A Bible in a Bush

Last month Kristina and I went to California on a ministry trip that included two memorial services on the same Saturday. Both memorials brought revelation which helped us put a few of the jigsaw pieces of our lives in place.

When I was a teenager, the oldest of eight children, my parents separated. They argued a lot, and I assumed they were both to blame for their conflicts. Then my mother told me that my father had another son with a woman from the bank where he worked. This helped me understand why she had been so upset.

I knew my half-brother existed and that he had been adopted. I didn’t know his name or how to contact him. So, we didn’t meet until sixty years later.

In 2023, I received a Facebook message from Courtney Chaon. She told me Michael Chaon, her father, was probably my brother. I messaged Courtney and included my phone number. She called and told me a sobering story.

Michael’s adoptive mother had just died. Courtney went through her safe deposit box and found Michael’s adoption papers. The papers said his father was John Buckley from a large family in Marin County. Courtney looked up Buckleys from Marin on Facebook. She saw my picture and realized she had found her dad’s family.

Michael had been put up for adoption by my dad and his girlfriend when he was two days old. He was raised in Rohnert Park, thirty miles north of Terra Linda, where we lived.

The couple who adopted Michael were stable and loving, but for some reason they didn’t tell him he had been adopted until they all went to see a counselor when he was eighteen years old. Michael felt betrayed when his parents told him he was adopted. He wanted to find his birth parents but didn’t know how to reach them. He started using drugs and eventually turned to crime.

Courtney gave me the number of a burner phone Michael was using, and information on possible homeless camps where he might be staying. My brother Robert and I visited a couple of the camps. A few people knew Michael but said he had recently disappeared. We left messages for him. Two months later, he called and agreed to meet my three brothers and me for lunch.

The four of us drove to Rohnert Park to meet Michael. From the minute we met we realized he looked just like our father. We had no doubt he was our brother from another mother. He told us his story honestly and without excuses.

Michael had seasons of sobriety followed by wild living. He had been married a couple of times and eventually had six children with three different women. He went to prison in both Nevada and California, and was put in jail many times. He had accepted Christ at a rescue mission, but his life was dominated by addiction. He worked as a cook and various jobs when he was sober, and lived in homeless camps when he was on drugs.

I talked with Michael on the phone a few times in the following months. He agreed to meet me once in San Rafael where I was preaching, but he didn’t show up. His daughters loved him, but they couldn’t trust him. Michael died from heart and respiratory failure in a care facility two years after we met.

I drove from Novato to Santa Rosa with my brother Robert for the memorial lunch we had arranged for Michael. I purposefully left my Bible in the car, because I assumed I would talk rather than preach. Robert and I stood outside the restaurant, waiting for it to open. On the sidewalk, we met two ladies who knew Michael when he was child.

The ladies told us Michael was a sweet boy growing up. As I listened to them, I glanced over at a planter box next to me. There was a Bible leaning on a bush in the planter. As I reached down and picked it up, I realized, “The Lord does want me to share His word after all.”

Six of my seven younger brothers and sisters showed up for the lunch with two of Michael’s daughters, his ex-wife and several others. I stood up after our lunch and shared a few stories about our dad with everyone sitting at the long table.

Our dad was the grandfather of two of these young women. They never met him, but if they understood his roots it might help them understand their father who had deeply disappointed them. This is important because we are promised a good and full life if we honor our father and mother.

No parents are perfect, but the greater their flaws, the more difficult it is to honor them. The Hebrew word for honor is “kabbed”, which means weighty. We are to weigh the factors that shaped our parent’s lives, not simply judge them for their faults.

My father was raised as a single child of two Catholic alcoholics. He joined the Army Airforce and was sent to England during WWII. He flew twenty-five missions as a tail gunner and bombardier in B17 bombers attacking Germany. From 3%-20% of the bombers were shot down over Germany during each mission. The chance of surviving twenty-five missions and returning home alive was only 28%.

My dad’s planes often returned from missions riddled with machine gun holes. One time a bomb from a plane above them ripped through their wing and they struggled to fly back to their base in England. Most airmen expected to die in the war. As a result, our dad joined many soldiers who chased women and drank heavily in their off hours.

When he returned from the war, he discovered that his mother had cleaned out his entire room. She was so sure he would die in the war that she gave away all his clothes and everything he owned.

WWII not only killed and wounded millions of people, but many of the survivors— like my dad—carried emotional and spiritual wounds for the rest of their lives. Wounded people, like abused people, often wound and abuse others.

I closed my talk at lunch by sharing John 11:25-26. Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

Jesus said those who believe in him will live even if they die, because there is a resurrection from the dead. Then he said, if we live by believing in him we will never die. This is possible because those who live by believing in him obey his commands. The believers who keep his commands love others in ways which impacts them forever.

Michael had accepted Christ, but we didn’t pretend he was obeying the Lord with his life. We all have choices in how we live. Our fruitfulness, or lack thereof, is a testimony that declares the presence of Christ in our lives, or not.

I had to hurry from Michael’s lunch to a memorial service in Novato for Roberta Philpott.

Roberta (Bobbie) was the first wife of Kent Philpott. Kent was my pastor and a major leader in the Jesus Movement in the Bay Area. Bobbie was a spiritual mother to my wife, Kristina. Kristina, along with other young women, lived with Kent and Bobbie and their three children for three years before we were married.

Many books written about the Jesus Movement feature Kent. He was a dynamic leader, author and pastor. Few books mention his wife, Bobbie. Yet it was Bobbie whose prayers, faith and example helped Kent find salvation in Christ.

As we honored Bobbie during her memorial service, something dawned on me. Kristina and I dated for two years before getting married. During those years I was at the Philpott’s house every week. Not once did Bobbie ever hint that I was invading her family’s space. She welcomed Jesus people coming, going and living in their house. It had never occurred to me that we were disrupting their family life.

Bobbie Philpott was not famous in the eyes of men, but she is well known in heaven. She was a faithful servant who welcomed the Jesus people even though we were ignorant of her sacrifice. Without her faith and service, the Jesus Movement would have not been the same, and I don’t know where I would be today.

The Lord who inspired the Bible I found in the bush says that we don’t have to be famous to have a big impact, we just have to be faithful, because those who live and believe in him will never die.