How Are You Different? Have You Changed? Questions to Assess Spiritual Progress

Many of us approach spiritual practices with an eye to doing them better and better.  We think we will master the technique.  There are all sorts of dangers to this approach of course--chief among them, that when we think we aren't mastering them, we may give up.

Take meditation, for example.  I used to try to empty my mind, and I would declare, "I'm no good at this."  But even the process of trying gave me a window into the way my brain spends its time.

I am now good at seeing various thoughts spiral and saying, "Hmm, my mood just took a dip because of what that person said to me.  Let me process this."

Once I thought that if I got really good at this process, there would come a day when my mood wouldn't dip at all.  My spiritual director at the time said that the goal of the process is to become more aware, that I wouldn't ever reach a time when others had no power to affect me.

At first, I was disappointed, but I've come to see the comfort in her words.

So, as we assess spiritual practices, perhaps we shouldn't ask ourselves questions about our mastery of the practice.  Maybe better questions are "Have you changed since starting this practice?  How are you different?"

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for Sunday, January 25, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 9:1-4

Psalm: Psalm 27:1, 5-13 (Psalm 27:1, 4-9 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23

Here we are this week, still in the early days of Jesus' ministry. We see him call the disciples with that famous offer to make them fishers of people. He goes out to preach and teach.

But notice that early on, he's also ministering to the physical needs of people. He's not here to talk to them about their spiritual ailments. He tells them that the kingdom of heaven has come near, but he doesn't go around haranguing people about their selfish natures and the need to pray more.

Notice that his fame spreads, and it's probably not because of his brilliant teaching or a glimpse of heaven on earth. People will come from far and near if one of their physical ailments can be lessened.

Jesus also addresses, at least indirectly, their emotional ailments. As he heals and teaches, he's creating a community. It's exhausting work. But again, he knows that people aren't going to overthrow their established way of doing things unless they get something substantial in return.

Notice that Jesus doesn't talk in terms of eternal salvation, at least not in this part of the Gospel. He doesn't promise a place in Heaven if people will just endure their ailments during this life. He doesn't tell people that they'll be popular in Heaven to make up for being outcast on earth.

No. He creates a community and includes all of these people.

His ministry addressed the very real, the very physical, the very present needs of the people around him. It's an example we should keep in mind, as we order our own lives, and as we think about the future of our individual church and the larger Church.

As we think about outreach, we should keep the example of Jesus in our mind. We should ask ourselves what our lives show others about Christian life. As we think about our individual lives and about what God has called us to do, we should keep God's example in mind. What is our larger purpose? How can we effectively minister to a broken and hurting world?

Many of us aren't comfortable talking about our faith, and perhaps that's for the best.  Let people evaluate us by our actions, actions that show our Christian faith in action.  

What would this look like? We can help out our coworkers who need it. We can invite lonely people over for dinner. We can be the person who always has a smile ready. We can be the person who's willing to listen. We can donate money/time/attention to worthy causes and projects.  

We can be the light of the world that God needs us to be--and that the world needs us to be.

Recording of Sunday's Sermon (January 18 sermon)

My sermon on Sunday went well.  I've posted the recording of it here on my YouTube channel.  You can read along in this post on my theology blog.

Sermon for Sunday, January 18, 2026

January 18, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 1:29-42


In the Gospel of John, we don’t see the baptism of Jesus the way we do in the other Gospels. In the other three Gospels, we observe the baptism itself. In the Gospel of John, but we don’t see it as it happens, but we do hear about it—here, in today’s reading, through the testimony of John the Baptist. Today’s Gospel reading gives us the testimony of John the Baptist, and it also offers essential questions that can point us to a more faithful life.


We might think of testimony, not questions, as the way that souls are saved, and we get testimony in today’s reading. In the Gospel of John, we find out about the baptism of Jesus because of John the Baptist’s testimony; in short, readers and hearers of the Gospel find out about it secondhand, unlike the other 3 gospels.


Then, John the Baptist has a chance to do what he has urged others to do. He has spent his ministry preparing himself and others for the one to come—and now, here he is, the Messiah, Jesus. When Jesus walks by, John points him out to his own disciples. In essence, John the Baptist is handing over his ministry to Jesus. He’s giving up his power, something we almost never see in human life. John could have claimed the title for himself, and if you go back to earlier passages that aren’t included in today’s reading, earlier in the first chapter of the book of John, we see religious leaders asking John the Baptist the same questions they will later ask Jesus: “Who are you anyway? Are you the messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for?” It’s a question that we still ask: are you the one who is able to deliver us from this oppressive regime?


John is very clear: he says, “I am not the Messiah. I am not even worthy to untie his sandals.” Think about how easy it would have been for him to say, “Yep. I’m the Messiah. Give me all your money. I am the one you’ve been waiting for—worship me regardless of what I do or say.”


