Quilt Camp as Metaphor for Political Hope

Just after midnight yesterday, I made this Facebook post:  I fell asleep early-ish for an election night (by 9 p.m.), early-ish for most grown ups on any night, and scrolling through results at midnight, I'm struck by how many of the winners are women, particularly in races for governor. It's going to be a record breaking election day for all sorts of reasons, but women winners give me so much hope!

What I posted just after midnight as election day passed into the day after election day is still true--how profoundly moving to see so many women elected.  I am also surprised by how many mainline Protestant pastors and seminarians were elected; James Talarico got the most coverage, but James Hamilton, perhaps, has the most experience and influence in a religious sphere of everyone elected.

I have been watching coverage and postings, and I'm struck by what people want and hope for after these elections.  My want/hope is simple:  pass some legislation that can help some people.  I don't care about Epstein files or corruption investigations--go back to that housing bill that had bipartisan support and might be veto-proof in the new Congress.  I don't care about taxing billionaires--bring back the health care subsidies that helped people afford health insurance.  I don't care about impeachment--restore that expansion of the earned income tax credit that happened in the wake of the pandemic, the expansion that showed remarkable impact on alleviating child poverty during the brief time it was in effect.

I say that I don't care about ___________ -- I do care, but I don't think it's a good use of time and energy.  

Let's do some things that most of us can agree on, some legislation that will make life better for people who won't see those things happen without some federal money.  Legislation with money delivers power that individuals and groups can't do on their own.  My small country church agrees with my desire for more housing, especially for poor people.  We don't have the resources to build one house, let alone an apartment complex.  But legislation done well could attract development.

I will spend the rest of the week at Quilt Camp, which seems like a great metaphor for what the country needs.  We are women of varying beliefs, but we find our common ground when we come together.  We are women of varying skills, but we're all creating works of beauty.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, November 8 , 2026:

First reading and Psalm
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78:1-7

Alternate First reading and Psalm
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 or Amos 5:18-24
Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20 or Psalm 70

Second reading
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Gospel
Matthew 25:1-13

How mystifying, this parable of the wise bridesmaids with more than enough oil and the foolish, unprepared bridesmaids! I would have expected Jesus to make a different point, one about those with abundant resources sharing with those who have a lack.

But once again, Jesus is full of surprises. It's not a parable about sharing. And if you reread it again, you may realize, as I did this morning, that it's not a parable about staying awake either--all of the bridesmaids get drowsy and sleep.

Through his parables and more importantly, through his life, Jesus shows us that we're allowed to have down time. We're allowed to sleep. Jesus retreated periodically to recharge, and we should do.

But those foolish maidens aren't going on a women's retreat at a nearby church camp. No, they have come to their task unprepared. It's not like the task was unknown. I assume that one of the basic job requirements of being a bridesmaid is to have oil for the lamps.

Or maybe it's not one of the basic tasks. Note that the bridegroom is delayed. Maybe the foolish bridesmaids assumed the wedding party would come by the time it was dark. Maybe their fault lies in not anticipating the unforeseen.

So, what does this parable tell us for modern life? For those of us who are waiting and watching, what does it mean?

Too many people will read this text and see the wedding party as a metaphor for Heaven. Perhaps it is, although I imagine Jesus would have had a very different idea of Heaven than that of 21st century folks. Too many people will focus on the possibility of a second coming in our lifetime, and that's why they keep the lamps ready.

But God did not create this planet just to wreck it out of displeasure. Absolutely not. The Good News that Jesus gives us again and again is that the redemption of creation breaks through into our daily lives.

If we wait for a distant Heaven, we've missed the point. The Good News is that we don't have to wait. It's happening right now, in all sorts of ways.

But many of us will miss it, because we're not looking or we're not used to seeing God in our daily lives. Perhaps instead of keeping a gratitude journal or instead of asking how our days have been, perhaps a better question would be, "Where have you seen God today?"

In this way we'll keep our oil replenished and our lamps ready. We will know the bridegroom, because we will have gotten in the habit of seeing him.

All Saints Day Sermon Recording

We had a great All Saints Sunday at Faith Lutheran, in Bristol TN.  Before worship, the youth helped construct an altar/display area where we could put photos and mementos of our lost loved ones.

My sermon went well, particularly considering how stuck I felt writing it.  The recording of the sermon is here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I put the manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for November 1, 2026, The Feast of All Saints

November 1, 2026, All Saints Sunday
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 5: 1-12





This passage is often called a preamble or an overture to the largest sermon that Jesus will give. Some scholars argue that these verses, commonly called the Beatitudes, are some of the most famous and familiar of all substantial Gospel passages.


In this Gospel, we see this upside down approach that Jesus will take, and we see it early in his ministry, here in chapter 5. Even though we’re at the beginning of his ministry, just after he calls the first four of his disciples, we see Jesus claim his authority: he’s speaking from a mountain, which is where God speaks to prophets like Moses, and he’s speaking from a seated position, which the most respected rabbis did. He makes the announcement that he will repeat throughout his ministry: the Kingdom of Heaven is breaking through into the worldly empire—and what a different reign it will be.



Those of us who grew up going to church have heard these Beatitudes over and over again and again throughout the years—and if you’re wondering what happened to the Woe to You Who Have Good Things now part, you’re remembering the version from Luke, not this version from Matthew. We may have lost sight of how strange the Beatitudes sound.


Even in the time of Jesus, the Beatitudes would have seemed counterintuitive. Blessed is a short hand way of saying that a person has found favor with God, and that God has given them something special to show that they have found favor with God. With that in mind, let’s return to the list of attributes that show a sign of God’s favor: those who are depressed, those who have lost loved ones, those who don’t brag, perhaps because they don’t have a reason to brag, and then at the end, those who are on the wrong side of their government.


In the ancient world, these are not signs of God’s favor. Ancient people would expect a sign of God’s favor to be something that elevates us: increased wealth or good health or being promoted by the king. And even today, this list seems counterintuitive. We live in a time that would offer a very different list of who the important and influential people are: those who control big companies or governments, the ones who star in movies, or on a smaller level, the ones who have the good jobs or the houses with lots of square footage on lots of acreage—and the resources necessary to maintain it all.


Even in religious circles, we see this idea. We are about 20 years past the peak of the prosperity gospel message, the books with variations of the God wants you to be rich titles, but the idea still lingers. If doors open for us, it must be because God ordained it.


This theology can also be seen in some of our popular slogans—like when God closes a door, God opens a window.


Of course, this theology comes with all sorts of problems, but here’s the main one. If the door doesn’t open and there’s no open window to be found, How will that impact our faith in God? If our prayers are not answered, does that mean our faith has been too shaky? How do we love a God who answers the prayers for deliverance for some people and not others?


Much of the Gospel of Matthew is written to an audience who would be asking similar questions, after Rome has brutally repressed their communities. There is good news in this teaching: the Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the powerful, which in the Gospel of Mattthew is the empire that taxes people so that they lose their lands, the empire that forces people into forced servitude, the empire that sends wealth back to Rome. God is to be found with those who have been broken, with those who have lost so much and cannot find their way out of mourning.


Jesus comes to tell us that the world’s ways are not God’s ways. Read this text one night as you watch T.V. and marvel at the difference in values. The world worships wealth and power. The world worships the kind of beauty impossible for most of us. The world worships those who boss the rest of us around. The world exalts those who trample on others to get what they want.


Our Gospel this week reminds us of God's rules, the way that we succeed in God's eyes. Our Gospel this week gives us God's promise that we will be comforted, that even though we may be meek in the eyes of the world, we will be filled with good things.


Today’s Gospel reminds us of how to act when we're turning to the ways of God. The middle verses, 6-10. These verses give instructions for how we can join together in the redemption of the world We are to treat ourselves and others with mercy, with compassion, with comfort. The text reminds us that just because we follow Jesus, our path will not be easy. On the contrary, we will likely face persecution. But Jesus promises us that we will be O.K., that we will find richer lives. This text tells us how we are to act and what we are to value.


Jesus comes to tell us that God is doing a new thing. In a world where mourners find no comfort, in a world where the meek get trampled further, and in a world where those who yearn for justice don’t live long enough to see it, Jesus comes to announce the upside down Kingdom of God that is breaking through right now. Jesus reminds us over and over again that worldly empires will make all sorts of promises that they have no intention of keeping. God’s covenant offers true life, true redemption, for us and for all of creation.


