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Monday, August 29, 2005
Life and Death in Carolina
You can enjoy the movie Junebug without ever setting foot in North Carolina. But if you've done some time there you'll understand it more.
Joanne and I met in college not far from where this story takes place. So, for 90 minutes in that dark theater, we endured chills and flashbacks, oh no's and oh wow's. What a ride we had.
A handsome yuppie drives across country with his hotty new wife, from Chicago to his parents' house in Carolina. That's only for cheap lodging while she negotiates a contract with a reclusive painter, a kind of lurid male Grandma Moses. The young husband hasn't been in touch with his family for years and he's not ready to pick up with them now.
But he has to be civil, at least. That's hard to do when his father hardly speaks and generally hides out in his basement workshop, and his mother dutifully if sullenly goes about her daily chores from dawn to dusk.
Compounding the communication problems is his kid brother (who makes Dad seem like a toastmaster), who obviously resents everybody in the house -- especially his extremely pregnant wife.
And she's a real piece of work. A naive sweet-spirited motormouth, she latches onto her new sister-in-law with an enthusiastic deathgrip.
On first exposure, none of these characters presents a single loveable trait. Not even an interesting one. Wherever this movie is heading, you're not sure you care to travel very far with it.
And yet... And yet, these people grow on you. What you thought you knew about any one of them disintegrates scene by scene.
Never before have I heard that inflection in the cliche, "Jesus loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay that way."
Never have I watched such sustained, amazed curiosity on a listener's face while her urbane husband sings an old gospel song without a trace of irony.
Corners of all their psyches are peeled back to reveal complexities of concern, desire, aspiration of which you'd never guess at first glance. Plot turns feel for the most part as inexplicable and real as the little daily defining events in your life and mine.
We rarely take readings on this choice to speak up or to shut up, on that impulsive reaction or calculated remark, as if the rest of our lives depended on such mundane decisions.
But Junebug's strange slow dance of family dysfunction suggests that is just the case more often than not.
My preacher mind cross-refers here to Moses' last big speech before the Israelites crossed over into the promised land. (See Deuteronomy 30:11-20) His punch line called on them to "choose between life and death." That is, to pledge themselves to go forward in step with God, or to take the line of least resistance and wind up worshiping idols and losing their whole identity in the bargain.
What strikes me right now about that proposition is how sneakily we can make the choice for death. I mean, nobody in their right mind says, "Yeah, of course, I want to die. Bring it on!" That's way too obvious. And dumb.
Instead, we're choosing death every time we refuse to risk our lives in order to really live. Trying above all to keep things safe, retreating from the unpleasant consequences of living right, we slowly freeze to death spiritually. Hypothermia never felt so good.
Ironically, the folks in Junebug are able to feel their way towards lives worth living only when they're willing to die to their habitual ways of making do with a living death.
And they're not the only ones.
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:10 PM
Monday, August 22, 2005
An Honest Answer
Jesus really put his team on the spot. I wonder what I'd say if I were in their sandals. (We're talking Matthew 16:13-20 here.)
His question had two parts.
Part one, easy enough: "Who do people say I am?" All they had to do was report what they'd been hearing. Some good guesses, a couple kind of odd.
Part two, the zinger: "But who do you say I am?" Er, um. uh... (Feet shuffle, eyes shuttle every which way.)
Then Simon Peter pipes up: "You're the Messiah. The Son of the Living God!"
"Right on!" says Jesus. Or words to that effect. Jesus commends him for getting it right, and cautions all of them that it was by divine revelation he'd found his way there.
I'm glad Peter answered the way he did. Not the way we preachers do in handling this story. We unpack his words in two different directions, complicating the matter and drifting past his simple point.
1. He could have said, "Look around this place (Caesarea Philippi, near the Sea of Galilee), see all the Roman statues -- Venus, Mars, Jupiter and all -- shrines to imaginary deities. But you, you're the incarnation of the Real Divine Deal!" (In fact, that's traditional Christology. But I'm glad Peter didn't expound it here.)
