Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, October 5, 2025:

First Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-4;2:1-4

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 1:1-6

Psalm: Psalm 37:1-10 (Psalm 37:1-9 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 3:19-26

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 137 (Psalm 137 (Semi-continuous) NRSV)

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10


Perhaps the Gospel readings of past weeks and months have left you feeling depressed. You have begun to realize that you will never succeed at this Christianity thing. You can't even remember to make a donation, much less tithe regularly. You'd like to invite the poor to your dinner table, if you ever had time to eat dinner yourself, and you wonder if you still get Christianity Points if you invite the poor to dinner, but pick up that dinner from the deli. You'd like to look out for widows and orphans, but happily, you don't know of any. And frankly, most of the week, you don't have a spare moment to even ponder these things at all.

This week's Gospel offers encouraging news. It reminds us that belief has the power of a seed. As fewer of us plant anything, we may lose the power of that metaphor. But think of how inert a seed seems. It's hard to believe that anything can come from that little pod. And then we plunk it into the earth, where it seems even more dead--no sun, no light, no air. But the dark earth is what it needs, along with water, maybe some fertilizer if the soil is poor, and time. And with some luck, and more time, eventually we might all enjoy a tree. And not only us, but generations after us--that tree will outlive us all.

Christ reminds us that faith is like that seed. And the good news is that we don't have to have faith in abundance. A tiny seed's worth can create a world of wonders. And it's good to remember that we don't have to have consistent faith. We live in a world that encourages us to think that we'll eventually arrive at a place of perfect behavior: we'll exercise an hour a day, we'll forsake all beverages but water, we'll pray every hour, we'll never eat sugar or white flour again, we'll cook meals at home and observe regular mealtimes. We'll have time to get our various types of work done, and we'll end at a sane hour so that we're home for a meal which we'll eat with loved ones.

We want lives of perfect balance, and we feel deep disappointment with ourselves when we can't achieve that, even when we admit that we'd need ten extra hours in the day to achieve that.

Jesus reminds us to avoid that trap of perfectionist expectations. People who have gone before us on this Christian path remind us of that too. Think of Mother Theresa. Her letters reveal that she spent most of her life feeling an absence of God. But that emotion didn't change her behavior. She tried to reveal the light of Christ to the most poor and outcast, and was largely successful. She didn't feel like she was successful, but she didn't get bogged down in those feelings of self-recrimination. And even when she did, she kept doing what she knew God wanted her to do.

Many of us might have seen Mother Theresa as a spiritual giant. We might feel dismayed to realize that she spent much of her life having a dark night of the soul kind of experience.

On the contrary, we should feel comforted. Maybe these letters show that she wasn't a spiritual giant or that even spiritual giants are human.

Or maybe we should revise our definition of a spiritual giant. If you read the journals, letters, and private papers of many twentieth-century people who have been seen as spiritual giants (Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Madeleine L'Engle, Dorothy Day), you'll see that feelings of spiritual desolation are quite common. The fact that we have these feelings--does that mean that God has abandoned us?

Of course not. Those of us who have lived long enough have come to realize that our feelings and emotions are often not good indicators of the reality of a situation. Our feelings and emotions are often rooted in the fact that we haven't had enough sleep or the right kind of food.

The people who have gone before us remind us of the importance of continuing onward, even when we feel despair. Christ reminds us that we just need a tiny kernel of belief. All sorts of disciplines remind us that the world changes in tiny increments; huge changes can be traced back to small movements. Your belief, and the actions that come from your belief, can bear witness in ways you can scarcely imagine.

Perfection is not required--just a consistent progress down the path.

Keeping Our Lamps Trimmed and Burning on the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels

 I've had the spiritual "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" in my head for much of the week-end:  "Keep Your Lamps, Trimmed and Burning, for this work is almost done.  Children don't grow weary."  It was the anthem for Sunday worship at St. Stephens, and it was also the theme for the women's retreat that the church offered, the retreat where I led workshops on spiritual journaling (more on those workshops in this blog post).  

It was a great retreat, with lots of thoughts on what keeps us on fire and how our lights are threatened by candlesnuffers everywhere.  It was a rich subject, and we could have spent a week or more on the subject.

I was most moved by the closing worship for the retreat.  We gathered around the paschal candle in the worship sanctuary.  Earlier in the retreat, we had thought about something that's important to us that we worry will be lost.  My list could have been long, but we were asked to choose one to bring with us to closing worship.  

As we entered the worship space, we were given small candles, the kind that we get on Christmas Eve.  At the end of the short worship, each woman came to the paschal candle and lit her candle while she said the thing that was important.  The whole assembly said, "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning."

We heard things like "freedom" and "democracy" along with specific items.  Mine was "the idea of the value of a liberal arts education."  I loved that we took time for each woman to state her item and we met each offering with a prayerful chant.

We ended with a song, "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light," and not for the first time, I reflected on how wonderful it is to sing together.  I am much more used to sitting in spread out sanctuaries where I only hear my own voice.  I much prefer to sing in closer quarters, where I can't hear any individual voice.

It was also a great way to close the retreat.  We have much work to do, but it was good to remember that we're not doing it alone.

On this feast day of Saint Michael and All Angels, it's great to have these images in my mind:  lamps trimmed and burning, candles lit with prayers for protection.  We didn't invoke the protection of the angels during our retreat, but today's feast day reminds us that along with our earthly help, we can call on divine help too (and for a more traditional writing about this feast day, see this blog post).

Sermon for Sunday, September 28, 2025

September 28, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


Luke 16:19-31



“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.” It’s the first verse of today’s Gospel, and you already know where this is going, right? Some of you might remember that in the Gospel of Luke, any time we have a rich man, we know that Jesus is about to teach a lesson about the dangers of wealth. In the Gospel of Luke, it’s O.K. to have riches, but you don’t want to be the rich man in a parable.

Maybe by now you're feeling a bit frustrated: week after week of reminders that we shouldn't get too comfortable with our worldly possessions. Maybe you suspect whoever chose this common lectionary of readings of being just a tad socialist. Or maybe you’re wondering why we can’t have some variety. It’s even worse than August of 2024 when we had week after week of teachings on bread—now we have week after week of teaching on the dangers of wealth, but no fun experiments like the kind we had on bread. You might be wishing to be admonished about some other human behavior, just for a change.

