Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 31, 2026:

First Reading: Genesis 1:1--2:4a

Psalm: Psalm 8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20


This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday, one of those festival Sundays that seem a bit baffling, at first (like Christ the King Sunday, which comes at the end of the liturgical year). We understand the significance of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But what exactly do we celebrate on Holy Trinity Sunday?

At first reading, the Gospel doesn't seem to help. And Jesus certainly didn't spend any time indoctrinating his disciples on these matters which would later split the church. He alludes to the Triune God: we see him pray to God and he tells the disciples that he will send a Comforter. But he spends far more time instructing the disciples on how they should treat the poor and destitute, about their relationship to the larger culture, about their role in creating the Kingdom in the here and now.

You get a much better understanding of the Trinity by reading all the lessons together (thanks to my campus pastor from days of old, Jan Setzler, who pointed this out in his church's newsletter over a decade ago). These aren't unfamiliar aspects: God as creator of the world, God as lover of humans, Christ who came to create community, the Holy Spirit who moves and breathes within us and enables us to create community.

Notice that we have a God who lives in community, both with the various aspects of God (Creator, Savior, Spirit) and with us. It's an image that baffles our rational minds. It's akin to contemplating the infinity of space. Our brains aren't large enough or we don't know how to use them in that way.

But maybe it's not helpful to spend time trying to understand these matters with our intellects.  Maybe we should focus on what the Triune God does, not what the Triune God is.

The God that we see in our Scriptures is a God of action. We see God creating in any number of arenas. We are called to do the same. This is not a God who saves us so that we can flip through TV channels. Our God is a God who became incarnate to show us how to be people of action: Go. Make disciples. Teach. Baptize. Keep the commandments. We do this by loving each other and God. We love not just by experiencing an emotion. Love moves us to action.

And that action doesn't have to have the boldness of those first, male disciples. They went very far when Jesus said to them "Go and make disciples."  But many of us don't need to travel more than a mile or two before we will find someone who needs us, someone we need, someone with whom we could form community.

How do we do that?  Here again, we can find many possibilities in our stories about our creator and our savior and our Holy Spirit Comforter:  rescuing captives out of bondage, teaching, eating meals together in a variety of ways, fishing, healing, going on retreat, praying, having conversations with both the popular people and the outcast, sharing resources, cleaning up messes, telling truth to power, on and on I could go.

We live in a time when the world offers us so many opportunities to act in the way that God acts.  How can we love our neighbor?  There are so many ways to do that.  Theologian Frederick Buechner reminds us in his book Wishful Thinking: "The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Jesus promises to meet us there.

Memorial Day 2026

Today is Memorial Day, and through the years, I've come to realize how many different things this holiday can mean to people.  I've met people who won't celebrate it because of its roots in memorializing the Civil War Union dead.  My dad was an Air Force officer in the Reserves until he retired, so Memorial Day was personal for him.  I don't think I know anyone who was killed while on active duty, but I do want to honor those who died.  Some people I've known seem to have no inkling that the holiday has anything to do with soldiers at all--for them, it's about getting a good deal on a holiday sale or opening up the vacation home or having a cook out.

I remember feeling desperate for Memorial Day, for a day off, but during my days of working as an administrator, I was always desperate for a day off, a day off that didn't require me to use up any of my paltry allotment of vacation time.  For the past several years, Memorial Day as a three day week-end was not top of my mind, since I've already had a few weeks of schedule easing in May.

I also know that many people don't get to have time off.  All of our grocery stores are open today, for example.  When I taught in community colleges in South Carolina, we didn't have Memorial Day off.  Our nursing students needed every scrap of time in the summer, so that holiday had to be sacrificed so that we stayed in compliance.  Or maybe it was because of the Civil War; I got different explanations. In past years, I've used the day off to catch up on grading for my online classes.  

This year, I'm thinking about past years, when war seemed far away.  And now, here we are, with war in Europe (Ukraine) and war with Iran, and lots of smaller scale wars across the globe.

But let me circle back to the intent of this holiday.  On this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:

God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day, we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

Sermon for May 24, 2026, Pentecost

May 24, 2026, Pentecost

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



First Reading: Acts 2:1-21
Psalm: Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Gospel: John 20:19-23



If we’ve been part of a church for any amount of time, say longer than 5 years, we might have opinions about Pentecost. We might consider it the birthday of the Church or the Holy Spirit. Maybe we associate Pentecost with Confirmation. Maybe it’s all about the color red or the geraniums.


Our readings for today show us the traditional scriptural depictions of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit gets into the world. In the reading from the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit arrives when Jesus breathes on the disciples. In the reading from Corinthians, we see Paul understanding the Holy Spirit giving believers a variety of skills and gifts with which to do God’s work. There’s also our first reading from Acts, the one that tells us what happened, the rush of violent wind, the tongues of flame, the ability to speak in languages that they didn’t already know—not mystical languages but languages that people from other places could hear and understand. Imagine the gift of being able to speak in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese—without years of study and practice. Imagine how many doors might open if we could do that. Or maybe, as our reading shows us, we’d face criticism and ugly inuendo.


The reading from Acts is probably what most of us think of when we think of Pentecost. When I was a child, it sounded marvelous, like getting a superpower. And indeed, that’s the story most of us are taught: the Holy Spirit comes and transforms the disciples and they go out and transform the world. Those stories of Christians transforming the world usually gloss over—or leave out completely—the difficulties.


It was not until the Pentecost Sunday after Hurricane Wilma when I considered how scary our Pentecost symbolism could and perhaps should be. Hurricane Wilma swept through South Florida in 2005, one of those one in a hundred year (or these days, 1 in every 10 year) supercharged hurricane times that included Hurricane Katrina. Katrina and Wilma both did damage to my house, and Wilma did extreme damage to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Hollywood, FL, our church at the time. After all the months of storm clean up, hearing about violent, rushing wind as a marker of the arrival of the Holy Spirit was disquieting, to say the least.


As I mentioned last week, if we look at the lives of the disciples, we see that the arrival of the Holy Spirit can be disrupting, like a supercharged hurricane season. Friday night, I had a very different vision of the Holy Spirit loose in the world.


On Friday afternoon, church members arrived for the fish fry to find that June Rasmussen had made these exquisite aprons in a variety of colors, all of them reversible. They’re all cut from the same pattern, but that pattern fit all of us—as a woman who has spent more time than I like to think looking for clothes that fit my non-standard body, I can say with certainty that one pattern that fits a variety of bodies, that’s a rare and wonderful pattern. I know that we’re here to think about our spiritual lives and all of the spiritual gifts we’ve been given, but just for a moment, think about all the physical bodies in this room. Some of us are tall, and some of us aren’t. Some of us have bodies that are wide—and some of us aren’t. Some of us are male, and some of us are female. Yet these aprons fit us all.


At one point I looked across the fellowship hall and saw all of us wearing our aprons, and I thought, now here’s a metaphor for the Holy Spirit at work in the world—these aprons are a great metaphor for the Holy Spirit itself. That idea felt scary and taboo, like I was transgressing some important religious boundary.


I’m a Lutheran who went to a liberal arts college, so transgression of a religious boundary doesn’t scare me the way it might if I was brought up in a different tradition. Let us think about the way the Holy Spirit is like this apron. As Jesus did with strange parables, let us see what happens if we use a different metaphor to think in new ways—Holy Spirit as reversible apron.


