Rethinking Paul

Yesterday was our first TEEM class on Paul.  It was riveting.  I'm still not much interested in preaching using Paul's letters, but because Paul has been so influential and so misused, it's good to find out what's really there.

The most interesting way of thinking about Paul that was new to me is to see him as a Jew framed by apocalyptic thinking, the apocalypse being when God comes to earth to judge the living and the dead, an event which will begin with the dead rising up from their graves as they come back to life to be judged.

So when Paul meets Jesus on the Damascus Road, a man who has been dead brought back to life and speaking to him, he assumes that judgment day is under way.  Being a good Pharisee, he would assume that Jews will be O.K. on Judgment Day--as people of the Covenant, God has chosen them.  But Gentiles are in danger.  Thus, off he goes to tell them how to be saved.

I asked the question that some of you might be asking.  Did Paul see a human Jesus on the Damascus Road?  I have always thought of that event as the heavens splitting open and the voice of Jesus speaking to him, not as an encounter with Jesus in his human body.  My professor talked about the different depictions of that event, including recountings of that event that we find in Acts and the letters of Paul.  In some of them, the encounter does sound disembodied, the voice from the heavens.  In others, we could interpret it as an encounter between Paul and a human-appearing Jesus. 

I still maintain my long-standing approach to Paul.  He wrote letters to specific churches/communities with specific problems.  Taking those letters and applying them to twenty-first century life makes very little sense--unless we're experiencing similar problems.  We had an interesting session looking at 1 Corinthians, the passage where Paul excoriates the Church for eating the good food before the whole community arrives and connecting this behavior with Communion.  How do our own Communion practices exclude or include in similar ways?

I still can't see myself preaching on Paul or even having the kind of Bible study that would interest most people.  But I'm very glad to have had this educational opportunity.

A Short TEEM Report

This morning has less blogging time, but I have finished my movie review, the first assignment for my TEEM class on Pauline letters.  I have done the practice quizzes one more time--I've been doing them over and over in the hopes that I'll do well on the quiz that will begin today's class.  

We have another quiz tomorrow, and I haven't done any practice for that one.  So tomorrow may be a light blogging day too, as I practice and practice.  I have not taken a quiz for course credit since undergraduate school.  Of course, I've taken quiz after quiz as part of HR training--those quizzes that you can take over and over again so that you can continue to be employed.

Each quiz counts for 10% of the course grade.  My inner good girl wants to make an A.  My pragmatic older self knows that whatever grade I make will be fine.  I'm not even sure if TEEM classes show up on a transcript.

And then, part of me wonders why I care about my official record.  Am I going to do more graduate work?  Maybe--and that's why I care.

Yesterday's TEEM training was a workshop on stewardship.  When I first heard about the workshop, I felt a bit of despair.  I've already had so much stewardship training.  But it was a great workshop.  We talked about a much broader vision of stewardship:  what do we value?  How do we protect what we value?  It's far more than money, budgets, and a finance team. 

I've been part of small churches, with attendance below 50 members, so these are not concepts that are new to me.  In a very small church, one can't assume that others will pick up the slack, unlike in a church that has over 100 members in the pews on Sunday.

Our workshop leader, Tim Brown, was both compelling and entertaining.  We had worship in the middle of the day, followed by Indian food.  It was good to have that long break.

Let me bring this writing to a close so that I can get some breakfast before the day begins.  Onward!

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, June 28, 2026:

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Genesis 22:1-14


Psalm: Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18


Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 13


Second Reading: Romans 6:12-23


Gospel: Matthew 10:40-42


This week's Gospel reading has the flavor of the theme that Jesus develops more thoroughly in the 25th chapter of Matthew--that reading where Jesus reminds us that as we treat the least of our fellow humans, that is how we treat Jesus. This tiny Gospel reading reminds us of some of the themes Jesus returns to again and again: stay alert and watchful. Treat everyone as if they're God in disguise. Keep our Christian priorities always in the front of our vision, so that we know what's important.

If I wrote a modern paraphrase, I might say something like this: Why do you swoon over supermodels and superathletes? What good do they bring into the troubled world? Why are you not searching out the words of the wise ones among you? Why do you neglect your duties to the next generation?

