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Monday, March 28, 2011
How To Beat the Devil
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11
The first Sunday in Lent always features the story of Jesus' temptations in the desert wasteland. For forty days and forty nights, he fasted and prayed his way through all kinds of spiritual testing.
That's odd good news for us who take his life and work seriously. For one thing, it puts him right alongside every struggling human soul (namely, all of us!) and significantly reduces the size of the halo pious artists love to place on or near his holy head.
The Book of Hebrews puts it this way: "He can sympathize with every weakness you and I may have, because he was tempted in the same ways that we are -- yet he never gave in." (chapter 4, verse 15)
For another thing, the ages-old Lenten tradition invites us to empathize with him for forty days, making some sort of sacrifice and setting our spiritual focus on what's really most important three hundred sixty-five days a year.
It's natural to think of Lent as a season to give something up. Not bad in and of itself, for most of us do indulge in at least a few luxuries, and some of them are not all that healthy in the long run. But why not make your sacrifice by taking on some good new thing, as an experiment in not-so-random kindness that could become a wonderful new habit by the end of forty days.
In any case, I preached about Jesus' encounter on that fortieth day with the Devil himself, who tried his damnedest to trick Jesus into his own damnation three different ways. And three times, Jesus resisted the impulse to take the easy way out of momentary stress and into ultimate distress.
Preparing the sermon, I kept hearing in those temptations strong echoes of the very first temptation way back in Genesis chapter 3. That's where the snake teased Eve into eating the forbidden fruit and getting herself and Adam 86ed from the Garden of Eden once and for all. So I set the two temptation stories side by side for a 3-D view of how temptation does its insidious work and how to succeed in resisting it.
I could have called the resulting message "A Tale of Two Temptations," I guess. But I wanted to emphasize how Jesus beat the Devil once and for all, undoing at last all the tragic troubles poor Adam and Eve bit into on that fateful day when the spiritual lights went out in Eden.
Take a few more minutes now to hear me out on all this...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:51 PM
Monday, March 14, 2011
Fellowship: God's Family Circle
Psalm 133; Acts 2:37-47
Two fellows in the same ship. That's how my corny colleague back in the day chose to define that amorphous word "fellowship."
Not bad, really. The "we're all in this together" spirit truly is the heart of the matter.
I'm remembering now the words of one or another "founding father" (Ben Franklin?) when war with England was looking inevitable: "If we don't hang together we will surely hang separately!" One serious play on words, that.
How different these nuances are from the idea of "fellowship" as mingling about with finger food after morning worship, playing table games at the church retreat, or exchanging pious paraphrases of "How you doing?" and "Fine, how about you?"
All this by way of introducing here my recent sermon on the fourth key ingredient of healthy church life as experienced day after day by the world's very first Christian church, in the second chapter of the Book of Acts.
On the heels of the miraculous day of Pentecost, when 3,000 people simultaneously put their faith in Jesus as their Messiah, the new church knew their survival absolutely depended on diligent spiritual disciplines: Daily prayer, Bible study, Communion feasts, and this thing called fellowship.
I found this sermon an easy one to preach. I simply shared my memories of the adventure in church life Joanne and I and our three kids were part of as "Jesus freaks" in 1970s Berkeley. Our house church self-consciously patterned itself after those Christians in Acts 2. In a way, we were on a quest to become an Acts 29 congregation -- as if the Holy Spirit were writing a new chapter in church history, picking up where Brother Luke had put down his quill at the end of Acts chapter 28.
Grandiose? Sure. Worth a try? Definitely.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
1:52 PM
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Prayer: Conversations With God
Psalm 147:1-11; Acts 2:37-47
Funny thing about prayer... Even people who couldn't care less about God sometimes practice it.
The old saw about "no atheists in foxholes" is easily enough controverted, but it's true enough that getting caught in a crisis can lead you to cry for help to someone or some thing bigger and stronger than yourself. So it's "Oh god!" or "Saints alive!" or "Mommy!" by default when the going gets rough.
That's only natural.
And prayer itself is, or should be, natural -- as natural as breathing. In fact, some spiritual exercises begin with sitting still and focusing on your breathing. Breathe in, and listen for God's word to you; breathe out, and speak your words to God. Prayer as a holy conversation with God.
Unfortunately, the God part of that analogy can be pretty intimidating. And more than a few folks get to wondering how to pray "right" or "well enough" or even "safely."
Here's a bit of doggerel that might put your mind at ease about such things...
"The proper way for a man to pray,"
said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"And the only proper attitude
is down upon his knees."
"Nay, I should say the way to pray,"
said the Reverend Doctor Wise,
"Is standing straight with outstretched arms
and rapt and upturned eyes.
"Oh no, no, no" said Elder Snow,
"Such posture is too proud.
A man should pray with eyes fast closed
and head contritely bowed."
"It seems to me his hands should be
austerely clasped in front,
with both thumbs pointing toward the ground,"
said Reverend Doctor Blunt.
"Las' year I fell in Hodgkins' well
head first," said Cyrus Brown,
"With both my heels a-stickin' up,
my head a-pointin' down;
an' I made a prayer right then an' there --
best prayer I ever said.
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
a-standin' on my head!"
I made some more serious, but equally practical, suggestions on how to pray in my third sermon about the four marks of a spiritually healthy church as modeled by the earliest Christian congregation in the second chapter of Acts. To hear them for yourself...
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:55 PM
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
The Bible: God's Timely Word
Psalm 119:9-16; Acts 2:37-47
The 20th century German Swiss theologian Karl Barth was famous for his brilliant mind and pastoral heart. The brilliance compelled him to write a systematic theology that, even though unfinished, filled fourteen volumes. The pastoral heart shone through in countless published sermons and popular essays throughout his career of almost six decades.
You could spend your entire life mining Barth's writings for profound gems of theology, philosophy, ethics, and many more intellectually stimulating academic disciplines. And chances are you would never finish the task. But you would probably die smiling -- if you're the theological type.
Here and now, though, I have two little stories about Karl Barth's pastoral side for you.
1. He maintained that professors and preachers need to read the Holy Bible side-by-side with the Daily Newspaper, if we hope to understand either publication accurately. What do we make of interpersonal affairs and international events without a biblical moral compass? How do we realistically apply in real time the Bible's eternal truths and ancient stories?
2. He once answered a reporter's question about the gist of his vast theological work with the words of a simple Sunday school song: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." All the profound words in all those thousands of pages, it seems, were commentary on that one simple thought.
This humble pastor is unworthy to even tie the shoelaces of the great Karl Barth. But I proudly stand with him, in my own unfamous ministry, on those two great pastoral principles. And the sermon I preached about the Bible as "God's Timely Word" is one modest shot at telling people why they make all the difference in the world.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:56 PM
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