Those who study such things would remind us that economic injustice is one of the most common themes in the Bible. In his book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis tells of tabulating Bible verses when he was in seminary: "We found several thousand verses in the Bible on the poor and Gods' response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures Old Testament--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (mammon, as the gospels call it). In the first three gospels it is one out of ten verses, and in the book of Luke, it is one in seven.”

If we take the Bible as the primary text of Christianity, and most of us do, the message is clear. God's place is with the poor and oppressed. The behavior that most offends God is treating people without love and concern for their well being. It’s not wise to be like the rich man in today’s parable. He’s not treating Lazarus in any way at all. Even though Lazarus is at the gates of his house, the rich man simply doesn’t see Lazarus. He’s not evil, the way the rich people have been in other parables. He’s just completely oblivious.

Lazarus has no food, but his body provides nourishment for the dogs. Keep in mind that ancient people saw dogs differently than we do. New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine tells us that ancient people saw the saliva of dogs as having healing properties. We’re not supposed to see these dogs as pets. But even undomesticated dogs have more concern for Lazarus than the rich man. They see Lazarus in a way that the rich man doesn’t. They see him as needing comfort and healing. They are willing to stay with him, even though he is miserable.

Both of these characters are at opposite ends of the extreme, so extreme as to be almost caricature. The rich man dresses in rich purple and fine linen, fabrics that most ancient people will never have the chance to wear. He has a sumptuous feast, not just once a season or once a month—but every single day. He is richer than rich.

Similarly, Lazarus is poorer than poor. He has no assets at all. He’s been dumped at the door of a rich man, and he can’t even get the crumbs from the sumptuous feasts. Yet Lazarus has a name, and the rich man does not.

We might be tempted to see this reversal of fortune as the moral of the parable. If we suffer now, we’ll be rewarded in the afterlife. Those of us who aren’t rich may relish the vision of rich people having to suffer through all of humanity.

But it’s not wealth itself that’s bad—it’s the way that wealth can transform the wealthy that is such a danger. One of the dangers of wealth is that it can blind the wealthy to the fate of those less fortunate.

Even in the afterlife, the rich man hasn’t learned a lesson. He still wants to boss everyone around. He couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to Lazarus when they were both alive, and in death, he wants to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers. Abraham makes it clear that it’s not going to happen. Like the rich man, they are so oblivious to the sufferings of others that even someone coming back from the dead will not convince them.

It's worth considering what suffering we don’t see in our current world. Where does our wealth blind us? We might protest that we’re not the rich man in the parable, but we do live in one of the richest nations in history. We are rich in ridiculous ways, historically speaking. And the parable warns us of the ways that wealth can blind us to the suffering of those that are not far away.

The rich man wants to believe that his brothers will change their behavior if they just get some certitude about what the teachings of the Law and the prophets mean. If Lazarus just came back from the dead, surely they would believe. Here, too, we should ask ourselves where we demand certitude.

We’ve had week after week of Jesus telling us of the dangers of wealth, that wealth blinds us to the treasure that is truly important. We’ve had week after week of Jesus telling us that we can’t serve God and money both. Have we given away our wealth? Have we changed our behavior? Are we waiting for some additional certitude?

Scholar Amy-Jill Levine reminds us that this parable does for us what the rich man wants Lazarus to do for his brothers—it warns us of the dangers of extreme wealth and of the need to help the poor. After week after week of lectionary teaching on the subject of the dangers of wealth, we can’t say that we haven’t been warned.

God does want us to be rich. But God doesn't care about us being rich in worldly goods. Anyone who has studied history--or just opened their eyes--knows how quickly worldly goods can be taken away. But those of us who have dedicated our lives to forging whole human relationships and helping to usher in the Kingdom now and not later--those of us rich in love are rich indeed.

Hurricane Helene, One Year Later

At this time a year ago, I'd be up and about, as I always am, doing some hurricane tracking, thinking about last minute packing.  A year ago, my plan was to wait for sunrise and then drive to Williamsburg, where I was scheduled to lead a writing workshop at my mom's women's retreat.  A year ago, I thought I might wait until mid-morning to leave, when I expected the worst of the rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene to be over.

By mid-morning, trees were crashing all around our neighborhood.  Thankfully, none fell on our house, but some of our neighbors were not so lucky.  When I saw big trees across the neighborhood roads, I realized I wasn't leaving in the afternoon.  I asked my neighbor across the street if she thought I could get out of town on Saturday morning.  She said, "I don't think you'll be going on your trip."

She was right.  By afternoon, North Carolina authorities advised that all roads in western North Carolina be considered impassible.  Of course, I didn't know that, because I was trying to conserve cell phone power.  Our power went off just before 5:30 a.m. and didn't come back on for over a week.  Internet and water proved harder to restore.  We did have running water for all but a few days.  We had to boil it, but it did come clear out of the taps, so it was safe for flushing and relatively safe for showers (I was careful not to let any get in my eyes or mouth).  We were without internet for 20 days, and happily, most days our phones could work as a hotspot.

This year, I am in Williamsburg, hoping to lead my writing workshop today.  This year, it is raining, and I'm reminding myself that I am safe.  This year, I'm saying a prayer for all those who will find today a tough day, with hurricane memories and other triggers. 

Misty Morning with Haiku

It has been a week of perfect autumnal weather, the kind of September weather I used to envy when we lived in South Florida, and we had months to go before we would get any relief from relentless heat.  It's been the kind of weather where we have warm/hot days followed by cool nights and misty mornings.  There's rain here and there, but nothing that disrupts plans.

This morning, I'll go for a shorter walk than usual.  I'm being observed this morning in my English 101 class, so I want to give myself plenty of travel time.  I'm not stressed about the observation itself, which is a nice change of pace.  I know that the people in charge are not looking for a reason to get rid of me, and that's not always been the case in my teaching life.  But I don't want traffic to snarl up my headspace, so I'll give myself extra travel time.

