Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, June 21, 2026:

Genesis 21:8-21

Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17

Romans 6:1b-11

Matthew 10:24-39

As we look at the teachings of Christ, a central theme emerges. Fear is at the root of all that keeps us from God. In this teaching, Jesus again gives us both warnings of what is coming and reminders to be of good cheer.

Again and again, Jesus yokes his teachings of what will be required with the admonition to have no fear. Here, Jesus tells us that God knows about the least little sparrow--and we're worth more than sparrows. The wisdom of the Holy Spirit invites us to new life, not to paralyzing fear. Jesus tells us that even sparrows are nurtured in God's economy. God will take care of us too.

I love this vision of God who knows me from the individual hairs of my head to the rough soles of my feet. I love this vision of God who helps me travel through the dangerous parts of the world. I want to believe that I am worth more than sparrows, and I want to believe that in God's economy, sparrows are worth more than two pennies.

But again, Jesus warns us that we can't stop with that vision. This is a God who keeps watch so that we can do the transformational work that must be done. It is work that is likely to take us to threatening places where we may have to oppose the dominant power structure. We may find ourselves crucified, in every sense of that word.

Again and again, Jesus asks if we're willing to pay the price. Again and again, Jesus offers the promise that we find at the end of this Sunday's Gospel: if we quit our obsessive clinging to those elements that we think give us life, we may indeed find true life.

We find ourselves in a time period where many of us have stopped clinging to those parts of society that diminish and demean us. May we have the courage to move towards what will nourish us and to demand that nourishment for all of us.

Recording of My Sermon for June 14, 2026

Yesterday's sermon went well at Faith Lutheran, the small country church I serve in Bristol, Tennessee.  Because 1/3 of our membership is an extended family, when they go on their family beach vacation, the worship space can feel a bit empty.  Yesterday we had no youth, so no youth sermon.  When I announced that there would be no youth sermon, I asked the congregation to think about what had brought them joy in their own youth.  I referenced a popsicle in the park event that one of the members had made the subject of a Facebook post.  The recording of the sermon referenced that popsicle event; the manuscript does not.

I've been trying to read my sermon less, which in some ways is good, primarily in the more lively energy.  But I don't like that I get tongue-tied, and I worry about my sermons getting longer.  I want a sermon to be 9-12 minutes.  

You can view yesterday's sermon here, on my YouTube channel.  You can read my sermon in yesterday's blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, June 14, 2026

June 14, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)




A traditional way of interpreting this Gospel is to see it as a companion to the “Go and make disciples” type of text that weaves its way through the lectionary. Here Jesus tells the disciples what to do as they go out to make disciples. Many sermons approach this text as a mission statement: the mission of the disciples, which then becomes the mission of the church through the ages. Traditional thinking goes something like this: if it’s good enough for those disciples who then train others to go and do likewise, then we, too, can adopt this passage as our mission statement.


But what if this approach is wrong? What if this message of Jesus is only meant for those disciples who are hearing it? What if Jesus didn’t mean for us here in the 21st century to assume that we, too, are supposed to do what those 12 named disciples were called to do?


You might ask, well, what’s it doing here, then? If it’s not direct advice from Jesus telling us how to live our lives and how to judge the success of the church, then what is the purpose of this reading?


Part of the purpose is to bear witness to the good news that Jesus embodies. One way that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew does this is to introduce us to Jesus, and also to introduce us to the disciples, the first generation to continue the work of Jesus.


Some of the first hearers of this Gospel might have actually known the disciples. I imagine them hearing this text and saying, “Curing the sick—yes, John was great at that. Casting out demons—how did Jesus know that Peter would get to be so skilled in that area?”


At this point, let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine that the writer of Matthew needed to add some additional information, some newer disciples who lived in the centuries after the original 12 disciples named in this passage. Who might the Gospel writer choose? Let’s consider some of the great witnesses of the 20th century.


There’s Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms, which gave birth to Habitat for Humanity. There’s Dorothy Day, who founded Catholic Worker houses all over the country, showing people how to live communally. There’s Archbishop Oscar Romero who was martyred for speaking out and demanding that the killing of non-combatants in El Salvador stop. And Martin Luther King, who ushered in a new era of human rights.