Fortunately, John knows his role in the story—he is not the Messiah, as he reminds people again and again. His role is to prepare people for someone greater than himself and to point to the Messiah, which he does faithfully. One Bible commentary that I read this week pointed out that while many of us like to ask the question “What would Jesus do?”—an equally compelling question would be “What Would John the Baptist do?” While it’s not as easy to put on those rubbery bracelets that were once so popular, it’s the central question that leads to faithful lives. What are we doing to align ourselves to the work of John the Baptist? What are we doing to point others to the Messiah?


Jesus asks another central question that can lead to faithful lives: “What are you looking for?” We have a sense of what John the Baptist and his disciples wanted: deliverance, change, the long-awaited Messiah. What’s less clear is what kind of Messiah they had in mind.


Christians know that they’ve found a savior in Jesus, so we might think the question is no longer relevant. But considering the question from all directions is a fruitful spiritual practice.


What are we looking for? We might long for a time not so long ago when everyone went to church; we might say we need deliverance from the misguided society, in whatever ways we think our current society isn’t living right, acting right, in our right minds. Or maybe we are the ones not living the righteous lives that we yearn to experience. Maybe we have habits that we’d like saving from or relationships where we need a savior to come and offer redemption. Maybe we once had a sense of where we were going, but we feel like we’ve lost our way.


Notice the response of Jesus. I’ve read this passage numerous times through the years, and I always focused on Jesus saying, “Come and see”: come and see where Jesus is living, come and see what Jesus is doing. As I returned to the passage earlier this week, I was struck by this sentence: “They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” An earlier translation says they abided with him. Think of that, an afternoon to simply be with Jesus. Not going and doing, but being.


Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall to observe that afternoon of abiding with Jesus? And we might ask, why don’t we get a record of what happened? It seems important, especially when we hear that Andrew goes out to find his brother. It must have been compelling: Andrew says, “We have found the Messiah.” What did Jesus say? What did Jesus do? In just a few short hours, Andrew is ready to commit to Jesus and to testify to others. How can he be so sure?


Well, for one thing, he’s had a good teacher in John the Baptist. In the Gospel of John, much of the first chapter is devoted to John the Baptist, who has drawn people out into the wilderness for baptism. Some of them don’t go back to their old lives. Perhaps living this discipleship with John the Baptist has prepared Andrew for a new level of discipleship with Jesus.


Or maybe something else happens that afternoon, when two of John the Baptist’s disciples follow Jesus home and never leave him again. They experience the peace of abiding in the true savior. Jesus knows what he’s offering when he says, “Come and see.” The writer of the Gospel of John can assume that we, too, will know what Jesus is offering—perhaps that’s why we don’t get an accounting of what happened that afternoon, because the Gospel itself is a testimony to the Messiah, who has come to be with us.


What will others see when they look at our lives as a testimony and a witness? That’s the third question that emerges from today’s reading. What do people see when they look at our lives? People pay attention to our actions. If our actions don't match our words, people don't accept our words. But it's worse: people see us as hypocrites, one of those Christian types they hate so much. But wait, it's even worse: if our actions habitually don't match our words, people begin to assume that ALL Christians are hypocrites. And the worst might happen if we say we are committing evil in God’s name and we actually do it—what do people learn about God from those actions?


Happily, those of us hearing this sermon are not likely to go out to commit atrocities in the name of Christ. Happily, those of us hearing this sermon are much more likely to live lives that make others want to know what we’ve discovered.


We are surrounded by examples of people who have lived faithful lives that have borne witness to Jesus. There’s this church, of course, the people here in the pews, and the ones who have come before us. Tomorrow we have a federal holiday to celebrate a 20th century faithful disciple, the Reverand Martin Luther King, Jr., who began his adult life following in the footsteps of his father, the Reverand Martin Luther King, Sr.—both men were Baptist ministers.


In any time when I feel despair about the violence in the world, I remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his approach of nonviolent resistance rooted in love. It’s a social justice movement that transformed the world, encouraging other oppressed groups to work to ensure that their rights were protected. It’s a movement that led to more of us having more opportunities with more doors opening. It’s a movement that led me to be here, as your minister. Most of us are old enough to remember a time when women could be Sunday School teachers, but not church council presidents or ministers, jobs that went to men. And now, we acknowledge that God calls a much wider variety of humans to ministries of various sorts.


That change happened in our lifetimes. And now, if one of our youth members of the church decided to go down the path of ordination, it won’t be as hard. We will have prepared the ground, in the way that John the Baptist did, by pointing the way to Jesus. We will have planted the seeds, by living lives of faithful witness, lives which inspire people to go and bring others back with them.


Our lives of faithful witness may lead us to big and bold actions, like the ones that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired. Our actions may be on a smaller scale: visiting the sick or teaching a group of students or saying kind words to those who are having a rough time. Undergirding our actions, an active prayer life can keep us connected to our Creator who yearns for each part of creation to experience a life that is oriented towards flourishing, not towards withering.

