Satisfying Sunday

Yesterday was a fairly good day.  At church, as I was moving through the communion liturgy, I could feel my throat about to crack, and sure enough, I went into a coughing fit.  Because I was at the words of institution, I felt weird about having someone else speak the words--Lutherans believe that only ordained or specially appointed ministers can consecrate the bread and wine.  I think it would have been fine, as long as I was there, but I don't really know how members feel.  So I drank some water, coughed a bit, and powered through.  People were kind.

I have spent most of the week wondering if I'm fighting off a cold:  I'm more tired and less hungry, and my throat has felt a bit scratchy off and on.  And I'm still not here.

I felt good about my sermon, although I'm aware of all the ways it could be improved; you can view it here on my YouTube channel and read it in this blog post).  We spent Sunday afternoon as we usually do, watching other people's sermons from churches where we feel a connection.  No one else preached on the Gospel.

I wanted something else of depth before we reverted to our usual viewing of old TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway?  We watched this podcast of David Brooks interviewing philosopher Meghan Sullivan. My spouse and I both have solid liberal arts educations along with graduate degrees, so it wasn't groundbreaking for us, but it felt nourishing.

I did some stitching in the evening so that I stayed awake past 7:15--success!  I'm making smaller squares, the first level of a log cabin square--but they're not all the same size.  I may put them aside and go back to the quilt I'm making for my cousin's first child who graduates from high school this year.

And now, another week:  week 6 at one school, week 3 at another.  We've got sanding to finish at the fixer-upper house.  The work at Faith Lutheran continues.  Onward!

Sermon for Sunday, September 13, 2026

September 13, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 18: 21-35



Last week’s Gospel instructed us in how to deal with disagreement in the context of community. Today’s Gospel continues the teaching—the work of forgiveness is never done. By now, we all know that Jesus isn’t telling us to keep a ledger book to track how often we’ve forgiven. Jesus is showing us how our forgiving becomes less a ledger book and more a repair manual.


Like last week’s text, today’s teaching, boiled down to that pithy 70 times 7, or 77 in newer translations, that number has been used to insist that we forgive some very hard to forgive actions: domestic violence for example. It can be a damaging text, taken out of the context of last week’s passage and the parable at the end of today’s Gospel.


Last week’s text reminds us that forgiveness doesn’t come without a change in someone’s behavior and/or belief, which is true repentance. If we’ve tried to sort out differences, not just one on one, but in the presence of community, and reconciliation can’t be achieved, we are eventually allowed to stop trying. Today’s parable tells us that forgiveness involves more than just an apology, which some people see as short hand for repentance. True repentance involves a change in behavior. True repentance involves a change in attitude too.


The slave in the parable shows neither a change in behavior nor a change of heart. Consider his predicament: the slave owes 10,000 talents. One Bible scholar notes that 1 talent is approximately 20 years of wages. It’s a shorthand way of saying he owes more than he can ever repay.


The fellow slave owes a hundred denarii, a much lesser amount—one denarii is one day’s wages. But the slave who has just had his much greater debts forgiven, literally in the same hour, on his way out of the palace, orders the other debtor slave thrown in prison. Luther tells us that repentance must be constant and daily, but the forgiven slave can’t even manage an hour! The king revokes his forgiveness and orders the non-repentant slave not only thrown into prison, but tortured.


Here we have another hard teaching, especially if we look at all of chapter 18. On the one hand, if someone is non-repentant, we’re allowed to cast them out, as verse 17 tells us we must. But we’re also required to forgive and forgive and forgive. And yet, if one remains non-repentant, the punishment is harsh. We’re told that God will refuse to forgive us, if we refuse to forgive.


It shouldn’t be a surprise. Jesus teaches us to pray “forgive us our debt, as we forgive our debtors.” If we don’t forgive, the Lord’s prayer says we won’t be forgiven. The parable elaborates on the prayer. It can also give us a bit of spiritual whiplash, with its depiction of extreme mercy in the early part of the parable and severe judgment at the end.


Christian teaching often sums up the idea of forgiveness as we are supposed to forgive and forget, but that idea is much too simple. Again and again in his theology, Luther tells us that the work of repentance continues until death. Luther saw humans as deeply sinful and that the work of turning away from sin takes humility and a daily effort. Part of that work is seeing where we are not the creatures God calls us to be and asking for forgiveness and turning away from the sinful behavior. Daily. If we’re not doing that, we can’t have an expectation of forgiveness for ourselves. We’re like the people in Luther’s day who wanted to pay money for an indulgence to avoid having to face the consequences for sinful acts.


The practice of rooting out sin sounds hard, and it can be, and that’s where we see the advantage of community. We are not the only ones discerning where we need to change. We are not alone in our discerning of whether or not the behavior of others in our community needs to change. The parable also continues to show the importance of having a group of people to help discern righteous action. In the parable, it is fellow slaves who notice the unjust behavior and report it to the king. Jesus shows us the role that community plays in right relationships—between humans and between humans and God.


Of course, this work will never be fully complete. God offers the gift of grace, an ongoing gift, because we are not made perfect in this lifetime, as Luther reminds us over and over again. We will fall short of being the people God calls us to be. We will cause harm. Others, too, will fall short, and we will need to repair relationships.


Scholar N. T. Wright reminds us that we must forgive others, not in a spirit of forgetting what was done, but in a move towards reconciliation, not revenge. He uses an interesting metaphor in explaining the last part of today’s Gospel: “Forgiveness is more like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one. If you insist on withholding it, refusing to give someone else the kiss of life they may desperately need, you won’t be able to take any more in yourself, and you will suffocate very quickly.”


Theories of social justice remind us of the importance of not just forgiveness but of accountability. In our own time, we’ve seen how these processes can work on an international scale. There are many examples, but one of the most successful recent ones is the truth and reconciliation committees in South Africa that allowed the nation to heal from the terrible wounds of apartheid. In the 1990’s, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu developed this approach in which victims explained the damage done to them, and perpetrators could confess what they had done, in the hope of both amnesty and reparations given to the victims. Some perpetrators still had punishment, particularly if they didn’t show repentance. It’s a compelling example of restorative justice taking the place of retribution. It’s a vivid and modern example of Matthew 18 in action.


Reconciliation is so important that it is now part of Just War Theory, the school of Philosophy that recognizes Matthew 18 on a geopolitical scale, that wars can be unavoidable, but they can be fought justly. In recent decades, the need for a just and lasting peace was added, a realization that without ensuring a just peace, the seeds for the next conflict are sown.


Bible scholar John T. Carroll says, “To be sure, Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes the importance of forgiveness in the lives of individuals and for the health of communities: blessing comes to those who are merciful (5:7). Yet justice matters too. There is and needs to be accountability for harmful actions and abuses of power.”


Our reading from Romans tells us that even like-minded people can disagree about any number of issues, but we find a way not to be torn apart. Our Old Testament reading reminds us of the way that reconciliation can happen, even after the most soul wrenching actions, if there is repentance. Our Gospel tells us what can happen if debts are forgiven without repentance. The king in the parable made forgiveness too easy, and thus, true repentance didn’t happen. Our Divine king does not make forgiveness simple, but the gift of grace that we can never earn is ours, ours so that we can continue with the repair work that must be done: repair to ourselves, repair to our relationships, and by doing so, repairing the larger mechanisms of both our communities and the larger world.

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!