When I was younger and not surrounded by multiple types of media, it seemed easier to ignore the siren calls of the larger world. I remember a world before cable TV: we had four channels, and when we lived in Montgomery, Alabama, we could sometimes see a snowy version of one of Ted Turner's superchannels out of Atlanta. Little did we know that we were seeing what would become one of the cornerstones of the cable world. Even in the early days of cable, one's viewing options only expanded to 10-40 channels, and then, as now, half of those were just dreadful creations formed to take advantage of cheap airwaves.

Once at a graduation, our graduation speaker told the graduates that there was no Internet 20 years ago. Of course there was. But there wasn't a widespread World Wide Web, so the medium was text based and not as user friendly. Unless we were at a university dedicated to the technology, it was slow and clunky. Therefore, we weren't as prone to let it suck away our lives.

Now we're surrounded by electronic information, media, and gadgets. Of course, in some ways, it's invaluable. It's much easier to research any subject from the comfort of my computer--unlike the old days, when I'd have to go to a library. It's easier to keep in touch and communicate, at least for those of us plugged in. I've often wondered if Christian communities online can be as valuable--even more valuable--in terms of keeping each other centered, grounded and on track. We now have churches that have as many people worshipping online as in the sanctuary, and some churches have started to hire online ministers; we're at a moment that might be transformative.

But will it be for the better or worse?  I wouldn't be the first to point out all the ways the technology can lead us astray. We spend our days dealing with e-mail instead of doing real work. In our quest to be connected, we often let our connections in the real, human world slide.

The Gospel for today reminds us that there are rewards for righteous living. Traditionally, Christian communities have translated those rewards as coming in the afterlife. But we shouldn't overlook that righteous, connected living has rewards for us in our lives right here and now. We will be able to recognize the prophets and disciples that Jesus promises to send. We will be able to discern the presence of the Holy Spirit. We will not neglect our duties to the young and disadvantaged. We will drink from the streams of living water and be able to know what nourishes us and what saps our strength.

Sermon for June 21, 2026

June 21, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 10:24-39



How is this year’s liberation season going for each of you?


You might be scratching your head, wondering what liturgical season I’m referring to and why haven’t we changed the paraments. Alternately, you might be feeling the first tingle of exasperation as you say, “I came to church to get away from talk of divisive holidays.” Maybe you’re saying, “If she’s wants to preach about Juneteenth, she should have done that last Sunday, and then we could have used that prayer petition that talked about Juneteenth.”


Summer brings us a stretch of holidays that gives us occasion to consider liberation, from June 6, which commemorates a major turning point in World War II, to Juneteenth, to July 4. We could take a more global approach: we could celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, when political prisoners were released, and France began to move toward democratic government.


Being honest about liberation season would mean including some non-joyful remembrances, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, which happened in early June of 1989, where unarmed students and workers were killed for demanding that the Chinese government change and abandon its policies that violated human rights. That government slaughtered them, with cameras rolling, rather than give them more liberty.


We must resist the temptation to see some liberation movements as ordained by God when they’re successful, and some as not favored by God—that risks us believing that God favors some nations and peoples above others, based on very human metrics. But if you read the Bible straight through, one theme is always there: God desires freedom from tyranny—all sorts of tyranny—for all of creation.


The approach of celebrating the human fight against tyranny might seem to be in line with the first part of today’s Gospel, where Jesus seems to be offering an egalitarian future, where no one is above anyone else. But go back and read the actual words, and keep in mind this is one of the verses that has historically been used to support slavery: “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master.”


The use of this passage to justify slavery and other types of bondage is not the only troubling part of today’s Gospel. Make no mistake, Jesus isn’t necessarily commanding us to rise up and overthrow our government or to wage war, in the way that some of our summer holidays celebrate, but Jesus is clear-eyed about what happens when humans say yes to our God of liberation:


"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of one's own household.”


In the past 10 years, regardless of political affiliation, almost everyone I’ve talked to has had such severe political disagreements with at least one friend or family member, or more, that they’re no longer on speaking terms. We see first-hand the dynamic that Jesus describes.


Some of these political differences have been taken to extremes. An honest celebration of Liberation season might include those, as a reminder of what can happen when not everyone embraces the idea of liberty for all.


We might include remembrances of the slaughter of people partying at the Pulse nightclub in 2016, or the 9 people killed 10 years ago at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston by a young man hoping to start a race war. Sadly, this list could go on and on.