Here's a photo from Monday's walk, in which the mist enthralled me, and I stopped to get the perfect photo to go with the haiku I composed while I walked.  I'll post the haiku-like creation below the photo:

Misty cathedral

composed of early bird song

baptism by fog

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for Sunday, September 28, 2025:

First Reading: Amos 6:1a, 4-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Psalm: Psalm 146

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31


This Sunday, the Gospel returns to familiar themes with the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus is so poor that he hopes for crumbs from the rich man's table and has to tolerate the dogs licking his sores (or perhaps this is a form of early medicine). Lazarus has nothing, and the rich man has everything. When Lazarus dies, he goes to be with Abraham, where he is rewarded. When the rich man dies, he is tormented by all the hosts of Hades. He pleads for mercy, or just a drop of water, and he's reminded of all the times that he didn't take care of the poor. He asks for a chance to go back to warn his family, and he's told, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead."

Maybe by now you're feeling a bit frustrated: week after week of reminders that we shouldn't get too comfortable with our worldly possessions. Maybe you suspect the Council who chose this common lectionary of readings of being just a tad socialist.

Yet those who study (and tabulate!) such things would remind us that economic injustice is one of the most common themes in the Bible. To hear the Christians who are most prominently in the media, you'd think that the Bible concerned itself with homosexuality.

Not true. In his book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis tells of tabulating Bible verses when he was in seminary: "We found several thousand (emphasis his) verses in the Bible on the poor and Gods' response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures Old Testament--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (mammon, as the gospels call it). In the first three (Synoptic) gospels it is one out of ten verses, and in the book of Luke, it is one in seven" (page 212).

And how often does the Bible mention homosexuality? That depends on how you translate the Greek and how you interpret words that have meanings that cover a wide range of sexual activity--but at the most, the whole Bible mentions homosexuality about twelve times.

If we take the Bible as the primary text of Christianity, and most of us do, the message is clear. God's place is with the poor and oppressed. The behavior that most offends God is treating people without love and concern for their well being--this interpretation covers a wide range of human activity: using people's bodies sexually with no concern for their humanity, cheating people, leaving all of society's destitute and despicable to fend for themselves, not sharing our wealth, and the list would be huge, if we made an all-encompassing list.

It might leave us in despair, thinking of all the ways we hurt each other, all the ways that we betray God. But again and again, the Bible reminds us that we are redeemable and worthy of salvation. Again and again, we see the Biblical main motif of a God who wants so desperately to see us be our best selves that God goes crashing throughout creation in an effort to remind us of all we can be.

Some prosperity gospel preachers interpret this motif of a God who wants us to be rich. In a way, they're right--God does want us to be rich. But God doesn't care about us being rich in worldly goods. Anyone who has studied history--or just opened their eyes--knows how quickly worldly goods can be taken away. But those of us who have dedicated our lives to forging whole human relationships and helping to usher in the Kingdom now and not later--those of us rich in love are rich indeed,

Recording of Sunday's Sermon

I struggled with yesterday's sermon; the parable of the dishonest manager is a tough one.  In the end, I'm pleased with how the sermon went.  You can view the recording here on my YouTube channel.

If you'd like to read along, I posted the manuscript here on my theology blog.

Sermon for Sunday, September 21, 2025

September 21, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Luke 16: 1-13


Today’s Gospel presents one of the most perplexing of Jesus’ parables. You could spend the next month reading commentaries and come away unsure of what Jesus is saying here. Are we supposed to be like the rich man or the manager? What does this parable tell us about the Kingdom of Heaven? Indeed, this parable shows us some of the problems with interpreting parables the way we usually interpret them.

We are prone to approaching parables the way that we approach poetry, if we read much of either. It’s not our fault. We are trained to read literature of all types in this way, as problems to be solved, not mysteries to be inhabited. In our parable reading, we look for equations, and because it’s Jesus, we often try to solve the equation the same way, regardless of the parable. We’re likely to go looking for the character that represents God, the character that represents the believer, the character that represents the larger culture.

Today’s parable does not fall neatly into an equation. I would have a problem preaching a sermon that tells us that the rich man or the dishonest manager is supposed to represent God.

We are also trained to approach parables as neat moral fables, with a clear lesson that we’re supposed to learn. To be fair, some parables do just that, and they often do it so clearly that there’s no mystery. I’m thinking of the few times that Jesus explained what he was saying, just to be sure that his listeners understood both the message and the moral lesson.

So, if we’re looking to this parable to give us a clear moral message, we might interpret verse 9 as the moral lesson: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Hmm. It’s hard for me to imagine that Jesus is telling us to go and cheat our employers so that we can win friends and influence people. It’s much easier for me to imagine Jesus saying this with a smirk on his face so that people would realize that he’s being ironic, meaning exactly the opposite.

In fact, if we imagine him in this way, verse 9 serves as a hinge verse to take us to the message that Jesus really wants us to understand. We might jump right to the conclusion: No one can serve two masters, God and Money—Jesus spells it out for us, in case we still don’t understand his teachings about the dangers of money.

It’s not really a new lesson, is it? We’ve had week after week of this message. And it’s not a new message. It’s not like Jesus comes along and invents this idea. Look at our first reading. Hundreds of years before Jesus, Amos preaches the same message.

Many of us have been taught that Jesus announces a split between the Old Testament and the New—but that’s not what Jesus says. Let’s look at the verses that come after our passage and before next week’s Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus.

“14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. 15 So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.

16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is being proclaimed, and everyone tries to enter it by force.[f] 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.”

Here and other places, Jesus proclaims that he’s not here to overturn God’s law, the laws announced by ancient prophets. No he’s here to reinforce the law—God’s law, not the law of humans. Throughout our scripture, again and again, we hear that God is on the side of the poor, not the side of those who would sell out the poor for a pair of sandals, as Amos tells us or for the crooked managers, like the one in today’s parable, who go around cutting debt in half—debt that is not owed to them. Jesus preaches that a different behavior is necessary. Again and again Jesus tells us that we need to behave and believe in ways that will demonstrate whose side we are on.

Jesus makes his point very plain, both here and elsewhere: we can’t serve God and money. But pay attention to the verb: it’s serve, not have. We can have money, but we can’t serve both God and money.

