A Look Back at 2024

I don't always do an end of year retrospective; some years I'm on vacation, while other years, I just don't feel like it.  But today, reading the retrospectives of other people, I've decided to put one together.  It's good to remember that there were good times and bad, goal met and not yet met and abandoned, books read, that kind of thing.

Teaching

Let me begin with teaching.  I've continued to teach online and in person.  I've had days when I thought, this is what I was put on earth to do!  There were plenty of days when I wondered if I'm too old to do this anymore, but mainly because there are so many cultural references I'm not going to get.  But my overarching feeling is that I am ready to step into my wise elder shoes--I'm much more assertive about forbidding cell phone use in class, much more willing to assert that some experiences are important (we will create a communal poem, we will describe a tree that we've spent 20 minutes observing, we will continue to assert the primacy of literature).

Seminary

I continued to take a wide variety of seminary classes in a wide variety of modalities.  I am still really enjoying this work.  In the past year, I took 9 classes, no small accomplishment, particularly in a year of a devastating storm that made life very difficult (no electricity for 2 weeks, no internet connectivity for 4 weeks) for an online student.

Writing

Much of my writing focus has been seminary work and writing a weekly sermon.  It's been delightful, but there are times when I feel odd about how much poetry writing I haven't been doing, along with other writing.  But I did write 30 poems of varying degrees of completeness, along with at least that many fragments.  I have continued to blog daily throughout much of the year.  I have kept an offline journal and sent e-mails to friends, along with letters.  Writing is still one of the ways I figure out myself and the world.

Sketching

I have done some sketching on a daily basis.  As I looked at my sketchbook, I'm struck by how I'm trying to capture the mountains in sketching, with varying degrees of success.  I've written more about my year in sketching in this blog post.  

Fabric Arts

I have continued to stitch, although there have been too many weeks in the Fall when I did not touch fabric.  At the end of the year, I have a new quilt top almost completed, a quilt top I didn't even have in my head at the beginning of the year.  I have loved being part of a group at the local Lutheran church that makes quilts for Lutheran World Relief.

Reading

I have done a lot of reading for seminary class, which means I haven't done as much other reading as I would like.  I read at least 70 books, including some rigorous academic books outside of theology.  I would like to read more poetry in 2025.

Theatre and Museums

We saw great theatre, but it was in our home, which may be one of the better ways to see it (it's cheaper, and we can see more).  I went to one special exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art, which I wrote about in this blog post.  I also went to the Smithsonian, back when I was in DC for the seminary onground intensive, which I wrote about in this blog post.

Music

We had great musical experiences at camp during Music Week.  We had plans to go to a concert or two, like the Violent Femmes, but Hurricane Helene disrupted those plans.

Health

I continue to work on solid practices that will situate me for an easier old age:  more walking, more vegetables, more strength training, more gratitude, more creative time, more friends, less alcohol, less sweets, less screen time.  Most months, I'm partially successful in most areas, and most of the time, I think that's about all I need to worry about.

Hurricane Helene

One of the things I will remember most about this year is Hurricane Helene, the fact that we moved 900 miles away from our South Florida house in a flood zone, only to be impacted so severely by hurricane remnants, from a hurricane that came ashore hours earlier and hundreds of miles to the south.  We are 2000 feet above sea level, and the damage to the geography was much worse than any hurricane damage I've ever seen with my own eyes.  Happily, our home was not damaged, and we did not lose a single tree.

Home Renovation

We made progress on home renovations.  A year ago, we still didn't have much in the way of internal walls; now we do.  A year ago, we didn't have any bathroom restoration done; now, we have two bathrooms that have been modernized.  There is still work to be done, but there will always be work that needs to be done.

Politics and Other Major Events

The presidential election had lots of surprises, which shouldn't be a surprise.  But I am guessing that in some future year when we look back, across a space of decades, we'll be surprised at what we all missed, what huge historical event we didn't see coming.  If the more deadly form of bird flu mutates to become transmissible from human to human, that might be the story.  If it's a war with China or that Putin detonates a nuclear bomb, that might be the story.  Or maybe it will be an unexpected human rights advancement.  I think about January of 1989 when no one would predict that this would be the year that the Berlin Wall came down and dictators across Eastern Europe would be deposed. 

Remembering Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter died yesterday, and far greater minds than mine will weigh in.  I was 11 years old when Carter was sworn in as president; I was roughly the same age as Amy Carter.  I was a kid who was interested in politics, so I paid attention to all sorts of news stories.  But of course, I was a kid, so I didn't understand everything I read or heard.  Throughout Carter's presidency, I head a lot of adults who were upset with Carter, the man, the president, and all the policies.

I am old enough to remember when people hated Carter, especially as he was leaving the White House and for a decade or two afterward.  By now, many of us know the good work that he did post presidency.  If you want an article that explains why Jimmy Carter was not a failure of a president, as you may have been taught, this one in The Washington Post by Stuart Eizenstat does a good job.  You should be able to read for free:  https://wapo.st/4gwS2JW

And again, I realize that many people, especially younger folks, are aware of the good work he did after his presidency--and so much good work, in human rights, in global health, in helping to protect natural resources, in building houses for those who had none, in continuing to be part of the community, on and on the list could go.  I was always astounded at reports of how he continued to teach a Sunday School class, for example.  I am grateful for how he showed us such variety in ways to live a life faithful to one's core values.

My favorite article of the morning reading, the most comprehensive assessment, an article in The Atlantic by James Fallows, has this quote, and I'll leave the spacing intact:  "Whatever his role, whatever the outside assessment of him, whether luck was running with him or against, Carter was the same. He was self-controlled and disciplined. He liked mordant, edgy humor. He was enormously intelligent—and aware of it—politically crafty, and deeply spiritual. And he was intelligent, crafty, and spiritual enough to recognize inevitable trade-offs between his ambitions and his ideals. People who knew him at one stage of his life would recognize him at another.

Jimmy Carter didn’t change. Luck and circumstances did."

Here's a great closing quote that I found in Heather Cox Richardson's post:  "President Carter said, 'When I was in the White House, I thought of human rights primarily in terms of political rights, such as rights to free speech and freedom from torture or unjust imprisonment. As I traveled around the world since I was president, I learned there was no way to separate the crucial rights to live in peace, to have adequate food and health care, and to have a voice in choosing one’s political leaders. These human needs and rights are inextricably linked.'"

As so many others have said, we were lucky to have a man like Jimmy Carter.  May we all find inspiration as we try to figure out way to live according to our values.

Lessons and Carols and Theology Ancient and Modern

Many churches today will do a Service of Lessons and Carols.  It's a great way to give church folks a lower-key Sunday, after the work-intense week that includes Christmas Eve and perhaps Christmas morning.  Musicians already know the music, and if pastors don't want to preach, the lessons do the work.  Many churches won't have communion, so more people can take the day off--after all, pastors have families too, and many of them haven't had much holiday time with those families.

When I was younger, I loved this service.  Of course, when I was younger, I loved everything about Advent and Christmas, and I wondered why church services throughout the year were no match for Christmas Eve.  Even today, the Christmas Eve service seems the most perfect to me.  I know I should love Easter best, but I don't.

One of the gifts seminary has given me is an appreciation for various theologies that have been squashed throughout church history--and not just appreciation, but hearing about them at all.  I will always wonder what might have happened if Pelagius had become the go-to theologian, not Augustine.   Just imagine it:  a church based on God's love of all of creation, not a church based on ideas of a fallen, unworthy creation.  What if the idea of sin took a back seat to ideas about the beauty of creation?

Alas, most of us aren't living in that world, which is one reason why Easter isn't my favorite.  Even though we have an empty tomb at Easter, we also get a lot of substitutionary atonement theology in an Easter service, lots of references to that old rugged cross.  And if that's true in ELCA Lutheran churches, I can only imagine how much worse it might be in more conservative churches.

But Christmas Eve is different.  We might want to lean into Christmas Eve as a story of God vs. Roman empire--well some of us pastor folks/social justice folks might.  But Christmas Eve is about beauty, about a Divine love so huge that God comes to be with us, to experience all of human life.

