in company with God.

Pumpkin Bread as Communion Bread: Success!

On Sunday, we concluded our 6 week study of bread that the Revised Common Lectionary gave us.  I have said often that I have no problem with a 6 week study of any part of the life of Jesus, but if we're going to focus on something like bread, we could have expanded our vision and included a parable or two.  That chunk of John doesn't lend itself as nicely to a 6 week study.  Or maybe it's me.

Still, we persevered, and by Sunday, I wanted to remind us that Jesus doesn't call us to a life of drudgery, a dry bread consumed while traipsing through the wilderness kind of life.  No, Jesus calls us to a festive life.  I wanted bread to match.

I thought about some of the special yeast bread that I make at Christmas, but it looks like the bread I usually make.  It might have almond paste or something special, but from a distance, you can't really tell.  Up close, you might not be able to tell.  I decided to use pumpkin bread, which looks and tastes very different from our usual weekly communion bread.

We worshipped outside in the pavilion, which meant we communed by intinction, dipping the bread into the common cup.  I wondered what pumpkin bread dipped in wine tasted like, but I needn't have worried.  A few parishioners commented on how delicious it was.

As I handed the bread to people, about 5 of them said, "Yum" or "It smells so good."  Many people seemed more engaged than usual, perhaps because it was so unusual to have pumpkin bread at communion.  I tried to hand everyone a piece of bread with the outside crust on it, so that it wouldn't all fall apart into the chalice.

It's an interesting idea, using different breads for communion, thinking about what insight these breads might give us into how to live a Christian life, how these breads are like Jesus.  It's been a fun few weeks, but I'm ready for something new to chew on.

Sermon for August 25, 2024

August 25, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


John 6:56-69


And so, we come to the end of this collection of bread gospels—we’ve been hearing about Jesus as bread for six weeks now. We have contemplated what it means to have Jesus nourish us. We have heard the stories of the ways that God has provided sustenance. We have meditated on the idea of Jesus becoming part of our flesh, blood, and bones.

In today’s Gospel, we see two ways of responding to Jesus, and they are often the two ways that we see, regardless of what Jesus is trying to teach. We see disciples who go away saying, “This is too hard,” and we see disciples who stay with Jesus and tell him, “You have the words of eternal life.”

Of course, it’s Peter who proclaims his faith, and yet we know what happens to him. Under pressure, he’ll say that he never knew Jesus. So much for the words of eternal life. What are we to make of this text, where the one who stays by Jesus turns out to be one of the deserters in the end? Did he just not get enough nourishment from Jesus?

And yet, it’s Peter, one of the corner stones of the Church, church with a capital C. If we read the book of Acts, we discover that Peter is able to do all sorts of things that most of us mere mortals would never dream of attempting. We wish we knew the secret that Peter knows. We might wish we could get some of the supercharged bread that Peter has gotten.

Maybe we do and maybe we can.

Peter’s secret is that he returns to Jesus. At his core, he knows that Jesus offers him life. Even when it’s been too hard, even when he’s fallen away, he returns to Jesus. The secret to supercharged bread is to return to Jesus, time and time again. Our circumstances may change, but Jesus will be there, waiting on us, even when we fear we have declined invitations too many times to be welcomed back.

Jesus says we must consume his flesh and blood to be saved, and through the centuries, we’ve interpreted this idea through the lens of sacrament, which is appropriate. This morning, I want to think about this idea through a poetic approach. I want us to think about the different kinds of bread that we have tasted. I want us to think about how these breads represent Christ and the life that Christ offers.

I grew up in small towns in the south, and in the 1970’s, you couldn’t get the kinds of breads that you can get now. We had Wonderbread in grocery stores, and perhaps a whole wheat option, which was really just beige white bread. Grocery stores didn’t have bakeries, and there wasn’t enough interest in bread to open a stand alone bakery. I remember a time that my dad went to Washington D.C. on a business trip and brought back sourdough bread. It was amazing.

Sourdough is an amazing bread that can be made from any yeast spores floating in the air, as our youth sermon experiment shows us. Aficionados will tell you that San Francisco sourdough tastes different from an East Coast sourdough which would taste different from our mountain starter that we have here. These days, we have all sorts of recipes for sourdough starters, but as you can see, all you really need is some flour and water. We’ll see what kind of bread this makes, but it is the kind of bread that sustained pioneers in their long journey across a continent. Similarly, a few weeks ago, you might remember that we had grilled bread, the kind of bread that has sustained people across the globe from the reservations of Native Americans to Middle Eastern populations like the one where Jesus preached to Pakistan and points east. If you can heat up a stone in the fire, you can have this kind of grilled bread.

The nourishment of Jesus and the Christian life has sustained many a population in just this way. We don’t need a cathedral, and we don’t even need to stay in one place. We don’t need fancy equipment. Jesus has given us the basic tools: prayer and service to each other and retreat and more prayer and tending to the charity and justice needs of our larger communities.

For our communion bread most weeks, we have a basic bread made out of oats with some honey and  some brown sugar. It’s a bread that’s not too sweet, with some goodness from whole grains, but with white flour to provide a texture that is less dense. It would make a good sandwich, but it’s also good on its own.

I see this bread as a basic kind of Christian community, the kind that sustained our ancestors here in this county, the kind that sustains much of the Church still. Many sociologists have predicted the death of Christianity as populations became less persecuted. But even as we find ourselves in the enviable position of leading lives relatively free from oppression and brutality, we may find ourselves wondering if this lightweight version of whole grain bread is all there is. But Jesus reminds us that a better life is still possible. We may think that we can make it on our own, and for a time, it may seem that we can. But every life will have some hardship, and when those troubles come, the basic oatmeal bread of Jesus gives us a solid foundation. And even if our troubles seem minor by comparison to the troubles of those who endure slavery or war or displacement, they can still grind us down. Oatmeal bread provides a comfort and nourishment and gives us the strength to keep going.

What does life in Christ taste like when it’s at its best? What do we want our living bread to be for us? Today, we’ll have a different bread for Communion, a pumpkin bread, made with that gourd that is such a nutritional powerhouse. But it doesn’t taste like something that is good for us. No, it’s much more festive, with its cinnamon and nutmeg and other warm spices, with its pecans; it evokes Christmas morning and the first chill of autumn. It’s a good reminder that Christ calls us to an abundant life, a celebration. We often talk about the Christian life as a bedrock foundation to weather the storms of life. But it can be so much more than that.

