|
"Temple Debate Continued" |
|
|
|
Written by Susan Warrener Smith
|
|
Sunday, 12 October 2008 |
October 12, 2008 Matthew 22:1-14 Luke 14:16-24 If I asked you which version of this parable you preferred, Matthew’s version or Luke’s, I think it would be a safe wager that Luke would win the popularity contest. It probably won’t surprise you that, so far, I have successfully dodged preaching on Matthew’s version of this parable for what are, I think, obvious reasons. I simply have never known what to do with the jarring words and disturbing events which seem like intrusions in what is otherwise a wonderful parable about hospitality. There are events in the parable which seem hateful and belligerent, and there is something dark and foreboding casting its shadow over the king’s gracious invitation. These unfortunate events fly in the face of words that have appeared earlier in Matthew’s gospel - words about forgiveness, about loving your enemies, about doing unto others, about not judging, AND they fly in the face of words that appear later in this same chapter, just a few paragraphs away, where Jesus says that love of God and love of neighbor are the highest goals to which one can aspire and that love is the overarching ethic by which everything in the law or the prophets is to be understood. Yet here in Matthew’s telling of this parable anger and cruelty seem to undercut the higher message of a gracious invitation to a banquet of joy.
|
|
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 21 October 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Love and Truth vs. Fear and Hate |
|
|
|
Written by Skip Jackson
|
|
Sunday, 05 October 2008 |
|
A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — October 5, 2008
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Proverbs 31:8-9; John 8:31-32; 1 John 4:16-21
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. — John 8:32
There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear. — 1 John 4:18
(I am Skip Jackson, your pastor, and I approve this message.)
Yes, it's election season. I was wondering what I might preach about for this Peacemaking and World-wide Communion Sunday when I picked up this week’s edition of my neighborhood newspaper the Northwest News. The editorial cartoon shows a man who has climbed up to speak with a power company line repairman. Under his arm is a TV set announcing “…and I approved this message,” and he’s begging the repairman, “Can you turn the power off again until after the election?” I’ve come to realize that one of the real blessings of losing power after the windstorm three weeks ago was two entire days without television or internet political ads.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
"Temple Debate" |
|
|
|
Written by Susan Warrener Smith
|
|
Sunday, 28 September 2008 |
September 28, 2008 Matthew 21:23-32
In the passage we just heard from Matthew this is the last time Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem. Just the day before Jesus created quite a stir, entering the city surrounded by cheering crowds and then going into the temple where he made a real scene. He chased out everyone who was buying and selling, overturning tables and chairs, and accusing the money changers of making a holy place into a den of robbers. Having made a spectacle, Jesus then responded to the blind and the lame who came to him in need, and he healed them - in the temple for all the crowd as well as the priests and scribes to see. To add to the tumult, the crowds cheered Jesus on once again - all right there in the temple on the most holy and sacred ground in all of Israel. The priests and scribes were not happy about all this - to put it mildly - and perhaps recognizing he had pushed his limits far enough for one day, Jesus retreated to the nearby town of Bethany to spend the night.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 10 October 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
What Is It? |
|
|
|
Written by Skip Jackson
|
|
Sunday, 21 September 2008 |
|
A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — September 21, 2008
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Exodus 16: 2-18, 31, 35
When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?”
For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the
bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” — Exodus 16:15
I’ve always loved family reunions. I haven’t been to one in seven years, but I well remember them from when I was a kid—hordes of kids (there were about 28 of us cousins in my generation), lots of good food, and a whole lot of folks who seemed really old. Most were probably younger than I am now, but there were a couple of great aunts who seemed to me, then, to be older than God. So I can imagine that a family reunion story I heard recently is true. Apparently something like eighty family members spanning five generations had gathered together for the first time in years. Since they’d come from all over the country, they spent a lot of time getting reacquainted—or getting acquainted for the first time, since some of the youngest and oldest knew each other mainly from e-mailed photos. One of younger kids, a four- or five-year-old girl, was particularly fascinated by the family matriarch. Great-great-grandma was nearly 100, and the little girl just could not stop staring at her. Finally she marched up to her great-great-grandmother and loudly demanded, “If you’re so old, why aren’t you dead?” There was utter silence, and then the matriarch replied, “Well honey, every time I get settled and ready to go, somebody needs me to make a sandwich.”
|
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 29 September 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
"Dancing Around the Holy Land" |
|
|
|
Written by Susan Warrener Smith
|
|
Sunday, 14 September 2008 |
September 14, 2008 2 Kings 23:1-14, Jeremiah 10:1-16, Exodus 20:1-5a, Matthew 22:34-40 Horus, Isis, Osiris, and Min . . . El, Anat, Asherah, and Baal . . . Kothar-wa-Hasis, Dagon, Mot, and Yamm . . . An, Enlil, Ninharsag, and Enki . . . Nanna, Inanna, Dumuzi, and Ereshkigal . . . These are just a few of the gods and goddesses that populated the ancient Near East in the second millenium BCE - that time when the stories of the Exodus and of Abraham and Sarah’s journey out of Ur were evolving. And these are just a few of the gods and goddesses whose names have been floating around in my head over the past few years. You may ask why. |
|
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 September 2008 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|