Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 31, 2026:

First Reading: Genesis 1:1--2:4a

Psalm: Psalm 8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20


This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday, one of those festival Sundays that seem a bit baffling, at first (like Christ the King Sunday, which comes at the end of the liturgical year). We understand the significance of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But what exactly do we celebrate on Holy Trinity Sunday?

At first reading, the Gospel doesn't seem to help. And Jesus certainly didn't spend any time indoctrinating his disciples on these matters which would later split the church. He alludes to the Triune God: we see him pray to God and he tells the disciples that he will send a Comforter. But he spends far more time instructing the disciples on how they should treat the poor and destitute, about their relationship to the larger culture, about their role in creating the Kingdom in the here and now.

You get a much better understanding of the Trinity by reading all the lessons together (thanks to my campus pastor from days of old, Jan Setzler, who pointed this out in his church's newsletter over a decade ago). These aren't unfamiliar aspects: God as creator of the world, God as lover of humans, Christ who came to create community, the Holy Spirit who moves and breathes within us and enables us to create community.

Notice that we have a God who lives in community, both with the various aspects of God (Creator, Savior, Spirit) and with us. It's an image that baffles our rational minds. It's akin to contemplating the infinity of space. Our brains aren't large enough or we don't know how to use them in that way.

But maybe it's not helpful to spend time trying to understand these matters with our intellects.  Maybe we should focus on what the Triune God does, not what the Triune God is.

The God that we see in our Scriptures is a God of action. We see God creating in any number of arenas. We are called to do the same. This is not a God who saves us so that we can flip through TV channels. Our God is a God who became incarnate to show us how to be people of action: Go. Make disciples. Teach. Baptize. Keep the commandments. We do this by loving each other and God. We love not just by experiencing an emotion. Love moves us to action.

And that action doesn't have to have the boldness of those first, male disciples. They went very far when Jesus said to them "Go and make disciples."  But many of us don't need to travel more than a mile or two before we will find someone who needs us, someone we need, someone with whom we could form community.

How do we do that?  Here again, we can find many possibilities in our stories about our creator and our savior and our Holy Spirit Comforter:  rescuing captives out of bondage, teaching, eating meals together in a variety of ways, fishing, healing, going on retreat, praying, having conversations with both the popular people and the outcast, sharing resources, cleaning up messes, telling truth to power, on and on I could go.

We live in a time when the world offers us so many opportunities to act in the way that God acts.  How can we love our neighbor?  There are so many ways to do that.  Theologian Frederick Buechner reminds us in his book Wishful Thinking: "The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Jesus promises to meet us there.

Memorial Day 2026

Today is Memorial Day, and through the years, I've come to realize how many different things this holiday can mean to people.  I've met people who won't celebrate it because of its roots in memorializing the Civil War Union dead.  My dad was an Air Force officer in the Reserves until he retired, so Memorial Day was personal for him.  I don't think I know anyone who was killed while on active duty, but I do want to honor those who died.  Some people I've known seem to have no inkling that the holiday has anything to do with soldiers at all--for them, it's about getting a good deal on a holiday sale or opening up the vacation home or having a cook out.

I remember feeling desperate for Memorial Day, for a day off, but during my days of working as an administrator, I was always desperate for a day off, a day off that didn't require me to use up any of my paltry allotment of vacation time.  For the past several years, Memorial Day as a three day week-end was not top of my mind, since I've already had a few weeks of schedule easing in May.

I also know that many people don't get to have time off.  All of our grocery stores are open today, for example.  When I taught in community colleges in South Carolina, we didn't have Memorial Day off.  Our nursing students needed every scrap of time in the summer, so that holiday had to be sacrificed so that we stayed in compliance.  Or maybe it was because of the Civil War; I got different explanations. In past years, I've used the day off to catch up on grading for my online classes.  

This year, I'm thinking about past years, when war seemed far away.  And now, here we are, with war in Europe (Ukraine) and war with Iran, and lots of smaller scale wars across the globe.

But let me circle back to the intent of this holiday.  On this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:

God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day, we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

Sermon for May 24, 2026, Pentecost

May 24, 2026, Pentecost

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



First Reading: Acts 2:1-21
Psalm: Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Gospel: John 20:19-23



If we’ve been part of a church for any amount of time, say longer than 5 years, we might have opinions about Pentecost. We might consider it the birthday of the Church or the Holy Spirit. Maybe we associate Pentecost with Confirmation. Maybe it’s all about the color red or the geraniums.


