Alternate Apocalypse

Even though my friends tease me for my apocalyptic mindset, my ability to see dystopia lurking around every development, I am not always quick to see immediate, personal danger in world developments.  I remember a leadership team meeting in early February of 2020, when our college president mentioned this strange new sickness in China and maybe we should be thinking about how it might affect us.  I remember saying that it wouldn't be any worse than the flu (my first blog post about the disease is here, January 30, 2020).  I had been aware of various versions of flu and SARS viruses, and I understood worst case scenarios--in other words, I'm not a denier of any sort.  But still, I was the one downplaying the danger.

On September 11, I was getting ready to drive down to the University of Miami to teach my Brit Lit Survey class.  I was still at home, almost ready to walk out the door, with NPR on the radio, when I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center.  I wondered what part of the navigation on the plane could have gone so terribly wrong, or could it be engine failure?  And then the second plane hit, and I thought, what are the odds of that?

As I drove to Miami, hearing more information and then the Pentagon plane, I kept scanning the skyline for mushroom clouds.  I had spent my life expecting a nuclear attack.  I did wonder if I should turn around and go home.  But not only did I not go home, I taught my first class to the distracted students who came.  By the time of my second class, U of Miami President Donna Shalala had canceled all classes for the day.

I am sure I have mentioned much of this story before, perhaps in different combinations.  I've been blogging since 2008, and that's a lot of anniversaries.  It's hard to believe it's been 25 years.  My onground students weren't born in 2001.

As I think about these 2 historic events, the COVID-19 pandemic and 9/11, the pandemic probably changed more lives of more people I know personally than 9/11.  People made dramatically different decisions once they had gone through that time of pandemic crisis.  If I had been in NYC, if I moved in military circles, perhaps I would have had different experiences.

Or perhaps it has to do with the passage of time.  I do remember always having a gas tank never below empty and always having a case of water in the car.  I remember asking if my school had an emergency plan, and I did take note of various control panels in the building.   Those developments, though, were later, because that school was AiFL, and I didn't start that job until 2002.  I asked about the emergency plan during the days when the federal government would issue color coded threat levels.  Those memories have faded, but pandemic memories are still fresh.

I have always looked for the exits, no matter where I am.  I am the one who says, "If something happens, and I'm in Spartanburg and you're in Arden, we'll meet in Arden."  I'm the one who knows which location is best for surviving various dystopias.

I have been listening to various programs that look back on that day and how it changed us (I particularly like this podcast from The Dispatch).  This blog post seems inadequate.  So let me post a poem.  It's not a 9/11 poem, but a pantoum about preparing for the wrong apocalypse.  I wrote it in 2002 or 2003.

And of course, we haven't prepared for the "wrong"  apocalypse.  Global warming has accelerated, and the world is less safe from nuclear weapons now than we ever were in the cold war years.  History should teach us that unexpected apocalypses are always lurking.

Alternate Apocalypse



We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.
Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere.
Chunks of glaciers break for freedom and sail across the sea.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands.

Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere,
yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.

Yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.
Some years we have no winter.

Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year.
Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Some years we have no winter;
furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.

Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
Furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.
We see new diseases stalking continents.

Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We see new diseases stalking continents.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.

We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We feared nuclear winter, not this relentless warming.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.
We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for Sunday, Sept.13, 2026:

First Reading: Genesis 50:15-21

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 14:19-31

Psalm: Psalm 103:[1-7] 8-13

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 114

Psalm (Alt.): Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21 (Semi-continuous)

Second Reading: Romans 14:1-12

Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35

The Gospel for today, at least the first part, is probably familiar to most of us. Peter is looking for the magic number of times that he must forgive--and you can tell he's annoyed, ready to cut off the person who has offended him, but he'll forgive seven times--and you know that he's probably already forgiven that person eight times. Jesus tells him he must forgive seventy times seven.

I remember in fifth grade Sunday school class where we studied this passage. We immediately got to work on the math. And if you were an obsessive child, like I had a tendency to be, you started keeping a list of how many times you had forgiven your sister.

I had unwittingly proven Jesus' point. Peter asks a stupid, juvenile question, and Jesus gives him an answer to let him know how petty he has been. By now, we should all know that Jesus didn't come to give us a new set of legalisms to follow.