Being honest about liberation also means being honest about the other ways that the desire for liberation can be manipulated by unscrupulous rulers. Juneteenth is our latest federal holiday, but we didn’t come to have it without a fight, just like the Martin Luther King holiday before it. But even holidays that seem more straight forward, like July 4, can show how divided we are as a nation when we can’t agree on what the events of 1776 mean.


Of course, the people experiencing the events were themselves divided—I highly recommend the Ken Burns’ documentary on the 1776 Revolution, which explores the divisions between those who supported the colonists who wanted to break away from England and those who were loyal to the crown—divisions within families, as well as the larger political divisions.


Even if we go back to the liberation anniversaries that seem straight forward, we find that wars won often led to further battles. At the end of the 1776 revolution, many of the people living in the U.S. were not free. The news of emancipation that we celebrate on Juneteenth did not leave freed slaves economically better off, especially not in that first generation when so many experienced a different kind of slavery in sharecropping. Sure, they could leave and many of them did, only to be worked to death in northern factories. Soldiers who survived the invasion of Normandy went on to fight additional battles before Hitler surrendered, and of course, the war in the Pacific was far from over on June 6, 1944.


Again and again, Jesus calls us back to the truth that will set us free—truly free. The idea of liberation can be terrifying, particularly for those of us who have seen how things can go wrong and how one person’s liberation can have unforeseen consequences, like a divorce that leaves everyone in a more precarious position with family members pitted against each other.


Paul’s letter reminds us that we are not abandoned. God’s liberation leads to resurrection. And in the middle of today’s Gospel, Jesus, too, tells us not to be afraid, in a much loved passage: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”


Today’s Gospel ends with the assurance that the efforts we make for God will not be in vain: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Freedom!


Theologians from Paul onward have reminded us that God comes to set us free, and we’re set free so that we can unbind others from what holds them enslaved. Our liberation holidays celebrate the human yearning for freedom and liberty. It’s a yearning that’s yet to be fully realized, even if we think we’re done. We’re all in need of liberation, to be free from the forces that would enslave us, the powers and principalities that want us to be held in the chains of addictions or debts or anger or racism or inequality or violence—the list of evil forces in the world is long.


As we move through this season of liberation holidays, let us remember that we are resurrection people free from our chains even if we’re slow to understand how free we are.


Let us move forward in faith, developing a new liberation for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of hatred, oppression, and slavery, all the powers and principalities that have caused so much destruction and death—these forces do not get to have the final word. God has the final word, and God’s word always leads to liberty and freedom and flourishing.

TEEM Work and Other Anxieties

It has been a strange week in terms of home renovations.  We're at a point where it makes sense to wait until the work of next week is done.  Hopefully by this time next week, we'll have an HVAC system installed and the house rewired.  Then we'll do the painting and the hardwood floor restoration.

It feels weird knowing how much work needs to be done, but not doing it.  Of course, I have plenty of other work to be doing, primarily grading and encouraging students.

In a way, it has been a good week to be pulling back on fixer-upper tasks.  I've gotten information about the next part of my path to ordination.  I will take three classes through the TEEM program, and the first class is next week.

The TEEM program has 3 onground intensives a year where participants gather in Indianapolis and take 2 classes, one on Monday-Tuesday and one on Thursday-Friday, along with a workshop on Wednesday.  I will be taking the Thursday-Friday class on Paul's letters next week.  I'm happy to be able to patch up some holes in my knowledge; I had wanted to take a seminary class on Paul, but it never worked out.

I needed this week to order books and get started on the reading.  I had missed the deadline to get the discounted hotel price, but happily, when I called, I was able to get that price. 

It's been an up and down week in terms of anxiety.  When I'm at the house in Spartanburg, I feel that we made a good decision.  When I'm not there, there's a bit more self-doubt rattling in my brain.  I've never driven to Indianapolis from here, so I feel a bit of anxiety in terms of a car trip, while reminding myself that I have relatives along the way who could help me if need be.  I'm headed there by myself, because my spouse needs to be here to oversee the HVAC installation and rewiring.  I'm looking forward to being away, but also a bit anxious at the thought of all the new people I'll meet.  I feel a bit of anxiety at the thought of all the money we're spending on home repair--if it goes well, I'll be glad we spent the money. 

I have some course work to do besides showing up for class next week.  There's reading to do, and a movie about Paul to watch, which I've done, and a review of the movie to write, which I haven't, but will soon.

