A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — August 30, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Mark 8:22 - 9:8;  Selections from the Psalms

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” — Mark 9:7

There has been a great deal of flack of late about various wild and wildly false charges that health care reform includes Nazi-like “death panels.”  I’m with Rep. Barney Frank who wonders just what planet people making these accusations spend most of their time on.  It all reminds me of a number of years ago when similar bogus claims arose as Oregon was considering a law to allow for doctor-assisted suicide—wild claims that nearly overwhelmed any attempts to consider some of the real ethical issues that needed to be discussed.  Once people are called Nazis, all serious discourse ceases.

I was serving a church in Oregon at the time, and amid all the hue and cry pastors often were asked to weigh in on the issue.   One day a college student called wanting to interview me for a paper he was writing.  As part of his assignment he needed to talk with people with differing views on doctor-assisted suicide.  So he came armed with questions and ready to record the answers he expected I’d give him.  After all, that’s what pastors and churches do, isn’t it?… give answers?  Well, we ended up talking for more than two hours about doctor-assisted suicide as well as a wide range of other ethical issues, with both of us asking questions.  At one point he expressed his surprise that I never offered church doctrine as official “religious answers,” but instead we kept exploring new questions and hypothetical situations.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — August 9, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Mark 7:14 – 8:21

Jesus said to his disciples, “Then do you also

fail to understand?”—Mark 7:18

And Jesus said to his disciples,

“Do you not yet understand?”—Mark 8:21

I noted last week how Jesus keeps taking his disciples into foreign territories, places they are in the minority, aliens on unfamiliar ground. I cited the admonition in Leviticus that is so very like the one we know so well to “love your neighbor as yourself,” but going way further to command in Leviticus 19:34, “You shall love the alien as yourself.”  Leviticus follows with the reason for this command: “…for you yourselves were aliens in the land of Egypt.”  Jesus is giving his followers a repeated crash course on what it is like to be an alien in the minority.  He does this in between visits back home to Galilee where they are part of the cultural majority.  Back and forth they go.  He is opening their eyes, raising their consciousness, teaching them empathy and compassion.  “For you yourselves were aliens…”

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — August 2, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Mark 6:30-56, 7:1-13

[The disciples] were utterly astounded, for they

hearts were hardened.  — Mark 6:51a-52

Isaiah prophesied… “This people honorsme

precepts as doctrines." — Matthew 14:31

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”  These are the first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Mark.  According to Mark, this is the core of what Jesus preaches as he goes from village to village and back and forth across the Sea of Galilee.  But just what is this time that is fulfilled?  And what does this kingdom look like that is now so close at hand, yet still needs to be pointed out and explained by all that Jesus is doing and saying?  To a large extent, that is what Mark is all about—that and how people respond to this good news.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — July 12, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Mark 6:14-44

“Send them away… [to] buy something for

“You give them something to eat.”— Mark 6:36-37

At this point in Mark’s story of “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” we might begin to wonder about the apostles.  They just don’t seem to get it.  They fail to grasp the meaning of the parables in Chapter 4.  And although they’ve witnessed many deeds of power by Jesus and performed some of their own, they seem to unable to grasp just who Jesus is.  “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” they ask [Mk 4:41].  All through the Gospel they bumble along following after Jesus, but they seem pretty clueless about what’s going on.