Jody Vickery

I think we’ve probably misunderstood Jesus’ words to Judas (John 12) when he objected to an extravagant gesture by Mary. In what is to us a rather strange ancient custom, Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with an expensive perfume, one worth nearly a year’s wages. “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” Judas fumed. Besides telling Judas to “leave her alone,” Jesus said, “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” Typically, we treat that like a prediction – Jesus is saying that we may as well get used … Read more…

There is not a doubt in my mind that Jesus was God in the flesh. Not a doubt. In John 14, he said it himself; “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” In other words, when God looks in the mirror, he sees Jesus. Not Buddha. Not Mohammed. Not Moses. Jesus. He was, as they put it back in Nicea in 325 A.D., “very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Amen. Here, though, is what’s hard for me to grasp. “For we do not have a high priest who … Read more…

Precious little potential adults. Tiny packages of tightly compressed energy. Imagination factories. Manufacturers of fun. Laughter machines. The main reason we have balloons, Happy Meals, birthday parties and lawn sprinklers on hot summer days. They make mothers into mommies and fathers into daddies. They can turn a tear into a smile in twelve seconds flat. Or an immaculately clean house into a dump in less time than that. Truth tellers, they are, and chaos creators. Heart breakers. Memory makers. Time takers. In the span of nine months they can accomplish what their grandparents couldn’t in two decades; turn twenty-something party … Read more…

Three powerful characters drive the action in Second Samuel 6, and all three teach some important lessons about worship. From Uzzah, we learn to take God’s holiness seriously. David teaches us to practice holy self-forgetfulness. It’s kind of hard to focus on God when you’re fretting about how you look to others. Michal teaches a lesson, too. And it may be the hardest of all. Michal did not like what she saw, not one little bit. David’s liturgical dance welcoming the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem was undignified, inappropriate, irreverent and un-kingly. Her late father and king, Saul, would … Read more…

At our first church, we always held a New Year’s Eve singing that started around 10-ish and finished up at 11:59:45, at which time we’d count down the seconds to midnight. Then we’d pray in the New Year and adjourn to the fellowship hall to eat pancakes. I don’t remember if we called it Praise ‘n Pancakes or Glory ‘n Gluttony. Either way, it was a grand tradition. One year, our oldest, most conservative elder, Virgil, was leading some of the singing in the pre-pancake part of our service. Virgil was the main preacher and I was his associate. He … Read more…

Some Bible stories are like that peculiar cousin that nobody in your family talks about. No one can deny the genetic connection and everyone hopes they don’t show up for the family reunion. There are the heroes with scandals (e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David). The scoundrels who behaved heroically (e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David). And, to be inclusive, the less than virtuous women (e.g. Rahab, Bathsheba, Tamar). But the stories that give good Christians the most heartburn are those where God himself does something that appears very ungodly. Like the one about Uzzah, in 2 Samuel 6. For … Read more…

In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul pens two of the most amazing verses in the Bible; amazing because they combine bare-faced honesty with bold-hearted hope. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (vs. 8 – 9). What’s it like to be hard pressed on every side? No matter where you look, there’s trouble. Physical sickness wracks your body. Emotional turmoil troubles your heart. Mental anguish tortures your mind. Financial deficits throttle your dreams. Your relationships are just a mess. Your kids are ungrateful and … Read more…

In the summers during my high school years I was a bus mechanic’s apprentice. Ralph, the mechanic, wore thick-rimmed glasses which always sat crookedly on his nose, not because the glasses were bent but because the nose was. Ralph looked like he had taken a few punches in his youth. If you made a mistake, and even if you didn’t, he called you a knucklehead. But he had a way of saying it that made you feel he still liked you. Ralph loved the Lord, working on engines and teaching boys how to love the Lord and work on engines. On … Read more…

Once, when I was eight or nine years old, I was loafing around the spacious backyard at my grandmother’s house, looking for snakes, large insects or evidence of the UFO she said she’d seen a few weeks before. Not finding any reptiles or invertebrates, the UFO angle was looking more and more promising — an absence of creatures which scurry along the ground, to borrow a phrase from Genesis, suggests alien alteration of the environment. That, or a proliferation of cats. Mee Maw had about seventeen of them. But UFOs were a much more exciting possibility. Anyway, all of a … Read more…

This may be my favorite week of the year — the lull between Christmas and New Years. The traveling is done and/or the travelers who came to see you are headed back home. For most of us, work is slow. Salespeople aren’t calling and clients aren’t answering. School hasn’t yet started. There’s just not a lot going on. Unless, of course, you’re in retail, in which case, may the Good Lord be with you. Especially if you have to work the returns counter. (Be nice to those folks — it’s not their fault.) That said, this is a good time … Read more…