The parable shows us the dangers of giving our allegiance to money and the ones who control it in our world. We’ve got a rich owner and a dishonest business manager: both are sleazy. Both are treacherous. And we see the problem with being indebted to these kinds of people. The dishonest manager goes to all of the people enmeshed in this money system and offers them a better deal. Not one says, “No, I made a deal, and I owe what I owe.” They’re all willing to cut a deal.

We still see this dynamic today. We see it in the top branches of government, when one president says he’ll cancel student loan debt and the next president says he’s taking back allocated money going to groups that don’t align with the administration. We see it at the state level where some counties get more resources than others. We see it in smaller contexts, with people taking work resources home for personal use: I’ve seen people steal reams of paper from office spaces or food from restaurants where they worked. We may see these examples as being vastly different, but it’s a matter of degree, and Jesus reminds us that the difference in scale doesn’t matter.

Christ commands us not to lose sight of the true riches, the riches that our society doesn't comprehend fully (or at all).

God has lifted us up out of the dust and ashes of lives not worth living. Into our barren lives comes Jesus, with God’s offer to each of us: fruitful abundance and flourishing with no need for dishonest calculations to win favor. We’ve already won God’s favor. That’s the good news of this parable: God is like none of those people in the parable, not the rich man or the dishonest manager or the indebted enmeshed in a system where they can’t win. We, too, have been set free from the earthly systems that set us up to fail. We have been entrusted with great riches—let us steward those resources wisely and with joy.

The Autumn of Life

 Yesterday I found myself in my Creative Writing class with my plans for the class upended.  I had planned to give them time in class to write, but we changed the due date to Tuesday, so it makes more sense for Tuesday to be the writing day.

Happily, I had come prepared with the worksheet that I described in this blog post, the Build Your Own Ode to a Season worksheet.  While they did that, I pulled up Keats' "To Autumn" on the Poetry site (the site that has the materials from the magazine, along with many other resources).  We listened to the poem without following along, and then we listened while we followed along, with the poem projected on the larger screen.  And then we talked about it.

What a treat to talk about this poem.  The more I read it, the more perfect it seems.

Because it was a Creative Writing class, we talked about the symbolism of autumn, the symbols themselves and how a story or a poem set in autumn might use that season as a symbol.  It made me think about who is in the autumn of their lives and who is not.

When Keats wrote this poem, he knew that he had TB, and he must have known that he was likely to die--so he was in the winter of his life.

I am 60 years old, so clearly in the autumn of my life.  But I want to think it's early autumn, September not late November.

Last week, I posted this picture, mist rising off the lake.  I can't always capture the mist, but I think I was successful here:

Yesterday I read the first line of "To Autumn":  "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."  I asked my students if the mornings had been misty lately.  They looked startled.  I realized that they probably wouldn't know.  They're probably up after the sun has risen and burned off the mist.

But here at a higher altitude, it's been very foggy/misty, and I've really enjoyed watching the swirls.  I've thought of past generations, surrounded by fog and mist and smoke, and it's no wonder they believed in ghosts, that they described ghosts the way they did.

I'm feeling a bit haunted myself.  It's strange to teach this poem to students who are not much older than Keats was when he wrote this perfect poem.  It's strange to think how much older I am than my students.  When I first started teaching, I was only a few years older than my students.  Now I am decades older.

Like Keats, I'm haunted by my mortality.  Let this haunting prompt me to do my best work!

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, September 21, 2025:

Jeremiah 8:18–9:1
Psalm 79:1-9 (9)
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13


Ah, the parable of the unjust steward. This parable may be one of the toughest to understand. Are we to understand this parable as a pro-cheating text? It seems that this tale is one of several types of unjustness, and it's hard to sort it all out. Let's try.

Much like the parable of the Prodigal Son, which sends up wails of protests about unfair treatment of undeserving children, this text makes one want to wail at first reading. There's the master, who believes the charges brought up against his steward, who seems prepared to dismiss him, based on those charges--let us remember that the charges may be false.

But the behavior of the steward seems slimy too; accused of unethical behavior, he seems to behave unethically, dismissing debt in an attempt to curry favor for a later time when he is dispossessed.

And then there's the surprise twist--the master approves of the steward's shrewdness.

There are several different approaches to this parable. The easiest approach is to look at the final lines of the Gospel, those familiar lines that so many of us would like to ignore, that we cannot serve God and money. This parable seems to suggest that it's hard to have dealings with money that don't leave us looking slimy.

We might ask ourselves how a stranger would view us if they looked at our budgets. On a personal level, the way we spend money shows our values. So if I say I'd like to wipe out childhood poverty, but I spend all of my extra money on wine, a stranger would question that. If I say that I value a Christ-centered economy, but I only give money to my retirement accounts, what would that stranger say? I will be the first to admit that I want to hoard my money, that it's hard for me to trust that God will provide.

We could ask similar questions about our institutional budgets. What does our church budget say about us? If we give more money to the upkeep of our buildings than to the poor, are we living the life that Christ commands us to live? These are tough questions, and I will honestly say that I haven't met many institutions, sacred or secular, that achieve balance very gracefully--especially not in economic hard times.

Parable scholars might caution us not to adopt the most obvious interpretation. Scholars would encourage us to see the parables in relation to each other. What are the parables that surround the one about the unjust steward?

In the text just before this one, we see the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coins, the lost sons (the Prodigal and his brother are equally lost boys). In the text after the parable of the unjust steward, we receive the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man, and you may remember that Lazarus has a tough life on earth, but a good life afterwards, and the rich man receives his reward early on, and goes to his tortures in the afterlife.

We might see this parable as one more cautionary tale about how we deal with wealth, as with the story of Lazarus. Or we might see the Prodigal Son's dad as similar in his mercy to the master of the shrewd steward--and of course, we could draw parallels to God, who gives us mercy, when we deserve rejection and to be left to our own devices.

It's hard to ignore the sense of urgency in all these texts. The steward must act swiftly, to dismiss debts while he still has the power to do so. The Prodigal Son's father doesn't have much time to decide how to act, once his son appears on the horizon. The rich man pleads with Abraham to be allowed to warn his brothers, and Abraham reminds him that they've had plenty of warning. The parables are interspersed with Christ's various admonitions to pay attention to the way we are living our lives.