On this All Saints Sunday, let us commit again to the Kingdom of God, not the empires of this world. Let us draw inspiration from the saints who have gone on before us. Let us take comfort in the vision of the Kingdom of God, from the last verses of our first reading:

“For this reason they are before the throne of God
  and worship him day and night within his temple,
  and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
 16 They will hunger no more and thirst no more;
  the sun will not strike them,
  nor any scorching heat,
 17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
  and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
 and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Halloween at the Abbey

This week I used 2 of my own poems in writing classrooms.  I wrote both of them when I thought of the first time I went to Mepkin Abbey in 2004.  Halloween was on a Sunday, and on both Saturday night and Sunday, we could see and hear trick-or-treaters across the river.  I also remember walking down the long drive with a friend at sunset; in the distance, we saw figures in white gowns.  We knew they were monks, but they had a ghostly presence.

I thought they might give us a blessing or a nugget of wisdom.  Instead one of them said, "Don't forget to vote on Tuesday and make sure you vote for the right one."

I wrote a poem with a lot of the elements from that first visit:

Autumn at the Abbey

I drove seven hundred miles from the tip
of Spanish speaking Florida to the Gullah drenched
lowcountry marsh.

I arose in the wee small hours of the morning
to drive up the spine of the state
with truckers and other insomniacs.

I saw the flaming
orange fields, the flickers
of light across the river.

I have eaten eggs from the chickens
raised by monks and been sprinkled
with holy water before bed.

I saw the baby Jesus
created from a
cornucopia of materials.

I harmonized with monks
and chanted my way through a quarter
of the Psalms.

I watched the monks at sunset
walking under Spanish moss draped
trees, ghosts from a different century.

---

Later I rewrote the poem and tried to make the Halloween elements more explicit:

All Hallows at the Abbey

I awoke very early to sing
lauds with the monks,
and then I set out for the river.

In the pre-sunrise mists that rose off the currents,
I would not have been surprised
to see a runaway slave.

In the afternoon, the fields flamed
orange and light winked
across the water.

I returned to the chapel to harmonize
with monks and chant
the Psalms that still speak to us.

As the sun sank, across the river, candles flickered
in carved pumpkins and costumed children participated
in a different ancient ritual.

As we walked to compline service, monks in white robes
walked under trees dripping with Spanish moss,

ghosts from a different century. 

---

I like them both, and what I like most is how the poem process captures the memory of that long ago visit for me.

All Sorts of Treats: Halloween for Christians

This post will offer no condemnation of witches or wizards. I’ve had fun at costume parties, and I have more than one happy childhood memory of trick-or-treating around my neighborhood. Still, I know that this holiday poses some interesting questions for Christians.

 It’s worth pointing out that when I was a child, in the 1970’s, this holiday was different.  I don't remember being able to buy costumes at a store; we assembled them out of what was on hand, usually our parents' clothes and make up and whatever we could construct (or what our mothers might sew).   Now Halloween is the second largest holiday in terms of what we spend on it, second only to Christmas. Candy, costumes, decorations, pumpkins: when you total what you spend on this holiday, you might be shocked.

Those of us with a social justice conscience must ask ourselves if this is the best use of our money. Even if you celebrate simply, you’ll likely spend a bundle on candy to give out to trick-or-treaters. In a year when we’re seeing one of the worst humanitarian crises in a century, as Syrian refugees and others fleeing the Middle East wash up on Europe's shores, we must ask if it’s ethical to spend our money this way. And the planet cannot afford too many more years of excess, whether it be candy wrappers or plastic/polyester (petroleum based, after all) costumes from stores.

There are ways to soothe that social justice concern. We could keep track of our spending and in November, we could send a donation that matches or exceeds our Halloween costs to an agency that tries to alleviate suffering, like Lutheran World Relief or ELCA World Hunger. We could make our decorations: instead of buying strings of orange lights that come from China, we could buy pumpkins from the local church that uses the pumpkin patch to fund education programs, and we could support local farmers when we buy mums which last until the poinsettias make an appearance. For that matter, we could decide to make our costumes instead of paying top dollar for flimsy costumes from the store.

We could spend some time thinking about those costumes and the human desire to transform ourselves into someone else. If we want to inject some deeper thought into our holiday, we could ask ourselves about the deeper meaning behind our costumes, if there is one. If we want to take a theological turn, we could spend some time considering the way we’d like to be transformed, and the promises of transformation that our triune God has made to humanity and all of creation.

We could also think of Halloween themes and the yearnings of our human hearts. Why are we so in love with vampires right now? Do we long for eternal life? What differences in the eternal life scenario are offered by vampires and by Christ? Or what do zombies tell us about our culture?  If we choose a superhero costume, what do we long for: flight, strength, invisibility, cool gadgets? Do we want transformation for ourselves or are we hoping for a savior? Again, we might think about the salvation narratives offered by superhero tales and that of our own Christian tradition.

Halloween also offers an interesting opportunity to think about the issues of good and evil. So many Halloween narratives essentially boil down to a good versus evil theme. How do these themes mesh with Christian narratives?

So, as a Christian with a conscience, I'd wish us all a happy Halloween. May we discover what haunts us and be blessed with a waking dream of how to banish the ghouls that prevent us from the life that God would want us to have.

Past Pumpkin Patch -- with Labyrinth

These waning days of pumpkin patches makes me think of past experiences.  Back in 2013, I wrote the following post, which continues to be one of my pumpkin-themed favorites:

Walking the Pumpkin Labyrinth

Yesterday I got to my church early to help set up for the Fall Festival we were having.  I wasn't really needed, so I walked over to our pumpkin patch. 

We've sold a lot of pumpkins since we unloaded the truck 9 days ago!  There were pathways through the pumpkin piles, so I walked slowly, dare I say, meditatively.

I thought about how similar it was to walking a labyrinth--and how different.  The main difference, of course, is that a labyrinth goes in a set pattern so that there's one way in to the center, no matter how much the walker winds around the center.  The pumpkin patch didn't have that quality.

It was an interesting difference, to stand and see all the pathways open to me.  In many ways, that felt more like real life.  Each path seemed equally appealing--again, like real life.

I have always envied people who have one pressing path, the way they know they are supposed to go.  I admire people who don't let themselves get distracted by all the other possibilities.  I do wonder if they get to a point in life where they feel some sorrow about all the experiences that their singlemindedness denied them.

As I walked the pumpkin "labyrinth," every so often I caught a whiff of the pumpkins themselves.  You may not think that pumpkins have a smell, but after spending 3 hours carrying them during the offload from the truck, I'm here to report that they do.  I found that organic smell to be wonderful.

There were also places where I could tell that a pumpkin had met its end.  Here and there were piles of seeds and pumpkin muck.  And some of the pumpkins are not far from descending into decay and rot.  I haven't walked a labyrinth that has such explicit reminders of mortality, but it seemed appropriate.

As I walked amidst the pumpkins, I thought about the wonderful diversity in the pumpkin world, and the wonderful diversity in other populations.  I thought about how a pumpkin looks like a head. 

I thought about the role of pumpkins in our culture, how strange our ancestors would find it that we take a gourd that takes so long to grow and carve faces into it.  They'd probably see it as a terrible waste of a nutritious food. 

I thought about the wonderful holiday special, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."  I thought about the sincere pumpkin patch we've created on the front lawn of the church.

Our front lawn is on a very busy corner, 72nd Avenue and Pines Blvd., with the south campus of Broward College across the street.  One night, a drunk driver plowed into our pumpkin patch.  Thankfully, it was very late and no one was shopping for pumpkins.  Some of us still have nightmares about how it could have been much more terrible.

As I walked, the sun was beginning to get high enough that we could all see it.  Soon the air would turn hot again, but I still had a few minutes to enjoy the slightly cooler air.  Part of me wanted to sit on a pumpkin and ponder, but I liked the act of walking to each pumpkin pile and paying a mental tribute.  I liked the serenity that came to my brain from walking slowly and with purpose through the pumpkins.

Soon it was time to go to spin class and to use physicality in a different way.  Both experiences left me with a sense of calm.  But the pumpkin patch left me with a sense of awe.

The Feast Day of Saint Simon and Saint Jude

 Today we celebrate the lives of Saint Simon and Saint Jude--two of the disciples about whom we really don't know much.  

Jude was the disciple called Judas, but not Judas Iscariot, so some traditions shorten the name.  The Gospels of Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus.  Once we thought he wrote the book of Jude in the New Testament, but now, scholars don't.  He is known as the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless situations--and hospital workers.

Simon isn't Simon Peter, but Simon the Zealot.  The Zealots were a subset of the Jewish people who were nationalist in the extreme.  Perhaps they are an offshoot of the Maccabees or maybe they were a more simple form of terrorist, rising up against the Romans for any variety of reasons.  He is the patron saint of curriers, woodcutters, and tanners.

We celebrate them together because tradition has it that they travelled together as missionaries.  Tradition tells us, but not many original sources.  Were they really martyred in Persia?  That's the most widespread tradition, but there are others that say Armenia, Britain, Egypt, and points in between.

