Celtic Wisdom: The Last Days of July

 ELCA Stewardship specialist Tim Brown made this Facebook post today:

In the heat of waning July days, the ancient Celts would ready themselves for the August festivals and the beginning of the harvest.

They would take these final days to spend intentional time resonating with the world around them, relaxing in the earth and seeking out sacred spots to bless and in which to be blessed.

You might say this ancient practice is a precursor to our ideas of "vacation" these days. Summer rest is not something we invented, Beloved, but inherited through the long echoes of phenomenological rhythms that pulse throughout the looping threads of time.

Celtic author Mara Freeman notes three ways to honor the earth in these last July days that fall on the cusp of transition.

First, you can give thanks. Find a quiet spot in nature, breath deeply, listen carefully, and be grateful for what is around you. She notes that "a sacred site does not have to be famous or located in a distant country. It can also be a quiet, secret place you have found in the woods or, if you live in the city, a favorite old tree in a local park." (from Kindling the Celtic Spirit)

Secondly, do some clean up. Whether it is in your backyard, along a well-hiked stream, your local park, or even just bush pruning around the house, caring for nature is an act of sacrifice to the very Earth who will, in the coming months, sacrifice fruit for us. Pruning, by the way, is necessary for many plants, and should be done with the plant in mind, and should not primarily be about how your yard looks from the street.

Finally, take a pilgrimage. Journey to a place where the Earth has been damaged or is in danger of being defiled, calling attention to it. Whether it is the pipeline in the Dakotas, over-fishing off the coasts, or even unwelcome infringement on a natural prairie in your little pocket of creation, walking there, seeing what is happening with your own eyes, and calling attention to it is an act of power and grace. Or, as one theologian puts it, "an actively mobilized process of bearing witness to woundedness and to the mysterious possibilities of the sacred."

In these acts, the whole Earth becomes an altar upon which our attention, our love, and our gratitude is sacrificed. These acts have rippled throughout the cosmos from our ancient parents until today.

How will you add to the wave?

Feast Day of the Bethany Siblings

In the decades/centuries before 1969, on July 29, we would have celebrated Saint Martha, one of few named women in the Gospels. Now we celebrate not only Martha, but also her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus.  Their story is in the eleventh chapter of John.

In a way, I think it's a shame, as each of these siblings deserves their own feast day. But today let us ask if we can we learn something from celebrating all of them together?

In more recent years, scholars have questioned whether the Mary and Martha in John are the Mary and Martha in Luke.  There are good reasons to believe both that they are the same and that they are not.  For now, I'm going set that question aside.

In many ways, Martha is the most famous of the siblings, and I've written about her extensively. Many others have written about Mary. I'm intrigued by the people who go back to the Greek to try to prove that Mary actually had some authority, that the reason that she wants to sit at the feet of Jesus while Martha gets the meal ready is that she had been out and about in the countryside, in the way that the disciples had been sent.  

The Greek word for the work she is doing is "diakonia," which is not the word for housework, but for the work of the church.  Perhaps it is this work that has left her busy and distracted.

Lazarus, also famous, is one of the few humans brought back from the very dead. He didn't just die an hour before Jesus arrived. He had been dead for days. I've always thought he deserved a story of his own, a follow up. I'm not the only one who thinks this, of course. Yeats is one of the more famous writers to revisit Lazarus after the tomb; I should revisit his play "Calvary."

Depending on how you attribute the various references to the women named Mary (all the same Mary? Who is the sister of Martha and who is the Magdalene? And then there's the mother of Jesus), Martha gets more space in the Gospels than her two siblings. We see her complaining about Mary not helping her, and we see her scolding Jesus for not coming earlier to keep her brother from dying.

I have always sympathized with Martha, and I still can feel the shock that come when Jesus doesn't. But in my later years, I see compassion in the words of Jesus when he reminds Martha that she worries about many things. It's only been in my later years that I see Martha's anxiety in a more clinical way. It's only been in later years that I see the harm in Martha's behavior, the way that obsessive anxiety for the ones we love can destroy so much.

Do I know what to do about my own obsessive anxiety? I know a few tricks, sure. I haven't explored every possibility; so far, I don't take any meds for my anxiety outbreaks. When I'm in the throes of an anxious day, I wonder if it's time to find a health care provider who can prescribe them. When I'm having a normal day, I think that I am managing just fine.

In some ways, I see a thread running through the stories of these siblings. Christ shows up to tell them that they're not doing fine. One of the siblings, Mary, is open to Christ's message, while Martha is not. We might think it's too late for Lazarus, but it's not.

Once again, I find myself wanting to know what happens in a year or two or ten. Does Lazarus return to regular life? Having lost him once, does his family appreciate him more? Does Martha ever get a handle on her anxiety? Does Mary go out to create the first convent? Or is she so tired of having to deal with her sister that she finds a solitary existence in a nearby desert?

