Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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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!
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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
Monday, March 20, 2006
Getting Back to God's Basics
John 2:13-22
In this week's story Jesus literally turned the tables on the people running the Temple. Understandably angry, they asked just who he thought he was to do and say such nasty things. His answer opens up a wonderfully new way to think about where it is God wants to set up housekeeping.
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In the 1980s "Me Decade," physical fitness freaks talked a lot about the body as a temple. I doubt many of them knew the term came from the Bible (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 -- "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God... therefore glorify God in your body.")
So instead of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jane Fonda in their prime, the original intention was for us to resemble Jesus more and more.
For he's the one who floated the idea years before St. Paul made ethical hay with it in his pastoral letter.
He'd come to the Temple in Jerusalem as a Passover pilgrim, one of countless thousands from all over the map. What he saw there made him so mad he created a public scene.
In the "court of the Gentiles," animals for sacrifice were on sale. Hired hands tended to the sheep and goats and birds. Official inspectors made sure each animal was kosher, no defects to pollute the altar. Their combined fees cost each worshiper two days' wages.
On top of that, all foreign coins had to be exchanged for kosher coins. And the exchange rate (plus a little skimming) raised the cost to three days' worth of pay. All of that before you could take one more step towards the holy altar. Talk about your sacrifices!
So Jesus, with fire in his eyes, grabs a whip and cracks it at the animal keepers, then turns over the money tables. People duck for cover in every direction, some of them chasing after the spilled coins in the bargain.
"Just who do you think you are," yells somebody in authority, "To do and say these things in God's Holy House?"
A missed point there? What's all that holy about buying and selling at poor people's expense?
By the way, I've known churches where selling Girl Scout cookies in the coffee hour is forbidden because of this story. To do that would be the first step onto a slippery slope of commercializing the house of God.
I don't buy it. Jesus was onto something bigger than that.
First of all, he calls his own body the true Temple of God. He warns that even if they got rid of him once and for all, he would come back to haunt them. "Destroy this Temple and in three days' time I'll raise it up again."
So don't mess with God's true Temple. Put that together with Paul's extension of the metaphor, to include all Christians who follow in Jesus' steps. You get the clear impression that real worship isn't about outward ceremonies but about loving and serving God from the heart.
You might also think twice about mistreating people who carry around inside themselves the Holy Spirit of God. Imagine -- that irksome neighbor, frustrating family member, stupid person you find it so hard to forgive... Look again and see them as God's true Temple, and think twice about desecrating holy ground.
Which one of us is wise enough to determine who is or isn't a Temple of the Spirit? Who can draw the definitive line between Chosen People and Gentiles? How truly wise we are to play it safe, and act as if every person we meet is already on God's invitation list.
A wonderful thing happens when you're treated that way. Maybe for the first time, you feel as if it could be true. And you lean into the possibility, you grow a little into the promise. In short, you become a bit more like Jesus -- a flesh and blood image of God in the world.
Imagine what the world would be like if we always remembered this profound and simple fact.
So... Remember it!
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:03 AM
Monday, March 13, 2006
Slipping Onto Satan's Side
Psalm 22:23-31; Mark 8:31-38
This week's message focuses on how easily even the best intentions can distract us from catching God's point of view. Poor Peter serves as a case study in getting it almost right and winding up all wrong.
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I understand how Peter could think he was standing up for God when he pulled Jesus aside and told him, "No way!" about this "going to Jerusalem to die" thing.
He was full of himself, praised just minutes ago by Jesus for seeing things from God's own perspective. "You're the Christ, the Son of the Living God," he'd blurted. "Right on!" said Jesus. "God showed you that, and you got it right."
But now Peter was getting it all wrong. Jesus actually called him "Satan"! He said, "You're not looking along God's sight line now, but squinting through the lens of common sense." And heading for a spiritual car wreck.
I know how that goes. I was there myself a few decades ago.
I had driven all night to meet my parents, then we rode together another 90 minutes to attend my grandmother's funeral. That evening I napped a couple of hours, then set off on the 300-mile trip back home.
Why the rush?
Well, the youth ministry I worked for had a big event coming up and I needed to hit the ground running as soon as possible. Family business was a major distraction from God's business. Being 25, I could easily pull two all-nighters and jump right back into ministry, powered by adrenaline.
I even stopped on the shoulder once to sleep some more in the driver's seat. Then... Time to stand up, kick out the kinks, and climb back behind the wheel for the duration.
Next thing I knew, brake lights were rushing towards my windshield. I hit my own brakes hard and started skidding. Ending up about eight feet behind a stopped delivery truck, I sat with hands frozen to the wheel, my heart in my throat.
I'd driven in a semi-conscious zone for who knows how long, the dawn light not registering in my mind, the road and traffic a blur to my sleepy brain.
My guardian angel got an ulcer that morning. But together we made sure I stayed w-i-d-e awake the remaining 100 miles between my highway wake-up call and my waiting bed.
And that's exactly where I headed as soon as I walked through our front door. So much for getting right back to God's work.
Amazingly, everything I needed to get done did get done, one day later and just as well.
I had risked my life out of obligation to do the right thing -- at all cost! Even if it stole from our ministry a dedicated leader, and cost my wife and two little kids me for the rest of their lives.