We’re surrounded by lives of faithful witness that show us what can happen when we decide to be like John the Baptist, pointing people to the Messiah, when we commit to following Jesus, saying “Come and see” to those who yearn for a different world, a world where power is used responsibly, where we are pointed to the one who is better qualified to lead and redeem us.


These are the essential questions: what would Jesus do? What would John the Baptist do? What can we do? Begin that work, continue that work, today and every day.

Crystalline Shards and Fragments

 I am feeling fragmented today, so let me capture some fragments:

--Part of why I'm feeling fragmented is the shifting forecast.  Will we be able to go to Bristol on Sunday?  It's very unclear.  There's a system that will likely snow on part of the Carolinas--but will it be closer to the coast?

--So, should I write a sermon?  Yes, I probably should.  And if church is cancelled this Sunday, I can probably tweak it so that it works for next week.  This Sunday is the call story of Peter and Andrew in the Gospel of John, and next week is the same story in Matthew.

--Why do we have these two call stories?  I'm assuming it's because of where the moving holidays fall, specifically Easter and the Baptism of Jesus.  

--If I have to write a sermon about each, what on earth will I say?  The Gospel of John has the words "Come and see."  The Gospel of Matthew has the fishing for humans language.

--My brain zings back to class planning.  It's not unpleasant, but it does remind me of why/how the times when I'm teaching in-person classes is SO different from the times when Spartanburg Methodist College is on a break.

--All of my classes have met for their first day.  They all feel good, with at least a few students who seem bright-eyed and ready to get going.

--So now the easy part is over.  Now I need to focus on what we're going to do each day.  I have broad ideas.  I understand why some people start the semester with day by day course plans, but I never have done that.

--If I did that, would I feel like I have more time to focus on other things?  I would feel that way, but I would probably not do the other things, like poetry writing.  

--I think about sermon writing, which I do every week.  If I had a weekly poetry assignment, like a paid column, would I be more focused week after week?  Yes, if I had a paid gig, I would.

--I think I will walk this morning.  It's going to be cold and windy all day, so I might as well walk early.  And maybe there will be snow flurries!

--I was hoping for a bit of snow yesterday afternoon, but alas.  We prepared as if there might be snow:  charging the phones, bringing the portable heater inside, making a pot of chili, that kind of thing.  Despite the lack of snow, it was cozy and nice.

--We're getting a bit more light outside, a very filtered light just before sunrise.  I think that it might be snowing now.  Or perhaps it snowed more last night than I thought.  But as I look across the trees, it does look snowy.

--When I took the last of the recycling to the curb a half hour ago, the air itself seemed crystalline. There weren't many snow flurries, but I could feel tiny shards of ice on my face--not altogether unpleasant, but not the joy of snow either.   

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for Sunday, January 18, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 49:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 40:1-12 (Psalm 40:1-11 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Gospel: John 1:29-42

Today's Gospel continues the story of Jesus' baptism, and it has lessons for each of us. Notice that Jesus doesn't get baptized and go home to sit on the sofa. He doesn't say, "Well, I'm glad I got that spiritual landmark over with. Now I don't have to do anything else until I die and get to go to Heaven."

No. Jesus goes out and tackles his mission. What is his mission? The same as ours: to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is revealing itself right here, right now, that God is breaking through our mundane daily life to transform us into better people in a better world.

But notice that Jesus doesn't go around yakking about this all the time. He's not the type of guy that drives most of us crazy, all talk and no follow through. When people ask about his mission, he says, "Come and see."

And what will people see? They will see a man healing the sick, comforting the poor in spirit, feeding everyone regardless of their finances, eating with the outcast, and supporting the lowest people in society's social stratum:  women, children, demon possessed, tax collectors, the diseased, and the like. They will see a man who sacrifices his social life and prospects for a long life so that other lives will flourish--and by doing so, he will flourish in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise. 

When people accept Jesus' invitation to come and see what he is doing, hey will see a man of constant movement.

What do people see when they look at our lives? People pay attention to our actions. If our actions don't match our words, people don't accept our words. But it's worse: people see us as hypocrites, one of those Christian types they hate so much. But wait, it's even worse: if our actions habitually don't match our words, people begin to assume that ALL Christians are hypocrites.

It's tough, this mission of being God's hands in a world that needs so much.  So, let's start with a simple approach.  Each morning, ask God to help you be the light of the world today. Remember that the world watches you, waiting for your light. Remember that when your light shines, other people see it. Forgive yourself for days when you're a dimly burning wick (to use the words of Isaiah's, in last week's readings) and remember that God does not extinguish a dimly burning wick.  Even a dimly burning wick is better than no flame at all.

Martin Luther said that faith should move your feet. We are called to be people who are moving and acting, not people who are waiting to go to Heaven.  Take heart:  even the smallest movements can lead to great changes down the road.