The Gospels give us such small snippets, but that leaves us room to find ourselves in these stories. One of the benefits to feast days and lectionaries is that we have the opportunity to return to them periodically to see if we're finding something new.

Each year, I'm reminded that God works in ways that humans don't fully understand, and that we need to resist the impulse to micromanage the miracles. But even if we don't, God won't go off in a huff and abandon us.

This year, and every year, I'm hoping that humans can also model that behavior. We're beset with anxiety, as are those around us. Let us remember that resurrection can still occur.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for August 2, 2026:

Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22 (Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21 NRSV)
You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Ps. 145:17)
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

The story in the Gospel lesson is familiar; indeed, a version appears in each Gospel, which may mean it’s more likely to be a factual reporting, or it may mean that each Gospel writer realized the significance and implications of the story and couldn’t bear to leave it out. Jesus preaches to the multitudes, who grow hungry. Jesus commands the disciples to feed them, and they protest that they only have five loaves and two fish. But miraculously, not only are the thousands of people fed, but the disciples gather basket after basket of leftovers.

Christian approaches to this story are varied, from share your resources to rely on Christ for what you need. But today, I'm interested in the human response to the miraculous.

Look at the behavior of the disciples. Jesus commands them to feed everyone, and they protest that they can’t, that they don’t have enough food. They’ve followed Jesus for some time and they’ve seen him perform many miracles, including making dead people come back to life. But their first response is that they can’t possibly do what Jesus expects.

This story tells us an important lesson about the human resistance to the miraculous. We limit God, and our fellow humans, by our inability to dream big visions. We assume that we’ll always have hungry people, oppressed nations, and what can we do? We only have so much and it will only stretch so far. But we forget how much is possible—how much we have already seen with our own eyes.

For example, imagine we could time travel back to the year 1985, not so very long ago. Imagine that we told the people of that time that in a few short years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Not only that, but Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and free elections would follow five years later. Not only that, the Soviet Union would soon be no more.

The people we encountered would not believe us. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that Nelson Mandela would die in his South African prison and that his nation would disintegrate into civil war. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that the Soviet Union would always be a part of the geopolitical landscape, and that there would always be a literal wall that separated east from west.

To talk about how these miracles happened would take a much larger space than I have here, but it’s important to remember that one reason is that ordinary people dreamed of something different. For example, in numerous interviews that I’ve heard, Desmond Tutu, gives credit for the fall of apartheid to the governments, institutions, and individuals who fought for divestment from a corrupt regime. And even when the call for divestment was not successful, those calls started an important conversation.

Desmond Tutu also always gives credit to the believers throughout the world who prayed for a peaceful way out of an insolvable situation. Even if you didn’t own a solid gold, South African Kruggerand, you could participate in the process of mercy and justice.

And don’t let my emphasis on political miracles keep us from remembering the other miracles that surround us: health restored, relationships repaired, the student who suddenly understands an impossible subject, the hungry fed, the homeless who come in from the inhospitable climate.

I know that for every miracle, someone has suffered the pain of loss:  the cancer that didn’t go into remission, the job loss that leads to other losses or a weather catastrophe from which we cannot recover. For every South Africa, there are countless countries that collapse and can't recover.

But we are called to keep our eyes towards a different reality. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just after death, Jesus declares. It is among us, here and now. And we can be a part of that glorious creation.

Recording of Yesterday's Sermon in the Outdoor Pavilion

As we drove across the mountain to Bristol, Tennessee yesterday, we wondered if we would have worship in the outdoor pavilion, the way we had planned.  Our weather apps told us that the rain would be going away in time for worship, but the dark clouds suggested otherwise.

We got to church, where everyone gathered early to set up was checking their weather apps.  The teenagers encouraged us to go with the outdoor plan, and so, we did.  And the rain held off, and worship was wonderful.  We had two visitors, a couple who are closing on their house and moving down from Maine, so I was glad that worship went well.  We had a barbecue lunch afterward, and they stayed, which also made me happy.

My sermon went well--I revamped the whole thing Sunday morning, so there, too, I was glad that it went well.  If you want to view the sermon, the recording is here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I posted the sermon manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, July 26, 2026

July 26, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52



During Music Week at Lutheridge, Carl and I went to a workshop for people who are part of small choirs. I’m no trained musician, but even I could tell that my version of a small choir is very different from those folks in charge of the workshop. My version of a small choir is the type you’d find at a church that only has 70 or so people, a choir of six or seven where one or two people might be able to carry a tune or play an instrument, where the other five choir members have enthusiasm but no ability to harmonize, the kind of choir where getting everyone to sing the melody well is accomplishment enough.