Many of us have limited exposure to the book of Acts, reading from it only at Pentecost. If we continued to read the book of Acts, we’d see the disciples arguing about what they had experienced. Who gets to use the apron? The Holy Spirit came for who, exactly? If it was just for the Jews, then why speak in different languages? And for the next two thousand years, that argument continues—how do we interpret Pentecost? Do we go out and bring the message to all nations? Or do we stay closer to home?


While Christians have been having these discussions/arguments for thousands of years, the Holy Spirit continues to travel, making appearances in interesting and unexpected places, draping itself over a wide variety of humans. Like an apron, the Holy Spirit gives the wearer the courage to act boldly. I would hesitate to stand in front of a deep fryer without an apron—too much danger of getting burned or ruining clothes that aren’t easy for me to find. But with an apron? Sure, I’ll help fry. An apron comes with the promise that we will be protected if we take chances; similarly, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will bring protection when we are working for the Kingdom of God. We need not be afraid—we can act boldly for the Kingdom of God as we work for justice or create beautiful art or minister to the poor or take care of the generations coming after us or heal bodies or the earth or tend to families.


That promise of protection can give us courage, along with protection. Like an apron, if we trust in the Triune God, the Holy Spirit can help us find what we need in the moment—maybe it’s courage, maybe it’s boldness, maybe it’s the ability to communicate in new ways.

As I looked at the aprons, I was struck by how they are alike, yet different—different colors, different pockets that matched and contrasted, how the cloth on one side harmonized with the other side. I thought about how we each get the same presence of the Holy Spirit along with the mission of continuing the work that Jesus commissions us to do—and yet, like those aprons on Friday night, each person’s Holy Spirit experience is unique. The Holy Spirit moving in the world is like the best cloth shop with so many colors and patterns that the combinations are endless.


An apron doesn’t promise that our ventures will proceed in the ways that we’ve envisioned. And the presence of the Holy Spirit also does not come with the promise that we control the show—far from it. I wasn’t at Faith Lutheran when the first fish fries were planned, but I’m willing to bet that part of what was hoped for this project was new members. Do we have anyone here who came to membership in this church by way of one of the fish fry events?


No, most of us came for other reasons. But the fact that the fish fry doesn’t generate new membership doesn’t mean that they haven’t been valuable. I talked to many of our guests on Friday night, and they came for a variety of reasons, but almost all of them talked about the value of the fish fry to the community for so many reasons: the money raised, the chance to eat with old friends, the value of a good meal. I looked at all of us in our colorful aprons, so tired from the prep work and the service work, but having a good time, and I saw God at work in the world. I saw the Holy Spirit at work in the world, not in tongues of flame or violent rushing wind, but in a congregation having fun together, draped in protective aprons that another member made for us.


We might look around us, though, and worry about the future. Sure, we can pull together and do fish fries now, but what about in 10 years. We might rejoice in our 2 confirmands today, while feeling some sorrow that there aren’t more. We might lose sight of the fact that we only have part of the story.


Each Pentecost, we remember beginnings that might not have been seen as the start of something bold and new. Jesus breathes on the disciples—and then he leaves them. The Holy Spirit comes in the book of Acts, and the disciples will spend the rest of their lives trying to determine the direction they should go next.


Let us remember that we have not yet seen the completed creation or the fullness of the Triune God who breathed into the chaos and began this life we have together. We see God breathe new life in Genesis and Jesus breathe new life in John. On this Pentecost Sunday, let us remember to breathe. Let us go forth to claim our gifts that the Holy Spirit grants to us, sure in the knowledge, that, like a good apron, the Holy Spirit will equip us to do the work that needs us to do it.

Rain and Writing

It's the kind of rainy morning that's saying, "Wait and walk later."  Of course, the risk in waiting is that I might not go at all:  it could continue to rain or I could submit to laziness.  It's the kind of rainy morning where I have writing that I need to do, so waiting to walk makes sense.  

I was feeling bad that I had no sermon rough draft written, but by last night I was glad.  We went to the last fish fry of the season at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, where we discovered that a church member had made aprons for everyone, reversible at that.  As I looked at us all wearing our aprons, I thought about Pentecost and the metaphors for the Holy Spirit, and I got an idea that hadn't been there before.  I don't want to write about it further, for fear of losing the energy of the idea.  Once I've posted the sermon, I'll come back and put the links in this post. 

I am happy for the rain, even if it means my walk never happens.  We've been in such a deep drought across the southeast.

Of course, last night I was not happy for the rain as we drove back from the fish fry.  At first, as we left at 7:30, it was beautiful, with clouds across the mountain.  The rain settled in as we got to the top of the mountain; once we got to the road construction outside of Asheville, the rain got heavier and the road conditions worse with construction debris and barriers and various lines on the road.  I have rarely been more relieved when we pulled into our driveway as I was last night.

Let me keep this blog post short so that I can take advantage of this rainy morning and get my Pentecost sermon written.

Parish Church as Community _____(Builder, Resource, Space to Breathe)

Later today, we head to Bristol, TN for the last fish fry for the community.  It's an outreach activity of a sort, but we're not really reaching unchurched people.  In the far-eastern mountain part of the state, most people who want a church home have found one, and almost everyone already knows we're there.

So why do it?  In part, my very tiny congregation raises an impressive amount of money for the local charities that feed the hungry.  But in part, we do it to feed the souls who come for dinner.  It's a great space for people to sit and eat and to linger with others that they don't see as often.

This morning, I read a blog post by Pastor Clint Schnekloth, and I want to capture part of that blog post here, so that I have it in the future, in case the post goes away.  It captures what I've been thinking about ways that the physical church community, including the building, can be important in new ways that are old ways, particularly in the space to breathe/refuge way:

"But over time I have also come to think that many of us internalized a false opposition between the local and the public. We sometimes imagined that meaningful ministry always happened elsewhere, beyond the congregation itself, when in reality local congregations can become some of the most important sites of public trust remaining in contemporary life. The parish was treated as a launching pad for the “real” work of the gospel, rather than itself being a primary site of public life.

Theologically, however, Christianity has always resisted that abstraction. The incarnation is not an argument for generalized spirituality but an affirmation of locality. God does not merely send ideas into history but inhabits a place, a body, a neighborhood, a people. Jesus comes from Nazareth. He lives among actual communities, eats in homes, and becomes recognizable through repeated relationships. Even the resurrected Christ remains marked by wounds. Christian faith is therefore never purely conceptual or placeless. It is embodied, located, and relational.

I no longer think about congregational life primarily in terms of maintaining institutional machinery. Increasingly, I think in terms of cultivating conditions under which grace can circulate through a community. What we are tending in parish ministry is not only institutional continuity but a social and spiritual ecology shaped by trust, accompaniment, hospitality, beauty, mutual responsibility, and shared life. People arrive for worship, for healing from religious trauma, for acceptance of LGBTQIA+ children, for relief from loneliness, for grounding amid exhaustion and outrage, or for practical support in grief, family breakdown, or economic strain.

What has struck me more and more is that people often experience churches like ours less as providers of religious goods and more as places where they can breathe.

That may sound simple, but culturally it is becoming rarer and more important. In an anxious, fragmented, performative society, spaces where people can exist without fear, humiliation, ideological sorting, or relentless productivity become deeply public realities.

None of these dimensions exist independently."

