Sermon for Sunday, October 18, 2026

October 18, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 22:15-22


How interesting to have this text in an election year, in the closing weeks of this election year, when it seems impossible to escape political ads. Everywhere we turn, there’s someone yelling about what someone has done with our tax dollars, and we can be sure, in the closing weeks of an election campaign, these ads are not going to deliver good news.


The Pharisees in today’s text are not interested in good news either.


In fact, they are hoping to get rid of the person standing right in front of them, Jesus, who has been preaching good news. Make no mistake—the Pharisees aren’t pro-Caesar or pro-Rome. Then as now, no one likes paying taxes, particularly to a government that one doesn’t approve of but is forced to endure.


But Jewish leaders have navigated their way to what they see as the best of a bad situation. They collect taxes from worshippers, and Rome will leave them alone to lead worship and protect some of their interests as they wish—until the year when Rome destroys it all, which has already happened when the Gospel of Matthew was written.


Jesus knows he’s given an impossible choice of answers to the tax question. If he says to pay taxes, he looks like he’s on the side of the oppressors, the Romans, who are taxing people out of everything they own. If he says not to pay, he gives the Romans even more reason to crack down. He’s given 2 impossible answers, and he offers a third alternative.


As always, with Jesus, the answer offers a much deeper response than the Pharisees were expecting.



In today’s Gospel, as in so many encounters between Jesus and the people with more power, we can almost hear Jesus saying, “You could be asking me any question, and this issue is the one that you think most deserves our attention?”


Jesus uses the coin to ask the question of what has grabbed our attention. Jesus wants us to consider what has left its imprint on us. Is it God? Or is it the powers and principalities of this world? Caesar’s image was on the Roman coin, along with words proclaiming him God—it’s no different today, although the larger collection of voices proclaiming themselves to be the one true savior is much noisier and amplified.


In claiming to be our only hope for human flourishing, worldly powers will claim all sorts of people and possessions for themselves. It was true in the first century, and it’s true today. But Jesus proclaims an older message, one delivered by ancient prophets and in the Psalms, that everything belongs to God. Look at our reading from Isaiah today in verse 4: “I call you by your name; I give you a title, although you do not know me.” Here God speaks to a foreign ruler, Cyrus, king of Persia, centuries before Caesar, a warrior who had created the biggest empire the world had ever seen and which also no longer exists.


We have two readings that remind us that earthly empires come and go, even when they are so large that they seem to be as permanent as the mountains that surround us. In an election year, we realize acutely how our earthly powers want us to believe that they can achieve permanence for all of us. Our Bible texts tell us over and over again that the only permanence comes from God.


Humans always have worldly powers trying to pull our attention away from God. Worldly powers always demand our allegiance or our persecution. It might be political powers, and the attempt by worldly leaders to capture our loyalty is just more apparent in an election year—but make no mistake, it’s always there.


You may be like me, thinking you’ve been mostly successful at avoiding all this election year drama. You probably don’t need my reminder that worldly powers are a much larger collection of forces who are whispering or yelling an anti-God message into our brains or using God language to promote themselves.


Maybe it’s a boss. Maybe it’s other types of advertising that convinces us that if we could just buy the latest whatever, we’d be happy. Maybe it’s our phone that we can’t seem to put down for very long. Maybe it’s money worries or health worries.


We give our attention to many things that are not God. Maybe it’s time to retrain our attention.


Last week at the onground intensive that claimed much of my time and attention, we sat at tables arranged in a semicircle. As we considered this text, our leader, who just happened to be our SE Synod bishop Kevin Strickland, asked us to stare at each face around the circle. He reminded us that all of creation, including every human face, bears the imprint of God not Caesar. He asked us to see each other as God sees us, our God who claimed us long ago.


It was a powerful experience, and it was a profound repudiation of all the voices that are so loud we may not hear them distinctly anymore. I’m talking about all the external voices that we’ve internalized, the ones that tell us that we’re not good enough, that we’ll never achieve enough, the voices that remind us of all the ways we lack so much.


And now for the real challenge. It’s easy to stare at the faces of fellow pastors in training and see them as God sees them. Can I do the same for everyone?


