Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
You have three ways to hear his weekly message:
- Read Pastor Jack's GODblog.
- Listen now to an audio of the scripture reading and Pastor Jack's sermon.
- Listen anytime. You choose the time and place. Download Pastor Jack's GODcast to your MP3 player.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Bright Lights, Dark Minds
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; John 3:14-21
When the religious leader Nicodemus visited Jesus in the dark of night for an exclusive interview about God's way with the world, Jesus said he had to stop lurking in the spiritual shadows if he really meant business with God. You and I face the same challenge today.
Listen to the GODcast!
_______________
The five-year-old says, "You can't see me!" But I can.
He's covered both eyes with both hands. At his stage of development, he figures that if he can't see then no one else can either. But he's wrong.
Jesus told a man named Nicodemus pretty much the same thing, when that good man came in the dark of night for an interview on what Jesus thought about God's way with the world.
Nick took to the shadows to avoid being seen checking Jesus out. His religious colleagues had serious questions about the young new rabbi. Nick didn't need any guilt by association as he asked Jesus his own serious questions.
When the conversation got confusing, Nick's questions started sounding like a five-year-old's. So Jesus reminded him of a familiar story about Moses, to help him get back on track.
Out there in the desert some time during the forty years of wandering, poisonous snakes attacked the Hebrew people, killing them very quickly. The snakes were a punishment for the people complaining about Moses, and about God, getting them into this hot, exhausting mess. The old days of slavery in Egypt were starting to look fairly comfortable by comparison, they grumbled. Zap! Snake bites!
Moses made an impromptu effigy of a snake, stuck it on a pole, and raised it high. "Look and live!" he yelled. Some did, and their snake bites healed right up. Some more of them looked at the snake statue, then more -- and they all lived to tell about it.
Sounds a little like homeopathy. A small dose of medicine that produces the same symptoms you're suffering from knocks out your illness once and for all.
Or like Carl Jung's archetypal "shadow" deep within you, which -- if you'll only look deeply into it -- has the power to transform your deepest dreads into newfound positive powers. Talk about coming in out of the dark!
In any case, Jesus calls on Nick to look his, and the whole world's, darkest problem right in the eye if he wants to find God's true light.
Just as Moses lifted up that snake, he says, so he will have to be lifted up on a cross as the antidote to sin and death. His one death, ironically, will become the cure for all death. "Look and live!" he says.
Then he says, God gave the world his very best in Jesus, who's called the Light of the World, but the people of the world "loved darkness rather than the light."
Imagine that.
Who would rather lurk in the shadows than step into the bright warmth of God's good will?
I don't know. Maybe someone who feels really guilty, and doesn't want to risk being punished. Or someone who doesn't want to change his ways, no matter how destructive they might be. Someone who'd rather do it herself, thank you very much. People like that.
Anyway, our basic problem seems to be not a lack of spiritual light, but a refusal to let ourselves see it.
Some wise person said it's impossible to defect from a new insight. You'd be much smarter, in every way, to face the facts you've discovered, to make friends with the truth, and then let the light do its life-giving thing in your heart and in your mind.
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:34 AM
<< Home
|
|
 |
|
|
