Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Monday, October 23, 2006
Peace By Surprise
Ephesians 2:11-22
If the gospel is true, then it's impossible for a Christian to have even one true enemy in the whole wide world. Oh yeah, you say. Well...
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A sage once said there are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide things into twos, and those who don't.
I think we all do the division thing -- not about things as much as about people!
Consider the Bible's story of Israel as God's Chosen People living in God's Promised Land.
That strong sense of identity and purpose sustained the Hebrew people through centuries of hardship, opposition, persecution, and outright warfare. All their traditions -- rules, rituals, sacrifices, feast days and fast days -- underscored "who we are," "why we are here," and "what we are to do."
Understand, outsiders were welcome. If they would conduct themselves properly. If they wanted to convert. Then they were schooled in the traditions, coached in the beliefs and behaviors, en route to complete assimilation into the covenant community.
Even so, there was a wall of separation beyond which they could not go. Literally. At the Temple in Jerusalem, inquiring Gentiles could mingle in the outermost courtyard with Jewish worshipers. But a wall prevented them access any further into the holy building.
They were still outsiders. Ceremonially unclean, spiritually disqualified.
A classic case of Us vs. Them, Our Kind vs. That Kind.
Our Kind Of People are the ones with whom we share the same assumptions, ideas, vocabulary, and behavior. We feel safe and comfortable. Life is good and relatively easy.
No wonder, then, that other kinds of people put us on guard. They might hurt us. They will certainly change us, given half the chance. Much safer, then, to do all you can to protect your familiar world from the start.
So we build walls. Or worse.
In Fremont, CA last week a woman was gunned down on the street, walking with her 3-year-old daughter on the way to pick up two other daughters after school. Police have no clear idea yet why she was murdered. But she wore a Muslim head covering, so it might have been a mindless hate crime. She was different.
In Nickel Mines, PA a few weeks ago ten Amish schoolgirls were shot by a suicidal gunman. Five of them died. Who knows exactly why that man did what he did. Maybe because the Amish are just so visibly different.
Such extreme Us vs. Them cases chill our hearts and minds.
And yet, all of us are inclined to divide people into two groups. And we tend to put up walls for protection.
But Ephesians says God won't let that be the last word on earth any more than in heaven.
"Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us." (That's chapter 2, verses 13-14)
When Jesus' body hung on the cross, at the intersection of heaven (upright pole) and earth (horizontal pole), his death was "the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world." (See John 1:29) Once and for all, every impulse not to love our neighbors the way we love ourselves was defeated then and there. In principle. At least, that's what Ephesians says happened.
Our challenge is to work out that principle in real life. So, how does it work in real life?
Let's revisit Nickel Mines, PA.
When the madman announced he was going to kill all those girls, one of them volunteered to be first. Hoping he would stop with her. A second girl asked to be next. Hoping against hope that help would come to save the rest. Willing sacrifices, they were, after the pattern of the Lord they loved and trusted.
A few days later, nationwide fundraising was begun to pay for medical treatment of survivors, and for burial expenses. The Amish families asked contributors to give money to the killer's family as well.
Then they sent a representative to his funeral, to tell everyone there that they forgave him from their grieving hearts. They could do nothing else, they said, if they grounded their whole faith on God's forgiving mercy.
How in the name of real life could those people do that kind of thing?!
What if, in real life, all of us did that kind of thing?
Human nature wants to divide and protect with high, thick walls. Without them we could get hurt. Or worse.
But I'm convinced human nature really wants something else, far deeper and wider than all that.
Every last one of us wants and needs to be taken seriously, to be honored, for who we really are. To be known for once, cared about, cared for, fully accepted just the way we are. On the receiving end of such an unconditional love, our defensive fists can't resist opening out into hugs of welcoming trust.
When your battlefield transfigures into a playing field, where's the room for enemies? All kinds of people are now become Our Kind Of People.
And that simple but profound idea has the potential power to change the world. The real world, in real life!
P.S. The latest issue of Esquire, not your average religious journal, contains an awesome story that illustrates my point. In "The Hug" Tom Chiarella tells about his overnight journey from defensive anger to peace by surprise. I think of it as the Gospel According To Amma.
