Sunday Sermons and Good Sundays

Yesterday was a good day at Faith Lutheran--the energy level felt a bit higher, a few more people attending than we had in the slower summer Sundays.  

I used the youth sermon to talk about the behavior of Jesus towards the Canaanite woman, the way we see Jesus at his most human, the hard parts of being human, the way humans get grumpy and tired and don't always treat each other well--but the way we can course correct in real time, just like Jesus did.

I was happy with how my adult sermon went, and happy about the last part of the last sentence, which wasn't in the manuscript:  "to live into a future where everyone has a place at the table, not under the table."

You can watch the recording of the sermon here on my YouTube channel, and you can read the manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, August 16, 2026

August 16, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28



We have met the Canaanite woman before, and not just 3 years ago when we were last at this place in the lectionary cycle. In Mark, she’s called a Syrophoenician woman. Both of these descriptors—Canaanite and Syrophoenician--are markers that would have been more clear to first century ears than to our own. She is an outsider in all kinds of ways: she’s female, she’s not from Galilee, and most scholars assume she’s not Jewish. And yet, she shows us a way that outsiders can make the culture more inclusive.


Jesus goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon. He’s now left Galilee, his home base. Tyre is 20 miles away, Sidon further north, 50 miles away. His reputation as a healer has spread far and wide. Some Bible scholars seem surprised by this, but I’m not. Imagine if someone today could heal the toughest cancer and not with a rigorous regime of chemo that leaves the body exhausted, but with a touch that restores health. Ancient people were not that different from us. Humans seek healing, then and now.


But the Canaanite woman is not sick herself; she asks for healing for her daughter. Is her quest on behalf of another’s health the reason that Jesus and the disciples are so dismissive? No—Jesus has healed others who came to him hoping that he would come to heal a friend or relative or even a servant. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, a centurion comes to Jesus on behalf of his servant, and Jesus heals from a distance.


We might be starting to notice an inconsistency in Jesus’ approach. In parts of some Gospels, he heals only after a discussion. In other parts, like with the bleeding woman, he heals without even giving consent. He heals people who are grateful. When people don’t say thank you, he may notice, but he doesn’t reverse the miracle.


If you are hoping that I can give you secret insider information that I got at seminary, information that will lead us to a consistent theology, well . . . I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve found my life’s work for the last 1/3 of my life, but I don’t have an answer now.


Jesus doesn’t limit his powers of healing only to Jews. The centurion and the servant are Romans. But the woman in today’s Gospel is an outsider on a different level, a much more ancient level, going back to the time of the Torah.


She is a Canaanite woman, and using the word Canaanite instead of Syrophoenician makes her outsider status even more ancient. If you think way, way back in the Bible, you may remember that when the Israelites leave Egypt, led by Moses, they are headed to the promised land. Unfortunately that promised land was already occupied—by Canaanites. That vicious battle created hatred that stretched across centuries, hatred still active in the time of Jesus.


She comes to Jesus, knowing of this enmity, this bad blood between people but also knowing that her daughter is sick. She enters this male entourage and insists on being heard.


But notice how she insists. Her language is key to understanding how respectful she is. Her language also shows that she is professing Jesus to be more than just a healer or a miracle worker. She begins by using this title: “Lord, Son of David.” She recognizes him as the Messiah, the promised one foretold by prophets, and she does this throughout her interactions by using the term “Lord.” We often hear that word as one of Jesus’ other names, like Christ. But she’s using it in an ancient context, and her kneeling before Jesus reinforces that signifier.


Jesus’ response is harsh, which we’ve talked about before, and in today’s context, it’s a bit baffling. If he’s only come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, then what’s he doing far away in Tyre and Sidon? You might bring up the parable about the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep behind in search of the one who wandered away. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is actually starting to expand the idea of the flock in a different way. It’s as if the shepherd in the parable decided to add a different type of animal to the herd.


Scholars now believe the Gospel of Matthew was written in the first decade or two after the destruction of the temples by the Romans. Keep in mind, it wasn’t just the destruction of the Temple—the Romans forced every Jewish survivor to leave the city of Jerusalem, and they would not return to that city again in mass numbers until the 20th century.


The Gospel of Matthew shows us a community in exile figuring out how to be a community in exile. Will they continue to be Jews who believe in the Divinity of Jesus or will they include believers who are Gentiles? The Canaanite woman argues for inclusion—she argues forcefully, yet respectfully. In this way, she changes Jesus’ mind and the approach of believers for decades to come. And if we look around, we could say that she was successful and leave it there and go home feeling happy.

But the message in today’s Gospel is that we’re never done with God’s vision for a more inclusive kingdom. Even Jesus has some growing to do. Even Jesus could dream a bigger dream, if only someone would come along and help him see what might be possible.


Today’s Gospel has reverberations for our own culture. We are a humanity in desperate need of new visions. We might hear this Gospel about ancient divisions and think of the ancient divisions plaguing our own times, divisions that come through history that is both different, yet ageless. People kicked out of homelands so that others can have a homeland—how do we solve that division? Geographical divisions that are intractable—how do we solve those disagreements? Old disagreements that fester into entrenched grievances—how do we solve that division? These are still essential questions for individual communities and larger nations.


Every person alive can tell a story of being on the painful side of exclusion and being outcast. How can we heal that wound?


The Canaanite woman shows us a way. We look to see what is healing and life giving. We look to those who are casting out demons, not the ones driving us into insensibility with evil speech. We insist on the dignity of everyone and give reverence to those who are deserving.


And yet, those actions alone may not be enough, if we don’t have the courage that it takes to be persistent.


As we work towards creating a better world, one in line with the flourishing that God wants for creation, we may not have success right away. The powers and principalities of the world will not say, “We were just waiting for someone to come and show us that a better way is possible.” We might be ignored. We might have to listen to harsh language about us and our visions. It might even be worse.


The Canaanite woman shows us the power of faith coupled with persistence. She is our ancestor in faith, and she showing us how to live in a time of cataclysmic change, showing us how to live in a world where the predominant response to cataclysmic change is to build more boundaries so that those who have a lot want can exclude those who aren’t so fortunate. The Canaanite woman changed Jesus’ mind; she changed the trajectory of his mission. Let us go and continue to live into the promise of this vision.

The Feast Day of Mary, Her Assumption and All Else

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

First Reading: Isaiah 61:7-11

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

Second Reading: Galatians 4:4-7

Gospel: Luke 1:46-55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirty-eight Years Married

Today we celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary--38 years! It feels like just a blip.  Here is one of my favorite pictures of us, a picture taken at the March 2026 wedding of our nephew, who was born in 1993:

This morning in 1988, we'd have been in Greenwood, South Carolina. I'd have slept in the house that used to be a parsonage where my grandfather served a congregation for many years. Thirty years ago in that house, my grandmother ironed my wedding dress. Below you'll see my grandmother, with my aunt Joyce helping.




Yes, I had a long, white dress. We got married in the same church in Greenwood, South Carolina where my parents had gotten married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather had been the pastor. We had the ceremony at 11:00 in the morning, so that our out of town guests with long travels home would have plenty of time.  We tried to keep the ceremony and the reception relatively simple. For example, we chose daisies for our bouquet. Our reception included sandwiches, so that our out-of-town guests wouldn't have to buy lunch on their way out of town. We had the best wedding cake I've ever had.

In many ways, we're still that same couple: we try to keep life simple, while at the same time, keeping a commitment to hospitality. We are hyper-aware of our blessings, and the fact that much of the world will never taste the extravagance of a wedding cake. But we don't deprive ourselves--we stop to admire the daisies.

Here you see a picture of us on this day in 1988, and the two of us at our 25th anniversary dinner:

Here's my final thought for an anniversary morning. I'd expand the thought to include not just our spouses but also our friends and colleagues and family members.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, August 16, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Genesis 45:1-15

Psalm: Psalm 67

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 133

Second Reading: Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

Gospel: Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28

I don't like this picture of Jesus that today's Gospel represents. He treats the Canaanite woman rudely, with a complete lack of compassion. What do we make of this vision of Christ?

Part of the answer may depend on your view of Jesus/God. Do you see God as unchanging? Do you see God as never making mistakes?

