Recording of Sermon for Sunday, December 7, 2025

The video of my sermon for Sunday was posted a few days late; usually it's posted within an hour of the time I deliver it.  You can view it here on my YouTube channel.  You can read the sermon manuscript in this blog post.

Returning to Bethlehem Again

I spent much of yesterday doing volunteer work, but not the traditional kind.  I haven't been stocking the food pantry or knitting scarves.  Yesterday I went over to a local Methodist church that allows its gym to be transformed into ancient Bethlehem for a walk-through, immersive experience, Return to Bethlehem.  All proceeds go to Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM), an interfaith group which works on hunger and homelessness issues in Buncombe county, the county which contains Asheville.

I first started doing this volunteer work in December of 2023, and I wrote a blog post about it, which I'll quote here:   "I thought it might be something like a living Nativity scene, maybe with a few extra scenes. I was wrong. It's a whole living Nativity village. One of the supervisors walked me through the space, telling me about how the visitors would stop at each station to hear actors tell about the space. For example, there's a weaver's house, and the Temple, and a place where a person dyes cloth. Eventually the tour ends up at the inn and the stable outside of the inn."

It takes a lot of work to make this transformation:  lots of hanging and draping of fabric, LOTS of industrial stapling, lots of arranging of baskets and chairs and potted plants and such.  I love doing it, and I'm happy to help.  It hits a weird combination of my interests:  the illusions of stagecraft, theatre, fabric, color and texture--creating illusions and believability.

Here's a 2023 picture, when the theatre flats were first being assembled.

Eventually each station gets its own furniture and tubs of supplies.  We have other tubs of fabric we can use, all sorts of fabrics.

And then, finally, a finished product, in this case, the Temple (this is a 2023 picture--I forgot to take pictures of  yesterday's creation, where I used more blue fabrics and velvets).

It's more standing on a ladder than I'd like, but I'm happy I can still do it.  I expected to be much more sore this morning than I am.

After a morning working on the Return to Bethlehem sets, I went over to the local Lutheran church to work on Lutheran World Relief quilts.  We assembled 4 quilts to get them ready for knotting.  I prefer to assemble quilt tops out of all the fabric we have, but by assembling those quilts, one of our members could take them home to get the knotting done.  I did bring some fabric home in the hopes that I/we can assemble a quilt top or two in the next week.  And then I made some repairs to a quilt top that my spouse had been assembling before he got frustrated and made ill-advised cuts.

Today I'll go back to the Methodist church--we're racing against the clock, since Return to Bethlehem opens at 6 tonight.  When I left yesterday at 1, we had made good progress, and more volunteers were expected.  Many of us have some experience now, which makes it easier to get things done.  And we seem to have enough ladders and enough staplers, lacks which have slowed us down in the past.

And now it is time to shift my morning into a different gear, to get ready for another day of volunteering in this way.

 

The Gospel for Sunday, December 14, 2025

  The readings for Sunday, December 14, 2025:

First Reading: Isaiah 35:1-10

Psalm: Psalm 146:4-9 (Psalm 146:5-10 NRSV)

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

Second Reading: James 5:7-10

Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11


Here again, in this week's Gospel, Jesus reminds us of the new social order--the first will be last, the last will be first. Since many of us in first world churches would be categorized as "the first," this edict bears some contemplation. What do we do if we find ourselves in positions of power? Are we supposed to walk away from that?

Well, yes, in a sense, we are. Again and again, the Bible reminds us that we find God on the margins of respectable society. Again and again, we see that God lives with the poor and the oppressed. Nowhere is that message more visible to Christians than in the story of the birth of Jesus.

We get so dazzled by the angels and the wise men that we forget some of the basic elements of the story. In the time of great Roman power, God doesn't appear in Rome. No, God chooses to take on human form in a remote Roman outpost. In our current day, it would be as if the baby Jesus was born on Guam or the Maldives. Most of us couldn't locate those islands on a globe; we'd be surprised to hear that the Messiah came again and chose to be born so far away from the most important world power centers, like New York City or London or Beijing.

God came to live amongst one of the most marginalized groups in the Roman empire--the only people lower on the social totem pole would have been captives of certain wars and slaves. Most Romans would have seen Palestinian Jews as weird and warped, those people who limited themselves to one god. Not sophisticated at all.

God couldn't even get a room at the inn. From years of Christmas pageants, we may have sanitized that manger. We may forget about the smelliness of real hay, the scratchiness, the bugs, the ways that animals stink up a space.

God chose a marginalized young couple as parents. Did God choose to be born in the palace of Herod? No. We don't hear about Joseph as a landowner, which means that his family couldn't have been much lower on the totem pole, unless they were the Palestinian equivalent of sharecroppers. God does not choose the way of comfort.

Again and again, Jesus tells us to keep watch. God appears in forms that we don't always recognize. God appears in places where we wouldn't expect to find the Divine. Jesus reminds us again and again that there's always hope in a broken world. God might perform the kind of miracles that don't interest us at first. The Palestinian Jews wanted a warrior Messiah to liberate them from Rome. Instead they got someone who healed the sick and told them to be mindful of their spiritual lives so that they didn't lose their souls.

Many of us experience something similar today. We want something different from God. God has different desires for us than our desires for our lives. We ask for signs and miracles, and when we get them, we sigh and say, "That's not what I meant. I wanted them in a different form." We turn away.

The John the Baptists of the world remind us to turn back again. Repent. Turn back. Forswear our foolish ways. Go out to meet God. Your salvation is at hand.

Week-End Update: Cooking and Other Types of Mood Management

In some ways, it was a good week-end.  Sunday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee went well, the kind of Sunday where I find myself wishing this position as a Synod Appointed Minister could continue for several more years.  It might, but much of that decision will not be up to me.

It was the kind of week-end where I hear about the travel plans of neighbors and feel a weird sense of emotion.  It's not envy, exactly.  They're taking a 10 day walk across England, 7-8 miles a day, carrying everything they need on their backs, following the same path that the pilgrim's in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales traveled.  They are at least 10 years older than I am, maybe 15.  It's the kind of plan that makes me wonder if I should retire/work less now rather than later.  But I am not sure we could make this kind of trek now.  For one thing, the long airline flight to get there is a dealbreaker for me.  And my spouse would need a very flat route, and he would need to do some training to be ready for even a flat route.

So, not envy, but the kind of feeling I have had so often in my life, wondering what is wrong with me that I don't want what so many other people seem to want.  In the above paragraph, it's vacation plans and bucket lists.  I look at the larger culture, particularly the desire to have the latest cell phone and hours to spend scrolling, and I don't feel like something is wrong with me.  I do worry about the health of the larger culture, particularly when I stumble across particularly disturbing information about what tech is doing to our brains.

I organized a cookie tasting for our neighborhood group, and I tried to make a recipe, pecan sandies, from childhood.  As with the chocolate chip cookies I've tried to make, the butter seemed to melt outside the cookie and fry it.  Not untasty, but not the memory of the cookie.  And there was that distressing moment when I said, "I can't cook anymore."  A ridiculous thought, but a distressing one.

Yesterday, though, we had great success making pizza with cast iron pans.  Before putting them in the oven, I turned the burner to medium heat for 3 minutes, as recommended by this blog post from King Arthur Baking Company.  It was the first time since being in this house when we've had a good homemade pizza.  My usual experience is to go through all the effort to make homemade pizza, only to be left with a mess of a kitchen and a blah pizza and a yearning for pizza from somewhere else. 

Yesterday as we ate pizza, we watched the recording of the Sunday worship service at the National Cathedral.  The service was beautiful, and once again, I found myself observing a strange mood evolving in me.  There was some nostalgia for the year I spent in seminary, where I went to the Cathedral occasionally.  I felt nostalgia and wistfulness and sadness for a time that is gone and won't be coming back.  I felt fortunate to have had the experiences and the opportunities and at the same time, I know what I had planned to do with that time in the city and the ways I fell short.  I tried to keep focused on what I did manage to do.  

