Archives for 2013

A New Beginning

January 13, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-23 for Baptism of the Lord Sunday
preached on January 13, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Sometimes you just have to go back to the beginning. In the midst of our very complicated and complex world, it is easy to forget where we began. In the face of changing times and places, we can easily end up someplace that isn’t where we intended to be—and that just isn’t faithful to to the original intentions of our journey. So sometimes we need to remember where it all began and do what we can do to reclaim that beginning once again.

For us as Christians, going back to the beginning means going back to baptism. Now baptism may not actually be the beginning of the story for us—just like Jesus, all of us lived some part of our lives before we were baptized, and some of us may have even begun our Christian lives before our baptisms—but baptism is the official, formal mark of new beginning for us as Christians, the time when we see how God claims us and makes us new, the moment when we are given a sign and seal of how we are made one with Christ in his death and resurrection. So when we think of Jesus’ baptism as we do today, we go back to the beginning of our stories and remember our lives of faith as we remember how the beginning of Jesus’ story in his baptism connects to the beginning of our story in our baptism.

Each of the gospels tells this story of Jesus’ baptism, but the version we heard from Luke this morning is a little different. First, unlike any of the other tellings of Jesus’ baptism, Luke puts this story much later in his narrative of Jesus’ life because of the detail he offers about Jesus’ birth and childhood. Like many of us, then, the Jesus of Luke’s gospel has some history of life and even of faith before he is baptized, so this moment in the water is the culmination of many things that come before it even as it suggests an incredible journey ahead.

But even with this extra detail on the front end, Luke brings the story in line with all the other accounts of Jesus’ baptism by dealing with John the Baptist. Based on the amount of attention that John gets at the beginning of the gospel story, John must have been important to early Christians, and most scholars think that John’s followers were around for quite a while after his death. But John’s message is not easily appreciated these days. He didn’t have much positive to say to anyone and demanded repentance from everyone. He attracted a lot of followers, but I’m not quite sure how. John’s first words according to Luke don’t exactly make people welcome. Would you appreciate being called first “You brood of vipers!”?! Even so, many of his first listeners wondered out loud if he was the Messiah, but John made it clear that there was something and someone greater on the way.

But Luke’s story does make John seem a little different. Only Luke tells us that John and Jesus were relatives of some sort, most likely distant cousins. But Luke also notes that John was put in prison by Herod before he tells us that Jesus had been baptized by him. This all happened in the two verses that were left out of our lectionary reading this morning, because it doesn’t make for particularly good storytelling and complicates an easy passage from John to Jesus. According to Luke, then, Jesus was baptized along with others in the crowd, but strangely enough Luke doesn’t directly identify John as the one who did it.

Amidst all these interesting twists in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ baptism, what really seems to matter here for us as we consider our own baptisms is not who did the the baptizing or the proper order of the story but what happened after Jesus’ baptism. First, after Jesus was baptized, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” What a dramatic moment for Jesus, to have this clear appearance of God in his life at the very beginning of his ministry! Now I suspect that our baptisms were considerably less dramatic than this one, but even so, the Holy Spirit was present and active in our baptisms, too. And just as Luke gets John the Baptist out of the picture of Jesus’ baptism, so it should be with us too, for in the end, God is the primary agent in baptism for Jesus and for us. Baptism is not about the pastor or priest who applies the water, the denomination in which the sacrament is celebrated, the amount of water involved, or even the time in life when it happens—baptism is about how God breaks into our world and steps into our lives to mark us and claim us as God’s own even with a little bit of water.

But after this movement of the Holy Spirit, Jesus heard a voice from God: “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Even though he surely knew it beforehand, Jesus’ baptism showed him once again who he was and gave him the strength and hope to face the challenges of the journey ahead. And so it is with our baptisms, too. Just as Jesus began his life of ministry with this assurance of love and grace from God, so we too begin our lives as Christians with the sign and seal of water that shows us that God loves us. Just as God’s claim and call on Jesus’ life was made clear in these words, so we in our baptisms also learn that God claims us and calls us to walk in new life. And just as Jesus found strength and hope in this moment at the beginning of a long and difficult ministry that would eventually lead to nothing less than his death, so we emerge from the waters of our baptisms with the confidence that we are God’s beloved children who are called out of the water and sent into the world to join in what God is already doing to make us and all things new.