If so, perhaps you should re-read your Bible, especially the Old Testament. Throughout the Scriptures, we see God changing course, often influenced by humans. God does not command us to be passive and just accept whatever comes our way--whether it be from God, powers and principalities, other humans, or Satan. That theological idea that we have to just accept our lot in life in the hopes that we'll get our reward in Heaven--it's a major misreading of the Scriptures and of theology.

I like the idea of God who allows us to disagree--and a God that sometimes agrees that we are right in our disagreement. I like the idea of a God that is being shaped and changed by creation, just as we are being shaped and changed by creation--and by God.

I know we'd rather believe in an absolute God, a God who has all the answers. We don't want to believe in a God who gets tired. We don't want to believe in a God who doesn't have absolute control. We want a God who can point and make magical changes, even though everything we've experienced about the world doesn't suggest that God acts that way very often, if at all.

In today's Gospel, we see a tired, irritable Jesus. It's a terrifying idea (I'd prefer a divinity of infinite patience), but it's the best support to show that God did indeed become human.

The Canaanite woman is much more Godlike than Jesus in this Gospel. Here's a woman who is desperate to help her child. When Jesus rebukes her, she stands up to him and argues her case. And she persuades him. She demands justice, and because she stands her ground, she wins. Her behavior is much more Christlike than Christ's.

She has much to teach us. We are called to emulate her. When we see injustice, we must cry out to God and demand that creation be put right. Many theologians would tell you that if you want God to be active in this free will world that God has created, that you better start making some demands. God can't be involved unless we demand it (for a further discussion of this concept, see the excellent books of Walter Wink). If God just intervened in the world, that would violate the principle of free will which God instilled in creation. But if we invite God to action, then God has grounds to act.

I would argue that some of the most sweeping social changes of the twentieth century were grounded in this principle of crying out to the wider world and to God to demand that justice be done. Think of Gandhi's India, the repressiveness of the Jim Crow era in the USA, the South African situation decried by Archbishop Tutu, the civil wars in Central America, the Soviet occupied Eastern Europe: these situations horrified the larger world and the movements to rectify them were rooted in the Christian tradition. True, there were often external pressures applied (economic embargoes and the like), but each situation prompted prayer movements throughout the world.

Let the Canaanite woman be your guide towards right behavior. Let the actions of Jesus remind you that even if you're snappy and irritable, you can change course and direct yourself towards grace and compassion. Let your faith give you hope for a creation restored to God's original vision of a just and peaceful Kingdom.

The Feast Day of Saint Clare

Today we celebrate the life of St. Clare of Assisi, one of the first followers of St. Francis, and founder of the Order of the Poor Ladies (more commonly called the Poor Clares).  She wrote their Rule of Life, the first woman to have created such a thing, a set of rules for the life of a monastic order.

The Poor Clares lived a life committed to poverty, what St. Clare called a "joyous poverty."  Why joyous?  Because they felt they were following Christ in a much more authentic way and because they more vividly felt the presence of Jesus because of their lifestyle.  Throughout her life she faced pressure from church officials to abandon or weaken this commitment to poverty, and she resisted.  

Yet she also understood poverty as a practice that needed to be navigated in a way that didn't threaten life itself.  In a Facebook post Tim Brown, ELCA pastor and Stewardship expert at the ELCA, says, "Though St. Clare was intent on living in a post-ownership society, she also understood that savage piety could produce a backhanded vanity. "We are not made of brass," she said once to an overzealous sister, reminding the order that poverty was a gift, not a quest or competition. Human bodies can handle only so much deprivation."

The order still exists today, which tells me much about her accomplishment.

She was also instrumental in assisting St. Francis of Assisi, and many give her credit as one of his earliest followers.  Her order was based on his intentional community, and again, Franciscan strains of spirituality not only exist but are strong today--a testament to their work.

Tim Brown concludes his Facebook post by noting three truths:

"St. Clare is a reminder for me of a couple truths:

 
First, the spotlight unfairly falls on men in history. Clare was inspired by Francis, but more fully lived into his ideal vision of a monastic life than he ever did. She is the shining example that what he preached was a good way to live.

Second, piety can be just as competitive as gluttony in the hands of the overzealous. Martyrdom complexes are as sinful as extravagance. Clare's call was to humility, not destitution.

Finally, never underestimate the ability to move someone when words and actions hold hands. Clare looked not only to the sermon Francis preached, but to the sermon he embodied, and was motivated to do something life-changing."

Back to me:

In these days of increased tensions of all sorts, the life of St. Clare seems to take on fresh importance.  Let us take a moment to say a prayer of gratitude for her.  Let us remember the poor.  Let us vow to be joyous about reduced circumstances, should we be facing them.  Let us meet our savior as we minister to each other.

Sermon Recording from a Good Day at Church

We had a really good day at church yesterday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  I say this with some sense of wonder because I arrived in a grumpy mood:  we left ten minutes later than I had requested, which meant I felt frazzled.

I prayed for my grumpy frazzled mood to lift as I waited for my spouse to come downstairs and open the door, and happily it did with the first hymn.  My sermon went well.  I was more pleased with my adult sermon, but I also think what I did with the youth was important, talking about storms as what they might encounter in school (it's their second Monday back today).  Grown ups hear about Peter sinking in stormy waters and immediately think about the chaos in their lives, but most youth are not trained in this kind of interpretation.

We even welcomed a new member, the nephew of one of our current members and his two small (delightful!) children.  I got donuts in Arden, at my newish favorite donut store that's open at 5 a.m., even on Sundays.

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

Sermon for Sunday, August 9, 2026

August 9, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


Matthew 14:22-33




We seem to be in the escalating miracles section of the lectionary. We might be able to explain away the miracle of last week’s reading by guessing that the crowds share more food as they are inspired by the actions of a few. But making a storm stop immediately—that miracle reveals the Divine nature of Jesus. No one could doubt after that miracle, right?


Perhaps not. Jesus has calmed a storm before today’s text in the Gospel of Matthew. It happens in the 8th chapter, when Jesus takes a nap in the boat as the storm rages around the disciples on the deck. When they are desperate enough to wake Jesus, he immediately stops the storm. The disciples are left puzzling over what they have seen, asking in verse 27 of chapter 8: “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”


The two stories have similarities beyond the storm and Jesus’ power over it. In both stories, Jesus has been ministering to a crowd. In today’s text, instead of getting in the boat with the disciples, Jesus sends them out in the boat and dismisses the crowds. Finally, he has time to go to the mountain to pray.


In the ancient world, particularly the Jewish world, the mountain is where one goes to meet God. Moses gets the 10 Commandments on a mountain. Prophets get Divine insight on mountain tops. Ancient ears would have heard about Jesus going to pray, and they might have interpreted that verb in a different way than we do. They might have heard about Jesus on a mountain and assumed that not only did Jesus talk to God, but also that God spoke back.


Ancient ears would have heard the part about the boat and the sea differently too. In the ancient world, the sea is a place associated with chaos, and a storm at sea would be evidence of a world out of control, depths that will swallow up even the best fisherman or sailor. Similarly, the early hours of the morning are evidence of the kind of dark night of the soul that we see periodically in the Bible—like the time Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemene.


So, when the men see Jesus, it’s not a surprise that they think they are seeing a ghost or some other creature rising from the depths to finish up the process of destroying them. Jesus speaks, and even then, they’re not sure of what they see. The storm still rages, after all. Can they even hear him?


Peter’s words—if it is you-- make me think that they can hear, but they just can’t process it. And who can blame them? When they last saw Jesus, less than 12 hours ago, he was headed in a different direction. And they may see him as a miracle worker, but even miracle workers can’t walk on the water in the middle of a storm.


Jesus can—and Peter can too, before he lets his analytical brain take control. Many a sermon has been preached on faith and how our rational brains might undermine our relationship with God, just the way we see here. Peter sinks, Jesus saves him, and still the storm rages around them.


Maybe it’s not Peter’s rational brain that fails him, that gets in the way of his faith, but fear. It’s not that Peter says, “Wait, I’m walking on water, and humans shouldn’t be able to do this.” No, it’s the wind that howls in his ears that makes him afraid and vulnerable.