When I contemplate the 12 original disciples, I'm struck by the wide variety of people called by Jesus.  I'm amazed at how Jesus could keep them a cohesive group--and when he didn't, it still worked anyway.  That gives me hope for today.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel for All Saints

 The All Saints Sunday readings for Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026:

First Reading: Revelation 7:9-17

Psalm: Psalm 34:1-10, 22

Second Reading: 1 John 3:1-3

Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12

This Sunday we celebrate All Saints Day. Most churches focus on loved ones of the congregation who have died; some churches give special emphasis to members who have died since the last All Saints Day. Some churches will be thinking about the larger collection of saints.

The Gospel reading for today at first seems jarringly out of place. Why are we back to the Sermon on the Mount? But after reading it, we see the connections. These are the behaviors of those whom we traditionally consider saints, people like Mother Theresa. They should be the behaviors of those of us still on earth who consider ourselves to be part of that saintly pantheon.

When we read Gospels like these, many of us might think that we do these things as our admission ticket for Heaven. But some of the more interesting books of theology that I've read lately remind us that Christ didn't come to take us to Heaven. In fact, the concept of Heaven with all our loved ones waiting for us there is relatively new to Christian thought. Christ came to announce that God's plan for redeeming the world had begun. That plan involves our pre-death world, which is not just a place where we wait around until it's our turn to go to Heaven. No, this world is the one that God wants to redeem. Christ comes to invite us to be part of the redemptive plan.

Jesus comes to give us instructions for how we can join together in the redemption of the world. Think of the Sermon on the Mount as a behavior manual. As you move through your days, view your actions and your thoughts through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. Do your thoughts and actions support this vision of peace, justice, mercy, and comfort? If not, how can you change to be more in alignment with God's vision of redemption?

We could use this All Saints Day as a reminder that we need to jump start our efforts to act as saints in this world. If that behavior means that we also get to be saints in the next world, swell.

But the good news of Jesus is that we don't have to wait until we die to experience redemption. We're already saints. We just need to remember to be about the business of sainthood, and to avoid the behaviors that distract us from our mission.

Recording of Reformation Sunday

We had a good Reformation Sunday at Faith Lutheran.  When I started writing my sermon, I wanted to show all the ways that Luther reformed the Church, not just the anti-indulgence, anti-corruption ways.  Yesterday afternoon, I thought of other ideas I could have included.  But overall, I think my sermon went well.  It was a high energy day at church, coming off of a successful Chili Fest on Saturday.

You can watch the sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read along, I posted the manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, October 25, 2026, Reformation Sunday

October 25, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott





Reformation Sunday



Here we are at Reformation Sunday, a Sunday chosen because it is closest to the day when Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door in Wittenberg, Germany. Having this day as one of our big Lutheran festivals might make us think that those 95 Theses are Luther’s biggest and best theological ideas. In the Spring, I took a Lutheran Confessions class at United Lutheran Seminary, one of our 6 Lutheran seminaries. It’s a class that looks at the foundational documents written by Luther.


On the first day of class, our professor made the startling claim that Luther’s 95 Theses, one of the founding documents we celebrate today, was not the most important work of theology that Luther wrote. By then, at the age of 33, some of his earlier theology is much more groundbreaking. You might say, “Who was this renegade professor that the seminary allowed to teach this class?” In fact, my professor was Guy Erwin, president of the seminary and former bishop of the Southwest California Synod. During the semester, Erwin proved his point. It is too easy to be raised Lutheran and have a distorted or shallow view of our theology as Lutherans.


In fact, if you read the 95 Theses, you’ll see that most of them are fairly straight forward and not radical at all. If you’re like me, you might have spent much of your life thinking the theses nailed to the door were all about indulgences, the medieval church practice of taking money with the promise of reduced time in purgatory and a faster route to Heaven for loved ones who have died.


His critique of indulgences is what got him into trouble with both the church and the emperor—and during his time the fortunes of both church and emperor were intertwined in a way that can be hard to remember today. In fact, today, about 60% of the Lutheran church budget in Germany still comes through the German government—but the fortunes of the government are independent from the church. Luther’s attack on indulgences is one of the events that eventually leads to the separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.


We might think of the medieval Church that shaped Luther and imagine it was the kind of church like the ones we miss, the ones we’ve heard about that existed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, churches that were full of activities not just on Sundays but throughout the week. We might think of a church like Faith Lutheran this week-end: a harvest festival on Saturday and worship on Sunday.


Medieval cathedrals may have been community centers, but they did little to enrich the spiritual lives of those who entered. People came to Church primarily for individual Confession, not worship. Medieval believers, before the reforms of Luther and others, were unlikely to have the Eucharist very often; most believers might have it once or twice a year. And most of those believers would not be able to explain why it was important.


We remember Luther’s critique of indulgences, but his vision of a church as a force for education is a far more important change. In Luther’s day, people knew that they had rules they had to follow, rules handed to them by the church and reinforced by the government, but they couldn’t explain why. Most believers couldn’t read, but they did memorize the rules—a condition which may remind us of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, who wanted everyone to follow the rules given in the Law. Luther wanted believers to think about what they memorized and why it was important.


In order to accomplish this task of a deeper understanding, Luther engaged in a life-long re-forming of the local church. He saw the church of his day as a sacramental gate keeper, managing who got to go to Heaven and how long it would take to get there. In contrast, Luther built a church focused on teaching and educating, a church in service to worshippers instead of a church with church leaders in charge.


To become a church serving believers, Luther focused on changing the priesthood. Many priests in Luther’s day didn’t have much education. But Luther was much more concerned with corruption, particularly priests who had sexual relationships with women. It was not uncommon for priests to have marriage-like relationships, and Luther believed this hypocrisy undermined faith—faith in God and faith in the Church. Luther talked about the need to regulate clergy and to focus on the parish. He redefined power saying that priests should be in service to the parish, not the other way round. Luther spent his life formulating the best ways for clergy and lay people to build a life together in a parish.


Luther also focused on home life, seeing the home as a kind of parish, another place where faith should be fostered. Many of us are familiar with Luther’s Small Catechism or we’ve heard of it (it’s in the ELW, if you want a refresher, p. 1160). Luther wrote this work as a teaching tool to be used around a household table, a way for families to have conversations about what really matters.


We spend time praising Luther for his work to get rid of indulgences, but we really should also be praising him for his work on education and literacy. He believed we should all be able to read the Bible for ourselves and interpret it in community. During his time, if someone wanted information, he or she would need to go find the one or two people who knew how to read and trust their reading. During his time in hiding, Luther translated the Latin Bible into the everyday German used by ordinary people and new technology, the printing press, made it widely available. The world would never be the same.


I don’t want to ignore the problems that came with Luther’s reforming ways. You can go back through my Reformation Day sermons and note that I don’t spend much time talking about Luther’s antisemitism or about the Peasant’s Revolt which resulted in the slaughter of 100,000 poor farmers. Times of reformation can be a time of powerful change, but those changes aren’t all positive.


We live in a time more similar to Luther’s, and Christ’s, than we may realize. People in Luther’s time were worried about a variety of gathering storms, from peasant uprisings to conflicts further away. Constantinople to the east had fallen to the Muslims, in Christ’s time, Jerusalem had fallen to Rome, and it was clear that neither would stop at the capture of those ancient capital cities. We, too, feel malevolent forces gathering, a variety of forces set to wreak havoc upon our lives.


Then as now, people were increasingly oppressed: faith in the church was diminished, adherence to law, church and civil, was strict, individualism and individual rights were suppressed, and the cost to simply live was becoming more difficult to achieve.


Based on the last three decades, the balance of the twenty-first century will have as many challenges as the time period during which Luther and the reformers lived and worked. With the grounding provided by these confessional documents, with their emphasis on grace, mercy and learning, a willingness to lift a pint with our political adversaries and share a song, along with a bit of luck and Divine providence, perhaps we, too, as a committed people of God, can successfully navigate our current century and emerge with even richer traditions that will shape future generations for centuries to come.

Reformation Eve

Reformation Sunday comes early this year--it's tomorrow.

You don't have much time left to decide how you'll spend Reformation Sunday.  Will you be going to church?  Protestant or Catholic?  Will you sing some stout German hymns?  Will you drink stout German beer?

Even if you're not a church going type, the Reformation has changed your life--after all, you can worship in your own language and read the Bible and think about theology for yourself.  I won't cover 500 years of history here, but suffice it to say that those Reformers launched us further down the road towards modernity than we would have been without them.  I have argued that Martin Luther did more to promote literacy for the masses than anyone before or since--and that's just one example.

In 2016, The New York Times had a great article about Martin Luther.  It talks about the Reformation pamphlet, which Luther perfected--it could be read to illiterate masses, and it was short enough that literate Germans would actually read it.  He knew how to use imagery and how to choose collaborators.  He could write quickly--and he knew the publishing process inside and out, in terms of the mechanics and onward.