2. Or he could have said, "Okay, let's do the divine equation. On one hand, GOD is immortal, invisible, spiritual, eternal, ad infinitum; HUMANITY, on the other hand, is oh so mortal, physical, timebound, fallible, on and on and on. And YOU, you're the perfect blending of the two! Here's the diagram...." (That too is a basic datum of our creed. But, again, thanks be to Peter for not pursuing it here.)
Why be grateful he didn't go there? Good question.
Because the last thing Jesus then, or anyone else now, needs to hear from honest Christians is, "How do you defend your faith in Jesus?"
We do far better to tell in simple terms, "Here's what Jesus means to me."
You might say, "Hold on there, cowboy. Peter says, 'Messiah... Son... Living God.' Pretty theological language, don't you think?"
Well, yeah. But let's think a bit further.
The Messiah would be God's chosen person to fulfill God's promises. Peter's been watching and listening to Jesus a good long while, and -- Bingo! He keeps hearing the ring of truth, seeing miracles of mercy. God at work for his people's good.
The Son of God would embody in flesh and blood God's own character. Peter has recognized in Jesus the divine family resemblance. The guy keeps reminding him of God on a daily basis.
The Son of the Living God would bring the living presence of God's love. Not a God who made things and left them to run for themselves. But God who's alive, well aware of us, actively involved to bless us.
If any of this is what we see when we look at Jesus, then what matters most about our "doctrine of Christ" is stuff like:
The ways we treat each other... The rules we decide to keep or break... The habits we feed or starve... The meditations of our hearts and minds....
Because that's what he's basically all about: What God is like, and what God wants to help us be like. In real time, one day at a time.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:33 AM
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Good Dog
In Walt Kelly's old "Pogo" comic strip a lazy hound dog loved to slouch up against a swamp tree and leaf through Dog's Life magazine.
Our phrase "a dog's life" describes a humdrum, plodding, where's-the-payoff existence. If dogs had lawyers, we libelers would be shirtless long ago! Meanwhile, every dog lover absolutely knows that dogs are loyal and loving, attentive to your every need.
But I say, who can know what's really going on inside a dog's head?
"The Far Side" once suggested a dog hears, when his human speaks, "Blah blah blah blah Harry blah blah blah blah." And I'm convinced a dog believes, "Every time I give that guy this Frisbee he's gonna throw it. I've sure got him trained!"
Many cultures call people they don't like "dogs." For example, the Jews of Jesus' day did it to the Gentiles. Ruled by basic instincts, liable to go wild without a moment's notice, unclean, a wonder they didn't go around on all fours. Sentimental stuff like that.
In Matthew 15:21-28 Jesus and his posse were in Gentile country. A local woman came to him asking if he'd heal her daughter. Jesus ignored her so she kept on asking. Dogging his steps, she started yelling and making a scene. The disciples tried to shoo her away, and Jesus said he couldn't care less because she wasn't "one of ours."
Then, to top off the brush-off, he said, "It's not right to throw the children's food to the dogs!" Ouch. Not your usual Gentle-Jesus-Meek-And-Mild story.
I wish Matthew cued us about body language here. Did Jesus make eye contact? Did he wink at her? Was he frowning? Maybe smiling? Nobody knows.
Regardless, she refused to give up. "That's true," she said. "But decent folks let a dog keep whatever falls on the floor!"
And here I think Jesus not only smiled but laughed out loud. Because he says, "You got me there. And you've got what you wanted. Your daughter is healed -- right now!"
I can't resist the temptation to say this woman's dogged determination made all the difference. Like a dog with a bone, gnawing and gnawing, she finally got the juice. And had the last laugh.
When you pray and don't get immediate answers, and that will happen, don't give up too soon. Stay on the lookout for a divine wink. Perk up your ears for the holy laughter.
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:40 AM
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Who You Callin' Church?
Before I knew it, I'd stirred up a nice little debate.
Blame my friend Dennis. He's the one who got me into his local writers' group. They meet monthly face-to-face. In between, they're in touch online as often as they wish.
My e-letter of introduction quickly drew a few friendly replies. 'Most everyone had even visited my blog. Next thing I knew we were conversing about spiritual things. A pleasant surprise, since it's a secular organization.
