Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Monday, July 31, 2006
Always Christmas
Ephesians 2:4-10
We celebrated Christmas on July 30th. Not to be silly or just to get attention. But to launch our Vacation Bible School by starting at the very beginning of the gospel story. It was great to recapture Christmas joy and gratitude in the off-season -- especially after a 2-week heat wave that sorely tested both those graces.
Listen to the GODcast!
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If every day was Christmas would it ever really be Christmas?
I mean, isn't the main point that one day stands out wonderfully above all others?
And so we have the holiday, complete with special gifts, foods, and gatherings to share them with special people. Try that for 365 days and you'll end up tired, fat, and probably unpleasant company.
But what if the spirit of Christmas became a part of your everyday life? Woven into each day's attitudes, words, and behaviors.
Christmas is all about gifts. Generous kindness that says, "I know you. I like you. I care enough about you to give you this much!" And out comes a present, absolutely free of charge, that's somehow just right for you.
Yeah, I know. Sox, a tie, some tinny trinket. It happens.
But generally a gift is chosen because it's something like you, something you will really like. Or realize that you wanted or needed, even if you had no clue before you got it.
The Bible says God loved the world so much that he gave us his Very Best -- Jesus! (See John 3:16, one of God's greatest hits.) He gave us Christ to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. To meet our deepest need. To give us what we really want more than anything else.
I'm convinced what we need and want most of all is to know that our lives mean something, that we exist for some good important reason.
What difference would it make to the world if we had never been born? What gap would be left wide open if we died today?
Jimmy Stewart found the answer some sixty years ago in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." This year it's Adam Sandler's turn in the serious comedy called "Click." In between, on every single day, it's your turn and mine to learn the lesson. That's the spirit of Christmas. Every single day.
What if God really did love you and me like that? To give us in Jesus the embodiment of what God is like, and of what we could become like if only we'd let it happen. If we'd just open our hands and our hearts to accept that wonderful gift.
One answer is, we'd find a whole new freedom to look at each other as priceless gifts to be accepted, appreciated, and loved. And we'd look for every excuse to let each other know that's the way it is.
Imagine that. Like Christmas, any day of the year.
posted by Jack Buckley at
6:18 PM
Monday, July 24, 2006
Wonder Bread
While Joanne and I got out of town a few days to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary (yikes), our son-in-law Victor plunged into overtime work in bakery school.
It was an intensive 1-week course in breads of every kind -- baguettes, brioche loaves, sweet curly challahs, savory ryes, and a whole lot more.
Even when the course was officially over, he took our daughter Sharon to his kitchen classroom for an afternoon of rolling and kneading and whatever else it takes to turn flour into bread.
We came home to a kitchenful of bread loaves, far more than we could or should ever eat all by ourselves. Joanne toted off a dozen or so of them to give away at her office. You'd think she was Alice Waters the way her co-workers responded.
That was last week. Today is Victor's first day working in the kitchen of Cesar, our very favorite tapas restaurant. Woo hoo. We modestly expect a little VIP treatment there from now on as next of kin.
Unfortunately, at our age less bread equals better health. Even so, it is so way cool to have a professional cook right in our own family, and at one of the Bay Area's top 100 eateries.
The overflowing bags of bread loaves remind me of the time Jesus fed 5,000 people with a mere 5 loaves of bread and 2 little fishes. (Read the story in John 6:1-14) That meager menu came from one young boy's lunch bucket. At the end of that impromptu picnic, lo and behold, the disciples scavenged up 12 basket loads of leftovers!
Now, I have no problem believing it was an outright miracle. I mean, Victor's prodigious output last week makes almost anything about food absolutely credible.
But I recently saw another take on the story, in the movie "Millions." St. Peter himself shows up to counsel a young English boy about God's way with the world. About this story in particular.
"So," he says, "When the lad offered up all of his bread and fish, the people around him were quite a bit embarrassed. You see, they'd hid their own lunches in their pockets and purses, holding back so Jesus would find the food some other way. Now though, the boy's generous gesture put them all to shame.
"So, first one, then another, sneaked their own morsels out and passed them on with the plates being circulated by the disciples. On and on, all around the crowd, the amount of food actually increased. Selfish hearts melted; helping hands multiplied. And all because one boy gave so freely of all he had to give."
On its face, that interpretation denatures the supernatural in a flash.
But I wonder if it doesn't call you and me to another kind of miracle that doesn't depend on divine interruptions of the course of nature.
The kind where we see... feel... sense... simply the right thing to do, and then we go ahead and do it. The best we can. The best way we know how. And that sparks others to do what they can, the best way they know how. On and on, a miracle grows and grows.
So pass it on. There's bread enough and to spare.
The Bread of Life!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:33 PM
Monday, July 03, 2006
Dead Can Dance
Psalm 130; Mark 5:21-43
It's the story of two miracles, performed in tandem for two people on the brink of death. No, make that three dying people -- one of them physically, the others in their heart of hearts. The end result: Dancing spirits, fully alive to God and all that's good!
Listen to the GODcast!
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The group called Dead Can Dance record all of their music in an old Irish church.
Even so, co-leader Brendan Perry says, "If we could only keep the oral traditions going, and leave the clerical bull behind...."
Ah yes. And don't we all wish for that now and then?
I love DCD's eerily spiritual music, their lyrics sometimes in English, or Gaelic, in some kind of Middle Eastern dialect, or just plain "speaking in tongues." And part of me longs with them for a whole lot less of organized-religion bull.
Maybe that's why I used their name as my title for this week's Gospel story.
You see, Jesus also had a low tolerance for clerical bull.
It's a wonder, then, that the president of the local synagogue sought him out right there in public, looking for a miracle in the most desperate way. His 12 year old daughter was at the edge of death; she'd never grow up to be the fine young woman of his fatherly dreams.
Mark says the man threw himself down at Jesus' feet and begged him to help.
Dignity and pride, prestige and power, out the window just like that!
To say nothing of any prejudice he'd held against this upstart young rabbi who delighted in sticking it to the spiritual status quo every way he could.
Now, I'm a pretty traditional Presbyterian minister. I tend to get uncomfortable when we don't do it "the way we always did." Speak in tongues? Dance in the aisles? Do something new without forming a committee? It makes me more nervous than I'd care to admit.
What would it take for me to do what this guy did?
Well, if someone I loved more than life was dying right in front of my eyes, that would do the trick. You see, this father was dying, too. Inch by inch, a heartbeat at a time, he died a thousand deaths.
So when Jesus did indeed raise the man's dead daughter (Yes! She passed before he could reach their house!) it was a resurrection for two right then and there.
The family and neighbors who'd come to mourn her death now tuned up to play and sing the most joyous music this world has ever heard.
Dead can dance? Even Calvinists with two left feet (me, for instance) would have to take to the dance floor when that most amazing party got jumping! No need to worry there about how to coordinate feet and knees and hips or about trying to stay on the beat.
Just dance, for God's sake!
I'll take that over clerical bull any day of the week.
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P.S. The story in Mark 5 actually includes another miracle right in the middle of this one. If you're curious, click on my GODcast link and give it a listen.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:54 AM
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