When the worship service was over, we switched to Saturday Night Live snippets, so it was easier to manage my mood.  And then it was off to bed; I've been going to sleep increasingly earlier, and I feel like I need to get back on a more reasonable track.

Sermon for Sunday, December 7, 2025

December 7, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 3: 1-12


Today's Gospel continues with the Advent theme of watching, waiting, and listening for the call. Today it's John the Baptist who tells us what's to come and what we are waiting for.

Many of John's listeners in today's Gospel probably thought that John was talking about himself when he said, “This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.'"” First century Palestine was full of self-proclaimed Messiahs, and I suspect many of them spoke of themselves in the third person telling (or warning) of the deeds they would do. Many of John’s listeners yearned for a Messiah that would come in a form they'd recognize: that warrior spoken of by ancient prophets and the Psalmist to save them from the Romans or a temple reformer to get rid of corrupt priests and other perverters of the word of God.


Of course, people yearning for that kind of messiah would not be wanting John the Baptist to be their Messiah. He is not that kind of warrior who can save them from the Romans or reform the Temple, although the later part of today’s Gospel, with John addressing Pharisees and Sadducees shows that he does have some appetite for confronting religious officials. People who came to the wilderness to see John the Baptist might have been hoping for a Messiah, but what they saw hearkened back to an earlier age. Even before he gave his message, just by his clothes and diet, John the Baptist would be familiar in his role as a prophet, out of the line of Isaiah or Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, or Micah.


His message would be right at home coming out of the mouths of those prophets. It’s important to remember that most Biblical prophets are not foretelling the far away future. On the contrary, God sends prophets to the people to remind them of the covenant, to call them back to right and righteous living in their time. Some prophets to do this by painting a picture of what could happen if people do this, the glorious world that is waiting if we would just move to God’s vision of the world. Some prophets do this by warning about what happens when people don’t set themselves right with God, who is just, loving, and powerful.


With his language of axes and winnowing and unquenchable fire, John the Baptist is clearly in the latter camp of prophets. And it works on some level. Consider verses 5 and 6: “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” Geographically, this means that everyone came to see John, city dwellers, people who lived in the desert, and everyone in between—John the Baptist wasn’t just a local phenomenon.


And unlike Old Testament prophets who might have to make a perilous journey to bring God’s message to God’s people, in today’s Gospel, John is on the margins, in the wilderness, and the center comes to him, just as wise men came to the baby Jesus just a chapter earlier in Matthew. And John’s influence is clearly more than the center of civilization. In this short passage, the whole of Judaism comes to him: everyone from religious elite to the common folks.


If John had been a different kind of person, he could have claimed enormous power for himself. Clearly, he’s charismatic. After several thousand years of baptisms, we might forget that John was doing a new thing. While ancient people would have taken part in ritual baths for purification after certain events, like pregnancy or other body processes that involved fluids, the idea of baptism for purification from spiritual impurity seems to be new, introduced by John the Baptist. And people go along with this idea and go into a river—ritual baths, by contrast, were human-created structures, a much tamer, safer experience than what John offers.


Once purified, John the Baptist preaches that the people are ready to meet their Messiah, the one prophesied in today’s Old Testament texts, the bloom that comes from the stump of Jesse. These kinds of prophecies prepare people to expect a warrior Messiah, and John’s language suggests that he, too, would welcome the arrival of this kind of savior, a Savior who would, to use the words of the prophet Isaiah from today’s reading, “strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.”


This kind of language is part of why people expect the Messiah to be a warrior type. This kind of language doesn’t prepare us to be on the lookout for a baby in a manger or a healer moving from place to place.


In next week’s Gospel, we’ll discover that John the Baptist isn’t quite sure that Jesus is the Messiah. He asks the question asked by many through the ages: “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for?”


In this Advent time of watching and waiting, it’s a good question for us, too. What are we hoping for? What are we yearning for? Although we might wish that others would be winnowed and thrown in the fire, we know we don’t want that for ourselves.


John reminds us that God has always wanted for us to be sprouts that grow up to bear good fruit. It’s a powerful image, one that’s not unique to John the Baptist. Indeed, it’s an image that Jesus will use, and it’s one that we’ve returned to as a congregation. What are the fruits of faithfulness?


John the Baptist emerges from the wilderness, and at first look, he seems to be a prophtet rooted in the Old Testament tradition of prophecy, of calling people to repent from past transgressions and to remember their roots of faithfulness. But John is also pointing to a new direction, with his baptizing in the river Jordan, the river associated with the promised land of old, and the new world that the Messiah will usher in.


Let us take some Advent time to consider the Messiah we are longing to meet, the God who longs to meet us where we are. Is it the baby that looks so harmless, lying in a feeding trough? Do we long for someone fierce like John the Baptist, someone who pulls no punches and tells it like it is? Are we hoping for that gardener that will prune back all the dead wood? Can we separate the charismatic imposters from the true Messiah? John the Baptist warns us to be alert even as we yearn.


Many of us in this congregation are coming to the end of a very hard year, a wilderness time of our lives. Indeed, if we look at events around the planet in the past few years, it’s not hard to see this decade as a wilderness time for the world. Today’s Gospel gives us a new way to frame this wilderness time, as an opportunity to get on the right path. And if we’ve been in this wilderness place for so long that we feel immobile, our Buddhist friends would remind us that the easiest way to get on the right path is to step out to whatever part of that path is closest.


John the Baptist reminds us of the potential of this desert space. For those of us who feel hollowed out, let us remember the vision offered in today’s Gospel—wilderness as a place of preparation, yes, but also of promise. We have not been forgotten. God has not gone off to greener galaxies. Out of a wasteland of locusts and wild honey, new hope arises. Let us prepare the path of our lives and make the way straight. Our redemption is at hand.

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.

This year, my neighborhood group is having a cookie/treat tasting.  It's not a cookie swap, which requires people to bring several dozen cookies to exchange.  No, we will bring a batch of cookies or treats of some sort and enjoy some time together, with treats to eat if we want.  We're doing it at one of the Lutheridge buildings, which means no host who had to clean their house.  

In different years, I might have spent some time looking at my own Santa objects, but they are all packed away while the house renovation continues.   Happily, I have pictures!

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.

Twenty Years of Phyllis Tickle's "The Divine Hours"

As I've been making my way through the first week of Advent devotional time, it occurred to me that I've now been using Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours for 20 years.  Back in 2005, having returned from my second trip to Mepkin Abbey, I wanted a prayer manual that was more like I experienced at Mepkin.  I'm not sure how I found The Divine Hours, but it's probably because some of the theological writers I admired were using it, or maybe I read other work of Tickle's and thought The Divine Hours was worth the price.

And I do mean price, as in the cost of the book:  a 3 volume set, each volume $35 before the Amazon discount.  But it's been worth it.

I have been most constant in my use of the books in the mornings.  It's hard for me to remember to return to the practice through the day, but when I do, I notice a difference.  I'm not sure why that difference isn't enough to make me do it consistently.

In late March of 2020, I started using the books as I did an online morning devotional for my church, which I've written about in other blog posts (most notably here at the 7 month mark and here at the 5 year mark).

I was not blogging back in 2005 when I first started using the books, but I remember loving the variety of readings, something that I didn't have in other books that were much briefer devotionals.  Other devotionals had one or two verses, if that.  I also loved the feeling of participating in an ancient ritual.

There have been times when the physical structure of the books weighed on me--literally, in some ways.  The books are fairly big, especially if one is travelling by plane and wants to bring other books too.  And the print is tiny.  But the physical book is reliable, unlike online sites.

I think back to 2005, when I envisioned a new life of some sort:  maybe a different teaching job (always I've been dreaming of a small, liberal arts college) or maybe a different degree (an MFA or an MDiv).  But I felt trapped in place and would only go on to feel increasingly trapped.

I'm grateful to be in this part of my life for many reasons, but not feeling trapped anymore is one of the reasons that makes me feel most grateful.  And I'm grateful to books like The Divine Hours that have been with me along the way.