Our readings for today show us the traditional scriptural depictions of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit gets into the world. In the reading from the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit arrives when Jesus breathes on the disciples. In the reading from Corinthians, we see Paul understanding the Holy Spirit giving believers a variety of skills and gifts with which to do God’s work. There’s also our first reading from Acts, the one that tells us what happened, the rush of violent wind, the tongues of flame, the ability to speak in languages that they didn’t already know—not mystical languages but languages that people from other places could hear and understand. Imagine the gift of being able to speak in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese—without years of study and practice. Imagine how many doors might open if we could do that. Or maybe, as our reading shows us, we’d face criticism and ugly inuendo.


The reading from Acts is probably what most of us think of when we think of Pentecost. When I was a child, it sounded marvelous, like getting a superpower. And indeed, that’s the story most of us are taught: the Holy Spirit comes and transforms the disciples and they go out and transform the world. Those stories of Christians transforming the world usually gloss over—or leave out completely—the difficulties.


It was not until the Pentecost Sunday after Hurricane Wilma when I considered how scary our Pentecost symbolism could and perhaps should be. Hurricane Wilma swept through South Florida in 2005, one of those one in a hundred year (or these days, 1 in every 10 year) supercharged hurricane times that included Hurricane Katrina. Katrina and Wilma both did damage to my house, and Wilma did extreme damage to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Hollywood, FL, our church at the time. After all the months of storm clean up, hearing about violent, rushing wind as a marker of the arrival of the Holy Spirit was disquieting, to say the least.


As I mentioned last week, if we look at the lives of the disciples, we see that the arrival of the Holy Spirit can be disrupting, like a supercharged hurricane season. Friday night, I had a very different vision of the Holy Spirit loose in the world.


On Friday afternoon, church members arrived for the fish fry to find that June Rasmussen had made these exquisite aprons in a variety of colors, all of them reversible. They’re all cut from the same pattern, but that pattern fit all of us—as a woman who has spent more time than I like to think looking for clothes that fit my non-standard body, I can say with certainty that one pattern that fits a variety of bodies, that’s a rare and wonderful pattern. I know that we’re here to think about our spiritual lives and all of the spiritual gifts we’ve been given, but just for a moment, think about all the physical bodies in this room. Some of us are tall, and some of us aren’t. Some of us have bodies that are wide—and some of us aren’t. Some of us are male, and some of us are female. Yet these aprons fit us all.


At one point I looked across the fellowship hall and saw all of us wearing our aprons, and I thought, now here’s a metaphor for the Holy Spirit at work in the world—these aprons are a great metaphor for the Holy Spirit itself. That idea felt scary and taboo, like I was transgressing some important religious boundary.


I’m a Lutheran who went to a liberal arts college, so transgression of a religious boundary doesn’t scare me the way it might if I was brought up in a different tradition. Let us think about the way the Holy Spirit is like this apron. As Jesus did with strange parables, let us see what happens if we use a different metaphor to think in new ways—Holy Spirit as reversible apron.


Many of us have limited exposure to the book of Acts, reading from it only at Pentecost. If we continued to read the book of Acts, we’d see the disciples arguing about what they had experienced. Who gets to use the apron? The Holy Spirit came for who, exactly? If it was just for the Jews, then why speak in different languages? And for the next two thousand years, that argument continues—how do we interpret Pentecost? Do we go out and bring the message to all nations? Or do we stay closer to home?


While Christians have been having these discussions/arguments for thousands of years, the Holy Spirit continues to travel, making appearances in interesting and unexpected places, draping itself over a wide variety of humans. Like an apron, the Holy Spirit gives the wearer the courage to act boldly. I would hesitate to stand in front of a deep fryer without an apron—too much danger of getting burned or ruining clothes that aren’t easy for me to find. But with an apron? Sure, I’ll help fry. An apron comes with the promise that we will be protected if we take chances; similarly, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will bring protection when we are working for the Kingdom of God. We need not be afraid—we can act boldly for the Kingdom of God as we work for justice or create beautiful art or minister to the poor or take care of the generations coming after us or heal bodies or the earth or tend to families.


That promise of protection can give us courage, along with protection. Like an apron, if we trust in the Triune God, the Holy Spirit can help us find what we need in the moment—maybe it’s courage, maybe it’s boldness, maybe it’s the ability to communicate in new ways.

As I looked at the aprons, I was struck by how they are alike, yet different—different colors, different pockets that matched and contrasted, how the cloth on one side harmonized with the other side. I thought about how we each get the same presence of the Holy Spirit along with the mission of continuing the work that Jesus commissions us to do—and yet, like those aprons on Friday night, each person’s Holy Spirit experience is unique. The Holy Spirit moving in the world is like the best cloth shop with so many colors and patterns that the combinations are endless.


An apron doesn’t promise that our ventures will proceed in the ways that we’ve envisioned. And the presence of the Holy Spirit also does not come with the promise that we control the show—far from it. I wasn’t at Faith Lutheran when the first fish fries were planned, but I’m willing to bet that part of what was hoped for this project was new members. Do we have anyone here who came to membership in this church by way of one of the fish fry events?