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:56 PM
Monday, October 16, 2006
The Open Secret of Joy
Philippians 4:4-9
The only way you'll find true happiness in this life is to give up looking for it. Just one more of God's greatest ironies. The Apostle Paul knew it, and so did C. S. Lewis.
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C. S. Lewis is probably best known lately as the author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of seven "Chronicles of Narnia" -- children's books about a magical kingdom ruled by the lion prince Aslan. The 2005 live-action film version of that story won critical acclaim and revived interest in all of Lewis's writings.
Good thing.
For this British scholar in English literature was one of the 20th century's most influential writers advocating for the Christian faith in a world gone thoroughly secular. Scores of his books, popular and technical, remain in print decades after their publication. Dozens of literary societies study them to this day. And children read and re-read the Narnia stories as if they came off the presses only yesterday.
In his mid-50s he wrote a memoir called Surprised By Joy. In its pages he narrated his journey from childhood in a formal Victorian moralistic world into adult life in a formally agnostic, post-World War I, world of academia.
Lewis remembered from earliest childhood a heartfelt longing for what he called Joy, a fulfillment that transcends mere happiness or pleasure. Those good feelings are dependent on circumstances, on what happens to you. Joy is a matter of the bones and marrow of your being, of your heart and your soul.
He told of flashes of insight, flushes of good feeling, that sometimes took his breath away. Of being drawn to the green hills visible from his boyhood home in Belfast. Of the innate kindness gladly given by his nursery maid. Of glints of sunlight, whiffs of a garden. On and on, as boy and man, he encountered hints of eternity flickering in the world of time and space.
He and his Oxford colleagues enjoyed debating and dickering about religious questions. It was all so stimulating and not the least bit threatening to penetrate their intellectual armor. And yet, Lewis and a few friends had to agree that apologists like G. K. Chesterton made a lot of practical and theoretical sense -- if only they weren't Christians!
In time, Lewis kind of argued himself into a theological corner, squirming to deflect the persuasive power of the Christian faith -- if only it weren't Christian! And finally, on a bus ride to the local zoo, he simply realized that he did believe the gospel. Outwardly undramatic, his conversion that day was, he said, that of an inwardly kicking and screaming penitent. If he'd been able to continue doubting he surely would have, but that was not to be.
When he became a Christian Lewis gave up his quest for Joy. He'd discovered he was known, loved, and engaged by the Maker and Ruler of the Universe. That was enough. So he thought.
And yet, as time passed, C. S. Lewis discovered that elusive Joy comes at last to stay in the midst of knowing, loving, and serving God. To any Christian, that is the great open secret of God's way with the world.
Paul the Apostle says it this way:
"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4) Then he says we should remember what we already know about God, what we've already received from God. "Think about these things," he says, and worry will vaporize, fear will disappear. In their place rise up joyous commitment to God's ways and courage to pursue them faithfully.
That's the way C. S. Lewis lived the last thirty or so years of his life. And he wrote about it every which way he could, trying to turn readers' hearts and minds toward the God he'd found, or been found by, in Jesus Christ.
Footnote: In God's delicious irony, the lifelong bachelor Lewis met, fell in love with, and married (not in that order) an American expatriate named Joy Davidman Gresham. In their few short years together, this mentally tough, compassionate, eccentric, devout woman surprised him again and again with her tenacious unconditional love. Their story is told with good humor and deep respect in the movie "Shadowlands" featuring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:20 PM
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
It's All About Ministry
Colossians 3:12-17
That $100 religious word "ministry" simply means "service," doing what you can with your set of skills to be of help to others. And the fact is that every single person on this planet is shaped to be a serving helper to others. This week's message is designed to encourage and challenge you to discover what your shape for ministry looks like.
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"Are you religious?" asked the bookstore clerk as I laid my selection on his counter.
A bit startled, I thought, "Well, I'm buying this book in a Jesuit bookstore, aren't I?" Sensing my confusion, he asked if I was a seminary student. That I was (even if a Presbyterian one) qualified me for a discount price. Woo hoo.
The Roman Catholic tradition distinguishes the vast majority of garden-variety believers from the select few with a religious vocation. Laity, clergy. People, priests.
That seems to work very well for them. But we Protestants see the seeds of a spiritual class system planted in that distinction. Truth be told, though, we're prone to duplicate it ourselves, even though we affirm the "priesthood of all believers."