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel (Pentecost)

  The readings for Sunday, May 24, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 2:1-21

First Reading (Alt.): Numbers 11:24-30

Psalm: Psalm 104:25-35, 37 (Psalm 104:24-34, 35b NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Second Reading (Alt.): Acts 2:1-21

Gospel: John 20:19-23

Gospel (Alt.): John 7:37-39



Ah, Pentecost, day of fire and wind and foreign languages.

Contemplate how much of Scripture circles around the breath of God. Reread Genesis--creation comes into being because God breathes it into life. Something similar happens in the Gospel of John. Jesus breathes on his disciples and transforms them. Likewise in Acts--that great rushing wind. For those of you in love with words and older translations, we often find the same word in these passages: Pneuma (yes, that root that creates our modern word of pneumonia).

The twenty-first century Church, at least some branches of it, is in serious need of the breath of God. Perhaps you are too.

I often think of those first followers, who went out with the breath of God in them, and transformed the world. In the history of social movements, few have been as broadly successful as Christianity. My atheist friends would chime in that few have been as destructive--we both may be right. What an unlikely story: a small band of weirdly talented or distinctly ungifted men and women head out in pairs, carrying very little with them, and they survive enormous obstacles. In the process, they change the culture--and often, then, they move on. Think of the distances that they travelled--often on foot. Think of how hostile the culture was. You wouldn't be able to suspend your disbelief if you read it in a book.

The breath of God can transform us in the same way. Jesus transfers his powers to his disciples; we're given the power to do what he does. Now, if only we could believe it.

Maybe the key is to act as if you do believe it. You can do remarkable things, even if you don't feel like you can.

We're at a point in history that may prove to be a pivot.  We've had plagues and pandemics.  We've had political upheavals from left and right.  Weather related catastrophes happen regularly.  Many people are already considering how to use this moment in history for their own purposes.  How can we use this moment to create a society that's more in line with the vision that God has for us?

Maybe the thought of transformation exhausts you in the best of times.  Maybe the question of transformation threatens to overwhelm you.  Maybe you are already drowning.

So let's begin from a much simpler place.  Let's return to a fundamental religious practice and focus on our breathing.  In his book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, researcher James Nestor points us to a study showing that breathing in for 5-6 seconds and breathing out for 5-6 seconds can help restore our sense of calm and well being.  Breathing more deeply can heal us in all sorts of ways, especially if we remember to focus on our breath more often.

As we focus on our breathing, let's add a powerful meditative element.  As you inhale, envision God breathing into you. Breathe deeply.  Receive the breath of God.  As you exhale, imagine God's grace and goodness flowing into the world. 

The world needs to receive the breath of God.  The planet cries out for healing.  The stories of Pentecost show us ways to begin.

The Feast Day of Saint Dunstan

On this day in 988, Archbishop Dunstan died.  In this blog post, medieval scholar Eleanor Parker calls him "one of the greatest saints of Anglo-Saxon England - statesman, archbishop of Canterbury, scholar, monk, musician, metal-worker, and noted tormenter of devils."

Well, there's a resume!

The blog post talks about the history of Dunstan's time, the tumultuous tenth century, tumultuous in England, at least.  It was a time of Viking raids--but not constant raids.  During the times of no raiding, could people relax or did they always know the raids would start again?

It was also a time of internal fighting, with battles between Scotland and northern England.  To read the timeline in this Wikipedia article exhausts me.  But I remind myself that medieval war wasn't relentless, the way our more modern wars could be.  I imagine that civilian populations might not have known much at all about those battles that are listed.

It was a time of monastic developments, with new orders founded and old monasteries and abbeys resurrected.  Was this renewed interest because of the constant state of war?

Despite my knowledge of English literature, I don't really know much about this time period.  My knowledge of English literature in any kind of deep way begins with Chaucer, who lived from 1343-1400.  Most of us think of the post-Roman, pre-Chaucer time period as the Dark Ages, but historians have often pointed out the limits of that term.  Saint Dunstan shows that the time was much more complex. 

Sermon for Sunday, May 17, 2026

May 17, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




John 17:1-11



The Gospel of John is the only Gospel that doesn’t have the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and have Jesus offer the prayer we use every week in worship, the prayer we call The Lord’s Prayer. Instead, we get this prayer, which appears in our lectionary every year for the last Sunday in the Easter season, the Sunday before Pentecost.


Across the Gospels, we see Jesus pray in a variety of ways, in a variety of places, for a variety of reasons. Here we see Jesus pray as part of the Last Supper, when he’s been doing some last instructing after the meal, and now he prays for the safety and the success of these disciples who have traveled so far with him, yet still have so far to go.


As I’ve thought about this picture of Jesus in prayer, I’ve thought about what it means to have a savior who prays for humans. Does Jesus already know the outcome of his prayers in a way that humans do not, when we pray? That’s another way of asking if the future is pre-determined, and if we believe in free will, we would have to say that even though Jesus is part of our Triune God, he doesn’t know in advance that the disciples will take his teachings to the ends of the known world.

We get this Gospel reading every year, just after the Feast of the Ascension, which we heard about in our first text for today. I think about those disciples getting Jesus back from the tomb. And now, he leaves them again. The Holy Spirit has yet to make an appearance in the spectacular way that will happen on Pentecost. Did any of the disciples think back to this time of prayer? Did they find comfort in a savior who prayed for their protection?


This Sunday is also Rogate Sunday, and at the end of today’s worship, we’ll head outside to do some planting. I’ve been keeping an eye on a neighbor’s garden while they’ve been walking and praying their way across a hundred miles in England on the Canterbury trail. As I’ve thought about prayer and this Sunday’s Gospel, I’ve thought about how much prayer and planting are similar.


Like Jesus, we often pray for something specific. Jesus prays for protection and unity. When we plant a seed or a seedling, we often have something specific in mind. We don’t plant a tomato seed hoping to have an apple orchard by August.


And yet, we don’t have complete control over the garden that will emerge. Maybe we’ll have so many tomatoes that we’ll have to give them away. Maybe it will be a summer of too much rain and the harvest will rot on the vine or never get rooted.


We pray as we plant, not knowing the final outcome. I have to assume that Jesus, being both human and divine, also prayed not knowing the final outcome.


Here’s what struck me as I was thinking about this text and this prayer down on the beach yesterday. Like us, Jesus doesn’t always get his prayers answered, at least not in the way I assume he was hoping.


Think about what we see in today’s Gospel. Jesus prays for safety for the disciples. In many essential ways, Jesus didn’t have his prayer answered. By the time the Gospel of John was written, around 100 AD, hearers of today’s reading would know that Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews sent into exile. By the time the writer of the Gospel of John records Jesus’ prayer, all the disciples except one had died horrible deaths, often Roman executions, as they attempted to do what Jesus prayed for them to be able to do, to go out to be living witnesses to the truth that Jesus has showed them and instilled in them.


But if we take a longer view of this prayer of Jesus, in another 200 years, the Church has taken root in the places where the disciples died. In another 300-500 years, seeds from the first seedling congregations have sprouted in much more distant places. If we take a longer view, Jesus’ prayers have been answered. His work has been glorified—perhaps in ways that would surprise him.


I'll admit that it's simplistic to look at Jesus' ministry in this way. We might also feel defensive. We might say that these early followers had the advantage of doing something new.


But of course, if we read all of the book of Acts, we’ll see that those first followers of Jesus weren’t always sure that they were doing something new. Many of the arguments circled around whether or not Jesus had called them to a new way of practicing Judaism or a new way of being in community with God and with one another.


