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.

Michaelmas or The Feast Day of St. Michael and All Angels

 If we lived in an earlier culture, a time more marked by the agricultural shifts of each season, we would celebrate Michaelmas today. It's one of the harvest holidays, one of the quarterly celebrations that kept people rooted to traditions of the seasonal cycles.

I am more interested in the idea of a hinge holiday, the way we shift from one direction to another. In Holidays and Holy Nights, Christopher Hill explains, "In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michaelmas balances that feeling (for) in autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name. We feel like wayfaring strangers... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun'" Summer is the sacrament of natural harmony with God... while autumn we fall away from the dreaming paradise of summer back into the conflict of light and dark" (pp. 36-37).

Today, the Church celebrates the role of angels in the divine plan, my prayer book tells me (The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle). Our Orthodox brothers and sisters handle the question of angels better than most Protestants. Most of the Lutheran churches that I've been a member of don't talk about angels much, and based on the ideas of some of my students, many Protestant churches do talk about angels, but with a very shaky theology.

I'll never forget one time teaching Paradise Lost to South Carolina students in my Brit Lit survey class at a community college. One woman seemed particularly confused about all the angels in the story. "How could there be angels," she asked, "when nobody has died?"

It took me a few attempts to understand her question. She knew about angels from church, but only in the sense that we become angels when we die--which is a very recent idea about angels. I explained the more ancient idea about angels, which is that they are a species completely separate from humans. We got into a bit of a theology lesson, but I could see that she wasn't happy with these ideas about angels. She was much more comfortable with the idea of the angels being Grandma and Grandpa who died when she was a child. The idea of angels as a separate kind of entity with no free will? No thanks.

In a way, I understand. Angels are scary. Death is scary. It's rather brilliant to come up with the idea that we become angels when we die--and yet, this shaky theology defangs several concepts which should, in fact, be scary. We will die--and before that, everything we love will die. How do we cope with that idea?

Some of us cope by clinging to the idea that there is a Divine God with a plan and a vision that's vaster than anything we could develop on our own. This God has more power than we can conceive of--including legions of angels, angels that are there for us too.

Some of us cope with the scariness of death by marking the seasons--we're entering the autumnal season marked by many holidays that remind us that death is unavoidable and perhaps nearer than we'd like:  Halloween, All Saints, All Souls, and Día de los Muertos.  In some ways, today's constellation of holiday and feast day is a start to that season, that shift towards a much darker time of the year in terms of less daylight, at least in the northern hemisphere.  

Let us take a moment and notice as the light lingers.  Let us mark the shift.

The Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen

 September 17 is the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, mystic, herbalist, musical composer, naturalist, and Abbess. Her life was full of accomplishments, an amazing feat considering she lived in the twelfth century (she was born around 1098 and died in 1179).

Until recently, I had never thought of the twelfth century as a high water mark of feminism, but female monastics did amazing things during that time period. By studying them, I come away with a new appreciation for the medieval Church, where talented women found a cloistered kind of freedom. In many ways, the cloistered life was the only way for medieval women to have any kind of freedom. Cloistered life offered the only protection available to women who lived at the edges or outside the margins of society: widowed, artistic, not wanting to be married, weird in any way.

But Hildegard's life shows that freedom was constrained, since women monastics answered to men. For years, Hildegard wanted to move her group of nuns to Rupertsburg, but the Abbot who controlled them refused her request.

We all face constraints of various kinds, and the life of Hildegard shows what could be accomplished, even during a time where women did not have full rights and agency. She was an Abbess, and because being in charge of one cloistered community isn't enough, she founded another. She wrote music, and more of her music survives than almost any other medieval composer. She was an early naturalist, writing down her observations about the natural world and her theories about how the natural world heals us. She wrote to kings, emperors and popes to encourage them to pursue peace and justice. She wrote poems and a morality play and along the way, a multitude of theological meditations.

She did all of these things, in addition to keeping her community running smoothly. Yes, I'm thinking about Hildegard as an administrator, a woman who could be efficient and artistic at the same time. It’s no wonder that I find her inspiring.

It's interesting to think about the different types of groups who have claimed her as their own. Feminists claim her importance, even though she didn't openly advocate equality. Musicians note that more of her compositions survive than almost any other medieval composer. Her musical works go in different directions than many of the choral pieces of the day, with their soaring notes. New Age types love her views of the body and the healing properties of plants, animals, and even minerals. Though her theology seems distinctly medieval, and thus not as important to modern Christians, it's hard to dismiss her importance as a figure from church history.

