Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Monday, January 29, 2007
God of Tight Spots
Psalm 71:1-6; Luke 4:21-30
Like many a preacher, Jesus failed to stop talking when he'd made his big point. The congregation turned on him right then and there, and he barely escaped with his life. (Even when I've occasionally bombed, my audience was always a lot kinder than that!)
Anyway, God came through for him in the nick of time, keeping the kind of promises that are praised so loudly in Psalm 71. This story reminds us that God's protection doesn't always come in comfortable ways. In fact, what's the point of protection if the situation isn't fraught with danger?
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SAFE IN THE ARMS OF GOD -- AND RANOLA
Anne Lamott, my favorite four-letter saint, remembers a real-life miracle she witnessed in her church one Sunday morning.* Her story reminds us that God keeps his promises for sure, sometimes even miraculously. But not always in the way we'd expect. Or prefer.
"One of our newest members, a man named Ken Nelson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our very eyes. He came in a year ago with a Jewish woman who comes every week to be with us, although she does not believe in Jesus. Shortly after the man with AIDS started coming, his partner died of the disease. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart that Brandon's loss left, and had been there ever since. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God's crazy nephew Phil. He says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus, and us.
"There's a woman in the choir named Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish toward Ken. She has always looked at him with confusion, when she looks at him at all. Or she looks at him sideways, as if she wouldn't have to quite see him if she didn't look at him head on. She was raised in the South by Baptists who taught her that his way of life -- that he -- was an abomination. It is hard for her to break through this. I think she and a few other women at church are, on the most visceral level, a bit afraid of catching the disease. But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year and won almost everyone over. He finally missed a couple of Sundays when he got too weak, and then a month ago he was back, weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided, as if he'd had a stroke. Still, during the prayers of the people, he talked joyously of his life and his decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he feels these days.
"So on this one particular Sunday, for the first hymn, the so-called Morning Hymn, we sang 'Jacob's Ladder,' which goes, 'Every rung goes higher, higher,' while ironically Kenny couldn't even stand up. But he sang away sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. And then when it came time for the second hymn, the Fellowship Hymn, we were to sing 'His Eye is on the Sparrow.' The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen -- only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap -- and we began to sing, 'Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?' And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up -- lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me.
"I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way."
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* Traveling Mercies (Anchor Books, 1999) pp. 63-65
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:26 PM
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
How To Read The Bible
Psalm 19; Luke 4:14-21
The visiting rabbi's message was absolutely brief and to the point. In the synagogue that day you could hear a pin drop when Jesus interpreted the old prophecy with a single sentence. Definitely not your ordinary sermon. Look and listen closely, though, and you'll find a classic case study in how to read the Bible and know you're making sense.
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The prophecy that Jesus read from that day (Isaiah 61:1-2) describes the Messiah's mission of mercy and healing in "the year of the Lord's favor." That would be the Jubilee Year (see Leviticus 25) -- a nationwide year-long Sabbath that came on a 50-year cycle. [7 years = 1 Sabbatical year; 7x7 years = Jubilee!]
During that year: all fields would get a vacation from farming; all debts would be cancelled; all servants would be set free; all property would revert to original family ownership; all families would reunite.
In short, it would be a 12-month season of recovery, release, and reconciliation. Call it Peace!
Jesus told his listeners that Isaiah's peaceful prophecy was being fulfilled right then and there, that he was the promised Prince of Peace they'd been hoping against hope to see before they died.
In context, Isaiah's use of the Jubilee theme was a call to believe God keeps all good promises and to get ready to experience a very special one in their own day.
Exiled in Babylon as they were, they could use a good promise or ten. So Jubilee release and reconciliation sounded very good to their ears. If only they could return home to the Promised Land, then all good things would once again be possible!
[Sidebar: There is scant evidence that in all of Israel's history a Jubilee Year ever really happened. A great shame and disappointment, if true. Even so, the idea burned bright as a glorious ideal to aim for through all the nation's meandering journey of faith and sometimes faithlessness.]