As I think about the wide variety of bread that we can enjoy, I realize that I could keep this metaphor going: Christian faith as croissant, flaky and light, Christ as a pumpernickel bagel, densely packed with much to chew on. This diversity of bread leads me to reflect on the diversity of ways we have to live out our faith and how the responses of Christ vary—but all are valid. Some of us will fight bravely for justice, following the example set by Jesus. Others of us will follow Christ into the wilderness, knowing the value of contemplation that comes from solitude. Others of us will come to understand our Creator as we engage in acts of creation ourselves.

And we don’t have to choose just one approach. What nourishes and sustains us in one season of life may be different from what has gone before. But like a great bread recipe, we find that the Christian life offers us variations along with guidelines for how to make the most of our time in the kitchen with family and friends or interacting with our community of neighbors.

If we, like those disciples, feel this teaching is too hard, we remember that Jesus offers us life in abundance. Even if we’ve said, “No, I’m on a diet. This bread that you offer is just too much, too expensive, too caloric, too filling” Jesus continues to show up to tantalize us with this bread of eternal life in abundant forms and flavors. Like Peter, we can return to Jesus again and again, saying, “You have the words of eternal life.” Like Peter, and generations of Christians who come after him, we can realize that there’s no place else to go—and nowhere we’d rather be. Nothing else can nourish and sustain us the way that the bread of Jesus does.

Feast Day of Saint Bartholomew

Today is the feast day of Saint Bartholomew, who many of us may think we don't know. But Bartholomew was also Nathaniel--one name is the Greek version and one is Hebrew. We think of Jesus as living in a distant outpost of the Roman empire, and in a way, that's true. But that area of the Middle East was also a crossroads, where various cultures had influence: Greeks, Jews, Romans, all sorts of people coming and going by sea and by land, all sorts of trade happening, all sorts of cultural elements mixing and matching.

Nathaniel was the disciple who asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" He's won over when Jesus can tell him that he was just under a fig tree. In the Gospel of John, he's the 4th disciple called, so he's among the first.

Nathaniel is martyred for his faith; his killing was particularly gruesome, including both flaying and beheading. But before he's killed, legend has it that he brought Christianity to both India and Armenia. He is the patron saint of nervous and neurological diseases, bookbinders, shoemakers, and makers of leather. I always find these collections of patron saint job descriptions intriguing. Is it because he was flayed that he's watching over leather makers?

If we lived in England in earlier centuries, we might see Saint Bartholomew's day as the beginning of a seasonal shift:

"Saint Bartholomew / brings the cold dew."

And here's another:

"If Bartlemy's Day be fair and clear, / We may hope for a prosperous Autumn that year."

So let's see what the day brings. It's going to be an interesting Autumn to be sure.  I am still expecting storms, both literally in terms of hurricane season, and in international affairs--and perhaps in the domestic political scene.  But for today, the forecast is for sunny weather in these southern Appalachian mountains.  Down at the lake at Lutheridge, we'll have our annual neighborhood picnic.  Let me enjoy living in this pleasant time while it is here; Autumn's tomorrows will be here soon enough.

Random Objects and the Writing Process

 We are in week 2 of my classes that I teach at Spartanburg Methodist College, and each day, we've done some pre-writing towards their first piece of writing that they'll turn in for a grade.  That assignment is to tell me something essential about themselves, and we've done some standard approaches, like making a list.

I wanted to do something a bit more creative, so I adapted a successful idea I used as a retreat leader.  I bought in a box of all sorts of objects, from things found in nature like stones and feathers to stuff I had made to random things I picked up.  I laid them all out on a table, and I had students pick one:

First I had them describe the object.  Then we did freewriting for five minutes.  The goal was to keep writing and to follow their thoughts wherever they led, even if they seemed to have nothing to do with the object.  I told them that I would not be reading this writing, although I would be walking around the room to make sure that everyone was writing.  They could write by hand or write on laptops/tablets.

After the writing, I had them read silently, underlining anything that was interesting or surprising or had potential.  Then we put all the objects on the table, and everyone chose a different object.

We did the freewriting again.  And then, because it didn't take as much time as I expected, I had them write about what object they would have chosen if they could have had any object from their own experience.  I granted them magical powers, so even if the object was at their grandmother's house, they could write about that.

And then at the end, I had them write for a daily writing grade, an analysis of this experience.  Most of them said they enjoyed it.  Were they being truthful?  I suspect they were.  It's unusual, and even if it doesn't lead to writing they will use later, it was a fun experiment and better than some of the instruction can be boring.

I feel like it went well.  We talked about how this process could be useful if they felt stuck, or how it could be useful to get to memories that weren't right at the surface.  When I used it at a retreat, we talked about the memories generated and then we talked about how the objects and the memories might get us to a place where we were more receptive to God.  I didn't include the God angle in my Composition classes, because I don't want to be too preachy--last week I had them make a list of things that were wonderful about themselves, and then I had them imagine what God would say about them, if God was making the list.  Even though I am at a Methodist school, I don't want to introduce God talk too often and risk being off putting, particularly since my approach to spirituality might clash with how they have been raised.  Better to introduce spiritual elements gently and gradually.

Students were engaged and writing, and that, for me, is the definition of a successful experiment.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for August 25, 2024:

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

Psalm 34:15-22

The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous. (Ps. 34:15)

Ephesians 6:10-20

John 6:56-69


In some ways, the Gospel readings get more difficult with each passing Sunday this August. They're difficult in part because they seem so repetitive: another week, another set of verses on flesh and bread and feasting on what actually nourishes us. You might find yourself protesting, "O.K., O.K., I get it."

We've spent the last month hearing about the importance of both physical and spiritual nourishment. As school starts, as events from the larger world get more attention, as we start to think about future holidays and wonder if we'll be able to see our loved ones, it’s good to be reminded of the importance of nourishing both ourselves and others.

Maybe it’s time to recommit to the good nourishment patterns that we know will keep us healthier. There's still time to enjoy summer's pleasures when it comes to the produce stand: have melons for breakfast and corn on the cob for dinner. Bake a batch of bread or muffins. Watch the bread rise and remind yourself of the larger Christian task of being leaven in the loaf of society.

Think of ways that you can nourish yourself spiritually so that you can be that leaven. Can you add some additional reading to your day? How about some extra prayer time?