If we could train ourselves to look at every face and see the imprint of God, the result will be transformative, on ourselves if not the larger world. Imagine, seeing the imprint of God in everyone, the ones we love, the ones that political ads tell us to fear. Paul’s letter, our 2nd reading, makes it clear that a practice of seeing God in all has the potential to change the larger culture too.


We can start this practice now, and we can use the election cycle to help us. We can use the political ads the way that monks use the ringing of the monastery bells as a reminder to bring their attention back to God. Every time an ad comes on, look away and praise God’s good creation, the way the Psalmist does. Every time we hear political conversations, let us pray for everyone who thinks that they can pull our attention away from God’s goodness by using fear tactics.


In today’s Gospel, as in many Gospels, we see the invitation of Christ contrasted with the expectations of the world, the promises given by Jesus in stark opposition to the empty promises of every political season. Let us ignore all the ways that the forces of empires, past and present, conspire to pull our attention away from God. Today and every day, let us notice what God is doing in the world, our God who has claimed us and loves us and calls on us to do the same for all of creation. Let us train ourselves to ignore the voices that tell us to fear and to hate. Instead, let us train ourselves to see the imprint of God on every part of all of creation.

The Long Drive Home from a TEEM Week

Soon I will put the last of my stuff in the car.  Sunrise comes later this much further north (at 7:57), so I'm not going to leave until 6:30 or 7.  Gone are the days when I would leave at 4 a.m.; driving that many hours in the dark is just too tiring.  Is this a sign of getting older or just a sign of being more cautious?  Part of it is wanting to linger in a lovely hotel room a bit longer, which is always balanced by knowing how much driving lies ahead and wanting to get that over with.

I've been in Indianapolis, taking the last required classes, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of the of Lutheranism in North America).  

We spent the first two days of the week studying Lutheran Liturgy, then a Wednesday workshop on Lutheran Polity, and we finished the week on Thursday and Friday studying Hebrew prophets, those prophets from the B.C.E. time period, the ones at the end of the Old Testament part of the Christian Bible.

I've studied those prophets before during an Old Testament class during my first year at Wesley Theological Seminary.  That class was asynchronous, and the material was not nearly as compelling as the last 2 days have been.  The history of the centuries before the Greek and Roman empires is much more clear to me now, and especially how we get from the time of David and Solomon to the Assyrian  and Babylonian exiles.

I came back to my hotel room on Thursday and made this Facebook post, which was just as true at the end of the day on Friday:  "Today and tomorrow, our TEEM group is doing a deep, scholarly dive into (B.C.E.) Hebrew prophets, a topic which seems very timely in ways I both did and did not expect."

I was impressed with various teaching techniques throughout the week.  During our Lutheran Liturgy class, Bishop Strickland had breaks where we sung, along with information about how we might use the songs in worship. Dr. Parker, our OT Prophets class instructor, had a variety of artifacts to show us or techniques (like using an imprinting device in clay) to show us how people wrote.  We worked in small groups for a break in lecturing, and that small group work will lead to papers we need to write.  For some of the prophets, we read the work out loud in a variety of ways, which made it more interesting to hear and understand.

I always learn a lot in classes that I take, both in subject matter and how to present the subject matter.  I go home with ideas for how to improve my own classrooms.

I've been with this group of classmates twice now, and my time with them is over, at least this time as a TEEM cohort.  It was a strange goodbye yesterday.  Any time of parting makes me think of all the other times of leaving, makes me melancholy and missing all the people who have passed through my life.

So maybe it's good to have a transition time of driving in the car, before hurling myself back into the rest of my life.  I do feel happy that I'm returning to regular life that is life giving, unlike pre-pandemic years when I would be returning to a toxic workplace and a boss bellowing about how I shouldn't leave ever again.  I know how lucky I am.

The Second Half of TEEM Week

 Last night over dinner, my TEEM cohort exchanged notes over how tired we are.  This onground intensive is, indeed, intense.   We eat breakfast at the hotel, head over to the Synod office meeting space, and we're meeting from 8 until 4 or 5, depending on how long we took for lunch. Lunch is brought in, and we try to be back on task by 1 so that we can be done closer to 4:00.