Prayers for Healthy Choices

While I set New Year's intentions, they aren't usually wildly different from year to year:  there are health goals and creativity goals and spirituality goals.  Most years, my sister joins with me on one or more.  We often adopt a word or phrase for the year.  This year, it's an advertising slogan, but we like it:  "2026:  The year that incremental becomes monumental."

This year, we've got some additional people trying to make incremental health changes that will become monumental.  I sent out this e-mail this morning, and because I like the prayer, I wanted to include it here:

"I wanted to let us all know that I prayed for us this morning, and I'll do so every morning. Some times, it helps to know that someone prays for us. It's a simple prayer:

Give us the strength to make healthy choices, the wisdom to forgive ourselves for past unhealthy choices, and the courage to go forward.

Peace be with us all!"

Recording of Sunday Sermon

Yesterday was a good day at church to celebrate the baptism of Jesus.  My youth sermon focused on God's message of being well-pleased with Jesus, even before he's done anything, which is so different from much of our experience in the world.  I put this idea in the context of going back to school.  It is likely the same youth sermon I preached last year, and it's a theme I return to periodically.  I am not worried about the repetition.  I want the youth to remember.

My adult sermon went in interesting directions.  I had the idea of ending with the monks walking for peace yesterday morning, the morning of the Sunday I was to preach the sermon.  That's not unusual for me; I often create the last paragraph the morning of the sermon.  But yesterday, it was a whole new page.  I was happy with it.  I referenced the picture below in the sermon, a picture posted by Sandra Cline, which she titled "Buddhist Monks with a Lutheran Monk."  It's a picture of the monks walking across the now-closed campus of LTSS, more commonly known as Southern Seminary:

The recording of my sermon is here, on my YouTube page.  The manuscript is in this post on my theology page.

Sermon for Sunday, January 11, 2026

January 11, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 3:13-17



Ah, John the Baptist—it’s been a few weeks since we spent time with him, and now, here we are, back at the river Jordan, back with John the Baptist who has been doing a new thing. Baptism the way that John practiced it did not exist before John did it, not that we’ve been able to tell. To be sure, there were ritual baths and sometimes they did symbolize purification, like after a woman had given birth. But those baths were in human-made, enclosed spaces, very private. John the Baptist was out in the wilderness, far away from society, and people came from far and wide, came to be baptized in untamed water, people from every part of the wider community. Baptism brings them together.


John the Baptist is so compelling that Jesus, the Messiah himself, comes to the river Jordan to be baptized. The Gospel of Matthew is the only one that includes the conversation between John and Jesus in which John says that Jesus should be the one doing the baptizing. Jesus’ response strikes me as odd. Instead of praising John for preparing so many people through his ministry, Jesus says, "Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." I don’t know about you, but my brain trips over the words proper and righteousness.


Wasn’t Jesus already righteous? If the Messiah isn’t righteous enough, what hope for the rest of us? Is Jesus talking about John’s need to be proper to fulfill righteousness? Surely not, with John’s total commitment to his ministry.


For the ancient world, the word righteousness was a much more comprehensive concept than what 21st century people envision. We might look at the word and say, well, a righteous person is someone who does the right thing—it’s part of the word, after all. But historically, righteousness is so much more than right behavior.


New Testament scholar Eric Barretto says, “The Greek term is incredibly difficult to define, and even more difficult to comprehend theologically. The term can encapsulate complex notions of justice, uprightness, correctness, innocence, and redemption.”


Throughout the Bible, righteous is a word that means more than just doing the right action or having the correct moral scaffolding to support that action. Righteous is a word that also connotes relationship, a right relationship with God.


But it’s hard to imagine that Jesus and John aren’t already in right relationship with God. Again, we ask, why, exactly, does Jesus need to be baptized and why does John need to be the one to do it?


Let’s return to the question of what John is doing out there in the wilderness, before Jesus shows up. We already know the answer to this question. We wrestled with it in Advent when we asked about John’s persistent presence in our Advent space. He was baptizing people, of course.


But why?


Many of us might assume that John baptizes people for repentance of sin. But that’s language that comes from the Gospel of Mark, not the Gospel of Matthew. If we look earlier in the third chapter of Matthew, verse 11, John the Baptist says, “I baptize you with water for repentance” -- repentance yes, but not repentance of sin.


Let’s take a closer look at the word repentance. Many of us hear that word and we think about saying we’re sorry. Or maybe we think about renouncing our bad behaviors. But the Greek word is very different: it’s metanoia. It means a turning around. It means transformation. In this instance, John the Baptist uses it in a very ancient way, the way of the prophet, calling people to be in right relationship with God. This right relationship with God will also result in right relationship with the whole community.


John called first century Jews to be transformed into the righteous people that prophets have always known that they can be. Jesus hears the call and comes to the river Jordan, a river that symbolizes escape from the bondage of past oppressors, like the Egyptian Pharoah and entrance into new life in a promised land.