Christ commands us not to lose sight of the true riches, the riches that our society doesn't comprehend fully (or at all). We are not our paychecks. There's so much more to us than our job titles. We have been entrusted with so much. We will be judged by how well we show stewardship of those resources.

The Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen

September 17 is the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, mystic, herbalist, musical composer, naturalist, and Abbess. Her life was full of accomplishments, an amazing feat considering she lived in the twelfth century.

Until recently, I had never thought of the twelfth century as a high water mark of feminism, but female monastics did amazing things during that time period. By studying them, I come away with a new appreciation for the medieval Church, where talented women found a cloistered kind of freedom. In many ways, the cloistered life was the only way for medieval women to have any kind of freedom. Cloistered life offered the only protection available to women who lived at the edges or outside the margins of society: widowed, artistic, not wanting to be married, weird in any way.

But Hildegard's life shows that freedom was constrained, since women monastics answered to men. For years, Hildegard wanted to move her group of nuns to Rupertsburg, but the Abbot who controlled them refused her request.

We all face constraints of various kinds, and the life of Hildegard shows what could be accomplished, even during a time where women did not have full rights and agency. She was an Abbess, and because being in charge of one cloistered community isn't enough, she founded another. She wrote music, and more of her music survives than almost any other medieval composer. She was an early naturalist, writing down her observations about the natural world and her theories about how the natural world heals us. She wrote to kings, emperors and popes to encourage them to pursue peace and justice. She wrote poems and a morality play and along the way, a multitude of theological meditations.

She did all of these things, in addition to keeping her community running smoothly. Yes, I'm thinking about Hildegard as an administrator, a woman who could be efficient and artistic at the same time. It’s no wonder that I find her inspiring.

It's interesting to think about the different types of groups who have claimed her as their own. Feminists claim her importance, even though she didn't openly advocate equality. Musicians note that more of her compositions survive than almost any other medieval composer. Her musical works go in different directions than many of the choral pieces of the day, with their soaring notes. New Age types love her views of the body and the healing properties of plants, animals, and even minerals. Though her theology seems distinctly medieval, and thus not as important to modern Christians, it's hard to dismiss her importance as a figure from church history.

I often say that it's odd I'm drawn to monasticism, as I'm a married, Lutheran female who has all sorts of worldly commitments, and thus cannot fully vow obedience. But as I think about church history, I'm struck time and time again by how often monasticism has offered a safe space to women that no other part of society did. I shouldn't be surprised that it's a tradition that speaks to me still.

It’s a tradition that speaks to many others too: have you listened to the Hildegard of Bingen channel on Pandora?

Maybe today is a good day to tune in that medieval music. We could listen while writing letters to those in charge, letters which demand more work towards social justice. Or we could focus on other writing projects, as Hildegard of Bingen did. We could plant a healing herb garden.

Today, on her feast day, let us say a prayer of thanks for Hildegard of Bingen and other medieval matriarchs of Christianity.

Poems and Chocolates and U2 on a September Tuesday Morning

 It's been a strange morning, strange but satisfying.  I began it as I do most Tuesday mornings, by reading Dave Bonta's weekly Poetry Blog Digest and exploring some of the blog posts.  Rachel Barenblat's post includes an amazing poem, which made me weep.  It's the perfect poem for a week of shootings, and sadly, multiple shootings is a hallmark of almost every week these days. 

I also wanted to hear U2's "Shadow and Tall Trees," so I went to a YouTube site, and after each U2 song has come another.  But they've all been from the early years, The Joshua Tree and earlier--such powerful music!

Some of it I haven't heard in decades.  I'm getting deep cuts from the October album for example.  I remember it as an album that I bought and didn't really listen to much; I wanted to be listening to War, and so I did.  And yet, I remember the songs still.  I don't listen to music that way much anymore.

I am also struck by the way the lyrics twine together contemporary politics and ancient religious texts and concepts.  Wow.

As always, this music takes me back to earlier falls:  the autumn of 1983 when I first bought a lot of this music on vinyl (War and October and Boy), the autumn of 1984 when I had The Unforgettable Fire in constant rotation.  That music made me think of listening to my own recordings on cassette as I drove across South Carolina to see my grandmother in Greenwood, SC.

Those memories made me think of her Whitman's Sampler and the time I got one of my own, on sale, at a local drugstore, during the spring of my last year at Newberry College.  Finally I could eat as many of the chocolates as I wanted!  My grandmother only ate one at a time, spaced out across many days, making that box last as long as possible.  It will surprise no one that being able to eat as much of the box as I wanted in one sitting was not as satisfying as I always imagined.  Ah, the heartbreak of grown up life!

I've been trying to write a poem out of it all, and I'm a bit haunted by thinking that I've already used this material but I can't remember if I really have or if I thought that it would make a good poem.

I've continued with the poem composing, and I like this line:  Sugar soaked mouth unsatisfied

I've also done some sketching and noted the way a mostly dried up marker looks like tree bark on the page.  That, too, seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but in a different poem.

I woke up this morning thinking that I was going to blog about reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this past week, and being struck by how it speaks to our current conversation/argument about generative AI.  Frankenstein seems timeless in so many ways.  Last year I read it for a seminary class, and the isolation of all the characters was what grabbed me.

I feel so lucky to have this life, and I'm amazed that I managed to stumble into it, being able to teach undergraduates in a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, just up the road from my the small, liberal arts college where I spent my youth listening to U2 and reading British lit and dreaming of being a poet myself.

Sunday Update: Satisfying Sermons and Disappointing Pizza

Yesterday's worship service went well.  Come to find out, the seminarian who asked to give the sermon is at a Lutheran seminary, and her sermon was just fine.  She did not talk about some of the more polarizing parts of our society, like justice for Palestine or Trumpian politics.  She didn't talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Her sermon was much more universal, about the need to avoid writing people off, the way that God threatened to do with the Israelites when they worshiped a golden calf.  She tied in all the readings in a way that I rarely do; I usually focus on the Gospel alone.  Hurrah!

On our way home, we talked about the fact that the visiting seminarians will probably be eligible for ordination before I am, and we wondered if they would be interested in the job that Faith Lutheran could offer them.  My guess is that they probably have something different in mind, but I could be wrong.  If it would work out, I would be fine with that.  My goal has always been to be a good caretaker while they found something more permanent.