In our baptism, just like Jesus, we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah loud and clear, directed at us:

Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;

when [you go] through the rivers,
they won’t sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,
you won’t be scorched
and flame won’t burn you.

I am the Lord your God,
the holy one of Israel, your savior.

Because you are precious in my eyes,
you are honored, and I love you.

I give people in your place,
and nations in exchange for your life.

These are powerful words, worthy of the power of baptism that begins the Christian life. We rarely realize it when we stand at this font at whatever age, but the waters in this bowl are far more powerful than even the strongest waves of Hurricane Sandy. We hesitate to affirm it when we welcome our children into our common life with this sacrament, but even the smallest bit of water on our heads in baptism means that we no longer belong to ourselves, to our families, or even to our church—but to God. And we may not always recognize it or remember it, but God’s claim on us in baptism never leaves us. We can do nothing to wash off this indelible mark. Even when we try our best to deny God’s place in our world or God’s claim on our lives, baptism shows us that “God loves us too deeply and too completely to ever let us go.”

And so as we remember and celebrate the baptism of Jesus today, moving from a season of celebrating his birth into more ordinary days, may the baptism of Jesus remind us of our own baptisms, of our beginnings in this life of faith, where we are claimed as God’s own forever and shown that God will go with us through the waters, the rivers, the fire, and everything else that is before us. And so today may we go forth sustained by this unforgettable sign and seal, remembering our beginnings once again, living out this unconditional love from God as we live with others and make it clear to everyone we meet that they too are claimed and loved by God now and always.

So remember you baptism, your beginning, and be thankful, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Light for the Journey

January 6, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 2:1-12 for Epiphany
preached on January 6, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Several years ago, the computer company Microsoft ran an ad campaign that asked a simple question: “Where do you want to go today?” While their way of thinking about computers may drive me crazy, I think Microsoft was on to something in picking up this theme of journeys.

Journeys are everywhere around us, and we take them constantly. Whether our commute is a couple minutes or a full hour, the workers among us make a journey to work every day. We take longer journeys sometimes when we set out on vacation or to visit family or friends who do not live nearby. And when we get down to it, our whole lives are a journey, as one of our most dear departed saints often said, with wonderful and challenging twists and turns and exciting and surprising stops all along the way. And so every day, we ask that question, “Where do you want to go today?”, not because Microsoft insists on answering it for us but because life is a journey that will take us to countless interesting places that will make us different from when we started.

Journeys are a very important part of our faith tradition, too. The Old Testament begins its focus on the great patriarch of Judaism Abraham by recounting his journey to Canaan at God’s command. The Israelites defined themselves as a people by their journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land—with a forty-year detour in the wilderness along the way! And both Matthew and Luke include journeys as they tell their different stories of Jesus’ birth.

Our reading today as we celebrate Epiphany tells Matthew’s version of events, recounting the journey of the magi as they made their way to Bethlehem to meet Jesus. It had to have been a pretty memorable journey, although probably not as much like what we think. We don’t know exactly where they came from or even how many of them there were, regardless of the certainty of our opening hymn today (“We Three Kings”) but these magi set out for Palestine knowing nothing more than that they were looking to welcome the newborn King of the Jews. They didn’t meet up with shepherds or angels along the way, but they did find their way to King Herod, who was so deeply troubled at this apparent newborn threat to his carefully-constructed power that he ended up killing all the male infants of Bethlehem. After this strange encounter, when the magi finally found the newborn king, he didn’t look a lot like most kings would, but they nonetheless showed him honor with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And as these magi prepared to return home, it became clear that their journey had sparked something more in their world, but their journey to meet this newborn king was not complete until they could return home by another road.

With the story of the journey of the magi fresh in our minds, Epiphany is a good time to think about the journeys that shape our lives. It comes very quickly after our American culture celebrates New Year’s, so many of us have already been thinking about what we will do differently in 2013—and if your life is anything like mine, many of those different intentions have already been missed! Epiphany comes after we have spent time preparing for and celebrating God’s incarnation in our midst, and we can hopefully remember the lessons of these days as we consider the journey ahead. And Epiphany is at the perfect time of the year, right when the days start to get longer, right when the light starts to come back into our world, for us to begin to see more clearly the road ahead.