Jesus comes to John at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, a metanoia point. It’s the beginning of a new phase of life, much the same way we see baptism today. God claims us in baptism, but in the Lutheran church, when we baptize an infant, that infant is claimed for God by parents, godparents, and a whole faith community. That whole community, in turn, commits to that baby. And then, later, on the cusp of adulthood, during Confirmation we ask youth to affirm that they will continue with the promises that adults made for them. To refresh our memories, we promise to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of Christ in word and deed, to serve all people as we follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for peace and justice throughout the earth (ELW p. 236). Martin Luther encourages us to remember our baptism every day when we use water, and today, I encourage us to remember our baptismal promises by dipping our fingers in the font as we move around the sanctuary, when we’re sharing the peace, when we’re making our way to and from communion.


The baptismal story of Jesus is also one of community. John and Jesus are involved in a communal effort of fulfilling all righteousness. Jesus will continue the work that John has begun, the work of calling people home, calling people into a community based on love, calling people to the life of flourishing that the Creator wants for all creation. And many theologians see baptism as a time when the Holy Spirit comes into the world, in the form of a dove descending, the Holy Spirit set free to do that work of community building, set free to work in and through Jesus, set free to work in and through us all.


For many of us, January can be a dry time. The holidays are now behind us, and while we get an additional minute or two of daylight a day, spring can still feel far away. And then there’s the weight of the larger world.


I’m not going to elaborate on all the griefs that reports from the larger world have been giving us. Instead, I’m going to offer one of my comforts of this past week-end. I’ve been reading about a group of Buddhist monks who are walking from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. They’re walking for peace, and the whole walk is a form of prayer in movement.


We could spend time debating whether or not this is a good use of their time, but I have been astounded at how many people show up, even on dreary days, to cheer them on. Yesterday they arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, where thousands of people walked to the statehouse with them. Once there, they prayed for peace, Buddhist prayers, Christian prayers, prayers of all kinds. They spent the night in the dorms of the old campus of our Lutheran seminary, where hundreds of people coordinated to cook them meals, carry their bags up the flight of stairs to their dorm rooms, and to be of assistance in any way they could.


I have taken heart in the ways that people have responded, at the ways that these Buddhist monks have reminded us that a better way is possible.


For those of us feeling like a bruised reed or a dimly burning wick, our Gospel today tells us to take heart. One of the beautiful aspects of life in community is that we are not doing everything, all by ourselves. Some days, we’re the ones making the journey. Other days, we’re the ones assisting with meals. Often, we are present in our prayers, while others do their portion.


Hear God’s words again: God is pleased with Jesus, and God is pleased with you. Jesus did not come to earth to snuff out our wicks, whether they are burning brightly or dimly lit. No, Jesus comes to show us—or remind us—of the way. The way to God is through community. Let every day be one of repentance, of metanoia, of choosing the practices that we promise to do at baptism and confirmation. Let us live into our baptismal promises, today and every day, doing what is necessary to fulfill all righteousness, to transform our lives into ones of flourishing.

A Post-Epiphany Prayer as January Settles In

For those of us who need help understanding the signs that we see, let us pray.

For those of us who search for new directions, let us pray.

For those of us who lose control of our fears and insecurities, let us pray.

For those of us finding that we need to take a new road, let us pray.

For those of us who need a new dream, let us pray.

For all of us, we pray.

Help us to bring the message of God's love to the world, whether our approach is more like the angel choirs or the steady light of a distant star. 

Help us to be the star, shining a message of God's love to the world. 

Give us the courage to follow our visions.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, January 11, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 42:1-9

Psalm: Psalm 29

Second Reading: Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17

This week's Gospel finds Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, a ministry that shows what a difference to world history a year or two can make. Notice that Jesus begins with baptism. I love the fact that the Revised Common Lectionary returns us to the baptism of Jesus to start every year. What a difference from the secular ways we start the year. In today's Gospel, instead of harsh resolutions, we get the words of God: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

We tend to see Jesus as special. We can't imagine God saying the same thing about us. But in fact, from everything we can tell, God does feel that way about us. God takes on human form in its most vulnerable, as a little baby. How much more of a demonstration of love do we need?

For those of us who are big believers in affirmations, we should print out those words and paste them on our bathroom mirrors. What does it mean, if we believe God is well pleased with us?

Many of us dwell in the land of self-loathing this time of year. Maybe we've spent too much money on our Christmas festivities. Maybe we've eaten too much in that time between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Maybe we've already broken our New Year's resolutions. We look in our mirrors and see multiple reasons to hate ourselves.

The world looks at us and feeds us criticism: too fat, too plain, too wrinkled, too odd, too tall, too short. A diet of that commentary quickly leaves us malnourished. The world looks at us and judges us in terms of all the things we haven't accomplished yet: no child or children who don't measure up, lack of business success, a house that's too small or in the wrong neighborhood, no publication credits, no worthy creative products, the wrong kind of degree or no degree at all, not enough in our bank accounts. Seeing ourselves through the eyes of the world means we compare ourselves to others and hold ourselves to impossible standards.