I suspect the same is true for most of us. It’s not our science trained brains that get us distracted from God, but it is fear that deafens our ears to the call of Christ. But today’s story reminds us that it often takes an experience of soul rattling fear that leaves us open to finding God in the midst of the raging chaos that surrounds us. When our lives are progressing smoothly, it’s easy to think that we don’t need God. It’s when our lives fall apart that we find ourselves reaching out to God, God who has always been there, reaching out to us.


Today’s Gospel ends with the disciples recognizing the divinity of Jesus, which is not how the earlier story of Jesus calming the storm ends. Is it the difference between calming the storm from the safety of the boat in chapter 8 and walking on the water in the storm, as he does here? Is it that they have seen more and more that convinces them and by chapter 14, they are ready to confess their faith?


Maybe it is because they are Jews, shaped by the Passover story. With the pairing of last week’s Gospel with this week’s, we see Jesus re-enacting this ancient story in some key ways: there’s food in the wilderness and deliverance from waters that threaten. And there’s another echo of Exodus; when the disciples think they are seeing a ghost, Jesus identifies himself by saying “It is I.” Hebrew scholars note that Jesus uses the same words in the same form of Hebrew that God uses in the burning bush to tell Moses who speaks from the bush.


We are not Jews shaped by the Passover story, but Christians shaped by the story of a Messiah. Listen to those words again from verse 27: "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Which part of that passage do you hear differently than others might? For me, it’s that ending, “Do Not be afraid.” From the beginning of the story of Jesus to the end, these words repeat: “Do not be afraid.” Mary and Joseph both receive this message, as does Jesus. And so do the disciples, throughout their time with Jesus.


But too many of us ignore the first part of what Jesus says. It’s not enough to train ourselves to not be afraid. We also need to take heart—or as an earlier translation says, “Take courage” or “Have courage.” If we don’t need to be afraid, we should be liberated to dare to do more.


Our courage might fail us, of course. Just because Jesus meets us in the storm, it doesn’t mean an end to all of our troubles. In today’s Gospel, the storm continues. And unlike the storm in chapter 8, in chapter 14 Jesus doesn’t command the storm to stop. Perhaps it ends, as all storms do, when they’ve expended all available energy.


Another interpretation of “Take heart” is “Be of good cheer,” or even “cheer up,” which might change our approach to the text considerably. We don’t need to be afraid. On the contrary, we can take heart and be of good cheer, because Jesus shows us again and again that his power is greater than any earthly power.


I wish I could tell you that a life following Jesus is one where there are no storms, but endless parties with everyone fed and leftovers collected. Jesus doesn’t promise us that life. But he does promise that if we fix our eyes on Jesus, if we listen to his words instead of the winds howling in our ears, we’ll survive the storm. Maybe it’s because we have faith enough to ignore our fear and walk on the water. It’s more likely that we survive because we fail, and in that moment of failure, we cry out for help. And Jesus is there, as Jesus has always been there, hand outstretched.


With the help of Jesus, we’ll make it back to the battered boat, and the battered boat will make it to the other side. All we need to do is let Jesus grab hold of us and steer us back to safety.

Shifts for Those with Sense to See

I am always intrigued by how we can see seasons shifting, long before the calendar would tell us to expect these changes.

We have to learn to see with new eyes, eyes that focus on what's there, not what we're expecting to see. It's more of a shift of imagination than with our literal eyes, our literal sense: 

It's similar to how we can see God at work in the world--but it might mean we need to change our focus. 

Once we see it, the changing of a season, the evidence of God in the world, it's hard to ignore.

In future years, I might see this photo as evidence of a world on fire; I wouldn't be wrong, but it's early morning mist here, not smoke from fires.

One aspect I can't capture:  the way the greenness of the trees is thinning, the way I can see distant lights from roads in ways I couldn't just a month ago.

Back to School, Back to Hiroshima

Yesterday was a delightful day.  Today will be delightful too, although it's a full day on campus, so it will be a different kind of delightful.  And I've been awake since 2, so I do worry about how tired I'll be by late afternoon.

My brain started churning at 2, churning with all sorts of worries and plans.  I need to sit down with a calendar and old syllabi and make some loose plans--or maybe weekly plans--at least that's what my brain was telling me when I couldn't go back to sleep.  My brain also jumped ahead to spring, and how I might teach the Intro to Lit class, and it's much too early to be plotting those classes.

Have I done the syllabus planning for this semester, since I was awake?  No, of course not.  I did some reading and ate some cranberry orange bread.  I did some fretting about muscle loss:  not my own, but my friend who had the catastrophic stroke a few years ago, and has lost so much muscle mass that she can't sit in the wheelchair very long.  I've wondered about other people in my life who aren't getting much exercise--but certainly more than my mostly bed-bound friend.

I am remembering 2 years ago, heading down to campus for a day that would have been even fuller, with a dinner for new faculty at the end.  I remember going to orientation sessions for new faculty and wondering how much would apply to me as a person with a one year position.  And I remember feeling so jealous of people who had the luxury of more permanence.

And now I am one of those people.

Of course, today is one of those days in history that reminds me that permanence is an illusion. Today is the day when the first atomic bomb used in warfare was detonated at Hiroshima, thus launching us into this brave new world where we find ourselves.  I think of those people headed to work when the bomb detonated, those burned into the concrete, and those further away, who would spend the rest of their lives being a walking specimen of what overexposure to radiation does to a human body before they died early.

The bombs used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small by today's standards--but what damage they did! The effects of that bomb obliterated much of Hiroshima--and vaporized some of it. There were reports of people fused into pavement and glass--or just vanished, with a trace remaining at the pavement. The reports of the survivors who walked miles in search of help or water are grim. And many of those survivors would die of the effects of radiation in the coming years.

Through the years, I've seen many a documentary about the rush to build nuclear weapons, about the uncertainty of what would happen with those first tests and explosions--would the very atmosphere around the planet dissolve? I have yet to see any footage of scientists who wondered what might happen to civilians on the ground when these bombs exploded.

I've lived long enough to see history being made to know that the choices can be fairly ghastly. In this case, far better to develop the weapons before the Germans. I know many people who believe that the use of these bombs helped avoid more years of grueling battles in the Pacific that would have left us with even more dead--one could argue that the sacrifice of the populations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were worth the avoidance of more years of war and that loss of life.

I've also done enough reading and thinking about pacifist approaches to wonder if there might not have been another way if we had acted much earlier.

I remember during our grad school years we went to a beautiful anti-nuclear vigil on August 6 in a city park.  I remember paper cranes and seeing some of our grad school professors there.  That would have been in 1988 or 1989.  I wonder if any groups mount anti-nuclear vigils in August anymore?

It's not that the world is any more of a peaceful place these days.  In fact, in recent years, it feels like we're sliding back to a world that's much more dangerous.  Sadly, the world still needs the blessings of the origami cranes.  They're not as easy to fold as they look--that, too, makes them an appropriate metaphor.  But they are worth the effort--and peace is worth the effort too.

Delights Planned for the Last Day of Summer and an A for Paul Class

In many ways, today is my last day of summer 2026.  A year ago, I'd have been going to CPE early and then driving to Williamsburg to help my parents recover from my mom's near death pneumonia hospitalization--I am so grateful that this summer's end is more mundane.

Our transition to the school year is a gentle one.  Tomorrow we have a very full day of teacher training and meetings.  On Friday and Monday, we have one meeting per day.  I'd prefer to have both on one day and the other day free for syllabus prep, but I'm fine with the schedule.  Having more time off is a game changer--in my younger days at community colleges, I'd have been irritable at being expected to do any of this at all.  

Of course, in my younger days, I spent much more time being irked.  Now I am older and wiser and more laid back and a better shepherd of my energy, meaning I ask more questions about situations and whether or not my irritability/anger is worth the energy and time.

On this last day of summer, I'll fill my day with delights:  a morning visit with a neighborhood friend doing creative work together in her studio and an afternoon with the LWR quilting group at the local Lutheran church.  I'll do some reading and some writing.  For one day, today I won't do any teaching work:  I turned in final grades for my online classes last night, and I still have time to create syllabi before classes start on Tuesday.

But I'm just remembering that I need to put an announcement in my onground class course shells that gives a welcome and says that more information is coming soon.  Since the shells open tomorrow, I'll do that cut and paste work today.