You say you have no time? Stop watching the news: a spiritual practice that will benefit in all sorts of ways. Spend as much time in prayer as you do paying attention to social media or print media. Listen to your favorite spiritual music as you go through the day’s tasks.

Once we've nourished ourselves, maybe we'll be better able to nourish each other.

The world groans more and more each day. We must fortify ourselves and each other to face the task of repairing the world. Our month of bread readings reminds us of the ways to do that. As delicious as our home-baked loaves of bread are, Jesus reminds us of the source of our true nourishment.

Fun Angel Craft Project

On Saturday, I went to see a friend before she heads out on a camping trip.  She was sorting craft supplies, and we chatted while she organized the supplies she will take with her.  She has a vision of making these angels while her spouse drives:

What a fun craft!  They are made of paper circles and flat buttons for faces--no glue needed.  She plans to put them in Christmas cards, so she needed a flat button.

The "jeweled" bead/s just below the face are stickers.

Here's a view from the back, a view that shows that the body and wings of the angel are made of three circles, each folded in half (the halo is a full circle):

I plan to experiment with other options.  I want to find out if we could make these out of cloth.

I also have a lot of beads in my jewelry box.  Could we use those beads for faces?

But mostly, I love these for their whimsy.  Just seeing them made me happy--and thus, this blog post.

Sermon for August 18, 2024

 

August 18, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

 

 

 

John 6:  51-58

 

 

When I was in the 5^th grade, our class mouse died.  Our teacher gave us a choice:  we could have a burial outside or we could dissect the mouse.  We were 5^th graders.  We voted to dissect him.  It was the 1970’s, so my teacher could dissect a dead animal and not get in trouble—different times indeed.

 Our teacher brought in a dissecting kit, and we gathered round on the floor.  As the teacher pulled the skin away from the muscle, he pointed to the muscle and said, “That’s what you eat when you eat meat.”

 You can probably imagine what happened next:  a room of 5^th graders recoiling in horror.  I was probably not the only child who went home to declare to the hard working person who prepared dinner that I didn’t want to eat the muscles of animals.  I’m far from a vegetarian these days, but that 5^th grade experience was instrumental in teaching me to consider what I’m eating and where it comes from.

 When I look at today’s Gospel, it’s not hard to understand the revulsion of people who take Jesus literally.  We might feel superior to them.  We might assume that we understand what Jesus is talking about, that of course he’s talking about the sacrament that we celebrate every Sunday.

But let’s remember that we’re in the mystical book of John where Jesus has baffled people by saying strange things, like when he told Nicodemus that one must be born again, and Nicodemus wonders how he can crawl back into his mother’s womb.  In today’s Gospel, we see people assume that Jesus is talking about cannibalism, and they respond as people have through the ages when they’ve considered eating human flesh.

 So what does Jesus really mean? We could spend time talking about the differences  between transubstantiation and consubstantiation.  Many denominations have rules, some of them quite strict, about who is allowed to take communion, and most denominations have very strict rules about who gets to preside over communion. Some of these rules are rooted in when or if we believe that the bread and wine actually become Jesus.

 Once I would have assumed that Jesus was instructing people in the need to be sacramental, and I still do.  But as I’ve read week after week of bread Gospels, I’ve found my brain coming back to the idea of what it would mean to consume Jesus in the way that we consume bread or meat.  Jesus asks us to consider how our lives would change if we believe, if we TRULY BELIEVE, that Jesus and our own flesh have become one.

 There is an intimacy to this idea, and this intimacy would have probably been even more offputting to ancient people who heard Jesus say it.  In Roman life, gods could join their flesh to humans, but it was usually a sexual conquest that didn’t go well for the humans involved.  When Jesus invokes human consumption and digestion, when he suggests that we can eat and drink and join our destinies together, it’s no wonder that people recoil—in next week’s Gospel, they’ll talk about how hard the teaching is, how difficult it is to accept this teaching.

 But I’ve returned again and again to the idea of abiding with Jesus.  We let Jesus feed us with his very self, the way a mother breastfeeds her child, a process which transforms the mother’s bodily fluids into everything that the child needs.  I think of the contrast to the other nourishment story that Jesus refers to throughout this passage:  the Israelites in the desert are not abiding with God.  They are escaping, they are journeying, they are complaining—but they are not abiding.

 Jesus calls us to do transformative work, but Jesus doesn’t leave us to do it on our own.  Jesus shows us how to do the transformative work, the teaching, the healing, the feeding, the dreaming of something different.  Jesus not only shows us, but empowers us—by becoming part of us, bound up in our muscle fibers, having us digest him so that it’s hard to tell where Jesus separates from us.

 Author and theologian Madeleine L’Engle says that Jesus came to show us how to live a full human life.  In her book,  Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, she writes, “God is always calling on us to do the impossible. It helps me to remember that anything Jesus did during his life here on earth is something we should be able to do, too” (page 19).

Let those words sink into your consciousness and think about how we'd live life if we had no excuses.  Anything Jesus did, you can do.  Abiding with Jesus will change us—and then we will be equipped to change the world.

 It seems miraculous, yet we are surrounded by so many processes that seem miraculous, and we often no longer see them.  In this month of bread and wine, think about the processes that happen before we get the bread and wine.  A tiny seed falls into dark soil and grows into a vine that gives us the grape from which we can make the wine that will transform questionable water into a safe drink that will resist spoiling.  We mill the grain that wheat produces to get flour, from which we can get bread that is much more digestible—and shareable—than the wheat buds themselves.  A boy offers up his lunch of some fish and barley loaves; Jesus’ audience would know that this boy was impoverished in a way that we’ve forgotten.  But from his generosity, a crowd of thousands has a meal.

In a different long ago classroom, I learned that we’re all made up of ancient stars, nature as the great recycler, where nothing ever vanishes or is thrown away.  It was was a concept that thrilled me and made me want to study astronomy.  I went a different path, but the idea still speaks to me.  Today it seems even more miraculous that we’re not only composed of stars, but of Divinity too. 

 As we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion each week, let us remember that Jesus comes not only to nourish us, not only to save us, but to transform our very existence on a physical level, to become part of our flesh and bone.  When we feel weary and despairing, let us abide in Jesus.  Let us remember how we are remade and remodeled each and every week, each and every day.   Let us go out to be part of the ongoing creation of the Kingdom of God.