No one wins this game.

Try a different practice for a week or two or 52. Look in the mirror and see yourself not as the world sees you. Look in the mirror and know that God loves you. God chose you. God delights in you.

God chose you. God delights in you. God loves you.

God loves you the way you are right now, not the future you that will be better adjusted, thinner, more accomplished, more worthy. Some theologians would go further and say that God created you because the world needs the you that you are right now, in all the ways you are so original and the ways that you are imperfect.

We've lived in the land of self-loathing long enough. Why cripple ourselves with this kind of thinking? There's work to be done, and the world cannot afford for you to waste time feeling bad for all the ways you've failed. Begin the day by remembering that you are perfectly made and return to that thought regularly throughout the day--perhaps as you say grace before you eat.

God loves you. Love yourself as deeply as God loves you.

A Poem for Epiphany

As I look back through my poetry folder, I'm surprised to see how many Epiphany poems I have.  I've always found the liturgical year and holidays to be fruitful places for inspiration, and Epiphany is particularly rich.  You've got a new star, wise people from a distant land, a murderous dictator, a baby whose story we already know, and various types of knowledge (observation, dreams, ancient information).

I often read T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" as Epiphany approaches; this year, Ross Douthat posted a reading which I like even better than my own internal voice reading the poem.  That reading sent me back to my poetry folder, and today I'm posting this poem which draws inspiration from Eliot's.  It was written about 10 years ago, and this appearance is its first publication.

Dispensations Old and New



The old dispensation cannot save
you now. Hard and bitter agony.
Eat stones for breakfast, crack
your teeth before sunrise,
it makes no difference.
Suckle the camels who cannot eat cactus,
wait for the silken girls with their sherbet,
No one will sing to you.

You must listen to a different song.
Plug your ears against the angel chorus.
Put away the mandolin and fiddle.
Listen for the star’s quiet plainsong.
Follow the single note.

Leave death’s twilight kingdom.
Enter the deep midnight,
the place you hoped
would be a temporary sojourn.
Learn the new landscape with only
your fingertips for navigation.

Youth Sermon and Recording of Adult Sermon for January 5, 2026

Yesterday was a great day at church.  My sermon for adults went well, and more on that in a moment.  I was pleased with my youth sermon, which really pleased me, since I find the Gospel for the second Sunday of Christmas, John 1:  1-18, to be a tough one for adults and youth alike.

For the youth sermon, I talked about our experience playing Charades with my family, and I suggested we do a version of that for our youth time together.  I said, "Now don't worry.  I'm not going to make you act."  I suggested that we look at the church, so beautifully decorated for Christmas, and think about how we might act out "Jesus," if we had to act it out so that people would guess we were talking about Jesus.

One girl pointed to the top of the Chrismon tree, which is a crown in our congregation.  We also talked about the cross and the baby in a manger and bread and wine.  Because it's the one time that we have real flowers in the church (the poinsettias), I also talked about the Eastern Orthodox idea that we know and understand God, and therefore Jesus, in any part of creation or the natural world, like the poinsettias.

Then I got to the Gospel--would we act out "Word" for Jesus?  Are they similar?  I talked about the Greek idea of Logos, the way that Logos or Word or Jesus would be order instead of chaos.  It was a theme from my adult sermon too.

Overall, the youth sermon went well, as did the adult sermon, which talked about Logos and Legos and Pythagoras and order out of chaos, the words I prefer for light and darkness in the John passage, and I don't think that substitution does damage to the text.

I was glad that the recording of the sermon worked yesterday, even more so since my spouse stayed home to keep his cold germs to himself.  Some of the ideas in the sermon, like Pythagoras and the connection to Legos, came from him, and I'm glad that he could see it.

You can view the recording of the sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, the manuscript is in this post on my theology blog.

Sermon for Sunday, January 4, 2026

January 4, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


John 1: 1-18



In today’s Gospel, we get our third and final Nativity story. Two weeks ago, in our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, we saw the story from Joseph’s perspective, a man who was about to disentangle himself from his betrothed who was pregnant with a child that was not his. On Christmas Eve, in our reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard the story from the perspective of those who are displaced: the young couple traveling to their ancestral hometown with no room for them and the shepherds, away from human society, who are first to hear the Good News of the birth of the Messiah.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus comes onto the scene fully formed, ready to start his ministry. In some ways, the Gospel of John is similar. In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus is fully formed too, part of the Divine, coming down and moving into the neighborhood, as Eugene Peterson translates this text in the Message version of the Bible.

In all of the Gospels, we see God come to us in human form and transform every day lives. The Gospel of John does give us a Nativity story, although we might not recognize it in the same way as the ones that revolve around a baby. The Gospel of John is the most Greek of the Nativity stories. We might not think of Pythagoras, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, when we read today’s Gospel, but maybe we should.