No, most of us came for other reasons. But the fact that the fish fry doesn’t generate new membership doesn’t mean that they haven’t been valuable. I talked to many of our guests on Friday night, and they came for a variety of reasons, but almost all of them talked about the value of the fish fry to the community for so many reasons: the money raised, the chance to eat with old friends, the value of a good meal. I looked at all of us in our colorful aprons, so tired from the prep work and the service work, but having a good time, and I saw God at work in the world. I saw the Holy Spirit at work in the world, not in tongues of flame or violent rushing wind, but in a congregation having fun together, draped in protective aprons that another member made for us.


We might look around us, though, and worry about the future. Sure, we can pull together and do fish fries now, but what about in 10 years. We might rejoice in our 2 confirmands today, while feeling some sorrow that there aren’t more. We might lose sight of the fact that we only have part of the story.


Each Pentecost, we remember beginnings that might not have been seen as the start of something bold and new. Jesus breathes on the disciples—and then he leaves them. The Holy Spirit comes in the book of Acts, and the disciples will spend the rest of their lives trying to determine the direction they should go next.


Let us remember that we have not yet seen the completed creation or the fullness of the Triune God who breathed into the chaos and began this life we have together. We see God breathe new life in Genesis and Jesus breathe new life in John. On this Pentecost Sunday, let us remember to breathe. Let us go forth to claim our gifts that the Holy Spirit grants to us, sure in the knowledge, that, like a good apron, the Holy Spirit will equip us to do the work that needs us to do it.

Rain and Writing

It's the kind of rainy morning that's saying, "Wait and walk later."  Of course, the risk in waiting is that I might not go at all:  it could continue to rain or I could submit to laziness.  It's the kind of rainy morning where I have writing that I need to do, so waiting to walk makes sense.  

I was feeling bad that I had no sermon rough draft written, but by last night I was glad.  We went to the last fish fry of the season at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, where we discovered that a church member had made aprons for everyone, reversible at that.  As I looked at us all wearing our aprons, I thought about Pentecost and the metaphors for the Holy Spirit, and I got an idea that hadn't been there before.  I don't want to write about it further, for fear of losing the energy of the idea.  Once I've posted the sermon, I'll come back and put the links in this post. 

I am happy for the rain, even if it means my walk never happens.  We've been in such a deep drought across the southeast.

Of course, last night I was not happy for the rain as we drove back from the fish fry.  At first, as we left at 7:30, it was beautiful, with clouds across the mountain.  The rain settled in as we got to the top of the mountain; once we got to the road construction outside of Asheville, the rain got heavier and the road conditions worse with construction debris and barriers and various lines on the road.  I have rarely been more relieved when we pulled into our driveway as I was last night.

Let me keep this blog post short so that I can take advantage of this rainy morning and get my Pentecost sermon written.

Parish Church as Community _____(Builder, Resource, Space to Breathe)

Later today, we head to Bristol, TN for the last fish fry for the community.  It's an outreach activity of a sort, but we're not really reaching unchurched people.  In the far-eastern mountain part of the state, most people who want a church home have found one, and almost everyone already knows we're there.

So why do it?  In part, my very tiny congregation raises an impressive amount of money for the local charities that feed the hungry.  But in part, we do it to feed the souls who come for dinner.  It's a great space for people to sit and eat and to linger with others that they don't see as often.

This morning, I read a blog post by Pastor Clint Schnekloth, and I want to capture part of that blog post here, so that I have it in the future, in case the post goes away.  It captures what I've been thinking about ways that the physical church community, including the building, can be important in new ways that are old ways, particularly in the space to breathe/refuge way:

"But over time I have also come to think that many of us internalized a false opposition between the local and the public. We sometimes imagined that meaningful ministry always happened elsewhere, beyond the congregation itself, when in reality local congregations can become some of the most important sites of public trust remaining in contemporary life. The parish was treated as a launching pad for the “real” work of the gospel, rather than itself being a primary site of public life.

Theologically, however, Christianity has always resisted that abstraction. The incarnation is not an argument for generalized spirituality but an affirmation of locality. God does not merely send ideas into history but inhabits a place, a body, a neighborhood, a people. Jesus comes from Nazareth. He lives among actual communities, eats in homes, and becomes recognizable through repeated relationships. Even the resurrected Christ remains marked by wounds. Christian faith is therefore never purely conceptual or placeless. It is embodied, located, and relational.