We, too, are at a crossroads, maybe several crossroads. The world, as we knew it, no longer exists in the same way. We might envy those disciples, sent out two by two, with just a change of clothes. But those disciples, too, were wrestling with a world that had changed. They were still in need of the protection that Jesus prayed they might have. They still had to figure out how to live the lives devoted to the truth that Jesus had showed them.


Here again, Jesus shows us a path forward. We can pray, like Jesus prays.


We plant our seeds of prayer, not knowing how they will take root or sprout. We pray our gardens, not knowing if we will see the answers to our prayers in our lifetimes. We pray, as Jesus did, knowing that we are only part of the process. We pray for others and for the larger world. We pray, trusting that God will find a way.


We pray for many of the same reasons that Jesus prayed. We have troubles that are bigger than ourselves. We pray because we need power greater than our own. We pray to calm our nerves, so that we can face the tasks that must be done.


God calls us to resurrection not just once, but daily. God calls us to ascend above all the earthly powers that try to hold us in their grip. Prayer is one of the ways that we stay rooted in God, planted in a garden designed for our flourishing. This summer, as we watch our gardens grow, as we go to farmer’s markets to find the food that nourishes our bodies, let us take care to nourish our souls as well, by tending to our prayer lives the way we care for tender seedlings.

Notes from an Off-Season Beach

We are at the beach in a slightly off season, here in mid-May.  It's warm enough to work up a summer-like sweat in the late afternoon.  But my morning walk today had a chilly enough wind that it was almost unpleasant.  Let me record a few other observations.

--Being here in mid-May means that the only children who are here are younger than elementary school age, which translates into lots of cute toddlers.

--We are also here with lots of older people, the ones with either very flexible vacation times or retired people.

--I am likely in the same age category as many of these older women, yet I am working from a different jewelry sensibility:  a nice way of saying that I love colorful glass beads that aren't very valuable, and I'm surrounded by precious gems and metals that are.  I am not wearing jewelry on vacation, and I'm in the minority.

--I have started judging restaurants by their playlists.  High marks go to Poseidon for having 3 Queen songs, including the more obscure "Hammer to Fall," which I am listening to in my earbuds right now.  What a great song--and it still feels very relevant.

--I do realize that "Hammer to Fall" was released as a single and went up the charts.  When I say it's more obscure, I mean that it no longer gets much airplay.  We're much more likely to hear "Somebody to Love," when we're out and about.

--A different musician performs by the pool each day.  Yesterday the musician could play steel pan drums, guitar, and saxaphone, but he didn't always know the song lyrics.  Strange to hear his version of Sting's "Englishman in New York," which didn't sound very English-y, and we're far, far away from both England and New York.

--Yesterday was my last Lutheran Confessions class.  It was a good class, and I learned a lot, although I'm not sure that much of it will be useful in my future life.  I love the idea that the creeds are not like a pledge of allegiance, but more like a love song of the early Church, more like a hymn than a confession of faith.  It seems counterintuitive--we say we confess our faith using the words of the _____Creed.

--It's been a good week, both bittersweet and tiring and inspiring.

The Feast Day of the Ascension

Today is the Feast Day of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter, 10 days before Pentecost. This feast day commemorates Jesus being taken up into Heaven.

In the church of my childhood, we must have celebrated this festival on a Sunday. I have memories of hearing the story in church; I don't have much memory of celebrating Pentecost as a child. Now, Ascension can go by without a peep.

Imagine it from the eyes of those who have followed Christ from traipsing around Galilee, Crucifixion, and then Resurrection. You have just gotten your beloved Messiah returned to you, and then, poof, he's gone again. What a whipsawed feeling they must have had.

How do we celebrate this day, so many thousands of years later? Many churches have chosen to simply ignore it. We march on to Pentecost.

By the point that the disciples witness the Ascension, are they used to these sorts of wonders? Their savior has risen from the dead, after all. Maybe being scooped up into heaven wasn't as wonder inducing--and yet, I suspect it was.

When I think of the events of Holy Week, Easter, and the time up to the Ascension, I wonder if any of them came close to a breaking point. I think of the Pentecost story, where once again we find the disciples holed up in a room. I wonder if some of them were rocking themselves in a corner, muttering about how the world had cracked open, and not in a good way.

In our current time, we may have lost our sense of wonder. When I watch us talking or tapping on our cell phones, I sometimes remind myself of the miraculous developments that the cell phone represents. For better or worse, it provides phone coverage to places that once were remote. It puts an enormous amount of commuting power in a very portable container. Satellites circle the earth to assist with these processes.

Sure, we might use them in the most mundane way: to coordinate the car pool pick up or dinner plans or to find each other in a crowd. And yet, maybe it's profound, in ways we don't acknowledge. We ascend by way of satellites to find each other, to tell each other of our love.

I think of Jesus and all of the others who have ascended before us. I think of the love that is our mission. I think of times I've watched the moon rise. I think of satellites, the ones we've made of metal and the ones that existed long before we hurled things into space. All of us, circling, all of us lost in both our daily orbits and our larger obsessions.

On this feast day of the Ascension, let us keep our eyes on the Savior who has gone before us. Let us stay grounded in the love that declares us wondrously made. Let us go forth and love similarly.

Prayer for the Feast of the Ascension:

Ascending God, you understand our desire to escape our earthly bonds, to hover above it all, to head to Heaven now instead of later. Remind us of our earthly purpose. Reassure us that we have gifts and talents that are equal to the tasks that you need us to do. Help us close our gaping mouths and get to work.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for May 17, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 1:6-14

Psalm: Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36 (Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Gospel: John 17:1-11

In today's Gospel, we see Jesus at the end of his mission. We see Jesus praying, telling God all the things he (Jesus) has done. We also see Jesus handing over his ministry to his disciples.

Notice that all of Jesus' followers were given responsibilities. They didn't just show up at church and wait to be entertained. They didn't march off in a huff when Jesus didn't do things the way the last savior did. I'm sure that Jesus lost some people along the way--after all, he made some stringent demands. But he also gave people ownership and expectations.

Jesus taught his followers to live in the moment, to not worry so much about 5 year projections or the future of the faith. He taught people to focus on the needs of the community and not on power structures that they hoped to maintain.  He taught people how to live in community and how to resist the very powerful structures of empire.

Jesus commanded his followers to be dependent on each other and to trust that God would provide for them.  When they're sent out, they're sent out two by two, with only what they can carry (and it's a light load). This ensures that they'll make connections in the new community, not just trust in each other and the people that they already know.

I'll admit that it's simplistic to look at Jesus' ministry in this way. We might also feel defensive.  We might say that these early followers had the advantage of doing something new.  In our century, we have all sorts of burdens:  tradition, responsibilities, buildings.  We can't decide to start over in thinking about the way we do ministry.

Or can we?  These last several years have showed us that we can do things differently.  And our time of innovation is not yet done.

God calls us to resurrection not just once, but daily.  God calls us out of all that has left us abandoned in our tombs.  Let us fold our gravecloths and emerge.

Sermon for Mother's Day Week-end

May 10, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




John 14: 15-21



Jesus speaks the words in today’s Gospel reading to the disciples in the last hours they’ll have together before the Crucifixion. He is preparing them for the hard times of separation that will be coming—not only his Crucifixion and death, but the Ascension too.


We will celebrate the Ascension on Thursday. Every year as Ascension Day approaches, I think of those poor disciples. They have such a short time with their resurrected Lord, before He goes away again. How on earth do they cope with these developments, the fierce grief moving to great rejoicing, moving back to grief again?