First Week Class Activities, with Guided Meditation

It's been a good first week of classes.  Because I may forget later, let me talk about what I did in the actual classroom during the first week.

Day 1

It's hard for me to leave the time honored practice of going over the syllabus.  I don't read the syllabus, but I do point to some policies.  More important, I talk about assignments and my approach to writing and writing classes.  In my younger years, I thought that I did this so that if students thought that my approach wasn't for them, they had time during drop add week to go to a different class.  Now I think that it's the rare student who has enough self-knowledge to make that decision--or the rare student who realizes that it could be different in a different class.

I gave out colored paper and had them write two truths and a lie about themselves.  I had a plan for how to use them on Day 2.  I had them write while I was passing out the syllabi.  Yes, I print out the syllabi for the first day of class.  I'm old school:  I don't trust that the technology will work, and I believe there's something to be said for interacting with paper, not staring at a screen.

We ended the class with writing.  I had them write three paragraphs, one that told me about themselves as a student, and then as a writer/creator, and then as a reader.  These paragraphs might be the basis for more formal writing later, or it may only be useful as an introduction. 

Day 2

I saved the bulk of the icebreaker/getting to know you stuff for this day.

We began with the lies and truths on the colored paper.  I had them stand if the statement applied to them.  We didn't know who had written what, which was the lie and which was the truth.  And because I was reading them, I could censor any problematic statements (but there were none).

We then played opening day Bingo.  I gave them a sheet of paper that was a grid with qualities (I'll list them below).  They had to move around the room, talking to students, and they could use each student only once.  That worked better than I thought; they seemed to enjoy walking around the room getting to know each other.  We talked about what we had learned from this exercise (nobody does yoga, for example, or how one plays Dungeons and Dragons).

Because the activities didn't take as long as I thought they would, I had them turn the paper over.  I had them make a list of everything that was fabulous about them.  Most people had a very short list, so I said, "Come up with a list of twenty things that are fabulous about you."  Many of them expressed disbelief that they could come up with twenty, but they tried.

I also had them make a list of what they valued in a friend or a partner.  I hoped it might spur them to think about what they took for granted in themselves and what made them valuable.

We then did a brief guided meditation.  If God was making this list, what would God say was valuable about you?  If God was here in the room, talking to you, what would God say?  I had them close their eyes for a minute or two, and then when they opened their eyes, to write.

I knew that for some of them, channeling the voice of God would feel weird.  We talked about the value of using their imagination in unconventional ways.  We talked a bit about theology; I told them about my Foundations of Preaching teacher who told us that most people had never heard that God loves them, even if they've gone to church every week.  I told them that if they channeled a negative voice, then they were probably hearing another voice, not God's voice, and I/we talked about whether or not God really does talk to us through a guided meditation.  Is it not just our brains talking to us?

And then, again, we ended the class with writing:  one paragraph that told what this past week of school had taught/revealed about themselves and one paragraph that talked about what they learned about their community.  It's a way for me to take attendance, it gets them writing, and it might be useful for their first graded assignment.

The first week of fall semester usually has a vibrant energy, but this past week was unusually vibrant.  I hope it continues.

---

Bingo Card Categories/Squares

Plays a musical instrument 

Has green eyes           

Has a sister   

Has travelled outside of the U.S.

Majoring in Business

Knows how to do yoga           

Has played football  

Knows how to sew

Has lived in more than one state     

Has lived and/or worked in a space with a fish tank           

Has participated in a performance 

Has worked in a fast food restaurant

Has baked bread or cookies

Knows how to play Chess    

Knows how to knit     

Has played Dungeons and Dragons

Hope in a Time of Global Warming

We've gotten news of another month of record breaking heat, which might lead us to feel despair.  It led me to go back to the final paper I wrote for the Environmental History of Christianity class that I took in the Spring.  I remembered the conclusion as being both a comfort and an inspiration.

I post it below, in the hopes that you, too, will find it a comfort and an inspiration:

In a time of climate transformation, some will be comforted by the now and not yet part of Jesus’ message. Jesus announces the inbreaking Kingdom of God, an event that it is happening before the eyes of those who see him, but with the creation of the new world not yet complete. That message is a powerful one in a time that can look like one of planetary collapse. God has taken chaos before and turned it into creation. Planetary history shows times of extinctions, yet they can lead to a planet full of even more vibrant life forms. These beliefs reinforce each other and can energize believers.

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.

Marian Feast Days

Today is one of the many Marian feast days. Today we celebrate Mary's Assumption into Heaven. Here are the readings for today:

First Reading: Isaiah 61:7-11

Psalm: Psalm 45:11-16 (Psalm 34:1-9 NRSV)

Second Reading: Galatians 4:4-7

Gospel: Luke 1:46-55

I will state the obvious from the beginning.  We don't really know very much about the historic life of Mary.  That's both a blessing and a problem.  Because we don't know much about her, our imaginations can fill in all the blanks.  That can be wonderful, but we can make Mary into the person we need her to be. We could spend a lot of time trying to decide if this is a problem or as a benefit.

Did Mary know that she was headed for a chosen status before the angel Gabriel showed up?  I picture her as a young girl, having interesting dreams, having flashes of insight as she was taught to do daily tasks and how those tasks might be transformed into something more transcendent (bread baking, for example).  And then she takes that insight and teaches Jesus.

I might have a different version of Mary next year.  And I have no way of knowing whether or not any of it is true.

Likewise with her assumption into heaven--could this have actually happened?  Unlike some theologians, it doesn't seem very important to me.  I'm much more interested in the ways that God shows up for each of us with offers of potential and promises kept.

Throughout history, Mary has been used to show how all of us are somehow less worthy.  But most of us don't have the benefit of the angel Gabriel showing up to paint a picture of God's idea of what we could be and what the world could be.

Mary's response is worth remembering, especially as she hearkens back to Abraham and Sarah in praising God, who has kept the promises made to the ancestors.

Here we are, on the Feast Day of the Assumption, hearkening back to the Feast of the Annunciation.  If I had a favorite Marian holiday, it would be this one, or maybe the Visitation, which celebrates both Mary and her older kinswoman, Elizabeth.  These days, I'm yearning for more models of healthy aging, and perversely, Elizabeth speaks to me more often than the other elders in the Bible.

