Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

Wendy and I were once in Istanbul.  We were pursued aggressively by a Turkish carpet salesman who was desperate to make a sale, given their terrible economy.  We look at Psalm 23, traditionally used at funerals and memorial services by Christians.  But this Psalm is not about saying goodbye to a loved one.  We look at what Psalm 23 is truly about - and why it reminds us of this relentless carpet salesman.

I once had dinner with Sony Bono.  I did not write about this dinner contemporaneously and am only now talking about it more than forty years after this occurred.  So, I might have some of the details wrong.  The Bible is also not a contemporaneous document.  There were also some reasons for the authors to twist or exaggerate parts of the story - they were telling us about faith, not about the literal details of ancient history.  So what do we make of this?  How does this impact our understanding of the Bible and our belief in God?

I have had both my corneas replaced with transplants.  My left eye was repaired successfully with one graft, but my right eye proved very problematic.  We look at the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon, only to find their farmlands in very poor shape and one oppressor (the Babylonians) replaced with another (the Persians).  Malachi tells the People of God that they must be patient, that they must put their full trust in God.  I had to live with only one eye working for some time.  The Israelites had to live in far greater doubt...

When I was a grad student at USC years ago, I came across a man lying on his back.  He appeared to have been killed with a shotgun blast to his chest.  We look at the mistake this man made in his life, how he did not learn the lesson of Augustine and of Solomon, and that is to make sure that what we create in life is only good.  This leads us to understand why there appears to be a paradox that a good God would somehow create evil.

We look at the heavy duty use of numerical symbolism in the Old and New Testaments.  We examine specific numbers and what they meant.  Then we address the bigger question: why the preoccupation with numbers?  What about our preoccupation with things like mathematics, art, and literature?  What about our preoccupation with video games and social media?  What of this is good?  What did God intend?  Where do we find safety?

When I was a young guy working in San Francisco as a computer programmer at an insurance company, I decided to do something a bit unethical to help my mother's claims get paid.  I made a one character programmer error, though, that would later make me realize that God had been speaking to me.  We look at 1st Peter and Romans, and we talk about what it means to truly strive toward perfection, to be like God as much as possible in this life.  We also see that society today has even lower standards of morality than when I was a young man.  

When I was in college, I had a friend with a schizophrenic mother.  She thought that God had commissioned her to write a sort of new New Testament, or what we cruelly called the "New and Improved Testament".  We look at the story of Adam and Eve - and why it is both a clear allegory and a sort of very literal story.  We look at why my friend's mother never had to learn the lesson that Adam and Eve failed so badly at learning...

Some years ago, a sixteen year-old from Kansas accidentally slid on the ice and slightly damaged my parked car in Boulder.  I had a terrible interaction with his father who angrily blamed his son for being careless.  Then some weeks later I got a call from this farmer father...  We look at a few Bible passages that tell us about just how a believer should behave.  We also look at the issue of how we interpret the Bible.

I had a friend when I was a kid.  His name was Miguel and he was adopted off the streets of Tijuana.  No one knew when he was born.  The same is true of Jesus, in truth.  We look at the evidence that suggests that Jesus was born on some other day than Dec. 25 - and we look at why we don't care about this...

When I was getting my Ph.D. in Computer Science, I had to take an oral exam where I was told to prove a mathematical theorem.  It was not the most natural task for me.  We look at the story of David and Goliath - and how a determined, faithful man was able to do something that must have surprised many of those around him.  We consider how putting full trust in God can enable us to do things we might otherwise not be able to do - and how it can empower us to find the life that God truly wants us to live.

We begin by looking at the somewhat scary birth of my wife Wendy's and mine first child.  Then, this advent, we look at the birth of Jesus.  In this podcast message, we consider Mary's song, from the Gospel of Luke, which praises God for the birth of Jesus and prophesies the important role that Jesus will play in humanity.

We look at the story of Ruth and how a young woman gives up any chance of a better life by moving back with her Jewish mother-in-law to Israel, a land that will hold her, Ruth, as a pagan and as inferior.  God rewards Ruth, however, for her love and courage.  We also look at my father's love of dogs, and a story about an apricot poodle that was left wandering after its owner died by herself in her house.

We look at Nazareth, both modern and ancient.  We consider why it was almost certainly a holy place.  We consider Jesus growing up in this tiny, backwater town - and how it must have influenced him.  We consider the prophesy of the Messiah from Nazareth, the savior who would help us listen to that "still, small voice" of God, as described to us in Hebrew Scripture.

When I was a boy, I picked citrus with Mexican migrant workers.  The men always looked after the boys.  I tell a few stories of their unearned protection, their unearned grace.  We look at the transition from the Old to the New Covenants, the suzerain contracts that God has made with his people.  We look at the movement from having a sense of debt to God to earning God's acceptance only through faith.  We also look at what this means in our everyday lives.

We look at the city and history of Jerusalem, from its ancient beginnings, several millennia ago, to the time of Christ, to now.  We consider the people who pilgrimaged there from all over the Roman Empire, so that they could visit God's city, and visit the home of God, the Temple.  We consider what this means to us today and to the nature and to future of our faith.