I wonder if they thought back to this teaching. I imagine them remembering the Crucifixion—nothing could have prepared them for what came next. They were probably just getting used to the idea of Jesus defeating death. So why can’t he stay?

I also see this situation as a metaphor for our own modern lives. We may be feeling a bit whipsawed by grief and loss ourselves. We may recover from one crisis, only to find ourselves staring down the next one. As I've gotten older, I've noticed that these crises seem to be increasing in frequency and severity in the lives of those I love. I look back to the dramas of my high school and college years, and I understand why so many elders chuckle dismissively at the troubles of youth. We forget, however, that trouble is trouble, no matter what our age.


Again and again, across the span of life, we find ourselves wrestling with similar questions. Why is there so much suffering? Why did God create a world where cancer and other diseases have their ravaging way with people? Why do the rich and powerful care so little about the world they’re living in and why doesn’t God punish those who don’t care? Why do we lose the ones we love, while the ones we wouldn’t mind losing are the ones who live the longest?

We are not the first to ask these questions, of course. Theologians have been happy to give us answers—here’s a favorite: it’s because Eve ate the apple. Or maybe we’d prefer this explanation: it’s because God and Satan are in a battle, and some days, Satan is winning.



But notice how Jesus does not answer the questions that we might wish we could ask God directly. Jesus did not come in human form to explain the ways of God to us. No, Jesus came to show us how to live more God-drenched lives, by living among us and showing us the way.


So now our question might be, why does he have to leave? Here, too, Jesus doesn’t explain why he can’t stay forever, why he is resurrected, only to leave again 40 days later.


Instead, Jesus offers this assurance: we will never be alone. Although we may feel orphaned, we are not. We may feel desolate, another way of translating verse 18. But we have a holy comforter on the way.


Today’s Gospel ends by Jesus reassuring us that we are not losing him. Indeed, the Gospel ends with an expansive vision of how we will abide with the Triune God, all of our lives intertwined, a place to rest and a place to be energized.


On this Mother’s Day, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to notice how Jesus describes a relationship that is nurturing, in the way that the best mothering relationships are. These days that celebrate parenting—Mother’s Day today, Father’s Day in June—can be emotionally wrenching for people. Parenting is not always an easy relationship, so these holidays can remind us of what we didn’t have with our parents or our children, or maybe they remind us of times together that are gone forever. Mother’s Day can remind us of paths not taken. Maybe we wish we’d had a different family configuration: more children or more time with extended family or children spaced apart differently. Maybe we made sacrifices for our children, and we wonder what would have happened if we made different choices. Mother’s Day can be a holiday that comes with emotional landmines.


In this context, too, the words of Jesus take on fresh meaning. We are not left orphaned, even though we may feel orphaned in our family relationships: children grow up and start their own families and most of us will outlive our parents. It’s enough to leave us feeling desolate, and the stories of the disciples might not make us feel much better. We don’t hear much about the family relationships of these men as they went out to spread the Good News of the inbreaking Kingdom of God to all of the Roman empire.


On Mother’s Day, let us turn our attention to the mothers in the Bible, particularly those at the beginning of the story of Jesus. I’m thinking of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, who is very old, much too old to have a child. I’m thinking of Mary, mother of Jesus, who is very young, much too lacking in resources to be a good mother. And yet, both women received unexpected invitations from God, and both women said yes.


Today, I invite you to think about who you are in these stories. Are you one of the disciples, careening between joy and grief, as you move from Holy Week to Easter to Ascension? Are you Elizabeth, a woman who comes to fulfillment late in life? Are you Mary, facing huge hurdles as you discern a way forward? Are you the main nurturer in your life? Are you in need of nurturing? Do you feel orphaned or desolate?


Hear with your ears and with your heart the words of Jesus, who promises us that we are not abandoned, we are not left orphaned, we are not desolate, stripped of everything that might have mattered to us.


If we’re feeling old and washed up, God still has a place for us. If we’re feeling young and insignificant, God has opportunities that the rest of our culture may not offer. If we’re worried that we never understood Jesus the way we should, we have an advocate in the Holy Spirit. If we feel too weighed down by our burdens, Jesus assures us that our lives are knit with his; we’re not carrying our burdens alone.


No matter how many ways we feel barren, new growth is possible. God’s good news is more inclusive than we dared imagine. And we are at a hinge point of history where it is more important than ever to deliver that good news to a world that is so hungry to hear it. Rest assured that we are up to the challenge. We are nurtured by Jesus as we abide with God and the Holy Spirit, all our lives sewed together into a comforter of peace that passes all human understanding.

The Feast Day of Julian of Norwich

May 8 is the feast day of Julian of Norwich in the Anglican and the Lutheran church; in the Catholic church, it's May 13.  Is Julian of Norwich as famous now as Hildegard of Bingen or Ireland's St. Brigid?  Are any of these women more widely known now than they were in grad school when I first started searching for the females that had been left out of a variety of narratives?  I have no idea.  They are more widely known in the subcultures to which I belong, but in the wider world?

In those early days (the late 80's) of discovering female voices that had been left out of literature anthologies, I most treasured Julian of Norwich for her writing.  In later years, the theology of her writing fascinated me--so many centuries before any blooming of anything that could be called feminist, here was a woman writing about a feminine face of God.

Now, as I head into the second half of my life, Julian of Norwich calls to me in a different way.  For me, the last decade can be seen through a lens of loss:  my best friend from high school died a horrible cancer death, there have been other deaths along with a pandemic, we left South Florida for many reasons, job loss among them.  Why would Julian of Norwich speak to me in this new way?

I think of her, alone in her cell, all of her focus shrunk into so small a space.  I think of her as a model of living more with less.  So, I may never hike the Appalachian Trail in one long trek, but that doesn't mean that my life needs to come to a halt.  I may come to a point where I'm living in one room, but that might be a room that is more full than any of my previous homes.

When I've thought about my older age, I've assumed that I would create communities the same way I've always attempted.  I've thought about the Hildegards and the Brigids and their nunneries--I've always wanted (or thought I did) a community like that one.

Of course, having lived in smaller communities, I realize how much work goes into making that kind of community--but the rewards can be so amazing.

As my friends and family have had health crises, it has occurred to me that I may outlast my friends.  There may be no one to follow me to the commune.  What then?

I used to write to my friend with cancer:  "When we are little old ladies, rocking on the porch, we'll look back on this time . . ." and then I'd fill in with various visions.  When she died, I thought, well, I might be rocking on that porch all by myself.

Instead of that lonely vision, I'm going to train myself to think of Julian of Norwich.  Many of us may spend our later years not in some kind of community, but all alone, in our various houses and apartments.  While some isolation will occur, perhaps it can be a time of creativity, a time to focus that many of us won't have had before.

Mystics like Julian of Norwich can show us the way!

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for Sunday, May 10, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 17:22-31

Psalm: Psalm 66:7-18 (Psalm 66:8-20 NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:13-22

Gospel: John 14:15-21


In today's Gospel, we get a hint of Pentecost. Jesus tells his followers that he will never leave them orphaned or desolate, to use words from several different translations.

Every year as Ascension Day approaches, I think of those poor disciples. They have such a short time with their resurrected Lord, before he goes away again. How on earth do they cope with this?