I've often marveled at the idea of God who is willing to be a baby, willing to be a teenager, willing to experience pain the way we do.  Again, I think of a different way that church/theology might have helped me frame this differently:  a God who wants to experience the exquisite wonder and awe of being human.  If I had it framed this way, earlier, preached from the pulpit, maybe it would have taken me less time to feel wonder and awe at being human, less time feeling trapped in my body, my fallen body in all of its femaleness (the way the Church has framed it through the ages). 

I write today, surrounded by Christmas beauty, lights and decorations that will soon be packed away.  It's a good day for thinking about ways to keep this wonder and awe going throughout the year.  Now that's a new year's resolution that makes me happy.

Remembering All the Slaughtered Innocents

 On Dec. 28, we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear. The magi tell him of a new king that has just been born, and he feels threatened. He will stop at nothing to wipe out any rival, even one who is still a tiny baby.

We like to think that we wouldn't have reacted that way. We like to think that we'd have joined the band of wise men and gone to pay our respects. We like to think that we'd have put aside our worries of not being good enough and our doubts.

But far too many of us would have responded in exactly the same way, if we had the resources at our command. You need only look at interpersonal relationships in the family or in the office to see that most of us have an inner Herod whom it is hard to ignore.

If you're old enough, you've had the startled feeling when you realize that the next rising star at your workplace or your congregation or your social group is a generation younger than you. It's hard to respond graciously.

Many of us are likely to respond to our feelings of inadequacy in unproductive ways. If we hear a good idea from someone who makes us feel threatened at work or in our families, how many of us affirm that idea? Instead of saying, "How interesting," we say, "How stupid!" And then we go to great lengths to prove that we're right, and whatever is making us feel inadequate is wrong.

So often I feel like I will never escape middle school, that particular kind of hell, where the boundaries were always fluid. Kids who were acceptable one day were pariahs the next. Many adolescents report feeling that they can't quite get their heads around all the rules and the best ways to achieve success.

Adult life can sometimes feel the same way. We fight to achieve equilibrium, only to find it all undone. Most of us don't have the power that Herod had, so our fight against powerlessness doesn't end in corpses. But it often results in a world of outcasts and lone victors, zero-sum games that leave us all diminished.

But feelings of inadequacy can have lethal consequences, especially when played out on a geopolitical scale, the powerful lashing out against the powerless. We live in a world where dictators can efficiently kill their country's population by the thousands or more. Sadly, we see this Herod dynamic so often that we're in danger of becoming jaded, hardened and unaffected by suffering.

Now as the year draws to a close, we can resolve to be on the lookout for ways that our inner Herod dominates and controls our emotional lives. We can resolve to let love rule our actions, not fear. We can also resolve to help those who are harmed by the Herods of our world.

Thinking of Herod might also bring to mind the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family turned into refugees. We remember the Holy Family fleeing in terror with only the clothes on their backs -- and we remember that this story is so common throughout the world.

As we think about Herod, let us pray to vanquish the Herods in our heads and in our lives. Let us pray for victims of terror everywhere, the ones that get away and the ones that are slaughtered.

The Feast Day of Saint John

The day after we celebrate the life of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, we celebrate the life of the only one of the original 12 disciples die of natural causes in old age. Tradition tells us that John was first a disciple of John the Baptist, and then a disciple of Christ, the one who came to be known as the beloved disciple, the one tasked with looking after Mary, the mother of Jesus.  There is much debate over how much of the Bible was actually written by this disciple. If we had lived 80 years ago, we'd have firmly believed that the disciple wrote the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and the book of Revelation. Twentieth century scholars came to dispute this belief, and if you do scholarly comparison, you would have to conclude that the same author could not have written all of those books.

Regardless, most of us remember St. John as the disciple who spent a long life writing and preaching. He's the patron saint of authors, theologians, publishers, and editors. He's also the patron saint of painters.

Today, as many of us may be facing a bit of depression or cabin fever, perhaps we can celebrate the feast of St. John by a creative act. Write a poem about what it means to be the beloved disciple. Write a letter to your descendants to tell them what your faith has meant to you. Paint a picture--even if you can't do realistic art, you could have fun with colors as you depict the joys that God has to offer.

Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime:

"Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, December 29, 2024:

First Reading: 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Psalm: Psalm 148

Second Reading: Colossians 3:12-17

Gospel: Luke 2:41-52

How quickly the children grow up! Could this Jesus in Sunday's Gospel really be the same baby we just saw in the manger? Can this boy be the same Jesus we'll be meeting soon? We spend so little time with Jesus as a young boy that it's strange to get these glimpses.

Those of you who live around teenagers will probably find the Jesus in Sunday's Gospel familiar. He's so self-absorbed. He doesn't worry about his parents' feelings and anxieties. And yet, he's mostly obedient, mostly a good kid.

We think of Jesus as a special case. We tend to focus on his divine aspects and overlook the human ones. Yet any child arrives with his or her own agenda. In the end, most children are a bit of a mystery. We wonder where they get that quirky sense of humor, or those interests that are so unlike any others in the family. If we're honest, most of us have moments, maybe quite a lot of them, where we wish those children would just conform, just be the little people we wish they would be.

The relationship that Mary and Joseph had with Jesus was no different. We might protest, "But Mary and Joseph knew that he was special!" Every parent feels exactly the same way: this child is born for greatness. Yet in how many ways our children will break our hearts.

And it often starts with education. Notice that Jesus has ditched his parents to stay behind with teachers and scholars. He has his own business, and Mary has her wishes, and they will likely clash. Read Mark's Gospel (go ahead, it's short, it won't take you long), and you'll get a different view of Mary and her view of the mission of Jesus; she's not always happy, and in several places indicates that Jesus is embarrassing the family.

But in the end, this week's Gospel is also a story of nurture. God comes to be with us in human form, and not just grown-up, self-sufficient form. God becomes the most vulnerable of creatures, a baby, and thus becomes, the second-most vulnerable, a teenager. Those of you who struggle with a teenager may not find comfort from the Good Friday outcome of this story. But maybe you can find comfort from the fact that even Jesus could be a pain-inducing teenager.

And we all can find comfort from this chapter in the Christmas story. Hear the Good News again. God comes to be with us, in all of our brokenness. God loves us in spite of, because of our brokenness. God lives with and mingles in our human messiness. We might even say that God glories in our messiness, that out of our messiness salvation comes.

Christmas Eve Report

At the end of the day yesterday, when I realized I was very tired (a good tired, but tired), my spouse said, "Of course.  You spent the whole day getting ready for the Christmas Eve service."  My first response was, "No I didn't."  But then I realized that with the exception of some grocery shopping and a short walk, yes, I did indeed spend the day getting ready for the service, experiencing the service, and then coming back across the mountain.

It was a great day.  

I spent several hours making angels from fabric, only to get to the church to remember that we don't do a youth sermon on Christmas Eve.  Ah well--I'll use them later.  And it might work out well, because my little angels won't be competing with so much for their attention.

The church was beautiful, as was the music.  If you'd like to hear/watch the sermon, I am happy to be able to say that I've downloaded it to my YouTube channel, and you can access it here.

Everyone was in a great mood, which is one of my favorite aspects of Christmas Eve.   I've baptized three babies since being at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, and all three were at worship last night--I felt a bit awestruck by it all.  I didn't expect to get a second Christmas with this congregation, and I felt overwhelming gratitude to be there.

I was also grateful that my spouse was well enough to be there.  It's been a tough autumn, and part of what made it tough is that my spouse was struggling with pulled muscles which led to extreme pain (happily resolved by bed rest, which was also a struggle) and then for the past 3 weeks, he's had a cold.  

I expected heavier traffic, especially during our trip over--we left at 2:30, and the traffic was more like Sunday morning than what I thought Christmas Eve afternoon would be.  When we travel through the mountains at night, I'm always startled by how dark it is, but happily, my spouse was nonplussed.

After the service, everyone took pictures by the Chrismon tree.  When the organist asked if we'd like her to take our picture, we said yes.