I am grateful for these shreds of information and insight from our spiritual ancestors.  While I wish we had more, I'm happy that we have enough for my imagination to take the reigns.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, August 18, 2024:

Proverbs 9:1-6

Psalm 34:9-14

Those who seek the LORD lack nothing that is good. (Ps. 34:10)

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58


In this Sunday's Gospel, we see Jesus confounding his listeners; the more he talks, the more confused they become (and a bit revulsed by the idea of eating human flesh and drinking human blood; let's not underestimate the strangeness of Jesus' message).

We shouldn't fault the people of Jesus' time. After all, Communion can be a divisive issue even in our own time. Churches differ in how often they celebrate Communion, and denominations differ widely in what they think the Eucharist means.

Jesus didn't intend for the sacrament to become divisive. On the contrary, Communion is designed to unite us--that's why most churches offer the sacrament as a communal practice. Unlike prayer, which is easily done in private and often silently, the Eucharist should solidify us and nourish us as a group, much the way that family meals together nourish us not only as individuals, but also as a family.

Of course, we can't leave it there. Communion should also transform us to do the work of God on earth. The surrounding lessons tell us of virtues we should strive to manifest in our lives. Our goal is to be leaven to this loaf of a world, to be the light of Christ in the world.

Again and again Jesus reminds us of the necessity of nourishing ourselves with him.  We can feast on the food that will bring us eternal life.

God calls us to do serious work. We must live as if the Kingdom of God has already taken over our world. To keep ourselves strong for that work we need to keep ourselves fed with good food: homemade bread and good wine, grilled fish, the words of the Bible, the words of writers who inspire us to transform both ourselves and the world, the images of people who inspire us to visions of a better world, music that can wind its way through our days, prayers that keep us connected to God, relationships that remind us that we are loved and cherished and worthy, and the sacrament of Holy Communion.

The Semester Begins with a Convocation

Yesterday at Spartanburg Methodist College, we had opening Convocation.  Unlike convocation at my undergraduate school, yesterday's convocation was for new students. Our president invited students to think ahead to graduation, which seems many years away, and is, but will be here soon, when they will reflect back to this opening day.

There we sat, the faculty in our robes, on a stage, as we will be when they graduate.  Convocation and Graduation bracket the undergraduate journey at this school, and I was happy to be a part.  We had inspirational speeches and prayers and we sang the Alma Mater.

Then I went back to my office and snapped this picture before putting all of the rented finery back in the bag to be returned to the company that must make very good money renting all this regalia:

I couldn't get the kind of distance it would have taken to show the full regalia, and I felt weird asking anyone to take my picture.  This one will suffice.

There was a moment when I tried to remember the last time that I wore my academic regalia.  It must have been at a graduation for City College, were I would have attended as the Director of Education, or  maybe it was even later, when I was the Campus Director.  I spent 5 minutes looking through past blog posts, trying to determine exact dates, but it doesn't really matter.

I am happy to be part of a campus that observes these traditions.  After the ceremony, we went over to the student services part of the campus, where tables were set up under the huge oak trees.  We had a plentiful dinner:  shredded pork or chicken with barbecue sauce, chicken patties, green beans, baked beans, cole slaw, rolls, and a variety of cookies.  

I know that I make a lot out of being at a school that goes to the time and effort to feed us, but it's because I know how much time and effort it takes--and money.  It's nice to be at a school that's expanding, not shrinking.  And it's really nice to be a faculty member--I'm not planning events or stressing over whether or not everything is in place or having other people bark at me.  

Let me bring this writing to a close so that I can get a walk in before going down the mountain to meet with my classes for the first day.  All day yesterday people asked if I was ready, and I said yes.  The first day is no problem.  It's that sloggy time in the middle that takes a lot more prep.

Olympic Marathon Race Courses and Sermon Delivery

Yesterday I posted my sermon to a blog post, even though I knew I would be changing the beginning.  I had seen a story in The Washington Post about ordinary people running the Olympic marathon course in Paris overnight, and the story fit with my sermon about carbo loading and Jesus as the delivery mechanism for nourishment of all sorts.

I began this way:  "Overnight, while we were sleeping, over 20,000 people ran the Olympic marathon course.  They weren't Olympians.  No, they were ordinary people.  The men's marathon was done in the morning, and the women would be running on Sunday.  In between, ordinary people decided that they, too, would run the course in between the men's and women's events.  And they did."

I reminded people that the course was challenging and long:  26.2 miles.  I said that I couldn't imagine just going out and running it.  I would think that I needed to train.  I said that the longest course I had run was a half marathon, and that I used to run all kinds of road races as a teenager.  From there it was a natural progression to talk about the carbo loading before the race that was my favorite part of training.

Yesterday I also experimented with delivering my sermon without relying on the printed manuscript.  I usually know what I plan to say, but if the manuscript is there, it's hard not to read it.  Yesterday, I didn't rewrite the introduction, and from there, it was easy-ish to glance at the pages here and there.

My sermon yesterday was much better than most days--in part because I didn't read it, but I also had an energy level that isn't always there.  It was even odder, because I had been up since 1:45, so not my usual approach to having a high energy day.

Right now, my public speaking aspect of my sermon still feels the most serendipitous to me:  some days are better than others, and I can't figure out why.  After 35 years of teaching, I don't have some of the public speaking issues that bedevil some people.  Perhaps because I don't, I also don't spend much time on the public speaking aspect of my sermon.

I will keep working on my sermon delivery and reporting back occasionally.  Perhaps it will be useful.  And if nothing else, it will keep me on track in my attempt to become a more powerful preacher.

Sermon for August 11, 2024

August 11, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


John 6:35, 41-51



It’s that time that happens every four years: the Summer Olympics! And this year, something even rarer happens: the Olympics happens while our Revised Common Lectionary has us meandering through a month of bread.

I’ve been thinking about bread and about track and field, even though I haven’t really been keeping up with this batch of Olympians. I’ve been remembering the running that I did in my youth, and wow--it’s been since I ran a long race, something that I did regularly when I was young.

I’ve been thinking about this sermon, and about the sermons for coming weeks, as I’ve been watching this group of Olympians shatter records. I’ve been wondering about their training regimens and their approaches to nutrition. I’ve been remembering my own training regimens, from long ago, the days of carbo loading that led up to a road race. It’s an idea that’s fallen out of favor, this thought that runners could load our bodies with carbs which would then fuel the runners to get to the finish line faster. Those were the days when the goal was the breaking of one’s own personal best in terms of time.