The article ends this way:  "'He [Luther] created a media storm with virtually no precedent in the age of print and became the most published author in the history of publishing, up to that moment,' he [Dr. Pettigrew, a Luther scholar] said. “Great men and women seize the moment, and I think he did.'”

It's good to remember that individual people can change the course of history.  If you could travel back in time, before Luther became so famous/infamous for his work, would people believe that Luther would be the person that changed the world so much?  A tortured monk and a university teacher?  I can imagine most people saying, "Who?  Not the emperor?  Not the pope?"

Is there a religious person or group that is even now working to change the Church in such ways that we will barely recognize it 500 years from now?  Or is the lesson that we don't recognize the true reformers in our midst?

Or maybe these thoughts are too heavy for a Sunday morning.  Maybe you want to dress in red today and think about your personal Reformations for which you yearn.

May your bulwarks never fail! Wait, we don't use that line (from "A Mighty Fortress") any more. Drat! How will children learn that word?

That song seems more appropriate than ever for our age. Societal institutions left and right have shown us of their inadequacy. We're lucky to have God as our shield and comfort.

So, in whatever way you celebrate, may you have a meaningful Reformation Sunday.  I plan to spend some time thinking about grace and the places in my life that could use some grace.  I will pray that God fill me with the spirit of grace as I move through these darkening days of November.

The Feast Day of Saint James

I did not realize until recently just how many James exist in the circle of Jesus.  The more famous Saint James is the one we celebrate in July, the one that people celebrate by walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points.

James the Brother of Jesus was one of the early leaders of the Church, which may or may not tell us that he's not one of the ones that the Gospel writer of Mark presents as coming to Jesus to try to get him to be quiet.  Or maybe he is, and he changed his mind.  James the Just is another name given to James the brother of Jesus, which suggests to me that he would be capable of changing his mind.

There are places in Acts and throughout the letters that make up so much of the New Testament that make us think that James is one of the ones in charge of the early Church, along with Peter.  He seems to be one of the ones making big decisions for the larger group.  He's given credit for helping move the early Church to the inclusion of Gentiles.  There are other scholars who see James the Brother of Jesus as more traditional, that it was Paul who reached out to Gentiles and James who argued for staying with Mosaic Law.  Circumcision played a big role in these deliberations, according to some scholars.

The more I look for answers, the more I am struck by how much we do not know about the early Church or about Jesus as a historical figure.  From there, it's a short realization to how easy it is to make the early Church figures be who we want or need them to be.

Still, I am grateful for their work.  On this morning where I've been listening to Ezra Klein's podcast about how Artificial Intelligence through Machine Learning has the capability to destroy the world (more specifically, humans), it's good to remember that the end of the world has been forecast many times, and so far, we persist.

Theology of the Pumpkin Patch

Every year, as the lectionary returns to readings that use sheep or crop yields as a metaphor, I wonder what has been lost to modern ears. Years ago, as I helped unload pumpkins from an 18-wheeler truck to our church’s pumpkin patch, one of the children asked, “Why are they so dirty?”

I said, "Because last week, they were growing in a field."

I could see the child looking at me as if I might be joking; after all, he's never seen pumpkins growing in a field. He may never have seen anything growing in a field. We are in an urban area, after all. I wondered if I should do more to explain.

And then I thought of all those agricultural metaphors, where Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like ... .” That parable of the seeds and the different types of ground – do we really understand that parable if we’ve never planted anything?

Each year, many churches transform part of the grounds into a giant pumpkin patch. It’s one of the more popular fundraising and community outreach events that my congregation did in its old space, and subsequent references are to those past years, along with current pumpkin patches. In my search for relevant metaphors, I’ve wondered, what does this pumpkin patch tell us about God and God’s community?

Our pumpkin patch contains all sorts of pumpkins, both the traditional orange kind and several types of green pumpkins. We offer both pumpkins and gourds. We have every size of pumpkin you could want, from the largest pumpkins that could be a chair, to those we’d use for a pie, to the very small, cute kind that you can put on a fireplace mantel.

In the variety of the pumpkins, we get a sense of God the creator who doesn’t stop at just one possibility. We get a sense that in God’s creation there’s room for every kind of pumpkin.

Those pumpkins don’t come off the truck by themselves. Our church must provide the labor to get the pumpkins to where we want them to be. When I helped unload the pumpkins through the years, I thought, “I’ve never felt like a part of a more seamless Christian community than I do right now.”  

That’s not exactly true. But the times that shine in my memory are times of similar service: serving dinner to the homeless, doing a winterization project for homes of the poor in the inner city, working together to create a wonderful vacation Bible school experience for children. 

Unloading the pumpkins also reminds me of something else that I cherish about church communities: At their best, there is room for everyone. The littlest ones can carry pumpkins, if they want to help that way. Those of us without the strength to carry pumpkins can help sell them. 

I think of myself as having no upper-body strength, but clearly I’m wrong. By the end of an October night, I had carried at least 400 pumpkins. I would not have expected that I could do that since I can’t do 10 pushups at a time without my arms screaming at me. And yet, it needed to be done, and so I kept moving the pumpkins and pushing through my fatigue. At the end of the night, although I was exhausted and covered in dirt and pumpkin gunk, I felt an exhilaration that I hadn’t anticipated. Similarly, God has plenty of surprises for us. 

As I cradled those pumpkins, which so resemble human heads, I felt a strange tenderness toward them, the tenderness that I imagine God feels toward us all. In some ways, pumpkins are so sturdy and yet so fragile. All it takes is one slip and the pumpkin is rendered useless, a pulpy mess of slime and gunk. And yet, even from that accident could come new life, if one planted the pumpkin seeds. From that one pumpkin, we could grow a whole new patch, life out of death.

As I drove home after we unloaded the pumpkins, I thought about all the ways I was surrounded by evidence of God's grace: an abundance of pumpkins, a great group of fellow workers, the beautiful sunset, the almost full moon, the exuberant children, blessing after blessing. I felt gratitude for my healthy body that could carry all those pumpkins. I said a prayer for those who had grown and harvested the pumpkins in a distant field in New Mexico. I went home to wash the pumpkin gunk and soil off me, and I felt additional gratitude for warm water and a cold swimming pool in which to soak my sore feet. I felt more appreciation than usual for my soft bed and clean sheets.

The next morning, I woke up with very sore arms and a soul singing with gratitude. I said hello to the pumpkins I brought home, pumpkins that won't be here very long.

None of us will be here very long. I want to adopt a more sacramental approach to life. I want to see evidence of God's grace all around me, in the lowliest gourd, in the greatest pumpkin, in every human who crosses my path. 

Support Your Local Church Pumpkin Patch

I have been part of a church that offers a pumpkin patch every year, a huge undertaking, from the offloading of the pumpkins to the selling of them.

That South Florida church funded a variety of special projects and ongoing ministries with this pumpkin patch.  When the church had a traditional Sunday school, funds went there.  The church used the funds to help repair the roof that covers the part of the building that is more used by community groups than by the church..  The church used the funds to pay for Vacation Bible School, an event which is attended by more neighborhood children than church member children.

I love the fact that the pumpkin patch itself is a form of community outreach and a service of sorts.  I love that it funds other community services.  I imagine that most churches who have a pumpkin patch use the earnings in similar ways.

Picture from the Ghost of Pumpkin Patch Past

So, this week-end, as you prepare for Halloween, drop by a local church pumpkin patch.  Your dollars will go further than if you bought a pumpkin at a grocery store. 

Meditation on Reformation Sunday, 2026

The readings for Sunday, October 25, 2026:

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm: Psalm 46
Second Reading: Romans 3:19-28
Gospel: John 8:31-36

Here we are, back at Reformation Sunday.  Each year, as this Sunday of celebration approaches, I find myself thinking about what needs to be reformed and what should be preserved.

Perhaps you feel like we've been living Reformation, not just in the ELCA, but across denominations.  Maybe you’re in an angry space; maybe you’re saying, “Hey, I have some theses of my own that I’d like to nail to a nearby church door.” It’s been a tough few years/decades for many of us, as we’ve watched our denominations wrestle with various issues. Maybe you find yourself feeling very sympathetic to the Catholic church of Luther's day, the Church that found itself torn asunder by many movements of reform.

Regardless of the side on which we sit with these recent struggles, we might find ourselves feeling a bit fearful. We might worry about schism. We probably worry that there won't be a place for us in the church that emerges from all of this.

