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Monday, April 24, 2006
Easter For Doubters
Psalm 133; John 20:19-31
We call him "Doubting Thomas," but there was a lot more than that going on inside the man. I think Thomas was an utter realist, unwilling to base his faith on nice ideas that have nothing to do with the real world.
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The disciple Thomas missed all the action that first Easter Sunday.
At dinner time, after all the day's excitement, Jesus' disciples were in a locked room, hidden away for their lives. Who wouldn't be?
I mean, all they had to go on was an empty tomb and the word of what they thought were some hysterical women. (Don't get me started.) How could they be sure Jesus was really alive again? Life doesn't work that way!
Seeing what the powers that be had done to Jesus, they figured enough more crosses could be found -- or patched together -- for each of them to hang on. So there they cowered, waiting to see what would happen next.
And then -- Shazam! -- right there with them stood Jesus. Complete with nail holes in his hands and a spear wound in his side.
What a celebration they must have had. Then he was gone again.
Next thing you know, Thomas gave the secret knock on the door. When he heard what had happened, he said, "No way! I won't believe it until I can see for myself and even stick my fingers in his wounds."
Talk about your realism. This guy was no pushover for pie in the sky religion.
I wonder where Thomas had disappeared to. What did he find to do, and where, and why?
Well, what do you do when your life takes a hard hit by surprise?
Some people crawl into bed and try to sleep their troubles away. Some go shopping. Or fishing. They do something familiar, comfortable, and safe. So maybe Thomas got in his pickup truck and made a run to the dump. Whatever it was, he bought some time.
And his time came the next Sunday night.
They all were huddled in that upper room again, Thomas with them this time. And sure enough, Jesus showed up like before. An encore performance for Thomas' sake.
"Go ahead, feel my wounds," he said. Instead, Thomas fell to his knees and worshiped his risen Lord. Seeing was believing. No touching required.
I'm so glad this story got into the Bible.
Because I have my moments (long ones, sometimes) when I'm not so sure how to compute a new idea or experience into my understanding of God's way with the world. Maybe you do too. If so, we're in the best of company.
Notice what Thomas did with his doubts. Unlike many of us, he refused to retreat. He wasn't interested in protecting himself from possible criticism, correction, or exclusion. Instead, he took his questions to church.
And that's where he got the answers he needed to know. He was welcomed not just by the other disciples, but by the living Christ as well. That's what any church worth its salt is all about.
Frederick Buechner says that doubts are not the opposite of faith, or its enemies, but its "ants in the pants.... They keep it awake and moving." (Wishful Thinking)
Maybe the church should be called Squirmers Anonymous.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:31 AM
Monday, April 17, 2006
Easter Earthquakes
Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; Mark 16:1-8
Mark's Gospel has a surprise ending -- Easter morning... empty tomb... angel's great good news... and the women run away in terror! The end. What shall we make of that?!
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We look back 2,000 years to that first Easter Sunday, and we're just days away from the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake. Interesting coincidence. If there really is such a thing.
One family who survived the quake but lost everything in the fire that followed, arranged with their rabbi to hold their son's Bar Mitzvah as scheduled on April 20. A Torah scroll was located, set on a table, and the boy read his prayers, right there in the midst of all the tents. A few hundred onlookers gathered round, most of them not Jews. They clearly needed some kind of spiritual focus amidst all the chaos, confusion, and loss of their earthly possessions.
It's a terrifying thing to feel the ground rocking and rolling under your feet!
Where can you put your weight down now for a secure footing in life? What will be your foundation now for any kind of predictable future? Everything you took for granted is suddenly up for grabs.
Matthew's Gospel says there was an earthquake on Easter morning, when an angel rolled back the huge stone the Roman soldiers had forced into place at the entrance to Jesus' tomb.
Mark tells it differently.
When the women get there, the stone's already off to the side, and the angel sits there patiently waiting for them. He tells them Jesus has risen and will meet them very soon. They must go announce the invitation to his disciples. Then the women beat a path out of there.
But not to tell the angel's message to anyone. No, they run away in terror! End of story.
What a strange way to end a Gospel -- which means "good news." More like bad news. Freaky news.
Think of it as Mark's version of the earthquake story. Those women ran away in open-mouthed horror because Jesus' resurrection turned upside-down everything they assumed about the way the world works. There's your ultimate earthquake -- inside your heart and soul.
And their story resonates with yours and mine, if we take Easter seriously.
I mean, I love fresh green grass, budding trees, and blooming flowers as much as anyone. But all those springtime-fresh goodies are coincidental to Easter's timing on the calendar. Easter is not about bunnies and eggs, either. Natural fertility is also coincidental to Easter's story of resurrection into eternal life.
Shift into metaphorical reverse with me, and consider all those cuddly elements as signs and symbols that point us to Easter as the heart of the springtime matter.
In this day of The DaVinci Code and a Gospel of Judas, it seems easier, for many people, to believe in spiritual conspiracies than in Jesus' resurrection.
Would you rather worry that the Pope and his minions are out to get you? Or trust that God has overpowered all the powers of death and sin and the Devil?