I'm happy that my work-for-pay still leaves me with time to see friends and do creative work of all types, along with writing and reading.  I'm grateful that my teaching life doesn't consume all my free time.  I know I say this a lot, but it's worth remembering and retreating.

It seems fitting that on one of the last evenings of summer, last night I got my grades for my summer TEEM class on Paul:  an A on each of the two papers, and an A for the class.  My teacher gave thoughtful commentary that made me feel seen and heard and understood.

I mention my reaction because last night I also got my supervisor feedback for the summer online class that I taught for SMC.  Overall, it was positive, although there is room for improvement:  more personalized feedback and more depth of feedback.  My first thought was that using names of students in grading feedback (a suggestion) would take too much time.  But it really won't take that much more time and maybe it would help students stay engaged.

I'm grateful for my return to school in late middle life for many reasons, but it's been revelatory to remember what it's like to be a student.  I used to think that A level papers don't really need much instructor feedback, but as an A student, I would feel cheated if my papers got the kinds of A level feedback that I give as a teacher.  Maybe that's too strong; I'm remembering all the times I got minimal feedback on A level papers and didn't feel cheated.  But every time I get more involved feedback, I'm grateful.  And A level students are more likely to have the time and mental space to care in a way that isn't possible for students who can't care as much because their lives are falling apart.

Meditation on Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for August 9, 2026:

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
I will listen to what the LORD God is saying. (Ps. 85:8)
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

This week’s Gospel reading reinforces the themes we found in last week’s lesson. The disciples are in the boat and Jesus walks across the water to them. They don’t recognize him; indeed, they’re terrified. When they realize who it is, Peter, always enthusiastic, asks Jesus to bid him to come, which he does. Peter walks across the water with no problem, until he realizes what he’s doing and starts to sink.

Now, most of us probably haven’t had experiences where we’ve suspended the laws of nature, but most of us can probably relate to what Peter experiences. When I first learned to type, I got to the point where I could type at a very fast speed—until I thought about what I was doing. If I just let my fingers go and didn’t look at them, if I did what I knew I could do, I’d be fine. I’ve had similar experiences in learning foreign languages and in learning to play the mandolin or the ukelele; if I play the notes without double checking both my fingers and the chord charts and music books, I find out that I really can play—still more haltingly than I would like, alas.

This story is also about God’s presence and our inability to recognize the Divine all around us, as well as our trouble accepting the miraculous. One of the narrative arcs the Bible is God’s desire to be with God’s creation, to know everybody, to be fully present in our day-to-day lives--to the extent of becoming human. And God has to go to great lengths to get our attention—bushes burst into flame, oppressive governments release the captives, loaves and fishes feed thousands, people rise from the dead, God goes so far as to take on human form—miracle after miracle, and still humans don’t understand and don’t want to accept God’s daily presence.

Even when we do let ourselves glimpse the sacred and divine, even when we experience the miraculous, how quickly we forget and let the mundane swamp us. Psychologists would probably tell us that our approach is a coping mechanism, that if we let ourselves be that open to God, we’d go insane, or at least we’d look insane to our fellow humans. I’m not sure I agree. Maybe we’d be better witnesses, better disciples.

Be on the lookout for God in your daily life. Maybe it will just be a wink from the Creator, like a tree full of butterflies. Maybe you’ll be in the presence of the full-blown miraculous, and all doubts will vanish—the tumor shrinks, the passengers escape the burning plane, the hurricane curves out to sea.

Or maybe you won't get the miracle you think you want, but the miraculous comes as you learn how to cope and you learn that coping leaves you more open to the presence of God. Watch for God, listen for God, be alert. God is there, by your side, both during the times of the miraculous as well as the mundane, in the times of catastrophe, drudgery, or luminous.

Recording of August 2, 2026 Sermon

I felt good about my sermon yesterday--it's not likely to go down as one of my best, but it's solid.  I tried to do more than just re-tell the Gospel, a problem with many sermons I've heard and one I try so hard to avoid in my own sermons.  The Gospels aren't so complicated that most people don't understand.

The recording of my sermon is here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I posted the manuscript in a blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, August 2

August 2, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 14:13-21




Last week we had parables of smallness and hiddenness to tell us what the community of God is like. I concluded last week’s sermon by saying that the Kingdom of God, this community that we’re helping to create right here and right now might remain hidden for our whole lives, visible to those around us with eyes to see, but invisible to the larger world. Today’s Gospel reminds us that the Kingdom of God might in fact burst out of whatever tidy containers we thought we had devised for it.


Today’s Gospel reading begins in the middle of chapter 14, and to fully understand today’s reading, we need to know that the first 12 verses of chapter 14 tell of how John the Baptist was killed by Herod. Jesus hears about the murder and withdraws to the wilderness.


In the book of Luke, John and Jesus are cousins; in the book of Matthew, they are colleagues. We could read the book of Matthew and infer that John is Jesus’ teacher. We also see that John knows that, he, John, is the warm up act for the Messiah who is coming.


But in the book of Matthew, John the Baptist isn’t always sure that Jesus is that Messiah. In chapter 11, John who is in prison sends some of his followers to ask if Jesus is the one. Jesus responds, as he so often does, by giving a list of what he has done, a list heavy with healing.


And now John is dead, killed by the forces of government, Herod representing both Jewish rule, Jewish rule allowed by the ultimate earthly authority, the Romans. Jesus goes to a deserted place, a wilderness place. Wilderness and deserted places have deep significance in both the Gospel of Matthew and the larger Bible. Wilderness is a place outside of the reach of earthly rulers. Wilderness is a place of temptation. Wilderness is also a place of deliverance. We see all of these aspects of wilderness in today’s Gospel.


Jesus retreats to the wilderness to process what he has heard: John is dead, killed by the forces of government. We might see Jesus’ retreat as an attempt to lay low for awhile. If we thought that people didn’t know what Jesus was up to, what happens in today’s Gospel shows us otherwise.


People follow him on foot. At the end of the Gospel, we find out that 5000 men have followed him, along with women and children. It’s a town-sized crowd out there in the wilderness. In fact, most towns of that time period would have fewer people than 5000.


Jesus feels compassion for the crowds, and so he heals them. He doesn’t say, “I’m grieving because the world lost a good man today. Come back tomorrow.” He gives them what they need.


The response of the disciples might seem less compassionate, but they, too, are trying to give the people what they need: food and getting back to a safe place before night falls in the deserted place. They know how much food they have, and it’s not enough.


In contrast, Jesus tells the crowd to sit. He blesses the food and gives it to the disciples to distribute. Note how this miracle could have gone a different way and still achieved the same outcome. Jesus could have commanded food to fall from the sky, a manna from Heaven moment. He doesn’t. Jesus could have had everyone come forward and wait in long lines. He doesn’t.


He equips the disciples. He empowers them to do the work that they know needs to be done. Jesus transforms not only the food, but also the disciples, who have come to Jesus with a problem and an inadequate solution, and Jesus gives them deliverance: 12 baskets of food left over, everyone having eaten their fill. It’s a unique deliverance: God’s miracle by way of 12 pairs of human hands who go out to the people gathered on the ground.


Here we see how the Kingdom of God, God’s community, spills out of its tidy containers. John has been killed, but his prophetic mission will not end. Jesus, too, will be killed, but he has shown his disciples how to continue his work. We know that some of the people who are fed will continue to follow Jesus. They will be convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the one for whom they have been waiting, their time in the wilderness of uncertainty coming to a close, Jesus as their new Moses.


Jesus shows how power is used in this new Kingdom of Heaven that has drawn near. He does not march on Jerusalem to avenge the death of John. He dismisses the crowds. Healed and fed, they are ready to return to the world.


Some of them are surely changed permanently. We will see that the disciples, too, are changed, although it does take them time to claim this power they’ve been given.


We, too, have this power. We’ve seen it in action in numerous ways, the way that small meals turn into nourishment for the whole community. We’ve seen it literally, with every fish fry and chili festival that we offer to our neighbors: literal meals prepared by a group of people smaller than the disciples, food that always stretches until the last ones are fed. We see this power in action in other ways too, as we carry on the work of sustaining souls, work that our ancestors began, work that is ours to continue in our own unique response when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”


We see a collective response to Jesus in the ways that our larger church in the world supports the sick and the hungry. We see the ways that small acts lead to larger abundance which leads to all sorts of transformations. As we get ready to return to school, I’m thinking about how Lutherans have so often been at the forefront of education, putting small sums of money together to create church camps and daycare centers and schools for everyone from pre-K to college and graduate work. Many of these institutions have lasted for several generations, some in Europe for hundreds of years.


