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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Love-Filled Faith
Psalm 98; John 15:9-17
My minister friend Sarah Reyes Gibbs and I have a friendly little rivalry going on about our new grandchildren. My Mateo is five months old; her Maribel is four months old. Our Facebook pages abound with photos and captions and gentle outbursts of grandparental pride and joy. An objective observer might conclude we're more than a bit beside ourselves.
On Mother's Day, at just about the same time and about ten miles apart, we baptized those two kids into Christ's community amidst great celebration -- to say nothing of pastoral levitation. And our Facebook conversation duly recorded the fact in the annals of cyberhistory.
A week later I found the perfect opportunity to refer back to those joyous baptisms in my sermon on Jesus' amazing conversation with his disciples in John 15.
The startling thing he tells them is "I'm not calling you my Servants any more; from now on you're my Friends!" Servants they'd been for three years, students of his master teaching, doing their best to soak up and understand what he said and what it meant. Now, suddenly, they're his friends, beneficiaries of his good graces and the objects of his love. Just like that, just because Jesus wanted it that way.
And just at that point, Sarah and Maribel and Mateo and I got to be a living parable in my sermon. It sprang from a lovely Facebook post Sarah put up on the morning after Mother's Day. To hear the words and share the joys, just...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:08 PM
Fruitful Faith
Psalm 22:25-31; John 15:1-8
In Jesus' day, the facade of the great Temple in Jerusalem, I hear, was decorated with a golden bas relief sculpture of a grape vine. It symbolized Israel's calling as God's Chosen People among all the nations of the world -- to bear righteous fruit for God's glory and for people's good. The image came from at least four of Israel's prophets.
If you had enough money, you could pay for a new cluster of grapes to enhance the sculpture. Even a single new grape would be a great honor to you and your family. For you were investing in God's plan for the ages.
Only one problem: each of those prophets brought up the vine idea to lament and lambaste Israel's failure to live up to their calling. Nobody, it seemed, from one generation to another, got it right. But what were they to do? Try again, and again, and... You get the point. If you're called, you're called.
And then there's Jesus. Talk about being called.
He had a crystal clear sense of God's call upon his life. He was the Messiah, the one and only member of the Chosen People who could finally get the calling thing right. His closeness to God would open the way for anyone to get close to God; his spiritual perfection would counteract everyone else's imperfections, once and for all.
John's Gospel has Jesus saying seven times over, "I am..." one or another familiar metaphor for God's plan for the world through the Chosen People. So, for example, he was the Light of the World, the Bread of Life, the Good Shepherd, and now in chapter 15 he was the True Vine. Nobody else so far in all of history had lived up to God's great calling, but now he was doing exactly that. In spades.
And his disciples (then and today), he says, are the True Branches. Called by him to stay as closely connected to him as a branch that cleaves to its vine, not for warm feelings of spiritual contentment but in order to bear spiritually vital fruit.
While I'm no horticulturist or vintner, I think I get the picture pretty well. And that's where my message takes us in this week's podcast.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:52 AM
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Remember, Rejoice
May has become America's month for remembering. On the second weekend we observe Mother's Day; two weekends later we will stop business as usual to celebrate Memorial Day.
Memorial Day is now mostly a time for picnics, recreation, athletic events, and (last but not least) cheering on the Indianapolis 500 auto race. But in May 1866, in Waterloo, NY a solemn assembly was held to honor the memory of Union soldiers who had died in battle during the Civil War. The idea spread across the country (except in certain southern states) and ultimately grew to include (in every state) special honors for military personnel killed in two world wars and numerous other conflicts around the world.
Mother's Day celebrates motherhood and the positive contributions of mothers to society. The tradition resulted from the efforts of Anna Marie Jarvis, after the death of her mother in May 1905, to honor all mothers on the second Sunday of every May. Interestingly, earlier efforts to honor American mothers also grew out of the Civil War. In the 1870s, Julia Ward Howe promoted a national Mother's Day to oppose the kind of warfare that recently cost the lives of so many sons and husbands. Her movement didn't last long, but sowed the seeds of today's tradition.
This year my heart has a special place for Mother's Day. On that special morning I will baptize my grandson Mateo. We will celebrate and dedicate his young life, yes; we will also honor my daughter Sharon's new life role as his mother. (We won't forget Victor, of course; but on Mother's Day all dads step back a pace and all moms must rule.)
My heart also holds a special memory on this Mother's Day. Mateo's name comes from the Greek word for "gift from God," which he surely has proven to be. Almost two years ago Sharon and Victor lost another baby boy in the making, four months before his due date -- a boy they had named Jonathan, from the Hebrew word for "God has given." So we will give God thanks for two special gifts that day, and we'll treasure all the more our beautiful boy's healthy, happy, hope-filled presence in our life together.
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:32 PM
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