In many training circles, carbs have fallen out of favor, which makes me wonder how these bread passages are received in these days when so many people are avoiding carbs, avoiding gluten, a new eating disorder that I only heard of just this week, orthorexia, a disease where one gets so obsessed with healthy eating that they become isolated and even malnourished when they can’t find acceptable versions of the nutrients they need. In the U.S., we are still in a time of fairly easy food availability for most of us, even if costs are variable. We forget about food scarcity in the time of Jesus.

It's not that long ago that getting enough calories required substantially more effort. Think about a few generations ago in this very church. I think about my great grandparents who lived on a farm and raised much of their own food, as did so many in that time period. Think about how easy it is for most of us to get a single meal of one thousand calories—go to a fast food restaurant, plunk down a $10 bill, and you could probably get two thousand calories with a burger, fries, soda, and maybe a shake.

But in the time of Jesus, getting one’s daily bread was not nearly so easy. That’s one reason why Jesus’ offer of bread that satisfies for longer than just a few hours is so appealing. A dependable food source—what a revelation.

We know that Jesus offers far more than nourishment for our flesh. Jesus here uses bread as a metaphor, and it’s a metaphor that people would understand differently than we do. It’s worth remembering how people used bread in the time of Jesus. In our time, we often serve bread on the side or as an appetizer. Many of us bypass the bread so that we aren’t full for the main course, which for many of us is meat. We might be surprised that Jesus would use bread imagery, instead of something more healthy, like fruit or nuts.

This metaphor of Jesus as bread also speaks to his own culture powerfully about the way that food got to the mouth. In the time of Jesus, most people weren’t eating meat, except perhaps at a festival time. Most people didn’t have utensils. They would have scooped food into their mouths with their fingers – or with a hunk of bread. Bread would be used to scoop up lentils, for example, or to sop up the broth. Bread is the way to deliver nourishment to the body, to make sure that more nourishment gets to the body than would happen otherwise.

With that image in mind, let me read the last verse of this Gospel: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

Indeed, Jesus is the delivery mechanism for so much nourishment, so much sustenance. He delivers this sustenance verbally, by telling us of God’s love and by showing us what that love looks like in action. He delivers this sustenance when he heals and when he feeds, when he attends to physical bodies so that humans are free to tend to larger matters—of spiritual sustenance and of making sure that others have this experience of healing and feeding. Jesus is the delivery mechanism of God’s grace, the way that bread delivers the protein of a pottage of lentils or beans or gravy.

If we continue with this idea of Jesus as nourishment, think about what it means in terms of our bodies. Food is metabolized and becomes part of our bodies. You may remember this principle from your nutrition or biology classes: proteins, carbohydrates and fats become muscle and bone. Carry this idea back to Jesus. Today’s Gospel ends with an idea that Jesus will develop further. Jesus is sustenance that lasts. We take the nourishment that Jesus offers and Jesus becomes part of our very bodies. We become more than our flesh.

I am now seeing a slew of ads and articles with the idea that we could all become better versions of our physical selves. Part of it is Olympic fever: you, too, could learn from Olympians and get in better shape. We are a nation of aging people, so there’s no shortage of ways to make us feel bad about ourselves in terms of our bodies.

Jesus offers a powerful countercultural message. Would we feel as bad about ourselves if we remembered that we are the body and blood of Christ? If we thought of ourselves as more than muscle and bone and flesh, would we treat our bodies better? Would we treat the bodies of other people with more reverence and respect if we thought of them as part human and part divine?

In terms of our larger society, the answer to this last question is no, no we would not. After all, we had Jesus here with us in the flesh, and we did not treat his human and divine body with respect and reverence. No, the people in charge crucified that body, as people in charge have been willing to do to human bodies in every age, and they did it in part because of his insistence on the sacredness of the body—his and everyone else’s body.

Today, as you come up to receive this sacrament, think about the words of Jesus again. As you take the bread, spend a minute thinking about the physicality of nourishment and digestion. Let Jesus become the protein that strengthens your body and allows it to go further and faster. Let Jesus become the carbohydrate that that your body uses to give you increased energy and stamina. Let Jesus become the fat that your body stores for the lean times, the days when we feel a gnawing hunger that seems insatiable.

Let Jesus feed us. Let Jesus become part of our flesh, blood, and bones. Let Jesus give us the bread of life. Let us say, “Please give us this bread always.” And then we can proclaim with the Psalmist: “Taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.”

Campus Prayer Walk

Yesterday I went to campus a smidge early.  Our first round of meetings started at 9, but I wanted to be there for the 8:30 campus prayer walk.  On Thursday, the campus chaplain had invited all the faculty to join him as he walked around campus and prayed.  The idea intrigued me.

I expected a small crowd, but I was surprised by how small it was:  me, the chaplain, and two others.  We headed out into the muggy morning, but we stayed in the shade, so it wasn't too unpleasant.

We made four stops.  At the buildings where most classes take place, we prayed for the learning opportunities that were about to happen.  At the student services buildings, we prayed for the care that would take place there.  At the administration building, we prayed for all the people who would be making decisions about the school. And then we stopped under a big tree and prayed for the land and all of us journeying on it.  

At each stop, we also prayed for faculty and students, along with all the others for whom we prayed.  The chaplain, an ordained Methodist, was respectful, offering us each a chance to pray.  We joined hands at each stop, after we made sure that we were each O.K. with that practice.  The God language was gentle and gender neutral.

Spartanburg Methodist College was founded by Methodists in the hopes that better undergraduate education would lead to better preachers, and its scope has expanded.  But an essential part of that mission remains, the hope that we can provide quality undergraduate education that will be transformative.  It's great to be at a campus where we are allowed to pray for that openly and out loud.  

It was a great way to start the school year.  

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, August 11, 2024:

First Reading: 1 Kings 19:4-8

First Reading (Semi-cont.):

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

Psalm: Psalm 34:1-8

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 130

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:25--5:2

Gospel: John 6:35, 41-51

Now we enter into that time of bread, where Sunday after Sunday, Christ uses that metaphor. Many of us are hungry, physically, but we're not sure what we hunger for. Bread makes a great metaphor, as it sustains us in our daily life, but it stands for so much more. Think of the miracle of bread: water, yeast, and flour, at its most basic level. But given time and attention periodically and an oven, it's transformed into so much more.

