Weekly Bulletin

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.          Jesus to his home congregation at Nazareth, Luke 4:18,19

 

I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them.     Matthew 5:17

 

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.         Luke 19:10

 

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.  I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.      John 10:10,11

 

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.        Matthew 16:21

 

 

I doubt whether I ever heard the term “bucket list” until it was popularized by the 2007 movie with that name.  The film starred Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two terminally-ill men on a road trip with a wish list of things they wanted to do before they died.  I’m pretty sure we never watched the movie, but we heard enough about it to get the gist of the story.  I never really thought about where the term “bucket list” came from until I picked up a book a couple of weeks ago – The Life of Christ in Stereo, which we used in a long-ago college class – to begin thinking about Easter.  That book’s author attempted to tell the story of Jesus’ life in a biographical style by weaving together the various accounts of his activities from all four Gospels in the most accurate chronological order possible.  That makes it possible to read in one comprehensive narrative about Jesus’ third year of public ministry as he prepared to face his crucifixion at the hands of the religious and political authorities in Jerusalem.  As I read about those final months of his earthly life, it made me think that Jesus had his own bucket list

 

All that made me curious about where “bucket list” came from, so I looked it up.  It is believed that a screenwriter coined the phrase in 1999, but it didn’t really catch on until the 2007 movie came out.  The screenwriter based his new phrase on a common reference to death as “kicking the bucket” that is found in literature dating back to the 1500s.  Evidently in those days, when a butcher prepared to slaughter a hog, he hung the live animal up by tying one hind leg to a wooden beam.  As the hogs died, they usually kicked the beam with their free leg trying to get away.  And in the French language of that era, the wooden beam was called a “buquet” (which sounded like the English word “bucket”), so dying became known as kicking the bucket. 

 

Jesus’ Life-Long Bucket List     When the angel of the Lord told Joseph to give Mary’s expected baby the name Jesus, it included a “bucket list” goal – “he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21).  Luke’s Gospel suggests to us that Jesus had a clear sense of spiritual mission and purpose even in his pre-teen years.  Luke 2:41-50 describes his family’s trip from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration when Jesus was 12 years old.  After the Feast was over, the family’s caravan packed up and headed for home.  They traveled an entire day before realizing Jesus wasn’t in the group, so they backtracked to Jerusalem to look for him.  They searched for three days before finding him at the temple courts discussing serious matters of faith with the teachers of the Law.  A weary Mary asked Jesus “why he had treated his anxious parents like that.”  Jesus answered her with questions of his own – “Why were you searching for me?” and “Didn’t you know I had to be about my Father’s business?”  He kept at that business for the next 21 years.  It was on his bucket list.
             At age 30, the Holy Spirit led Jesus to go to be baptized in the Jordan River by his distant cousin John.  People there saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove and heard God confirm his divine Sonship and affirm his commitment to his mission (Luke 3:21,22).  From there, he trekked into the wilderness for forty days of fasting and testing by the devil to make it clear to God’s enemy that he could never overpower the Creator. 
             After that, Jesus returned to Galilee and began teaching in the synagogues there, including the one of his childhood at Nazareth.  It was there he quoted Isaiah 61:1,2 to summarize the contents of his bucket list for the next three years (Luke 4:18,19).  He told his neighbors that the Holy Spirit had empowered him to bring good news to spiritually and materially poor people; to provide freedom to people who were imprisoned by someone or something; to give sight to people who were physically or spiritually blind; to sever by love the bonds of all sorts of oppression; and to assure people that the power of God’s love could enable them to actually practice Jubilee.

 