 

At the small choir workshop, one of the leaders talked about the small Vespers choir that he leads in Minneapolis. When you hear “vespers choir,” how many people do you think are in the choir? I thought about a small size, that choir of 10 people, although with more training. Nope—his “small” Vespers choir is 70 people, which led me to wonder how many people are part of this church. In every church in my adult life, we’ve usually had less than 70 members in the congregation as a whole. It dawned on me that the workshop I thought I would be attending would actually be a very different one.


Today’s Gospel celebrates very small things and hidden things and catches of fish that must be sorted. Jesus presents them to explain “the Kingdom of Heaven.” Our 21st century ears might hear that phrase and think that Jesus is explaining exclusively about what life after death will look like. We hear Heaven and most of us probably have an image of angel choirs of thousands, pearly gates, maybe a family reunion where nobody fights and the food doesn’t disappoint. Even Aunt Evelyn’s salmon salad stays fresh and the jello compositions are delightful in Heaven.


Jesus spends much of his ministry describing the Kingdom of Heaven, which he also calls the Kingdom of God. Over and over again, he tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven Kingdom of God is among us, right here and now, that we don’t have to wait. Jesus takes every opportunity to remind us that God’s kingdom isn’t a far away place. God’s kingdom can be found in the communities we create. And they probably won’t look like the kingdoms we might expect. They might be small, like the mustard seed or the grain of yeast. They might be hidden away, like wealth or a pearl of rare price, so that very few people know they are there. They might be messy, like the net full of fish—we hear about a net full of fish and think, “Abundance!” A first century fishing audience would think of the chore of sorting them all out.



And then Jesus directs our attention to the sorting that will come at the very end of human time, when God judges all, the living and the dead.


Perhaps Jesus gives us this vision of end times to reinforce his message of being alert so that we don’t miss the Kingdom of God. All of the examples in the parables are of items easily overlooked or not noticed—yeast and mustard seeds, hidden treasure, one rare pearl. Even that catch in the nets, with the messiness of a mix of fish, is an abundance that’s easy to dismiss, if we were hoping for just one fish or type of fish to be in the net.


Humans don’t usually celebrate small things. We’re trained to equate bigness with importance: big militaries, big budgets, big buildings, big muscles, lots of followers/donors/supporters. In the economy of the world, it’s the little things that get trampled, and worse, perhaps never even noticed as they are being trampled.


Jesus turns the world’s economy on its head: from a bit of yeast comes a feast big enough for an army. From one mustard seed, a tree big enough to shelter the birds. The overlooked treasure is the greatest, and even in a catch of fish that is messy, can come abundance.


Think back over the past several weeks of parables—they all come from the same chapter in Matthew, where Jesus is trying to tell people, especially the disciples, what the kingdom of Heaven is like, in both the now and the not yet. We’ve had a variety of seeds across the past several weeks, only some of which will grow into trees like the mustard seed. We’ve had wheat and weeds mixed together, too small to sort out early. Here, too, we have seeds, along with other small things.


In some ways, the message is obvious—small is beautiful, to use that phrase from the past, that slogan which encouraged us to live in a way that is sustainable, unlike big, industrial agricultural ventures that were beginning to appear in the middle part of last century. It’s a message that is still countercultural, even in churches, where we might expect a different approach. But as our experience at Lutheridge shows, even a choir director leading a workshop on small choirs has a very different idea of what small means from what Jesus meant.


Three years ago, I first preached on this set of parables, and I had only been here two months. Back then, I thought this assignment would be temporary, nine months at most. Back then, I knew this congregation was small, but I didn’t realize how mighty this congregation is and not as hidden as I might have assumed.


All of my adult life, I’ve been a member of very small congregations, churches that had less than 50 members in the pews on Sunday mornings. We’ve had stewardship campaigns and workshops that showed us new ways to do outreach so that we could get more members. The standard thinking was that churches must grow and grow and grow so that they could survive, that church health was measured solely by size, not vibrancy.


That message of growth ignores a significant part of today’s message and the message of the parables of past weeks. If we use the metrics of the world to judge whether or not we’re doing something right and good, we may miss the larger focus that we need to see what is truly happening. If we’re counting people in pews to decide whether a church should stay open or close, we’ve taken a shallow measure of success.


That metric doesn’t include the mom who creates devotional opportunities for those in the car pool line at school; because we’re a small group, she can easily share those devotions with all of us, even if we’re not driving children to school and back. That metric doesn’t include the member who buys us all special gifts when he goes to auctions—in a larger church, he wouldn’t know our names, much less be able to buy us gifts. If I was pastor of a church with 100 members or more, I couldn’t pray for each individual person on my morning walk—unless I had several hours to walk and a memory that is stronger than mine is now.


Of course, not every small community is as vibrant as this one. That’s why the larger world loves metrics that simply ask us to quantify—why our bishops ask us for head counts or a tally of who gives money. But the larger Church is moving towards a more nuanced assessment—which is why we generate the annual reports that we do each year.