I often say that it's odd I'm drawn to monasticism, as I'm a married, Lutheran female who has all sorts of worldly commitments, and thus cannot fully vow obedience. But as I think about church history, I'm struck time and time again by how often monasticism has offered a safe space to women that no other part of society did. I shouldn't be surprised that it's a tradition that speaks to me still.

It’s a tradition that speaks to many others too: have you listened to the Hildegard of Bingen channel on Pandora?  At one time, the channel was one of the most popular on that streaming service.

Maybe today is a good day to tune in that medieval music. We could listen while writing letters to those in charge, letters which demand more work towards social justice. Or we could focus on other writing projects, as Hildegard of Bingen did. We could plant a healing herb garden.

Today, on her feast day, let us say a prayer of thanks for Hildegard of Bingen and other medieval matriarchs of Christianity.

The Feast Day of Mary, Her Assumption and All Else

 Today is one of the many Marian feast days. Today we celebrate Mary's Assumption into Heaven. Here are the readings for today:

First Reading: Isaiah 61:7-11

Psalm: Psalm 45:11-16 (Psalm 34:1-9 NRSV)

Second Reading: Galatians 4:4-7

Gospel: Luke 1:46-55

I will state the obvious from the beginning.  We don't really know very much about the historic life of Mary.  That's both a blessing and a problem.  Because we don't know much about her, our imaginations can fill in all the blanks.  That can be wonderful, but we can make Mary into the person we need her to be. We could spend a lot of time trying to decide if this is a problem or as a benefit.

Did Mary know that she was headed for a chosen status before the angel Gabriel showed up?  I picture her as a young girl, having interesting dreams, having flashes of insight as she was taught to do daily tasks and how those tasks might be transformed into something more transcendent (bread baking, for example).  And then she takes that insight and teaches Jesus.

I might have a different version of Mary next year.  And I have no way of knowing whether or not any of it is true.

Likewise with her assumption into heaven--could this have actually happened?  Unlike some theologians, it doesn't seem very important to me.  I'm much more interested in the ways that God shows up for each of us with offers of potential and promises kept.

Throughout history, Mary has been used to show how all of us are somehow less worthy.  But most of us don't have the benefit of the angel Gabriel showing up to paint a picture of God's idea of what we could be and what the world could be.

Mary's response is worth remembering, especially as she hearkens back to Abraham and Sarah in praising God, who has kept the promises made to the ancestors.

Here we are, on the Feast Day of the Assumption, hearkening back to the Feast of the Annunciation.  If I had a favorite Marian holiday, it would be this one, or maybe the Visitation, which celebrates both Mary and her older kinswoman, Elizabeth.  These days, I'm yearning for more models of healthy aging, and perversely, Elizabeth speaks to me more often than the other elders in the Bible.

I am grateful for these shreds of information and insight from our spiritual ancestors.  While I wish we had more, I'm happy that we have enough for my imagination to take the reigns.

The Feast Day of Saint Clare

Today we celebrate the life of St. Clare of Assisi, one of the first followers of St. Francis, and founder of the Order of the Poor Ladies (more commonly called the Poor Clares).  She wrote their Rule of Life, the first woman to have created such a thing, a set of rules for the life of a monastic order.

The Poor Clares lived a life committed to poverty, what St. Clare called a "joyous poverty."  Why joyous?  Because they felt they were following Christ in a much more authentic way and because they more vividly felt the presence of Jesus because of their lifestyle.  Throughout her life she faced pressure from church officials to abandon or weaken this commitment to poverty, and she resisted.  

Yet she also understood poverty as a practice that needed to be navigated in a way that didn't threaten life itself.  In a Facebook post Tim Brown, ELCA pastor and Stewardship expert at the ELCA, says, "Though St. Clare was intent on living in a post-ownership society, she also understood that savage piety could produce a backhanded vanity. "We are not made of brass," she said once to an overzealous sister, reminding the order that poverty was a gift, not a quest or competition. Human bodies can handle only so much deprivation."

The order still exists today, which tells me much about her accomplishment.

She was also instrumental in assisting St. Francis of Assisi, and many give her credit as one of his earliest followers.  Her order was based on his intentional community, and again, Franciscan strains of spirituality not only exist but are strong today--a testament to their work.

Tim Brown concludes his Facebook post by noting three truths:

"St. Clare is a reminder for me of a couple truths:

 
First, the spotlight unfairly falls on men in history. Clare was inspired by Francis, but more fully lived into his ideal vision of a monastic life than he ever did. She is the shining example that what he preached was a good way to live.