The Third Year of Jesus’ public ministry was a continuation of the first two, with the addition of frequent reminders to the disciples and others that it would be his final year on earth (Matt. 16:21; 20:17-19; Luke 9:51; 13:32,33).  It was during that year that he offered, through the Spirit’s power to do the impossible, freedom to the rich young ruler who was trapped by his love of wealth (Mark 10).  If he had allowed Christ to transform him, it also would have been good news for the poor.  At that same time, Jesus told his listeners the parable about the vineyard owner who hired workers at various times throughout the day, then paid them all the same agreed-upon daily wage at the end of the day, a Jubilee-like blessing.  He told the parable to stress that eternal life is the one identical reward for everyone who turns to accept God’s offer of a place in his work, whether early or late, and to highlight God’s loving patience with humankind.  As he prepared for Golgotha, Jesus used a request from the mother of James and John for privileged positions for her sons in his kingdom (Matt 20) to teach the importance of eternal perspective, and that it is sacrificial service on earth which will be rewarded in eternity.  On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus compassionately healed blind people at Jericho and transformed the tax collector Zacchaeus’ greed into a commitment to live with integrity and generosity (Luke 18,19).  When Jesus and his group reached Bethany and learned that his friend Lazarus had died four days earlier (John 11), he again demonstrated that all things are possible with God by restoring his friend to life.  For Jesus, every day was a bucket list day.

 

The Disciples’ Bucket List     As Jesus prepared his disciples to carry on his work after his return to the Father, he put onto their bucket lists some simple, broad, but urgent instructions to follow until their own deaths.  In Matthew 28, he told them to “go and make disciples of all nations,” immersing them in the full knowledge and worship of God, and teaching them to obey what Jesus had taught the disciples during their years together.  Jesus’ similar instruction recorded in Mark 16 is to “preach the good news to all creation.”  John’s record of Jesus’ final instruction to Peter really applies to all the disciples – “you must follow me” (21:22).  Acts 1:4-8 details another important thing on their bucket lists.  Jesus told them in his last days with them to wait until the Holy Spirit fills them with his power, and then be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Fortunately for us gathered in worship here today, those disciples faithfully heeded those instructions. They built the network which 2000 years later has given us the opportunity to know Christ, to rest in assurance of his promised eternal life, and to continue carrying his instructions on our own bucket lists and sharing his good news of salvation with others for as long as he gives us life.

 

 My Spiritual Bucket List      One Sunday during the pandemic, Rhonda Scofield read a John Wesley quote which could be the simple, broad, but urgent instruction for our 21st century bucket lists:  “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”  If I was going to make a list, I’d put that at the top, with the added preface “For the Lord,….”
             I rarely think about my own death, so I’ve never made a list of the earthly things I still want to do before I get there.  There are lots of people and places I’d love to see and things I’d like to have or do, but if those never happen, I’ll have no regrets.  I do, however, frequently think about spiritual progress I hope for and pray to see before my time is up.  I have often told people about an article by Ralph Winter in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement in which the author notes ten cycles of roughly 400 year periods between the time of the Bible’s patriarchs about 2000 BC and our time (2000 AD).  Winter details how in each of those cycles, there is a period of notable turning to the Lord with many new Christians won, followed by a time of spiritual coasting, turning inward, and hoarding God’s blessings rather than sharing them freely.  That opens the door to social stresses and unrest, secularity and rejection of true spirituality, and moral decline.  Only after the people of God begin again to share his blessings with others does the opportunity arise for a revival of dynamic spiritual life.  The world seems to have been in one of those low times for quite awhile during my adult life.  I would love to live long enough to see that pendulum finally swing back towards acknowledgment of need for God and spiritual renewal.
             There are several other things I hope to live long enough to see.  I would love to see the current era of self-focus and selfishness replaced by commitment to the common good.  I would love to be governed by people who genuinely “know the things that make for peace.”  I long for a society that accepts and honors principled Truth as its Creator spoke it, rather than Truth being whatever an individual says or wants it to be.  I would love to live in a culture which honors and rewards civility and decency, rather than their opposites.  I hope one day to see our society invest more in helping our most needy neighbors than in unnecessary luxuries for a privileged few.  And I long to see more groups of Christ’s followers gladly and unquestioningly live out the principles of the Beatitudes in daily life, in ways so attractive that people who don’t yet know Christ want to join in.

 

That’s my spiritual bucket list on this date.  What’s on yours?  Let’s together be Christ’s Friends.

 

 

 Queries for Worship-Sharing and Reflection

 

1)  What are the most important or urgent things on your bucket list (or would be, if you had one)?

2)  How important to you think sacrificial suffering was on Jesus’ bucket list?  How important should it be on ours?

3)  How should Jesus’ followers understand, define, and practice “the common good”?

4)  What makes more sense to you, a bucket list as a life-long guide, or as a final act?