However, Jesus reminds us that even these nuanced reports will not capture all of what it means to be the community of God here on earth. As I was writing a rough draft of this sermon, I took a break to eat dinner with Eileen, an old church friend who was passing through town. After dinner, we served blueberry pie, made with the pie filling that the Rasmussens brought us all, and come to find out, Eileen had never had blueberry pie before. We talked about choir experiences past and present. Once we played in a very small church choir together, for Easter sunrise service. I was on the upright bass, she was on the ukelele, Carl was on the violin, and another friend played banjo ukelele. Our small choir of 4 led the music, all the music, for the congregation of 15 that assembled in the church’s butterfly garden. Our pastor posted pictures on Facebook.


One church member who had drifted away saw the pictures and decided to come to the later service because she remembered how much she missed the music. She hoped to hear Carl and Eileen play and sing a duet.


I wish I could tell you that lives were changed because of those moments. I wish I had some kind of climatic, zingy example to give you, to end this sermon with a bang. But then I remind myself of the parables, of the gentle teaching of Jesus who reminds us that the kingdom of God is created in small acts, not splashy ones, and the long term wealth of those acts likely will remain hidden.


We can trust that God is the ultimate music director, whether our choir has 4 people or 70. God can use any voice that shows up, and God will know how to create the best harmonies with those voices. And if our singing voices fail, God has other options: the call of the cicadas, the percussion of the rain, the late night discussions as we eat blueberry pie, the devotional time of the car pool lane, all the ways, great and small, that we create a soundtrack for the community of God that we’re building, right here, right now.

The Feast Day of Saint James

Today we celebrate the life of James, one of the 12 disciples, the first to be martyred (Acts 12:1 tells us by Herod's sword). He's known as James the Greater (to distinguish him from James the Lesser, James the son of Alphaeus). He's the brother of John. He was one of the first to join Jesus, and Jesus chose him to go up the mountain to witness the Transfiguration. He is the patron saint of veterinarians and pharmacists, among others.

Lately, I've heard more about St. James, as more people become aware of the pilgrimage that involves walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points. Walkers who cover 100 km or cyclists who cover 200 km get a compostela, a certificate, and a blessing.

St. James is associated with scallops, and if you look at a map, you'll see that the pilgrims arriving from a variety of beginning points to the same end point does look like a scallop shell. There are now travel agencies that will help pilgrims, but I've been told that it's not hard to set up one's own journey. There are all sorts of lodgings along the way, all sorts of support.

In 2023, I finally saw the Martin Sheen/Emilio Estevez movie, The Way, which features this pilgrim's path. I'd love to actually walk part of it, but it seems increasingly unlikely. But life has taught me never to say never. If I could go on the Santiago or Iona, I'd probably choose Iona, but who says I would have to choose.

I'm not the only one who finds the idea intriguing. In 1985, only 690 pilgrims made it to the end point, the Cathedral of Santiago de Campostela; recently, 179,919 pilgrims completed the journey. The most hardcore pilgrims walk barefoot. I would not be one of those pilgrims.

A few years ago, one of my good church friends figured out how to walk part of the Santiago de Campostela, how to make sure her pets and children were taken care of for 2 weeks, and off she went with her husband. I found her journey so inspiring. She kept a blog while walking and has continued to keep writing posts in her "regular" life.

Let us remember that we're all on a variety of pilgrimages, even if we're not leaving the house. Let us remember that God is with us.

Other Symbols of Smallness: The Small Choir

This week's Gospel reading revolves around small things (mustard seeds and yeast) and hidden things (treasure and pearls of rare price and fish that are worthy hidden around a net full of sea creatures).  I have preached on mustard seeds and weeds before.  I'm always on the lookout for new metaphors and symbols.  I've used symbols like mold in a bathroom as a synonym for yeast. 

This year, I thought of an experience during Music Week, where we went to a workshop for people who are in charge or are part of small choirs.  It quickly became clear that we (me, my spouse, my S. Florida church friend) have a very different definition of  "small":  one of the workshop leaders talked about his small Vespers choir, and then casually mentioned the 70 members of the small Vespers choir.

We looked at music that three workshop leaders would be good for "small" choirs.  Almost all of them relied on choirs that had sopranos, altos, and deeper voices of some variety.  Many of the pieces rely on some level of musical skill from those voices.

I am guessing that most truly small choirs don't even have these resources.  Here's how I put it in the rough draft of my sermon for Sunday:  

"My version of a small choir is the type you’d find at a church that only has 70 or so people, a choir of six or seven where one or two people might be able to carry a tune and play an instrument, where the other five choir members have enthusiasm but no ability to carry the non-soprano sections by themselves, the kind of choir where getting everyone to sing the melody is accomplishment enough."