Jan Richardson's Prayer/Hope for Peace

During a Monday morning prayer group, our leader shared the following prayer by Jan Richardson with us.  Jan Richardson has written many prayers, so I couldn't track the prayer to the original posting of it.  I loved the imagery and language, and it seems appropriate for our moment in history.

That peace will rise like bread we can always hope.
That justice will flow like wine we can always hope.
That the table will make strangers kin we can always hope.
That our hope will rise like bread we can always pray.


By Jan Richardson

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 7, 2025:

First Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Second Reading: Romans 15:4-13

Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12


Today's Gospel continues with the Advent theme of watching, waiting, and listening for the call. Today it's John the Baptist who tells us of what's to come.

Many of John's listeners in today's Gospel probably thought that John was talking about himself; after all, first century Palestine was full of self-proclaimed Messiahs, and I expect many of them spoke of themselves in the third person telling (or warning) of the deeds they would do. Many of John's listeners probably had no idea what he was talking about; humans seem incapable of thinking in terms of metaphor and symbol for very long. Many of them probably expected a Messiah that would come in a form they'd recognize: a warrior to save them from the Romans, a temple reformer to get rid of corrupt priests, or maybe someone who would lead them into the wilderness to set up a new community.

Are we not the same way? How many of us read the Bible literally, expecting specific answers to social or political issues that would have been unheard of thousands of years ago when the Scriptures were written? How many of us would welcome salvation when it comes? We go to church, we sit in our pews, we wait for God to appear. We wonder why we don’t feel the presence of God, as we go home to take a nap and gear up for our secular week ahead. We scurry through the rat race of our lives, substituting other things for God. We worship at the churches of Capitalism, buying things at the mall or on the Internet, which means we have to work overtime to pay for those things. We wonder why we feel unfulfilled. To try to fill that emptiness, we do more of the activities that leave us with gaping holes in our Spirit. We hear that voice, the voice of the Spirit--maybe it cries or maybe it whispers. It scares us, so we continue scrolling through our phone,  we eat some more, we keep looking for the perfect show to stream, or we go to bed early--because we can't deal with the implications.

John warns what happens to those of us who don't listen: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (verse 12). Some of us don't like this vision of a God with a winnowing fork in hand. How does this mesh with a God of grace and love?

I think of parents who warn their children of the danger of bad choices. I think of all the ways we make bad choices, both as children and as adults.

I return to John's fiery language and the idea of winnowing. I visualize God as a loving parent, wishing we would do what's good for us. God doesn't have to do much winnowing. Our lifestyles are already punishing us. Many of us are already feeling that unquenchable fire.

The good news is that there is time to change our ways. There is still time to "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." (verse 3). Advent, traditionally a time for getting ready, is a good time to think ahead. How could we make the next year to be our best spiritual year ever?

Choose just one simple action, whether it be keeping a prayer journal or making gratitude lists or learning to play or sing sacred music. Choose just one action and attend to it faithfully.

In this way, you will be in a much stronger spiritual place a year from now. You will be bearing fruit. God will call, and you will hear. God won't have to go to such great lengths to get your attention. Your deepest yearnings, the ones you didn't even know you had, will be filled, as you move towards God--and God moves towards you.

Recording of Sunday's Sermon for Advent 1

Before we get too far away from last Sunday, the firs Sunday in Advent, let me link to the recording of my sermon for November 30.  You can read the manuscript here.

Despite the forecast of ice in the mountains and that it was the Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end, we had a fairly easy trip to Bristol, Tennessee and back.  And the church strikes me as particularly beautiful during the season of Advent, as most churches do.  It is my third Advent season with this church, and I'm glad to still be here with this community.

World AIDS Day 2025

Here we are, World AIDS Day, in yet another year of our no-longer-new pandemic (COVID 19), a disease that's much easier to contract than AIDS, a disease that like AIDS preys on the more vulnerable in our society.

Maybe all diseases target the more vulnerable.  And our epidemiologist friends would remind us that diseases don't have emotions or calculations.  Diseases infect where they can, and in vulnerable populations, diseases have more opportunity.

AIDS is still a fairly fierce disease, even though we have medications that can keep people alive for decades--that's still a lot of disease management, which isn't a cure.  According to a UN Fact Sheet, 1.3 million people worldwide contracted AIDS in 2024 alone--that's just one year.  Since the beginning of this epidemic, 91.4 million people have been infected, and 44.1 million have died of the disease.

At this moment in time, COVID-19 isn't killing as many of us.  But it is still a disease to be reckoned with, a disease that leaves lots of wreckage in its wake.  Like AIDS, many of us assume that COVID-19 has been tamed or disappeared.  But like AIDS, some of us are more protected than others.

Dec. 1 is also the anniversary of the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This act is often given credit for launching the Civil Rights Movement, but what many forget is that various communities had begun planning for the launch, even before they could see or know what it would look like.

In fact, for generations, people had prepared for just such a moment. They had gotten training in nonviolent resistance. They had come together in community in a variety of ways. They were prepared.

Someone asked me once how I had come to be such an optimist. I've always had an optimistic streak, but frankly, my whole world view shifted when I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison. I fully expected him to be killed, but again, my worldview shifted when I watched South Africans stand in line for days (days!) to elect him president. And he was ready to be president because he had spent those decades in prison thinking about how he would run the country and making plans.

I have seen enormous social change happen in my lifetime--in the face of such evidence, I must agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, who said the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.  

Some years, that arc seems so long and the bending so difficult to discern.  Diseases show us where we need to bend that arc towards justice, where there's still opportunity for progress.

Those of us who work towards social justice and human dignity for all know how long the struggle might be. We are similar to those medieval builders of cathedrals: we may not be around to see the magnificent completion of our vision, but it's important to play our part. In the words of that old Gospel song, we keep our eyes on the prize, our hands on the plow, and hold on.

Sermon for Sunday, November 30, 2025

November 30, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 24: 36-44



When I arrived at church this morning, I felt my shoulders release, going from a usual “hunched to my ears” kind of position to a more relaxed state. I felt my brain relax too, as I looked at the Advent wreath and the Chrismon tree with its beautiful lights. Christmas at last! My favorite time of year!

And then we get to the Gospel, which says, “Not yet.” How does the Gospel say this? The way the Gospel always does for the first Sunday of Advent, by reminding us of the impending doom that is always around the corner. Some of us are probably saying, “Gee, thanks. I live in a constant state of anxiety already.” My shoulders just hunched back up.


At first I thought that we had one of those fluky years where Advent 1 is Apocalypse Sunday. Then I looked through my file of written sermons and realized Advent 1 is ALWAYS Apocalypse Sunday, which means every Gospel includes this kind of apocalyptic teaching from Jesus (two years ago it was from Mark, last year from Luke). And when I read today’s Gospel, I thought, I feel like I’ve been preaching on end times a lot lately. Since I’ve been following the lectionary and not using the news shows as my starting point for the sermon, that must mean that it’s more than just a stray Gospel text that circles back to apocalypse.


Some non-Christian folks have told me that they assume that Christians are always focused on the end times, except for when we’re trying to ruin everyone’s good time in the here and now. Indeed, the ideas in this text have helped shape what many modern people, Christian and non-Christian, assume the end times will be, the left behind story, that somehow those who have managed to stay faithful will be rescued while everyone else perishes.


In today’s text, Jesus invokes the God that rescues Noah, a depiction of God that is my least favorite, God the destroyer. I prefer the God of the first chapters of Genesis, God who creates and creates and creates and delights in every aspect of that creation. The God in the time of Noah is the one who crumples up the rough draft and tosses it all in the trash can.

I imagine Jesus here, listening to this sermon, Jesus who would say, “Not every rough draft. Noah and his family are saved, along with two of every animal.” That’s a lot of rough drafts saved from the garbage, saved from judgment. Or maybe not saved from judgment, but evaluated and found worthy.


