Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, July 5, 2026:

First Reading: Zechariah 9:9-12

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

Psalm: Psalm 145:8-15 (Psalm 145:8-14 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 45:11-18 (Psalm 45:10-17 NRSV)

Psalm (Alt.): Song of Solomon 2:8-13 (Semi-continuous)

Second Reading: Romans 7:15-25a

Gospel: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30


In this week's Gospel, we see the mystical Jesus, the one of bizarre stories and metaphors that confuse. The first part of this week's Gospel has those strange comparisons calling us children in the marketplace, and then Jesus reminds us that he and John are the latest in a long line of people sent by God to get our attention. And then the Gospel ends with that strange bit about easy yokes and light burdens, when the very definition of yoke and burden encompass experiences that aren't easy and light.

Maybe in these days of rising prices, you're feeling the more traditional definition of yoke and burden, a strangling and a crushing sensation. Maybe you're weary of the world's problems and the inability of governments to even attempt to solve them. Maybe you wish for a savior to show up in our troubled times. But then you'd have to wonder if we'd even notice, in our world of noise and distraction.

Sometimes, when I feel most bleak, I like to return to the words of the Old Testament prophets. It's good to remember that no matter how terrible our historic age seems, it's not really a new situation. This week's reading from Zechariah commands us: "Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope."

That command is our burden and our yoke. We must be prisoners of hope. We are called to commit to resurrection. That doesn't stop with our belief in a resurrected Lord. That's just one sign, among a galaxy of signs, of a God who creates and recreates the cosmos daily.

In our deepest despair, we must remember that we're Resurrection People. To me, that's one of the beliefs that separates Christianity from the other major religions. We don't believe in a fixed universe. We don't believe that we're doomed. We don't believe that we have to accept our lot with stoic resignation and wait for a better life--in a future lifetime, in Heaven, but not right now.

No, our burden and our yoke is that God calls us into partnership in this remodeling of the world into one that is more in line with God's vision and plan. Could God just step in and order it to be so? Perhaps. But God didn't create that kind of universe. For whatever reason, God found it much more interesting to design a world in which we have free will. We can put our necks into the yoke that God offers us and discover that what appears to be a burden is, in fact, a blessing that transforms us as we transform the world.

Sermon on Acceptance Finds Acceptance

Yesterday was a good Sunday.  As I was driving and driving and driving on Saturday followed by a night when I was up and down, I wondered if I would be just exhausted on Sunday.  Happily, I felt fine.  I got up and reworked my sermon, taking out the bit I had written about grad school experiences as a Community Outreach Worker for a Methodist church, leaving in the later experiences about a church welcoming a transgender visitor who became a member.

I did wonder if I should feel worried about children in church hearing about a transgender human and asking their parents questions, but I decided that it was likely to be fine.  Most children aren't paying much attention during the non-youth sermon.  If the teenagers paid attention, I reasoned that they're likely to know what a transgender person is.

I had an encounter after church that reassured me.  One of the younger members, a father of two of those teens, thanked me for my sermon, thanked me for including modern issues.  I said that I had worried a bit about the children hearing about transgender issues for the first time, and he said, "They already know.  It's all over the place."  He thanked me again, and I thanked him for reassuring me.

As we drove home, I reflected on the sermon, which isn't nearly as radical as I might have made it sound with my worries about it.  The Gospel, Matthew 10:  40-42, is a standard hospitality text, and I used the example of my South Florida church welcoming a transgender visitor to show that radical acceptance and radical hospitality blesses everyone in all sorts of directions, like how remodeling a bathroom with cramped stalls into a single use bathroom benefitted people in wheelchairs or with mobility issues, who now had more room, and parents with babies who needed a diaper change, who now had a bathroom with a changing table.

But of course, the more important change is hearts and minds.  Once we know a transgender person (or any one member of a minority group), it's much less easy to accept the demonization of a whole group of people.  And it's so vital for members of minority groups to find support from majority groups so that the forces of empire and forces of evil have less traction.

You can find the manuscript of the sermon here, and you can watch/hear the sermon here.

Sermon for Sunday, June 28, 2026

June 28, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 10:40-42



At first, this text seems like a standard hospitality text, and we’re not wrong to read it that way. It’s a familiar lesson that repeats over and over again through the Gospels, and indeed through a variety of texts both ancient and modern. Not that we agree, of course. You don’t need me to remind you of how different our opinions can be when we talk about who is welcome and who is not. Today’s Gospel reminds us of the stakes. If we’re not welcoming, we risk turning away God, who often comes to visit in forms we don’t expect.


Of course, there are other risks to hospitality. When we fling open our doors or our borders, when we are welcoming, things can get messy. Look at Jesus mentions: prophets and children. Even righteous people come with a risk: that insistence that we follow God’s law, not our own rules.


We understand the chaos that comes with children and teens. For every story that I’ve heard about how a chaotic child came to the church and by the end of the year was helping with altar guild duties, I could tell you 10 more about the grumbling and complaining that comes when we truly welcome children in a way that lets them be both seen and heard.


But today’s Gospel is an optimistic one. Look at what is missing: there’s no threat of punishment for those who aren’t welcoming. You could say it’s implied, sure. But in this Gospel, we are promised reward for right behavior. But it goes even deeper. Bible scholar Stanley Saunders says, “These three designations—prophets, the righteous, and little ones—do not differentiate members of the community so much as they describe interrelated aspects of Christ-discipleship.”


