A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — December 13, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Ephesians 4:4-13;  Luke 2:8-14

Third Sunday of Advent

In that region, there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. — Luke 2:8 (on video with Linus van Pelt reciting)

I was a high school senior when “A Charlie Brown Christmas" first aired 44 years ago in 1965.  High school seniors can be a little self-absorbed and cynical, but I was among the 50% of viewers tuned in to that first animated Peanuts special, and I remember goose bumps as Linus recited those words.  I’ve since learned that CBS network executives really wanted this scene cut from the show, believing that viewers wouldn’t want to sit through a passage from the King James Version of the Bible.  But their worries proved for naught.  One New York critic wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.” 

 

What is it that is so moving about Linus’ narration?  Is it the voice of a child?  It has been reported that some of the child actors couldn’t read and so were given their lines one at a time to recite, then these were put together on tape, which resulted in that now-familiar Peanuts delivery style.  There is something special about the simplicity of the presentation, the lack of any music accompaniment, Linus’ silent walk on and off stage, and, yes, the child-like intonations.

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 22, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  John 18:33-37;  Mark 16:1-8 with Shorter & Longer Endings

…they fled from the tomb, for terror and

for they were afraid. — Mark 16:8

…Jesus himself sent out through them, from eas

of eternal salvation. — Mark 16 (shorter ending)

[Jesus] appeared to the eleven …he said to them,

the good news everywhere. — Mark 16 (longer ending)

Does it seem odd to hear the Easter story on Nov. 22?

One of my favorite Easter songs declares, “Ev’ry morning is Easter morning from now on!  Ev’ry day’s resurrection day, the past is over an gone.”¹

Well, it’s true.  Like all Sundays, this Christ the King Sunday, this last Sunday of the church liturgical year, is a celebration of the resurrection.  It is the Lord’s Day!  And on this day, we have come to the final chapter of the gospel according to Mark to hear this gospel’s story of the first Easter.

Chapter 15 ended with the death of Jesus and the burial of his body.  All his followers have abandoned him—all, that is, except for a few women who look on as he is crucified and then follow to see where he is laid to rest.   All is lost, it seems.  Now in Chapter 16 the sabbath is over, and it is very early in the morning on the first day of the week.  The women have come to Jesus’ tomb, and someone—an unidentified young man dressed in a white robe—tells them the good news of Easter, “You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here… he is going ahead of you…”  That’s pretty much how we first received this good news, isn’t it, a message told to us by someone else?  At some point in our lives someone tells us that  Jesus has been raised and is alive.  There is new life.  And we believe it… or want to believe it… or want to want to believe it.  We probably wouldn’t be here otherwise.  But now what?

 

A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — Nov. 15, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts: Romans 8:31-39; Mark 15:1-47

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,

love of God in Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:38-39

At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice,

God, why have you forsaken me?”—Mark 15:34

As followers of Jesus Christ we live in the midst of a spiritual tug-of-war.  At times our faith has all the assurance of Paul’s words to the church at Rome—we’re sure nothing can separate us from the love of God.  But other times God can seem to be “absent or on leave,” to use the phrase we sang in our opening hymn by Brian Wren.¹  A mother or father dies, or a child, a brother or sister is lost, a wife or husband.  A tragedy occurs: the massacre at Ft. Hood, a typhoon half a world away, a diagnosis at your doctor’s office.  Then our faith may become more a matter of desperately hanging on in the midst of a silent absence, or as that same hymn puts it,  “when all seems empty, wrecked, and wrong”¹ and Jesus’ cry from the cross becomes our painful reality, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In such times, Paul’s promise can seem little more than trying to whistle a happy tune in the darkness.

In chapter 15 of Mark, it all goes horribly wrong as the religious authorities finally succeed in their plots to have Jesus put to death.  They hand him over to the leader of the Roman occupying force, and more out of political expediency than anything else, Pilate does what only he can do.  He has Jesus crucified as a common criminal.  The author of Mark does not make it easy for us readers here.  Other gospels show us a Jesus who has some measure of assurance and control in his death, right up to his final words:  “It is finished” in John or “Into your hands I commend my spirit” in Luke.  But Mark offers only two utterances that are ambiguous at best: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and a loud, wordless cry as Jesus breathes his last.  Is there assurance in Jesus crying out to “my God, my God” from the cross?  Or are we left with the agony of that “Why?”

 

A  Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 8, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text: Psalm 126;  Hebrews 12:1-13

 100th Anniversary Service

…let us run with perseverance the race that

and perfecter of our faith…— Hebrews 12:2b-3a

This is one of the most seductive books I own.  It’s a Rand McNally Road Atlas, and by opening it I can embark on the most marvelous journeys.  Oh, I know all about Google Maps and Google Earth.  But I love books.  And some of what are on the pages of this book are journeys of memory as I recall odysseys from the past—like May of 1982 when I set out solo on a motorcycle from Los Alamos, New Mexico on a trip that took me 9000 miles in 30 days.  Place names and routes in this book take me back— to Carlsbad Caverns… to an empty stretch of highway 54 just south of Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas with rattle snakes sunning themselves on the pavement just after dawn, to Big Bend National Park, and the Alamo, to the French Quarter, the Natchez Trace, Treasure Island in Florida, Kitty Hawk, the C & O Canal along the Potomac, Kalamazoo where I grew up, Lake Itasca (the headwaters of the Mississippi River), on to Wind Cave and Mount Rushmore, finally Estes Park at the gates to Rocky Mountain National Park where, turned back by a June blizzard, I decided it was time to head home.

But a Road Atlas is about more than memories.  There be dreams herein.  Someone has explored and mapped these places, thereby luring me to go there too.  In his first book about being On the Road for CBS News, Charles Kuralt listed his ten most beautiful highway trips in America.  I’ve driven five of them and especially love recalling the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park.  But the other five—like the Hana Highway in Hawaii—spark my imagination and make me want to drive them too.  Odd place names, major and minor “wonders of the world” like the world’s largest hand-dug well in Kansas, ferry boat connections (I love ferry boats)—they’re all in this book.  I can pour over a map of Newfoundland and dream of taking the car ferry from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Channel Port aux Basques, driving around the island, and finally taking a ferry all the way to Goose Bay, Labrador—all the while comfortably ensconced in my living room armchair.  It’s a book of dreams.