Of course, that idea of a God of judgment isn’t one that I warm to. The world is full of judgment, so why do we need to bring judgment to our Sunday, particularly an Advent Sunday?


Some theologians would say, “You’re focusing on the wrong part of the story. It’s not about the judgment. It’s about the confidence that God is at work in the world, the world that looks flooded with bad news and bad decisions, the world that looks like it is going in a disastrous direction.” The story of Noah could remind us of when God acted as judge and destroyer. But it should also remind us of God who is making all things new, taking the wreckage and building a new creation. The resurrection of Jesus is one of the most stunning examples of the power of God to put to right all the ways that humans destroy things. As scholar David J. Bartlett says, “We wait in hope because we wait in memory.” We wait in hope for a new creation.


Today’s Gospel tells us that it’s not enough to wait, however, even though Advent is traditionally a season of waiting, at least in the Church, if not in larger culture. We go about our regular lives, but we must also stay alert. In the time of Advent, it’s easy to stay alert. In some ways, it’s unlike the time that Jesus discusses, where we don’t know the day or the hour. In Advent, we’re surrounded by reminders that Christmas is coming. It’s one of the few times that the larger culture joins us in our waiting for the big day—December 25 is still for most of us the culmination of the Christmas season.


But what if we try a different approach this year? What if we borrow from the season of Lent, or the traditions of the new year? What if we set an intention to be more faithful people in the coming year? What if we adopted an Advent discipline instead of a Lenten discipline—but this year, what if we kept that discipline going for the whole year instead of just a season.


I’m not suggesting anything particularly radical, but I am suggesting that we think about a daily discipline, not a seasonal one. As we move through Advent, I plan to think about what is giving me life. Is it the lighting of the candles on the Advent wreath? As we leave Advent behind, I could continue to light candles, a new candle for each week of the year. Is it the devotional time that can come with the candle lighting? Let me add a 5 minute devotion at a time of day that’s not usual for me. If it’s the special music we like, there’s nothing that says that we can’t use the music of Christmas to enrich other times of the year.


I know that for many of us, it’s the mood of good cheer that we love about this time of year, more than the external aspects like decorations or food. But hear the good news: by taking our Advent disciplines with us throughout the year, we can keep the mood of good cheer going. Sure, everyone else might descend into grumpiness—but maybe if we keep our Christmas calm, with our shoulders not bunched up around our ears, maybe that calm will spread.


Jesus tells us again and again that we can’t know the day or the hour that the day of rescue will come. But Jesus assures us that we don’t need to worry about it (shoulders down), and yet, we don’t get a free pass to sit back and enjoy the destruction of others. David J. Bartlett says, “One day Jesus may appear in the clouds, suddenly, like a thief in the night. But before that—as Matthew reminds us—Jesus will appear just around the corner, suddenly, like a hungry person, or a neighbor ill-clothed, or someone sick or imprisoned.”


Our Advent disciplines will help us to be ready for whatever comes. Maybe it will be that day long foretold when the final judgment happens. But in the mean time, as we wait for whatever comes, we find ourselves uniquely prepared to repair our society and ourselves, to reweave all the shredded fabric of our lives into a new and vibrant cloth.


The Chrismon tree and the Advent wreath declare that Christ is coming. The Gospel texts ask if we are ready. Our Advent disciplines, taken with us through the year, will help us declare that yes, we are ready. Come Lord Jesus!

Thanksgiving History in Fabric Scraps

Here I sit, at the kitchen table of the big, ramshackle house at Lutheridge, the church camp where my family has always had our holiday festivities (well, since 1992 or so), the house where we’ve assembled for at least 20 years.  It was at this table, on the Saturday of Thanksgiving week-end in 2022, where I first assembled the log cabin patch out of scraps, and I’ve been doing it ever since, and may just continue to do it until my fingers won’t let me.

It has been a great Thanksgiving this year, although zooming by too fast, and I know I likely say that every year.  This year, all the members of the next generation are teenagers now, which brings a certain sadness about all the books we’re not reading about giving a mouse a cookie or llamas in pajamas.

 Happily, there are other joys.  We spent much of the week-end helping the oldest teenager in the house with a project she envisioned:  letters made of fabric scraps, sewed on a sweatshirt.  When my cousin wrote me in advance and told me what she had in mind, I brought all my fabric scraps with me.

 

 

The project became a bit bigger than we first thought it would be.  She chose small squares, and we made them into larger squares of four patches; then we made took the template she’d made of paper letters and cut out the fabric.  We used the Steam-a-seam product to make sure the letters didn’t move around.

 

 

And what do you know—it worked!  It looked very much like the picture that had provided the inspiration, and she was very happy with it.  The whole family had a great spirit going in, and they assured my spouse and me (mostly me) that whatever happened would be fine.  I was worried about a ruined sweatshirt and the crushing of creative dreams—I’m so happy that didn’t happen.  The oldest teenager was so happy with her creation that she wore it on the long car trip home.  I wish we had had more time to sew the letters to the sweatshirt, but she knows how to do it, and her mom knows some folks who will help, and in the meantime, they won’t wash the sweatshirt.

In a way, that’s a metaphor for the whole holiday time together—the worry that the experience won’t live up to expectations, the happiness of time together, the realization that it’s all going to be O.K., even if not exactly perfect.

                                                                                                           

Thanksgiving Morning

Thanksgiving morning, in a house with no wi-fi, and a writer determined not to use her hot spot until the last possible minute because she, unlike much of the U.S.A. does not want to pay for unlimited data on her cell phone. But she knows what to do. And so she writes the old-fashioned way, typed in a Word document that will be uploaded later.

You thought the writer might use a pen? She’s not that old-fashioned—she still has electricity! And she’s willing to pay for the version of Microsoft Office that’s always available, regardless of Internet access.

That writer, of course, is me. I’m being cautious with my cell phone usage because one past Thanksgiving of reckless abandon showed me how much data can cost, when I left the hot spot function on overnight. I am educable.

But I’m also delighting in disconnecting. I’ve gotten a sermon written in the past hour since I got up. If I’d had connectivity, I’d have spent that hour looking at stuff on the Internet, and likely feeling dispirited. Now I am feeling virtuous!

Long ago, I did write with a pen and paper, and I do remember that I had to fend off distractions then, too. Back in those days, I might be tempted to read the newspaper before I started—the old-fashioned kind, that arrived on the doorstep, not on my computer screen. The world is always trying to pull us away or lull us into complacency or sedate us—or terrify us or make us feel inadequate.

Let me take a moment before Thanksgiving starts in earnest, a moment to remember some of the wonderful events that have already happened:

--We have managed to gather at the ramshackle house at Lutheridge where we have gathered almost every year since 1992.

--Not everyone could come. But we had new participants—yesterday my mom and uncle’s cousin’s wife came over for a wonderful afternoon of talking and reminiscing.

--The babies that I once read to are now teenagers. They are grown but not gone yet. They have interests (fabric! Cooking! Getting ready for Christmas!) that intersect with mine. What a delight.

--We did not gather at this house last year because of hurricane damage from Helene. I have not looked out of these windows at Thanksgiving until this year, although I was in the house in September. In September, the view was obscured by the trees still in full leaf. Now that the leaves are down, I’m sobered by how few trees are actually there.

--It is also sobering to think about how much older we all are. On the other side of the spectrum from babies grown into teenagers are the rest of the family, with a variety of health challenges.

But for today, we are here, the house is still here, and we will celebrate that fact with food, my favorite meal of the whole year.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, November 30, 2025:

First Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm: Psalm 122

Second Reading: Romans 13:11-14

Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44

Some years, the apocalyptic tone of the Advent texts feel more appropriate than other years. This is one of those years when the images of the end of days resonate with me.

The images in the Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent have found their way into popular culture lately--the idea of one being taken up to Heaven while the other is left behind (see the Left Behind book series which was made into other forms of popular culture and the more recent show The Leftovers).  But most scholars agree that those ideas of a Judgment Day are fairly recent in Christian thought and interpretation, fostered in the heat of 19th century Revival meetings. If Christ isn’t talking about the Rapture, then what do those passages mean?