Second, piety can be just as competitive as gluttony in the hands of the overzealous. Martyrdom complexes are as sinful as extravagance. Clare's call was to humility, not destitution.

Finally, never underestimate the ability to move someone when words and actions hold hands. Clare looked not only to the sermon Francis preached, but to the sermon he embodied, and was motivated to do something life-changing."

Back to me:

In these days of increased tensions of all sorts, the life of St. Clare seems to take on fresh importance.  Let us take a moment to say a prayer of gratitude for her.  Let us remember the poor.  Let us vow to be joyous about reduced circumstances, should we be facing them.  Let us meet our savior as we minister to each other.

Feast Day of the Bethany Siblings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Feast Day of Saint James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

Decades ago, many of us might not have heard of Mary Magdalene. When I went to undergraduate school, in the mid-80's, we didn't know about many women in the Bible outside of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maybe we had a vague memory of a woman with demons that Jesus healed.

Now it's a different story. We've had decades of feminist theology that has opened our eyes and our theology to the presence of women. Now scholars are doing an even deeper dive into ancient texts. I'm thinking of Diana Butler Bass's sermon in the summer of 2022 which alerted us to the research of Elizabeth Schrader who is looking at manuscripts and trying to see if Mary Magdalene has been literally erased and written over to transform it to Martha.  Her scholarship also leads her (and others) to suggest that Mary might have been one of the pillars of the first church:  Mary the Tower and Peter the Rock.  But over the centuries, only Peter the Rock endures.

It's an interesting theory, and it seems like just one more example of how the ancient Church tried to minimize and hide the involvement of women in the life of the first group of believers. It's not that different from emphasizing the Mary Magdalene of demon possession and/or prostitution, not the Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection.  As I think of the Easter morning story, I wonder if we’re seeing a vestige of Mary Magdalene’s possessed personality. What drove her to the tomb? I understand the ancient customs surrounding the care of dead bodies, and I understand the laws regarding dead bodies and the Sabbath. But in one Gospel, it’s only Mary who is so deeply concerned about the body of Jesus. What drives her to the tomb?

In Mary’s reaction to the man she assumes is the gardener, I recognize my own demon of anxiety. I watch her ask a perfect stranger about the body of Jesus. I watch her throw all caution and decorum away, so desperate is she to complete this task, as if completing the task will restore the world to right order.

Many of us suffer in the grip of these demons of anxiety, these beliefs that somehow, through our manic quest for control, we can keep the world from spinning into chaos. We might argue for the benefits of medication, and indeed, if it’s a matter of brain chemicals that are out of balance, we would be right.

But all too often, something else is at the root of our modern possession. Maybe we haven’t stopped to grieve our losses, as Mary needs to do in the garden. Maybe it’s the fear of loss that is coming to all our lives. Maybe it’s that insistent hiss from both inside and out that says that we will never be enough: good enough, clean enough, accomplished enough, nice enough, attractive enough, loved enough.

The Easter message comes to cast out these demons again and again. Christ reminds us that he’s here, always waiting, always watching, always ready for us. Even if we don’t recognize him, Jesus will not cast us away. It is the voice of Jesus that can silence all of our demons and help us to be at peace. Christ’s voice calls us to what’s important in our lives.

Recording of the Sermon for Sunday, May 31, 2026

Both of my sermons yesterday seemed to go well.  For the youth sermon, I focused on the reading from Genesis and used it as a chance to remind/teach about the 2 creation stories, that Adam and Eve are in the second one, the one that people use to explain why the world is bad.  But in yesterday's creation story, we see God creating with great happiness and declaring everything good, which is how God feels about us.

My adult sermon wove together Trinity Sunday and the Feast Day of the Visitation. I decided to go that direction as I contemplated how many Trinity Sunday sermons I might preach in my life and how rarely the Sunday will fall on May 31.

You can view the recording of most of the sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along/instead, I posted the manuscript here on my theology blog.

Sermon for May 31, 2026, The Feast Day of the Visitation and Holy Trinity Sunday

May 31, 2026, Holy Trinity Sunday
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



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

Psalm: Psalm 8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20





The wonders of technology make it possible for me to be part of the women’s group at the church in Florida where I used to be a member; once a month, we meet by way of Zoom to check in with each other and to have a bit of Bible study. We met the Saturday before Pentecost, and we talked about prayer and which part of the Triune God we talked to when we pray—or do we separate them in that way? I would offer the same question to all of us, as we think about Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s one way of thinking about what it means to have a Triune God.