Our afternoon was more disappointing.  We got a pizza from the Ingles deli, and it was blah, blah, blah.  The one advantage:  it was quick to heat up.  We won't be doing that again.  My problem is that I want pizza made by one of our local places, in all its greasy glory.  My spouse objects to that kind of pizza on every level, primarily cost, but also, it's often structurally compromised (not cooked through, not enough toppings, too greasy).  So we get disappointing options, trying to work around those objections, and often, we're neither one of us happy with the meal.

I was surprised at how hard I had to work so that my disappointment didn't derail the whole rest of the day.  I could have ordered the pizza that I really wanted, but I had already eaten so many bad pizza calories that I didn't like.  My spouse took a nap, and I drifted around the house trying to decide what to do next.  I knew that I was still hungry, so I started a batch of focaccia.  I also made the lentil-barley combo that anchors my weekday lunch.  I'm always looking for ways to make it more interesting, so this time, I tried this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, the lime-cilantro dressing part of the recipe.  It wasn't as heavenly and sublime as the recipe makes it sound, but I decided to use it anyway.

And now it is time for another week to begin.  We are at that time in the semester where I feel a bit panicked about running out of teaching ideas, particularly in English 100, the class before the college level English Composition class.  But I know that I have plenty of ideas, and there's still plenty of time.    

No Sermon Sunday

It's an unusual Sunday.  I don't need to put the finishing touches on a sermon--we have seminarians staying at the church, and one of them has asked to do the sermon.  I said yes.  But I still need to go across the mountain:  there's Confirmation to teach and elements to consecrate and all the other elements of the worship to lead.  

We had a lovely day in Inman yesterday, spending time with my spouse's sister and her husband, exploring the small town shops and the nearby Lake Bowen.   It was good to reconnect.  

We began the day with cinnamon rolls that I had stashed away in the freezer.  I was happy that I remembered to bring a piece of foil so we could heat them up; I even greased the foil.  We ended the day with a meal in a Mexican restaurant. 

We headed home, and I crashed into bed very early, just after 7.  I don't know what left me so worn out, but I suspect that a week of nights of sleep interrupted by my spouse's coughing had much to do with it.  Happily, last night was a quieter night.

Now, let me get ready. 

Glints of Gold and Green

Yesterday, I captured this shot as I walked up the hill to the chapel at Lutheridge:

On the one hand, it looks like a summer morning--there are still lots of green leaves on the tree, and the hints of gold on the trees aren't changed leaves (not yet), but the sun shining through.

But the signs of seasonal change are there--the road has lots more leaves on it.  The shift is underway.

God's movement in the world is often like this picture.  In some way, it looks like nothing different from any other point in time, especially from one day to the next.  But those who are alert will notice that something is shifting.

Osama's Sunflowers: A Poem for September 11

In the years since September 11, 2001, I have never not thought about that anniversary each year.  In 2017, it wasn't the first thing on my mind, since we had just had a hurricane, and we were trying to decide if it was safe to return home.  But eventually, I did realize what day it was.

In the years just after 2001, everyone remembered that anniversary each year when it arrived.  Now I have students who weren't born in 2001.  I think of my own reaction to my elders remembering the anniversary of the JFK shooting, which happened just a few years before I was born.  It seemed like such ancient history to me, while it was still very vivid for my elders.  I suspect the same is true of my students.

In 2001, we seemed to have shifted from the violence of assassinations to the violence of terrorist acts.  And now, we have a wide variety of types of violence, and I have no idea where the world is headed.

In 2011, I heard  this interview with Lawrence Wright, who wrote The Looming Tower.  I'm haunted by all the things we missed, all the pieces we didn't put together.  I'm haunted by the folks who say they tried to get a meeting with the President and key staff to go over all of this, but the scheduled meetings were cancelled again and again and again.

It makes me think about my life and all its facets.  What am I missing?  What should I focus upon?

Lawrence Wright told this nugget about Osama bin Laden, who flirted with both terrorism and agriculture, before committing to terrorism.  He loved his sunflowers.  

I understand how people become disaffected enough to leave their sunflowers behind and turn to dreams of destruction.  I'm grateful for my religious heritage that reminds me of the seductive qualities of evil, that warns me not to succumb to that glittery facade.

I continued to think about the terrorist that loved sunflowers, and not surprisingly, that nugget later led to a poem:

Osama’s Sunflowers


The terrorist sits in his armed
compound and watches videos
of himself. He counts
his weapons and yearns
for a nuclear bomb.

The terrorist dreams of hamburgers
and the joy of a cold beer
on a hot day.
The terrorist remembers the grill
he used to have, a container
of gas used to cook,
not to kill.

The terrorist tamps
down his longing
for the sunflowers he used to grow,
their bright smiles turned
towards blue skies.
He wonders about the different trajectory
had he chosen seeds and soil
instead of flame and ash.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, September 14, 2025:

First Reading: Exodus 32:7-14

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Psalm: Psalm 51:1-11 (Psalm 51:1-10 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 14

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Gospel: Luke 15:1-10


This week, we have parables of lost creatures and lost things. When we read these parables, which character calls more clearly to you? Are you the shepherd or the sheep? Are you the woman sweeping or the coin?

I never really thought about the story from the perspective of the coin, until I went to a Create in Me retreat at Lutheridge. Pastor Mary Canniff-Kuhn was leading a Bible study on parables, and she said, “What about that lost coin? What’s it doing? Nothing. It’s just sitting there.”

These parables reassure us that we don’t have to do anything to deserve being found. We don’t have to redeem ourselves. God is the shepherd who will come looking for one lost sheep, even if that sheep is the dumbest, most unworthy sheep in the history of animal husbandry. God will light the lamps and sweep under the cupboards until the coin is found.

As Christians, we have a creator who goes to great lengths to find us, to be with us, to enter into a relationship with us. If you look at both the Old and New Testament, you see God trying a variety of techniques: crafting a beautiful creation, resorting to rage when that creation doesn’t behave, wiping out populations, rescuing populations. The New Testament shows a continuation of this story, with God taking the most extreme step of becoming human.