Henri Nouwen spent much of his writing talking about Communion, trying to impress upon his readers how important it is. In Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, he says, "The Eucharist is the sacrament by which we become one body. . . . It is becoming the living Lord, visibly present in the world" (reading for Oct. 13). In the reading for the next day, he says, "We who receive the Body of Christ become the living Christ." Nouwen argues for a mystical--yet very real--transformation: the wine and bread transform themselves into blood and body which then transforms us from ordinary sinful human into Christ.

We are hungry for that transformation, but like those people who followed Christ from shore to shore, hoping for a free meal, we often don't know what we hunger for. We want to do God's work in the world, but there's so much work to do, and we're so tired before we even get started.

Our Scriptures remind us in both the Old and New Testaments that God provides. God gives us both physical food and spiritual food. But we must be receptive. We must open our mouths. God won't chew for us.

There are days and weeks when what I do seems so insignificant. What are my words of comfort when person after person suffers medical crises, their own or family members? I solve one student’s problems, only to discover that 10 more have sprouted in its place. Most people don't know how much longer their jobs will last, how long their retirement funds will last, how much longer we can go at this pace.

It’s good to return to the metaphor of bread. It’s good to think about small granules of yeast and to remember that without their activation, our dough would not be worth baking. It’s good to know that small acts can lead to great transformation further on.

It’s essential to remember that we are the leaven in this loaf that is the world. In the words of N. T. Wright: "But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: 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. Your are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire" (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, page 208).

Transfiguring Atoms

On this day in 1945, the world was about to change in dramatic ways that we likely still don't fully comprehend. On this day in 1945, the first nuclear bomb was used in war.

The effects of that bomb obliterated much of Hiroshima--and vaporized some of it. There were reports of people fused into pavement and glass--or just vanished, with a trace remaining at the pavement. The reports of the survivors who walked miles in search of help or water are grim. And many of those survivors would die of the effects of radiation in the coming years.

In a strange twist, today is also the Feast Day of the Transfiguration in Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox churches, the day when Jesus went up the mountain with several disciples and becomes transfigured into a radiant being. Those of you who worship in Protestant churches may have celebrated this event just before Lent began, so you may not think of it as a summer kind of celebration. Pre-Reformation traditions often celebrated this day in conjunction with blessing the first harvest.

I find it an interesting conjunction, and of course, I've written a poem about it.


Ides of August


We long to be transfigured in the Holy Flame,
to harness atoms to do our will.
At the thought of what they attempt,
leaders and scientists tremble.
On the other side of the planet,
people vanish into the unforgettable fire,
wisps of cloth pressed into concrete,
the only sign that they existed.

We cling to the Ancient Lie
of the violence that can redeem
us. We purge and plunge whole
landscapes into the land of ash and smoke.
The sun rises over a steamy swamp
of decimated land and decapitated dreams.

Like Peter, we long to harness Holiness,
to build booths, to charge admission.
Christ turned into Carnival.
No need to do the hard, Christian work:
repairing community, loving the unloveable.
No, we seek redemption in the flame.

We pin our hopes on the nuclear
family, small units than can withstand the fission
of everyday stresses and detonating loss.
We cast away thousands of years of human
knowledge; we forget the wisdom of the pack.
We head for our hermitages in the hills,
hoping to be transfigured into hardy-stocked survivors.


Today is a good day to think about what distractions, atomic, cosmic, or otherwise, take our attention away from the true work. Today is a good day to think about mountaintop experiences and how we navigate our lives when we're not on the mountaintop. Today is also a good day to meditate on power and how we seek to harness it and how we use power once we have it.

Today is a good time to spend with the texts for the day, to carve out some time for quiet contemplation. Go here for readings, complete with links, so that you can read online, if that's easier.

Today is also a great day to celebrate the transfiguring possibility of power. After all, not all uses of power lead to destructive explosions. Some times, we find redemption.

Ministering with Peaches

I now have 1/8 bushel of peaches in a big bowl on my kitchen counter.  I began with 1/4 bushel yesterday, and after church, I invited anyone who wanted peaches to take some.  My spouse and I do love fresh peaches, but I knew there was no way we'd be eating that many peaches.  And yes, we could make peach preserves, but again, we don't really use much in the way of preserves throughout the year, and we don't have storage for jars and jars of preserved peaches.

How did I end up with so many peaches?  Back in the spring, I found out that one of the church's youth was selling peaches to support the high school band, so I casually mentioned that I would be happy to buy some peaches.  This was the week that they came in, so I arrived at church to discover exactly what I had bought.  They were waiting for me in the sacristy refrigerator.

Some days, I feel like I have fallen into a Norman Rockwell landscape.  But then I am reminded of all the ways that my church congregation faces 21st century issues, not the least of which is how to carry on with dwindling numbers.

Maybe ministering with peaches is the membership campaign of the future!  I am kidding, although there may be more to this idea than initially meets the eye.  Many of us are yearning for a different kind of life, the kind of life that Norman Rockwell captured in his paintings, where there are peaches for all who need them and safe spaces, like family and churches, to help us navigate the issues of the day (those issues were captured by Rockwell in different paintings).

Sermon for Sunday, August 4, 2024

August 4, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 6: 24-36



Today’s Gospel takes place right after last week’s Gospel in terms of where it is positioned in the book of John. We left last week with the disciples and Jesus on a different shore. Today we’re back with the crowd. Here in the 21st century, we might expect the crowd to shrug and head home to tell their friends about the experience: “Good teaching and a good meal too. This Jesus, he’s one to watch.”

But that’s not what happens. They pursue Jesus, which means they get in boats and go looking for him. I confess that I’m a little surprised by Jesus’ reaction. I’ve been in the education field for decades now, and in the classroom, I rarely see this kind of interest. I’d be thrilled if my students waited for me at my car to ask further questions about the poems we studied or the ways to make their writing stronger.

Jesus, on the other hand, is less than thrilled. In fact, he seems a bit suspicious. He accuses the people of only being interested in him because he can feed them. But as I returned to this passage throughout the week, I was struck by how engaged they are. They don’t go off in a huff because Jesus is less than welcoming. They don’t leave when Jesus says confusing things. They ask questions. They show that they have studied the lives of their ancestors: they know the history and the text, the tradition and the scripture (which, as observant Jews, they would have been trained to approach questions that way). Again, if my students challenged me in this way . . .