I'm not thrilled with this picture--who are these older people?  I want to believe that we don't look like this in real life.  We're both carrying extra weight, and I feel like I look even frumpier than usual in this photo.  But I'm also at the point where I care less.  Yes, I am heavier because I'm not spending several hours each day trying hard to keep weight off.  Keeping weight off takes extraordinary focus and rigidity on my part.  But despite extra weight, I'm healthy, and for that I am grateful.

Today will be a quieter day--we have a turkey to roast, and I think it's defrosted.  It will be not as cold this afternoon (52 degrees for a high), so I hope to take a walk.  Our families are far away, so there won't be extended family time today.  So today won't feel vastly different from other days, the way that Christmas did when I was a child.

But I am grateful:  grateful to have survived this tumultuous autumn mostly unscathed (but not unchanged), grateful to have several jobs which I love and which nourish me, grateful for health and a new roof over my head (bought and installed just a few weeks before the hurricane) and water that comes out of the tap that I can drink again.

A Sermon for Christmas Eve

 December 24, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 2: 1-20

Finally, the night we’ve waited for:  our Advent watching and staying alert is about to pay off!  Christmas Eve at last!  Soon we will open presents and do lots of cooking followed by lots of eating—all sorts of celebrating, and we can rest.

Well no--our Gospel text reminds us that we can’t just put aside our watching and waiting and take a long winter’s nap.  We’ve heard the text so much that it may feel like a soft Christmas pudding of a reading:  a sweet tale, easy to digest, easy to swallow.  Maybe we let it slip by us as we look at the pretty Christmas sights that won’t be with us much longer.  Maybe our brain is already jumping ahead to tomorrow:  is the turkey going to thaw in the fridge?  Should we have chosen something different?  Is that one unusual eater a vegan or vegetarian?  When does our long winter’s nap start?

Tonight’s text warns us of the dangers of distractions, the dangers of falling fast asleep.  The beginning of tonight’s Gospel roots us in a specific time and place, with rulers who get to decide who is important and who is not.  Everyone will be registered!  Some of us will recognize this world of documenting, counting and accounting, sorting and categorizing.  Some of us will remember that when rulers start to see humans as simply resources that need to report for registration, nothing good usually happens next, at least not for ordinary people.  Maybe it will be higher taxes or maybe military service or maybe deportation or maybe worse.

Then as now, we see a world of weary people on the move.  Maybe they are happy to return to ancestral homes—maybe their heads are full of the hope of family reunions and rich conversation.  Maybe they are exhausted from the trip.  Maybe they are wary of the dangers that lie ahead.  Maybe they have never been to their ancestral home, so they don’t know the customs, don’t have connections.  All these people, full of fear.

The Gospel passage for tonight begins with the the rich and powerful, but by the center of the story, we spend time with an ordinary couple, a young couple, a firstborn son coming into a world where there is no room.  God comes to be with humanity, but in a brand new way, a brand new way that is also an ordinary way, a very messy way.  A new thing is being born, a new phase of a relationship, far away from the corridors of earthly power.  But most people aren’t noticing.  Most people have no idea because they aren’t paying attention.

We move to the third part of the story:  an angel comes to herald the good news, not to the emperor, not to the people who make it onto the “best of” lists, not to the man of the year, not to the ones with the power to disrupt lives in ways pleasant and unpleadant.  No, the angels appear to shepherds, to ones even further away from the power structures than the couple with the newborn.  Are the shepherds so insignificant that they don’t have to go back to ancestral homes to be registered?  Or are they the ones who have occupied the same pastures for generations, so they don’t have to worry about travel?  Maybe we find ourselves in this part of the story, off to the side, on the outside of the insignificant towns, taking solace in our animals or maybe a good friend or two.  Families gather, but we have jobs we need to do.  Rulers of countries bluster and blather, but they have no idea how people are living on the ground, and so we do our work, unnoticed.

Shepherds hear the good news first.  Were other people sleeping, so they missed the angel choir?  Would the bright lights of the little town nearby make it impossible to see the celestial show?  Did no one else hear the angel song?  Was everyone else too busy to notice or too unimaginative to look up and follow the unusual noise?

We live in a much noisier world today, but this story has resonance.  Don’t doze, or you might miss the good news of what God is doing in the world.  Pay attention.  The life changing, creative, restorative work of God in the world is not finished—it is just begun.

Hear again the message of the angel in charge:  Be Not Afraid.  What a different message than what we usually get from the people in charge. Too often those people want us to be very afraid, to see the world as a scary place, so that we will look to them for solutions and salvation. The angels call us to a different reality, a world soaked in wonder, a glimpse of the world that we see on Christmas Eve.

Once again, consider the shepherds.  We’ve heard the news that the angel brings so many times that it’s lost its weirdness.  The Messiah has arrived—and the sign will be—a baby in a manger? That’s your sign?  A baby?  A manger?  Sure, symbolically it works.  A feeding trough, which is an image that will run through the Gospels:  God as food.  But as a sign that the Savior is here?  A vulnerable, dependent infant--not a powerful ruler?  A manger--not a throne?

The curious and observant shepherds decide to go and see this Good News for themselves, leaving their livelihoods behind.  There’s no arguing, no trying to have it both ways, no leaving one shepherd behind to keep watch while the others go ahead to investigate.  I have often envied the shepherds the clear sign that they get, the clear message.  If only I could have an angel choir, one single sign so loud that it cuts through all the other noise of life—yes, an angel choir might be so much easier to make life decisions.  Of course, often when we look back, we’re amazed at the messages we convinced ourselves to ignore, God’s invitations that we’re sure were meant for other people, people in a different phase of life or with different resources and skills.

We began this Gospel with an empire paying attention in an ominous way, and we end with a mother keeping watch, much like the shepherds did.  Mary treasures the words of the shepherd, much like we will treasure the memories of this Christmas, in years to come.  Mary also ponders—a focused watching, a trying to make sense of it all.

It’s good to remember that the story doesn’t end here—and hence the need for observant watching.  The story of God at work in the world doesn’t end with the manger.  It doesn’t end with the Messiah on the cross.  It doesn’t even end with the empty tomb.  God is at work in the world, and God invites us to the party.  I realize that on Sunday, I preached in part about the benefit of rest and retreat, as Mary and Elizabeth withdraw and wait for the next chapter.

It’s the tension we live in, like the Kingdom of God itself, inbreaking but not here yet, underway, but not complete.  There are times when we need retreat and rest and pondering, like Mary and times when we need to be moving in the world, like the shepherds, moving to meet God in the unlikely, unexpected places where God appears.  When we’re observant, we’ll know which way to go.  When we pay attention, we’ll be able to ignore the noise of our society so that we can hear the angel song.  Most important, when we maintain our Advent alertness, our watchful waiting, we’ll be able to turn our lives into a manger that welcomes God.  We’ll be able to, in the words of Biblical scholar Barbara Reid, “have a disposition of hospitality toward God.”  Our Advent and Christmas stories remind us:  opening our lives, our beings, to this hospitality to God is so often how God is able to work in the world.  Let this be the year that we close our ears to the noise and distractions so that we can hear God’s call.

A Wonderful Advent 4 Sunday

Yesterday was the kind of Sunday where I found myself wishing that I was already ordained, that I could stay at Faith Lutheran Church to be their pastor.  Of course, being their permanent pastor might change things, and it's important to remember that.  If they called me as their full-time pastor, I would need to move.  I would be held to different standards.

It doesn't really matter.  I am not ordained, and ordination is realistically years away.  But let me delight in the ways that yesterday was wonderful:

--Last year, Christmas Eve fell on the 4th Sunday of Advent, so we didn't do a morning service.  We did a 2 p.m. Christmas Eve service.  I was happy to have the 4th Sunday in Advent to luxuriate in the season a bit longer.

--I loved the music yesterday:  a chance to sing both "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel" and "Soon and Very Soon."

--I felt like both my children's sermon and adult sermon went well.  What a treat to focus my message on Elizabeth and Mary and their babies in their wombs.