Did you know the title "parson" is a holdover from long ago when the pastor was the best educated person in town, and thus worthy of the name "person" with a capital P?
Too bad for the uneducated masses, huddled in their pews and scrabbling at their daily tasks.
Did you know the word "clergy" is foreign to the Presbyterian vocabulary? Its opposite, of course, is "laity," meaning "people." So logically a clergy man or woman turns out to be a non-person!
Tricky, that.
As far as I know, we Calvinists are unique in ordaining not only pastors, but also elders and deacons, to their official ministries. Three different job descriptions, calling on different skill sets, but each recognized as equally valuable and authoritative in its own area of ministry.
Pastors major in teaching God's truth and guiding the church in worship, fellowship, and service. Elders focus on spiritual oversight and practical management of the church's life together. Deacons lead the church's ministries of mercy and practical assistance.
And there's your "priesthood of all believers" in action. No clergy-laity divide, no Person-people caste system.
It's all rooted in Christ's breaking down the walls of separation between God and people, and between people of different ethnic, or class, or even gender origins. (See Galatians 3:26-28 and Ephesians 2:13-19)
In Colossians 3, it's all about ministry -- every single person shaped by God for serving God and serving God's people.
Imagine that. Every one of us is a unique, unrepeatable bundle of gifts for ministry. Even if you've never been appointed to official church leadership. We're just meant to work out, every day in every which way, what it means to love God and love people most effectively.
Rick Warren, in his best-seller The Purpose Driven Life, uses the word "shape" as an acronym for five distinct aspects of this serving life style.
Spiritual gifts -- Your God-given strengths for ministry
Heart -- Your center of motivation and passion
Abilities -- Your natural in-born talents
Personality -- Your unique temperament
Experience -- Your history of satisfaction, challenge, and learning in the laboratory of life
Take some time to reflect on each of those aspects in your own life, then put them all together. There's your personal template for how to help each other become all the more the person God intended you to be.
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:40 PM
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
It All Belongs To God
Acts 2:37-47
The very first Christian church, chartered in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost 50 days after Jesus' death, was so popular that new people signed up every day. One thing that made them so attractive was their willingness to let go of their goods to serve the common good. After all, they said, it all belongs to God anyway.
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We had a mystical $50 in those days.
Those days were the 1970s. That place was Berkeley. We were a "house church" called Fellowship Of His People. He was Jesus himself.
Our little church was a more or less noble experiment in recovering the lifestyle of the earliest church in the Book of Acts. That ancient church was chartered by the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover when Jesus had died.
Passover was a festival of remembrance, looking back to God's miraculous liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. Pentecost was a festival of hope, looking ahead to a fruitful new harvest. It featured an offering of the "first fruits" of the spring crop. The main idea: God gives us all good things, including this grain; it all belongs to God; so we thank God by giving back this first and best portion.
It all belongs to God.
So, back to the mystical $50....
Our church was full of babies, children, and young adults. We were idealistic, naive, highly motivated, and poor as a church mouse. We lived within walking distance of each other's homes, some right next-door, some sharing common gardens. A few of us started small businesses together. We rotated among the houses for worship, prayer, special meals, and just plain fun.
Now and then someone would need money for a car repair, new clothes, a doctor bill, whatever. We'd pass the hat and come up with the money. Often in the neighborhood of $50. Next time a need arose, around went the hat and in came -- yep -- $50 more or less. My turn, I'd accept the dough with many thanks. Your turn, I'd chip in what I could. Round and round went that mystical money, always in the nick of time.
None of us got rich. Nobody went without. It all belonged to God. We tried to use it well for God and for each other.
That's the way the story goes in the second chapter of Acts. Those earliest Christians loved the Lord, and they loved each other, too. No matter where they'd come from (and most of them had been Pentecost pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire) they were now one family of faith. God was their Father, Christ their Brother. So they took care of each other the way that families do. It all belonged to God, and so did they.
The story says they "enjoyed the goodwill of all the people," and that their "glad and generous hearts" had an irresistable spiritual power. Every day, it seems, people came knocking on their doors, asking, "What is it with you, sharing and caring the way you do? How can we sign up?"
That's exactly the kind of church this world needs, now more than ever. I'm convinced they really want it, too, and would do anything to get in if and when they ever found it.
I wonder (and pray): Are we that kind of church?
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:47 PM
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