Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2004
A Sign from God?
I was recycling mixed paper when I saw it. Right there at eye level on the debris bin, big as life. An oval bumper sticker slapped there by some crypto-evangelist. Four big letters: WWJD.
"What Would Jesus Do?" Those four initials show up everywhere anymore -- key chains, stationery, maybe even Super Bowl rings. And here they were in a recycling center.
This time, though, the message was slightly altered. Some wiseguy had neatly written: "Jesus has left the building." And that, I suppose, settled that.
With Jesus gone who-knows-where, the message implied, worrying about WWJD is irrelevant. Nostalgic at best. But meaningless in today's real world.
Interestingly, Jesus himself foresaw exactly that point of view. My paraphrase: "Just as it was in Noah's day, people will be getting married, raising a family, their kids will grow up, get married, raise families, and so on to infinity." (See Matthew 24:37-39)
Life-as-usual. So predictable it can bore you to tears sometimes. And then along came Noah, who built a big box of a boat in his yard. Neighbors scratched their heads and said things like, "So, Noah, where's the nearest ocean? Your house isn't even close to the river. What's with the boat?"
It didn't help any when he said God told him to build the thing because soon it would rain so long and hard there'd be the world's biggest flood. If God spoke to Noah, why didn't they hear it too? Poor old fool.
Time passed. Noah pressed on. The flood came. You can look up the rest of the story in Genesis 7,8, & 9.
Jesus' point seems to have been: Don't bank on life-as-usual lasting forever. God has a way of intruding into time with flashes of eternal power and glory. Real life has a way of becoming really unusual, or unusually real.
It happened on the first Christmas. It'll happen when Jesus comes again. In this time between the times, it happens whenever God and you are good and ready.
Jesus did leave the building 2,000 years ago. But by his Spirit, he's right here right now, and he's probably knocking on your heart's door to be let back in.
"What Would Jesus Do?" indeed! The fact is, we've got four Gospels to tell us what he'd do. And a bunch of letters from his friends, who knew from experience that his way really works.
If you're interested in walking in his footprints, I'd like nothing better than to help you find your way.
Contact me and let's get started on the journey of faith.
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:46 PM
Monday, November 22, 2004
For the Birds
My friend John was given a parrot. Turns out the bird had a bad attitude and a foul mouth. Rude, obnoxious, off-color to say the least.
John tried every which way to change the parrot's attitude. He spoke only the most polite language. He played strictly soothing music -- a lot of Celtic harp, soft guitars, Enya. Nothing worked.
Finally, John lost his cool. He screamed bloody murder at the parrot. When the bird yelled back, John shook it real hard. The parrot just got angrier and all the more obscene. At last, John grabbed it by the throat and threw it in the freezer.
For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then, suddenly, there was total silence. A minute passed without a peep, then two.
Afraid he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly walked out onto John's outstretched arms, looked him in the eye, and said, "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions, and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude, unforgivable behavior."
John was stunned at the bird's change of attitude. Before he could ask the parrot why the sudden change, it continued, "Please, sir, may I just ask: What in the world did that turkey do?"
Happy Thanksgiving!
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:09 PM
Monday, November 15, 2004
Out On a Limb
"God loves a cheerful giver," says St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 9:8.
I wonder if he had Zacchaeus in mind. His story's told in Luke 19:1-10.
Jesus and his posse paraded into Jericho, Zacchaeus' home town. Wherever Jesus went it seems a crowd would gather, to greet him and hear what he had to say about God and things.
Sure enough, the curbside crowd was so thick that Zacchaeus, a short man, couldn't see a thing. So he climbed a tree for a bird's eye view.
(I suspect the crowd purposely squeezed him out. He was not a popular guy. He worked as chief tax collector for the Roman authority, and was well-known as a traitor and a thief. Can you say "scum"?)
Anyway, he's out on a limb, in more ways than one. When Jesus gets within clear view, he stops still and looks up right at Zacchaeus. Then he calls him by name! Now everybody's looking up, waiting for the holy man to tell off Zacchaeus for all his evil ways.
Instead, Jesus calls the man front and center and invites himself to dinner at Zacchaeus' un-kosher home. Zacchaeus is even more shocked than his neighbors are. He blurts out, "Lord, if I've cheated anybody I vow here and now to repay them four times over. And half of what's left I'll give away to the poor!"
Imagine the scene a couple of days later, when Zacchaeus sidewalk superintends the Goodwill movers as they load their van with his fancy furniture, priceless china, fine paintings, Armani suits, and Gucci shoes.
