Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Heaven On Earth
A 15th century poet asks us all to thank God for Adam and Eve's "fall from grace" in the Garden of Eden.
If that catastrophe hadn't happened, s/he said, then God would never have sent his Son to save us.
Not exactly the way I would put it; but the poet does have a point.
Tradition says that "in Adam's fall we sinned all." That is, the first man and woman were all we had in terms of a bond of loving trust between humanity and God. Our fate was in their hands. And, for who knows how long a time, everything went swimmingly. It was heaven on earth, complete with evening strolls with God to top off each day.
But one sad day temptation won out. The garden became a jungle. Adam and Eve hid from God (good luck!) but were smoked out to admit, "We decided we just wanted what we wanted, and we wanted it now, regardless of what you'd like us to do."
Their relationship with God was broken. So was their relationship with each other. And their inner relationship to themselves. Till then Adam could look at Eve and see God's own image, and vice versa, but now it was like staring at a cracked mirror.
Then came the baby Jesus, Christ the Lord, Immanuel -- "God With Us."
Such titles say that once again heaven came down to earth.
And all the stories about grown-up Jesus say he undid the damage of Adam's original sin, by consistently choosing to want what God wants above anything else.
At the beginning of his ministry, he says three fast No's to the devil's temptations. (See Matthew 4:8-11) On the last night of his life, in another garden (Gethsemane), he wrestles with wanting to avoid death but ends up praying, "And yet, not what I want but what you want!" (Mark 14:32-36)
St. Paul even called Jesus a Second Adam (in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15), who sparks a whole new creation. At long last, Jesus got it right!
And it all began one cold winter night when a baby was born in a borrowed stable. No wonder the angels sang loud and long about the good news!
Whenever you and I give in to temptation, we're repeating the pattern of Adam and Eve way back there in the garden. Every time we side with Jesus, we replicate his pattern of agreeing with God. The more we do that, the clearer our reflection of God's image, the less cracked our spiritual mirror becomes.
Okay, poet; that really is a whole new reason to sing "Merry Christmas!"
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:18 PM
Monday, December 19, 2005
Rob's Christmas Carol
At Christmas dinner in 1992 our grace prayer included a request that my nephew Rob would get well soon.
He had a bad case of pneumonia, which was wrecking his first Christmas back in his parents' home after years of being off on one mission tour or another. Africa, Amsterdam, the heart of Manhattan. Enthusiastic, energetic good works in the name of Jesus. That was the pulse of Rob's young life.
Rob didn't get well. Soon or at all. By the end of January 1993 he was dead. Of AIDS.
The memorial service at Rob's home church in New York was Standing Room Only, and rightly so. For he'd served tirelessly there the last couple of years as boss of their Sunday night meal program for down-and-out neighbors. The meal was a fitting contact point for numerous ministries of mercy, including spiritual bread for hungry souls, who gladly joined the church family in due time. And Rob was the charismatic kid brother loved by all and loving them right back in Jesus' name.
The crowd that day included professors, actors, writers, blue collar workers, street freaks -- and one minister whose grief overpowered his intention to stand and testify what his nephew meant to him. All I could do was sit still and drink in the palpable love for Rob, the grief at his loss, the gratitude for his life.
Kids in a nearby Christian elementary school put together a special square for the AIDS Quilt Project in honor of Rob. They'd never met him, but their teachers had.
High school classmates pooled some cash to seed a scholarship in Rob's name. Students who'd never met Rob would get a leg up because some who had known him loved what he stood for.
His brother Dave determined that a foundation would come into being, to promote Rob's kind of ministries and provide Rob's kind of ministers with what it takes to make them happen.
Thirteen years ago, we prayed for my nephew to get well. He didn't. I dearly wish he had.
But his death, and the responses it provoked, bestowed on me a priceless gift I would never think of exchanging. One young man's untimely passing compelled each of us who loved him to look again at our assumptions.
About the infinite value of every new day we're given.
About the human complexities our stereotypes are powerless to define.
About the limitless ability of love to transform open hearts and minds.
This Christmas, pray for whatever it is you really want. Then be sure to look for what's really good in whatever it is you get.
posted by Jack Buckley at
1:10 PM
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
How Do You Recognize A Prophet?
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; The Gospel of John 1:6-8, 19-28
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This third week of the Advent season, we meet John the Baptist again, as the Gospel of John tells his story. For some reason, this got me wondering how you can know you're really dealing with a prophet. My message identifies four distinctive characteristics and suggests prophets can show up in the most surprising places.
Listen to the GODcast!
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Holy Hubert. Now there's a name to conjure with.
Thirty years ago he stood out there on Berkeley's Sproul Plaza every weekday at noon. About fifty years old, rough hewn, he would thump his Bible, pace around like a leopard, and preach hellfire and damnation to anyone who'd stop to listen.