I no longer think about congregational life primarily in terms of maintaining institutional machinery. Increasingly, I think in terms of cultivating conditions under which grace can circulate through a community. What we are tending in parish ministry is not only institutional continuity but a social and spiritual ecology shaped by trust, accompaniment, hospitality, beauty, mutual responsibility, and shared life. People arrive for worship, for healing from religious trauma, for acceptance of LGBTQIA+ children, for relief from loneliness, for grounding amid exhaustion and outrage, or for practical support in grief, family breakdown, or economic strain.

What has struck me more and more is that people often experience churches like ours less as providers of religious goods and more as places where they can breathe.

That may sound simple, but culturally it is becoming rarer and more important. In an anxious, fragmented, performative society, spaces where people can exist without fear, humiliation, ideological sorting, or relentless productivity become deeply public realities.

None of these dimensions exist independently."

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel (Pentecost)

  The readings for Sunday, May 24, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 2:1-21

First Reading (Alt.): Numbers 11:24-30

Psalm: Psalm 104:25-35, 37 (Psalm 104:24-34, 35b NRSV)

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Second Reading (Alt.): Acts 2:1-21

Gospel: John 20:19-23

Gospel (Alt.): John 7:37-39



Ah, Pentecost, day of fire and wind and foreign languages.

Contemplate how much of Scripture circles around the breath of God. Reread Genesis--creation comes into being because God breathes it into life. Something similar happens in the Gospel of John. Jesus breathes on his disciples and transforms them. Likewise in Acts--that great rushing wind. For those of you in love with words and older translations, we often find the same word in these passages: Pneuma (yes, that root that creates our modern word of pneumonia).

The twenty-first century Church, at least some branches of it, is in serious need of the breath of God. Perhaps you are too.

I often think of those first followers, who went out with the breath of God in them, and transformed the world. In the history of social movements, few have been as broadly successful as Christianity. My atheist friends would chime in that few have been as destructive--we both may be right. What an unlikely story: a small band of weirdly talented or distinctly ungifted men and women head out in pairs, carrying very little with them, and they survive enormous obstacles. In the process, they change the culture--and often, then, they move on. Think of the distances that they travelled--often on foot. Think of how hostile the culture was. You wouldn't be able to suspend your disbelief if you read it in a book.

The breath of God can transform us in the same way. Jesus transfers his powers to his disciples; we're given the power to do what he does. Now, if only we could believe it.

Maybe the key is to act as if you do believe it. You can do remarkable things, even if you don't feel like you can.

We're at a point in history that may prove to be a pivot.  We've had plagues and pandemics.  We've had political upheavals from left and right.  Weather related catastrophes happen regularly.  Many people are already considering how to use this moment in history for their own purposes.  How can we use this moment to create a society that's more in line with the vision that God has for us?

Maybe the thought of transformation exhausts you in the best of times.  Maybe the question of transformation threatens to overwhelm you.  Maybe you are already drowning.

So let's begin from a much simpler place.  Let's return to a fundamental religious practice and focus on our breathing.  In his book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, researcher James Nestor points us to a study showing that breathing in for 5-6 seconds and breathing out for 5-6 seconds can help restore our sense of calm and well being.  Breathing more deeply can heal us in all sorts of ways, especially if we remember to focus on our breath more often.

As we focus on our breathing, let's add a powerful meditative element.  As you inhale, envision God breathing into you. Breathe deeply.  Receive the breath of God.  As you exhale, imagine God's grace and goodness flowing into the world. 

The world needs to receive the breath of God.  The planet cries out for healing.  The stories of Pentecost show us ways to begin.

The Feast Day of Saint Dunstan

On this day in 988, Archbishop Dunstan died.  In this blog post, medieval scholar Eleanor Parker calls him "one of the greatest saints of Anglo-Saxon England - statesman, archbishop of Canterbury, scholar, monk, musician, metal-worker, and noted tormenter of devils."

Well, there's a resume!

The blog post talks about the history of Dunstan's time, the tumultuous tenth century, tumultuous in England, at least.  It was a time of Viking raids--but not constant raids.  During the times of no raiding, could people relax or did they always know the raids would start again?

It was also a time of internal fighting, with battles between Scotland and northern England.  To read the timeline in this Wikipedia article exhausts me.  But I remind myself that medieval war wasn't relentless, the way our more modern wars could be.  I imagine that civilian populations might not have known much at all about those battles that are listed.

It was a time of monastic developments, with new orders founded and old monasteries and abbeys resurrected.  Was this renewed interest because of the constant state of war?

Despite my knowledge of English literature, I don't really know much about this time period.  My knowledge of English literature in any kind of deep way begins with Chaucer, who lived from 1343-1400.  Most of us think of the post-Roman, pre-Chaucer time period as the Dark Ages, but historians have often pointed out the limits of that term.  Saint Dunstan shows that the time was much more complex.