Monday and Tuesday, we learned about Lutheran Liturgy, the way worship is structured. Yesterday was a 1 day workshop to teach us about Lutheran Polity, how the larger church operates--after a morning studying governing structure, we took a deep dive into church constitutions. We finish the week with Old Testament prophets.

I feel like I had more energy back in June, but let me remember that I only did the workshop and the last half of the week.  Plus, I wasn't in the middle of an onground teaching semester.

I've gotten good ideas for my sermon that I'll preach on Sunday, which happened in June too.  We've also had good worship this week, which has been nourishing.

I've been thinking about my past experiences with the onground intensive model, which has only been for the spiritual director certificate program.  I do wonder how the spiritual experiences compare with low residency MFA programs.

I love the idea of an intensive that blasts requirements out of the way in one week--but having said that, it's not my favorite way to learn.  I'm grateful to have had so many different kinds of educational opportunities throughout my life.  I also realize that my preferred way of learning:  onground, over 12-16 weeks, once or twice a week--it's not a way that can work for most people who are employed full-time, especially not older folks.

I'm also grateful that my current work life doesn't involve sitting at a desk all day, the way we've been doing this week or the way I did as an administrator.  Yes, we do try to move during breaks, but my step count at the end of 8 hour desk days is much lower than my regular teaching days.

I am grateful for so much as we head into the end of this week.  I am most grateful for all my jobs that allow me to be away so that I can be part of this educational experience and for my spouse, who is self-sufficient and holding down our 2 home fronts.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for October 18, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 45:1-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 33:12-23

Psalm: Psalm 96:1-9 [10-13]

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 99

Second Reading: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Gospel: Matthew 22:15-22

This week's Gospel contains a saying of Jesus that is probably familiar: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22, verse 21). Even people who have never set foot inside a church are probably familiar with this saying, although they may attribute it to somebody else, like Shakespeare or Ronald Reagan.

I love how Jesus realizes that the Pharisees have set a trap for him, and he manages to avoid entanglement. This passage also shows Jesus reacting to the legalistic outlook of the spiritual leaders. He seems to tell us not to be so rigid in our formulas of our finances. We know what we must do. We have bills and obligations (among them, caring for the less fortunate); we cannot escape those worldly cares. But in figuring out our tithes and taxes, we should not lose sight of the larger spiritual picture.

God calls us to more than a rigid formula of living. Instead of dividing up our budget into rigid categories, we should always be on the lookout for ways to love each other. Some days/months/years, that love might be manifest in monetary ways. But in a way, just writing a check is much too easy. God calls us to be involved with each other's lives. That doesn't mean we need to hop on a plane to personally respond to every huge disaster. Look around--you'll see plenty of opportunities just outside your door.

What if you gave 10% of your time? There's 168 hours in a week. If you gave 17.8 hours to God, how would you need to change your life?

The reality is, that God wants and needs more from us than a mere 18 hours a week. God wants an ongoing relationship with each and every one of us. And that relationship should transform us to do the tough work of transforming creation, of creating the Kingdom of Heaven right here and now.  That transformation, too, will come from relationships.

In these days of all sorts of insecurity, the message of Jesus seems more prescient than ever. If we save up our treasures on earth, moth or rust or inflation or deflation or bad policies or war or climate disruption or any other kind of ruin you want to name will leave us bankrupt.

The way we live our lives moves us closer to God or further away. If we devote our lives to God, our whole lives, not just an hour on Sunday, then we'll find a relationship that we can count on. And that relationship can help us transform not only ourselves, but our families, our communities, everyone we touch.

Spiritual Lessons: A Meditation on Columbus Day

 Writing time is short this morning, so let me run a Columbus Day post that I wrote some years ago. It's one of my favorite meditations on Columbus.

Today we celebrate Columbus Day: October 12 was the actual day of the first sighting of land after almost 2 months at sea. I’m always amazed at what those early explorers accomplished. At Charlestowne Landing (near Charleston, SC), I saw a boat that was a replica of the boat that some of the first English settlers used to get here. It was teeny-tiny. I can't imagine sailing up the coast to the next harbor in it, much less across the Atlantic. Maybe it would have been easier, back before everyone knew how big the Atlantic was.