Drifting off to sleep at the wheel, I'd let my car drift towards destruction. Losing my focus on God's sight line, I had gone cross-eyed with pride in my own point of view on what mattered most and how to get it done.
All innocently, I had slipped onto the devil's side, working directly against God's best intention for me, for my family, for my ministry -- all 40 years of it since that dangerous day.
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:14 PM
Monday, March 06, 2006
Where The Wild Things Are
Psalm 25:1-10; Mark 1:9-15
We begin the Lenten Season with a look at Jesus' temptation out in the desert right after his high moment of public baptism. Mark tells us angels and wild beasts were also on the scene, flanking Jesus and the devil. Dangerous stuff!
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It's not an easy thing to figure out why the Roman Empire bothered to pick on the earliest Christians.
I mean, their Founder went out of his way to preach peace and nonviolence, and side-stepped every hint of invitation to lead a rebellion against the Powers That Be.
But there they were, in the Colosseum, entertaining standing-room-only crowds with their deaths. Sometimes as human torches tarred and ignited on tall poles at sundown to shed light on the gladiators and wild animals, more often just marched out there to be the beasts' next meal.
I think that risky pricetag for faith in Jesus is why Mark mentions wild beasts in his version of Christ's temptation.
He doesn't bother to tell us the devil made three specific offers to Jesus, let alone what they were. Matthew and Luke sure do. But Mark is up to something different.
I believe he wants to encourage people who live daily on the edge of destruction by the Roman authorities -- the same way their Lord and Savior had been destroyed. That is, in the most cruel and nasty way possible.
Our ornamental gilded crosses are a far cry from the rough wood truss Jesus hung on that "good" Friday, all naked out there in public shame and agony. "Take that," said the soldiers. And the crowd made fun of him for it.
If Jesus, who knew and trusted God so well, wasn't spared a cruel death -- then why should his followers expect any different fate?
But Mark adds there were angels there at the temptation, too. In the midst of deadly danger God's good guys stood by to "wait on" Jesus through the worst of it. I'm sure they were nearby his cross as well.
Not to save his life. If that was an angel's job description, God would have fired most of them long ago!
Angels aren't so much heroic EMTs, but more like personal trainers. They're there to give a timely word of instruction, to show you how to do the right thing in the right way. They stop you from doing something wrong or harmful. They remind you what you've already learned but have lost track of during stress and strife.
Remember the cartoon image? On one shoulder sits a leering devil, whispering nasty little nothings in your ear. On the opposite shoulder is a conscientious angel exhorting you to do the right thing. What will you do? Who will you obey? It's your call now.
A wise Native American elder tells a young boy about two wolves who live inside every one of us, struggling to gain dominion. One is good, the other evil. "Which one will win, Grandfather?" asks the boy. The old man replies, "The one I feed!"
I suspect the Imperial mind couldn't wrap itself around such modest spiritual logic.
After all, in the words of the Berkeley bumper sticker, it "subverts the dominant paradigm." Buy into the Jesus way of choosing, and nothing is ever quite the same again. For you or for the world.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:04 AM
Thursday, March 02, 2006
A Glimpse of Heaven -- On Earth
Psalm 50:1-6; Mark 9:2-9
Jesus took his three favorite disciples up a mountain to sit a spell and pray together.
After a while, right before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, Jesus' face began to shine like the noonday sun! And his clothes turned whiter than Calvin Klein's highest priced dress shirt!
Lacking polarized sunglasses, the disciples hid their eyes. But not before they saw two other men sitting side by side with Jesus. These new guests turned out to be Moses and Elijah back from the dead.
And they were talking over with Jesus what would soon be happening -- like, his death!
Well, enough was enough. So God dropped a cloud over the scene, the disciples blinked, and suddenly -- Jesus was alone again. And on low beam.
Peter impetuously (his usual modus operandi) said, "Lord, this is fantastic! Wait till we tell everybody what just happened up here. Why, there'll be pilgrimages from the four corners of the world. I know, let's build three shrines so people can bow down, pray, maybe even leave an offering or two -- or, better yet, three!"
Or words to that effect.
God had another idea. "Listen to Jesus. Follow his lead. He's the One I'm working through now."
How disappointing.
So Peter and his pals had to go back down to sea level with Jesus, and get on with their real mission in real life.
But, you know, in an instant they could be right back up there anytime they needed -- through the gift of sanctified memory.
On a blissful summer afternoon... Bouncing on storm-swept waves in a flimsy fishing boat... Staring temptation in the eye... Stirring awake at 2:00 in the morning in a cold sweat....
Back up there on the mountain-top.
God gives us sanctuaries by surprise along our pilgrim way. And forever after, they're there for us to revisit just when we need them most.
My wife had to endure a few MRIs a year ago. Facing that noisy claustrophobic experience, she determined to go back in her mind's eye to the wee island of Iona. There, just off the western coast of Scotland, she and I spent a magical couple of hours on our silver anniversary victory tour.
Talk about your holy ground! It was the toehold of Christian missions in ancient Scotland. At the modest old abbey there, even today daily prayers are said, psalms are sung, lesson are taught. All in pursuit of peace for all the world.
In real time, we were there 120 minutes or so. In God's timing, we're there in a flash, whenever our spirits thirst again for its priceless gift of serenity.
Peace be with you.
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:37 PM
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