Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
You have three ways to hear his weekly message:
- Read Pastor Jack's GODblog.
- Listen now to an audio of the scripture reading and Pastor Jack's sermon.
- Listen anytime. You choose the time and place. Download Pastor Jack's GODcast to your MP3 player.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Give The World Your Best
Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23
Frederick Buechner wrote a whimsical theological alphabet back in the 1970s. A sort of sanctified Devil's Dictionary (Ambrose Bierce's 1911 skeptical take on American mores), Wishful Thinking begins with Abraham and ends with Zaccheus. Stop off at V and you find Vocation, the high class word for one's career, or calling.
What Buechner has to say there ties in just right with our Gospel story for last Sunday -- Where Jesus called four fishermen to drop their nets, tie up their boats, sell their business, and become "fishers for people" instead. I love Christ's generous kindness in the way he called them to discipleship. He spoke of spiritual things in the most practical understandable words, inviting these guys to do God's work as if it was the job they knew inside out and were especially good at doing.
And that's exactly the way he calls you and me today. If we're willing to listen in the first place.
I'll let Brother Freddy B. take it from here...
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.
By and large, a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deoderant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:31 AM
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Get In Step With Jesus
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42
For all the headline news he'd been making, and his popularity with the hometown crowds, John the Baptist knew the day would come for him to fade into the background. That day arrived when Jesus stepped in line to be baptized.
The Gospel of John (no relation to J the B) tells the story this way...
John (the B) saw Jesus walking by soon after the baptism and pointed his disciples in Jesus' direction. "There he is, boys! Go, follow his lead from now on. I've done what God sent me to do. Now it's his turn."
Two of them did just what John said. Shy maybe, definitely unsure what would happen next, they stayed a safe distance behind Jesus.
Until he stopped, turned their way, looked them in the eye and asked, "What are you looking for?"
Truth be told, that's the question he puts to every one of us when we start to take him seriously.
What were you looking for when you made those resolutions at the top of this new year? How did you want your life to really be different from that day forward?
What are you looking for when you sit straight up in bed at 3:00 a.m.? A new idea about solving an old problem? Forgiveness for a sin you thought you'd forgotten for good? Strength beyond your self, to do the right thing when morning comes?
What do you suppose those two guys said in answer to Jesus' stunning question? And where did he lead them from there?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:37 AM
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
With God On Your Side
Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
Read the story of Jesus' baptism by John and you get the sense God just loves to shake up the status quo.
I mean, John the Baptist was a wild and wooly prophet, warning everyone about judgment just around the corner. He talks about axes and torches and bonfires. "Turn back to God!" he cries. "Let go of your sins, open your hands and hearts to God!"
And be baptized to show you really mean it.
Baptism. Some water on your skin to symbolize the washing of your soul. We're talking sin and salvation.
Now, John himself shakes up the status quo. But then there's Jesus.
When he shows up to be baptized, John doesn't know what to do. For he knows this guy. They're cousins. And he knows the family folklore, about angels and shepherds and wise men all celebrating Jesus as God's gift to the world. Perfect in every way. Sinless, you might as well say.
So he protests, "You should be baptizing me! I'm the sinner here."
And Jesus shakes things up all the more by saying, "Don't worry, bro. This is exactly the right thing to do. It's just what God wants." [Translation: "I need your ritual bath. I need to have my non-existent sins symbolically washed away, just like you did for those guys in front of me."]
Now, how in the world does that compute?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:48 AM
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Let There Be Light
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
At last!
Through the long cold dark month of December, we watched and waited for Christmas. Week 1 of Advent, then 2, and 3, finally 4. And then came Christmas, right on schedule, filled to overflowing with angel songs and glorious heavenly light.
Then the countdown began again. Day 2 of Christmas, then 3 and 4 and 5, all the way to 12. (I know you're singing inside your head right now, about calling birds, lords a-leaping, and a partridge in a pear tree. Who can resist?)
Then, this Sunday, at last... The Wise Men entered the scene.
Three of them? So tradition says, though Matthew doesn't bother counting. But they do bear three precious gifts for the newborn King of the Jews.
Three kings? Matthew calls them "magi," a term used for the priests of Persia. Advisors to the king, they were. And guardians of all the Persian sacrifices. Scholars, too -- philosophy, medicine, science, and astrology. They could read omens and destinies in the night-time sky. And one star told them a miracle baby was being born way over there someplace.
So off they went on a pilgrimage to God only knew where. And they trusted God to lead them right.
The story Matthew tells is full of surprises, if you read it carefully. For instance...
- King Herod and all Jerusalem were caught off-guard when the magi showed up asking about a newborn prince. "Why wasn't I told?!"
- The magi thought for sure that a royal baby would be born in a royal palace. "You'll find no babies nursing inside these satin sheets."
- The religious leaders showed not a bit of interest or even curiosity about prophecy being fulfilled just a few miles down the road. "Ho hum. So much for tradition."
- Last, but far from least -- Matthew's "most Jewish of all the Gospels" is the one that brings Gentiles into the Christmas story. Instead of foreign idolaters and all-around religious bad guys, he gives us humble seekers after God's eternal light.
And they see it for all it's worth, not in the miracle star so much as in the miracle baby, Jesus.
Listen, folks... Wise men and women still search carefully to discern God's eternal light, and, once they find enough rays of it, will risk everything to follow wherever it might lead them. And, if Matthew's story is even halfway true, that light of all lights will bring you face to face with Jesus.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:04 PM
|