Again and again, our holy scriptures remind us that we need to stay alert and watchful. Again and again, our holy scriptures warn us that God is coming and that God won't always take on the shape we expect. Sometimes, our spiritual ancestors are lucky, as Abraham was, when he invited the strangers into his tent and found out he was having dinner with God. Sometimes our ancestors aren't as lucky. Think of all those contemporaries of Jesus, many of them good, observant Jews, who were on the lookout for a different kind of Messiah. They wanted someone to deliver them from oppressive Roman rule. What did they get? A baby in a manger.

We think that we wouldn't have been so stupid. We would have recognized the Divine, as Christ moved among us.

But think of our own lives. Many of us are so busy that we can't even adopt traditional practices that move us closer to God, practices like fixed-hour prayer or tithing.  We can't find 10 minutes in our busy lives to slow down at all.  If Jesus shows up, will we really notice?

We usually think of Lent as the season of discipline and denial, but Advent cries out for a similar rigor, especially in our culture that goes into hyper-consumer-overdrive this time of year. This year, practice seeing the Divine in difficult people. It's easy to look at a little baby and to see God looking back out of that face. But for a few weeks, practice treating difficult people as if they are the embodiment of God:  your critical relative, your unreasonable boss, your difficult teenager, the homeless guy at the corner who won't take no for an answer when he asks for money, on and on the list could go.  How might things change if we treat these difficult people as the embodiment of God, as Christ incarnate?

Think about the larger world that bombards us with messages that are designed to move us to anger, not compassion.  Let's pray for those national figures who usually move us to anger.  Let's remember that they, too, are chosen children of God whom God loves.

We could do something more radical.  We could try seeing God in them.

If we approach everyone as God moving in the world, our attitudes will likely change. Maybe people will wonder how we achieve our peace and equilibrium.  Maybe they will ask us for our secret.  Maybe they will simply try to emulate us.

In this way, we can sow the seeds of peace into our troubled time.  Maybe they will take root and grow into a sturdy orchard.

Sermon for Sunday, November 23, 2025, Christ the King Sunday

November 23, 2025, Christ the King Sunday

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Luke 23:33-43



Last week we had a hint of Advent, and today we’re in full-blown Good Friday mode—and it’s Christ the King Sunday? Where is our story of final victory? Maybe something like Jesus coming back to earth, splitting the sky in splendor and glory, coming to judge us all, and give faithful folks their one-way ticket to eternity. But this festival day reminds us that if we get our expectations too focused on one aspect of Jesus, we’re likely to miss the signs of God at work in the world. If we’re expecting one kind of king, we will miss something essential about the essence of Jesus.


Certainly many first century folks would define a king as having splendor and glory, even going as far as to see the ruler as being divine. Not just godlike—divine. Historian Mary Beard notes that Roman emperors were often deified, with elaborate cults and temples dedicated to worshipping them. This religious aspect of their role further consolidated their authority, as they were seen as intermediaries between the people and the gods. To question their authority was seen as heresy beyond free speech or disrespect.


Throughout his ministry, we see people assessing Jesus as to how big a threat he might be to the Roman ruler and all the people like Pilate and Herod that are ruling on behalf of the emperor. We probably remember the question about taxes and Jesus’ clever answer involving a coin. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey can be seen as threatening or mocking; the emperor or his emissary would often enter cities on a majestic horse. It’s this kind of behavior on the part of Jesus that made many Galileans think he might just be the Messiah.


Of course, Galileans would not expect the Messiah to wind up on a cross, executed by the ruling authorities of Rome. The Jewish people had been looking for a Messiah for generations, always with the hope of deliverance from whatever empire oppressed them at the time: the Egyptian pharoah, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and in the time of Jesus, the Romans. Centuries of prophecy, like the kind we see in today’s reading from Jeremiah, kept that hope for deliverance alive. Clearly, if Jesus was killed by the oppressing empire of his time, he wasn’t the Messiah the Jews had been yearning for.


In today’s Gospel, we see people still trying to figure out who Jesus is. King of the Jews? Ruler of the world? Messiah? What kind of Messiah? A messiah who will save us all or a messiah who is only sent for some?


Christ the King Sunday shows us that the way of Christ as King is not the way that the world sees a king. The way of Christ the Messiah is not the way we would expect Christ to come as a Messiah. In today’s Gospel, we see how Jesus uses his power, and its not in the earthly ways of leadership. Jesus shapes his leadership as one of service and love, from his earliest days of ministry through his death on the cross and during his time after resurrection. Love and service—that’s the power that Jesus wields.


Jesus spent much of his ministry cautioning against the expectations we have about what a Messiah looks like. Our readings for today, taken in their totality, show us a multi-dimensional savior. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. We confess belief in a triune God, after all, the kind of God that our reading from Colossians tries to describe. And yet, it’s hard to remember that fullness, especially in the busyness of our lives.


I admit to being partial towards the aspect of Jesus that we see in our Gospel reading. Here’s Jesus up on the cross, in the process of dying one of the most agonizing forms of death, and he’s still fulfilling his purpose, forgiving those who don’t know what they’re doing and saving those who repent. Here’s Jesus, showing concern for the very lowest on the rungs of society, the criminal on the cross beside him, while at the same time, continuing to feel pity for those in power who are not living up to God’s vision for creation.


Some days, though, I long for the savior I sense in our reading from Jeremiah, the one who says, “ Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” We don’t have to look far to see sheep destroying behavior and shepherds who should know better. The prophets who came before Jesus have a warning for those who practice this kind of behavior—the days are surely coming when God will punish those that act this way. Jesus, too, issues this warning periodically, although this part of Jesus’ personality doesn’t surface as often as the Jesus we see on the cross. A King of vengeance Jesus—yes, that’s what we want! We often feel powerless in the face of those who would scatter the flock. Maybe we want Christ the King to be more like a modern superhero, dispatched to save us, with no effort required on our part.


Today’s Gospel reminds us, however, that our vision of vengeance, even if it’s on behalf of the oppressed, isn’t the way God operates. God sends prophets and messengers to remind humanity of our obligations, of what we’ve promised and what God expects. God goes so far as to come to earth to live with us, not to deliver the last blow of vengeance but to teach us by way of example. Jesus comes to us in a spirit of mercy and a yearning for connection.


And it’s not just in today’s Gospel. Throughout our Scripture, we see God acting mercifully, especially in the face of repentance. Think of God’s forgiveness each time people choose a different god, from the Golden Calf in Exodus to more modern examples of people worshipping anyone and everything else instead of God.


But when people repent, God forgives. Think of all the pillars of the faith who have needed forgiveness, like King David, who behaved badly as many times as he executed justice and righteousness. Consider Peter who denied Jesus, and Jesus not only forgave him but gave him a leadership position in the church that was to come. Jesus not only tells the disciples that they must forgive more times than they think possible, but Jesus models this behavior too. Like any good teacher, Jesus doesn’t ask us to do what he’s not willing to do himself.


As we think about Jesus the teacher who through the centuries has been transformed into Christ the King, it’s helpful to think about what we want from Jesus and why. It’s also helpful to think about which aspects of Jesus make us uncomfortable and why. We may think that we would never make a golden calf and worship it, but it’s all too easy to focus on the aspect of Jesus that makes us most comfortable and leaves us feeling championed, not challenged. But we know that Jesus came to earth not only to be a way that God is revealed to us, but also to challenge us and move us out of our complacency. Sometimes shaking us out of our complacency takes righteous indignation on the part of Jesus. Sometimes, it takes mercy and forgiveness. Always it takes love and compassion. Luckily, unlike earthly rulers, Jesus has a bottomless supply of love and compassion.