I'm betting that God shook up the world we thought we knew so well, when Jesus got back on his feet that first Easter Day. Death is not the last thing in life! And that means everything we think, and choose, and say, and do every day of our lives now adds up differently -- with eternal consequences. For every one of us, and for all of us together.
Earthquakes come and earthquakes go -- under our feet, inside our hearts.
But, like angels always say when they show up, "You don't have to be afraid. Never ever again."
Happy Easter!
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:19 PM
Monday, April 10, 2006
God Sweats the Small Stuff
Psalm 118:1-2,19-29; Mark 11:1-11
"Don't sweat the small stuff" means "Major in the majors, and let the minor things take care of themselves." Fair enough. But when Mark spends half his version of the Palm Sunday story explaining just how Jesus got that donkey for his little parade -- well, you get the impression that even the smallest details of your life must mean a lot to God.
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My Southern Baptist classmate at the Presbyterian seminary told me he'd run into serious trouble a while back. Presiding at a funeral in his rural church, he quoted Mark 11:3 to reassure the grieving congregation the man had died because "the Lord has need of him." A sweet thought in its way. But the good people got up in arms that the preacher would compare the deceased to a donkey!
Watch out when your people know the Bible inside out.
It's true, Jesus sent two disciples to fetch a young donkey for his "triumphal entry" parade into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And Mark devotes half his story of that glorious day to the details of that livestock transaction. Including the men's self-defense about taking the donkey because Jesus needed to have it. Very unusual, for the most concise of the four Gospel writers.
Two facts to consider:
1. Far from the lowly joke critter we moderns have in mind, the donkey in Bible times was really no less noble than a horse. When a king rode a horse in procession it was a sign of power and conquest. Riding on a donkey, the king signaled he was coming in peace and humility.
So Jesus' parade cut against the grain of the shouting crowd's "hosannas" -- a plea for him to "Save us now!" Meaning: "Get rid of the Roman oppressors! And do it right away!" But that was not his plan. His power to save came through submission to God's surprising method of salvation. His parade passed through the shadow of a cross.
2. All the donkey details in Mark's narrative suggest that God really cares about the "small stuff" when it comes to getting God's work done. Maybe it's all small stuff, after all. Those two disciples, only hours before running their lowly errand, had been arguing about who would have the best seats when Christ's kingdom finally got up and running. Ha! This was their crash course in humble service.
So, when you're serving God's big plan [Ministry], it's no little thing to change the light bulb in the church rest room, offer a ride for a doctor's appointment, or turn away from your computer screen to give a few minutes to someone who's itching to chat you up [ministry].
Life is full of small stuff. But there's no such thing as insignificant people. So everything really matters in the end.
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:55 PM
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
High Time
John 12:20-33
John tells us "some Greeks" tried to have a meeting with Jesus, at the very Jewish festival of Passover. His reaction was enthusiastic, to say the least. This, he said, was the moment he'd been waiting for from the first day he went public. Make you curious? Then...
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The old saying says, "The Greeks have a word for it."
Take, for instance, the matter of time, which has two words.
Chronos is ordinary tick-tock time, precisely measured by clocks and calendars. Kairos, on the other hand, means a special moment in time -- your day of opportunity, your hour of decision.
Here's an example of the two "times" at work.
A pelican swept gracefully across the water, mere inches above the waves. I watched intently, forgetting for the moment all about the bird's strange combination of physical features. I drifted into a zone of appreciation for Beauty's way of catching us by surprise -- transforming the least likely candidate sometimes into an icon worthy of worship.
That this epiphany happened at 3:27 p.m. on a Tuesday is absolutely true. And irrelevant by a country mile. While the clock kept ticking, I was lost in the moment. And that's the difference between chronos time and kairos time.
When two of Jesus' disciples tug his sleeve and tell him he has some unusual visitors, his answer translates fairly well into cowboy movie lingo. "Okay, boys, it's high time. Let's get packing!"
For 11 chapters, John's Gospel teased the reader along with Jesus frequently saying, "My hour has not yet come." Whatever was going on, he wasn't ready to do his main Messianic thing. Not yet. Not ahead of God's timing.
Now he says it is indeed God's kairos time. The moment for God's Son to be glorified.
Yay!
But then he complicates things. By saying the way he'll get the glory is by letting himself die. Dead as a doornail. Or, in his words, dead like a seed. You get a good harvest of grain, he says, by letting seeds die, planting them in the dirt, hoping against hope they'll sprout up into new life.
Then another complication. If you like what you see in Jesus, want to follow his ways, then you also have to let yourself die. Not like Jonestown, drinking the Koolaid in unison because the Master says so. But like Calvary, where the Master relinquished control of his own life for the sake of others. And for God's sake.
Easter tells us there's so much more life on the other side of that kind of death. Dead to self, but alive to God! Call it abundant life!
The springtime clock ticks on and on, in daylight saving time for now. Each day recorded on the calendar grows a little longer, a bit fuller with bright warm light.
In the midst of all that, don't forget to stop and look and listen for signals of splendor. Keep tuned into kairos, and major in opportune moments.
Time is too short for anything else.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:41 AM
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