Jesus then gives us a parable about the nature of forgiveness. Most of us will need more forgiveness throughout our lives than we really deserve. We are like indentured servants who can never hope to pay off our debt, but we're miraculously forgiven.

Most of us, happily, will never experience indentured servitude in the traditional sense. But many of us have experienced a different kind of indebtedness. We might have a mortgage or a student loan that seems like a sum larger than we'll ever repay. Many of us look at our credit card bills and can't remember what we bought and how long ago and how the balance ballooned.  Think of how wonderful it would be if someone came in and relieved us of those debts. Think of forgiveness the same way.

Our task--and it sometimes seems more monumental than paying off a huge financial debt--is to extend that quality of forgiveness and mercy to others--and to ourselves.

If our capacity to forgive isn’t at 70 times 7 yet, let’s pray for an expanded ability to forgive. Let us also remember to pray for our enemies, both the personal ones and the political ones, the inner voices that berate us, the outer voices that shrilly defeat all peace initiatives, all the enemies who would undo us.

Navigating Conflicts: The Recording of the Sermon for Sunday, September 6, 2026

It was a good day at church yesterday.  The conventional wisdom would have told us to expect light attendance yesterday because it's a holiday week-end.  But we ran out of wine (just 1 glass short, so I went without).  I felt good about my sermon, and the youth sermon went well too.  

Both sermons talked about navigating conflict.  The youth sermon talked about crazing, the problem in pottery with cracks that destabilize the whole piece.  I also talked about the organist playing extra measures for the prelude as the acolytes and an adult tried to troubleshoot an issue.

The adult sermon also talked about conflict but on a larger level, even a national level; it ended with praise for local public libraries and for the Dep't of Transportation who plants flowers in interstate medians.  Go to this post on my YouTube channel to see the recording of the sermon.  If you'd like to read along, I put the manuscript in this post on my theology blog.

Sermon for Sunday, September 6, 2026

 

September 6, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew 18:15-20

 

 

 

Truly, this Gospel text is a hard teaching.  It’s harder than the one on forgiveness that we’ll get next week, the one that looks at forgiveness as a math problem, forgiving each other 70 x 7 times.  For some of us, today’s teaching is a harder cross to bear than the cross of persecution and death.  So you might ask, why is it so difficult?

 

It’s a hard text because it has a complicated history and use.  On the one hand, it can be used as a blueprint for how to build community.  But it also has a troubling history of being used to cast people out of community.  It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a sociopath or a narcissist could use this text to get support for their views and to get rid of everyone who disagrees and will not conform to their world view.

 

For some of us, it’s hard because it seems so legalistic.  Bible scholars can show us that today’s Gospel is rooted in ancient Jewish law about how differences will be settled.  On its face, this Gospel doesn’t seem like the rule of love that Paul encourages in today’s passage from the letter to Romans.

 

For some of us, it’s hard because it reminds us that what we want to have happen—a quick resolution so we can all go back the way we were before—this outcome may not happen the first time we make an attempt.  Forgiveness and repair of relationships can be an arduous process—and the fact that Jesus doesn’t offer a quick fix makes it a hard teaching.

 

Today’s text reminds us that Jesus comes to earth for many reasons, but one of the most essential reasons is to show us how to live in community, not how to live for ourselves.  And today’s text tells us how to navigate one of the hardest parts of living in community—how to handle disagreements of all sorts, from the petty to ones more major.

 

The bad news is that we don’t automatically agree on what God wants, for us and for the larger world, just because we profess the same savior.  The good news is that we don’t have to do the work of resolving disagreements by ourselves. We don’t have to change ourselves to be what someone else wants us to be, but we can’t ignore, dehumanize, avoid, or just dismiss the one with whom we disagree.  We have to talk to them.  We can’t do what so many do in this age of social media, complain to everyone else except to the one with whom we disagree.

 

Jesus gives us an order of approaches, which involves more and more members of the community.  We’re involving others for several reasons.  Maybe we need witnesses.  Or maybe it’s because we’ll be more likely to work on a resolution in the company of others.  Maybe the other members of the community will see a way forward that those who are disagreeing do not see.