This festival day has an important reminder to us, as we think about Christ as both human, king, and God. Like any human, Jesus is more than the sum of his parts—and to understand this fully, we need to know all of the parts. Luckily, we have many paths to know Jesus. There’s scripture of course. There’s the larger religious community, whom Luther reminds us we need to help us come to an honest understanding of the scripture. We have the larger creation; many a theologian and mystic would tell us that we can gain an important understanding of our creator by observing creation.


On this Christ the King Sunday, may we find in Christ the ruler that challenges us to be the best version of ourselves, the merciful and loving version. May we follow the model of Jesus, as we find our best ways to be of use to others. Let us always remember that the best way to glorify Jesus is to be of service to the world, this world that Jesus loves so deeply.

Technology and Other Various Orthodoxies

On Saturday I listened to an interview/discussion, between Ross Douthat and Paul Kingsnorth.  It was an interesting take on technology, and I find my brain coming back to it periodically.

Even though Kingsnorth seemed to say that he's making a living writing books and with his Substack, which is reliant on the Internet, he painted the Internet as a portal and asked us to think what we're inviting in.  He thinks that most people are inviting evil into their lives, by way of the Internet.

Here are his exact words:  "Sometimes I think the internet is a giant Ouija board and we use it to summon things. And things appear through it. So if you want to be supernaturalist about it, if you want to be Christian about it, the world is inhabited by powers and principalities and demonic forces, which have it in for us, and which want to turn us away from God. That’s their purpose. I think if C.S. Lewis was writing 'The Screwtape Letters' today, there would be a good few letters about how the demons can use the internet, how they can use the phones, how they can use this to completely delude us and distract us and take us away from our true purpose."

Kingsnorth converted to Orthodox Christianity 12 years ago, so he's got a very different perspective than many writers who talk about AI.  This morning, I read an article in The New York Times about how young men are increasingly attracted to the Orthodox branch of faith.  I'm remembering when I, too, wanted something more rigorous, but I was attracted to monasticism, but a bit too late, being already married, with a host of other commitments.

I don't have an elegant way to close this post other than to say that my writing time has run out.  Off I go to move away from my screen and go for a walk.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, November 23, 2025:

First Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-6

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm: Psalm 46

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Luke 1:68-79

Second Reading: Colossians 1:11-20

Gospel: Luke 23:33-43

This Sunday we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, which is the last day of our liturgical calendar. The readings are familiar: we're back in the land of Good Friday, with our king crucified on a cross. Perhaps not the image we'd expect for Christ the King Sunday, but those of us who have been reading through this cycle, either for the first time or for the umpteenth time, will be familiar with these strange twists of imagery, with the upheaval of all our expectations.

I have always loved the cyclical nature of the lectionary, with its readings that loop around and remind us that all of life is cyclical. When I'm having a bad day (or week or month), it's important to remember that everything can change. When I'm having a good day (or week or month), it's important to express profound gratitude and to try not to dread the next downturn too much. With every downturn comes an upturn. The life of Christ shows us this.

Christ's life shows us that being king requires something different for a believer. It's not the worldly experience of kings, who are venerated and obeyed. Being a Christian king requires humbling ourselves and thinking of others before we think of ourselves. But our rewards are great. If we could emulate Christ's behavior, we'd have a wonderful community here on earth, and whatever we might experience in the afterlife would just be icing on the cake. We'd have already had a taste of heaven right here on earth.

I do realize that living the way that Christ taught us is often easier in theory than in practice. Maybe we feel grumpy as the holiday season approaches. Maybe we've had a season of sorrow, and we can't quite manage to feel festive. Maybe we're tired of humbling ourselves and we'd like someone to humble themselves for us.

Well, here's some good news. Someone already has. Maybe in this season of thankfulness, we can concentrate on our good fortune, even if we don't feel it. We're alive to see the sunrise and the sunset, some of the best shows on earth, and they're free! Even if we don't have as much money as we wish we had, we probably have enough to share. If we give some of our money away, we won't feel as constricted about money. If we are having trouble keeping everything in perspective, maybe it's time to volunteer at a food bank or an animal shelter--or if we're not into organizational activities, we could do our part to pick up litter. We could smile at the janitorial staff. We could thank them for cleaning the communal bathrooms in the places where we work and shop.

If we start working on our spirit of gratitude, the gift of generosity often follows. If we pray for those who need our prayers, our hearts start to open. If we work on forgiveness, our spirit soars. And soon we realize what it means to celebrate Christ the King Sunday.

Recording of Sunday Sermon

It was a fairly good Sunday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN.  The congregation had good energy, which may have been more about the toddlers present than anything else.  But I'm always happy for good energy, regardless of the reason.

The recording of my sermon is here on my YouTube channel.  You can read along in yesterday's posting of the sermon manuscript.

Sermon for Sunday, November 16, 2025

November 16, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Luke 21: 5-19


In today’s Gospel, we hear an echo of Advent and Christmas. Did you hear it?

It’s hard to hear it, because it’s surrounded by so many sentences that tell us that hard times are coming: wars and insurrections, natural disasters of all sorts, false accusations and persecutions and death. Where, exactly, is the Advent and Christmas?

We get all of these details straight out of a dystopian story, and Jesus says in verse 9, “Do not be terrified.” The writer of the Gospel of Luke uses this idea like a refrain that winds through the book. In the first chapter of the book, an angel appears to Zecheriah and says, “Do not be afraid.” Later in the chapter, Mary gets the same message: “Do not be afraid.” In chapter 2, angels appear to the shepherds with good news of the coming of the savior, and they, too, begin with the same words: “Do not be afraid.”

I’ve always assumed that angels say this because they terrify the humans who see them. Are angels that scary looking or is it just that humans don’t expect them and so they inspire terror?

Maybe it’s something even more existential. I think of hearing news of a savior, and my first response is “Finally!” But maybe the angels instruct us not to be afraid because of what comes when deliverance is at hand.

We know from the first time Jesus came to earth that redemption is not a peaceful process. People don’t say, “Yes, we’ve been running the world all wrong—here, you do it.” And even if people did say that, we know from the history of how God deals with humans that God doesn’t want us to do that. God did not create us to be puppets, with God’s hands pulling the strings, making us move in ways that God wants. God wants to persuade us that a different way is possible—and Jesus is one of the ways God does this.

“Be not afraid” is a phrase not only spoken by angels in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus, too, says it over and over again. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he says it here.

But still, it’s terrifying stuff that Jesus presents, a sort of end times greatest hits. If we read the whole chapter, Jesus goes on and on, telling his terrifying tale. But at the end of the chapter, we find out that people are still coming to hear him at the Temple. And in Luke 22, the Holy Week narratives begin: the people in charge plotting against Jesus, Jesus arrested and charged with exciting the people, and the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Jesus teaches at the Temple, and the Gospel begins by everyone admiring the Temple. Jesus knows that humans are easily distracted by bright, shiny object, the big buildings, the decorations. There’s so much that pulls our attention away from the work of saving our souls. Even in the non-dystopian times, even when there’s not war and plague stalking the human race, we can be seduced by the beauty of our buildings. Jesus reminds us that it’s all temporary, even these buildings which seem so solid and worthy of admiration.

The first generation of readers of the Gospel of Luke would hear Jesus’ words about the destruction of the Temple in a very different way. Many of them might have a memory of the literal destruction of the Temple. They would hear these words in this Gospel and say, “Yup. Jesus predicted this very thing that came true.”

And the rest of it has come true, too, hasn’t it? We’ve had wars and kingdoms rising against kingdom. We’ve had natural disasters, like the earthquakes and plagues Jesus mentions, and other natural disasters too, like fires, floods, and ever more destructive hurricanes. We’ve had every variety of human-made disasters along the way. Every generation gives us a false prophet or two or three—people who want us to believe that they alone can fix what is wrong with or without God’s assistance.


I would guess that even the last part of the picture Jesus paints is true for those of us in this congregation, although perhaps a softer version. If we’re sincere in our faith, it’s likely that we’ve lost some friends and family members along the way. It’s likely that we’ve had to defend ourselves against false accusations of what all Christians are like. In today’s Gospel, Jesus assures us that he will give us the words and wisdom when we face this particular test, and I hope we’ve felt that presence.


