International Women's Day, 2025

March is the month designated to celebrate women's history; March 8 is International Women's Day. We might ask ourselves why we still need to set time apart to pay attention to women. Haven't we enacted laws so that women are equal and now we can just go on with our lives?

Our current administration seems to think so--no need for equity or diversity or equality anymore.  With some in power, the picture is much more bleak, with an apparent desire to strip away some hard-won rights and liberties for women, for minorities, for everyone who is not white and male.

Until recently, I'd have assumed that rights that had been awarded by the Supreme Court were ours forever.  That belief is gone.  Yet I also know that I'm living in a better place than many women across the globe.  Part of that reason is because of my race and age and class.  But part of that reason is that women across the globe face much more bleaker circumstances than women on the lowest rung of U.S. society, even the ones who live in states that have greatly restricted health care for women and other protections that women need that men don't.

So, it's a hard year to be thinking about the status of women and celebrating accomplishments.  But it's important to remember that there have been accomplishments.  Women have been doing the work that needs to be done.  And in some years, surviving to fight/live another day is accomplishment enough.

It's also important to remember how bleak life has been in the past, in the not too distant past.  We have not slid all the way back to bleaker days, and it's important to remember that.  We do have rights, we do have opportunities, and we can move fairly freely in the world if we're careful.  Of course, even as I type those words, I think about all the people who don't have rights, who don't have opportunities, who cannot move freely--that's especially true in countries like Afghanistan and Iran.

In my various seminary classes, we've done a lot of analysis of oppressive social structures, of what we might call Powers and Principalities if we used theological terms.  We've talked about how these structures are self-perpetuating, about how hard it is to defeat them because they have power and accrue power simply by existing and because they have existed for so long.

No one said defeating them would be easy.  But many people have seen the vision of a better life for us all, and they can assure us the struggle is worth it, even though it's hard.  Future generations will thank us, even if we leave them tasks to finish.

And let me end on a positive note, even if I'm not feeling particularly positive.  

We know that the world can change very quickly.  I have often thought about how my 1987 self would be astonished at the fact that Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and went on to be elected president of South Africa and how there is no longer an East and West Germany. We are called to be part of the movement to change the world in ways that are better for all--and particularly for the vulnerable and powerless. We have made great progress on that front. But there is still more to do.

So, today, let us continue.

That Year When Jesus Came to Your High School

When I was at my mom and dad's, my mom showed me various books that she had used as devotional texts for Lent.  One book, Forty Days with Madeleine L'Engle, had all sorts of scraps of paper in it, including some of my poems.

We couldn't remember whether or not we were using the book together, but across a distance, or whether she was using it to lead a local church group.  I was happy to see that I still liked the poem.  It was first published in Chiron Review, back in 2009.  I'm almost certain that I wrote it earlier.

I've now written a variety of these kinds of poems, the ones I think of as Jesus in the modern world poems.  They are an attempt to answer that old Sunday School question of how the world would react if Jesus returned again and what would Jesus do and how would we recognize him?

I think of my Sunday School teachers of long ago, asking those questions, and I imagine that they would be scandalized by my poetic answers.  Of course, they may have been secretly radical themselves, as they taught us about the Jesus that the Church wanted us to know.  They may have planted these seeds that have bloomed into poems, decades later. 

New Kid

If Jesus came to your high school,
he'd be that boy with the untuned guitar,
which most days was missing a string.
Could he not afford a packet of guitar strings?
Did he not know how to tune the thing?
Hadn't he heard of an electronic tuner?
Jesus would smile that half smile and keep playing,
but offer no answers.

If Jesus came to your high school,
he'd hang out with the strange and demented.
He'd sneak smokes with the drug addled.
He'd join Chorus, where the otherworldly
quality of his voice wouldn’t quite blend.
He'd play flute in Band.
He'd spend his lunch hour in the library, reading and reshelving.