So Jesus pronounced the beginning of a new Jubilee, his own reign of peace and blessing. Now, 2,000 years later, there is scant evidence that in all the Church's history we've seen even one year's worth of worldwide release, reconciliation, or recovery.
But during the last year all of America witnessed a dramatic demonstration that some Christians are absolutely committed to the spirit of Jubilee against all odds.
When several Amish children were shot down in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse, their parents' and neighbors' response took our collective breath away with its profound simplicity. Here we saw the ultimate meaning of our religious buzzwords "grace" and "peace."
Diana Butler Bass describes what they did this way:
"Their practice of forgiveness unfolded in four public acts over the course of a week. First, some elders visited Marie Roberts, the wife of the murderer, to offer forgiveness. Then, the families of the slain girls invited the widow to their own children's funerals. Next, they requested that all relief monies intended for Amish families be shared with Roberts and her children. And, finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, more than 30 members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer."
She says her husband disagreed when she exclaimed what a great witness those actions were to the way of peace. "They weren't witnessing to anything. They were actively making peace!"
Bass goes on to speculate what might have happened if we Americans had responded to the horrible events of September 11, 2001 according to the Amish way of life. Then she makes a modest proposal:
"We're five years too late for the Amish response to 9/11. But maybe we should ask them to take over the Department of Homeland Security. After all, actively practicing forgiveness and making peace are the only real alternatives to perpetual fear and a multi-generational global religious war. I can't imagine any other path to true security. And nobody else can figure out what to do to end this insane war. Why not try the Christian practice of forgiveness? If it worked in Lancaster, maybe it will work in Baghdad, too."
Almost 100 years before all of this, the British author G. K. Chesterton lamented, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
Suppose that now, perhaps history's most desperately deadly day, we could declare in all good faith what Jesus said in that synagogue service: "Today this Jubilee promise is being fulfilled right before your eyes!"
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:25 AM
Monday, January 22, 2007
God and Marriage
Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11
Jesus' first miracle, according to John, was to make sure a friend's wedding party was a perfect success -- the famous water-into-wine trick. How sweet was that? I'm convinced that every wedding is a kind of miracle. Two starry-eyed people plunging into a lifetime of loving each other enough to do the loving thing, even when they don't feel like doing it. No matter how much a pastor says "marriage," the couple hears only "wedding." Thank God, true love goes so far deeper and wider than that. God's own kind of love, I mean.
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posted by Jack Buckley at
1:05 PM
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Push Back the Shadows
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
On Sunday we celebrated Epiphany, the visit of the "Wise Men" who followed a special star to find the newborn King of the Jews. How interesting that Matthew, the most Jewish-inflected of all the Gospels, is the one that includes these pagan Gentiles in the Christmas story. Great good news: The light of God's love and mercy in Christ shines out from Bethlehem into the whole wide world! Everybody's welcome, so y'all come!!
Listen to the GODcast!
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Our church is host to a child care center, open all day long Monday thru Friday. I love the ambient noise and palpable energy those kids create on our campus!
They also give me a refresher course in real life. What I take for granted is all brand new to them. What they take for granted I forgot or gave up on long ago.
I saw one of them cover her eyes with her hands and say, "You can't see me!" Since we're invisible beyond those hands, she must be as well.
Magical thinking. But wrong.
I think about this now because of Sunday's story about the "Wise Men" who opened their eyes wide to follow a special star from Mesopotamia all the way to the little town of Bethlehem.
We call them "The Three Kings," but Matthew says they're "Magi." We derive "magic" from that name. Not quite wizards, they were wise in philosophy and the sciences, able to read signs of the times and give good counsel to their kings. No wonder they were captivated by some unique astral phenomenon -- a comet? convergence of planets? supernova?
Whatever it was, they dropped everything and set off to see just what it was that rated such a spotlight introduction. But they didn't go blindly.
Numerous writers of that era report a widespread anticipation was in the air. Jews and Romans alike had a hunch a great king would soon be born to change the world. Caesar Augustus even modestly accepted the title "Savior of the World." Curiously, the omens all pointed to obscure Judea as the royal birthplace.