We should take heart that the Church has always been in the process of Reformation. There are great Reformations, like the one we'll celebrate this Sunday, or the Pentecostal revolution that's only 100 years old, but has transformed the developing world in ways that Capitalism never could. There are smaller ones throughout the ages as well. Movements which seemed earth-shattering at the time (monastic movements of all kinds, liberation theology, ordination of women, lay leadership) may in time come to be seen as something that enriches the larger church. Even gross theological missteps, like the Inquisition, can be survived. The Church learns from past mistakes as it moves forward.

Times of Reformation can enrich us all. Even those of us who reject reform can find our spiritual lives enriched as we take stock and measure what's important to us, what compromises we can make and what we can't. It's good to have these times where we return to the Scriptures as we try to hear what God calls us to do. It may be painful, but any of these processes may lead us to soil where we can bloom more fruitfully.

We may think of that metaphor and feel despair, as if we will never be truly rooted, flowering plants. But rootlessness can be its own spiritual gift. The spiritual wanderers have often been those who most revitalized the Church, or on a smaller level, their spiritual communities. The spiritual wanderers are often the ones who keep all of us true to God's purpose.

If you have been feeling despair, take heart. Jesus promises that we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free. You might not be feeling like you know what the truth is at this current point; you may feel tossed around by the tempests of our current times. But Jesus promises that we will know the truth. We will be set free. We don't have a specific date at which we'll know the truth. But we will.

Rest in God's promise that we are all redeemable; indeed, we are redeemed. Rest in the historic knowledge that the Church has survived times of greater turbulence than our own. Rest in Luther's idea that we are saved by grace alone. Rest.

Recording of Sunday Sermon

We had a good day at church yesterday, and I felt good about both sermons.  Usually, I'm a bit more proud of my youth sermon, but yesterday, I thought my adult sermon was better.  I was pleased that I could talk about modern politics in general, without approving of one political power/leader over another.  I used the election season ad as ongoing motif, using an ad as a reminder both to pray and to praise God's creation.

Here's how I described the sermon in a Facebook post:  "My sermon today at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bristol, Tennessee addressed taxes and empire (Cyrus' and Caesar's) and God's imprint and ended with a suggestion that we treat political ads as monastery bells."

You can view the recording here on my YouTube channel, and if you'd like to read along, I posted the manuscript in this blog post; I'm intrigued by how often I added to the script.

Sermon for Sunday, October 18, 2026

October 18, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 22:15-22


How interesting to have this text in an election year, in the closing weeks of this election year, when it seems impossible to escape political ads. Everywhere we turn, there’s someone yelling about what someone has done with our tax dollars, and we can be sure, in the closing weeks of an election campaign, these ads are not going to deliver good news.


The Pharisees in today’s text are not interested in good news either.


In fact, they are hoping to get rid of the person standing right in front of them, Jesus, who has been preaching good news. Make no mistake—the Pharisees aren’t pro-Caesar or pro-Rome. Then as now, no one likes paying taxes, particularly to a government that one doesn’t approve of but is forced to endure.


But Jewish leaders have navigated their way to what they see as the best of a bad situation. They collect taxes from worshippers, and Rome will leave them alone to lead worship and protect some of their interests as they wish—until the year when Rome destroys it all, which has already happened when the Gospel of Matthew was written.


Jesus knows he’s given an impossible choice of answers to the tax question. If he says to pay taxes, he looks like he’s on the side of the oppressors, the Romans, who are taxing people out of everything they own. If he says not to pay, he gives the Romans even more reason to crack down. He’s given 2 impossible answers, and he offers a third alternative.


As always, with Jesus, the answer offers a much deeper response than the Pharisees were expecting.



In today’s Gospel, as in so many encounters between Jesus and the people with more power, we can almost hear Jesus saying, “You could be asking me any question, and this issue is the one that you think most deserves our attention?”


Jesus uses the coin to ask the question of what has grabbed our attention. Jesus wants us to consider what has left its imprint on us. Is it God? Or is it the powers and principalities of this world? Caesar’s image was on the Roman coin, along with words proclaiming him God—it’s no different today, although the larger collection of voices proclaiming themselves to be the one true savior is much noisier and amplified.


In claiming to be our only hope for human flourishing, worldly powers will claim all sorts of people and possessions for themselves. It was true in the first century, and it’s true today. But Jesus proclaims an older message, one delivered by ancient prophets and in the Psalms, that everything belongs to God. Look at our reading from Isaiah today in verse 4: “I call you by your name; I give you a title, although you do not know me.” Here God speaks to a foreign ruler, Cyrus, king of Persia, centuries before Caesar, a warrior who had created the biggest empire the world had ever seen and which also no longer exists.


We have two readings that remind us that earthly empires come and go, even when they are so large that they seem to be as permanent as the mountains that surround us. In an election year, we realize acutely how our earthly powers want us to believe that they can achieve permanence for all of us. Our Bible texts tell us over and over again that the only permanence comes from God.


Humans always have worldly powers trying to pull our attention away from God. Worldly powers always demand our allegiance or our persecution. It might be political powers, and the attempt by worldly leaders to capture our loyalty is just more apparent in an election year—but make no mistake, it’s always there.


You may be like me, thinking you’ve been mostly successful at avoiding all this election year drama. You probably don’t need my reminder that worldly powers are a much larger collection of forces who are whispering or yelling an anti-God message into our brains or using God language to promote themselves.


Maybe it’s a boss. Maybe it’s other types of advertising that convinces us that if we could just buy the latest whatever, we’d be happy. Maybe it’s our phone that we can’t seem to put down for very long. Maybe it’s money worries or health worries.


We give our attention to many things that are not God. Maybe it’s time to retrain our attention.


Last week at the onground intensive that claimed much of my time and attention, we sat at tables arranged in a semicircle. As we considered this text, our leader, who just happened to be our SE Synod bishop Kevin Strickland, asked us to stare at each face around the circle. He reminded us that all of creation, including every human face, bears the imprint of God not Caesar. He asked us to see each other as God sees us, our God who claimed us long ago.


It was a powerful experience, and it was a profound repudiation of all the voices that are so loud we may not hear them distinctly anymore. I’m talking about all the external voices that we’ve internalized, the ones that tell us that we’re not good enough, that we’ll never achieve enough, the voices that remind us of all the ways we lack so much.


And now for the real challenge. It’s easy to stare at the faces of fellow pastors in training and see them as God sees them. Can I do the same for everyone?


If we could train ourselves to look at every face and see the imprint of God, the result will be transformative, on ourselves if not the larger world. Imagine, seeing the imprint of God in everyone, the ones we love, the ones that political ads tell us to fear. Paul’s letter, our 2nd reading, makes it clear that a practice of seeing God in all has the potential to change the larger culture too.


We can start this practice now, and we can use the election cycle to help us. We can use the political ads the way that monks use the ringing of the monastery bells as a reminder to bring their attention back to God. Every time an ad comes on, look away and praise God’s good creation, the way the Psalmist does. Every time we hear political conversations, let us pray for everyone who thinks that they can pull our attention away from God’s goodness by using fear tactics.


In today’s Gospel, as in many Gospels, we see the invitation of Christ contrasted with the expectations of the world, the promises given by Jesus in stark opposition to the empty promises of every political season. Let us ignore all the ways that the forces of empires, past and present, conspire to pull our attention away from God. Today and every day, let us notice what God is doing in the world, our God who has claimed us and loves us and calls on us to do the same for all of creation. Let us train ourselves to ignore the voices that tell us to fear and to hate. Instead, let us train ourselves to see the imprint of God on every part of all of creation.

The Long Drive Home from a TEEM Week

Soon I will put the last of my stuff in the car.  Sunrise comes later this much further north (at 7:57), so I'm not going to leave until 6:30 or 7.  Gone are the days when I would leave at 4 a.m.; driving that many hours in the dark is just too tiring.  Is this a sign of getting older or just a sign of being more cautious?  Part of it is wanting to linger in a lovely hotel room a bit longer, which is always balanced by knowing how much driving lies ahead and wanting to get that over with.

I've been in Indianapolis, taking the last required classes, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of the of Lutheranism in North America).  

We spent the first two days of the week studying Lutheran Liturgy, then a Wednesday workshop on Lutheran Polity, and we finished the week on Thursday and Friday studying Hebrew prophets, those prophets from the B.C.E. time period, the ones at the end of the Old Testament part of the Christian Bible.

I've studied those prophets before during an Old Testament class during my first year at Wesley Theological Seminary.  That class was asynchronous, and the material was not nearly as compelling as the last 2 days have been.  The history of the centuries before the Greek and Roman empires is much more clear to me now, and especially how we get from the time of David and Solomon to the Assyrian  and Babylonian exiles.

I came back to my hotel room on Thursday and made this Facebook post, which was just as true at the end of the day on Friday:  "Today and tomorrow, our TEEM group is doing a deep, scholarly dive into (B.C.E.) Hebrew prophets, a topic which seems very timely in ways I both did and did not expect."