In the Bible study group, we found out that most of us pray to Jesus and/or God, who we described as Creator or Father. None of us pray to the Holy Spirit. In a way, that’s not a surprise. We’re Lutherans, after all. In my Lutheran Theology class, we studied the foundational documents written by Luther and his fellow reformers. The focus was on Jesus and justification more than God and creation or the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gets no mention at all.


When we look at the readings for today, we see something similar. Look again at what we just heard. In the first reading and the Psalm, we see God the Creator in full force. Not God as judge, not God as rescuer, not God as avenger-- three of the other main ways we see God across time, three of the main ways we see humans relating to God.


In our Gospel reading, we see the second part of the Triune God. We see Jesus at the end of his ministry, Jesus as dispatcher, sending the disciples out to carry on his work. In today’s Gospel reading, we don’t see Jesus as savior in the same way we do during Holy Week and Easter. In today’s reading, we don’t see Jesus as healer and worker of miracles.


The Holy Spirit only gets a brief mention, just part of a sentence in both the second reading and the Gospel. For Holy Trinity Sunday, this seems unfair. Sure, we had a focus on the Holy Spirit last week, but now we seem back to our non-Pentecostal life, all the parts of the Triune God back in their lanes, each responsible for different parts of our spiritual and church lives.


Throughout the centuries, the Church has wrestled with trinitarian theology, with the question about what it means to have God in 3 persons, blessed Trinity, as the hymnist writes it. Were all three there in the beginning? Can they exist separately, apart from one another? Different theologians would give us different answers.


Some theologians might tell us that the answers aren’t important. The important question is how we relate to this Triune God—how we understand the ways that God is at work in the world. This understanding can shape our spiritual practices: how we pray and to whom we pray, for example.


Our Gospel reading is one predominant way that Christians through the centuries have related to God, by going out and making disciples. Through the centuries, that has been interpreted as going to people who haven’t heard about Jesus and convincing them that Jesus walked the earth and died for us and rose again. That model has us converting people and moving on to the next group who hasn’t heard about Jesus.


That model doesn’t seem as useful today. Can there be any people out there who haven’t heard about Jesus? Would our showing up to preach and teach really make a difference?


Perhaps we’ve focused on the wrong verb in today’s Gospel. We’ve focused on the verb “Go”; for today’s world, “Make disciples” is a much more important focus. In the past, we’ve done that by preaching and teaching. But how does the Triune God make disciples?


One clear way is by coming to live with us. Christians focus on Jesus. Jesus comes to earth to show us what it means to be human, how to live our best human lives. From the beginning of the story, even before the birth of Jesus, the Triune God is showing us by example.


May 31, roughly 6 months before Christmas, is the Feast day of the Visitation, a day that commemorates Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, her kinswoman. In Protestant denominations, we hear about this visit in Advent, if we hear it at all. But it provides an interesting note for Trinity Sunday too. It’s an important counterpoint to Pentecost, which often is presented as something that happens to the disciples after they have been commissioned by Jesus.


The story of Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that others are also worthy of commissioning, worthy of doing God’s work in the world—and those people may look very different from those 11 disciples in today’s Gospel. Society and biology told Elizabeth that she was too old for a child; God said it wasn’t too late. Society told Mary that she wasn’t the appropriate choice for a mother of the Messiah; God invited her to ignore that judgment. Women said yes, God said yes, and the history of the world shifted.


It's a great day to celebrate those possibilities. And even if we've been feeling like our time is passed, that it's too late for us, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way. If we feel like we're too inexperienced, that we don't know what we're doing, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.


On this Trinity Sunday, let us remember that our God is revealed through community—community between Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit, and community between the Divine and humans. Let us follow God’s example. Let us rejoice in all that is possible when we say yes to God, when we join this community. In a world that rarely celebrates the ways we need each other to thrive, let us make disciples by being a living example of the value of community. So let us go, go about our days, secure in the knowledge that with God, nothing is impossible. With our Triune God, nothing—nothing—is impossible.

The Feast Day of Saint Dunstan

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

Well, there's a resume!

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

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

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

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

The Feast Day of the Ascension

Today is the Feast Day of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter, 10 days before Pentecost. This feast day commemorates Jesus being taken up into Heaven.

In the church of my childhood, we must have celebrated this festival on a Sunday. I have memories of hearing the story in church; I don't have much memory of celebrating Pentecost as a child. Now, Ascension can go by without a peep.