You would hear his songs echoing
in your head, down the hallways, across the years.
They'd shimmer at you and just when you thought you grasped
their meaning, your analytical processes would collapse.
Instead, you write strange poems
to delight your children who draw mystical
pictures to illustrate your poems inspired
by Jesus, who sang the songs of angels,
that year he came to your high school.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 9, 2025:

First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13

Gospel: Luke 4:1-13


This week's text shows Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. Jesus goes to the desert to find out "what it meant to be Jesus" (in the words of Frederick Beuchner). Jesus goes to the desert, that scorched, barren land. We begin our journey with Ash Wednesday, with scorched ashes from last season's palms that we used on Palm Sunday. Richard Pervo points out that it is a journey that starts in ash and ends in flames (think Pentecost). Along the way of our spiritual path, we will face similar temptations to the ones that Jesus faced.

The first temptation is so basic: basic sustenance, stones turned into bread. Most of us in the first world find ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of earning money. Why do we earn money? Well, of course, we need to cover our basic needs: food, shelter, clothing. But most of us have far more than we'll ever use. If you're like me, you have a multiple sizes of clothes in your closet, and even if you stayed within one size, you've probably got a month's worth of clothes that you could wear before you'd have to repeat. If you're like me, you've got a month's worth of food in the fridge and pantry, even when it's not hurricane season. If you're like most Americans, you have several cars, several computers, several televisions. Maybe you even have several houses.

Jesus is then tempted with power, and it's the rare person I've met who doesn't wrestle with questions of status and fame--and the power that comes with it. Even if you wouldn't sell your family or your self to be on TV, you've probably felt this temptation--or envy, because you weren't someone getting offers of fame and fortune.

The third temptation shows the danger of succumbing to the second temptation: once we become wealthy and powerful, we're likely to forget that we're not God. We use our money to insulate us, but we forget how fortunate we are to have that money. We begin to think that we earn that money because we're so talented, so capable, so educated--for many of us, the fact that we have one job over another is largely a matter of luck.

We could also read this temptation as the yearning to control God. How often do we pray in an attempt to control God? Maybe we pray for specific results to a problem. Maybe we pray for things we want, even if it's something that seems good, like an end to world hunger. Most of us aren't very patient with God's time scale. We wish God would just hurry up and show us the Divine Plan.

We need to look to the model of our savior, who also wrestled with temptation. We need to be resolute in our refusal.

The beauty of the cyclical nature of liturgical life is that it is full of chances to turn around. Even if you recognize that you've given in to these temptations or the many other temptations the world offers, it's not too late. God calls us to return. God gives us any number of welcome home parties. God waits patiently, like the parent of the prodigal son. And God knows that we will stray again. Like keeping to a sensible eating plan, this spiritual path requires more vigilance than we can sustain all the time. And yet, we can keep adjusting our trajectory.

Welcome to Lent, the season of ash and penitence. Repent, return, retool your lives. It is time again to commit to resurrection, to submit to the purifying flames of Pentecost. As we begin our Lenten journeys, let us remember that ash will not have the last word. Let us remember that we are on a journey to Easter, where the power of the grave will be defeated.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

 March 5, 2025, Ash Wednesday

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21

There have been some years when I have needed Ash Wednesday to remind me that I am dust and to dust I shall return.  And then there are years like this one, where Ash Wednesday keeps crashing into other seasons, where the forces of Ash Wednesday expand their reach.

It’s been the kind of year so far where it seems cruel to preach a traditional Ash Wednesday sermon, the sermon with the message that reminds us that our time is limited, so we better get on with whatever it is that we thought we might be put on earth to do.  We’ve had a funeral here, a few weeks ago, along with deaths in the extended families of our church members.  Many of us have more names than ever to add to the weekly prayer list, and those concerns are so serious, unforeseen, and compounded by uncertainty about the future.  Our scripture readings have circled back to death, with those passages from Corinthians that remind us of our physical death and resurrections that we can’t quite understand.  