By day two a dissenter piped up. He drew a bold line of distinction between faith and reason, declaring that appeals to supernatural causes for mysterious phenomena really "explain" nothing.
Readers know that I advocate a faith that works in the real world, that "planting your feet firmly in mid-air" is spiritually useless. So this man and I might seem like natural allies. Maybe as we get acquainted that's where we'll end up. For now, he's fired a skeptical shot across my pastoral bow, and I'm on my toes to see what's coming next.
Meanwhile, several other members have logged on with observations and testimonies about what they believe or don't.
Some write poetically. Some others sound a bit professorial. Each clearly trusts the rest to listen carefully and answer honestly. For all the seriousness, there's a lot of good humor in the air.
The whole endeavor reminds me of the church on its better days. Consider...
Christians come together from many different backgrounds, with different complexions and accents, to meet at one common point of identity. We've all learned to trust God's promises embodied in Jesus Christ. We're the family of faith, a fellowship of the forgiven.
God loves us, pure and simple. We can't do a blessed thing to change God's mind.
God knows us through and through, just the way we are. God accepts us 100% right there. God leads us towards becoming everything we're meant to be.
And, all along the way, God uses us to remind each other that that's the gospel truth.
Can we trust it enough to let it govern our lives? And trust each other enough to open up our lives a little more? Like the AlamedaWriters seem to do?
I think I'm going to like this secular church I've joined. Maybe that dividing line was only dotted after all?
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:12 AM
Monday, August 01, 2005
What Miracles Are Made Of
A couple of Sundays ago Joanne and I went to San Francisco's Stern Grove for a free concert.
Opening the show were Linda Tillery's Cultural Heritage Choir, an African-American a capella group from Oakland. Then came Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South African singers who in their own modest way helped bring down apartheid in the 1980s. Their leader closed the concert with a shout of "Peace, love, hope, and hallelujah!"
Amen to that.
I had dropped Joanne off, then taken 1/2 hour to find curbside parking. Then I'd walked a switchback path down, down, down to the amphitheater. I somehow found Joanne amidst the audience of thousands, and learned she'd had to negotiate that same steep path ahead of me.
Then we had to stand for the whole concert. This with my poor wife just 3 weeks free from a 6-week hospitalization for pneumonia. Yikes.
And then we trekked back up the steep slope to street level. Double yikes.
But all the way to the top, Joanne never once stopped to catch her breath or even cough. A minor miracle. Hallelujah for sure!
Well, not quite a miracle.
We use the term pretty loosely nowadays, flexing it to mean something like, "I'm blessed, grateful for a special good surprise. Thank you, God!"
Technically, a miracle is a contradiction of (in contemporary terms) the laws of nature. Biblically we might say: of the usual patterns of the created order.
Either way, what usually happens doesn't. Life-as-usual is reversed, slowed down, speeded up, or stopped.
So, the Red Sea parts to let the Israelites cross ahead of the Egyptians chasing them down. Or, Joshua prays and the sun stands still a while so his army can win their battle. Jesus walks on water. Or he turns water into wine to rescue a wedding reception.
In Matthew 14:13-21, he takes five loaves of bread and a couple of fish and feeds 5,000 men with them, not counting all the women and children eating right along with them.
That last one, I think, gives us a model of what goes into most miracles. Not what happens in a miracle. It'd take somebody a lot smarter than me to tell you that. But what God is up to in making the miracle happen....
1. Compassionate Care: Jesus saw the crowd was tired and hungry after a long day of good spiritual stuff, so he went the extra mile to give them what they needed -- Food!
2. Creative Power: Jesus re-worked the created order to make something good -- and timely -- happen for the people he cared about.
3. Complete Provision: Jesus' miracle fed his people's souls as much as their bodies. He's a full-service Savior!
In "Jesus Christ Superstar" King Herod sneers at Jesus, "Prove to me that you're no fool. Walk across my swimming pool!" But that kind of grandstanding Jesus would never do. His miracles weren't done to prove a spiritual point, but to provide a spiritual point of contact.
Always were. Always will be.
posted by Jack Buckley at
6:52 PM
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