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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Spiritual Profits and Losses
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38
When I was a kid there was a series of movies starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby titled "The Road To [fill in the blank]," innocuous musical comedies. In every generation, road pictures with more serious messages have won awards and shaped lives. Truth be told, we're all of us on the road, pilgrims making our way to who knows where exactly?
Our Bible stories this time feature two great heroes of the spiritual journey, so different and yet so much alike.
When we pick up Abraham's story (Genesis 17) he's been on the road some fourteen years. Accompanied by his wife Sarah and a sizable entourage, 99-year-old Abraham has followed God's lead to "a land that I will show you." Sniffing out each new city, village, or oasis along the way, Abraham hopes against hope that, at last, this will be the place to put down roots. Good luck, Abe.
When we pick up Jesus' story (Mark 8) he's been on the road for about three years. He travels here and there with a dozen disciples, staying every so often in hospitable homes or setting up camp in some out-of-the-way place. By now it's clear to anyone who knows him that Jesus' destination is anything but an earthly home sweet home. Good luck, disciples.
And now Jesus stuns his faithful few with a declaration that his itinerary will terminate with his own termination -- when they get to Jerusalem he will end up crucified, dead, and buried. His man Peter, for one, will have none of this and let's him know it.
The cross was one of the Roman empire's cruelest inventions. It was an instrument of shameful execution, worse by far than a gallows in that it killed one slowly, with agonizing pain. Adding insult to injury, you had to carry your own cross to the place where you'd be hung on it.
Brushing aside Peter's well-meaning effort to help him save face if not his life, Jesus insists that Peter, the other eleven, and every last one of us who want to be his disciple would need to carry our own cross as well.
All things considered, it seems he meant that metaphorically for most of us. Whew.
Then again, he clearly meant we'd better be ready to let go of all claim to security, safety, or self-satisfaction on our pilgrim journey. It's tragically possible, he says, to do everything you can to save your own life at any cost, and in the end to lose the very thing your life is really all about -- your everlasting soul. Do the divine math, he says. Choose life, eternal life, and live accordingly right here and now.
Very heavy stuff, that. And I had to make something palatable of it in twenty minutes or so that Sunday morning. How did I do? Where did we come out?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
12:00 PM
Thursday, March 15, 2012
A Little Slice of Heaven
1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Russell Mowry's sermon reminded me of Lorenzo Pisoni's one-man show.
Russ is our church's youth ministry leader. Every once in a while he preaches in morning worship, and I always enjoy hearing what he has to say and watching how he says it. His physical presence is awesome, and he uses body language to good advantage while he speaks.
Lorenzo is an actor who began his career as the world's youngest clown. His show, "Humor Abuse," pulls back the tent flap on circus life in general and specifically on life with his parents who co-founded the Pickle Family Circus. Complicated and conflicted life, to say the least. Lorenzo may have been the only boy who ever ran away from a circus!
Pisoni's well-spoken narrative of the joys and travails he shared with his dad is augmented by numerous bits of clown antics sprung by surprise throughout the two-hour show. Some juggling here, twenty ways to fall down a staircase there, double takes and stubbed toes, on and on, again and again, the shtick got shtuck with the funniest of finesse.
The crowning point came in a long but fast-moving skit where Lorenzo tried to climb a tall rickety ladder in order to dive into a bucket of water. He was dressed out in clownish aquatic gear, including a snorkel mask and floppy swim fins. How many ways can you not climb a ladder? Well, for about fifteen hilarious minutes he showed us, as one bad idea after another led our clown ever closer to disaster. And then, in the end, what should have at least maimed the man, if not killed him dead, instead provoked the evening's loudest and longest laughter.
Now then, how did Russ Mowry's message remind me of Lorenzo Pisoni?
Well, the Gospel story that day sketched three key events in seven short verses: Jesus' baptism by John, his temptation in the desert, and his first sermon about the Kingdom of God.
The day itself was the first Sunday in Lent, our forty-day season that invites Christians to reconsider how and why Jesus spent forty days of spiritual reconsideration himself, right at the start of his ministry. So on Lent 1 everybody preaches on the temptation of Christ.
Except Russ. Or so it seemed, as he first did some artful unpacking of what Jesus' baptism meant, then shared some meaty interpretation of Jesus' take on the Kingdom of God. I felt truly blessed listening to his words, but I also sat there wondering, "So what happened to Christ's temptation? What Sunday is this, again? Come on, Russ, help us get ready for the disciplines of Lent."
Only now, after the fact, do I think to envision our preacher moving from one set piece to another, slyly misdirecting our attention, building up our discomfort, until -- at last -- the spiritual equivalent of clownish swimwear, a tall and trembly ladder, and yes, one small bucket filled with water.
Disclaimer: No Presbyterians were harmed in the performance of that sermon. Just blessed.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:21 AM
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
No Shortcuts To Glory
2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9
The Bible story that Sunday was about the Transfiguration, that mysterious mystical moment when Jesus' three closest disciples got a glimpse of him glowing like the midday sun.
Imagine that! It was as if a veil had been pulled away from his familiar face and for a split second they beheld the Glory of God as only angels get to see it.