I also see this situation as a metaphor for our own modern one. You may be feeling a bit whipsawed by grief and loss yourself. You may recover from one crisis, only to find yourself staring down the maw of the next. As I've gotten older, I've noticed that these crises seem to be increasing in frequency and severity. I look back to the dramas of my high school and college years, and I understand why so many elders chuckle dismissively at the troubles of youth. We forget, however, that trouble feels like crisis, no matter what our age.

But Jesus offers this comfort: we will never be alone.

Notice what Jesus does NOT offer: our God is not Santa Claus. Our God is not a fix everything quickly God (at least not all the time).

I have some acquaintances who claim to have lost their faith on September 11, 2001. They had been faithful in their church attendance, but once that disaster happened, they declared they couldn't believe in a God that would let such terrible things happen. No talk of free will would deter them in their determination to let go of their faith.

Earlier generations had a similar difficulty with Auschwitz (perhaps you do too). How can God let such awful things happen?

Evil has real power in the world, and we forget that at our peril. As Christians, we are called to take a longer view, and we are called to believe that God will eventually emerge victorious--but that doesn't mean that this victory will happen in our lifetimes. We are part of a larger story, and we all have our part to play. But we must be aware that we might be like Moses or the early apostles: we may not see the fruits of our labors; we may not get to the promised land (at least not in this life). The Good News that Jesus delivers should give us comfort: all of creation will be redeemed eventually, and that redemption has begun.

Return to that promise of Jesus: we are not orphaned. We are not abandoned. Even in our darkest days, when we feel at our most unlovable, God sees our value. God remembers our better selves. God knows what we could accomplish. If God can use deeply flawed people like Saul who becomes Paul, God will also weave us into the great fabric of Kingdom life.

Retreat Chef

I have spent this week-end down at the Isle of Palms (near Charleston, SC), being part of a team that cooked for a retreat.  I used to cook for larger groups more often, so I knew I could do it.  But I'm also relieved that we're coming to the end of the retreat, and it's been a success.

We were helped by the fact that it's a group of people who are easy to cook for:  no dietary restrictions, no allergies.  We made pork tenderloin last night, and everyone ate it, and many went back for seconds.  Most of the participants spend much time in caring professions and providing care for family members--it's been years since anyone cooked for them, and they haven't been shy about expressing their gratitude.

It's an amazing kitchen--that helps too.  The kitchen has 2 dishwashers, 2 stoves, and 3 refrigerators.  It's got lots of equipment and all the basics, like dishes and silverware, every type of pot and pan, baking containers in every size and shape.

It hasn't all been cooking.  There's been Bible study and worship and lots of great conversation.  Back in October, on a chilly morning walk, when I agreed to help with the retreat, I hoped it would be this kind of experience.

It's been interesting being back at this retreat center, which is one of two Lutheran retreat centers in South Carolina.  I first came here as part of a campus group long ago in 1983.  My family came here in 1984 with a church group; it was the beginning of summer, and I wondered how I would last without seeing my college friends for a WHOLE SUMMER.

Now I'm thinking about coming back here at some point this summer to reconnect with old friends. 

I haven't done much grading, but I still have time.  Grades are due on Monday and Tuesday--plenty of time, but as I tell my students in the waning days of a term, not as much time as we once had.  I haven't done much writing, but there is plenty of time--a WHOLE SUMMER.

World Labyrinth Day 2026

 Today is World Labyrinth Day.   It's celebrated the first Saturday of May.

For more on labyrinths, this website is full of information. 

Below is  a poem-like thing with some of my favorite pictures of labyrinths I have known and loved:

We have walked labyrinths
made of fabric, made in fields,
laid out in tiles
or offered by cathedrals.

We have relied
on the promises of the labyrinth:
one path in, no dead ends,
no false turns, not a maze.

We have trusted
that the path leads
to a center that can hold
us all in all our complexities.

May Days and Feast Days

Here we are in the merry month of May--how can it already be May? The first day of May has ancient roots as a celebration of Spring and new growth and the return of warm weather. More recently, the first day of May has become a celebration of workers.

So let's think about some ways we could make the day special:

--The traditional way would be flowers, traditionally flowers that we would leave on dark porches for people to discover when they woke up. It's probably too late for that approach, but it's not too late to appreciate flowers. You could buy some flowers or a flowering plant. Or, for future enjoyment, you could do what we did: buy some seed packets, plant them, water them, and see what happens.

--It is probably also too late to weave long ribbons around a Maypole. But we could braid ribbons or strips of cloth and meditate on the types of joy we'd like to invite into our lives.

--Today is a good day to think about workers, workers of all sorts. We're having more of a national conversation these days about work, about gender, about who takes care of children and elders while people work, about the locations of work. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out--I'm holding onto hope for positive change, even as I'm afraid we can never make the improvements that need to be made.

--If we're one of the lucky types of workers, the ones who aren't under threat by bosses or by globalization or by robots, we can support those who aren't as lucky. Send some money to organizations that work for worker's rights. I'm impressed with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which works to protect the migrant workers in the fields of Florida, but you certainly have plenty to choose from.

--Can't afford to make a donation? Write letters on behalf of the unemployed, the underemployed, everyone who needs a better job or better working conditions. Write to your representatives to advocate for them. What are you advocating? A higher minimum wage? Safer worksites? Job security? Work-life balance?

--Today, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans celebrate the feast day of Philip and James; others will celebrate May 3. These are not the most well-known disciples. Today you could reread the Gospels, a kind of literary Easter egg hunt, to try to find them.

--Can you create something that weaves these strands together? Here are some possibilities: a sculpture made out of ribbons that explores the world of migrant workers. A poem that celebrates flowers and contemplates the ways that we love some blooms (flowers) but not others (algae, cancer). A painting that uses weaving in some ways to think about the past century of efforts to enlarge the workplace and make it safer. A short story that updates the story of Philip--who would he be today?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for Sunday, May 3, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 7:55-60

Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Gospel: John 14:1-14

The Gospel text for this Sunday has much to say to modern people.  I come back again and again to the beginning:  "Let not your hearts be troubled."  We are in a time period where so many of us have troubled hearts.

I worry about our hearts becoming hard as stones once we all decide that we're tired of being troubled.  History shows us this trajectory.  Right now many of us are steadfast in our resistance to becoming a country/world that doesn't seem true to our values.  But what happens when we grow tired?

I look at the way part of this passage has been misused, verse 6:  "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"  I think of all the ways that passage has been used to persecute those who believe differently.  Are we ultimately on that path?

I worry about the ways that so many of us are engaged in binary thinking, the either-or, in or out thinking that can get us into so much trouble.  We spend much time with ideas exactly identical to ours.  We can go for weeks/months/years without meeting someone with different political ideas than ours.  We live in a different kind of segregated world than that of half a century ago, but it's no less dangerous a segregation.

This morning, I came across a quote from Thomas Merton, in this post from the ever-wonderful Parker Palmer:

"This is of course the ultimate temptation of Christianity! To say that Christ has locked all the doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved — while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.”

In this quote, we see a way forward.  Even as so many of us are in despair about so many things, God is making creation whole again, in ways that we don't always perceive.

The Gospel text for this week includes an implicit invitation.  Jesus invites us to be part of this redemption of creation when he says, "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

Where and how will you respond to this call?

Jesus Buys a Fixer-Upper

I have been up early, both fretful and hopeful, thinking about taxes, thinking about home renovation shows and real life fixer-uppers, working on some poetry ideas.

