Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Why The Church Is Here
Psalm 104:24-34, 35; Acts 2:1-21
What an exciting day that was!
It was the spring harvest festival of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover... Jewish pilgrims from all across the Roman Empire surged in the streets of Jerusalem... Followers of Jesus crowded into borrowed houses near the Temple... Great energy of expectation was palpable in the air... What would God be doing next? When and how would you recognize it?
Then, God's Holy Spirit showed up with three dramatic signs of the divine presence and power at work --
1. The sound of a strong wind blowing, God's breath giving new life to the soul.
2. Tongues of fire on people's heads, God's refining power purifying the mind and heart.
3. A multitude of languages, God's unifying truth transcending all human boundaries and barriers.
Thus began a new spiritual era: the birth of the Christian church, which has spread around the world and across the centuries to bring together ever more people of diverse places and races, who (left to ourselves) might well have done each other in, all in the name of some higher good.
In our one smallish church family this Pentecost Sunday, my sermon included readings of John 3:16's one-verse summary of the whole Gospel message in eight different languages. Twice. The first time, the languages were read in sequence, and this was impressive in its own right...
We heard the Good News in Spanish, Assyrian, Dutch, Scottish, Tagalog, Cantonese, French, and King James English -- a mere sampling of the diverse ethnic traditions embodied in our congregation. And then, all eight readers repeated their performance at the same time.
It's just that sort of hubbub that happened on the first Pentecost! What sounded at first like total confusion turned out to be a wonderful miracle -- with each person present hearing clear as a bell, in his and her own language, the one surprising story of Jesus as God's unique and universal Savior of the Whole Wide World.
To hear the readings for yourself, and the rest of what I had in mind that morning...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:13 PM
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Pentecost - Why The Church Is Here
 After our morning worship came to a close, the First Presbyterian Church family gathered in the courtyard with members of the Alameda Korean Presbyterian Church to celebrate Pentecost Sunday together. Here we were, two congregations, with two different cultures and languages, yet one in our commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ. One small local expression of the vast worldwide fellowship of faith that originated in the dramatic events of that first Pentecost described in the second chapter of Acts...
The sound of a powerful wind, the breath of God creating new abundant life; tongues of fire, the refining power of God cleansing hearts and minds; foreign languages, sharing God's good news across all traditional boundaries and barriers. All these heart-stopping phenomena represented the presence and power of God's Holy Spirit.
Our celebration included songs and prayers in Korean and English, and the release of snow-white doves (one more biblical image of the Holy Spirit) by children of both churches. And the child in all of us was delighted through and through with all of it.
See for yourself...
  
  
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:46 AM
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Everyday Glory
Psalm 97; John 17:20-26
This week our church family kept our shoes on during the sermon. (An apologetic nod to Randy Newman might be in order here.)
The congregation is used to me inviting them to "put yourself in the disciples' sandals" so they can feel for themselves what it was like to see and hear Jesus in action.
But this week was different, for our Gospel story featured Jesus praying not just for himself, or his disciples, but for folks like you and me all these years later and so far away from the spot where he knelt to pray that night. He loved each one of us long before we were the proverbial twinkle in our daddies' eyes. And he wanted God's very best for us, individually and all together.
So we spent a while taking in how it feels to be cared for that much, and prayed for that fervently, by Christ himself in the hour of his deepest spiritual trial. It was the night of his betrayal and arrest, the eve of his cruel crucifixion. And he took extra time to talk with God about you and me.
What did he say? What requests did he make? And why? Why for us, of all people?
Two words: God's glory.
Sound too spiritual? Want something a bit more down to earth?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:43 PM
Monday, May 10, 2010
Worried? Jesus Has A Cure.
 Psalm 23; John 10:22-30
On the Sunday I was away on vacation, our youth director Elizabeth Campbell gave a most encouraging message on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. That familiar image from agrarian life is really never out of date or irrelevant to modern cosmopolitan life. You'll find that Elizabeth's spin on the metaphor is as timely as today's headline news and as meaningful as a good counseling session.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:46 AM
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Aloha, For All Ages
Isaiah 40:25-31; Luke 2:25-40
Joanne and I were just back from Maui when I preached a message honoring our church's older adult members. Everyone over 65 received a flower at the door, to wear with pride as an honored guest for the day. Several of them were especially thanked in the coffee hour for 50 or more years of church membership!
You probably won't be surprised that I had hula on my mind as I prepared the sermon. And that was a good thing. For a fun story about a mom-and-pop hula show, plus the memory of a particular "classic rock" song I heard on our Hawaii car radio, gave me the perfect introduction to my sermon -- which not only honored ripe old age but also paid tribute to childhood, youth, and general adulthood's various stages.
The point was that, while we naturally mark time and make judgments accordingly (older = wiser, younger = stronger), in God's timing we're all right on time at any time! God has a blessing for and through each one of us, if we really want it, regardless of our chronological age.
But what about the hula and that golden oldie song? Well, take a bit of time right now and...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
1:23 PM
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