Well, angels and Moses (see Exodus 34). And Elijah (check out 2 Kings 2). After Moses' mountaintop experience of God's glory, his own face glowed so bright he had to wear a veil to protect his followers from snow blindness. For Elijah, the glory of God came in the form of a fiery chariot that whisked him away to heaven.
In Mark 9, those two ancient saints somehow show up to sit side by side with Jesus in all his glory. It's too much for the disciples to take in, and mercifully it's over almost as soon as it's begun.
Peter pipes up to suggest a ploy to preserve the experience: "Let's build three little booths, create a shrine to commemorate this amazing meeting!" Can't you see and hear the gears of his mind working here? Before long, there'd be guided tours... photo ops... seminars.... Why, the masses could make their pilgrimage, and return home trained to conjure similar mystical moments themselves.
That's such a terribly common temptation. I'm reminded of a different kind of mystical moment I had a couple days after Christmas in 1987.
I'd flown to Urbana, Illinois with more than twenty students from our church in Berkeley for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship's triennial mission conference. As I sat in the lobby of our hotel by the university campus that first evening, a young man approached and asked me if "Dr. Swaggart" had come by yet.
I knew he meant the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who might have had an honorary doctorate or two, but who I doubted would attend a week-long conference where his name appeared nowhere among scores of speakers. Humility didn't seem one of his strong points.
In fact, a traveling speaker friend of mine had recently nailed the Swaggart situation nicely. He said that, late at night in his hotel room, he was channel surfing and came upon Hulk Hogan in all his macho glory. The wrestler was jabbing his finger at the viewer, shouting his challenges, daring you to take him on and surely to get beat up in the process. Switching channels, he tuned in to Jimmy Swaggart at the pulpit, jabbing his finger, shouting his challenges, daring you to -- well, you get the point. Separated at birth? You make the call.
By that time, Swaggart had become famous for being rock 'n' roll bad boy Jerry Lee Lewis's good boy cousin. He embodied the traditional methods of pentecostal holiness. His preaching and public prayers were matched by tremendous personal charisma. Well, yes, there was that anger thing. But...
Now, back to that evening in the Urbana hotel lobby.
About ten minutes after I stammered "No, I haven't seen Dr. Swaggart anywhere around here," out of an elevator stepped Billy Graham. My jaw dropped open at the sight. He was about 70 years old at the time, stood erect as a soldier or athlete half his age. And he exuded not one bit of pride or privilege, world-famous as he was. "Dr. Graham" turned out to be the keynote speaker at that evening's plenary meeting. Standing on that stage, and walking through that hotel lobby, this man's charisma seemed centered in a confidence that he was where God wanted him to be, doing what God wanted him to do.
No shrines, no sanctified methodology, no saving the moment at any cost. And yet, glowing with glory.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:05 PM
Monday, March 05, 2012
Good News Is For Sharing
Psalm 30; Mark 1:40-45
It was Boy Scouts Sunday. The scripture readers were two fine young members of Troop 2, which our church has sponsored ever since 1918. They and their fellow scouts were the very embodiment of youthful energy and robust health.
How ironic, then, that the Gospel story for the morning involved a man whose whole life had been devastated by the dread disease of leprosy.
From the days of Moses up to this fateful day in Jesus' ministry, a person stricken with leprosy was officially "unclean" -- an untouchable outcast whose sickness filled others with a sickening fear of contagion.
When I was the age of our Boy Scouts, a polio epidemic created similar panic about contracting the disease. I remember the dread we felt just at the sight of the hospital we called Soho, where polio patients were kept in isolation. I also remember how my cousin's deep breathing while he slept in the bed next to mine one summer night kept me wide awake in fear, as I saw in my mind's eye the "Girl in the Iron Lung" exhibit we had gawked at on the beach boardwalk just a few hours earlier.
When some of our scouts' parents were not much older than they are, it was AIDS that put the fear of God and sex and viruses in our collective conscience. Identified at first as the "gay disease," the pandemic soon raised incredible fears among all sorts of people who'd had a blood transfusion or "exchanged bodily fluids" with another person in any way at all.
You could say that leprosy was a kind of polio or AIDS of biblical times. It became a popular symbol for sin. That's understandable, if unfortunate for those who bore the disease through no fault of their own.
Here's how the metaphor worked: A single spot of infection led eventually to numerous lesions, hardening of the skin, then deadening of nerve tissue; injuries could go unnoticed because no pain was felt; body parts would atrophy; eventually, the whole body would shut down and simply die.
You can see the pattern: One temptation leads to a sinful act; when repeated, sin becomes a pattern of behavior; eventually sinful habits dominate one's life, leading at last to a destiny of spiritual death.
Except... On this particular Sunday, Jesus would have none of that. As apt as the analogy might have been, his compassionate heart had something else in mind.
When a man with leprosy came and knelt down in front of him to beg for his help, Jesus did the unthinkable. He reached out his own clean hand and he touched the "untouchable" man. In one split second, he thus made himself "unclean." And, just as quickly, he made the poor man's leprosy completely disappear. Then he gave the man two instructions.
"Go see your priest," he said, "and tell him what God has done for you. But don't breathe a word of this to anybody else." Now, why do you suppose he did that?
So the man went off ostensibly to see his priest. But all along the road he told and retold the great good news that Jesus had cured his leprosy with just one caring touch.
And why, do you suppose, did he do that?
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
5:50 PM
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