Meditation on Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for August 9, 2026:

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
I will listen to what the LORD God is saying. (Ps. 85:8)
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

This week’s Gospel reading reinforces the themes we found in last week’s lesson. The disciples are in the boat and Jesus walks across the water to them. They don’t recognize him; indeed, they’re terrified. When they realize who it is, Peter, always enthusiastic, asks Jesus to bid him to come, which he does. Peter walks across the water with no problem, until he realizes what he’s doing and starts to sink.

Now, most of us probably haven’t had experiences where we’ve suspended the laws of nature, but most of us can probably relate to what Peter experiences. When I first learned to type, I got to the point where I could type at a very fast speed—until I thought about what I was doing. If I just let my fingers go and didn’t look at them, if I did what I knew I could do, I’d be fine. I’ve had similar experiences in learning foreign languages and in learning to play the mandolin or the ukelele; if I play the notes without double checking both my fingers and the chord charts and music books, I find out that I really can play—still more haltingly than I would like, alas.

This story is also about God’s presence and our inability to recognize the Divine all around us, as well as our trouble accepting the miraculous. One of the narrative arcs the Bible is God’s desire to be with God’s creation, to know everybody, to be fully present in our day-to-day lives--to the extent of becoming human. And God has to go to great lengths to get our attention—bushes burst into flame, oppressive governments release the captives, loaves and fishes feed thousands, people rise from the dead, God goes so far as to take on human form—miracle after miracle, and still humans don’t understand and don’t want to accept God’s daily presence.

Even when we do let ourselves glimpse the sacred and divine, even when we experience the miraculous, how quickly we forget and let the mundane swamp us. Psychologists would probably tell us that our approach is a coping mechanism, that if we let ourselves be that open to God, we’d go insane, or at least we’d look insane to our fellow humans. I’m not sure I agree. Maybe we’d be better witnesses, better disciples.

Be on the lookout for God in your daily life. Maybe it will just be a wink from the Creator, like a tree full of butterflies. Maybe you’ll be in the presence of the full-blown miraculous, and all doubts will vanish—the tumor shrinks, the passengers escape the burning plane, the hurricane curves out to sea.

Or maybe you won't get the miracle you think you want, but the miraculous comes as you learn how to cope and you learn that coping leaves you more open to the presence of God. Watch for God, listen for God, be alert. God is there, by your side, both during the times of the miraculous as well as the mundane, in the times of catastrophe, drudgery, or luminous.

Recording of August 2, 2026 Sermon

I felt good about my sermon yesterday--it's not likely to go down as one of my best, but it's solid.  I tried to do more than just re-tell the Gospel, a problem with many sermons I've heard and one I try so hard to avoid in my own sermons.  The Gospels aren't so complicated that most people don't understand.

The recording of my sermon is here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I posted the manuscript in a blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, August 2

August 2, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 14:13-21




Last week we had parables of smallness and hiddenness to tell us what the community of God is like. I concluded last week’s sermon by saying that the Kingdom of God, this community that we’re helping to create right here and right now might remain hidden for our whole lives, visible to those around us with eyes to see, but invisible to the larger world. Today’s Gospel reminds us that the Kingdom of God might in fact burst out of whatever tidy containers we thought we had devised for it.


Today’s Gospel reading begins in the middle of chapter 14, and to fully understand today’s reading, we need to know that the first 12 verses of chapter 14 tell of how John the Baptist was killed by Herod. Jesus hears about the murder and withdraws to the wilderness.


In the book of Luke, John and Jesus are cousins; in the book of Matthew, they are colleagues. We could read the book of Matthew and infer that John is Jesus’ teacher. We also see that John knows that, he, John, is the warm up act for the Messiah who is coming.


But in the book of Matthew, John the Baptist isn’t always sure that Jesus is that Messiah. In chapter 11, John who is in prison sends some of his followers to ask if Jesus is the one. Jesus responds, as he so often does, by giving a list of what he has done, a list heavy with healing.


And now John is dead, killed by the forces of government, Herod representing both Jewish rule, Jewish rule allowed by the ultimate earthly authority, the Romans. Jesus goes to a deserted place, a wilderness place. Wilderness and deserted places have deep significance in both the Gospel of Matthew and the larger Bible. Wilderness is a place outside of the reach of earthly rulers. Wilderness is a place of temptation. Wilderness is also a place of deliverance. We see all of these aspects of wilderness in today’s Gospel.


Jesus retreats to the wilderness to process what he has heard: John is dead, killed by the forces of government. We might see Jesus’ retreat as an attempt to lay low for awhile. If we thought that people didn’t know what Jesus was up to, what happens in today’s Gospel shows us otherwise.


People follow him on foot. At the end of the Gospel, we find out that 5000 men have followed him, along with women and children. It’s a town-sized crowd out there in the wilderness. In fact, most towns of that time period would have fewer people than 5000.