I was impressed with various teaching techniques throughout the week.  During our Lutheran Liturgy class, Bishop Strickland had breaks where we sung, along with information about how we might use the songs in worship. Dr. Parker, our OT Prophets class instructor, had a variety of artifacts to show us or techniques (like using an imprinting device in clay) to show us how people wrote.  We worked in small groups for a break in lecturing, and that small group work will lead to papers we need to write.  For some of the prophets, we read the work out loud in a variety of ways, which made it more interesting to hear and understand.

I always learn a lot in classes that I take, both in subject matter and how to present the subject matter.  I go home with ideas for how to improve my own classrooms.

I've been with this group of classmates twice now, and my time with them is over, at least this time as a TEEM cohort.  It was a strange goodbye yesterday.  Any time of parting makes me think of all the other times of leaving, makes me melancholy and missing all the people who have passed through my life.

So maybe it's good to have a transition time of driving in the car, before hurling myself back into the rest of my life.  I do feel happy that I'm returning to regular life that is life giving, unlike pre-pandemic years when I would be returning to a toxic workplace and a boss bellowing about how I shouldn't leave ever again.  I know how lucky I am.

The Second Half of TEEM Week

 Last night over dinner, my TEEM cohort exchanged notes over how tired we are.  This onground intensive is, indeed, intense.   We eat breakfast at the hotel, head over to the Synod office meeting space, and we're meeting from 8 until 4 or 5, depending on how long we took for lunch. Lunch is brought in, and we try to be back on task by 1 so that we can be done closer to 4:00.

Monday and Tuesday, we learned about Lutheran Liturgy, the way worship is structured. Yesterday was a 1 day workshop to teach us about Lutheran Polity, how the larger church operates--after a morning studying governing structure, we took a deep dive into church constitutions. We finish the week with Old Testament prophets.

I feel like I had more energy back in June, but let me remember that I only did the workshop and the last half of the week.  Plus, I wasn't in the middle of an onground teaching semester.

I've gotten good ideas for my sermon that I'll preach on Sunday, which happened in June too.  We've also had good worship this week, which has been nourishing.

I've been thinking about my past experiences with the onground intensive model, which has only been for the spiritual director certificate program.  I do wonder how the spiritual experiences compare with low residency MFA programs.

I love the idea of an intensive that blasts requirements out of the way in one week--but having said that, it's not my favorite way to learn.  I'm grateful to have had so many different kinds of educational opportunities throughout my life.  I also realize that my preferred way of learning:  onground, over 12-16 weeks, once or twice a week--it's not a way that can work for most people who are employed full-time, especially not older folks.

I'm also grateful that my current work life doesn't involve sitting at a desk all day, the way we've been doing this week or the way I did as an administrator.  Yes, we do try to move during breaks, but my step count at the end of 8 hour desk days is much lower than my regular teaching days.

I am grateful for so much as we head into the end of this week.  I am most grateful for all my jobs that allow me to be away so that I can be part of this educational experience and for my spouse, who is self-sufficient and holding down our 2 home fronts.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for October 18, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 45:1-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 33:12-23

Psalm: Psalm 96:1-9 [10-13]

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 99

Second Reading: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Gospel: Matthew 22:15-22

This week's Gospel contains a saying of Jesus that is probably familiar: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22, verse 21). Even people who have never set foot inside a church are probably familiar with this saying, although they may attribute it to somebody else, like Shakespeare or Ronald Reagan.

I love how Jesus realizes that the Pharisees have set a trap for him, and he manages to avoid entanglement. This passage also shows Jesus reacting to the legalistic outlook of the spiritual leaders. He seems to tell us not to be so rigid in our formulas of our finances. We know what we must do. We have bills and obligations (among them, caring for the less fortunate); we cannot escape those worldly cares. But in figuring out our tithes and taxes, we should not lose sight of the larger spiritual picture.

God calls us to more than a rigid formula of living. Instead of dividing up our budget into rigid categories, we should always be on the lookout for ways to love each other. Some days/months/years, that love might be manifest in monetary ways. But in a way, just writing a check is much too easy. God calls us to be involved with each other's lives. That doesn't mean we need to hop on a plane to personally respond to every huge disaster. Look around--you'll see plenty of opportunities just outside your door.

What if you gave 10% of your time? There's 168 hours in a week. If you gave 17.8 hours to God, how would you need to change your life?

The reality is, that God wants and needs more from us than a mere 18 hours a week. God wants an ongoing relationship with each and every one of us. And that relationship should transform us to do the tough work of transforming creation, of creating the Kingdom of Heaven right here and now.  That transformation, too, will come from relationships.

In these days of all sorts of insecurity, the message of Jesus seems more prescient than ever. If we save up our treasures on earth, moth or rust or inflation or deflation or bad policies or war or climate disruption or any other kind of ruin you want to name will leave us bankrupt.

The way we live our lives moves us closer to God or further away. If we devote our lives to God, our whole lives, not just an hour on Sunday, then we'll find a relationship that we can count on. And that relationship can help us transform not only ourselves, but our families, our communities, everyone we touch.

Spiritual Lessons: A Meditation on Columbus Day

 Writing time is short this morning, so let me run a Columbus Day post that I wrote some years ago. It's one of my favorite meditations on Columbus.

Today we celebrate Columbus Day: October 12 was the actual day of the first sighting of land after almost 2 months at sea. I’m always amazed at what those early explorers accomplished. At Charlestowne Landing (near Charleston, SC), I saw a boat that was a replica of the boat that some of the first English settlers used to get here. It was teeny-tiny. I can't imagine sailing up the coast to the next harbor in it, much less across the Atlantic. Maybe it would have been easier, back before everyone knew how big the Atlantic was.

In our spiritual lives, we may be feeling a bit like Columbus. Let’s ask some questions prompted by Columbus Day, questions that may lead us to some meaningful meditations.

Below, when I talk about our spiritual lives, I’m talking about our individual lives and expressions of spirituality, as well as our corporate spiritual lives, the lives we live in the company of fellow believers.

--In our spiritual lives, are we the explorer or are we the native populations of new continents? Or are we members of the Old World? In other words, are we always striking out for new lands? Or are we waiting to be discovered? Are we so tied to our traditions that we can’t even imagine how our lives could be different?

--As spiritual people, how long are we willing to be at sea? I’m part of a church tradition, mainstream Protestantism, that looks back longingly to the 1950’s, when it seemed that everybody made time for church. Many of us hope that we will soon return to a time when church returns to its central location. But we may have only started our time at sea, on a voyage of discovery. Can we trust God? Can we continue to hold onto our faith when we're in the middle of a vast ocean, with nothing but our instruments and the stars to guide us, with no sense of how far away the land for which we're searching might be?

--We may be certain we’re on a quest to find one kind of wealth. In the process, we may discover something completely different, something far more valuable? Will we recognize the value of what we find?

--The explorations in North and South America changed our cooking forever. Imagine a culinary life without corn, sweet peppers, tomatoes. Imagine life without chocolate. What ways can our spirituality enrich our cultures?

--Of course, if I was looking through the Native American lens, I might say, "Imagine life without smallpox." What are the possible negative impacts implicit in the collision between secular culture and sacred culture? Can we mitigate those? Should we mitigate those?

--These explorations wouldn’t have been possible without the patronage of the wealthiest of society members. In our current world, many of us are some of the wealthiest people on the planet. North Americans may not feel like it, but we’re the Isabella and Ferdinand of our time. What projects should we be funding? What spiritual projects will make the kind of lasting legacy of funding the voyage of Columbus?

Sermon for Sunday, October 11, 2026

October 11, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 22: 1-14



The idea that the reign of God is like a banquet is probably not unfamiliar to us. You may have grown up singing about the welcome table, either as a grace before a meal or as a hymn. We partake in the Eucharist, also called Communion, also called The Lord’s Supper, every week as part of our service—this sacrament is rooted in a meal, unlike baptism, our other sacrament. This church enjoys eating literal meals together, as most churches do.


What are we to make of this parable that gives us God as a king celebrating his son’s wedding with a banquet? So far, it’s not troubling: we might nod along, recognizing that the King represents God, and the son Jesus.


But then, this parable gets dark very quickly. Unlike other parables, where potential guests offer reasons for why they can’t come—an RSVP done politely—in Matthew’s version, we get neglect. The Greek translation of their response is much closer to “They didn’t take notice of the King’s invitation.” They just didn’t care.


Later it gets even worse. The invitees kill the slaves sent to fetch the wedding guests. These last few weeks in parables have not been kind to those on the lower rungs of the social ladder—they’re ignored or beaten, and this week, they get killed. The King is enraged and sends in troops to destroy the invited guests who have behaved badly and to burn their cities. Yikes. What, exactly, is it that Jesus is trying to teach us about God?