We will hear these words of coming dystopia again in two weeks, when we begin our Advent texts, and those texts can leave us puzzled. Why this apocalyptic tone in our Advent?

But Advent should be apocalyptic, in the dystopian sense of the word. The coming of a savior is something that generations of people long for—ancient people and people in our own times. But we often forget how that coming will change everything we thought we knew. The making of something new so often requires the destruction of the old.

Let’s remind ourselves that along with the scene of destruction that Jesus paints for us are the seeds for a new life, a new way of being. We have seen this evidence with our own eyes. Imagine if we could go back to a particular year during the cold war. Let’s say 1984, with all of its dystopian echoes from books we might not have read since high school.

If we could travel back to 1984, you might meet college students who were convinced that we might be called upon to invade Central America. You might meet cold war shaped adults who worried about the intentions of the USSR. You might meet people who worried about possible Civil War in South Africa and how that might spread across the vast continent.


Those people that we would meet would be amazed to learn that Archbishop Oscar Romero has now been made a saint for his efforts to stop the killing in El Salvador. People in 1984 would not believe us when we told them that the wall between East and West Germany would come down before the end of the decade. And people who had their eye on South Africa would be expecting Nelson Mandela to die in prison, not to become the first president elected after the fall of apartheid.


I do realize that you could reverse this story and mourn all of the opportunities to have a better society that we’ve lost since 1984. But hear again the refrain of the book of Luke: “Do not be afraid.” Let’s make that refrain our own. Every time we feel the tingle of fear, let us remind ourselves that new life begins with birth pangs. Let us remember the words of the angels, the words of Jesus, the words of Easter morning: “Do not be terrified.” Let us offer our songs of praise to the God who is making all things new, to our redeemer who knows that earthly power might dazzle or terrify, but it is God’s power who can defeat death to bring new life to us all.

Quilt Camp Homily: the Prophetess Anna and Our Quilting/Spiritual Life

I gave the homily for our Saturday night Quilt Camp closing worship.  I wanted to take a minute and make a record of the experience before it slips away.

Our Bible verse was Psalm 91: 4, and we focused on the first part, about God covering us with God's feathers and sheltering us beneath wings.  We talked about wings and feathers and angels.  We had a prayer board in the shape of wings, and we had feathers where we wrote prayers.

I wanted my homily to go in a slightly different direction--what happens when we don't feel that sheltering space?  What happens when it looks like everyone else's prayers get answered and not ours?  How many of us feel too old for whatever might have once seemed to make us special?

We had begun the retreat by talking about where we had sensed the presence of angels, and I started my sermon by talking about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, but that's really a young person's story.  Can you imagine if Gabriel came to any of us with that possibility?  We'd say, "Hmm, mother of the Messiah--not really my calling thanks."  

So I thought about other people who make an appearance in our Advent and Christmas texts.  I thought about Elizabeth, who gets to be the mother of John the Baptist.  But she doesn't even get the angel message herself; it comes through her husband, who laughs at the idea that his very old wife might have a baby.  He's struck mute through the whole pregnancy for his disbelief.  But it's still pregnancy, still not everyone's idea of fulfillment.

I continued:  I call your attention to a bit later in the story, when Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple.  Simeon has been promised that he will not die without seeing the Messiah, and he holds the baby Jesus, holding the light of the world in his arms.  But I call your attention to Anna in Luke 2:  36-38 (I read the text).  We may think of Mary Magdalen as the first evangelist, the first to tell of the empty tomb, but I've come to think of Anna as the first, as she goes out to tell everyone about the Messiah.

Of course, it's sobering to realize that by the time the Gospel of Luke was written, that very Temple has been destroyed, and it will be thousands of years before there will be another one.

Then I took the turn to quilting:  it's a bit like quilting.  Some of us have everything we need, the right material, the sewing machine that is up to the job.  Other times, we discover we didn't buy enough cloth, and it's no longer available, and we have to figure out what to do.  There are times we are given a quilt started generations before, and it comes with no instructions, and we have to figure out a way.  And we, too, will die.  Maybe someone else will complete our projects, maybe not.  But we continue to do what we can do.

The life of faith is like this.  Some times, everything goes well.  Other times, the sewing machine explodes.  But we are in a group that can keep us going, keep us encouraged, help us solve the problems.

I concluded with what I think is the most important thing to remember:  when we feel abandoned by God or abandoned by our quilt group, we're not.  God is still there, although we may not be able to hear God.  Even someone like Mother Theresa has felt this way, as we discovered, when her letters were published after her death.  Some people thought her doubt diminished her, but I felt just the opposite, this relief that if even someone like Mother Theresa feels doubt, then I shouldn't feel alarm when I feel abandoned.

The trick is to keep going, keep working on our quilts, keep believing until the time when it isn't so hard to keep going.

As I delivered the homily, I noticed a few people wiping their eyes.  I noticed people smiling and nodding--happily, I didn't see any angry expressions.

I felt good about my homily, and I got good feedback, from people who appreciated the brevity to those who appreciated the message which gave them hope.  But most importantly, I feel that my homily spoke to those who were feeling loss and grief, emotions that are never very far away, especially for those of us who are on the older side of life.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, November 16, 2025:

First Reading: Malachi 4:1-2a

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Isaiah 65:17-25

Psalm: Psalm 98

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Isaiah 12 (Isaiah 12:2-6 NRSV)

Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Gospel: Luke 21:5-19


This week's Gospel finds us back in the landscape of apocalypse, a landscape where we find ourselves periodically in our Bible readings.

In a way, these readings offer a kind of comfort. To be sure, it's a hard consolation, since these readings promise us that hard times are ahead. But surely we knew that.  If we've lived any amount of time at all, and we're the least bit observant, we see that hard times will always come on the heels of good times. We're currently in one of the longest economic expansions in our living memory, and yet a recession will surely come at some point.  And a long economic expansion isn't good news for the majority of citizens.  We see people engaged in all sorts of social justice struggles, some of which we're fighting all over again.  The cycle of history can feel like a torture wheel--but that's not a new feeling.

We read the words of Jesus, the words that warn we'll be hauled in front of harsh governments, and this indignity we'll suffer once we've lived through famine and pestilence and any other portent of doom. Our families will abandon us, and our friends will desert us. Many of us reading these words this Sunday may not perceive the threat. We're convinced we're safe, that we live under a Constitution that will protect us. But those of us who study the cycles of history know that we're very lucky and that we can't necessarily count on that. Millions of humans thought they were safe, only to find out that in short order, the hooligans were at the gate.

But Jesus offers us encouragement: "This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict" (verses 13-15). Yes, we might lose our lives. But we will gain so much more.

In this time of gloomy news, it's important to take some deep breaths and remind ourselves of what's important. Our friends and families won't always be with us. We can appreciate them while they are. We may be facing trouble at work, but at least we're employed. Even if we're not employed, if we live in the U.S., we have a lot of advantages that we wouldn't have if we lived in, say North Korea or Russia.

A few years ago, my friend John told me about talking to an older black man who came into the state park where John was working. John asked how his Christmas had been. The man said, "Well, we had enough food and no one took sick. So, it was good." Now there's some life wisdom, especially as we turn our thoughts towards the upcoming holidays.

I've always loved Thanksgiving, for many reasons. There's not the pressure of gift giving. The holiday meal is hard to mess up, unless you forget to thaw the turkey. The holiday is rooted, at least in popular imagination, in the idea of colonists saved from the brink of destruction by natives who show them how to live in a new community. The cynical amongst us can deliver powerful counterarguments to my optimism, but for the rest of the month, we can tune them out.

As we get ready for this season, let us remember to be grateful. Let us remember to say thank you, especially to people who might not hear it very often. Let the prophecy of apocalypse from the gospel remind us of our ease of life now and remind us of those who are not so fortunate. Let us keep perspective and remember that we're called to a higher purpose.

