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.   

Celtic Spirituality and October

I met Tim Brown at the onground intensive for TEEM students back in June when he came to talk to us about stewardship.  He's well versed in that subject, but also in saints old and modern, about all things ELCA, and about Celtic Christianity/history/spirituality.

This morning, he made this post on Facebook, and I wanted to preserve it:

For the ancient Celts, October signaled the end of their Autumn and opened the door for the shadowed half of the Celtic year.

Samhain (which literally means "summer has ended") marks the final feast day of the season, and the convergence of the shadows and the weather inclined the Celts to believe that spirits were able to walk among the living causing mischief, curses, and sometimes blessings.

Practically it meant bringing in the cattle and the sheep down from the summer hillside and into the byre and the stable, now full of the harvested hay brought in throughout August and September.

It was also the time to slaughter the animals and prep them to last as far through winter as possible with salts, cold storage, cottaging, and drying.

The very last bits of barley, wheat, turnips, and apples were picked from the now naked fields, because come November the faeries would start breathing on all the fruit, frosting them and making them inedible.

While the sun still glowed it was also time to get the wood and peat stacked and ready for use. No one wanted to chop and gather in the frigid days coming.

This was a joyous month for the Celts, as the whole family was regularly gathered in the house and the barn: baking, salting, prepping, and preserving, envisioning the coming winter feasts and the cozy days ahead.

The summer sun now became the warm, dim room, and the noisy insects would be replaced with long talks and stories from family and visiting friends.

October has come.