What does it mean for our lives if we really believe that God will go to all this effort for us? Look at the story again. The shepherd isn’t rescuing a whole flock of sheep. The shepherd goes to that effort for just one sheep. What does it mean for us, if we believe that God is like that shepherd?

Many of us might not be quite comfortable with that idea. We like the idea of a distant god, maybe one who made the whole creation and then went away to leave us to our own devices. Do we really want a God who doesn’t allow us to wallow in our lostness? Do we really want a God who takes such efforts to find us when we go astray?

I've also wondered if this metaphor of a shepherd still works.  Maybe instead of a shepherd, we want a God who is like a dog who loves us.

God is the one who marks our comings and goings with as much steadfastness as a good dog. God is that good dog of popular culture who will know that something’s wrong before anyone else does. God will go to great lengths to find us, to bring us back to the flock, back to the coin purse. We worship a God who will not rest until we’re all present and accounted for. That’s Good News indeed.

Recording of Sermon for Sunday, September 7, 2025

The recording of yesterday's sermon is now posted here on my YouTube channel.

You can read a manuscript of the sermon in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, September 7, 2025

September 7, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Luke 14:25-33


In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us the cost of discipleship—and these costs are very high. Perhaps we should have waited to welcome new members until next week, when the Gospel revolves around lost sheep and lost coins. That would be a more welcoming Gospel for a Sunday that celebrates new members.

It’s also a curious Gospel for God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday. Our lectionary is much older, of course, than our various approaches to God’s Work, Our Hands across the Lutheran church.

It’s a much more negative sounding Gospel than we may be used to: we have to hate our loved ones, we have to pick up a cross which in the first century would lead to a literal crucifixion, and we have to give up our possessions. Yikes. Who would sign up for this?

Let’s ask the question that Christians have been asking for centuries. Was Jesus meaning us to take this passage literally? Different Christians have come to different conclusions.

It’s important to remember that for the first three centuries of Christianity, professing allegiance to Jesus would put you squarely against the larger culture, especially once it became clear that Christianity was a new religion, not a newer expression of Judaism. Being a professing Christian meant that many avenues of wealth would be closed to one, and that family members would be the ones doing the rejecting. Many Christians were killed by the Roman empire. It is amazing that the religion survived at all, so fierce was the Roman response to it.

But what does it mean for us today? Was Jesus giving future Christians this advice? Are we meant to take it literally? Some Christians would tell us that yes, Jesus meant it literally. If we deny ourselves the pleasures of this life—loved ones, riches, life itself—we get eternal life. Some Christians would tell us that it’s a great bargain—forty to sixty years of deprivation on this side of death, but an eternity to enjoy whatever pleasures paradise will bring.

Scholars of ancient rhetoric have looked at this passage as one of hyperbole, exaggeration used for some other purpose, which was a common technique in ancient texts—and indeed, even today. Perhaps in this passage, Jesus tries to shock his followers out of their complacency.

Maybe he’s not talking to the committed few who have already given up so much to follow him and earlier martyrs like John the Baptist, but to the crowds whom he can’t seem to shake. Maybe he wants to be sure of who is really interested in true discipleship and who is following him hoping for a miracle; in the Gospel of John, he would already know and in the Gospel of Mark, he would never be sure. But we’re in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus gives people outside of his disciples extra chances to declare their allegiance in a way that he doesn’t in the other three Gospels.

Maybe he’s telling the people who think he’s nothing but free meals and miracle healings that there’s more involved. Is it a warning or is it a promise?

But perhaps, we’ve lost some of the nuance of the original words of Jesus. Maybe what he’s saying isn’t as horrible as it sounds at first. Maybe the concepts of the Greek words don’t translate as easily to English. For example, look at the verb that might trouble us most: hate. But some Biblical scholars say that Jesus wasn’t telling us to hate our loved ones, but to show non-preferential treatment. This idea would have been as appalling to first century followers. We’re supposed to treat our sister the same way we would a stranger? Jesus says yes.

But before we breathe a sigh of relief, let us make no mistake. Jesus is talking about the nature of sacrifice, and for some of us, the sacrifice will be steep. Jesus wasn’t talking about the cross we’ll have to pick up in the sense that we might mean it, as in “This difficult situation is just my cross to bear.” We know from past readings that Jesus calls us to choose God over Caesar, and we know from history that this choice often came with the harsh penalty of capital punishment. Even today, in parts of the world, following God may mean that we make the ultimate sacrifice, our literal lives. As 20th century martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Archbishop Oscar Romero would remind us, it only takes a change in government for Christians to become targets, and that change to an oppressive government may not be as impossible as we like to think.

The idea that we have to give up our possessions may seem like a much easier cost of discipleship. We might be tempted to bargain: “I’ll give up my possessions if I get to keep my life. In matters of justice and mercy, I’ll treat my loved ones just the way I treat everyone else—that’s a bargain I can try to live with.”

Here we see the danger of taking this passage too literally. We lose the larger message that Jesus preaches. Here, as in so many other parts of the Gospel, Jesus tells us that we should travel lightly in this world. In earlier translations, Jesus tells us to renounce our possessions, which can have a slightly different connotation. It might be even more accurate to say that Jesus tells us to separate ourselves from our possessions. Jesus understand the ways our possessions can own us. Over and over again, Jesus warns us of the heavy baggage that comes with having possessions.

At this point we might feel despair about our ability to walk this pilgrim path.

But as our spiritual ancestors tell us that this all gets easier the more we practice. If we think of all that we own as being on loan to us, it's easier to pass our stuff along, easier to help others who don’t have as much stuff. If we simplify our lives, it's easier not to clutch to our money as much. If we spend our time in prayer and spiritual reading, it's easier to rely on God. If we spend our time practicing inclusivity, it's easier to expand our idea of family. In this way, we bear the crosses of others, in that modern sense of the word. We lighten the yokes for us all.

Discipleship is a process. We are not born good or bad disciples. It’s a process that benefits from practice. Like the person who builds a house or the ruler who contemplates war, we have calculations to make. Jesus is warning the uninitiated, to be sure. But Jesus also asks us to calculate the cost of discipleship.