Jesus feels compassion for the crowds, and so he heals them. He doesn’t say, “I’m grieving because the world lost a good man today. Come back tomorrow.” He gives them what they need.


The response of the disciples might seem less compassionate, but they, too, are trying to give the people what they need: food and getting back to a safe place before night falls in the deserted place. They know how much food they have, and it’s not enough.


In contrast, Jesus tells the crowd to sit. He blesses the food and gives it to the disciples to distribute. Note how this miracle could have gone a different way and still achieved the same outcome. Jesus could have commanded food to fall from the sky, a manna from Heaven moment. He doesn’t. Jesus could have had everyone come forward and wait in long lines. He doesn’t.


He equips the disciples. He empowers them to do the work that they know needs to be done. Jesus transforms not only the food, but also the disciples, who have come to Jesus with a problem and an inadequate solution, and Jesus gives them deliverance: 12 baskets of food left over, everyone having eaten their fill. It’s a unique deliverance: God’s miracle by way of 12 pairs of human hands who go out to the people gathered on the ground.


Here we see how the Kingdom of God, God’s community, spills out of its tidy containers. John has been killed, but his prophetic mission will not end. Jesus, too, will be killed, but he has shown his disciples how to continue his work. We know that some of the people who are fed will continue to follow Jesus. They will be convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the one for whom they have been waiting, their time in the wilderness of uncertainty coming to a close, Jesus as their new Moses.


Jesus shows how power is used in this new Kingdom of Heaven that has drawn near. He does not march on Jerusalem to avenge the death of John. He dismisses the crowds. Healed and fed, they are ready to return to the world.


Some of them are surely changed permanently. We will see that the disciples, too, are changed, although it does take them time to claim this power they’ve been given.


We, too, have this power. We’ve seen it in action in numerous ways, the way that small meals turn into nourishment for the whole community. We’ve seen it literally, with every fish fry and chili festival that we offer to our neighbors: literal meals prepared by a group of people smaller than the disciples, food that always stretches until the last ones are fed. We see this power in action in other ways too, as we carry on the work of sustaining souls, work that our ancestors began, work that is ours to continue in our own unique response when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”


We see a collective response to Jesus in the ways that our larger church in the world supports the sick and the hungry. We see the ways that small acts lead to larger abundance which leads to all sorts of transformations. As we get ready to return to school, I’m thinking about how Lutherans have so often been at the forefront of education, putting small sums of money together to create church camps and daycare centers and schools for everyone from pre-K to college and graduate work. Many of these institutions have lasted for several generations, some in Europe for hundreds of years.


God’s work in the world might be like a seed or a grain of yeast or a treasure in a field, hidden to all but those closest to it. Our work in the kingdom of God might seem small to us, but even a small meal in the hands of God, can feed over 5000 souls. And for those of us who identify more with the crowd longing for healing and food and something we can’t even articulate as we chase Jesus into a deserted place, today’s Gospel reminds us that wilderness time often results in a closer relationship with God.


Jesus comes to liberate us from all that tries to constrain us. Jesus tells what the Kingdom of God is like in parables, and today he shows us those parables in action. What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? It’s like a small group of people who see what needs to be done. It’s like a small group of people who are sure they don’t have enough resources, but onward they go, person to person, sharing what they have. What is the Kingdom of God like? Five thousand men, along with women and children, fed to bursting, with baskets of left overs. It’s a foretaste of the feast to come, and a taste of the Heaven that we can have right here, right now.

The Hinge Festival of Lammas

Early August is a hinge point in the calendar. In some ways, it's not as obvious a hinge as the autumnal equinox or the summer solstice; in fact, it's the time directly between those two hinges--we're as far away from the start of summer as we are from the start of autumn. But in some ways, it's just as significant a point of seasonal shift.

If we lived in medieval England, we would be celebrating the festival of Lammas, a festival that celebrates first harvests with loaves of bread standing in for that first harvest.  There might be processions to bakeries, to bless them and to bless the bakers.  

It would be a festival that celebrates abundance, the abundance that comes later in a cooler climate.  Of course, we here in Appalachia are celebrating that abundance too; the summer vegetables are still going strong with beautiful tomatoes at the farmer's market.  Yet across the region, apple orchards are opening today.

We may have slogged through summer long enough that we may feel that nothing will ever change--it will be hot and humid forever. The light hasn't changed significantly, the way it will in a month or two. But we are losing more daylight each day as we hurtle towards a different season. Students aren't in school yet, but the time draws closer. Most of us aren't agricultural people anymore, but if we were, we'd be seeing crops in their final ripening. Harvest would be coming soon.

Now is a good time to take an accounting. Have we been planning some summer festivities that we haven't gotten to do yet? Now is the time. Do we need to adjust our trajectories for the rest of the year? Let us make some plans.