God’s work in the world might be like a seed or a grain of yeast or a treasure in a field, hidden to all but those closest to it. Our work in the kingdom of God might seem small to us, but even a small meal in the hands of God, can feed over 5000 souls. And for those of us who identify more with the crowd longing for healing and food and something we can’t even articulate as we chase Jesus into a deserted place, today’s Gospel reminds us that wilderness time often results in a closer relationship with God.


Jesus comes to liberate us from all that tries to constrain us. Jesus tells what the Kingdom of God is like in parables, and today he shows us those parables in action. What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? It’s like a small group of people who see what needs to be done. It’s like a small group of people who are sure they don’t have enough resources, but onward they go, person to person, sharing what they have. What is the Kingdom of God like? Five thousand men, along with women and children, fed to bursting, with baskets of left overs. It’s a foretaste of the feast to come, and a taste of the Heaven that we can have right here, right now.

The Hinge Festival of Lammas

Early August is a hinge point in the calendar. In some ways, it's not as obvious a hinge as the autumnal equinox or the summer solstice; in fact, it's the time directly between those two hinges--we're as far away from the start of summer as we are from the start of autumn. But in some ways, it's just as significant a point of seasonal shift.

If we lived in medieval England, we would be celebrating the festival of Lammas, a festival that celebrates first harvests with loaves of bread standing in for that first harvest.  There might be processions to bakeries, to bless them and to bless the bakers.  

It would be a festival that celebrates abundance, the abundance that comes later in a cooler climate.  Of course, we here in Appalachia are celebrating that abundance too; the summer vegetables are still going strong with beautiful tomatoes at the farmer's market.  Yet across the region, apple orchards are opening today.

We may have slogged through summer long enough that we may feel that nothing will ever change--it will be hot and humid forever. The light hasn't changed significantly, the way it will in a month or two. But we are losing more daylight each day as we hurtle towards a different season. Students aren't in school yet, but the time draws closer. Most of us aren't agricultural people anymore, but if we were, we'd be seeing crops in their final ripening. Harvest would be coming soon.

Now is a good time to take an accounting. Have we been planning some summer festivities that we haven't gotten to do yet? Now is the time. Do we need to adjust our trajectories for the rest of the year? Let us make some plans.

Celtic Wisdom: The Last Days of July

 ELCA Stewardship specialist Tim Brown made this Facebook post today:

In the heat of waning July days, the ancient Celts would ready themselves for the August festivals and the beginning of the harvest.

They would take these final days to spend intentional time resonating with the world around them, relaxing in the earth and seeking out sacred spots to bless and in which to be blessed.

You might say this ancient practice is a precursor to our ideas of "vacation" these days. Summer rest is not something we invented, Beloved, but inherited through the long echoes of phenomenological rhythms that pulse throughout the looping threads of time.

Celtic author Mara Freeman notes three ways to honor the earth in these last July days that fall on the cusp of transition.

First, you can give thanks. Find a quiet spot in nature, breath deeply, listen carefully, and be grateful for what is around you. She notes that "a sacred site does not have to be famous or located in a distant country. It can also be a quiet, secret place you have found in the woods or, if you live in the city, a favorite old tree in a local park." (from Kindling the Celtic Spirit)

Secondly, do some clean up. Whether it is in your backyard, along a well-hiked stream, your local park, or even just bush pruning around the house, caring for nature is an act of sacrifice to the very Earth who will, in the coming months, sacrifice fruit for us. Pruning, by the way, is necessary for many plants, and should be done with the plant in mind, and should not primarily be about how your yard looks from the street.

Finally, take a pilgrimage. Journey to a place where the Earth has been damaged or is in danger of being defiled, calling attention to it. Whether it is the pipeline in the Dakotas, over-fishing off the coasts, or even unwelcome infringement on a natural prairie in your little pocket of creation, walking there, seeing what is happening with your own eyes, and calling attention to it is an act of power and grace. Or, as one theologian puts it, "an actively mobilized process of bearing witness to woundedness and to the mysterious possibilities of the sacred."

In these acts, the whole Earth becomes an altar upon which our attention, our love, and our gratitude is sacrificed. These acts have rippled throughout the cosmos from our ancient parents until today.

How will you add to the wave?

Feast Day of the Bethany Siblings

In the decades/centuries before 1969, on July 29, we would have celebrated Saint Martha, one of few named women in the Gospels. Now we celebrate not only Martha, but also her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus.  Their story is in the eleventh chapter of John.

In a way, I think it's a shame, as each of these siblings deserves their own feast day. But today let us ask if we can we learn something from celebrating all of them together?

In more recent years, scholars have questioned whether the Mary and Martha in John are the Mary and Martha in Luke.  There are good reasons to believe both that they are the same and that they are not.  For now, I'm going set that question aside.

In many ways, Martha is the most famous of the siblings, and I've written about her extensively. Many others have written about Mary. I'm intrigued by the people who go back to the Greek to try to prove that Mary actually had some authority, that the reason that she wants to sit at the feet of Jesus while Martha gets the meal ready is that she had been out and about in the countryside, in the way that the disciples had been sent.  

The Greek word for the work she is doing is "diakonia," which is not the word for housework, but for the work of the church.  Perhaps it is this work that has left her busy and distracted.

Lazarus, also famous, is one of the few humans brought back from the very dead. He didn't just die an hour before Jesus arrived. He had been dead for days. I've always thought he deserved a story of his own, a follow up. I'm not the only one who thinks this, of course. Yeats is one of the more famous writers to revisit Lazarus after the tomb; I should revisit his play "Calvary."

Depending on how you attribute the various references to the women named Mary (all the same Mary? Who is the sister of Martha and who is the Magdalene? And then there's the mother of Jesus), Martha gets more space in the Gospels than her two siblings. We see her complaining about Mary not helping her, and we see her scolding Jesus for not coming earlier to keep her brother from dying.

I have always sympathized with Martha, and I still can feel the shock that come when Jesus doesn't. But in my later years, I see compassion in the words of Jesus when he reminds Martha that she worries about many things. It's only been in my later years that I see Martha's anxiety in a more clinical way. It's only been in later years that I see the harm in Martha's behavior, the way that obsessive anxiety for the ones we love can destroy so much.

Do I know what to do about my own obsessive anxiety? I know a few tricks, sure. I haven't explored every possibility; so far, I don't take any meds for my anxiety outbreaks. When I'm in the throes of an anxious day, I wonder if it's time to find a health care provider who can prescribe them. When I'm having a normal day, I think that I am managing just fine.

In some ways, I see a thread running through the stories of these siblings. Christ shows up to tell them that they're not doing fine. One of the siblings, Mary, is open to Christ's message, while Martha is not. We might think it's too late for Lazarus, but it's not.

Once again, I find myself wanting to know what happens in a year or two or ten. Does Lazarus return to regular life? Having lost him once, does his family appreciate him more? Does Martha ever get a handle on her anxiety? Does Mary go out to create the first convent? Or is she so tired of having to deal with her sister that she finds a solitary existence in a nearby desert?

The Gospels give us such small snippets, but that leaves us room to find ourselves in these stories. One of the benefits to feast days and lectionaries is that we have the opportunity to return to them periodically to see if we're finding something new.

Each year, I'm reminded that God works in ways that humans don't fully understand, and that we need to resist the impulse to micromanage the miracles. But even if we don't, God won't go off in a huff and abandon us.

This year, and every year, I'm hoping that humans can also model that behavior. We're beset with anxiety, as are those around us. Let us remember that resurrection can still occur.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for August 2, 2026:

Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22 (Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21 NRSV)
You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Ps. 145:17)
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

The story in the Gospel lesson is familiar; indeed, a version appears in each Gospel, which may mean it’s more likely to be a factual reporting, or it may mean that each Gospel writer realized the significance and implications of the story and couldn’t bear to leave it out. Jesus preaches to the multitudes, who grow hungry. Jesus commands the disciples to feed them, and they protest that they only have five loaves and two fish. But miraculously, not only are the thousands of people fed, but the disciples gather basket after basket of leftovers.