It's been the kind of year where the weather, also, serves as a constant reminder that all we love can turn to ash and rather suddenly, with wildfires in California and the Carolinas.  We’ve had a harsh winter than many in recent memory.  And the landscape itself remains ravaged by the effects of a hurricane reaching us here in the mountains, thousands of miles above sea level and hundreds of miles from the nearest coast.  Do we really need 40 days of additional reminder of our Ash Wednesday existence?

We might read the Gospel from Matthew and find ourselves wishing for some people who were pretending to be better than they are, like those hypocrites referenced in tonight’s reading, who pray ostentatiously.  At least they are praying, after all.  We live in an age where people don’t even pretend to be pious anymore, where people are practicing a different religion, worshiping a might makes right kind of God.  We are in an age where it seems that people are in a race to see who can be most cruel as they race to dismantle systems that took so long to build.

But of course, every age has its despots, eager to dismantle and destroy.  We are not facing anything new under the sun.

In a year like this one, where it seems that the world can’t transform itself into ash fast enough, it’s good to slow down, to think about ash and dust, perhaps in a new way.  When we are surrounded by the dust of what we once held dear, let’s reconsider the role of ash.

Those of us who garden already know how valuable compost can be, how decomposing vegetative refuse can help feed new growth.  We see a similar dynamic with ash.  Experts  tell us that if we have poor soil, adding ash is one way to build the earth’s ability to nourish new life.  Ash acts as a fertilizer, enriching the soil.  Ash also deters many pests from attacking plants.  It can play the same role with weeds, protecting plants from invading weeds.  Ash protects plants from some diseases.  It can help the seed to be protected and to prosper.  We don’t hear about the afterlife of ashes in this way in most Ash Wednesday liturgies.

The danger of Ash Wednesday is that it can convince us that nothing that we do can matter.  Most of us are already aware—painfully aware—that we won’t be here on this side of the earth for very long.  We have already internalized the Ash Wednesday message that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  But let’s not be too quick to focus on the impermanence of it all.  Our physical lives, and the ways we live those lives, here in the physical realm, can be the fertilizer that our society needs.  The way we live our lives here, in 2025, can nourish the ground for the generations that will follow.

We are the ones who gather Sunday after Sunday to be transformed into a Christian community, the type of community that can sustain us, and those around us, in the hard times that are surely coming or are already here.  We are the ones who remember the ancient words and rituals that give meaning in times that are chaotic and frightening.  We are the ones who answer a different call, God’s call, to take care of the poor and the outcast, the hungry and the stranger, the afflicted and downtrodden.

We nourish the soil in the songs that we sing, the stories that we tell, the meals that we prepare, the fish we fry and the food pantries that we stock.  People do not die alone—because we are there.  People remember God’s love—because we remind them.

As we think about this season of Lent that begins today, perhaps you’ve already chosen your Lenten discipline.  Maybe you are going to eliminate something from your life, some toxic behavior that threatens your flourishing.  Maybe you are going to add something to enrich your Lent:  additional prayer time or Bible study or an activity that brings you joy. Psychology suggests that it takes about 40 days to develop a habit.  Even if it feels hypocritical at first, there is hope that our Lenten disciplines will develop, will take root, will become fertilizer for positive change.

Let us use this Ash Wednesday as a call to consciousness, a time to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  Let us use this Ash Wednesday to contemplate the soil of our lives, the destruction that has made us what we are, the decay that can nourish the work we still need to do.  Let us use this Ash Wednesday to strengthen our resolve to open our eyes to God, to say yes to God, who is making all things new.  Our God knows how to take brokenness and transform it into beauty.  Our God invites us to be part of that creation story, where dust is a medium for a new beginning.  If we look to the ground, we’ll see the bulbs that we planted in the fall are poking through the dirt.  

In Kingdom time, we don’t always get to see the flowering, but that doesn’t mean that our time, thoughts, and actions are useless.  We, too, have new life yet to come.  To paraphrase the words of Paul: rejoice, we are alive and possess everything that is meaningful and endures.  Not everything returns to ash.