--We got home to find out that our tech person had figured out a way to record the sermon and posted it to the church's Facebook page.  I can't figure out a way to download it to my YouTube channel, but if you're on Facebook, you can view it here.

--I finally did figure out how to post it to my YouTube channel!  It's here.  And of course, if you'd prefer to read my sermon, I turned it into a blog post.

--We had more children in church yesterday:  2 toddlers home to visit Grandma and Great Grandma.  They were interested in everything we did, including communion.  Delightful!

--One of our members got a Christmas present for everyone, so we stayed seated after worship so that the older youth could assist in handing out Christmas gift bags.  

--Then we all did the final decorating for Christmas, which involved tall metal candleholders attached to every other pew and gold ribbons around them.

--On our way out of town, we took communion to a parishioner who is too unsteady to make it to church.  We will likely start doing this every Sunday.  I was really happy to be able to do this.  

I even discovered that the church had a kit stashed away in the sacristy, so transporting the wine was easier than I thought it might be.

--The drive across the mountains was so beautiful, with parts of the mountains frosted with snow.  In some spots, it reminded me of that flocking snow that people used to spray on indoor Christmas trees.

--We finished by watching Civil War, not a Christmas movie, and not as compelling as I thought it would be.  But it did make me think about what would happen if one paired it with Salvador, two movies about photojournalists.  I am not likely to have a class where I would have time to do that, but let me record it.

--It was an early night to bed--a good day can leave one worn out that way.

Sermon for Sunday, December 22, 2024

 December 22, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 1:39--55

Here we are, a few days before Christmas, and finally we move into more familiar Advent territory, although John the Baptist is still here—but in this Gospel, he’s in utero, so he’s not calling anyone the offspring of a viper, at least not in language we can hear.

This Advent, we will have no angel Gabriel appearing.  By the time we get to today’s part of the Gospel, the pregnancies are under way for both women, two very improbable, well nigh impossible, pregnancies.

In verse 7 of the Gospel of Luke, we meet Elizabeth and Zechariah.  They are, and I quote, “very old.”  Her pregnancy is not just improbable.  This is no geriatric pregnancy, that we sometimes hear about in the twenty-first century, those unlikely pregnancies that happen to pre-menopausal women.  Elizabeth’s pregnancy happens in a womb that has no potential for life.

No potential for life—and yet, here she is, pregnant.  Elizabeth’s experience is not the first time that we see this miracle in the Bible:  the Old Testament has a few examples of older women who become pregnant.  But unlike those women, Elizabeth doesn’t have to do anything:  there’s no petitioning God, no promises of what kind of dedicated life the baby will have.  In fact, Elizabeth’s lack of involvement can unsettling.  

Mary’s pregnancy is like non other in the Bible.  Richard B. Vinson says:  “But whereas Zechariah and Elizabeth are typical characters in a stock plot—the aging righteous childless couple longing for a baby—Mary is not.  There are no biblical examples of young unmarried women who get the happy news that they will have a baby through God’s direct intervention” (p. 35).  

The centuries have seen similar debate about Mary:  did she have agency?  When Gabriel appears to her, could she say no?  She has questions, to be sure.  But she says yes.  Most Bible scholars agree that she could have refused.  Barbara Reid says, “Just as Jesus invites disciples but cannot compel anyone to follow him (see Luke 18:18-25), so God’s power needs Mary’s receptivity in order to accomplish the divine will. Gabriel is not delivering a decree from a dictatorial patriarch but an invitation from One who is able to work through those who have a disposition of hospitality toward God” (p. 27).

I love the idea of hospitality to God.  I love the idea of this hospitality as a very different kind of call story.  Let’s consider the scene as it is presented today.  A younger pregnant woman goes to visit an older pregnant woman.  Neither of them should be pregnant:  it’s too early for Mary, and it’s too late for Elizabeth.  We have  two very different women, yet God has need of them both. I love the way this Gospel shows that even the impossible can be made possible with God: barrenness will come to fruit, youthful inexperience will be seen as a blessing.

I also love this Gospel for its contrast to the reading that we’ll get on Christmas Eve.  There’s no angel choir—just two women, coming together to create community.  We have Mary, the first to say yes to Jesus.  And Elizabeth, the first to witness that the Messiah is here—and let’s not forget John, who is also testifying.  And I love that the first act of witness is so very embodied, and so very embodied in a female body.

I admit that I am biased.  And yet, it’s an aspect of witness that we don’t see often.  Elizabeth and Mary are the first to proclaim the Divinity of Jesus—but their mission is very different from the one that Peter and Paul will claim for themselves.  Instead of going to make disciples, they stay put, to create community.

I love this story because it reminds us that God doesn't choose those who are already ready and waiting for the call.  Imagine how many lives could have been changed if the earliest Church had emphasized this aspect of a call, this being worthy in God’s eyes even if one is not worthy in the world’s eyes. Imagine if we had centuries of the message that God loves us before we’ve done anything special at all, and even if we never live into our full potential in the eye’s of our society, God will see our value. 

Imagine if the church had given emphasis to Elizabeth, along with Mary.  I love the message that we're not too old, that our hopes and dreams might be answered after all.  We're not cast away if we're not a young woman, like Mary, with years ahead of her to be of service to God.  The definition of fertility enlarges.  

In a culture like ours that worships youth and beauty, it is good to remember that God doesn't discard us when we might think we've outlived our usefulness.  We may look at our past decades and sigh over what we have not achieved.  God looks at us and sees so much potential.

We’re also not cast away if we’re young with limited options.  Here is Mary, very young with no past job history of being a mother, and yet God sees her potential.  God comes to a distant outpost of a huge empire, to an unmarried woman who lives in a small village in that distant outpost.  God sees something in her that the rest of us would not see before the miracle.

I love this story as evidence that two generations can come together in support for each other.  I love the small community they form.   I also love the idea that they take time for rest, a time to incubate.  Thousands of years before anyone mentions the phrase “self care,” we see it in action.  The next time you have trouble sleeping, thinking about all you have to do the next day, meditate on Mary and Elizabeth, and how they show us the value of rest and retreat.

We’re living in a culture that’s always full of praise for the newest and shiniest thing, and church, well, church certainly isn’t new.  But the story of Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that community is so important, and recently much of the shiny new parts of society prove to be very isolating.  People are lonely, people are yearning.  And here, too, the message of this Gospel rings out across the centuries.  Mary knows that she needs support, and she knows that her older relative will also need support.  They come together.

This morning, I'm feeling most inspired by the possibility of the impossible.  The world tells us that so much of what we desire is just not possible.  Even churches hear this message that we will never attract the next generation, that we don't have enough money, that we can't have an impact, that our dreams of social justice will never come true, and that the world is on fire, so humanity has no future anyway--in short, we live in a culture that tells us we are doomed.  We swim in these seas, and it's hard to avoid the pollution.

Along comes this day late in Advent which proclaims that the not only is the impossible possible, but the impossible is already incubating in an unlikely womb. It's much too easy for any of us to say, "Who am I to think that I can do this?"  The good news of today is that we don't have to be the perfect one for the task.  By saying yes, we make ourselves the perfect one.

Today, on this last Sunday in Advent, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, let's remember that God's dream is bigger than anything that the world can offer us.  Let us return to those dreams and look for the ways that we can say yes.

A Sketch for Solstice

 Last night, after creating a sketch for a notecard for a friend who is having a difficult December, I made a sketch for me, while we were watching that old stop-motion animated show, "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town":

I hadn't planned to create a haiku-like thing, but it emerged;  in case you can't read it, it says, "Winter turns her back / On this foresaken season / Autumn of our woes."  I didn't realize that I had misspelled forsaken until I typed it out just now.  Intriguing! 

I was trying to create some sort of winter fairy-like creature.  As I often did, I drew the creature from the back, which allows me to avoid my lack of skill in sketching faces and hands; I drew the creature in a flowing dress, which allows me to avoid my lack of skill in drawing shoes from the back, and my difficulty with perspective (more specifically how to draw legs and arms in proper proportion to the body).