Some Bible scholars say that today’s Gospel is perhaps trying to tell us more about earthly rule than Heavenly rule. The book of Matthew was written in a time period in history when Rome has just behaved like this king, killing people and destroying the temple. Maybe this parable represents the trauma of war, of the experience of an empire that is mightier than its subjects, and in some ways, mightier than any individual ruler.


What if we take Jesus at his word? What is Jesus trying to tell us about the reign of God? But before we go further, let me remind us that it’s a parable—it’s not an allegory with one to one correlations. It’s a parable, and parables are meant to knock us off balance and leave us with puzzles. Maybe we’ll figure out the puzzles, the contradictions. Maybe we won’t. Maybe we can’t. But parables offer us the possibility of a richer understanding because we’ve done the puzzling.


We have several other versions of this parable. The most familiar one is in the 14th chapter of Luke; there’s also one in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, along with a similar story out of the Jewish Babylonian time period. But those texts have significant differences from Matthew’s text. Our former bishop of the SE Synod, Julian Gordy, tells us that the differences can tell us what a particular text is trying to say.


So let’s look at the differences in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the book of Matthew, we have a king and a wedding feast for a son; in the book of Luke, it’s a man creating a banquet for guests. These differences give us insight into what the Gospel of Matthew may be trying to say.


Saying no to an invitation from the king is significantly different than saying no to a rich man’s banquet. And it’s more than a banquet in our reading today—it’s a wedding banquet for the king’s son. This invitation is exceptional. Saying no is not just disrespectful, it’s rebellious.


The reaction of the King to the man who doesn’t have a wedding robe might seem extreme—but maybe not. We’ve seen the king in action before. It’s not wise to wear casual clothes around this kind of King who kills people and burns cities in retaliation for individual behavior. Again, maybe Matthew is telling us about earthly empires.


But what if this parable really is trying to teach us about the community of God? It’s not an easy parable like the version in the Gospel of Luke. The easy part of the parable explores inclusion. Both parables are telling us something about the community of God being open to the people who have never experienced it before. In the words of a more ancient time, both parables seem to teach us that God continues to expand the covenant. But the Gospel of Matthew gives us a vision that is much less comforting. Even when we’re chosen, we might be banished.


The language at the end might tell us that we’re looking at a text that teaches us about judgment and end times, that language about weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Matthew’s Gospel does often circle back to judgment, both in the current time period and at the end. The book of Matthew often tells us not to judge each other, but reminds us that God will judge eventually.


This parable in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew’s tells us that we are chosen, but not to sit around in our non-wedding clothes. Kingdom living should change us. Luther says, “The Law doesn’t save you, but it does command you.” This parable shows us a relation between grace and obedience. In more modern language, we are chosen and called to participate in what God is doing here. Now that we’re at the banquet, there are expectations. Our good works won’t save us, but they are required, according to some theologians, like John Calvin, and others from the non-Lutheran streams of thought. But even Luther told us that faith should move our feet (an older version of one of the ELCA’s mottos, God’s work, our hands).


Scripture reminds us that we have some power and some agency. Unlike the underdressed person in the parable, we have a voice. We can clothe ourselves with gentleness, with what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is commendable, what is pleasing and worthy of praise, those qualities from Paul’s letter today, the one we just heard a few minutes ago--theologians from the time of Paul and onward have given similar advice.


Or we can go back to Jesus. Jesus showed us how to live as the community of God. We share what we have, knowing that it will be multiplied to be enough. We invite everyone, even though some won’t accept. We heal our societies in the ways that we know how to do, and we remember that even when it seems there is no way, we pray to the one who shows us again and again, that there is a way out of no way, a way that is different from the ways of earthly empire.


God invites us to a wedding feast—not an ordinary banquet. Let us say yes—today and every day, let us respond to the invitation with a resounding YES.

Hurricane Remnants and Travel

Last June, when I left Indiana after the first TEEM onground intensive that I attended, I thought ahead to our next gathering in October, where I anticipated autumnal shifts with still-warm days.

I did not anticipate a hurricane affecting the weather that far inland.  But here we are.  I've changed travel plans, and instead of leaving on Sunday, I'm leaving in a few hours.  There's already a bit of rain here, but nothing like what is expected later this morning.

We are supposed to have record breaking warmth in the 80's in the early part of the week, and cooler temps by week's end.  I have packed a variety of clothes--lots of layers for my upper body, some with sleeves and some not, and shorts for my lower body which is odd-shaped and hard to fit for long pants in this time of my life.

This hurricane has turned out to be a normal-ish hurricane, not a monster that zoomed up several categories just before landfall--how refreshing!  It moved ashore as a category 2, very survivable for most structures--not a fun way to spend an evening, but likely not life threatening for many.

I am still glad I changed my travel plans.  I should be able to stay ahead of the storm remnants today, and it will be good to head into the week being better rested.

When Jesus Plans Your Family Reunion

 On Sunday, I went through my old files looking for a St. Francis poem that I thought I had written--but I was thinking of an Ash Wednesday poem.  While searching, I found an old manuscript of Jesus in the world poems, many of which I had forgotten writing.  

Because my time is short this morning, I'll post one of them here.  Let me make sure to mention that the people in this poem are not based on real friends and relations.  It is published for the first time here.

Reunion



We let Jesus plan our family reunion,
and we won’t be doing that again.

He searched through the stunted
branches of the family tree and invited
them all: Weird PopPop Walter, who went to war
and was never the same, Cousin Buddy
who married that poor little black girl,
Aunt Leona, who we never forgave
for stealing all of Mamaw’s silver.

And then Jesus went and invited strangers
to our feast. People we didn’t know
from Adam’s housecat. We’re lucky
they didn’t rob us blind.
Where Jesus thought all these people
would park, I don’t know.

We usually cater these events, we told
him that. But no, Jesus had to go and change
things. Price of admission, he informed us,
was that we had to bring our favorite food, enough to share.
How could I do that?
My favorite food was Mamaw’s sweet
potato pie, and no one’s made it since she died.
But one rainy day, with restless
children to entertain, I set
one to work peeling potatoes and taught
one the secrets of pie crust.
The smell of those pies baking made me weep
with missing her, which alarmed
the children. To distract them, I dug
out the old quilts she made, and we lost
the rest of the day to looking at photo albums.

Fired by insider information, the children pestered
everyone at the reunion, and we told each other stories
we hadn’t thought of in years. I hope my girl stopped
thinking of herself as fat and sees herself as sturdy
like her Great Aunt Lillian who did the plowing
herself after flu felled all the menfolks.

But the greatest miracle of all was the singing.
Descended from northern Europeans, we keep
our mouths shut to keep from freezing, but Jesus
got us to open up. Jesus built a big bonfire,
and we spent the night singing while the leftovers multiplied
to feed us again.

Jesus planned our family reunion,
and we might let him do it again.
Maybe in five years or so.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, October 11, 2026:

First Reading: Isaiah 25:1-9

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 32:1-14

Psalm: Psalm 23

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23

Second Reading: Philippians 4:1-9

Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14

Today's Gospel sounds impossibly harsh. The kingdom of heaven is compared to this story of a king who can't get people to come to the wedding feast? Is God really like the King who murders people who won't come to the party and burns their city? Is God really like the king who punishes a guest who comes in the wrong clothes? And such a punishment!

But perhaps our brains are too quick to see God as judge. Maybe we're losing the point of the parable.

So, let's look at this parable from a different angle: what's keeping us from accepting the invitation to the wedding feast? If the wedding feast is the kingdom of God, what keeps us away?

What activities keep us from accepting or even hearing the invitation? Is it the work we do to earn the money to pay our bills? Have we let that work take over our every waking hour? Does our work wake us up at night?

Or maybe we don't have enough work, and we worry about how we will pay for our obligations. We can't accept God's invitation now, because we need to work our multiple part-time jobs or fill out applications or research our new career field.

Jesus is quite clear on this issue, and he instructs us again and again. What good will it do us to work ourselves this way, to devote ourselves to earthly things, like work and earning money?

Or maybe we reject God's invitation because we feel inadequate. We'll accept at a later time, when we've improved ourselves. But that's the good news of God's grace that we find throughout the Gospels. We don't have to wait. God loves us in all of our imperfections. In fact, we may find that what we see as an imperfection is what God will need and use to work for God's purposes.

Perhaps we should see ourselves in the wedding guest that didn't have the right garment. What clothes do we need to invest in to make ourselves better wedding guests? Maybe we need to clothe ourselves in the garments of love and acceptance. Think of what attitudes you need to wrap around yourself, and work to shed the ones that do not serve you.