To see how that might work, let us consider an experience from a different church, one of my home churches, the one in South Florida, where we used to go to worship early because the choir rehearsed before worship. I took a book and read and sometimes talked to the pastor. One Sunday, he told me he’d gotten a strange phone call from someone who was looking for a place to worship, and when the pastor invited the person to join us, the person on the phone asked, “Would your church be welcoming to a transgender person?”


“What did you say?” I asked the pastor, who would know the hearts of the members better than I did.


My pastor said, “I said ‘Of course you’d be welcome.’” He waited a beat and said, “I hope I’m right.”


When my pastor tells the story now, he’s very honest that he didn’t know for sure. Many of the members were older, and one had a habit of saying outrageous and moderately offensive opinions at coffee hour. But those older members turned out to be the most welcoming, which helped other members to be welcoming too. We worked through issues of rest rooms, updating our 1970’s era bathrooms to become single use bathrooms, which let us put a changing table in them and have a bathroom that a person in a wheelchair could use.


Ellen, the church’s first openly transgender member, helped the church be more open minded, and the church transformed into a place that was welcoming to more members who hadn’t always felt welcome before. We gave her a safe place as she figured out the ins and outs of her transitioning. In turn, she invited us to ask her any questions that we had—and members did. She, too, asked questions. We all came to understand each other better.


In this story, we see discipleship in action. The church had been participating in county-wide justice events, where 25 or more churches gathered to demand justice for underserved populations. These actions led to more oversight in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, more affordable housing, a different approach to justice for juvenile offenders. The church had been prophetic on a county-wide level, and it was also able to live into its prophetic calling on a personal level. Similarly, the church had declared commitment to righteous living, following the ways of Jesus. In its acceptance of Ellen, the church practiced what it preached. Ellen came to the church needing the cup of cold water that is acceptance and welcome. We gave that to her.


She also gave us a cup of cold water, a cup that many of us may not have known that we needed. She showed us what prophetic righteousness looks like on a personal level. She gave us the opportunity to practice radical hospitality. Years after Ellen first came to worship, the church became a Reconciling in Christ church, which is the designation that many LGBQTIQA+ people look for when they are determining if a church will be a safe space. Many churches say that all are welcome. But it can be hard to put that into practice, especially when the visitor may look so different. It might be easier if it’s a cute child. But it’s harder if we have to adjust to people of different cultures, different practices, different clothing choices, different tattoos and piercings.


When we can practice radical acceptance, that’s the space where radical hospitality can take hold. We do this by offering a cup of cold water, which seems like such a simple thing in our day of refrigerators and ice. But it would have been a different symbol in the time of Jesus, when cold water came from a well, and quickly grew warm.


We’re to give a cup of cold water—not stale water that’s been sitting under the hot, desert sun since we drew it out of the well yesterday, not water that’s been sitting in a jar. We’re to give the cup of cold water to little ones, an inversion of the hierarchy that comes with many human relationships. Here, the vulnerable, the expendable get the water—a child, not a person in charge.



The world needs the cup of cold water that each and every one of us can offer. And we, too, are in need of a cup of cold water. Jesus came to give us that living water. And thus, transformed by the living water of Christ, we can go out renewed and refreshed. We can welcome the prophets, the righteous, the vulnerable ones. We can live into the life of renewal that Jesus came to give us, the life that radical hospitality makes possible. That’s the reward given to prophets, to the righteous, to the little ones. That’s the reward that can be ours too.

Kristin in Indianapolis, Paul in Spain

In another hour or so, I'll put the last of my stuff in the car and head back to the mountains of North Carolina.  I've been in Indianapolis, taking a class on Paul, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheranism in North America).  

It has been a great class, full of deep dives into Greek words and church history and Paul's theology, which can be summarized as Proclaim Christ Crucified.  We even had a fun digression into what we would proclaim--I find it problematic to proclaim Christ Crucified.  Christ incarnate, yes.  Christ risen from the dead, yes.  But crucified?  That's the most important thing?

The cross means something very different for Paul than it does for me.  The cross as a symbol/shortcut does something very different for Paul.  I get that. 

We talked about not knowing how Paul died, not for sure.  Church custom/tradition posits that it's likely that he died in Rome, executed by Emperor Nero.  But it's also possible that he left Rome and continued onward to Spain.

A random thought floated through my brain on Thursday:  that would make a good poem, Paul in Spain, late in life.  By yesterday morning, I decided to jot down some lines, and voila!  A poem emerged, mostly formed.

Here's how it begins:

Paul slices citrus for sangria, 

oranges and lemons plucked

from trees in the lingering light

of a late October evening.

Who would have dreamed or demanded

such a soft landing?

This morning I thought, oh dead, when does citrus ripen in Spain?  I chose "late October evening" because Paul is in the late autumn of his life.  Happily, a quick search this morning shows the detail can work--and even had I discovered that it didn't, I'd have probably kept it.

The poem ends this way:

Safe for now, he pours the sangria

and waits for the sun to set.

I do worry that the poem is cliched, and I also worry that it won't be interesting to non-Christian readers.  But we all age, and this poem looks at aging.  By using Paul as the vehicle, maybe it does say something new.

I'll put it away and look at it again later this week.  But I am happy to have created a poem the way I once did:  an idea comes and within 24 hours, I'm attempting a poem and seeing it to completion.  Hurrah!

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.