Imagine it from the eyes of those who have followed Christ from traipsing around Galilee, Crucifixion, and then Resurrection. You have just gotten your beloved Messiah returned to you, and then, poof, he's gone again. What a whipsawed feeling they must have had.

How do we celebrate this day, so many thousands of years later? Many churches have chosen to simply ignore it. We march on to Pentecost.

By the point that the disciples witness the Ascension, are they used to these sorts of wonders? Their savior has risen from the dead, after all. Maybe being scooped up into heaven wasn't as wonder inducing--and yet, I suspect it was.

When I think of the events of Holy Week, Easter, and the time up to the Ascension, I wonder if any of them came close to a breaking point. I think of the Pentecost story, where once again we find the disciples holed up in a room. I wonder if some of them were rocking themselves in a corner, muttering about how the world had cracked open, and not in a good way.

In our current time, we may have lost our sense of wonder. When I watch us talking or tapping on our cell phones, I sometimes remind myself of the miraculous developments that the cell phone represents. For better or worse, it provides phone coverage to places that once were remote. It puts an enormous amount of commuting power in a very portable container. Satellites circle the earth to assist with these processes.

Sure, we might use them in the most mundane way: to coordinate the car pool pick up or dinner plans or to find each other in a crowd. And yet, maybe it's profound, in ways we don't acknowledge. We ascend by way of satellites to find each other, to tell each other of our love.

I think of Jesus and all of the others who have ascended before us. I think of the love that is our mission. I think of times I've watched the moon rise. I think of satellites, the ones we've made of metal and the ones that existed long before we hurled things into space. All of us, circling, all of us lost in both our daily orbits and our larger obsessions.

On this feast day of the Ascension, let us keep our eyes on the Savior who has gone before us. Let us stay grounded in the love that declares us wondrously made. Let us go forth and love similarly.

Prayer for the Feast of the Ascension:

Ascending God, you understand our desire to escape our earthly bonds, to hover above it all, to head to Heaven now instead of later. Remind us of our earthly purpose. Reassure us that we have gifts and talents that are equal to the tasks that you need us to do. Help us close our gaping mouths and get to work.

The Feast Day of Julian of Norwich

May 8 is the feast day of Julian of Norwich in the Anglican and the Lutheran church; in the Catholic church, it's May 13.  Is Julian of Norwich as famous now as Hildegard of Bingen or Ireland's St. Brigid?  Are any of these women more widely known now than they were in grad school when I first started searching for the females that had been left out of a variety of narratives?  I have no idea.  They are more widely known in the subcultures to which I belong, but in the wider world?

In those early days (the late 80's) of discovering female voices that had been left out of literature anthologies, I most treasured Julian of Norwich for her writing.  In later years, the theology of her writing fascinated me--so many centuries before any blooming of anything that could be called feminist, here was a woman writing about a feminine face of God.

Now, as I head into the second half of my life, Julian of Norwich calls to me in a different way.  For me, the last decade can be seen through a lens of loss:  my best friend from high school died a horrible cancer death, there have been other deaths along with a pandemic, we left South Florida for many reasons, job loss among them.  Why would Julian of Norwich speak to me in this new way?

I think of her, alone in her cell, all of her focus shrunk into so small a space.  I think of her as a model of living more with less.  So, I may never hike the Appalachian Trail in one long trek, but that doesn't mean that my life needs to come to a halt.  I may come to a point where I'm living in one room, but that might be a room that is more full than any of my previous homes.

When I've thought about my older age, I've assumed that I would create communities the same way I've always attempted.  I've thought about the Hildegards and the Brigids and their nunneries--I've always wanted (or thought I did) a community like that one.

Of course, having lived in smaller communities, I realize how much work goes into making that kind of community--but the rewards can be so amazing.

As my friends and family have had health crises, it has occurred to me that I may outlast my friends.  There may be no one to follow me to the commune.  What then?

I used to write to my friend with cancer:  "When we are little old ladies, rocking on the porch, we'll look back on this time . . ." and then I'd fill in with various visions.  When she died, I thought, well, I might be rocking on that porch all by myself.

Instead of that lonely vision, I'm going to train myself to think of Julian of Norwich.  Many of us may spend our later years not in some kind of community, but all alone, in our various houses and apartments.  While some isolation will occur, perhaps it can be a time of creativity, a time to focus that many of us won't have had before.

Mystics like Julian of Norwich can show us the way!

May Days and Feast Days

Here we are in the merry month of May--how can it already be May? The first day of May has ancient roots as a celebration of Spring and new growth and the return of warm weather. More recently, the first day of May has become a celebration of workers.