Armistice Day with Monastic Poem

It has been many years since I was teaching the second half of British Literature in a Fall semester when Armistice Day/Veterans Day happens.  This year, I am.  We've already covered the material, although now we're discussing Mrs. Dalloway, a book which may be the first depiction of World War I caused PTSD in a novel.

I think it's hard for most of us to conceive of how many people died in World War I.  Even when I have my students imagine all of their male classmates going off to fight and no one coming back, I think it's hard to get our heads around the total.  I wish we could all go to the WWI cemeteries in France.  It's a visual that's tough to capture in a picture; it does make a very different impact.

Years ago, I was at Mepkin Abbey on Armistice Day.  It also happened to be near All Saints Sunday, the first All Saints Day after Abbot Francis Kline had been cruelly taken early by leukemia, and the Sunday we were there was the day of the memorial service for him. Part of one of the services was out in the monks' cemetery, and all the retreatants were invited out with the monks. I was struck by the way that the simple crosses reminded me of the French World War I cemeteries:

I took the above picture later from the visitor side of the grounds, but it gives you a sense of the burial area. I turned all these images in my head and wrote a poem, "Armistice Day at the Abbey."



 Armistice Day at the Abbey



The monks bury their dead on this slight
rise that overlooks the river
that flows to the Atlantic, that site
where Africans first set foot on slavery’s soil.

These monks are bound
to a different master, enslaved
in a different system.
They chant the same Psalms, the same tones
used for centuries. Modern minds scoff,
but the monks, yoked together
into a process both mystical and practical,
do as they’ve been commanded.

Their graves, as unadorned as their robes,
stretch out in rows of white crosses, reminiscent
of a distant French field. We might ponder
the futility of belief in a new covenant,
when all around us old enemies clash,
or we might show up for prayer, light
a candle, and simply submit.

Recording of Sermon for Sunday, November 9, 2025

Yesterday was a high-energy day at church.  We welcomed new members; actually, they were members here years ago and transferred to another Lutheran church across the state line, and now they've come back.  We went ahead and did the liturgy that my spouse created to welcome new members.  I think it's a good idea to have this recognition, which I'm hoping will keep people from drifting in and out and away.

We had donuts after worship.  We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts on the way to church, which is a very different experience than the donut stores of my youth:  no place to sit down, no display of donuts.  We ordered from a touch pad, and the very friendly teen worker brought them to us.

I'm not sure my sermon connected all the dots that I hoped to connect, but I do feel I made good points.  I posted the manuscript in this blog post, if you'd like to read it.  The recording of the sermon is on my YouTube page.

We came home, did some grocery shopping, and settled in for a cozy end to our Sunday, watching TV and me getting some additional stitching done, a lovely way to end a lovely Sunday.

Sermon for Sunday, November 9, 2025

November 9, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Luke 20:27-38



Finally, a Gospel that mentions the afterlife! Of course, it’s a bit late—All Saints Sunday was last week. But some of you might be saying, “Oh, good, at last we’ve got a chance to see what Jesus has to tell us about Heaven.”


Others of us might be back at that first sentence of the Gospel. Sadducees don’t believe in the Resurrection? No life after death? Are these the religious leaders who are in charge? And they don’t believe in a fundamental of the faith?


A brief historical note: Yes, they were in charge of much Temple practice, including the taking of the money and the paying of the taxes that Rome required. Yes, most members of priestly ruling class were Sadducees.


Do we know for sure what they believed? Is there a Book of the Sadducees? No.


But leaving that aside, the set up is even stranger than it seems at first. There’s the obvious question: if they don’t believe in the Resurrection, then why pose this question to Jesus, this question about who will be married to who in Heaven?

Here, too, we don’t really know. What we do know is that the Sadducees are working with others to test or trick Jesus. We’ve had story after story of people testing Jesus. More commonly, it’s Pharisees who offer Jesus a question that will damn him, no matter which way he answers. Now the Sadducees get their turn.


We could also criticize the Sadducees for asking a question that’s no longer important. Let’s make no mistake: the set up of the question, the childless widow who loses her husband and then has to marry brother after brother after brother in hopes of a child, this practice is Jewish law in the time of Moses. In the time of Jesus, people had rejected this ancient practice designed to protect inheritance and blood lines. Many of us think of Jesus as moving in cities that weren’t cosmopolitan. But even in the small fishing towns and outposts where Jesus traveled occasionally, the practice of widows marrying their brothers-in-law was not practiced, and frankly, would have been seen as a bit barbaric. Centuries of law and practice by conquering empires gave people a much more modern view of marriage, something closer to what we practice in the 21st century than in the time of Moses.


So why ask this question?


I take a kinder approach to the motives of the questioner, whether it be Roman, or Pharisee, or Sadducee. I think that Jesus truly baffles people, then and now. People pose questions hoping that they can figure out who Jesus is by the response that he gives. The questions might tell us more about the questioner than the answers tell us about Jesus.


As is so often the case, Jesus gives a response that could leave the questioner even more confused. In Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees, we see a familiar dynamic. Jesus knows that the Sadducees don’t really care about the answer to the question that they’ve asked. The Sadducees don’t believe that there is life after death. For the Sadducees, the answer to their riddle wouldn’t be a mystery: the woman and all the brothers would be dead, and there would be no reunion in the Resurrection. Why do they bother Jesus with this question?


Perhaps Jesus wonders the same thing, but as all good teachers do, he uses this moment as a wider teaching opportunity. As he so often does, Jesus answers the question that he wishes people might ask. He reminds the audience—and us—that so many of us ask the wrong question.




There’s another nuance to today’s Gospel that may be lost to us across the centuries. The Sadducees are no longer in power by the time the Gospel of Luke was written. No one is in power in terms of the Temple because there is no Temple. The Romans have crushed Jewish uprisings in the decade of the 70’s and destroyed the Temple, which they saw as the place that nurtured anti-Roman radicals. Here, as in other parts of Luke, we can almost hear the Gospel writer saying, “You’re arguing about trivial matters while the forces of the Roman empire are about to crush you. WAKE UP!”




It's tempting to feel we’re better than those ancient cultures, the ones who didn’t recognize the Messiah, even when he lived among them. But here, too, we find out that we have more in common with the Sadducees than we first suspected. We, too, are much more interested in questions that are rooted in a culture of death than in the new kingdom of life that Jesus calls us to live.


We, too, live in a culture of death. A quick look at the television, even when it’s not campaign season, reminds us that we are so often asking the wrong questions, thinking about riddles that don’t matter. We see it in our politics, we see it in our schools, we see it in our grocery stores. We even see it in churches where we might expect a community to be wrestling with the essential questions of life. Instead so many congregations spend time wrangling over issues of morality that will seem incomprehensible to future generations. We could spend some time thinking about which riddles of our day will seem like the question of widows marrying their brothers-in-law in centuries to come.


Jesus spends much of his ministry declaring that God has created humanity to be so much more than our culture expects us to be. Jesus sees us, names us, claims us-- as God has done for the earliest patriarchs, through the time of the Sadducees, right on through to our time. We are children of the resurrection. Resurrection culture is the one that matters.


It's a question worth asking then, and it’s a question worth asking now. What dead issues consume us? What cultures of death keep us distracted from the work Jesus calls us to do?


God invites us to move away from the culture of death in which we find ourselves, whether that’s the culture of death that is legalistic posturings and entrapment or the culture of death that is shaming and casting out those who are different or the culture of death that comes from endless worry, worry rooted our scarcity consciousness that tells us we can never have enough or do enough.


In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks this question: what gives us life and what keeps us connected to death? He asks it in a round about way, but that’s the question at the heart of today’s Gospel. In this time of creation getting ready for the season of hibernation, let us reflect on it again. What do we need to let go of, to let die? What is giving us life? What lies dormant, waiting for the Spring season of our time and attention? Let us resolve to ignore the forces that want to keep us buried in the grave. Let us commit ourselves to our Triune God, who has the power to transform life out of all the powers of death.