 

Involving others also helps everyone to have a spirit of discernment.  In a disagreement, it can be so easy to be sure that we are right, that we have been wronged.  A loving community can remind us of our part in the conflict, of the ways that we have not been innocent, the way we may have added fuel to the bonfire of disagreement.

 

We begin the work of reconciliation on a small scale, one on one, two by two, and then with the larger group.  If differences can be sorted out easily, no need to involve others.  But if it can’t, the resources of the larger group may be required.

 

In verse 17, the larger group is translated as “church,” which probably leads many of us to think of a group of folks, like this one, who gathers on a Sunday.  The Greek word is ekklesia, which is often translated as “church,” but the writer of the Gospel of Matthew would not have meant a church, like this one, but a much smaller group of people called by God, living together like the church in the book of Acts.  The church that Jesus creates in the first century is one forged in opposition and resistance.  The stakes of a disagreement can be much higher, truly life and death. 

 

Jesus’s life shows what happens when disagreements aren’t settled in the way that Jesus describes in today’s Gospel.  We know that some of his ekklesia of 12 disciples are not happy with decisions that Jesus makes.  We saw it last week with Peter wanting a different outcome for the ministry of Jesus, and we’ll see it in the Holy Week stories of Judas being so upset that he betrays Jesus to the authorities.  Judas shows what happens when disagreements are allowed to fester.

 

But the experiences of the other 11 disciples show a different path, and what a transformative path it is.  At the beginning of the book of Acts, we meet a traumatized group living in fear and isolation behind locked doors.  By the end, they have become a cohesive group that has gone out to declare the Good News of the life of Jesus and the love of God and the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Along the way, they’ve had many differences.  But Jesus has showed them how to manage those differences, and in the book of Acts, they handle disagreements in the way that Jesus taught them, although we only read about disagreements brought before the council at Jerusalem, the last arbiter of disagreements.

 

We say the disciples did great things because Jesus commissioned them, and that’s true.  But one of the less talked about reasons for their effectiveness is that they were able to be a cohesive community, the way Jesus taught them. They listened, they puzzled, they questioned, and occasionally, they disagreed—and then they listened and puzzled and questioned some more so that they could come to reconciliation.

 

I spent the week-end with a different ekklesia, a group of friends, at a Crafts for Christmas retreat at Lutheridge  It’s a small retreat of women from across the southeast, who have known each other for decades.  I think of us as “retreat friends,” but our bond is so much deeper.  We are women of faith, women who have spent our lives in the helping professions.  Talk turned, as it so often does with friends who are my age and older, to ways that life now seems worse than when we were younger.  Regardless of political affiliation, it’s not hard to make a case that life in previous decades seemed less perilous.  One of my friends said, “Is there anything right in the U.S. today?”

 

I said, “Well, my local public library is thriving, and every day they have a cool event or two, in addition to all the books we can borrow for free.”  Complete silence.  My friends stared at me.  I couldn’t tell if they thought I was delusional or if they wanted me to say more or to go back to our conversation rooted in despair.  I continued, “I don’t deny that there’s a lot that is wrong with the world—which is why I think it’s even more essential to remember all the things that are going beautifully.”  From there, the talk took a more positive direction, as we remembered all the ways that a community can change the world for the better.

 

When we aren’t willing to talk to each other, to sort out our disagreements so that we can come back to unity, even if we’re not in agreement, we get the world that my friends were seeing, a world without hope for the future.  If we are willing to talk, two by two or in front of larger parts of the community if need be, then we have the hope of building something beautiful, something that is part of God’s kingdom on earth that Jesus proclaims is near:  a public library or a retreat or a classroom or some other Christ-shaped community that can serve the world.

 

Yes, today’s Gospel is a hard teaching, particularly as it reminds us of how hard it can be to live in community.  Happily, Jesus assures us that we need not be afraid.  Jesus is with us, helping us as we heal our fractured world, as we gather together in groups of two or three or more, building something greater than the sum of ourselves, a community of inclusiveness that our world so desperately needs.

 

 

 

 

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, September 6, 2026:

First Reading: Ezekiel 33:7-11

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 12:1-14

Psalm: Psalm 119:33-40

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 149

Second Reading: Romans 13:8-14

Gospel: Matthew 18:15-20

The Gospel readings from the last several weeks have shown us Jesus trying to prepare his disciples to take over his mission, once he's no longer physically there to lead them. The last verse of this Gospel is one of the more famous Gospel verses, the one that tells us that we only need two or three to gather in the name of Christ, and he'll be there. But what does this verse mean for the larger church?