Jesus understands all the ways that the lives we are living can be a form of death. The cost of discipleship also comes with a promise of opportunities that we wouldn’t recognize otherwise. The cost of discipleship comes with an enormous gain—a life worth living, this life, not the one after we die. The discipline of discipleship transforms us into believers who are, in the words of our Psalm for today, “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.”

If that’s the cost of discipleship, that we become like those trees, then it’s really a bargain when we do our calculations—a bargain AND an incredible gift.

Trying to Have No Fear

Last night I had dinner with some retreat friends who are in town for the Crafts for Christmas retreat which begins later today--two retreats in two weeks!  I am the luckiest woman, and this situation would not be possible if I still lived in South Florida.

Lest you think we talk about nothing but God and spirituality, our talk was primarily of politics and all the ways that people in charge of various governments are going off the rails and our fear of being dragged off the rails with them.  I'm not just talking about our US government; one of our group keeps track of events in Gaza in ways that I can't follow.

Of course, I'm beginning to feel the same way about most geopolitical trends--I can't possibly keep up or follow the course of events.  And in part, it's because all of it makes me feel any number of negative ways:  anxious, sad, depressed, worried.  

So this morning is a good time to remind myself of a verse from a  Gospel reading from several weeks ago, Luke 12, verse 32:  "Have no fear, little flock."

I made this sketch, which continues to delight me:

It's a good reminder.  We've had hard times before and will again.  God is with us through it all.

Adopting a Tree and Other Types of Awe

At Spartanburg Methodist College, first year students take a required, one credit class that trains/reminds them of the techniques that can make them successful:  academic techniques, meet and greet techniques, involvement techniques.  There are many reasons why I love being at a liberal arts college, and this commitment to student success at every stage, and with a wide definition of success, is one of them. 

One of my colleagues teaches one section, and on Tuesday, she asked me, "Do you have your students adopt a tree?"  I smiled and said yes.  She said, "I saw that written in the calendars of a few of my students, and I knew they must be in your class."

I felt like I had been paid a great compliment.  Even better, I knew that my colleague meant it as a compliment.  I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it--it's WONDERFUL to be at a place where my creative approaches are seen as normal--admirable, too, but normal.  It's WONDERFUL to be at a place where I'm not the only one doing creative approaches.

These days, even people who aren't inclined to take creative approaches are experimenting, often in an attempt to come up with assignments that can't be fed into generative AI.

Today I will begin using the green, brown, and gray paint swatches that I got on Tuesday:

My English 100 students will take the swatches outside with them, to help them learn to describe the colors of their tree more precisely.  My English 101 students will do that, and we will also talk about the names of the colors on the paint swatches, in a way to think more poetically/with more imagination about colors.

Earlier this week, I had my classes try to write instructions:  get us from this classroom to the tree.  Don't just say, "Go outside."  What if we go to the door on the other side of the building.  They wrote directions and then tested them and then wrote about what they learned.

Granted, they weren't as tough testing each other's directions as I would have been.  But they seemed to be learning what I wanted them to learn, and they worked in different small groups than the peer editing groups.  This year, I am looking for ways to have them be in small groups occasionally, since I do think it has benefits, even if I'm not as big a believer in some of the practices, like peer editing, as I once was.

It's good for all of us to move away from the traditional model:  students in desk, teacher at the front, no one moving, not much student talking, too much teacher talking.  As the fourth week of classes comes to an end, I think I'm doing a good job of mixing up activities:  some individual writing, some instruction, some group work, some inside work, some outside work.

 These ideas could be adapted for church groups too (retreats, Sunday School, etc.).  So many of us have forgotten how to see; teaching ourselves to see again can inspire awe, not only for creation, but for our Creator God.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 7, 2025:

First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 18:1-11

Psalm: Psalm 1

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 (Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 NRSV)

Second Reading: Philemon 1-21

Gospel: Luke 14:25-33

Here we have another tough Gospel, where Jesus seems to knock all our defenses out from under us. With his reference to the person building a tower, he seems to be telling us to think very carefully before we leap onboard his Kingdom train. We may have to give up (or at least transform our relationship to) much that we've held dear.

First, he tells us that we have to hate our family. Notice that I'm not exaggerating--hate is the verb Jesus uses. He doesn't use a verb that would be more palatable, like reject or leave or forsake. No, we have to hate them. Many of us have spent much of our lives struggling against a certain human tendency towards hating others--now we're instructed to hate our family?

It gets worse. In that list, Jesus includes our very lives. We have to hate our own lives? What's that all about?

Many scholars would tell us that Jesus is telling us that we can't have the same lives when we're Christians as we did before we came to Christ. Our relationships will have to be transformed. Many of us place our relationships with our family members above all else. Many more of us place our own self-worth above everything else.

We've spent the last several weeks listening to Jesus telling us that we can no longer behave that way. We have to transform our world of relationships. For those of us who have been used to hiding away with our families, we are called to treat the whole world as our family, especially the poor and the outcast. For those of us who put no one's needs above our own, we can no longer behave that way. The only way towards the world for which we yearn is to place the needs of others ahead of our own.

Our relationship to our possessions is not exempt from this discussion. Here is Christ again telling us that we have to give up all that we have. For some of us, it might be easy to hate our family and give them up. For some of us who are filled with self-loathing anyway, it might be frighteningly easy to hate ourselves.

But to give up our possessions too? How will we ever feel secure? Again and again, Jesus reminds us that we rely too much on the things of this world, the things (and people and our own egos) that pull us away from God.

At this point we might feel despair about our ability to walk this pilgrim path.

But as our spiritual forebears would tell us, if we would listen, this all gets easier the more we practice. If we think of all that we own as being on loan to us, it's easier to pass our stuff along. If we simplify our lives, it's easier not to clutch to our money as much. If we spend our time in prayer and spiritual reading, it's easier to rely on God. If we spend our time practicing inclusivity, it's easier to expand our idea of family. The world is filled with lonely people who would like to be invited to dinner or coffee.

And some day, we might look up and realize that the life we once lived was living death. We might realize that by reorganizing and reforming that life, we've gained a life worth living.

Recording of August 31, 2025 Sermon

My sermon for yesterday went well.  You can view it here.

If you want to read along, you can read this blog post.