Christian approaches to this story are varied, from share your resources to rely on Christ for what you need. But today, I'm interested in the human response to the miraculous.

Look at the behavior of the disciples. Jesus commands them to feed everyone, and they protest that they can’t, that they don’t have enough food. They’ve followed Jesus for some time and they’ve seen him perform many miracles, including making dead people come back to life. But their first response is that they can’t possibly do what Jesus expects.

This story tells us an important lesson about the human resistance to the miraculous. We limit God, and our fellow humans, by our inability to dream big visions. We assume that we’ll always have hungry people, oppressed nations, and what can we do? We only have so much and it will only stretch so far. But we forget how much is possible—how much we have already seen with our own eyes.

For example, imagine we could time travel back to the year 1985, not so very long ago. Imagine that we told the people of that time that in a few short years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Not only that, but Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and free elections would follow five years later. Not only that, the Soviet Union would soon be no more.

The people we encountered would not believe us. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that Nelson Mandela would die in his South African prison and that his nation would disintegrate into civil war. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that the Soviet Union would always be a part of the geopolitical landscape, and that there would always be a literal wall that separated east from west.

To talk about how these miracles happened would take a much larger space than I have here, but it’s important to remember that one reason is that ordinary people dreamed of something different. For example, in numerous interviews that I’ve heard, Desmond Tutu, gives credit for the fall of apartheid to the governments, institutions, and individuals who fought for divestment from a corrupt regime. And even when the call for divestment was not successful, those calls started an important conversation.

Desmond Tutu also always gives credit to the believers throughout the world who prayed for a peaceful way out of an insolvable situation. Even if you didn’t own a solid gold, South African Kruggerand, you could participate in the process of mercy and justice.

And don’t let my emphasis on political miracles keep us from remembering the other miracles that surround us: health restored, relationships repaired, the student who suddenly understands an impossible subject, the hungry fed, the homeless who come in from the inhospitable climate.

I know that for every miracle, someone has suffered the pain of loss:  the cancer that didn’t go into remission, the job loss that leads to other losses or a weather catastrophe from which we cannot recover. For every South Africa, there are countless countries that collapse and can't recover.

But we are called to keep our eyes towards a different reality. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just after death, Jesus declares. It is among us, here and now. And we can be a part of that glorious creation.

Recording of Yesterday's Sermon in the Outdoor Pavilion

As we drove across the mountain to Bristol, Tennessee yesterday, we wondered if we would have worship in the outdoor pavilion, the way we had planned.  Our weather apps told us that the rain would be going away in time for worship, but the dark clouds suggested otherwise.

We got to church, where everyone gathered early to set up was checking their weather apps.  The teenagers encouraged us to go with the outdoor plan, and so, we did.  And the rain held off, and worship was wonderful.  We had two visitors, a couple who are closing on their house and moving down from Maine, so I was glad that worship went well.  We had a barbecue lunch afterward, and they stayed, which also made me happy.

My sermon went well--I revamped the whole thing Sunday morning, so there, too, I was glad that it went well.  If you want to view the sermon, the recording is here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I posted the sermon manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, July 26, 2026

July 26, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52



During Music Week at Lutheridge, Carl and I went to a workshop for people who are part of small choirs. I’m no trained musician, but even I could tell that my version of a small choir is very different from those folks in charge of the workshop. My version of a small choir is the type you’d find at a church that only has 70 or so people, a choir of six or seven where one or two people might be able to carry a tune or play an instrument, where the other five choir members have enthusiasm but no ability to harmonize, the kind of choir where getting everyone to sing the melody well is accomplishment enough.

 

At the small choir workshop, one of the leaders talked about the small Vespers choir that he leads in Minneapolis. When you hear “vespers choir,” how many people do you think are in the choir? I thought about a small size, that choir of 10 people, although with more training. Nope—his “small” Vespers choir is 70 people, which led me to wonder how many people are part of this church. In every church in my adult life, we’ve usually had less than 70 members in the congregation as a whole. It dawned on me that the workshop I thought I would be attending would actually be a very different one.


Today’s Gospel celebrates very small things and hidden things and catches of fish that must be sorted. Jesus presents them to explain “the Kingdom of Heaven.” Our 21st century ears might hear that phrase and think that Jesus is explaining exclusively about what life after death will look like. We hear Heaven and most of us probably have an image of angel choirs of thousands, pearly gates, maybe a family reunion where nobody fights and the food doesn’t disappoint. Even Aunt Evelyn’s salmon salad stays fresh and the jello compositions are delightful in Heaven.


Jesus spends much of his ministry describing the Kingdom of Heaven, which he also calls the Kingdom of God. Over and over again, he tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven Kingdom of God is among us, right here and now, that we don’t have to wait. Jesus takes every opportunity to remind us that God’s kingdom isn’t a far away place. God’s kingdom can be found in the communities we create. And they probably won’t look like the kingdoms we might expect. They might be small, like the mustard seed or the grain of yeast. They might be hidden away, like wealth or a pearl of rare price, so that very few people know they are there. They might be messy, like the net full of fish—we hear about a net full of fish and think, “Abundance!” A first century fishing audience would think of the chore of sorting them all out.



And then Jesus directs our attention to the sorting that will come at the very end of human time, when God judges all, the living and the dead.


Perhaps Jesus gives us this vision of end times to reinforce his message of being alert so that we don’t miss the Kingdom of God. All of the examples in the parables are of items easily overlooked or not noticed—yeast and mustard seeds, hidden treasure, one rare pearl. Even that catch in the nets, with the messiness of a mix of fish, is an abundance that’s easy to dismiss, if we were hoping for just one fish or type of fish to be in the net.


Humans don’t usually celebrate small things. We’re trained to equate bigness with importance: big militaries, big budgets, big buildings, big muscles, lots of followers/donors/supporters. In the economy of the world, it’s the little things that get trampled, and worse, perhaps never even noticed as they are being trampled.


Jesus turns the world’s economy on its head: from a bit of yeast comes a feast big enough for an army. From one mustard seed, a tree big enough to shelter the birds. The overlooked treasure is the greatest, and even in a catch of fish that is messy, can come abundance.


Think back over the past several weeks of parables—they all come from the same chapter in Matthew, where Jesus is trying to tell people, especially the disciples, what the kingdom of Heaven is like, in both the now and the not yet. We’ve had a variety of seeds across the past several weeks, only some of which will grow into trees like the mustard seed. We’ve had wheat and weeds mixed together, too small to sort out early. Here, too, we have seeds, along with other small things.


In some ways, the message is obvious—small is beautiful, to use that phrase from the past, that slogan which encouraged us to live in a way that is sustainable, unlike big, industrial agricultural ventures that were beginning to appear in the middle part of last century. It’s a message that is still countercultural, even in churches, where we might expect a different approach. But as our experience at Lutheridge shows, even a choir director leading a workshop on small choirs has a very different idea of what small means from what Jesus meant.


Three years ago, I first preached on this set of parables, and I had only been here two months. Back then, I thought this assignment would be temporary, nine months at most. Back then, I knew this congregation was small, but I didn’t realize how mighty this congregation is and not as hidden as I might have assumed.


All of my adult life, I’ve been a member of very small congregations, churches that had less than 50 members in the pews on Sunday mornings. We’ve had stewardship campaigns and workshops that showed us new ways to do outreach so that we could get more members. The standard thinking was that churches must grow and grow and grow so that they could survive, that church health was measured solely by size, not vibrancy.


That message of growth ignores a significant part of today’s message and the message of the parables of past weeks. If we use the metrics of the world to judge whether or not we’re doing something right and good, we may miss the larger focus that we need to see what is truly happening. If we’re counting people in pews to decide whether a church should stay open or close, we’ve taken a shallow measure of success.


That metric doesn’t include the mom who creates devotional opportunities for those in the car pool line at school; because we’re a small group, she can easily share those devotions with all of us, even if we’re not driving children to school and back. That metric doesn’t include the member who buys us all special gifts when he goes to auctions—in a larger church, he wouldn’t know our names, much less be able to buy us gifts. If I was pastor of a church with 100 members or more, I couldn’t pray for each individual person on my morning walk—unless I had several hours to walk and a memory that is stronger than mine is now.