Well, to be honest, if my students challenged me in this way, maybe I, too, would be frustrated, the way that Jesus seems to be. I would be especially frustrated if they just didn’t seem to be understanding what I was telling them. We say that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but there are questions that reveal that people’s attention was elsewhere.

This week’s conversation about bread has the people asking about Moses and the manna in the wilderness. They seem focused on the past—what God has done in the past. Jesus changes the verb tenses to present tense and future tense, to try to help people understand what God is doing now.

Jesus could have reminded them of how ungrateful those ancestors were, once they got tired of the manna or how undeserving they were. But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the opportunity to tell them, as he does again and again throughout his ministry, that God is the one who gives the true sustenance, whether it be manna in the wilderness or multiplied loaves and fishes.

In fact, the true sustenance is both similar to bread and completely different—something we’ll be considering over the next three weeks. Often bread is a symbol for sustenance of a deeper sort, the way it is here. And often, we see people respond the way that they do in verse 34: “Sir, give us this bread always."

But we know that a short time later, people will be clamoring for the death of Jesus, not for the sustenance that he can give them. What has happened? Is it the mob mentality that makes the crowd cross the Sea of Galilee looking for Jesus? Is his message just too hard?

We are back to a lesson that the parables give us multiple times: Jesus’ word is the seed that will fall on many types of ground. I’m going to shift metaphors. I’m thinking of a tomato seedling that I planted back in late May. It has gotten tall. But it hasn’t yet given any fruit. In another month or two, I expect it to whither and die, just like the spiritual lives of this crowd that pursues Jesus in our Gospel today.

Let’s ask ourselves the question that Jesus does in verse 27: What food endures? If you could easily tell the difference between “the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life,” what would you choose?

The obvious answer is Jesus, but in our current day, that choice might look different than it did to those who were literally following Jesus, chasing him across lakes, making him so nervous that he withdrew to the mountains so that he wouldn’t be proclaimed their ruler.

It’s interesting to get these bread passages in August, that time of the year that we often call the “dog days” of summer. In some ways, we might be experiencing the dog days of the spiritual year. Think about it: we don’t have the kind of high holy days, like Christmas or Easter. In August, we don’t have times of penitence, like Lent, or times of anticipation, like Advent. If we’re not careful, it’s easy to find ourselves malnourished.

Jesus tells us that we must believe, but what is unsaid in this Gospel is that our beliefs can be fortified by keeping certain spiritual practices that sustain us. If we’re thinking that we’re in a bit of a spiritual doldrum, think back to a time when you weren’t—is there a practice from that time you could adopt? It doesn’t have to be rigorous, like reading your way through the whole Bible. Just a bit more reading of something that is spiritually nourishing might help. Or maybe you want to take a practice that you love from a different time of year, like lighting candles, and add it to your spiritual life now; instead of an Advent wreath, you could have an August wreath.

Jesus tells us that he is the bread that will never leave us hungry, if we just believe. But Jesus needs us to turn away from the forces that are not life giving and towards the practices that will lead to our flourishing. We are gathered here in this church, where we have an opportunity to be nourished and fed weekly. What will help us remember that Jesus comes to nourish us daily? How can we connect to God, the source of flourishing, on a daily basis?

The answers to those questions are as varied as the people in this room. Maybe it’s adding some prayer to our daily walk, prayers of gratitude or wonder or supplication. Maybe it’s getting back to a creative practice. Maybe it’s social justice or charity work.

Jesus is the bread that never leaves us hungry. Our weekly and daily spiritual practices are the way we chew that bread, the way we get the full benefit of that nourishment.

Friday Fragments: Quilt Projects, Camp Projects, Home Projects

This morning, I've done my work out of order.  I've been doing grading, and now I can't remember ever having had anything worth blogging about.  Let me put down some assorted thoughts:

--At the end of spring Quilt Camp, I put together smaller pieces of fabric by size.  I had a vision of putting together a quilt of random pieces.  It's not exactly worked out that way, but I'm pleased with how it's going:

--I love having a small project to work on in the evening, but it's quickly becoming a large project.

--This morning, I woke up thinking that I should spend the next few weeks sewing together the Log Cabin squares that I spent much of 2023 assembling.  The picture below is from spring 2023:

Then I can have it ready to assemble and quilt at Quilt Camp in November.  Later today I'll put them on the bed to see how many I have.  I'm fairly sure I remember that I have enough for our queen size bed.

--We took the car in for an oil change yesterday, and came home not only with the oil changed, but also with bushings and a control arm for the steering and suspension.  We could have put off this repair for a few months, but when it fails, it will be "catastrophic," according to the mechanic.  Well, this is why we save money, I suppose.

--Today we go to pick up the last of the furniture that we bought a few weeks ago.  We went in to get a kitchen table, and we left with two new chairs--well, we left having ordered them in a fabric that we hope will complete the living room look.  I've been very pleased with the small kitchen table, which can be expanded when we have guests:

--Yesterday we ate a delicious meal at that table, with the window open, and gentle music playing.  We could hear the patter of rain, and it was so delightful, even as we were waiting for the summons to come back and get the car.

--Today is the last day of summer camp at Lutheridge.  I still have dreams of being a director of adult programming at a camp like Lutheridge.  I have memories of Lutheridge summers from years ago, where there was more programming for adults.  Could we ever go back to that?  There are lots of folks in work places where they can't get away for adult programming during the school year (like teachers).  It would be fun to offer Quilt Camp or Create in Me or Wild Women or any other number of programs in the summer.  From what I can tell, there is space for adults in terms of lodging in the summer.  In terms of program space, it would require some creative thinking.  I'm putting this idea here so that I remember it in the future.

--It seems like we just got started, having counselors arrive and then campers.  And now, it's done.  One more summer complete.

--We've had people at camp this week doing burly, lumberjack kind of things.  Some trees needed to be cut into pieces, like the one that fell down last week and took some power lines down with them.  One tree by the lake has been down for over a year, maybe even two or three.  Why cut it apart?

--I did get a poem idea, when I said that men with chainsaws have a different idea of forest management than I do.  I thought this might be an interesting idea to have Noah's wife contemplate.  Or maybe I'll do several approaches and see which one I like best.  Hmmm.