I know that at this point, many of us are trying to remember the Pythagorean Theorem from a long ago Geometry class, but that’s not the aspect of Pythagoras that I’m referencing. About five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Pythagoras said that to fully understand the essence of a thing, we need to be able to quantify it—it needs to stand apart from other items, and we need to be able to define it with our senses. He went further and said that until we can recognize it as a unique thing, it doesn’t exist at all. We could see the beginning of the Gospel of John in the same way—in order for humans to understand God fully, Jesus must come us as a separate part of the deity.

Although he was secretive about his work, Pythagoras was not a lonely philosopher, coming up with ideas on his own. He founded communities of learning, and much of what we know about him, comes to us through the work of others. In reading about these Greek learning communities that he created, I was reminded of early Christian groups kept the words of Jesus alive, words that come to us through the Gospels. In finding out that it was Pythagoras’ wife that helped preserve his ideas and pass them along, again, I was struck by the early church, by the women who might not have had leadership positions, but without whom, we might have never had the faith we celebrate.

There are other aspects of Greek culture in the Gospel of John. This Gospel calls Jesus “The Word,” but it’s a poor substitution for the Greek word, “Logos,” the original name of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Logos has a more profound Greek meaning than one word in English can convey. Logos has connection to reasoning, to making mathematical calculations, to telling a story in narrative form. Logos also includes the animating spirit behind the words, the numbers, the calculations, and the narratives. Above all, it’s a word that conveys a making order out of chaos.

I thought of this idea of order out of chaos many times during my Christmas break, but none more so than when I was at an activity room at a resort near Williamsburg. The room was full of toys and games, anything a child could want. Of course, the child would have to track down all the various parts that were scattered all over the room. As I stepped on a Lego, I thought of how close the words are: Legos and Lagos. I thought of creation as a vast Lego set, the kind that could be used to make anything. But without a plan, there’s only chaos, chaos in tiny pieces that find their way to feet. With a plan, a person can make buildings or planes or planets out of a bunch of Legos. Without a vision or a set of instructions, most of us would be reduced to toddler status, not sure of how the parts fit together or ways to move from tiny pieces to unified whole.

Those of us who have been alive any amount of years could offer any number of similar metaphors: home repair projects, quilt designs, recipes, a strategy to win a football game. Life is easier if we get organized before we start. The project has a better chance of completion if we stay focused and follow the directions. We see this idea throughout today’s Gospel. The Gospel writer uses the idea of light coming out of darkness, but it might be a more accurate translation to use these words: Order was created out of chaos, and the chaos did not overcome it.

By using the word Logos for Jesus, the writer of the Gospel of John echoes back to robust Jewish thought. We get a glimpse of it in today’s Psalm, that the way God orders the world is through words. It’s a concept as old as Genesis—God speaks, and there’s life and a new creation. Today’s Gospel is both Genesis story and Nativity story—it’s the story of the beginning, and in the seeds of the beginning, we have a glimpse of its completion. Of course, as anyone who has renovated a house or built a Lego structure knows, the project is never really complete. Today’s Gospel gives us a sense of that incompleteness that begins in fulfillment. And if we spend time thinking about that idea, that the beginning contains both the end and a new beginning, we get a window into the mystical aspect of the Gospel of John.

But the mystical aspect has very practical applications.

In a world where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know what is true, today’s Gospel reading continues to be achingly relevant. In a world where so many words are being generated and preserved, both by humans and by computer intelligences, it can feel hard to insist that words have relevance and meaning. But it’s a truth that most of us know in our deepest core.

Words become flesh every day. We begin to shape our existence by talking about the reality we hope to experience. For example, we see this dynamic in every New Year’s Resolution we’ve ever made. And even if we’re not successful, we’ve shaped a different reality just by trying. If you’re already feeling like a failure, because it’s January 4 and you’ve broken your New Years Resolution, take heart—psychologists tell us that it takes a certain amount of attempts before we can change our behavior, our beliefs, our ways of being human.

It’s not just our individual selves that are shaped by words and ideas. Our relationships are too. We shape our relationships through our words which then might lead to deeds, which is another way of talking about flesh.

For example, If we treat people with patience and care, we will shape the flesh of our relationships into something different. Alternately, if we're rude and nasty to people, they will respond with rudeness and cruelty--we've shaped the flesh of the world into a place where we don't want to live. We create chaos, instead of a firm foundation—or worse, we take a firm foundation and transform it into chaos.

Try this simple experience for a week: say please and thank you more often. Say it to your spouse who does a chore that they’ve always done. Say it to every person you meet in the grocery store or other retail spaces. Write to the people in charge of institutions that matter to you, but from a posture of please and thank you. You will likely find yourself transformed by this practice. It’s possible to transform others too and well worth a try.