The Day Before Ash Wednesday

Today is Mardi Gras, and it's also Shrove Tuesday. It's the day before Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent begins. The holidays of Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, and Mardi Gras have their roots in the self-denial of the Lenten season. These holidays are rooted in the fasting traditions of Lent and the need to get rid of all the ingredients that you'd be giving up during Lent: alcohol, sugar, eggs, and in some traditions, even dairy foods.

Mardi Gras and Carnival, holidays that come to us out of predominantly Catholic countries, certainly have a more festive air than Shrove Tuesday, which comes to us from some of the more dour traditions of England. The word shrove, which is the past tense of the verb to shrive, which means to seek absolution for sins through confession and penance, is far less festive than the Catholic terms for this day.

In the churches of my childhood, we had pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday. In the church of my childhood, a church could count on its members gathering whenever the church doors were open. Thus we had Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers and Wednesday Bible study meetings and groups of all sorts gathering throughout the week.

These days, most mainline churches feel lucky if members come on Sunday, much less at other points in the week. Many churches have Confirmation classes during Sunday School time, unlike my experience of trooping back to church in the late afternoon of a Sunday. Many churches do the whole Holy Week journey on Palm Sunday because they know that church members won't be coming back on Thursday and Friday.

It feels like we should do something special on the day before Ash Wednesday, but I suspect many of us aren't interested in traditional Mardi Gras festivities which often include large amounts of alcohol.  This blog post has a recipe for a quick yeasted bread that is relatively healthy.  It's fairly simple to make, and easy to make more festive if that's your thing.

My Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday will consist of driving; it's the day I head back to my mountain home.  It's been a great visit with my parents, and I know that I am lucky to be able to say that.

Launch Into Lent 2025

 Here we are in the last few days before Lent.  Tomorrow feels like part of Lent, even though it is not.  Let me collect some fragments.

--My sister and I have been thinking about ways to live healthier lives, ways to use Lent to undergird our efforts.  I have thought of some sort of point system, less complicated than the March Madness sports grids, but something that gives points and takes points away.  So, I might gain a point for every serving of fruits and vegetables, while losing a point for every alcoholic drink. I haven't worked out many details yet, but I wanted to capture this idea.

--I also love the idea of doing our Lenten disciplines not only for ourselves, but for the larger world.  In the example above, I like the idea of making decisions and gaining points and along the way,  using those points to help us remember to pray for the health of the larger world.

--I like the idea of adding something to our Lent, instead of denying ourselves.  But I do understand the power of denial.

--My thoughts about adding something tend to revolve around reading:  reading a poem a day, reading a devotional resource especially designed for Lent, reading my way through a book of the Bible.

--This year, I'm taking a seminary class that focuses on Christmas and Easter.  We will start exploring the Easter texts soon, and I think it will be interesting to go through Lent as we explore those texts.  I've enjoyed the deep dive into the Christmas texts which stretched Christmas into January and February.

--I need to write an Ash Wednesday sermon, which is challenging because the Ash Wednesday texts stay the same each year.  I want to say something different than last year, when I used some of my best ideas.  This year feels different:  my congregation has had more deaths and then, of course, there's the national and international changes. 

Let me finish this blogging so that I can move on to the other work of the day--and the joys of the first day of Spring Break at 2 of my schools.

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday 2025

 March 2, 2025 Transfiguration Sunday

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)

Here we are, the final Sunday before Lent begins.  Transfiguration Sunday gives us a chance to wrestle with an essential question:  who is this Christ?  Why worship Jesus?

Do we worship Christ because of his glory?  The mystical elements of Transfiguration Sunday dazzle us and threaten to overshadow the rest of the story.  What a magnificent tale!  Moses and Elijah appear and along with Jesus, they are transformed into glowing creatures.  A voice booms down reminding us of Christ's chosen and elevated status.