The gold marker for wings made me think about a star, so I drew one.  I wanted to draw a forest of Christmas trees, but I ran out of room on the page, so one tree would have to do.  I liked the ambiguity of the sketch.  Is that a winter witch or the angel Gabriel or some stray angel who stayed home from choir practice and so could not appear to the shepherds?  Is that the star that guided the Magi?  Are those ornaments on the tree or the red berries that are on some bushes this time of year?

The whole process delighted me and reminded me to return to this sketchbook more often.  I bought it about a year ago, thinking I wanted to create a daybook of sorts, a place to record sketches and haiku-like responses to the day, a place to record inspirations.  As I flipped back through it, and as I've been flipping back through my sketchbook that I use predominantly during my morning meditation time, it's good to remember how many sketches I made.

In the two sketchbooks alone, I made roughly 80 sketches.  I also made some individual sketches, which I then turned into notecards to send to friends.  That's a lot of sketching, and it's taken place in less than 30 minute increments.

When I met the family member of the friend who had a stroke, she said, "I wanted to meet this person who kept sending these delightful cards--you're so talented."

I don't think of myself as talented at sketching--I can't draw humans in a realistic way that would please me, the way I can sketch a tree or a flower.  Maybe I should change that:  I can't quickly draw humans, I can't consistently draw humans.

Let me record this idea, which is not a commitment at this point, but more of an idea that inspires me:  if I did a quick sketch of a human, a daily sketch, would I improve?  Or maybe if I saw my drawings of humans on a more regular basis, maybe I would get more comfortable with the quirky/imperfect way that I do it.

Haunted by Color, Soothed by Stitching

I turned in my last seminary paper on Saturday, and I turned in my last batch of grades a few days before that.  But yesterday, Thursday, was my first truly unscheduled day of this winter break.  On Sunday, I spent a good chunk of the day attending to my preaching job, on Monday I went to Columbia, on Tuesday I came home, and on Wednesday, I had a holiday lunch with the local church quilt group and an evening Zoom session.  At one point, my spouse said, "Did the Little Engine Who Could have a name?  Because you remind me of an Energizer Bunny in the way that you keep going."

It's a mix of metaphors, but I understand what he was saying.  Even when I'm on break, I'm not really on break.  I still have my part-time preaching job, and there are upcoming classes that start on January 7, onground classes where I need to create syllabi still.  And even though I know that I'm done with the fall semester responsibilities, both as teacher and student, I still wake up in the middle of the night feeling fretful.

I still did a bit of chugging along; I wanted to get to Michael's to get new sketchbooks while they were on sale.  So after rounding up the last of the recycling before the arrival of the trash collectors, I headed out to run some errands.  We did a bit of cooking, and then settled in to watch some plays by way of the National Theatre at Home.  I had to subscribe for a class, and we've been enjoying watching good theatre.  Yesterday we watched two plays.

I still felt fidgety, so I pulled out my basket of fabric.  I've been creating a quilt out of scraps of fabric--you may say, "Yes, that's the very nature of quilting, correct?  Scraps of fabric?"  But I began this project by thinking I would put the scraps together in a less organized way.  I thought I could pay no attention to size or color of each scrap and just put them together as I pulled them out of the basket.  Here's what I have so far:

Clearly, I'm not putting this quilt together in the random way I first envisioned.  But I'm having fun assembling my scraps into longer strips.  Here's the one I worked on last night:

And then I did a few quick sketches for notecards that I'm always creating.  You can see one nestled in the cloth:

Today I'll do a bit more writing than yesterday, a bit more shopping than yesterday (4 x the fuel points at Ingles!).  But I plan to keep doing some sewing each day.  It reminds me of this quote that I saw on the wall of the museum on Tuesday:

Part of a Prayer for Monastic Vocation

This week, I was part of a Zoom session, where, for closing prayer, the woman used part of the Mepkin Abbey Prayer for Monastic Vocation.  She reminded us that we could have an expansive view of that vocation.

I have been thinking about an expansive view of a monastery, something beyond the physical building.  Can our lives be a monastery?  I've written some poems about the heart as a monastery, although I can't find them right now.

I did find the Prayer for Monastic Vocation.  Long ago at Mepkin Abbey, the Abbot passed out postcards.  On one side was the prayer; on the other side, a picture of all the monks.  I put the postcard in the pocket of the winter lightweight coat that I rarely used in South Florida, and I was always delighted when found it in subsequent seasons.

It's still there!  Here's the passage that we used in closing prayer:

"We come before you now asking for the grace

To be faithful to our vocation

Striving to live in the communion of Love which surpasses all other gifts."

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, December 22, 2024:

First Reading: Micah 5:2-5a

Psalm: Luke 1:47-55 (Luke 1:46b-55 NRSV)

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 80:1-7

Second Reading: Hebrews 10:5-10

Gospel: Luke 1:39-45 [46-55]


Finally, we have moved away from John the Baptist--although he's there, in utero, leaping at the sound of Mary's voice.

I love this Gospel vision of improbable salvation: two very different women, yet God has need of them both. I love the way this Gospel shows that even the impossible can be made possible with God: barrenness will come to fruit, youthful inexperience will be seen as a blessing.

Take some Advent time and look at the Magnificat again (verses 46-55). Reflect on how Mary's song of praise sums up most of our Scripture. If we want to know what God is up to in this world, here Mary sings it for us. He has raised up a lowly woman (who would have been a member of one of the lowliest of her society). He has fed the hungry and lifted up the oppressed. He has continued to stay with Abraham's descendants, even when they haven't always deserved it. We can count on our strong God, from generation to generation.

Take some Advent time and think about Mary's call to be greater than she could have ever expected she would be. She could have said no to God--many do. But she said yes. That acceptance didn't mean she would avoid pain and suffering. In fact, by saying yes, she likely exposed herself to more pain and suffering. But in saying yes, she also opened herself up to amazing possibilities.

Think about your own life. Where do you hear God calling your name?

How can we be like Mary? How can we be like Elizabeth, who receives an even more improbable invitation? Where would we be led, if we said yes to God?

God has a greater narrative for us than any we can dream of. Let this be the year that we say yes to God and leave our limited visions behind.

Sermon for December 15, 2024

 December 15, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 3:7-18

As I’ve spent the week thinking about this Gospel, I’ve been finishing papers for this semester’s seminary classes, including a class that looked at twenty-first century churches and what it means to be missional.  I’ve read about churches that do prayer walks through their neighborhoods, churches that partner with community groups, churches that are trying to be outward facing rather than inward facing.  As I’ve written a final paper that synthesizes all the texts, I’ve thought about John the Baptist and his approach to the seekers that came to him.

In seminary, we have not been trained to use the language that John does; imagine if I stood here and preached the kind of sermon that John preached.  Imagine if I called the congregation a brood of vipers—not just snakes, but the offspring of snakes.  If I used this language week after week, I imagine it wouldn’t be too long before you called Bishop Strickland.

But look at how the people in today’s Gospel respond.  I would be the one stomping away, saying “You can’t call me a baby snake.  I don’t have to listen to this.  Don’t threaten me with an ax and with fire.”  No, the people in our Gospel today ask, “What, then, should we do?”  

John the Baptist’s answer contains multitudes.  In it, we get a foreshadowing of some of the narrative story arcs that we’ll find throughout the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts—which scholars believe were written by the same person and should be read together, as two parts of the same story.  

John the Baptist is asked the same question by three very different groups of people, all of whom have been told that the time to repent is now, lest they be like non-producing trees, thrown into the fire.  Scholars have puzzled over the first group, “the crowds” who do the asking.  Some Bible commentators suggest that this part of the crowd was the rich part.  They are the ones, in this time period, who have extra coats and food.

But given the specificity of the next two groups, I think we’re meant to see the crowds as “everybody”—it’s a group that can include the very wealthy to those of more moderate means.  If we’re very rich, we have an extra coat.  But even if we’re not very rich, we likely have something we can share, like food.  Even if we don’t have extra luxury items, like a coat would have been in first century times, we can share something that will sustain life.