I was thinking of mid-life crises, how some of us buy convertibles and others buy run down houses to fix up.  I had planned to work on a poem about Jesus having a mid-life crisis and buying a run down house to renovate--the idea came to me on Friday.  But I worried that readers would reasonably point out that Jesus didn't exactly live until mid-life to be able to have a midlife crisis. 

My Jesus in the World poems can demand a willing suspension of disbelief, since Jesus is doing activities that he didn't do in the Gospels:  bowling, going to a holiday cookie swap, helping with hurricane clean up, and so on.  But I worried that mention of a midlife crisis would disrupt that suspension of disbelief.

Sunday morning, the solution came to me, and it's so obvious I hesitate to admit that it didn't come to me sooner.  I can take out the reference to a mid-life crisis.  Let the reader decide why Jesus is buying a run-down house to renovate. 

There are so many wonderful ways this poem could go--it's so wonderful to have a glimmer of an idea that's closer to fully recognized than just a whisp and to have poem creation to look forward to in the week to come.

Report from the Field: Good Shepherd Sunday

Yesterday was a good Sunday--we welcomed a new member, had donuts, and heard about Jesus as a good shepherd and a gate.  Before the worship service, I met with the two confirmands.  We are at the end of our time together:  I'm gone for the next two Sundays, then we have one Sunday to rehearse, and then it will be Pentecost, the day we'll also have Affirmation of Baptism, which is what we call Confirmation these days.

I felt my sermon was serviceable.  My spouse would have preached a more political sermon, while I worried that I had strayed too much into the realm of politics.  My spouse often hints that he thinks I preach too much on the same themes:  God loves us, the world of empire does not, here's how to survive in a world where the empire is too much with us.

He's not wrong.  When I think about the Good News that my people need today, as my Foundations of Preaching professor advised we do when crafting a sermon, I think about the horrors and sadnesses that my congregation is facing, less so about the horrors and sadnesses faced by the larger world.

The recording of yesterday's sermon is here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read along, I put the manuscript in yesterday's blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, April 26, 2026

April 26, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 10: 1-10



Today is church holiday commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday. This Sunday in the season of Easter comes to us each year, with the readings focused on shepherds and the idea that Jesus is the shepherd. I’ve thought, written, and preached on this text, and I’ve always focused on the sheep and the shepherd. This year, though, it’s the idea of Jesus as gate that speaks to me.


In some ways, it’s a metaphor that feels dangerous, like it could be misused. Indeed, it has been. First century Christians who heard today’s text would see themselves as the chosen sheep. Through the centuries that have followed, the Jews who came before the time of Jesus were often painted as the ones in verse 8: “All who came before me are thieves and bandits.” But most modern scholars agree that Jesus is much more likely talking about all the other false messiahs that were roaming the country side, taking advantage of people in a time of extreme political and economic insecurity and danger. Let us always remember that Jesus said he did not come to replace the Law and the prophets, but as a fulfillment of them.


The other danger with this text is how it has been used to exclude—even to the extent of justifying public policy. Listen to that first verse again, with the ears of a person who is running for office and wants your vote: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” Anyone who wants to keep people out is likely to advocate for high walls or a big fences—and politicians through the ages have known that one way to win votes is to make us afraid of the thieves and the bandits or to make us want to keep some people out and some people in.


Jesus, though, is not a politician.


Notice that Jesus doesn’t call himself the fence. That metaphor would be different, one of exclusion. Jesus is the gate, which is a much more welcoming metaphor. A gate can open. Is Jesus the only gate? We might talk ourselves into believing that our way of understanding Jesus is the only way, that those who don’t enter through the gate of Jesus are on their way to Hell. But that might not be what Jesus means.


In the book of John, Jesus uses several metaphors to explain himself as Messiah: food, drink, and light. Note that these metaphors show Jesus as essential to life; humans won’t last long without nourishment, hydration, and light. In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses another metaphor of something that is essential to life: safety, the safety that comes from inclusion.


Many people might have heard this Gospel preached as Jesus being necessary to keep us from eternal damnation. In this preaching, Jesus is the gate that allows people to escape Hell. We tend to think of salvation in terms of the afterlife—whether we’re going to Heaven or going to Hell. Where will we spend eternal life?


But Jesus offers us a bigger pasture: safety and protection in the life we’re living now. In the book of John, Jesus often circles back to the idea of what makes life-giving community. He often preaches this vision of life-giving community by using metaphors, and the symbol of the shepherd is one of the most vivid and judging by what images find their ways into churches, one of the most beloved and meaningful. It’s not hard to understand the appeal.


Jesus as a gate gives us a slightly different vision than Jesus as the shepherd. A beloved vision of Jesus as a shepherd is of the shepherd who goes after the one wandering sheep. I’ve preached at least one sermon that ponders the strangeness of this metaphor. If the shepherd goes after one sheep and leaves 99 sheep behind, those sheep are unprotected. A fence with a gate gives those sheep more protection.


It’s not just the shepherd and the fence with a gate that gives an individual sheep protection. The rest of the sheep give protection too. We don’t often hear sermons that preach about the value of sheep. Most of the sermons I’ve heard—or preached—talk about the stupidity of sheep, not the wisdom of being part of a herd. I am thinking of a Far Side cartoon, with one sheep standing on its hind legs saying, “Wait! We don’t have to be sheep!”


I first saw that cartoon on the office door of a professor who wanted students to stand out and be unique, to resist conformity. Although I first saw that cartoon over 30 years ago, not much has changed. We live in an individualistic culture, one that sneers at those who follow the crowd. Many of my students dream of becoming an influencer—maybe through social media, maybe through rising in the ranks of business, maybe by being an athlete. My students are not alone in this yearning. In the U.S., we aren’t raised to want to be someone who follows.


But Jesus comes to remind us that we belong to a different herd. Jesus is the one in charge, not the flashiest sheep who has learned to play the popularity game and rig the algorithms.


Being part of the herd frees us in many ways. We don’t have to analyze the trends. We don’t need to figure out the latest ways to attract the attention of the most powerful people, the ones who will give us a job promotion or money or attention of some other sort. We just need to remember to listen for the voice of the shepherd, the one who has our best interests in his heart, the one who knows our deepest yearnings, the one who wants our flourishing. We need to remember to listen to and for Jesus, and the right flock of sheep can be instrumental in keeping us focused and helping us listen. If we’re lucky, we can find a community like the one described in our reading from Acts.




When Jesus calls himself the gate, he reminds us of what’s inside the gate: a flock of sheep who will help us stay true to the abundant life that Jesus brings us. That life begins in our current life. We don’t have to wait until we’re dead. But it can be hard to remember that the Kingdom of God is inbreaking and ongoing, right here and now, not in some later time. It can be hard to remember when the uglier parts of life are also crashing in right here, right now. As we saw with the road to Emmaus story last week, even if we know the voice of the shepherd, the horrors of the world can plug up our ears.


Luckily, Jesus is the shepherd who walks beside us, teaching us, reminding us of the wisdom we once knew—his wisdom.


Jesus reminds us again and again that he offers us something that the world can’t: nourishment, the spiritual water that will never go dry, and the safety of community. Jesus is the gate that opens to the green pastures and still waters. With Jesus as our shepherd, we can walk through the valley of death, we can face down evil, and we don’t need to be afraid.


Jesus is the gate, not the fence. Walk through that gate. Claim your community. Let your soul be restored.