Of course, not every small community is as vibrant as this one. That’s why the larger world loves metrics that simply ask us to quantify—why our bishops ask us for head counts or a tally of who gives money. But the larger Church is moving towards a more nuanced assessment—which is why we generate the annual reports that we do each year.


However, Jesus reminds us that even these nuanced reports will not capture all of what it means to be the community of God here on earth. As I was writing a rough draft of this sermon, I took a break to eat dinner with Eileen, an old church friend who was passing through town. After dinner, we served blueberry pie, made with the pie filling that the Rasmussens brought us all, and come to find out, Eileen had never had blueberry pie before. We talked about choir experiences past and present. Once we played in a very small church choir together, for Easter sunrise service. I was on the upright bass, she was on the ukelele, Carl was on the violin, and another friend played banjo ukelele. Our small choir of 4 led the music, all the music, for the congregation of 15 that assembled in the church’s butterfly garden. Our pastor posted pictures on Facebook.


One church member who had drifted away saw the pictures and decided to come to the later service because she remembered how much she missed the music. She hoped to hear Carl and Eileen play and sing a duet.


I wish I could tell you that lives were changed because of those moments. I wish I had some kind of climatic, zingy example to give you, to end this sermon with a bang. But then I remind myself of the parables, of the gentle teaching of Jesus who reminds us that the kingdom of God is created in small acts, not splashy ones, and the long term wealth of those acts likely will remain hidden.


We can trust that God is the ultimate music director, whether our choir has 4 people or 70. God can use any voice that shows up, and God will know how to create the best harmonies with those voices. And if our singing voices fail, God has other options: the call of the cicadas, the percussion of the rain, the late night discussions as we eat blueberry pie, the devotional time of the car pool lane, all the ways, great and small, that we create a soundtrack for the community of God that we’re building, right here, right now.

The Feast Day of Saint James

Today we celebrate the life of James, one of the 12 disciples, the first to be martyred (Acts 12:1 tells us by Herod's sword). He's known as James the Greater (to distinguish him from James the Lesser, James the son of Alphaeus). He's the brother of John. He was one of the first to join Jesus, and Jesus chose him to go up the mountain to witness the Transfiguration. He is the patron saint of veterinarians and pharmacists, among others.

Lately, I've heard more about St. James, as more people become aware of the pilgrimage that involves walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points. Walkers who cover 100 km or cyclists who cover 200 km get a compostela, a certificate, and a blessing.

St. James is associated with scallops, and if you look at a map, you'll see that the pilgrims arriving from a variety of beginning points to the same end point does look like a scallop shell. There are now travel agencies that will help pilgrims, but I've been told that it's not hard to set up one's own journey. There are all sorts of lodgings along the way, all sorts of support.

In 2023, I finally saw the Martin Sheen/Emilio Estevez movie, The Way, which features this pilgrim's path. I'd love to actually walk part of it, but it seems increasingly unlikely. But life has taught me never to say never. If I could go on the Santiago or Iona, I'd probably choose Iona, but who says I would have to choose.

I'm not the only one who finds the idea intriguing. In 1985, only 690 pilgrims made it to the end point, the Cathedral of Santiago de Campostela; recently, 179,919 pilgrims completed the journey. The most hardcore pilgrims walk barefoot. I would not be one of those pilgrims.

A few years ago, one of my good church friends figured out how to walk part of the Santiago de Campostela, how to make sure her pets and children were taken care of for 2 weeks, and off she went with her husband. I found her journey so inspiring. She kept a blog while walking and has continued to keep writing posts in her "regular" life.

Let us remember that we're all on a variety of pilgrimages, even if we're not leaving the house. Let us remember that God is with us.

Other Symbols of Smallness: The Small Choir

This week's Gospel reading revolves around small things (mustard seeds and yeast) and hidden things (treasure and pearls of rare price and fish that are worthy hidden around a net full of sea creatures).  I have preached on mustard seeds and weeds before.  I'm always on the lookout for new metaphors and symbols.  I've used symbols like mold in a bathroom as a synonym for yeast. 

This year, I thought of an experience during Music Week, where we went to a workshop for people who are in charge or are part of small choirs.  It quickly became clear that we (me, my spouse, my S. Florida church friend) have a very different definition of  "small":  one of the workshop leaders talked about his small Vespers choir, and then casually mentioned the 70 members of the small Vespers choir.

We looked at music that three workshop leaders would be good for "small" choirs.  Almost all of them relied on choirs that had sopranos, altos, and deeper voices of some variety.  Many of the pieces rely on some level of musical skill from those voices.

I am guessing that most truly small choirs don't even have these resources.  Here's how I put it in the rough draft of my sermon for Sunday:  

"My version of a small choir is the type you’d find at a church that only has 70 or so people, a choir of six or seven where one or two people might be able to carry a tune and play an instrument, where the other five choir members have enthusiasm but no ability to carry the non-soprano sections by themselves, the kind of choir where getting everyone to sing the melody is accomplishment enough."

The Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

Decades ago, many of us might not have heard of Mary Magdalene. When I went to undergraduate school, in the mid-80's, we didn't know about many women in the Bible outside of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maybe we had a vague memory of a woman with demons that Jesus healed.

Now it's a different story. We've had decades of feminist theology that has opened our eyes and our theology to the presence of women. Now scholars are doing an even deeper dive into ancient texts. I'm thinking of Diana Butler Bass's sermon in the summer of 2022 which alerted us to the research of Elizabeth Schrader who is looking at manuscripts and trying to see if Mary Magdalene has been literally erased and written over to transform it to Martha.  Her scholarship also leads her (and others) to suggest that Mary might have been one of the pillars of the first church:  Mary the Tower and Peter the Rock.  But over the centuries, only Peter the Rock endures.

It's an interesting theory, and it seems like just one more example of how the ancient Church tried to minimize and hide the involvement of women in the life of the first group of believers. It's not that different from emphasizing the Mary Magdalene of demon possession and/or prostitution, not the Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection.  As I think of the Easter morning story, I wonder if we’re seeing a vestige of Mary Magdalene’s possessed personality. What drove her to the tomb? I understand the ancient customs surrounding the care of dead bodies, and I understand the laws regarding dead bodies and the Sabbath. But in one Gospel, it’s only Mary who is so deeply concerned about the body of Jesus. What drives her to the tomb?

In Mary’s reaction to the man she assumes is the gardener, I recognize my own demon of anxiety. I watch her ask a perfect stranger about the body of Jesus. I watch her throw all caution and decorum away, so desperate is she to complete this task, as if completing the task will restore the world to right order.

Many of us suffer in the grip of these demons of anxiety, these beliefs that somehow, through our manic quest for control, we can keep the world from spinning into chaos. We might argue for the benefits of medication, and indeed, if it’s a matter of brain chemicals that are out of balance, we would be right.

But all too often, something else is at the root of our modern possession. Maybe we haven’t stopped to grieve our losses, as Mary needs to do in the garden. Maybe it’s the fear of loss that is coming to all our lives. Maybe it’s that insistent hiss from both inside and out that says that we will never be enough: good enough, clean enough, accomplished enough, nice enough, attractive enough, loved enough.

The Easter message comes to cast out these demons again and again. Christ reminds us that he’s here, always waiting, always watching, always ready for us. Even if we don’t recognize him, Jesus will not cast us away. It is the voice of Jesus that can silence all of our demons and help us to be at peace. Christ’s voice calls us to what’s important in our lives.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, July 26, 2026:

First Reading: 1 Kings 3:5-12

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Genesis 29:15-28

Psalm: Psalm 119:129-136

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 105:1-11, 45b

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 128 (Psalm 128 (Semi-continuous) NRSV)

Second Reading: Romans 8:26-39

Gospel: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Today we have a series of interesting parables which Jesus uses to explain the Kingdom of Heaven. I don't think that Jesus is explaining the afterlife, the way that many of us might assume when we hear the word "Heaven." Instead, Matthew uses that word as shorthand for a concept that's closer to "life as God intended." Of course, I'm grossly simplifying, but instead of doing an in-depth exploration of the word "Heaven," let's look at the images Jesus uses.