Tax collectors are the next group that asks John to tell them what they should do.  The language of the Gospel shows what a surprise it is to find them among the group following John the Baptist.  Like Jesus will do later, John does not turn them away, but he does have specific instructions for them:  “Collect no more than the amount proscribed to you.”  You may remember that tax collectors were paid a percentage of what they collected, which gave perverse incentives to them to collect more than what was owed. Keep in mind that the population was already taxed at 30-40%--no wonder tax collectors were so hated, often linked with sinners in the same breath—the Pharisees will ask the disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with sinners and tax collectors?   Later in the Gospel of Luke, a tax collector will get a name-- Zachaeus, chapter 19,--and we will see what can happen when one becomes serious about repentance.

The third group, the soldiers who ask the same question have a different sort of power, and they can wield that power without caring who they hurt.  There will be no Senate investigations, no suspensions.  They, too, must harness the impulse to take more than what is owed.  

Notice how these last two groups are outsider groups—tax collectors were shunned by the Jews, and Roman soldiers would be avoided.  Today’s Gospel prefigures Christ’s actions, with Zacchaeus and others, with Jesus eating with sinners and healing community by way of inclusion. It also prefigures the actions of the disciples and apostles in the book of Acts, where the first Christians were primarily Jews who learned to share, and then the group was widened to include a Gentile here, a Gentile there—starting with Cornelius in Acts 10, and then many, many more, as we see in the letters of Paul.  John’s 3 groups of questioners gives a foreshadowing of what will come.

John calls the people who come to him a brood of vipers, but he doesn’t leave them dejected.  He gives them a choice—this life or that life?  A tree that bears good fruit or a non-producing tree that faces the ax and the fire?  

Last week I mentioned that John is preaching a message of repentance, but John delivers a message far deeper far more than a need to apologize and feel bad for all the ways that we’ve gone wrong, the way that repentance has come to be preaches.  The Greek word is metanoia, which means a turning around.  It’s a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook, a mental and spiritual U-turn.

A wide variety of people came to John because they knew that their current lives were not working—the crowds, the people working for the government, the military, all sorts of people came to John to find out what to do.  They came to John—a weirdo in the wilderness who called them a brood of vipers.  We hear the story today and feel a tremor of truth.

Like those people who came to John, we, too, can look around us and see that regular old life is not working for the vast majority of people.  We see fractures all around us and worry about what is coming.

John’s answer to the question of “What then should we do?” is still relevant to us here, so many centuries later.  Notice how mild it seems, at first glance:  share your excess.  Not give everything you have to the poor so that you, too will be poor, but share your excess.  In your job, act with integrity.  Don’t abuse the power that you have, but use it wisely.  Don’t act in ways that make people fearful.  Don’t issue threats.  Imagine what a different world we would have if everyone did this—how our interpersonal relationships would improve, how our communities could reknit themselves together, how our geopolitical relations would lead to a world of more flourishing.

John has good news for us this Advent season—the time is getting very late, but it is not too late.  There is time to turn around.  God has not given up on this creation the way that so many people have given up on God and everything else.  John calls on all of us to repent, to make a u-turn, to come back to the covenant with God.  It’s good news for all of us.

The Feast Day of Santa Lucia

Today is the feast day of Santa Lucia, a woman in 4th century Rome during a time of horrible persecution of Christians and much of the rest of the population, and she was martyred.  The reasons for her martyrdom vary:   Did she really gouge out her eyes because a suitor commented on their beauty? Did she die because she had promised her virginity to Christ? Was she killed because the evil emperor had ordered her to be taken to a brothel because she was giving away the family wealth? Was she killed because a rejected suitor outed her for being a Christian?  We don’t really know.  

She is most often pictured with a crown of candles on her head, and tradition says that she wore a candle crown into the catacombs when she took provisions to the Christians hiding there.  With a candle crown, she freed up a hand to carry more supplies.  I love this idea, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it isn't true.

Truth often doesn't matter with these popular saints like Lucia, Nicholas, and Valentine.  We love the traditions, and that means we often know more about the traditions than we do about the saints behind them, if we know anything at all about the saints behind these popular days.

This feast day still seems relevant for two reasons.  First, Lucia shows us the struggle that women face in daily existence in a patriarchal culture, the culture that most of us still must endure.  It’s worth remembering that many women in many countries today don’t have any more control over their bodies or their destinies than these long-ago virgin saints did. In this time of Advent waiting, we can remember that God chose to come to a virgin mother who lived in a culture that wasn’t much different than Santa Lucia’s culture: highly stratified, with power concentrated at the top, power in the hands of white men, which made life exceeding different for everyone who wasn't a powerful, wealthy, white man. It's a society that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

On this feast day of Santa Lucia, we can spend some time thinking about women, about repression, about what it means to control our destiny.  We can think about how to spread freedom.

It's also an important feast day because of the time of year when we celebrate.  Even though we're still in the season of late autumn, in terms of how much sunlight we get, those of us in the northern hemisphere are in the darkest time of the year.  It's great to have a festival that celebrates the comforts of this time of year:  candles and baked goods and hot beverages.

I love our various festivals to get us through the dark of winter. In these colder, darker days, I wish that the early church fathers had put Christmas further into winter, so that we can have more weeks of twinkly lights and candles to enjoy. Christmas in February makes more sense to me, even though I understand how Christmas ended up near the Winter Solstice.

I always thought that if I had a more flexible schedule, I'd spend December 13 making special breads, but that will have to wait.  My schedule is flexible, but much of today and tomorrow will be spent working on my final papers/presentations for three seminary classes.  

You could do baking though! If you’d like to try, this blog post will guide you through it. If you’re the type who needs pictures, it’s got a link to a blog post with pictures.  Enjoy.

Fall Teaching Tasks Complete with Seminary Writing Yet to Do

 I have posted my last set of grades.  I am not done with all of the work from Fall semester, but all my grading is done:  5 Spartanburg Methodist College classes and 4 online classes for Broward College.  For the online classes, I don't have to do some of the more time consuming work:  the curriculum is created and standard for online classes, and the course shell is the same from term to term--in many ways, I am the grader and the person who answers questions and encourages and sends reminders.  Still, it takes time, and it takes up a lot of space in my head at certain points of the term, like the end. 

Tuesday I uploaded all of the components of the final project for my Preaching class: Race, Gender, and the Religious Imagination.  I had to write an academic paper, then I had to create an event that would address some of the material the paper revealed, and I had to create/preach/record a sermon that I would preach for the event, along with a sermon manuscript.  It was one of the more complicated final projects, with lots of parts.

I still have three papers to write, but they feel doable:  one is due on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday.  The end is in sight!  I want to get as much done Thursday as possible.  My spouse has been fighting off a cold, and I worry that I'll wake up sick.

I thought I would get more done yesterday, but after getting up early to get grading done and get the Rogue in for new tires, I was tired by afternoon.  I took a nap and then got up to finish the gingerbread in the late afternoon.  I started the recipe in the morning, but the dough needs time to chill.  They were wonderful fresh out of the oven, but this morning, they are a bit crisper around the edges than I'd like.

As I look at my history in gingerbread, I am realizing that this is one cookie that almost never turns out the way I want:  soft on the inside, but with some resistance (but not overly crispness) on the outside.  It's usually a delicious cookie, if I didn't have my preconceived idea of what it should feel like when I bite into it.  And yes, I do see the life lesson there.

Let me bring this blog post to a close and actually post it.  I first started writing it yesterday and got sidetracked by the day's tasks.  And then let me get to my seminary writing.  

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 15, 2024:


Zephaniah 3:14-20

Isaiah 12:2-6 (Isaiah 12:6)

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18


Today's Gospel shows the fiery side of John the Baptist, who calls his audience a brood of vipers and warns of celestial axes coming to cut down the trees that aren't bearing fruit. Not a very Christmasy message.

But what a contrast to the message of excessive consumerism bleating at us from every portal of communication this time of year. I find it refreshing, this apocalyptic thread of Scripture running parallel to the beat of capitalism.