So that's where the Magi headed.
No new baby was to be found in Herod's Jerusalem palace, though. Confusion and curiosity, yes. Followed by a quick search of prophetic scrolls -- which pointed them towards Bethlehem.
The Magi hit the road, promising King Herod they'd let him know where he too could pay his royal respects to the miracle baby.
But what the king really wanted was to snuff his little rival as soon as possible. He was famously jealous about his kingly power. He'd even had his wife and other family members murdered to protect his hold on things.
So, Herod said a loud NO to God's light. Magical thinking! He couldn't prevent the darkened world from growing brighter as God's light of love and truth pushed back the spiritual shadows.
But the Magi's YES rang loud and true. With open eyes and hearts they followed God's light, and wound up spreading its grace and truth wherever they went.
Did I mention the king's spiritual advisors? They were Bible scholars, able to find the proper prophecy in no time flat. But they weren't smart enough to go with the Wise Men. They put away the scrolls and went back to their religious busy-work.
They simply murmured HO HUM. How tragic to be that close to the truth and still miss it by a country mile!
I'm convinced the greatest spiritual risk in this life is to be simply indifferent to God's truth.
And not one of us is immune to that great danger.
If you're an outsider to the church, it's easy enough to assume "those people" need whatever it is religion offers. God, if there is a god, bless 'em. But not for me.
Inside the church, it's tempting to get so busy with rituals, rules, and programs that whatever God is doing "out there" doesn't matter much. If it even exists.
Either kind of spiritual boredom puts us in the worst kind of peril. What if, in the end, it makes God yawn most of all?
Better by far to be wise men and women ourselves, finding and following God's pure light whenever it shows up, wherever it leads.
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:15 AM
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Boys of the Lost and Found
1 Samuel 2:18-20,26; Luke 2:41-52
The familiar story of 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple marks a major turning point in his family's life. "Today," he might as well have said, "I am a [new] man." He knew now that God had a special hold on him. So now his mother had to let loose of her hold on his life. It's no accident that Luke patterns this story on the ancient one of Samuel and his mother Hannah. In each case, it's only by being willing to lose her greatest treasure that either mother could find the even greater gift God wanted so much to bestow.
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ALL'S LOST, ALL'S FOUND
Frederick Buechner's novel Godric* tells the story of an 11th century English saint who lived as a hermit on the shore of the River Wear, not far from the city of Durham.
The story is written as Godric's confessions, his asides to us who read today, in dark counterpoint to a sincere monk's efforts to collect the makings of an official "life of Godric" for the pious masses.
Godric will have none of that. He's determined we must know the real story of his many sins and shortcomings, which drove him to become a hermit in the first place.
To no avail, it seems. The monk refuses to believe anything but the best about wretched old Godric. And Godric's sordid stories eventually persuade the reader that only a true saint would be this hard on himself for such common human frailties.
Godric's other human companion at his ascetic riverside digs is a youth named Perkin, whom he loves like a favorite son. The boy waits on him hand and foot, 24/7, and joyfully tolerates all the old man's quirkiness.
Godric knows full well he has but a short time left to live. And he's pretty much ready to pass by now. He knows what he's lost in life, and also what he's found. Most of all, he knows whom he's found, who it is will welcome him on the other side of death.
Bathing in icy water drawn by Perkin from the river, Godric says a kind of prayer:
"'Praise, praise!' I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death.
"In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star.
"Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup."
And that is a law of life. Every one of us, religious or not, learns it over and over again. The one sure way to receive life's good gifts is to let go of what we're so afraid of losing. We're talking open hands either way.
Read Buechner's book when you can find a copy. Meanwhile, read the Luke and 1 Samuel stories listed above. Two mothers lost their boys to God, and found the world a better place by far because of what God did in and through them.
It's a law of life. What's lost is nothing to what's found!
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*Godric, 1980, Atheneum (available now from HarperCollins)
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:03 PM
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