So let's think about some ways we could make the day special:

--The traditional way would be flowers, traditionally flowers that we would leave on dark porches for people to discover when they woke up. It's probably too late for that approach, but it's not too late to appreciate flowers. You could buy some flowers or a flowering plant. Or, for future enjoyment, you could do what we did: buy some seed packets, plant them, water them, and see what happens.

--It is probably also too late to weave long ribbons around a Maypole. But we could braid ribbons or strips of cloth and meditate on the types of joy we'd like to invite into our lives.

--Today is a good day to think about workers, workers of all sorts. We're having more of a national conversation these days about work, about gender, about who takes care of children and elders while people work, about the locations of work. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out--I'm holding onto hope for positive change, even as I'm afraid we can never make the improvements that need to be made.

--If we're one of the lucky types of workers, the ones who aren't under threat by bosses or by globalization or by robots, we can support those who aren't as lucky. Send some money to organizations that work for worker's rights. I'm impressed with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which works to protect the migrant workers in the fields of Florida, but you certainly have plenty to choose from.

--Can't afford to make a donation? Write letters on behalf of the unemployed, the underemployed, everyone who needs a better job or better working conditions. Write to your representatives to advocate for them. What are you advocating? A higher minimum wage? Safer worksites? Job security? Work-life balance?

--Today, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans celebrate the feast day of Philip and James; others will celebrate May 3. These are not the most well-known disciples. Today you could reread the Gospels, a kind of literary Easter egg hunt, to try to find them.

--Can you create something that weaves these strands together? Here are some possibilities: a sculpture made out of ribbons that explores the world of migrant workers. A poem that celebrates flowers and contemplates the ways that we love some blooms (flowers) but not others (algae, cancer). A painting that uses weaving in some ways to think about the past century of efforts to enlarge the workplace and make it safer. A short story that updates the story of Philip--who would he be today?

The Feast Day of Saint Mark

Today is the feast day of Saint Mark. Looking back through my blog posts, I'm surprised to find out that I haven't written much about this feast day. It does often fall in a part of the month where I'm more likely to be at the Create in Me retreat. But it's also because it's hard to know who the real Saint Mark was. So many Marks, so hard to know for sure who did what.

Was he the author of the Gospel of Mark? The one who brought water to the house where the last supper took place? That strange naked man in the Crucifixion narrative? It's hard to say.

We do give him credit for founding the church in Egypt, and that fact alone seems important enough for him to have a feast day. I think of all the church traditions that can be traced back to northern Africa, particularly the work of the desert fathers and mothers, which led to so many variations of monastic traditions.

I also think of Augustine, the important thinker, one of the earliest Christian philosophers, who lived in Hippo. Would we have had Augustine if Mark hadn't been an evangelist to Egypt? It's hard to know. If Mark hadn't gone to Egypt, would someone else? Probably--but the outcome might have been completely different.

Today is also a good day to turn our thoughts back to those early evangelists, those early disciples. I often say that if you were putting together a team, you would not have chosen those men. But God's ways are not our ways when visualizing success.

So for those of us who are feeling inadequate, take heart. God's plans are greater than our own. 

The Feast Day of the Annunciation

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, the feast day which celebrates the appearance of the angel Gabriel, who tells Mary of her opportunity to be part of God's mission of redemption. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says, in the older wording that I still like best, "Hail, oh blessed one! The Lord is with you!" Mary asks some questions, and Gabriel says, "For nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1: 37). And Mary says, ". . . let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1: 38).

That means only 9 months until Christmas. If I wrote a different kind of blog, I'd fill the rest of this post with witty ways to make your shopping easier. But instead of spending the next nine months strategically getting our gifts bought, maybe we should think about the next nine months in terms of waiting for God, watching for God, incubating the Divine.

I find Mary an interesting model for modern spirituality. Notice what is required of Mary. She must wait.

Mary is not required to enter into a spiritual boot camp to get herself ready for this great honor. No, she must be present to God and be willing to have a daily relationship, an intimacy that most of us would never make time for. She doesn't have to travel or make a pilgrimage to a different land. She doesn't have to go to school to work on a Ph.D. She isn't even required to go to the Temple any extra amount. She must simply slow down and be present. And of course, she must be willing to be pregnant, which requires more of her than most of us will offer up to God. And there's the later part of the story, where she must watch her son die an agonizing death.