It's easy to understand Peter's response:  we'll stay on the mountain, we'll build a more permanent structure!  But it's also easy to understand why the disciples stay quiet about this mystical experience.  Once they descend from the mountain, they must begin to wonder if they had been dreaming.  And once again, they likely ask themselves, “Who is this man that we’ve been following?”

Jesus then heals a child; he's a success where his disciples have failed. 

Do we worship God in the hopes of harnessing this kind of transfiguring power?  It's easy to understand this impulse.  Then as now we live in a world where pain seems to have the ultimate power.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to cure the sick like Jesus did?  We live in a time where we might get tired of sending sympathy cards.  Wouldn’t it be nice to do a total transfiguration of this world we live in, where we break the bonds of disease, where no one goes to bed hungry, where our foes are vanquished.  If only we could harness the power of God!

But the rest of the lesson for today warns us against this impulse.

Jesus know that he's on a collision course with the powers that rule the world.  In the weeks to come, the disciples will argue about who is greatest, and Jesus will remind them of the nature of his ministry:  to be least.

For those of us who worship Christ because we want transfiguration, it's important to remember what kind of transfiguration we're going to get.  We're not likely to get worldly power because we're Christians--in fact, it will be just the opposite. People will not elect us to be president.  We will not be wealthy; any wealth we get, we’re likely to give away, if we’re following Jesus.

Will we get healing?  Maybe.  But it may not be the kind of healing that we’re desperate to experience.  When we think of healing, we might think of what we see Jesus do in today’s text.  A child who can’t live in society because of demon possession, suddenly transformed into a healthy child.  We might wish for something similar, for ourselves or for our loved ones.  Some of us will get that healing that we long for.  But while Jesus does heal the physically sick, he’s clear that his ministry leads to a much more significant type of healing, a spiritual kind.

Will we be creatures that glow with an otherworldly light?  Maybe this will happen occasionally—but it will be metaphorical, not the kind of literal light that the disciples witness on the top of the mountain.  

The text today reminds us that Transfiguration Sunday gives us a glimpse into a larger spiritual realm—but there’s also the sadness that we can’t stay there forever.  Ah, Transfiguration Sunday which leads us to Mardi Gras, a few last hurrahs before the serious season of Lent, that season of ash and penitence.  Let us stay here in this glow. 

But we can’t stay there forever.  Our spiritual texts remind us again and again that we must come down from the mountain.

However, we can frame that descent into good news, a path before us, the path that brings us off the mountain and into service. Let us not confuse the mountain top for the true relationship that God offers us.

Throughout the Scriptures, we see this tension between the mountain top and the flat land experience. We feel the thrill of meeting God, and then we have to figure out how to live our daily lives afterwards. Some of us will spend our lives in permanent quest mode, going from one mountain top to the next, looking for spiritual thrill.  This quest might not be as dangerous as other pursuits.  But it can keep us from committing to the communities that we live in, between the times when we’re off to the next retreat or monastery. 

Some of us will try to convince ourselves that the mountain top experience wasn't real, that it didn't matter, that it wasn't as profound as we know that it was. Maybe we won’t talk about it because we can’t figure out the right words.  Maybe we have no way of processing what we saw up there on the mountain.  But our text does show us a way, to come down, to serve our fellow humans.

Some of us will try to live our daily lives transfigured: at our best, people, convinced that we have some yoga regime or diet that they need to know about, will ask us for our secret.  At our best, we’ll transfigure the societies around us, casting out the demons that torment so many of us.

Many of us approach Lent in a spirit of transfiguration. We give up something for Lent or we add something for Lent, hoping to feel that thrill of transfiguration. But once Lent is over, we shouldn't forget our Lenten disciplines. It's too easy to let our daily lives take over. It's too easy to forget the Gospel message of transfiguration and resurrection. God calls us to transfigured lives so that we can help in the repair of the world.  And that’s true during Lent and other times, as true for us as it was for those disciples who saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain.