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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Drop-Everything Faith
Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20
"Drop everything," Jesus said. "Come with me."
And they did just that, right on the spot. At the drop of a net four young fishermen stepped out to follow Jesus wherever it was he wanted to lead them.
I call them young, but who knows? They were old enough to have built a successful small business in the fishing trade. Peter and Andrew they were, and James and John. Two pairs of brothers who made up the first 1/3 of Jesus' full complement of disciples in about five minutes flat.
I call them young because their behavior in this instance is like that of an enthusiastic 20 year old. All full of energetic optimism, deciding in a split second and accelerating to 60 mph in no time at all. Something about Jesus' invitation (command?) convinced them that tomorrow would somehow take care of itself. And all the tomorrows after that one.
I guess that's what faith is really all about.
Oh sure, the longer we live the less likely we are to plunge recklessly into even the best of new endeavors. We'll count the cost more closely. We'll take careful stock of our own talents, our available time, and the tenacity of our spirit.
But there's something about believing in Jesus, and trusting his call to discipleship, that makes calendar time more or less irrelevant. Faith turns everything into prime time. Preparing my sermon on all this, I happily remembered three very different people whose "Yes" to Christ vividly demonstrated that point. Different ages, different life circumstances, different calculations to make about the details. But one common eagerness to let everything else go in order to hold on tight to Christ and his great calling.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby celebrate Maggie, Karl, and Al. And when you've heard my tribute to them, I'm sure that you will too.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:25 PM
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Known From The Inside Out
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; John 1:43-51
You've probably seen the picture. It's a portrait of Jesus, with his eyes looking straight ahead at the viewer. If you move to the left or to the right, his eyes appear to follow you. The intention is to encourage you. To assure you that no matter where you are, Jesus is right there with you and he's watching out for you. Well and good, but potentially a little creepy, too.
I'm thinking of the joke you may have also heard.
A burglar stands in a darkened living room. He's cased the joint and knows the owners are out of town. But as he gets set to do his dirty work, he hears a voice: "Jesus is watching." Startled, he stands stock still. Silence. So he starts again, only to hear a second time: "Jesus is watching."
"Who's there?!" he asks.
"John the Baptist," comes the reply.
He turns on his mag light, aims it towards the voice, and he sees... a parrot!
"Who in the world," he mutters to himself, "would name a parrot John the Baptist?"
"Same guy," says the parrot, "who calls his rottweiler Jesus!"
And aren't you glad that Jesus is not a rottweiler? But he has been called "Christ the Tiger" (T. S. Eliot)... And "Aslan the Lion King" (C. S. Lewis)... And "The Lion of the Tribe of Judah" (Book of Revelation, 5:5).
When I preached about this week's assigned Psalm and Gospel passages, I was struck by the mixed emotions they revealed even in people of sincere faith. Especially in people of sincere faith.
The Psalmist sings God's praise for always being there, wherever there might be, and for always knowing exactly what is going on in a person's life, even inside a person's life. Awesome. Wonderful. And more than a little bit frightening. Given that none of us is eager to know everything there is to know about ourselves, let alone have GOD know it all.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls out a man named Nathanael, revealing he knows the man's name before they're even introduced. And more. He knows Nathanael is a straight shooter, the real deal, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. Wonderful. Awesome. And kind of creepy, too. What else might he know about this man he's only just now met?
I don't know. Maybe I'm projecting my own personal problems on these Bible characters. But what if I'm right? What if more of us than we'd like to admit have very mixed emotions about those ever-present, ever-watching eyes of Jesus?
Why not tune in for a few minutes and see where the Spirit took me when I preached about these things the other day?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:45 PM
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Tale of Two Cities
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
"We Three Kings," we sing as part of the Christmas carol repertoire.
It's a favorite of children, and of the little kid inside all of us, regardless of our chronological age.
The song's rhythms evoke the rocking and rolling of camels making their awkward but surefooted way in caravan across hundreds of miles from Mesopotamia to the little town of Bethlehem. It's almost impossible to sing it without swaying to and fro in the process.
The words introduce us to the Wise Men who made that journey to find a newborn baby boy, Gentiles on pilgrimage in search of a King of the Jews. It goes on to describe each of the gifts they offered Baby Jesus once they found him, and to elaborate on its symbolic meaning. Finally, it calls us all to worship him as the Risen Lord, worthy of glad alleluias from us and all people everywhere.
All well and good. And wonderfully so. There's just one problem.
There weren't three of them. And they weren't kings.
Even so, I had some fun by starting my sermon on their story with a summary of the traditions that rose up very early in the Christian era about these mysterious men and their marvelous gifts.
Then I got down to business with a new slant on this old familiar story -- the tale of two cities where the Wise Men came calling on the newborn Christ child. Both of them were "Cities of David," Judaism's great ideal of what a king is all about. But what radically different images of royalty they portrayed.
Wake up and watch out, kings of Jerusalem. A brand new kind of king is born in Bethlehem!
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:20 PM
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