Life is short, and Christ returns to this message again and again. We think we will have time to get to the things that will be important. We'll do it later, when the kids are older, or when we don't have to work so long and hard. We'll do it when we retire. We'll wait until we have more money. Once we lose that 20-100 pounds, we'll buy the right clothes and go to feasts to celebrate sacred occasions.

But God calls us to focus on the important things now. The apocalyptic tone of the recent readings may seem overly dramatic, but apocalypse dramas remind us that everything that is precious can be gone in an instant--and so the time to focus on what we hold dear is now.

It's a luxury that so many do not have, to appreciate what we have while we still have it, to be able to tell our loved ones that we love them while they're still with us.

Recording of Sermon for Sunday, October 4, 2026

We had a pretty good Sunday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  My sermon focused more on Saint Francis, whose feast day was yesterday, than on any of the readings, but my sermon did circle back to the Gospel at key points.  I focused on rejected stones becoming the chief cornerstone. 

I always think about myself when I was a parishioner--would I have liked the sermon I preached or would it leave me yearning for something deeper.  I would have liked it.  I do realize that not everyone would like a sermon steeped in history, so I don't do that week after week.  But from a pastoral point of view, I think it's important to remember that we are part of a Christian tradition that stretches back across centuries.  I always try to talk about how the traditions still have relevance for us today--an easy task with St. Francis.

You can watch a recording of my sermon here on my YouTube channel; if you'd like to read along, I put the manuscript in this blog post.  

Sermon for Sunday, October 4, 2026, the Feast Day of Saint Francis

October 4, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 21:33-46


The parable in today’s sermon doesn’t need much explaining. We read it and see the landowner’s son as Jesus and the servants as the prophets. Even the earliest listeners who might not have heard the parable and thought about God and Jesus would have understood the message.


None of us probably see ourselves as the tenants who brutalize the messengers from the landowner and kill the landowner’s son. Jesus might tell us otherwise. The hopeful message of today’s Gospel is that even rejected stones can become the building block of something new, something lasting.


Today, October 4, we celebrate the life of one of these rejected stones. Today is the feast day that celebrates the life of Saint Francis of Assissi, who was born in 1181. He died 800 years ago yesterday, which means he was 44 years old. Most people have encountered this saint through concrete statues in our gardens, but we may not recognize him as a saint so much as we see a monk.


Many of us are familiar with the Saint Francis who was kind to animals. We celebrated that aspect of him last week, with our blessing of pets as part of worship. But Francis’ view of animals was more radical than many of us may realize. He called all creatures his brothers and sisters. Many of us think of our pets as our family, and we forget what a departure from the history of human treatment of animals this is.


For that matter, treating all humans as equal is a fairly radical, at least in western belief systems. When I teach literature of the 19th century, I remind my students that the evolving belief that we find in some of the literature, that women should have the same rights as men, would be as baffling a notion to most 19th century people as if I suggested that our computers have rights.


Of course, in a time of artificial intelligence becoming ever smarter, this idea may come to be one we’ll need to think more seriously about in our lifetimes.


Francis saw nature as one kind of testament to God, a way to know God, much the way most of us think of scripture. Others had this idea before Francis, but his popularity as a saint has made this idea a popular one. Most of us are quite happy with our Bibles as testament, but for those who have a more troubled relationship with Christianity, the idea that one can find evidence for God outside of scripture is important.


Francis was groundbreaking in other ways. He took Jesus’ preaching about including the outcast to new levels. Like Mother Theresa, Francis lived among the lepers, at a time when very few others were willing to do so. He traveled to Egypt, both to do missionary work, but also to reach out to Muslims to try to find a peaceful path out of the attempted genocide of the Crusades.


Let that sink in. He went to Egypt to try his hand at peacemaking with Muslims, even while other good Christians were trying to slaughter them. Francis’ contemporaries saw Muslims as a marauding force, murderous and not quite human. And Francis goes to negotiate with them. Not only did he treat animals as intrinsically valuable parts of God’s creation, worthy of respect, but also Muslims. And lepers. Basically, he treated all parts of creation as worthy of respect—which is an idea very much ahead of his time, and perhaps very much ahead of our own.


Francis founded 3 religious orders, 2 of which survive to this day. In one of his orders, he and his brothers went out as friars, living among the people who needed them most, like lepers. Francis came from a wealthy family, and he spent that wealth in pursuit of not more wealth, but care for those whom society had abandoned or tried to slaughter.


As a founder of religious orders, Francis wrote down rule books for how to live in community, rule books which are still being used today. He also created new ways of worship. He is given credit for creating the first Nativity scene. He is also the first to have living animals as part of a Nativity scene. He wanted worshipers to engage with all of their senses. Here in the 21st century, we’re still trying to find new ways of doing that. Think of what Francis might have done if he had access to our technology.


Of course, he might have been a back to basics man, as evidenced by all the ways he tried to include living creatures in worship. He is often depicted as preaching to the birds and other woodland creatures; he probably had some members of his religious community there with him too. I imagine Francis with an outdoor pavilion like ours, finding new ways to engage our senses by taking us out of our buildings and fortresses.


Let’s be very clear, though—in being ahead of his time, Francis was not seen as a chief cornerstone. The religious rulers of his time rejected him in the same way that the rulers of the first century rejected Jesus.


There has been a growing movement to have a season within the season of the time after Pentecost, the season of Creation, also called the Season of Christ in Creation or the Feast of Creation. It’s an ecumenical idea, grounded in the ancient liturgical tradition of the Orthodox church. This year, some churches began celebrating on September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, and for those congregations, this season within a season ends today, on the feast day that celebrates Saint Francis. Our liturgical materials that come from Sundays and Seasons have given us some liturgical elements that celebrate this new season during the past six weeks.


Francis has become one of the cornerstones that Christ foretold, building a stronger church. In a few weeks, on Reformation Sunday, we’ll hear about another cornerstone, Martin Luther. It’s good to remember that cornerstones don’t begin as cornerstones, not necessarily. They often look like the rubble left from once impenetrable fortresses.


In today’s parable and so many other teachings, Jesus declares that God has given us a good garden. Saints like Francis call us to care for that garden more deeply than we have in the past. These messages continue to resonate for a reason. We live in a time when all of creation groans, and so many of us yearn for something better, for deliverance from the murderous forces that surround us. May we be like Saint Francis, stepping forward to show that there is a different way to live in God’s garden. May we be the cornerstones, holding up the structures that will nurture future generations.

A Banquet and Archived History

Yesterday I drove down to Columbia, SC to meet my parents so that we could all go to the James R. Crumley Archives banquet.  In years past, I've seen pictures of the event, and I've always been curious.  This year, schedules aligned, and we could go.

Each year, as far as I can tell, the banquet is held at a different place.  So far, the Archive has not had a permanent home.  That's about to change:  Newberry College has donated land for a building and now the capital campaign begins.  We heard a bit about that new development last night.

(l-r Don Poole, Ina Berkey, Jane Mitcham,Tom Berkey)

But most of last night's banquet was to celebrate the accomplishments of the honorees:  an individual, a church, and a synod of the ELCA.  It was enough of a program to justify the banquet, but not so overwhelming/long that people started leaving early.

(l-r Honoree Dorothy Jeffcoat, Don Poole, Ina Berkey)

Before the event, we had been invited to be part of a program that told the story of African American Lutherans in the southeast.  That program turned out to be a documentary that's available to all (go here to watch), along with some segments about Atlanta from a forthcoming documentary in the same series.

It was a lovely evening with good food, good stories/speeches, and even better, the chance to reconnect with others from the region.  I was happy to be reminded of all my connections:  to individuals, to various churches, to synods from the southeastern United States, to Newberry College, and to church camps.  But more than that, I was happy to hear the stories of all the good happening in the world, in small ways and in big ways.

A Prayer for Blessing of Pets

Many congregations are doing some sort of Blessing of the Pets this Sunday.  We did ours last Sunday because we had already scheduled our last outdoor worship service when I had the idea of adding a Blessing of the Pets to our autumnal activities.  We didn't do it in 2023 because I had just arrived in June.  In 2024, we had Hurricane Helene, and last year, I was away doing a workshop for my mom's church's retreat in Williamsburg.

I got to last Sunday without having written any liturgy or prayer, or a blessing of any kind.  So I wrote one, by hand, because my computer mouse had stopped working, and writing by hand was faster.

I want to preserve the prayer, so I'm transcribing it here.

Creator God,

Please bless all of your creatures gathered here together, the humans, their beloved pets, and this piece of Eastern Tennessee.  Please bless those who couldn't be here with us.  And we ask your blessing on our wider world, with so many who need so much.   And let us always remember that you are more loyal than our most faithful pets, and you love us in the same generous way we love our pets.