A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — December 26, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Psalm 148;  Luke 2:1-20

 

 

…all who heard it were amazed… but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. — Luke 2:18-19

It wasn’t until I had kids that I truly realized just how quickly Christmas traditions could happen.  At age 3 or 4 they remembered “just how things were done last year” and would insist they be done the same way again.  After all, it’d been that way “for as long as they could remember.”

And traditions can hang on and on.  Take our Christmas Eve service, for example.  I’ve been told there one time more than ten years ago the processional was changed to something other than “Once in Royal David’s City.”  But people missed it so much—most especially the teenagers.  For my first Christmas Eve here ten years ago, someone handed me the prayers and readings I was to do.  When the service got to the closing, the script for lighting the Christ Candle noted, “Now Bob says...” and there were words that had apparently been said year after year for many years.  I used that same script until about five years ago when I finally changed it to “Now Skip says…”  But two nights ago when it came time for us to extinguish our candles, I noticed that my script still reads, “Now Susan says…”  Tradition.

 

Now don’t get me wrong; I like traditions.  They’re a big part of Christmas.  Reading a children’s story the Sunday after Christmas has long been one of my traditions.  But when we come to love Christmas largely for the traditions, we risk losing something—namely the image of Christmas as a time of new life, new beginnings, new creation… a time of miracles that can transform lives.  Stories that have become traditional remind us of this—like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the movie It’s a Wonderful Life and, of course, the story of a baby born in a manger.  Here’s another story about a Christmas miracle called:

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
by Susan Wojciechowski [Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 1995]

(read with images from the book projected on a flat screen TV)

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — December 12, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Isaiah 7:10-16;  Matthew 1:17-25  —  Advent III

 

To download an mp3 audio file of the sermom click HERE .

 

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him… — Matthew 1:24a

Too often the church seems to demand a kind of blind belief, that we go along and ask no questions, agreeing with things that seem to be flat-out impossible—to be like the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.  When Alice protests, “One can’t believe impossible things,” the White Queen huffs that she practices believing in the impossible every day.  “Why,” she says, “sometimes I’ve believed in six impossible things before breakfast.”  So when it comes to the Christmas story, we can get bogged down in whether or not we “believe in” certain facets of the tale that seem impossible—angels, a virgin birth, a guiding star, a God who descends to earth, trading power and glory for swaddling cloths and a crude manger.  But at it’s heart, the story is not about our usual understanding of belief—it’s not about agreeing with some idea or thing no matter how strange—but rather it’s about a deeper understanding of belief as radical trust.  

In Luke’s Gospel the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces she will bear a child.  Does Mary blindly fall into line?  No, she questions, “How can this be, since I am a virgin.”  Only after getting further information does she say, “Let it be for me according to your word.”  In Matthew’s Gospel an angel comes to Joseph in a dream, and only after the angel explains in some detail what is to happen does Joseph change his mind about quietly dismissing Mary and instead decide to do what the angel has told him to do.  And what is at work in both Gospels is trust—actually a two-way, mutual trust.  God trusts these two very human people to make a choice, and in turn Mary and Joseph trust God in their choosing.  Let’s look a little more closely at Joseph’s situation.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 28, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Hebrews 12:1-2;  Matthew 1:1-16 (in sermon)

 

…surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… — Hebrews 12:1

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah… — Matthew 1:1

What would it have been like to be there at the birth of Jesus—to be a witness to the event?  I often ponder this question whenever I see a nativity set with all its familiar characters from the various stories of the first Christmas.  Whatever they’re made from—wood, clay, metal, paper, plastic—all are readily recognizable.  At the center is a stable with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus lying in a manger—that is, in a food box for the animals.  As for the animals, there are usually some sheep, an ox, and/or a donkey.  Then looking on are the witnesses—shepherds, wise men (usually with a camel), and angels.  It’s all so familiar that it’s hard to remember that nowhere in the Bible is the nativity scene described anything like this at all.

Mark and John don’t tell us anything about the birth of Jesus, and the gospel stories of Luke and Matthew disagree.  Matthew has no shepherds.  Luke leaves out the wise men.  Luke says nothing about King Herod, and Matthew says the wise men entered a house, not a stable, to see Mary and the baby.  What we usually do is sort of mash the accounts of Matthew and Luke together into a single, charming story.  But by doing so, we dilute the particular concerns each writer had in sitting down to tell the story of the good news of Jesus to his own particular community.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 21, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Luke 12:13-34;  Revelation 21:1-6a

 

 

And [Jesus] said to them, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  — Luke 12:15

I saw Heaven and earth new-created.  Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.  I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband.  I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!  They're his people, he's their God.  He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone."  The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new. — Revelation 21:1-6a [The Message]

Last Sunday I preached about economics, and sure enough there was a raft of comments and questions.  I contrasted the images of Joseph and Jubilee: Joseph in his role as “Minister of Food,” selling grain for Pharaoh during a famine, as against the Torah’s call for such things as Sabbath years, when debts are to be cancelled and slaves freed, and a 50th year Jubilee when all agricultural lands are to revert to original owners—that is, to the families, clans, and tribes to which, according to scripture, God assigned all the lands in the first place.  Remember that by the end of the famine Pharaoh ended up owning everything there was—all the money, all the animals, all the land, and even all the people as slaves.  So for the Hebrew people Pharaoh came to represent an economics based on accumulation and greed that enslaves people in a production/consumption rat race. Jubilee represents an alternative economics that reflects the dream of a more neighborly society, one rooted in love of neighbor, compassion, and covenant.  Jubilee was to serve along with regular debt forgiveness as a kind of ultimate “reset button” to re-level the playing field and prevent the formation of a permanent underclass.  Having experienced slavery, the Hebrews sought ways to prevent its reoccurrence, not unlike American patriots in 1776 who sought freedom from an entrenched system of royal peerage and power.

What I want to say in response to all the comments and questions is that I was not proposing a specific economic program when I challenged people to choose between Joseph and Jubilee. And I wasn’t saying that return of property and remission of debts are how to solve what’s wrong in our world.  Doing these things was problematic even in the world of the Bible as we can see in all its warnings about not trying to take advantage of upcoming Sabbath or Jubilee years as well as the prophets frequent oracles against injustice in the marketplace.  I also wasn’t lifting up Pharaoh as an example of government abuse of power.  We live in a vastly different, globally interconnected world with many different centers of power.  So I was not arguing for any specific economic actions or model that you might debate in an OSU Econ class, but rather for an economics that would reflect the root meaning of the word.