A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — May 2, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Revelation 21:1-6; 1 John 4:16b-21;  John 13:31-35

See, the home of God is among mortals. 

and God himself will be with them. — Rev. 21:3

We love because God first loved us. — 1 John 4:19

Just as I have loved you, you should also

that you are my disciples… — John 13:34-35

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day.  No, this isn’t a heads-up to remind you to go out and support your neighborhood Hallmark store of florist shop or do whatever it is you do for your mother.  Rather I want to say something to you about Mother’s Day before it gets here.  I always thought that Mother’s Day was set aside as a time to honor our mothers and show our love for them.  But I learned after I became a pastor that Mother’s Day originally was proposed in 1870 for different reasons.  Julia Ward Howe, who is probably best known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and who nursed wounded soldiers during the Civil War, promoted Mother’s Day as a day for peace and summoned women of all nationalities to join her.  Here are the opening words of her original 1870 Mother’s Day proclamation:

Arise, then,… women of this day!
Say firmly:  “We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country,
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

Mother’s Day originated in an appeal to the deep, powerful love of mothers for their children and, by extension, for the children of all other mothers.  Such love is to be active in the world for peace.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — April 25, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Psalm 23:1-4;  Ezekiel 34:11-16;  John 10:1-21

The Lord is my shepherd… — Psalm 23:1

Thus says the Lord:  I myself will search for my sheep… — Ezekiel 34:11

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
So there will be one flock and one shepherd. — John 10:16

All those images of shepherd and sheep and sheepfold.  “The Lord is my shepherd,” sings the psalmist in that most beloved of all the 150 psalms.  “I myself will search for my sheep… [and] be the shepherd of my sheep,” says the Lord God through the voice of the prophet Ezekiel. “I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus.  All those familiar pictures of Jesus with a lamb in his arms or on his shoulders, all those images of shepherd, sheep, and sheepfold—they’re wonderful.  You’d almost think we like when the Bible refers to us as sheep.  But look closely at real sheep sometime.  They’re smelly and not the brightest of beasts, mostly interested in eating, always wandering off and getting into trouble, kind of silly looking really.  But, as our bulletin cover suggests, maybe we’d still rather be called sheep than fish.

That fish image does suggest something to me as a pastor, however.  Since the word “pastor” literally means “shepherd,” what if Jesus had gone beyond calling his disciples “fishers of people” to declare about himself, “I am the good fisherman”?  If the psalmist had sung, “The Lord has caught me hook, line, and sinker; I shall not want…”, why then, instead of being called a pastor I might be something like a “pescador,” a fisherman.  And we pastors, that is, we “pescadors” might go around swapping “fish stories” like all fishermen and fisherwomen do—stretching the truth about our latest catch… —it was sooooooo big.  The “Parable of the Lost Sheep” might instead be the “Parable of the Lost Fish”—about the one that got away.  (But the fisherman kept fishing until he finally caught that fish, and he brought it home and called all his friends together to celebrate—probably with a fish dinner.)  One problem of course is that, fishermen don’t take care of fish; they hunt them.  Fishermen prey upon fish.  “Let us prey” takes on a whole new meaning when “prey” is spelled p-r-e-y.  Oops, a pun—maybe we shouldn’t go there.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — April 18, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:   Luke 22:54-62;  Acts 9:1-9

            John 21:15-19;  Acts 9:10-20

Peter remembered what the Master had said to him: “Before
the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” He went out
and cried and cried and cried. — Luke 22:61-62 (The Message)

As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul,

why are you out to get me?” — Acts 9:4 (The Message)

One of the most important things we do in the church is tell stories—most especially stories from the Bible, but also other stories that help us to appreciate and better understand the Bible’s stores.  This morning I want to share with you a couple of stories about two of the most important early followers of Jesus Christ—the Apostles Simon (also called Peter) and Saul (also called Paul).  And I have a contemporary story that relates to the meaning of the two Bible stories.

The first thing we remember about Peter and Paul is that they were not perfect.  In fact, they were a long ways from it.  Both of them did things that were wrong, things they were ashamed of, bad tings.  But Jesus never rejected them.  In one story Peter says three times that he doesn’t know his friend Jesus at all.  It happened when Jesus was arrested.  Some of us heard this story during the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae Service.  It appears in all four gospels.  Here’s how Luke tells it by way of Eugene Peterson’s contemporary English version, The Message:

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — April 11, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Nehemiah 5:1-13;  Isaiah 58:1-14

Some 80-90 years after Hebrew exiles were allowed to return from Babylon to Judah, the king of Persia decided it was time to rebuild the wall around the city of Jerusalem, so he sent Nehemiah to direct the project.  When he arrived, Nehemiah found a great deal of discontent among the people.  Nehemiah 5:1-13 describes the situation and what Nehemiah did about it.