Note the smallness, the almost invisibility, of the first two images (verses 31-33): mustard seeds and yeast. There are two elements which are interesting. One is that these small grains left alone will transform themselves into something bigger--and in the case of yeast, will transform the surrounding elements too. Leave flour alone, and it won't change much in terms of volume. Even if it gets buggy, the bag won't explode. But add yeast and water and a bit of sweetness and leave the bowl in a warm place for a few hours--when you return to the bowl, the dough might be overflowing. Likewise with a seed. Plant it in the earth with a bit of fertilizer, add some water each day, and leave it alone--if you're lucky, you get a shrub or a tree. If we go out looking for the kingdom to be a big, glorious thing, we might miss the Kingdom.

Many people simply don't register the presence of God because they're looking for the wrong thing. They're looking for something huge and powerful. For example, think about the Jews of Jesus' time. They didn't want spiritual salvation. When they talked about a savior, they wanted someone who would kick the Romans out of their homeland. They missed the miracle of Jesus because they looked for the wrong sign.

The next set of metaphors (verses 44-46) talks about the preciousness of the Kingdom and also a bit about the effort required to find it. The treasure/pearl doesn't just fall into the men's laps--they're out looking.

We live in a culture that doesn't want to put in a lot of work. If you don't believe me, watch the claims that advertisers make: I can lose weight by working out 7 minutes a day, I can make thousands of dollars a month by working just 15 minutes a day, I can get a college degree without leaving my house. I love talking to my colleagues and collecting their strange student stories. One of my colleagues had a student stomp out in a huff when she realized she'd have to write essays. Keep in mind, my colleague teaches an English Composition class. Did the student think they'd be creating macaroni collages?

And then I start to wonder why this student imagines that she can go to college and not have to work. Where does she get that message? Of course, the culture in which she lives beams that to her all the time.

Likewise, Kingdom living requires some effort on our part. God wants to meet us, but we have to go forward towards God. We have to look for the right signs, and we have to make some effort. That effort might be regular prayer, spiritual reading, going to church, turning ourselves into caring people, giving more of our money away.

But the end of this week's Gospel assures us that the effort will pay off. We don't want to be in the furnace where men weep and gnash their teeth. For those of you who read the end of the Gospel as a metaphor of Hell after death, you might be right. But I would argue that life is terribly hellish right here and now for people who aren't doing transformational work.

Weeds and Seeds and Sermons

I thought my sermons, both the youth sermon and adult, went well yesterday.  Then my spouse and I listened to the adult sermon on the drive home, and had a rollicking discussion about whether or not it worked.  We agreed that my approach to weeds and wheat wasn't true to the parable, which tells us that you're born a wheat seed or a weed seed.

But as a sermon, it works.  I think.

You can view the sermon here.  If you'd like to read along, you can read the sermon manuscript here.

Sermon for July 19, 2026

July 19, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43


If Jesus was going to explain parables, there are other parables that need more explaining than today’s parable and last week’s. These parables of seeds, sowing, good soil, and sorting don’t really need additional explanation, not from Jesus, not from generations of preachers that have come after Jesus.


You might be objecting to this parable from a standpoint of Lutheran theology—what happened to grace? We’re using the Revised Common Lectionary, and the idea of a common lectionary is that all Christians are hearing the same text on the same Sunday across the world. Today’s parable will fit in more neatly with the theology of other denominations than with Luther’s ideas of a God of grace.


This vision of the end of time, when God returns to judge the living and the dead, would be one that energized the apostle Paul. Last week, I talked about Paul and how so many generations of Christians have treasured his letters, but he had a very different vision of his mission. He was not writing letters in the hopes of being the chief theologian of a new church. He thought that God would be returning very soon, in his lifetime, to judge the living and the dead. His letters were written in the hopes that they would guide new believers in ways that would save them from the harsh judgment described in this parable’s explanation.


Paul would not be worried about the Jews and their salvation. They have a covenant with God after all. They’ve had a head start. But we see from his letters that Paul is deeply concerned about the salvation of the Gentiles, who don’t have much time to prepare for God’s return to judge them.


When we interpret the parables in traditional ways, we, too, are likely thinking in terms of a human lifespan, not a cosmic span, in our timeline, not God’s timeline. We think about the spiritual practices that are likely to save us from the fire, from the final judgment. I’ve preached these sermons, so I know the pull of that interpretation, how easy it would be to bring my sermon to a close by urging to seek out spiritual disciplines that work and to jettison the habits that are keeping us from being our best spiritual selves.


In today’s parable, we see Jesus reminding us that it’s not always obvious which seeds are which at the time of sprouting. God the gardener takes a wait and see attitude. The interpretation of the parable at the end reminds us that God takes a much longer view, the kind of view that waits to see what the garden produces. The Apostle Paul has always been important to Christians, even in his lifespan. But what about apostles that had their work undermined by those workers who are so ready to yank out weeds?


This week, I have found my thoughts returning to Mary Magdalene. We usually hear about her on Easter, if we hear about her at all. But her feast day is Wednesday, July 22. Hers is one of the first feast days devoted to someone other than the 12 male disciples. Modern Christians have a plethora of feast days to celebrate. Ancient Christians would have had far fewer, one for each disciple, a few for the earliest apostles, and a few that celebrated events in the Gospels, like the Annunciation, 9 months before Christmas, when the angel Gabriel visits Mary the mother of Jesus.


The fact that Mary Magdalene had a feast day early should have told us of her importance, but for centuries, most of us haven’t learned much about her. At best, we were probably told that she was the first witness to the resurrection, important because she alerted the disciples.


However recent scholarship suggests that she was far more important, a woman who was present with the disciples for many of the important events, including the Last Supper. But as early Church fathers became more protective of the faith, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Mary Magdalene was written out of the Gospels—for a variety of reasons. Scholar Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer has done important work in the last ten years to establish how Mary Magdalene was written out of the Gospel of John so that it would seem less radical and be included with the other 3 Gospels when the New Testament was compiled in the 4th century. Four years ago, in a sermon given by theologian Diana Butler Bass talked about Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer’s scholarly work on Mary Magdalene. That sermon, given at the Wild Goose festival, is now one of 3 of the most watched sermons of all time; the other two were Bishop Budde's sermon at the interfaith worship service after the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the sermon preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Mary Markle.


Going forward, study Bibles will have a footnote that will refer to Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer’s work—this development is a very big deal. Recognition for the work of Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer has come fairly quickly. But we all know that we don’t always recognize important people in a timely way.


I could give plenty of examples closer to our own time period. Let me choose just one. Summer always puts me in mind of long afternoons in childhood with the luxury of getting lost in a good book. When I was a kid, I was often reading and re-reading Madeleine L’Engle. You probably already know about her book, A Wrinkle in Time. But she wrote many, many more, for children and for adults.


She always said she wrote for readers, not for age groups, and if it’s been awhile since you read A Wrinkle in Time, I encourage you to return to it. It’s a book we need now more than ever, a book that insists on the power of love, and a book with a provocative message that what may seem like our most difficult faults and personality traits may in fact be the way we save the world.


It’s a novel that almost didn’t get published. L’Engle had 10 years of not being published before she wrote the book, and in her 40’s, after writing it, she had publisher after publisher reject it. The rejections were so intense that she almost gave up writing. Thank goodness she didn’t. That book has gone on to win awards and to remain in print, along with most of her other books. We can’t say that for most books published in 1963.


When we look at people like Paul or Mary Magdalene or Madeleine L’Engle through God shaped glasses, we see how successful they were. To keep the garden metaphor going, imagine them as carrying on the work of the Son, the work of Jesus. Jesus gives the disciples and apostles the seeds of the Good News, and those very human first Christians spread them far and wide. Later believers have continued to widen the garden. Some seeds that are sown are obviously wheat, like the Apostle Paul and the scholar Elizabeth Schrader-Polzer. Other seeds may look like weeds, like Mary Magdalene and Madeleine L’Engle, holding on where they don’t appear to be welcome. But time reveals that they, too, have a place in God’s garden.


We all have a place in God’s garden. Don’t listen to the people who treat others like weeds. Instead, grow in the soil of Jesus’ teaching, sure in the promise that we will shine like the sun as we flourish in God’s garden, watered by grace, nourished by God’s love.