But it's nice to feel I have time to do that work.  The last time I was getting ready to go to an onground intensive, it was October of 2024, and we were still dealing with Hurricane Helene aftermaths.  I'm sure there's some residual anxiety that my body is dredging up.

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to look back on this anxiety and smile because all the moving parts came together so well.

Liberation Holidays: Juneteenth

Today we celebrate our newest federal holiday:  Juneteenth.  Of course, many populations have been celebrating Juneteenth since the news of freedom first came to the last enslaved people in Texas in 1865.  This is the first year that I've been in a workplace that recognized the holiday.  In 2021, I was working for a small school that was very stingy with holidays, so we didn't have that holiday or MLK day or Presidents Day.

In 2022, I was no longer working for that school.  I was driving back across several states, coming back to Florida from the onground intensive at Southern Seminary.  I was already a certified spiritual director through their program, but I went back to take advantage of the education, to have a reunion with my small group, and to see a friend graduate from the program.  Two weeks later I would turn around to drive back up to Arden to buy the house that I'm writing in this morning.  So far, I have never regretted that purchase, which is not usual for me when it comes to housing or moves or jobs.

Or maybe it is becoming usual.  I don't have regrets about the spiritual direction certificate or my MDiv.  My main regret about my job at SMC is that I didn't have it sooner.  I love this house in a way that I haven't loved any other house.  Maybe my lack of regret is a pleasant part of being in late midlife.

I am tempted to tie these ideas back to Juneteenth, but I don't want to trivialize the holiday or the history.  While regret can enslave us, it's a very different enslavement than other forces and humans that enslave.

Wat are the forces enslaving so many of us? We think of iron shackles, but there are other societal constructs that hold so many back: debt, geopolitical forces, violence, educational systems.  And let's not forget that literal slavery hasn't disappeared. 

So on this Juneteenth, let us think about the captives who need our help to be set free. Let us also think about all the captivity narratives that hold us enslaved. Let us embrace liberation narratives. Let us envision what life would look like if all were truly free.

The Rethinking of Mary Magdalene Gets Wider Acceptance

I have been listening to a fascinating interview between Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer.  Several years ago, Bass preached a sermon using Schrader-Polczer's work, which Bass points out is one of 3 of the most watched sermons of all time; the other two were Bishop Budde's sermon at the interfaith worship service after the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the sermon preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Mary Markle.

In that sermon, Bass presented the work of Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer, who was then a PhD student at Duke.  She did research on the Lazarus text and noticed that the word Mary had been changed to Martha.  Why would someone do this?  And how can we be sure?  

Bass published her sermon here.  It's worth the read, and it's got a link to hear the sermon.  Bass makes the case that it was likely a 4th century change, a change to disempower Mary Magdalene.

In the interview I'm listening to today, Bass and Schrader-Polzer review those ideas.  It's an interesting window into how research on ancient texts is done, and how this work was done.  It's got great information about issues of gender, along with church history.

Here are some highlights:

--At minute 28, they talk about the canon--which books made it into the Bible, which did not, and why.  Schrader-Polzer posits that the approach to Mary Magdalene, the changes made in the Gospel of John, might have happened in the 2nd century so that the book would be seen as more acceptable, so that it would survive. 

--In the oldest artwork, whenever there's a Lazarus, there's only one sister.

--Throughout the interview, there's lots of great information about translations of the Bible and how we come to have the Bible that we do.

--It is fascinating to me that there are changes to Bible commentaries and forthcoming changes to translations, including the master text, the "Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland). The 'Nestle-Aland,' or 'NA,' is the source from which almost all versions of the New Testament are translated into every language around the world" (quoted material from Bass' newsletter).  These changes happened because of Schrader-Polzer's work and Bass' promotion of this work.  I'm inspired that academic work can have this effect.

--Bass points out that this kind of revision to Bible scholarship, a major revision like Schrader-Polzer's, doesn't happen often and usually about once a generation.

--In the first century, the town of Magdala didn't exist (roughly minute 1:08).  So using Mary of Magdala would be a wrong translation.

--"Reframing ancient questions" vs. "opening new questions"--Bass uses this language about the way that the Catholic church might approach these developments.  She posits that this research is the reframing of ancient questions kind of development.

--Just after 1:18, Bass and Schrader-Polzer talk about the Gospel as a piece of story telling, a cohesive narrative, that is not the way that most people think about a Gospel:  approaching it the way a creative writer/teacher would see it.