This morning, I'm thinking of the modern church, which seems focused on numbers and growing large. This morning, I'm thinking of this passage and wondering if Christ calls us to be small. This year, I'm thinking of the text in a new way, in light of the past several years, when so many churches have experimented with online options for gathering. 

I think of all the articles I've read that talk about the declining numbers of people who affiliate with a church of any kind. I think of all the people who remember the glory days of the U.S. church, back in the middle of the 20th century, back when stores were closed on Sundays, and it seemed that everyone went to church. When church leaders talked, communities listened.

Of course, the sociologist and historian in me also knows that many vulnerable members of the community were not heard in those days. I would not go back to 1959, even if more people went to church on Sundays. Too many people led restricted lives--no thanks.

Still, those of us who have inherited the churches that were built during those glory days might be spending a lot of time wondering how to support those buildings with our smaller memberships. We look for ways that the building can be a blessing to many groups, not just ours.  It's good to remember that church doesn't mean the building. 

And offering a digital experience that can be accessed when there is time and space and electricity might mean that more people worship. The old way of offering one worship service, or several services, on a Sunday morning excluded many people: those who are too sick to leave the bed, the disabled, those people who must work at a variety of jobs on Sundays.

Jesus promises that the presence of God will be with us when only two or three gather. And we've seen from the lives of the earliest Christians, the transforming power of what happens when groups of two or three go out into the world together in the company of the Holy Spirit.  These days, we're going out into the world in new ways, across airwaves that many of us had never tried to access before. The Holy Spirit is loose and moving in new ways, and we know what to expect--the world will be transformed!

Farewell, Wendell Berry

 I was sad to hear of the death of Wendell Berry on Monday.  But why should I be sad?  He was 92 and had lived a good life, mostly on his own terms, from what I could see.  But the death felt like "one of the greats has left us" moments.  I remember reading him in college, so his writing has been with me a long time.

Back in my undergraduate days,  I felt somewhat embarrassed for liking someone whose work was so accessible.  Now, of course, I think it's one of his more important traits.  Berry's work has seemed vital for decades now.

What I value most these days is his ability to never sink into gloom for too long. He manages to sound prophetic (one of the prophet's duties being to call people back to right living, as well as to warn), without setting up a house in the land of the apocalypse. He always comes back to one of his main themes: ". . . hope is one of our duties. A part of our obligation to our own being and to our descendants is to study our life and our condition, searching always for the authentic underpinnings of hope. And if we look, these underpinnings can still be found. For one thing, though we have caused the earth to be seriously diseased, it is not yet without health. The earth we have before us now is still abounding and beautiful" ("Conservation and Local Economy" from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, page 11).

He wrote those words almost 20 years ago, and yet, they still have relevance.  Some days, when the news seems unrelentingly bad, it's hard to continue to hope.  But it's one of the more important activities we can undertake.

Here's a passage that reminds us of the miracles which surround us each day:  "Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes" ("Christianity and the Survival of Creation" from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, page 103).

That passage made me gasp when I first read it, and it still does.

As I was looking over old blog posts about him, I came across this one that I wrote after reading  Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder.  It made me want to read the book again.  It seems a fitting read for this tim of so much loss of greatness.

My Sunday Sermon Recording: August 30, 2026

We had a good Sunday yesterday.  My spouse and I had a good car trip over the mountains.  We began by talking about my youth sermon, which led to a better youth sermon.  Then we talked about the relationship between Peter and Jesus.  My spouse said, "Jesus wasn't evaluating him as a future employee.  They were friends."

I was startled to realize how often I think of Peter as an employee who needs close management, not as a friend of Jesus.

On our way home, I was worried that my sermon spent too much time with Dolly Parton, but after we listened to it on the way home, I was relieved to decide that it was balanced.

We spent the afternoon the way we usually do, listening to other people's sermons from around the southeast--good afternoon to follow a good morning.

You can view the recording of the sermon here at my YouTube channel, and if you'd like to read the sermon, I put the manuscript in this blog post.