I’ve been reading many year end reviews of the year we just ended, 2025, and many of them comment on how much harder the world seems. And yet, if we think about the world that Jesus enters, our world is no more brutal or ugly than that of the Roman empire. Then and now, we have rulers looking out for their own interests, invading other countries, trampling the downtrodden even further. Then and now, we have displaced people on the move. Then and now, we have people from every walk of life facing challenges that seem insurmountable.

But hear again the words from Ephesians, words that promise us that we have an inheritance. Listen again to the words of the Gospel of John, words that tell us that God creates Logos order out of the spilled Legos character of the world. Remember the promise of every Gospel text, that Divine messengers can break through, in the form of hopes and dreams or angels and stars. Each and every day, remember that God has not abandoned us to rehabilitate the world on our own; God invites us to a partnership in a new creation, one that is both now and not yet, one that will not be overcome by chaos and shadow.

Clear Margins

Yesterday as we drove back from Williamsburg, my cell phone rang.  I was driving, and my spouse was sleeping, so we didn't answer the phone.  Then his cell phone rang, which woke him up and made me wonder if there was bad news we needed to know about sooner rather than later.

We got the message left on my cell phone; it was a nurse from the melanoma doctor's office who was calling to "discuss the pathology report."  I exited the interstate so that we could call back from a parked car.  If it was bad news, I didn't want to be driving.  It was 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, so I didn't want to delay making the return phone call.

Of course, the nurse was with another patient, so I left a message.  We switched drivers and made our way back home.  The minutes ticked on while we waited for the call.  I wasn't anxious that we wouldn't get a return call, and I wasn't too anxious about the nature of the test results.  I figured that the worst case scenario was that the doctor didn't get it all, and we'd have to do it all again.  Since it hasn't been too bad an experience, that, too, wouldn't be terribly awful--unlike say, if I had to undergo my broken wrist experience again.  I knew that the pathology was on the tissue removed, not anything that would reveal cancer elsewhere: it's not like they did a body scan of some sort while I was undergoing surgery.

Still, it was a relief to hear the nurse say, "Your margins came back clear."  And yes, I clarified, even though I was fairly sure what she meant--they got all the melanoma.  

I feel very lucky, since it's possible that the spot has been there since summer 2024, when it was diagnosed as a bug bite.  It did look like a bug bite, and it's possible that it was, and that the melanoma came in the same spot.  But it's also possible that we missed it for over a year, which means it had that much longer to grow deep and become more dangerous.

Last night, the steri-strips came off my surgery site.  I went home with the site covered in gauze and waterproofing plastic, which we took off 3 days later.  But the steri-strips hid some of the starkness of the surgery.  The melanoma doctor did warn me that it would be lumpy, but I was expecting something like the lumpiness of cellulite, not skin that looked like two ping pong balls had been inserted on either side of an indentation.  

The stitches are underneath and will dissolve, which means there will be less scarring and eventually no lumps.  Happily, it's my arm, not my face, so I'm not too worried.  I'm relieved that there's no bleeding and no pain--not even any discomfort.  I'm trying to remember that I am supposed to take it easy in terms of lifting for the next week (no lifting of anything over 10 pounds).

Let me stress again how lucky I feel.  It could have been so much worse.  It's not how I anticipated spending part of my winter break, but here, too, I'm glad it unspooled during December, instead of other times that would have been much less convenient, like last summer when I was working a full-time CPE internship at the VA Hospital.

Watching "Chariots of Fire" on New Years Day

 Yesterday was a great beginning to 2026.  It was a cold day, so we weren't interested in some of the outdoors things we might have done on a milder day.  My parents had been planning to watch Chariots of Fire, and I like that movie, so we decided to have a movie day.

We've all seen the movie before, and we were all surprised by how much we've forgotten.  I thought I had seen it in the years since it came out, and I saw it in the movie theatre.  But now I wonder.

I did remember the main characters, of course.  But I had forgotten how principled both men are.  Eric Liddle stands out, of course--his decision not to run on a Sunday, even though it means he won't actually get to participate in the Olympics, is the part of the movie that many people remember.  The other main character is also making a principled stand by working with a coach to get even faster, even though he's already one of the fastest students ever.

I had forgotten how wonderful the other aspects of the movie are.  What amazing costumes!  What wonderful settings!  And that soundtrack--I hadn't forgotten how wonderful the soundtrack is.

As always, the movie made me think about trying to run again.  Or maybe it's just the soundtrack that has that effect on me.  The running I want to do is not the 100 or 400 yard sprint.  I want long, rambling runs, and I've always run at a very slow pace.

For now, I just need to get back to walking, which I will do, once we get back to more of a semblance of regular life.  My arm is healing nicely from the melanoma surgery, so I can soon return to some weight/strength work.  Let me use the movie as inspiration for 2026, as I look for ways to regain good health.  I'm not far off from good health now, but I am carrying some extra weight--probably another pound or two since early December, but what a wonderful holiday we've had!