We might think about how we can listen for God's call. Most of us live noisy lives: we're always on our cell phones, we've often got several televisions blaring in the house at once, we're surrounded by traffic (and their loud stereos), we've got people who want to talk, talk, talk. Maybe today would be a good day to take a vow of silence, inasmuch as we can, to listen for God.

If we can't take a vow of silence, we could look for ways to have some silence in our days. We could start with five minutes and build up from there.

Maybe we can't be silent, but there are other ways to tune in to God. Maybe we want to keep a dream journal to see if God tries to break through to us in that way. Maybe we want to keep a prayer journal, so that we have a record of our prayer life--and maybe we want to revisit that journal periodically to see how God answers our prayers.

Let us celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation by thinking about our own lives. What does God call us to do? How will we answer that call?

The Feast Day of Oscar Romero

Oscar Romero is now officially a saint, and today is his feast day.  On this day in 1980, he was killed, a martyr for the faith.  When I made this collage card years ago, I couldn't believe that he'd ever be canonized:

Many scholars believe that he was chosen to be Archbishop precisely because he was expected not to make trouble. All that changed when one of his good friends, an activist Jesuit priest, was assassinated by one of the death squads roaming the country. Romero became increasingly political, increasingly concerned about the poor who were being oppressed by the tiny minority of rich people in the country. He called for reform. He called on the police and the soldiers to stop killing their brethren. And for his vision, he was killed as he consecrated the bread for Mass.

I was alive when he was martyred, but I didn't hear or read about it.  I remember reading about some of the more famous murders, particularly of the nuns, and wondering why people would murder nuns or missionaries who were there to help--I had yet to learn of the horrors of colonialism throughout history.

In my first year of college, I was asked to be part of a service that honored the martyrdom of Romero, and this event was likely how I heard of him first.  Or maybe it was earlier that semester when our campus pastor took a group of us to Jubilee Partners.

Jubilee Partners was a group formed by the same people that created Koinonia, the farm in Americus Georgia that most people know because they also created Habitat for Humanity--but they were so much more, in their witness of how Christian love could play out in real practice in one of the most segregated and poor parts of the U.S. south.  In the early years of Jubilee Partners, when I went there, the group helped people from Central America get to Canada, where they could get asylum in the 1980's, when they couldn't get asylum in the U.S.

My consciousness was formed by these encounters and by other encounters I had throughout the 80's.  I met many people in the country illegally, and I heard about the horrors that brought them here.  Then, as now, I couldn't imagine why we wouldn't let these people stay.

Many of us may think that those civil wars are over, but many countries in Central America are still being torn apart by violence.  The words of Romero decades ago are sadly still relevant today:  "Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression."

But his teachings go beyond just a call for an end to killing.  His messages to the wider church are still powerful:  "A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?"

And even those of us who are not part of a faith tradition can find wisdom in his teachings:  "Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ."

If we treated everyone we met as if that person was God incarnate, what a different world we would have!

But for those of us who are tired from the work of this weary world, here's a message of hope and a reminder of the long view.  This prayer, while not written by him (it was written by late Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Cardinal John Dearden, and misattributed to Romero), is often called the Romero prayer:  "We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own." 

On this day that honors a man who was not always honored, let us take heart from his words and from his example.  Let us also remember that he was not always this force for good in the world; indeed, he was chosen to be Archbishop because the upper management of the church thought he would keep his nose stuck in a book and out of politics. 

In these days that feel increasingly more perilous, let us recommit ourselves to the type of love that Romero called us to show:  "Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world."

The Feast Day of Saint Joseph

 Today is the feast day of St. Joseph, Mary's husband, the earthly father of Jesus. Here are the readings for today:

2 Samuel 7:4, 8-16
Psalm 89:1-29 (2)
Romans 4:13-18
Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a

I have done some thinking of Joseph, as many of us do, in the Advent season, when occasionally, we get to hear about Joseph. He thinks of quietly unweaving himself from Mary, who is pregnant. This behavior is our first indication of his character. Under ancient law, he could have had Mary stoned to death, but he takes a gentler path.

And then, he follows the instructions of the angel who tells him of God's plan. He could have turned away. He could have said, "I did not sign up for this!" He could have said, "No thanks. I want a normal wife and a regular life."

Instead, he turned towards Mary and accepted God's vision. He's there when the family needs to flee to Egypt. He's there when the older Jesus is lost and found in the temple. We assume that he has died by the time Christ is crucified, since he's not at the cross.

Some of us today will spend the day celebrating fathers, which is a great way to celebrate the feast day of St. Joseph. Lately, I've been thinking of his feast day and what it means for administrators and others who are not the stars, but who make it possible for stars to step into the spotlight.