In our spiritual lives, we may be feeling a bit like Columbus. Let’s ask some questions prompted by Columbus Day, questions that may lead us to some meaningful meditations.

Below, when I talk about our spiritual lives, I’m talking about our individual lives and expressions of spirituality, as well as our corporate spiritual lives, the lives we live in the company of fellow believers.

--In our spiritual lives, are we the explorer or are we the native populations of new continents? Or are we members of the Old World? In other words, are we always striking out for new lands? Or are we waiting to be discovered? Are we so tied to our traditions that we can’t even imagine how our lives could be different?

--As spiritual people, how long are we willing to be at sea? I’m part of a church tradition, mainstream Protestantism, that looks back longingly to the 1950’s, when it seemed that everybody made time for church. Many of us hope that we will soon return to a time when church returns to its central location. But we may have only started our time at sea, on a voyage of discovery. Can we trust God? Can we continue to hold onto our faith when we're in the middle of a vast ocean, with nothing but our instruments and the stars to guide us, with no sense of how far away the land for which we're searching might be?

--We may be certain we’re on a quest to find one kind of wealth. In the process, we may discover something completely different, something far more valuable? Will we recognize the value of what we find?

--The explorations in North and South America changed our cooking forever. Imagine a culinary life without corn, sweet peppers, tomatoes. Imagine life without chocolate. What ways can our spirituality enrich our cultures?

--Of course, if I was looking through the Native American lens, I might say, "Imagine life without smallpox." What are the possible negative impacts implicit in the collision between secular culture and sacred culture? Can we mitigate those? Should we mitigate those?

--These explorations wouldn’t have been possible without the patronage of the wealthiest of society members. In our current world, many of us are some of the wealthiest people on the planet. North Americans may not feel like it, but we’re the Isabella and Ferdinand of our time. What projects should we be funding? What spiritual projects will make the kind of lasting legacy of funding the voyage of Columbus?

Sermon for Sunday, October 11, 2026

October 11, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 22: 1-14



The idea that the reign of God is like a banquet is probably not unfamiliar to us. You may have grown up singing about the welcome table, either as a grace before a meal or as a hymn. We partake in the Eucharist, also called Communion, also called The Lord’s Supper, every week as part of our service—this sacrament is rooted in a meal, unlike baptism, our other sacrament. This church enjoys eating literal meals together, as most churches do.


What are we to make of this parable that gives us God as a king celebrating his son’s wedding with a banquet? So far, it’s not troubling: we might nod along, recognizing that the King represents God, and the son Jesus.


But then, this parable gets dark very quickly. Unlike other parables, where potential guests offer reasons for why they can’t come—an RSVP done politely—in Matthew’s version, we get neglect. The Greek translation of their response is much closer to “They didn’t take notice of the King’s invitation.” They just didn’t care.


Later it gets even worse. The invitees kill the slaves sent to fetch the wedding guests. These last few weeks in parables have not been kind to those on the lower rungs of the social ladder—they’re ignored or beaten, and this week, they get killed. The King is enraged and sends in troops to destroy the invited guests who have behaved badly and to burn their cities. Yikes. What, exactly, is it that Jesus is trying to teach us about God?


Some Bible scholars say that today’s Gospel is perhaps trying to tell us more about earthly rule than Heavenly rule. The book of Matthew was written in a time period in history when Rome has just behaved like this king, killing people and destroying the temple. Maybe this parable represents the trauma of war, of the experience of an empire that is mightier than its subjects, and in some ways, mightier than any individual ruler.


What if we take Jesus at his word? What is Jesus trying to tell us about the reign of God? But before we go further, let me remind us that it’s a parable—it’s not an allegory with one to one correlations. It’s a parable, and parables are meant to knock us off balance and leave us with puzzles. Maybe we’ll figure out the puzzles, the contradictions. Maybe we won’t. Maybe we can’t. But parables offer us the possibility of a richer understanding because we’ve done the puzzling.