They did more than that. Some students and hangers-on went out of their way to show up for Hubert's scene, many of them ready with one-liners intended to knock him off his prophetic tracks.
But Hubert held his own. He'd point his finger to the sky and talk about God. He'd point at his own chest and talk about spiritual things. Then he'd point right at his audience, call them to repentance, and drop his punch line:
"And God loves you, you sinner. Bless your dirty heart!"
I wonder how many of those students, now as old as Holy Hubert was then, once in a great while flash back to those open-air revival meetings -- the memory triggered by some sight or sound or turn of phrase -- and realize they'd received a "word from the Lord"? What seeds planted by Hubert so long ago have now yielded a harvest of spiritual maturity?
I remember hearing, way back then, an even more surprising word from the Lord than Hubert's. Not on campus, but in my own front yard.
A friend and I stood there talking when two street dudes came walking by. Stopping right in front of us, one of them asked for spare change, which I politely declined to give. He looked me in the eye and said, "You're not crazy, are you? Naw, you're not crazy. You're too strong to be crazy." Then he moved on down the street to catch up with his friend.
I could not shake his words. Maybe he was right. On the continuum of mental health, I was a lot closer to the sane end than he; but whatever kept me this side of his kind of problems seemed suddenly very tenuous.
Where did any strength I had come from? How strong was it, really? What might tip me towards or even beyond his position on the scale? And when, or how?
As it turned out, within a week I was a guest on an intensive retreat with seventy or so men. Half of us were guests, talked into being there by trusted friends who'd experienced Cursillo for themselves and wanted to share its blessings. The other half had teamed up for months in advance, training and praying, conspiring to love us unconditionally in Jesus' name.
That weekend transformed this professional Christian's life and ministry. It was like a spiritual bath, a plunge into cool fresh waters of faith and hope and love. Strengths... weaknesses... sins... faithfulness... every part of me known fully by God and perfectly taken care of by the mercy of God.
For days after returning home I couldn't help smiling at even the most mundane things. I could swear I'd fallen in love. Bless my dirty heart!
Intentionally, or by accident, now and then some person plays the role of God's prophet in your life. If you've got a tender conscience or a sensitive soul, you pick up their message loud and clear. As if God had a microphone.
Holy Hubert knew how to prophesy. He pointed up, he pointed to his own heart, and he pointed out to clinch the deal with his assembled noonday multitude. In his better moments he was really pointing behind himself, like John the Baptist did 2,000 years before:
"Look beyond me and you'll see Jesus. Watch and listen to him, to what he does and says, and you'll find out just how much God loves you. Bless your dirty hearts!"
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:55 AM
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Road Work Ahead
Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
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This second week of the Advent season, we focus on the mission of John the Baptist who answered God's call to "prepare the way" for God's new Messiah. Kind of a wild man, John caught everyone's attention and shook them out of spiritual lethargy.
Listen to the GODcast!
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For half a year drivers on two of Alameda's main streets slowed down, merged lanes, and muttered unkind words. The orange "Road Work Ahead" signs were far from beautiful, but they steered us through a major street beautification project. And the end results are indeed easy on the eye.
When John the Baptist came preaching his message of repentance and spiritual renewal, his words were far more upsetting than our bumper-to-bumper discomfort.
But he used the same image to describe what he was up to. He'd been sent to "prepare the way of the Lord," to pave the road for God's new Messiah!
Mark, telling John's story, quotes the very same image from Isaiah's old prophecy. Then he slips in a phrase from Malachi, the very last prophet in the Hebrew scriptures.
Now, after 400 years of prophetic silence, John steps up and speaks up for God. His message is stern: God's people need to turn back to God from their foolish ways. They need to confess their sins and be baptized.
Baptism wasn't a new deal. If a Gentile wanted to become a Jew, two or three rituals had to happen. For a man, (1) Circumcision would symbolically cut out his sins. For a man or a woman, (2) Sacrifices would pay for their sins, and (3) Baptism would wash their sins away.
The shocker was that John said even Jews had to go through these steps. It's not about your lineage, but your life! It's not about hearing the truth, but having a true heart! It's not about nice words, but good deeds!
Parenthesis: Every week of Advent has a theme. This week's is Love. John the Baptist hardly seems to embody love. Maybe not at first glance; but look again.
Like Malachi, John told the truth to everybody from peasant to priest -- even when it hurt. And that might be the most loving thing you can do when serious problems are afoot.
Real life teaches us that denying the truth doesn't make it false. Ignoring a problem never makes it go away. Tough love requires reality checks.
That alcohol is killing you... Those careless remarks are killing your marriage... This refusal to forgive and forget the past is killing your future....
So John the Baptist shone bright with the truth of God's law, guidelines for good living. But he couldn't hold a candle to God's grace that came with Jesus.
Talk about your beautification project! John's "road work" paved the way for the arrival of God's Light of Life, who warms and brightens our world, full of grace and truth.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:34 AM
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