Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

Years ago, when I had an as-yet untreated corneal disease, I had very limited vision.  I once accidentally stepped into a coffee cart line in a hospital lobby, and without meaning to, cut off a number of people.  I got yelled at loudly - and felt both angry and embarrassed when the woman who yelled at me didn't seem to care that I couldn't see well.  We look at a few quotes, from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes, that have to ...

When I was a boy, the cross on the top of my church was covered with gold leaf.  We consider the First Temple, Solomon's Temple, which King David declared "will not be for man".  We consider an amazing vision of the Prophet Ezekiel: a valley of dried and disconnected bones rising up and reforming the lost people of God.  We consider the result of the gold leaf being put on the cross of my childhood church by a person who was honori...

My wife and I once saw a side-dump trunk tip over and completely bury and crush a car - with a man still inside.  It seemed like the perfect example showing that we can die at any time.  We look at the Lord's Prayer, its text from the Gospels, what it really meant (as opposed to what we might think it means), and we consider how it relates to us today.  We look at the Lord's Prayer as the perfect prayer to offer at any time we are ...

When I was a boy we used to look for particularly salacious or gross stories in the Bible and talk about them on the playground at recess.  My favorite one is the bread that God orders Ezekiel to bake - by cooking it over human poo.  We look at the Old Testament purity laws and what they were really meant to inspire in the People of God.  We look at what they mean for us today.  We consider how we can be "pure" in the eyes of God -...

I once spoke with a young woman who had been badly traumatized in life.  She understandably had a jaded feeling about the ability of Christianity to change humanity.  We look at two similar stories in the Gospels, about the "Second Coming", or the "Parousia" in Greek.  We look at this from the perspective of a spiritual, not a physical, second coming - and what this could mean for those of us who still believe that people could tra...

I once met a man who had lost one foot and had just been told he would lost part of his other foot.  He had something to say about how this relates to faith.  We look at the age old debate of salvation through faith vs. salvation by acts.  We consider a bit of a different perspective to try and see if we can find a way out of the seeming conflict.  Is there a way to look at faith that does more than conclude that a person with fait...

A buddy of mine, long ago, once gave me surfing lessons.  I grew up near the ocean and was aware of its dangers.  Sure enough, my first time on a board, I ended up under water, spinning, trying to discern up from down.  We look at the Book of Revelation, specifically how it uses the Sea as a metaphor for the chaos of the world and the power of God.  From this we draw the bottom line: the true message of Revelation, written by John ...

I once prayed with a man who was watching his grandmother pass away; she had largely raised him.  I prayed for a joyous eternity in the Kingdom.  He asked me if the story of Jesus in the New Testament was engineered to match Old Testament prophesy, and therefore, Jesus wasn't really the Messiah promised by the prophets.  We consider the classic passage in Micah that predicts a savior born in Bethlehem.  We look at the aspects of th...

I came upon a man at the San Francisco airport who was reading his Bible, studying a passage from the New Testament where Jesus speaks of himself as being a Temple.  The man at the airport had had a severe conflict with his brother, another Christian, over a Bible translation, and was wishing that we could, as people of faith, come together as true community.  We consider the view that as Christians, we are collectively, like Jesus...

I once walked into my L.A. apartment to discover a burglar leveling a cutdown pump action shotgun at me.  We consider the warnings that God sends our way from time to time, reminding us of our mortality.  We know that we will die - that this life is very temporary.  Are we ready?  We look at the issue not of dying, not of going to Heaven, but of the final End Times, what will happen - how this should change our behavior and our min...

I had a student in a class of mine once who had recently been treated for bone cancer in her spine.  She was using a cane.  She talked to me about faith and Heaven, and the fears she had when she was sick.  We discussed the issue of what it means to believe.  Today, we look at the Book of Joel, in particular at a passage referenced in Acts that says that all people will one day be able to accept God.  This serves as a critical moti...

I once visited a woman who was almost a hundred years old and was about to die.  She expressed some sadness that she had not given enough as a Christian.  We reflect on the Book of Acts and the common misunderstanding that the early church was somehow rigidly socialist.  We consider the real gift we are supposed to give, the gift that does not involve personal assets.  We also consider what it means to lose a loved one who is very ...

We look at the very dramatic Psalm 137.  It tells of the fall of Babylon and the longing that the exiles have for their holy city and destroyed Temple.  We consider two people I met who reacted in very different ways to the feeling they had been harmed by others.  We look at why the Babylonian invasion is such a major cornerstone in the history of the Israelites.  We consider its use as a metaphor in both the Old and New Testaments...

A student once asked me for advice on how he should react to his family, especially his father, who did not approve of him being baptized a Christian.  I gave him a lesson that I learned from Acts.  In this book, we see "the Way" spread to Jews in Jerusalem and then to Gentiles outward in the Roman Empire.  There is a turning point midway through Acts that is carefully engineered by God when the first Gentile, Cornelius the Centuri...

I was once toured around Jerusalem by a 12 year-old boy named Yaakov.  He showed me many sites, including a number of Christian sites, as he knew I was a Christian.  He also talked to me about the evolution from Temple to Rabbinic Judaism - something that is critical to understanding the theological underpinnings of the Book of Acts.  We consider this new movement that is called "the Way" in Acts, and we see what it has to do with ...

I once was asked to sit with a Buddhist patient who was passing away.  She asked me to recite a mantra with her.  We look at the Prophet named Habakkuk.  We see that he offers an unusual message for a Prophet.  He doesn't simply warn people that God will punish his people for their wayward means.  He offers us an upbeat message of hope no matter what happens.  We consider prayer, and the relationship between the practice of recitin...