We have several other versions of this parable. The most familiar one is in the 14th chapter of Luke; there’s also one in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, along with a similar story out of the Jewish Babylonian time period. But those texts have significant differences from Matthew’s text. Our former bishop of the SE Synod, Julian Gordy, tells us that the differences can tell us what a particular text is trying to say.


So let’s look at the differences in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the book of Matthew, we have a king and a wedding feast for a son; in the book of Luke, it’s a man creating a banquet for guests. These differences give us insight into what the Gospel of Matthew may be trying to say.


Saying no to an invitation from the king is significantly different than saying no to a rich man’s banquet. And it’s more than a banquet in our reading today—it’s a wedding banquet for the king’s son. This invitation is exceptional. Saying no is not just disrespectful, it’s rebellious.


The reaction of the King to the man who doesn’t have a wedding robe might seem extreme—but maybe not. We’ve seen the king in action before. It’s not wise to wear casual clothes around this kind of King who kills people and burns cities in retaliation for individual behavior. Again, maybe Matthew is telling us about earthly empires.


But what if this parable really is trying to teach us about the community of God? It’s not an easy parable like the version in the Gospel of Luke. The easy part of the parable explores inclusion. Both parables are telling us something about the community of God being open to the people who have never experienced it before. In the words of a more ancient time, both parables seem to teach us that God continues to expand the covenant. But the Gospel of Matthew gives us a vision that is much less comforting. Even when we’re chosen, we might be banished.


The language at the end might tell us that we’re looking at a text that teaches us about judgment and end times, that language about weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Matthew’s Gospel does often circle back to judgment, both in the current time period and at the end. The book of Matthew often tells us not to judge each other, but reminds us that God will judge eventually.


This parable in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew’s tells us that we are chosen, but not to sit around in our non-wedding clothes. Kingdom living should change us. Luther says, “The Law doesn’t save you, but it does command you.” This parable shows us a relation between grace and obedience. In more modern language, we are chosen and called to participate in what God is doing here. Now that we’re at the banquet, there are expectations. Our good works won’t save us, but they are required, according to some theologians, like John Calvin, and others from the non-Lutheran streams of thought. But even Luther told us that faith should move our feet (an older version of one of the ELCA’s mottos, God’s work, our hands).


Scripture reminds us that we have some power and some agency. Unlike the underdressed person in the parable, we have a voice. We can clothe ourselves with gentleness, with what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is commendable, what is pleasing and worthy of praise, those qualities from Paul’s letter today, the one we just heard a few minutes ago--theologians from the time of Paul and onward have given similar advice.


Or we can go back to Jesus. Jesus showed us how to live as the community of God. We share what we have, knowing that it will be multiplied to be enough. We invite everyone, even though some won’t accept. We heal our societies in the ways that we know how to do, and we remember that even when it seems there is no way, we pray to the one who shows us again and again, that there is a way out of no way, a way that is different from the ways of earthly empire.


God invites us to a wedding feast—not an ordinary banquet. Let us say yes—today and every day, let us respond to the invitation with a resounding YES.

Hurricane Remnants and Travel

Last June, when I left Indiana after the first TEEM onground intensive that I attended, I thought ahead to our next gathering in October, where I anticipated autumnal shifts with still-warm days.

I did not anticipate a hurricane affecting the weather that far inland.  But here we are.  I've changed travel plans, and instead of leaving on Sunday, I'm leaving in a few hours.  There's already a bit of rain here, but nothing like what is expected later this morning.

We are supposed to have record breaking warmth in the 80's in the early part of the week, and cooler temps by week's end.  I have packed a variety of clothes--lots of layers for my upper body, some with sleeves and some not, and shorts for my lower body which is odd-shaped and hard to fit for long pants in this time of my life.

This hurricane has turned out to be a normal-ish hurricane, not a monster that zoomed up several categories just before landfall--how refreshing!  It moved ashore as a category 2, very survivable for most structures--not a fun way to spend an evening, but likely not life threatening for many.

I am still glad I changed my travel plans.  I should be able to stay ahead of the storm remnants today, and it will be good to head into the week being better rested.