Celtic Wisdom: The Last Days of July

 ELCA Stewardship specialist Tim Brown made this Facebook post today:

In the heat of waning July days, the ancient Celts would ready themselves for the August festivals and the beginning of the harvest.

They would take these final days to spend intentional time resonating with the world around them, relaxing in the earth and seeking out sacred spots to bless and in which to be blessed.

You might say this ancient practice is a precursor to our ideas of "vacation" these days. Summer rest is not something we invented, Beloved, but inherited through the long echoes of phenomenological rhythms that pulse throughout the looping threads of time.

Celtic author Mara Freeman notes three ways to honor the earth in these last July days that fall on the cusp of transition.

First, you can give thanks. Find a quiet spot in nature, breath deeply, listen carefully, and be grateful for what is around you. She notes that "a sacred site does not have to be famous or located in a distant country. It can also be a quiet, secret place you have found in the woods or, if you live in the city, a favorite old tree in a local park." (from Kindling the Celtic Spirit)

Secondly, do some clean up. Whether it is in your backyard, along a well-hiked stream, your local park, or even just bush pruning around the house, caring for nature is an act of sacrifice to the very Earth who will, in the coming months, sacrifice fruit for us. Pruning, by the way, is necessary for many plants, and should be done with the plant in mind, and should not primarily be about how your yard looks from the street.

Finally, take a pilgrimage. Journey to a place where the Earth has been damaged or is in danger of being defiled, calling attention to it. Whether it is the pipeline in the Dakotas, over-fishing off the coasts, or even unwelcome infringement on a natural prairie in your little pocket of creation, walking there, seeing what is happening with your own eyes, and calling attention to it is an act of power and grace. Or, as one theologian puts it, "an actively mobilized process of bearing witness to woundedness and to the mysterious possibilities of the sacred."

In these acts, the whole Earth becomes an altar upon which our attention, our love, and our gratitude is sacrificed. These acts have rippled throughout the cosmos from our ancient parents until today.

How will you add to the wave?

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.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

  The readings for August 2, 2026:

Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22 (Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21 NRSV)
You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Ps. 145:17)
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

The story in the Gospel lesson is familiar; indeed, a version appears in each Gospel, which may mean it’s more likely to be a factual reporting, or it may mean that each Gospel writer realized the significance and implications of the story and couldn’t bear to leave it out. Jesus preaches to the multitudes, who grow hungry. Jesus commands the disciples to feed them, and they protest that they only have five loaves and two fish. But miraculously, not only are the thousands of people fed, but the disciples gather basket after basket of leftovers.

Christian approaches to this story are varied, from share your resources to rely on Christ for what you need. But today, I'm interested in the human response to the miraculous.

Look at the behavior of the disciples. Jesus commands them to feed everyone, and they protest that they can’t, that they don’t have enough food. They’ve followed Jesus for some time and they’ve seen him perform many miracles, including making dead people come back to life. But their first response is that they can’t possibly do what Jesus expects.

This story tells us an important lesson about the human resistance to the miraculous. We limit God, and our fellow humans, by our inability to dream big visions. We assume that we’ll always have hungry people, oppressed nations, and what can we do? We only have so much and it will only stretch so far. But we forget how much is possible—how much we have already seen with our own eyes.

For example, imagine we could time travel back to the year 1985, not so very long ago. Imagine that we told the people of that time that in a few short years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Not only that, but Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and free elections would follow five years later. Not only that, the Soviet Union would soon be no more.

The people we encountered would not believe us. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that Nelson Mandela would die in his South African prison and that his nation would disintegrate into civil war. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that the Soviet Union would always be a part of the geopolitical landscape, and that there would always be a literal wall that separated east from west.

To talk about how these miracles happened would take a much larger space than I have here, but it’s important to remember that one reason is that ordinary people dreamed of something different. For example, in numerous interviews that I’ve heard, Desmond Tutu, gives credit for the fall of apartheid to the governments, institutions, and individuals who fought for divestment from a corrupt regime. And even when the call for divestment was not successful, those calls started an important conversation.

Desmond Tutu also always gives credit to the believers throughout the world who prayed for a peaceful way out of an insolvable situation. Even if you didn’t own a solid gold, South African Kruggerand, you could participate in the process of mercy and justice.

And don’t let my emphasis on political miracles keep us from remembering the other miracles that surround us: health restored, relationships repaired, the student who suddenly understands an impossible subject, the hungry fed, the homeless who come in from the inhospitable climate.

I know that for every miracle, someone has suffered the pain of loss:  the cancer that didn’t go into remission, the job loss that leads to other losses or a weather catastrophe from which we cannot recover. For every South Africa, there are countless countries that collapse and can't recover.

But we are called to keep our eyes towards a different reality. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just after death, Jesus declares. It is among us, here and now. And we can be a part of that glorious creation.