And of course, there are the less famous disciples, like a woman in my old church in South Florida who taught Confirmation classes for over 60 years; imagine how many people she told about the good news of Jesus. The number of schools and hospitals kept running by faithful people are too many to list in a sermon.


When you hear me list these witnesses, do you say to yourself, “Let me go and start a farm in the red clay dirt of Georgia to show that black and white citizens can farm in harmony like Clarence Jordan did”? I don’t. I don’t have farming skills in the best of circumstances, but I admire those who do.


Why, then, do we hear sermons and theologians tell us that the mission of the original 12 must still be our mission? In part, it’s because we have a long history of this interpretation. And don’t get me wrong: if you can heal the sick, that’s a great way of announcing the good news of Jesus.


But it isn’t the only way. Not by a long shot. Take a minute. Think about your own gifts. If the writer of the Gospel added your skills to the list of healing the sick, cleansing skin diseases, raising the dead, and casting out demons that we hear today, what would it be?


Frederick Buechner has a great quote for those of us who doubt we have any sort of call or who have lost sight of God’s call or who fear it might be too late. in his book Wishful Thinking he says : “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."


Of course, even when we find that place, we won’t always find people who are happy we found it.


In part, today’s Gospel is also a cautionary tale. We can answer our call, our call that is unique to us, our own way of announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near, but that doesn’t mean that the world will instantly accept our gifts. Jesus warns us that just the opposite might happen. It sounds pretty grim. Not a great way to win converts. But Jesus tells us not to worry. God will speak through us. We will not be left to our own devices.


Not so long ago, I would have written this sermon imagining that very few of us would face any sort of resistance when we answered God’s call. Humanity seemed on a path of improvement as we charted our way through the last several decades of the 20th century. But as I was pondering this week’s Gospel text, word leaked out that the Southern Baptist Convention has decided to curtail the ways that women can be involved in the church.


Southern Baptists already restrict women in terms of answering a call. A Southern Baptist woman who hears God calling her to be a pastor would not get support in that denomination. In a way, this is not a new development. But that denomination continues to wrestle with how to deal with the issue of women and power. Can women be guest speakers? Can they be lectors? Should women be allowed to supervise men? Can they be Sunday School teachers?


If your social media feed is like mine, you may have seen an upsurge in reminders of all the ways that women have been faithful, with Biblical examples, like Mary Magdalene, whom some call the first apostle, because she’s the first to see the risen Jesus and she tells others. And look what happened to her—most people are more likely to remember her as the woman possessed by demons than as the first apostle.

Not so long ago, I might have said that our religious communities could help us discern a call and help us to be sure that it’s God’s call we’re hearing and not the call of those who might not have our best interests at heart. Now I use the words of Jesus in advising us how to proceed: we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We can ask ourselves if we’re part of a process that announces the Kingdom of God is at hand, or are we announcing someone else’s kingdom.


In this way, we will endure until the end. In this way, we will be saved.

Women and Authority and Southern Baptist Decisions

I wonder if the social media feeds of other people are full of rage at the Southern Baptist governing body and their decisions about women in leadership.  In many ways, it's not a surprise:  they've forbidden women pastors for decades now.  The recent decision seems to say that women can't even be church council members or Sunday School teachers or speak in worship at all--no lectors, much less assisting ministers.  

Obviously, I disagree with these decisions.  I am lucky to have other denominations, including my own, the ELCA, the more inclusive expression of Lutheranism in the U.S.  I am not Southern Baptist and neither are most of the people filling my feed with rage.  Living in a "free" society and believing in free will does mean that people get to make their own decisions, no matter how much I think they are on a wrong path.

I do wonder who will do all the work, if women aren't allowed to do even volunteer work, even the work traditionally done by women, like teaching of all kinds.  Are there really all these men, waiting in the wings who have been chomping at the bit to do the work?

It's hard for me to believe that they do.  Of course, I've been in congregations that are tiny, where everyone who is breathing has been put to work, churches that don't have the luxury of excluding half (or more) of the congregation.

I am happy to be part of a church that welcomes everyone into the circle to do the work of kingdom building.

All the Battles Worth Watching, One after Another

We spent a long chunk of time yesterday watching One Battle After Another.  It's a movie that's been out for awhile, but only recently free to stream on Amazon Prime.  I had forgotten how long it was, but happily, we started it in the late afternoon, not at 7:30 at night.

It wasn't until the later part of the movie, during one of the long (LONG) car chases that I became aware of how long it was taking to finish the movie.  It was compelling from the beginning until close to the end, compelling in ways that surprised me.

I was impressed with all the chunks of narrative that did manage to come together.  Paul Thomas Anderson deserved those Oscars for best director and best adapted screenplay.  There were moments when I did some math to try to figure out the revolutionary aspect of it all--if the daughter is 16 or 17, then the revolutionaries were active in 2008 or 2009?  The planting of bombs in government buildings and calling in bomb threats from a pay phone seemed so 1972 to me, but clearly, that timeline wouldn't work.  It was a nebulous revolutionary movement in the movie, so I was willing to suspend my initial disbelief.

There's another revolutionary movement in the movie, and it's the "Latino Harriet Tubman situation."  This movie has a lot to say about a great many issues, and one of the disadvantages of a vast movie is that some issues get short shrift.  I'd have liked more about all the Latino issues, especially the nods to the sanctuary movement that are hiding there in plain sight for those of us with eyes to see.  It's in the storylines about migration where we see revolutionaries who are working for social justice and working against a government that's against the flourishing of all people--unlike the other revolutionaries, the main characters who seem to be just blowing things up for the thrill of it all.

I try very hard not to fault movies or books or TV shows for not being the story that I wish they could have been.  In the end, I was happy to have a well-made movie to watch, a movie with much to mull over, a movie worth re-watching, as so few things are deserving of a second look these days.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, June 14, 2026:

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)

Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19

Romans 5:1-8

Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)


In many modern churches, especially in the time around Pentecost, we spend a lot of time talking about mission, even if we're not realizing we're talking about it. Does the church exist to serve the members? Does the church exist to serve the community? And what do we mean when we talk about the church anyway?

In this Sunday's Gospel, we get a very different vision of the early church than we'll get in parts of Acts. In Acts, we often see the early believers arguing about doctrine, like who gets to belong and who doesn't--and once we've decided who gets to participate, there are debates about how to participate, like what can be eaten and when it should be eaten.

In this Sunday's Gospel, we see a vision of the early church in the way that Paul will practice it. Jesus gives instructions to his disciples to go out taking very little with them: no food, no money, not even a change of clothes. Their mission: "Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons."

And what will they get for their troubles? They will be flogged in the synagogues and drug before rulers, where we assume a gruesome death will follow. Their message will divide families, but they are to persevere, to endure.

I think about those early disciples and our current time. The early disciples lived in a time of upheaval, and Jesus had fomented even more unrest. We, too, inhabit a time of social unrest with threats both familiar and new. We, too, sense we are at a hinge moment in history, when the time before us will be completely different to the time we lived in not too long ago.

In these days when we can't budget in the ways we once did, how can we possibly plan for our mission in the coming months and years? We have spent years and decades learning to make plans and budgets, skills which seem geared for a different time in history.  Each day, if we listen to news and social media platforms, we get news of how the church seems increasingly irrelevant to the larger world.

Yet our mission remains the same: to care for the outcast of society, to speak truth to the ones who rule, to cast out the demons that oppress society. Jesus sends his disciples out into the world without a plan, without a budget, without supplies, without a script. He trusts them to be able to think on their feet, to react to the circumstances that they actually encounter, instead of planning for encounters that may never happen.

Jesus ends with one last piece of instruction: "See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10: 16). 

Let us all be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, a mission that is as important now as it ever was.

Recording of Two Sermons for Sunday, June 7, 2026

Yesterday was a good day in worship at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  I preached on the true miracle that Jesus performs across the linked stories in the Gospel reading, Matthew  9:9-13, 18-26, the ability to rescue us from the living death of isolation--and it's a miracle we can perform too.

You can view the recording of the sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read along and see where I went off script, I posted the sermon manuscript in this blog post.

My spouse also captured the youth sermon, where I reminded the youth that like the father in the Gospel, God will never give up on us, even in death.  You can view it here on my YouTube channel.