Go back to that agricultural metaphor of John's: "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire" (Luke 3: 9). The New Year approaches, and many people are thinking about how they've failed in their plans for this year, and how they might get on track for next year. Instead of focusing on appearance and weight loss, as so many people do, we might turn some attention to our spiritual lives. If God was a gardener, and we were trees in the orchard, what would God do?

Would we be chopped down, thrown into the fire?

John's message is not this one of despair. He doesn't say, "There's nothing you can do. The messiah is coming, and all is lost."

No, John tells us to repent. It's not too late. The word repent is often associated with seeking forgiveness of sins, but that's a very narrow definition. The larger meaning of that word is to turn. Turn away from what isn't working in our lives. Turn towards God and all the ways our lives could be better.

How are you bearing fruit? One reason God came to be with us, one reason God took on human form--to show us how to live. If living like Jesus is your goal, what kinds of practices can get you there?

What personality traits bear fruit? What needs to be chopped away? What spiritual practices should you think about incorporating in the coming year, to support your plans to be more Christ-like? More prayer? One day of fasting a week? Less spending on yourself? More sharing? More patience? More volunteer time? Cutting back on debt, so that you don't have to work such ridiculous hours? Living more simply, so that you have more to share with others?

I know, you're thinking that you don't have time for this kind of contemplation right now. You're very, very busy: Christmas gatherings to attend, shopping to do, cooking to complete, getting packed for your holiday journeys.

We live in a culture that likes to keep us busy. We are all too busy to heed John's message: "Repent." Turn around. Do it now, before it is too late.

What would our culture look like if we took Jesus as our model of behavior? If we trusted God more? If, instead of listening to the blare of TV and the Internet and the many forms of media, what would happen if we listened for God? What would happen if we structured our lives according to the plan that Jesus reveals? What would happen if we decided that Jesus meant what he said, and we structured our lives accordingly?

As you think about the implications of the answers to those questions, you see why our culture rushes in to fill the voids that most of us don't even perceive in our individual lives and larger communities. For if we lived our lives and made our decisions based on the Kingdom that Jesus reveals, it would be a very different world indeed. John gives us a hint later in the Gospel for today: if you have two coats, share with the person who has none, and likewise with food; don't cheat people; be content with your wages.

Repent. Turn away from the life of bloat and greed that our culture of consumption offers us. Turn towards a vision of Kingdom living. Don't wait until you're dead. Do what you can to create the Kingdom here and now.

An Afternoon in Which I Record a Sermon for Seminary Class

Yesterday's main task was completing as much of my seminary project that's due at noon today, as I could.  Part of that project involves recording a sermon, and it's a sermon that's supposed to be part of an event that I would create (if I had money, time, place, support) in response to my critical reflection paper.

I had written about the event, a retreat on the nameless women who helped shape the ministry of Jesus, a retreat to remind us that if nameless women can have this kind of influence, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our own agency and power.

Since I live at a retreat center, I thought about all the places where I might record my sermon.  Yesterday was fairly warm for December, and the rain had held off, so I decided that an outdoor location wasn't an issue.  Plus I knew I wouldn't be in the way, as I might if I tried to use one of the indoor spaces around camp.  My spouse was willing to be the controller of the camera.

We went over to the lake, where there's a gorgeous outdoor space, and it's fairly quiet.  We experimented with filming several sentences, a few times, and then we made the recording.  You can view it here.

I thought about doing several more takes, but I know that this attempt is probably as good as some of the other attempts we might make.  I don't have fancy editing software or the knowledge of how to take the best bits and pieces of recordings to make a seamless whole.

Once I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel, I uploaded the video to the dropbox for my class.  And now I need to make the final polishings to my paper.  I am to the point where I need to do some final revisions and call it done.  I've been immersed in this project for days, and I'm probably not able to see it clearly, at least not before the noon due date.

I am always aware that I might be able to create something better, but my experiences as a writer, or as any kind of creative, reminds me that it's always the case.  And what else is always the case:  even if it could be better, my efforts are likely good enough.

Sermon for Sunday, December 8

 December 8, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 3:1-6

When I looked ahead into the lectionary for Advent this year, I felt a bit of despair.  I wanted angels announcing good news—this year, more than ever, I felt hungry for that message.  Instead, we get passages that seem more fitting for the Baptism of Our Lord Sunday that we’ll celebrate in January.  I found myself asking, as you might be asking, “How is this an Advent text?”  Let’s take a deeper look to answer that question.

Luke begins by naming every important ruler, along with religious leadership.  In doing this, the Gospel writer anchors the story of Jesus in a particular place and time.  Unlike Greek and Roman mythology, God doesn’t act here outside of time or in an otherworldly way.  In fact, the audience for the Gospel of Luke would likely remember these rulers and the mighty deeds they had done and the mistakes they had made.

How might this passage sound if we transposed the names into more modern ones?  Let’s give it a try:  In the fifteenth year of the reign of President Trump, when Ursula von der Leyen was governor of Europe, and Xi Jinping (Shee Jin Ping) was ruler of China, and his brother Putin ruler of the region of Russia, and Netanyahu ruler of Israel, 2 during the high priesthood of Pope Francis, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  

To get the full symbolic impact of what Luke does, however, it’s not enough to think about these rulers in geopolitical terms.  Luke’s passage begins by naming the most murderous rulers, not necessarily the ones with the most political power or the ones governing the biggest chunks of land.  We could have an interesting conversation about whether or not I’ve picked the correct names, in light of that insight, and in the spirit of honesty, I’ll admit that I was choosing names that matched countries that seemed important in our own geopolitical discourse, not the names of the most bloodstained leaders.  I chose these rulers from our own time as I thought about one of the main themes of the Gospel of Luke—throughout this Gospel, Luke reminds us of the differences between earthly power and Divine power.

In this passage, by linking the religious leadership with worldly leadership, the Gospel of Luke reminds us that God is not contained in human temples and palaces.  Like other Advent stories, in this one we are reminded that God will come where we least expect to find God:  not in the corridors of political power, not in the beautiful cathedrals where religious authorities rule, but in distant outposts, in places that are untamed, with rivers that serve as borders, not the city walls.

Twenty-first century readers might miss the significance of this river:  a river is a river is a river, at least until its banks overflow.  But first century readers would understand the symbolism:  the Jordan is the river that the Israelites cross when they finally are ready to leave Egypt behind, after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, taking the most circuitous route to the promised land.  Bible commentator Charlene P. E. Burns notes that in the book of Joshua, the Jordan is seen as cleansing the Israelites from “the disgrace of Egypt (Josh. 5:9)  and the river also figures prominently in the Elijah-Elisha stories of 2 Kings, where its crossing sanctifies Elisha as Elijah’s successor (2 Kgs. 2:6–14).”  Here, too, in the Gospel of Luke, the river Jordan is a marker between two time periods, just as John is a marker between two ages, the time before Jesus and the time of the coming of the Messiah, the fulfillment of an ancient promise.  Here, too, we wait and hope—a very Advent theme. 

The river Jordan also symbolizes a cleansing, a return from exile, and the words that John speaks in this passage hearken back to an earlier passage from a different time of exile, the one addressed by Isaiah.  Bible commentator Mariam J. Kammell  says, “Isaiah 40:3–5 was originally a word to the exiles in Babylon and so brought comfort to the people of Israel, that their time of oppression would end with God’s rescue— that God had not forgotten them and would not neglect them.”  Here’s another Advent message that many of us need to hear.  We are not waiting and watching in vain; God will act, promises will be kept, justice and mercy will be delivered.  

There’s an interesting connection and contrast between worldly power and Divine power in the idea of making straight pathways.  When I read this passage this year, I thought of all the winding roads that can take me from the Asheville area to Bristol; I am grateful for the quick restoration of I 26 which makes it possible for me to be here to be part of worship and to be part of this community.  I was grateful for it before I took the winding, twisty roads that Sunday several weeks after the hurricane.  I see the passage in our text today as praising direct routes, and judging by the roads we build and rebuild, most of us in the 21st century feel the same way.