The Feast Day of Saint Mark

Today is the feast day of Saint Mark. Looking back through my blog posts, I'm surprised to find out that I haven't written much about this feast day. It does often fall in a part of the month where I'm more likely to be at the Create in Me retreat. But it's also because it's hard to know who the real Saint Mark was. So many Marks, so hard to know for sure who did what.

Was he the author of the Gospel of Mark? The one who brought water to the house where the last supper took place? That strange naked man in the Crucifixion narrative? It's hard to say.

We do give him credit for founding the church in Egypt, and that fact alone seems important enough for him to have a feast day. I think of all the church traditions that can be traced back to northern Africa, particularly the work of the desert fathers and mothers, which led to so many variations of monastic traditions.

I also think of Augustine, the important thinker, one of the earliest Christian philosophers, who lived in Hippo. Would we have had Augustine if Mark hadn't been an evangelist to Egypt? It's hard to know. If Mark hadn't gone to Egypt, would someone else? Probably--but the outcome might have been completely different.

Today is also a good day to turn our thoughts back to those early evangelists, those early disciples. I often say that if you were putting together a team, you would not have chosen those men. But God's ways are not our ways when visualizing success.

So for those of us who are feeling inadequate, take heart. God's plans are greater than our own. 

A Different Kind of Getting to Know You Exercise

Let me remember to record a really neat getting to know you exercise that we did the first night at the Create in Me retreat.  It's something that could be modified for non-retreat groups, and I'll give some ideas at the end of the post.

Advent

Our retreat theme was "Nature, Imagination, and Liturgy," so our opening exercise revolved around the liturgical seasons:  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time.  

Epiphany

When we checked in, we had a nametag with a piece of colored paper in it--we sat at the table that had a larger sheet of colored paper that matched the color in the name tag.  It was a great way to make sure that we mingled new folks with returning folks.

Lent

The color of the paper matched the liturgical season (purple for Lent, for example).  We had a sheet of facts about the season, along with a small, blank banner.

Christmas

There was a table of all sorts of supplies.  Our project was to make a banner that matched the season, along with a song or prayer or poem.  We only had 20 minutes.

Ordinary Time

I admit that I was skeptical at first, as we sat there, every table staring blankly at the blank banner.  But it was a room of creative people, so soon we sprung into motion.  The energy level and discussion level rose.

Pentecost

When we were finished, we went around the room, explaining the banners and presenting our song or prayer or poem.  I was impressed with what we created--and impressed with how this exercise helped us get to know each other through a joint task and some friendly competition.

Easter

Could I create a non-religious variation for the first week in class?  I've used getting to know you Bingo, which is good.  The banner creating meant that people didn't have to move around the room and approach strangers, which is a plus for a lot of people.

Holy Week

I have a vision of this exercise, but with secular holidays and seasons, along with the holiday of Christmas, which is universal for my students.  Could non-creative students rise to the challenge?  I think they could.  Let me tuck this idea away.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, April 26, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 2:42-47

Psalm: Psalm 23

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:19-25

Gospel: John 10:1-10


In this week's Gospel, Christ mixes metaphors a bit, talking about sheep and calling himself a doorway for the sheep to find pasture. He also warns of thieves and robbers, and we might ask ourselves who are modern day thieves and robbers? Who are the ones who would lead us astray?

Well, there are lots of contenders, aren't there? But the ones I'm finding most insidious these days are all the electronic activities which steal so much of our time away from us. I see more and more people bent over their phones, oblivious to the world around them.

You don’t believe me? Try an Internet fast and see what happens. Could you go for a day without logging on? Could you go for a week?  How long can you go without touching your phone?

These days, many of us rely on the Internet as we shift our work and education activities to be online so that we can work remotely. In some ways, it's a wonderful thing. In some ways, it robs us further of time and attention.

We might tell ourselves that we use our online time to stay connected to family and friends, and I will admit that it’s easier to stay in touch with some people via Facebook and/or texting than it was with e-mail or old-fashioned paper letters. Often, I find myself wondering how my friends and family are REALLY doing.

But do I take the time to ask?  Do I write to them or call?   No. I’m too busy racing off to the next Internet diversion.

We might tell ourselves that the Internet allows us to stay current with what’s happening in the world, and in some ways, it’s a wonderful thing. I can read newspapers from all over the world, often for the price of my Internet connection. Not only that, I can read the opinions of others about those articles. In some forums, I can trade ideas with people. But all of that staying current comes with a price: it takes time away from other activities. Some of those displaced activities might be trading ideas with real people in a real conversation.

Very few of us will find real community via the Internet. We often think we don't have time because we're all very busy these days. But what is really sucking away our time? For some of us, it is, indeed, our jobs. For some of us, we're taking classes.  For many of us, it’s our Internet lives: we’ve got a lot of stuff to read, videos to watch, plus games to play, plus status updates, and all the information we can Google now, and so we do (whereas before, if it required a trip to the library, many of us would have stayed ignorant). 

And if you’re like me, once you’ve spent so much of your day staring at screens, you may find it hard to reconnect to humans at the end of the day. You may feel your brain gone fuzzy. You may find yourself irritable at these humans who demand that you respond. You may withdraw before you ever have/take/make time to reconnect.

The Internet also takes time away from our relationship with God. I’ve found useful websites that allow me to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, but for the most part, I’m not noodling around the Internet looking for ways to enhance my relationship with God—or with anyone else, for that matter. I suspect that if I’m brutally honest, even my relationship with myself suffers when I spend too much time on the Internet.

Now the Internet is not the only tool and resource that allows us to sidestep the hard work of relationship. Some of us drug ourselves with television or with spending more hours at work than the work requires or with the relentless pace of the activities that our children do (and need us to drive them to) or any of the other countless activities that humans use in ways that aren’t healthy.

These activities can not only keep us from relationship with humans but can deafen our ears to the voice of that shepherd that goes out looking for us. Our Bible tells us over and over that God yearns to be in relationship with us. But if we’re too busy for our families and friends, we’re likely not making time for God either.

So, try an Internet/phone sabbath, even if it’s just for a few hours a week. Try doing it every week. Talk to a loved one.  Read a book. Play an old-fashioned board game. Listen for the voice of God who calls to you across space and time. Answer.

A Tale of Three Butterflies

 For most Create in Me retreats, we have a community art project, something we can work on together.  Some times, the work stays at Lutheridge, like the cross as tall as a human, made of clear plastic, filled with broken things.  One year, we knotted a quilt for Lutheran World Relief.  This year, we made a huge butterfly, decorated with bits of nature.  I brought it back to my house because Lutheridge didn't really have a place for it, and it had so much glue on it that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave it beside a trail to decompose, as we had once thought we would do:

Here's what it looked like at worship yesterday:

It began as a series of fan blades.  Here's what it looked like when my spouse and I first constructed it last week:

I felt a keen sense of failure and despair at this early stage.  My friend on the planning team had sent me this picture when describing what the group had in mind and asking if my spouse could build the base for it:

I wrote to my friend to tell her that we might not have created what she had in mind.  She wrote back the most perfect reply:  "It will look just as it should--a unique community effort."  I so needed those words, to know that I hadn't let the team down.

In the end, I like what we created better.  One friend used the leftover dried flowers that she created for her drop in station.  We used some of the leftover wood circles that had been cut for a prayer project.  We used interesting bits that people found during outdoor time.  

And in the end, yes, it looked just the way it needed to look--many good life lessons/reminders here.