The tears in his eyes aren't about what he's losing, but rivers of joy at what he's found. When Jesus accepted him just the way he was, it transformed him into what he was meant to be -- a person known and loved by God, now set free to know and love God back.
The point is this: When you know how much God has given you, no strings attached, you're eternally grateful; that kind of gratitude frees you up to be generous in something like the way God is.
"Cheerful" hardly begins to describe it. Even so, I can't help smiling ear to ear as I reach for my checkbook.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:02 AM
Monday, November 08, 2004
A House Divided
Abraham Lincoln gets the credit. But Jesus said it first.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." (Matthew 12:25)
In context Jesus was deflecting accusations that his miracles were the work of the devil. If so, wouldn't Satan be a fool? He'd be splitting his family into factions, short circuiting his plan to take over the world. No, said Jesus, neither he nor the devil was that dumb.
Lincoln picked up the phrase to motivate support for continued national union, challenged as it was by insurgent support for states' rights and slave labor. Not everybody accepted his rallying cry, of course. The civil war literally pitted brother against brother for four long years.
Today I saw two maps of our country. One showed a vast territory filled with red, trimmed on each coast with blue, the results of our national election. The other showed red and tan areas more or less overlaid on the other map's red region. That map dates from Lincoln's era, the red and tan representing slave states and territories open to slavery.
I wonder what the comparison is supposed to mean. But that's not my chief concern just now.
Today I resonate with the words of Jesus and Honest Abe. Our country and our churches are a house dangerously divided.
Perhaps the greatest danger is the way so many people skirted serious political conversation during the presidential campaign.
Most of us felt free among like-minded souls to tell the truth about what we thought, how we felt, what we wanted from our leaders. But how many felt equal freedom to differ out loud with people on the other side?
Many simply kept their peace (some peace!), tried to be polite, forfeiting dialogue for stereotypes. The line of least resistance made us crooked as a river.
I'm not sure if the American separation of church and state made it happen, or if we simply lost confidence that sincere faith doesn't always lead to agreement on how to be faithful.
The Republican embrace of certain moral watchwords, applying them to specific controversial public issues, silenced vocal opposition by Christians who respectfully disagreed. The Democrats' secular vocabulary made it hard for Christians to express agreement with their policies in the language of faith.
As a result brothers and sisters talked past each other, or just didn't speak at all. About matters of national and global magnitude. About matters of life and death. About matters of liberty and justice for all.
Our house is divided. Now, today, we need to lean together into the work of repairing the foundation, of rebuilding a secure home for everyone who wants God's best for our country -- and for the world.
Not so sure about shared goals? Afraid of arguments or rejection? Welcome to the family!
What's most important is our absolute need for each other, with all our differences included. Talk to me honestly and listen the same way. Argue your case and consider mine. Trust me, work with me, and teach me why we differ when we do.
Let's be done with polite silence when it's time to tell the truth.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:02 AM
Monday, November 01, 2004
Don't Go There!
"Lead us not into temptation," says the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:13). Do you suppose God would tempt us if we didn't plead against it? Now, there's a concept to conjure with.
As if God were like a father who leaves a 6-pack, car keys, and a gun out in plain view of his hormonal son. Or a mother who gives her adolescent daughter a makeup kit, salsa lessons, and a year's supply of birth control pills. Yikes.
Lets hope the prayer means something else. I'm sure it does.
After all, Jesus did ask us to think of God as our Father in heaven.
So God cares for you and me like a perfect parent, loving us through and through. And God's infinite wisdom and power make that love work for us just the way it should.
Jesus' theology is nothing if not practical. I'm convinced he's saying God will lead us away from temptation, saving us from every kind of evil.
Picture the cliff-hanging road just outside Yosemite National Park. Who in their right mind would ride the edge, playing Grand Prix hero? No, we hug the shoulder where the slope runs uphill instead of down.
Real faith looks for protection. It doesn't presume on God; it doesn't invite unnecessary testing.
Yet real life does involve some necessary struggles. I'm thinking of Jesus' three temptations when he fasted all alone in the desert -- testing his spiritual readiness and strengthening his gifts for full-tilt ministry. (See Matthew 4:1-11)
The Bible says God can't be tempted and will never tempt us either (James 1:13). But God does let trials come that test our faith (James 1:2-4). We might even be glad sometimes when the going gets rough. The same way steel is strengthened when it's tempered, faith can become even more faithful when put through real-life trials.
It's no accident that this prayer includes deliverance from evil. Every resisted temptation frees us all the more from giving in to the next one.
I love the irony, then, that every trick of the devil is a potential bullet into the toe of his own Hush Puppy.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:12 AM
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