But first century hearers of this text would have a different connection to Roman roads.  Roman roads were straight, but they weren’t built for every day people.  Indeed, most people would never be given permission to use a Roman road.  Roman roads were built for armies and for officials who needed to respond to an emergency, much the same way as our interstate system was designed.  All others would use the dirt paths and other routes in between places.  A path made straight would not be a sign of easy travel.  A path made straight would be a sign of impending war.

If we make the mountains low, how will we see the approaching armies and prepare?  If the paths are smooth, we seem even more likely to be killed in a war or carried away as a captive to be sold into enslavement.  First century readers might be puzzled by this symbolism in this speech of John crying in the wilderness.

In the many intervening centuries, we’ve seen John’s speech as declaring that we need salvation, and that salvation is coming soon.  But John is preaching something far more profound than feeling sorry for the ways we’ve sinned.  The Greek word is metanoia, a turning around, and this idea is so important that we get a fuller exploration of it in next Sunday’s Gospel reading.

Like first century people made anxious by the idea of straight pathways, we have an Advent message that might make us nervous, much as we need to hear it.  John the Baptist reminds us of all the answers we thought we had, all the power we thought we understood.  Like the Israelites, we might feel that we’re in exile, cut off from home.  Like ordinary people during the time of Roman empire, we might feel like all our protections have been taken away, like we’re sitting ducks on a wide highway.  Like John, we might be finding ourselves in a wilderness.  Perhaps it’s a wilderness of our own making, like a move to a new job or maybe it’s one that descended on us, like illness or death or loss.

Hear the good news again.  Your salvation is at hand: your grieving heart will be comforted, your anger and irritation will lift, the planet will heal itself, God will take care of you.  In short, everything you need is on its way.

In this year, in every year, that’s the Advent message so many of us yearn to hear, whether delivered by angels or in dreams or in the mouth of a prophet.  This year, hear the message again and believe.

The Feast Day of Saint Nicholas

Today, all over Europe, the gift-giving season begins. I had a friend in grad school who celebrated Saint Nicholas Day by having each family member open one present on the night of Dec. 6. It was the first I had heard of the feast day, but I was enchanted.

Still, I don't do much with this feast day--if I had children or gift-giving friends, I might, but most years, I simply pause to remember the historical origins of the saint and the day.

In different years, I might have spent some time looking at my own Santa objects. One year, my step-mom in law and my father in law gave me these as Christmas presents:

They're actually cookie presses, and the Santa figures are the handles of the press. I've never used them as a cookie press, but I love them as decorations that are faithful to the European country of origin.

It's always a bit of a surprise to realize that Saint Nicholas was a real person. But indeed he was. In the fourth century, he lived in Myra, then part of Greece, now part of Turkey; eventually, he became Bishop of Myra. He became known for his habit of gift giving and miracle working, although it's hard to know what really happened and what's become folklore. Some of his gift giving is minor, like leaving coins in shoes that were left out for him. Some were more major, like resurrecting three boys killed by a butcher.

My favorite story is the one of the poor man with three children who had no dowry for them. No dowry meant no marriage, and so, they were going to have to become prostitutes. In the dead of night, Nicholas threw a bag of gold into the house. Some legends have that he left a bag of gold for each daughter that night, while some say that he gave the gold on successive nights, while some say that he gave the gold as each girl came to marrying age.

Through the centuries, the image of Saint Nicholas has morphed into Santa Claus, but as with many modern customs, one doesn't have to dig far to find the ancient root.

I don't have as many Santa images in my Christmas decorations. Here's my favorite Santa ornament:

I picked it up in May of 1994 or so. I was visiting my parents, and I went with them on a trip to Pennsylvania where my dad was attending a conference. I picked this ornament up in a gift shop that had baskets of ornaments on sale. I love that it uses twine as joints to hold Santa together.

In the past decade, I've been on the lookout for more modern Saint Nicholas images. A few years ago, one of my friends posted this photo of her Santa display to her Facebook page:

I love the ecumenical nature of this picture of Santa: Santa statues coexisting peacefully with Buddha statues. And then I thought, how perfect for the Feast Day of St. Nicholas!

More recently, I have a new favorite Saint Nicholas image, courtesy of my cousin's wife:

In this image, Santa communicates by way of American Sign Language. As I looked at the background of the photo, I realized Santa sits in a school--the sign on the bulletin board announces free breakfast and lunch.

The photo seems both modern and ancient to me: a saint who can communicate in the language we will hear, the promise that the hungry will be filled.

In our time, when ancient customs seem in danger of being taken over by consumerist frenzy, let us pause for a moment to reflect on gifts of all kinds. Let us remember those who don't have the money that gifts so often require. Let us invite the gifts of communication and generosity into our lives.

Nuggets of Inspiration from Facebook Posts: C. S. Lewis on Saints and Theologian Ruben Alves on Hope

Every day I worry that I waste too much time zipping around to Internet sites, and I always feel I spend too much time on social media.  But each day, I get a bit of inspiration, a bit of uplift that keeps me hopeful that it's not a complete waste of time.  I've pasted some samples below.

And it's also worth remembering that I've always wasted some time:  trashy books, afternoon talk shows like Oprah, gossiping with colleagues.  It's good to remember that they weren't all complete wastes of time.  And it's probably unrealistic to expect myself to be productive every waking hour.

A Facebook friend who is a female pastor made this post:

As I drove to my last radiation treatment this morning and listened to the news about the escalation of the war in Ukraine and Russia, I remembered C.S. Lewis words, “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints." And here, I don't think he's talking about the saints with a capital S, but those who persist in the small, everyday acts of courage, hope, and kindness. These are the things that make for peace and that will, in the end, erase every memory of the great unoriginal tyrants.

A Facebook friend who is a female pastor made this post (completely unrelated to the above quote):

An Advent thought from Brazilian theologian Ruben Alves: “Hope is that presentiment that the imagination is more real, and reality less real, than we had thought. It is the sensation that the last word does not belong to the brutality of facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is far more complex than realism would have us believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will open the way to freedom and resurrection.”

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 8, 2024:

Malachi 3:1-4 or Baruch 5:1-9

Luke 1:68-79 (Luke 1:78)

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

In this week's Gospel, we see and hear John the Baptist proclaiming the good news. We'll see him in different contexts throughout the liturgical year. Luke gives a rather tame introduction--no locusts or wild honey. But he is living in the wilderness, which has led me to think of the role of wilderness in the lives of believers.

Again, in this season of relentless festivity, this Gospel (and all the Advent readings) might give us a bit of disconnect. Why is John in the wilderness? What is the nature of this good news?

If we're living in the wilderness, we may feel cut off or otherwise deadened. It's hard to think about wilderness, in this time of overdevelopment. Many of us live in places where there is more concrete than desert (or other forms of wilderness). Perhaps one of these places of relentless "development" is where John the Baptist would come from, if we re-cast the story in modern terms.

Or perhaps it would be useful to think of wilderness in other ways. Perhaps the wilderness is not a geographical place, so much as an emotional one. Can we even hear this good news in the world we live in? We like to think that we're connected, but I've been wondering about all the ways that our technology keeps us disconnected. We text each other instead of having conversations. We get our news from so many sources, at every hour of the day, that we may go numb. The human brain was not made for such misery. Maybe the wilderness in which we find ourselves is one of shallow connection where our roots whither.

Many of us approach December with all kinds of dread. We don't have enough money to pay for necessities, much less gifts. We've lost loved ones, and the holidays remind us of those holes left by loss. We remember a time when we liked the holidays and we've lost that person who approached the season with wonder and joy. We have too much caretaking to do and no one taking care of us.

Listen to the words of John the Baptist again. Listen to God, who often calls to us from the wilderness. Let the words fill your heart with hope: "The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." (Luke 3: 5-6).

Your salvation is at hand: your grieving heart will be comforted, your anger and irritation will lift, the planet will heal itself as it always does, God will take care of you and everything you need is on its way.

Glad tidings of good news indeed.