Let us today praise the support teams, the people in the background, the people who step back to allow others to shine. Let us praise the people who do the drudgery work which makes it possible for others to succeed.

For example, I am not the kind of person who immediately decides what to do with each piece of e-mail. Consequently, once every few weeks, or more often, I need to go hunting for a particular e-mail. I am amazed at how many e-mails I send and receive in any given day. And yes, much of it is not that important.

But occasionally, an e-mail exchange can quickly settle a problem. Some times, it's good to have an e-mail chain for reference.

Many of us grow up internalizing the message that if we're not changing the world in some sort of spectacular way, we're failures. Those of us who are Christians may have those early disciples as our role models, those hard-core believers who brought the Good News to the ancient world by going out in pairs.

But Joseph shows us a different reality. It's quite enough to be a good parent. It's quite enough to have an ordinary job. It's quite enough to show up, day after day, dealing with both the crises and the opportunities.

Joseph reminds us that even the ones born into the spotlight need people in the background who are tending to the details. When we think about those early disciples and apostles, we often forget that they stayed in people's houses, people who fed them and arranged speaking opportunities for them, people who gave them encouragement when their task seemed too huge.

I imagine Joseph doing much the same thing, as he helped Jesus become a man. I imagine the life lessons that Joseph administered as he gave Jesus carpentry lessons. I imagine that he helped Jesus understand human nature, in all the ways that parents have helped their offspring understand human nature throughout history.

Let us not be so quick to discount this kind of work. Let us praise the support teams that make the way possible for the people who will change the world.


Here is a prayer that I wrote for today:

Creator God, thank you for your servant Joseph. Help us to remember his lessons for us. Help us look for ways to shepherd your Good News into the world in ways that only we can.

The Feast Day of Saint Patrick

Here we are at the Feast Day of Saint Patrick, perhaps even more popular with non-Christians than the Feast Day of St. Valentine.  I think of people eating corned beef and cabbage, or perhaps some sort of potato dish, served with soda bread and green beer to wash it all down.  Do those people think about Saint Patrick's years of slavery in Ireland before he became a missionary to Ireland before he became a patron saint of Ireland?

It's strange to think of Saint Patrick in these years when we've been censoring books that mention slavery, when we've been banning curriculum that talks about the more recent history of slavery, when we've been altering information at museums and national parks.  Hmmm.

We like slaves who are safe in centuries we can scarcely remember.  Patrick was born to a high ranking Roman family in England, but when he was approximately 16, he was kidnapped and spent 6 or 7 years as a slave in Ireland. While there, he learned the language and the non-Christian customs of the land.

This knowledge would come in handy when he was sent back to Ireland in the 5th century to solidify the Christianity of the country. There are many stories about Patrick's vanquishing force, complete with Druid spells and Christian counterspells. I suspect the real story was perhaps more tame.

Later scholars have suggested that Patrick and his compatriots were sent to minister to the Christians who were already there, not to conquer the natives. Other scholars have speculated that one of the reasons that Christianity was so successful in Ireland was because Patrick took the parts of pagan religions that appealed most to its followers and showed how those elements were also present in Christianity--or perhaps incorporated them into Christianity as practiced in Ireland.

These days, I am thinking about all the decisions made in the earliest centuries of Christianity, about roads not taken, about the ways we could have had a more vibrant religion.

This morning, on the Feast Day of Saint Patrick, I'm realizing that we do have it.  

I'm thinking of Celtic Christianity and all the ways it can enrich our daily lives.  I realize we could argue about whether or not Celtic Christianity really existed in the way we might think about it now, this many centuries later.

Even if modern versions of Celtic Christianity aren't historically accurate, these ideas have much to offer us in the twenty-first century.  I like the idea of living in community.  I like the idea of taking care of creation.  I like the way that spirituality can infuse every element of our lives, if we're being aware and intentional.  In an article from the Northumbria community, Trevor Miller says, "Esther De Waal puts it well; ‘The Celtic approach to God opens up a world in which nothing is too common to be exalted and nothing is so exalted that it cannot be made common.’ They believed that the presence of God infused daily life and thus transforms it, so that at any moment, any object, any job of work, can become a place for encounter with God. In everyday happenings and ordinary ways, so that we have prayers for getting up, lighting the fire, getting dressed, milking the cow etc."

The entire article is well worth your time, especially if you're looking for ways to revitalize your own spiritual life.  What a great way to celebrate Saint Patrick--much more nourishing than corned beef and green beer!