So as another Christmas comes to an end, as another year begins, as another Epiphany gives us light and inspiration for the journey, where will our journey lead us? Will we see a star and follow it as the magi did? Will we embark on a journey that looks a bit different from what we have known before because of what we see going on around us? Will we welcome the opportunity to journey in faith or just focus on making the best of what we have in the here and now?

Whatever our intentions, the journey of Epiphany is not easy. It doesn’t come with a clear road map—the magi can certainly tell us that. We may have a star to guide us along the way, but there are still likely to be unexpected and unwanted twists and turns for us, just as there were for the magi. We may be asked to do unexpected things, to go to unexpected places, to meet people who don’t look like we expect them to look, to stand up to those in power to say that there is something bigger going on here. And sometimes we may even get so confused or distracted or discouraged that we forget why we are on this journey in the first place—but we too have seen something that keeps us wondering, something that insists that we ask questions, something that guides us all along the way.

The same star that guided the magi to Bethlehem still shines in our world today. It may not shine in the night sky guiding us to a house in a small town in Palestine, but it’s still there. The star still shines among those who take God’s invitation to live in justice, mercy, and peace seriously. The star still shines where the divisions of this world are set aside, where racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia are not tolerated, where people let go of the ways of the past and embrace new hope for the future. The star still shines where people work to make the lives of others different, where God’s presence is fearlessly offered, where peace is made possible and real. And the star shines where people gather together in trust and in hope that God is still at work in our world.

So if the star is shining, we can follow it—even if we ourselves are part of that light sometimes! We can ignore the other stars that tempt us and distract us and keep focused instead on the light of the world that gives us life. We can walk in the way of the magi, journeying toward something we don’t fully understand, opening ourselves to the possibilities of something new, continuing on our way amidst all the unexpected moments of the journey so that we too can welcome the Christ child, offer our own gifts, and pay him homage before we go on our way home transformed by what we have seen and experienced. And all along the way, we can help make the light of this star bright so that others can see it and join us along the way.

Writer Anna Briggs offers us a wonderful exhortation for this Epiphany that you saw some part of as our prayer of preparation today. Now hear her whole call to this journey of Epiphany:

Once a small star led wise seekers to Bethlehem,
Now bright lights dazzle and lead us astray;
Worldlywise people, seduced by prosperity,
How can we hope to find Jesus today?

Seek out the family who circle their precious one,
Body or mind needing care night and day;
See the star shining where costly love’s pouring out;
How can we hope to find Jesus today?

Turn to the neighbours who stand by the outcast one,
Labelled, rejected, with nowhere to stay;
See the star lighting the exiled one’s homecoming;
How can we hope to find Jesus today?

Watch for the country that welcomes the stranger in,
Fleeing from hunger, from tyranny’s sway;
See the star shine where the door’s ever opening;
How can we hope to find Jesus today?

Mark where a nation renounces its weaponry,
Sharing wealth round to provide work and play;
See the star shine where the earth finds new cherishing;
How can we hope to find Jesus today?

Offer your gifts where the seeking ones yearn for them,
Welcome the love which they more than repay;
Healing comes swiftly where human hearts turn again;
Turn to the star and find Jesus today.

May it be so for us. Amen.

A 2012 Recap

January 1, 2013 By Andy James

There’s a family tradition for us to send out Christmas letters. So far, I’ve resisted the temptation—until this year. This one has been eventful enough, I suppose! So I share it here as well as by mail…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

While I am sending cards incredibly late this year, I hope this letter still reaches you before the Christmas season comes to an end. It has been a busy and eventful year, and I figured I would share a few things about it with all of you!

my new apartment, decorated for Christmas

First, on June 1 I moved to a new apartment in Queens as part of the church’s decision to sell its manse. I’m still serving as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone, and my new home is still less than a mile from the church. I love my new place, although I’m not quite as able to welcome visitors as I once was. However, as a one-bedroom apartment, it is much more my size than the five-bedroom manse!

Iona Abbey in Scotland

Then, in July and August, I took a wonderful and much-appreciated sabbatical. I traveled first to Pittsburgh to attend the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), then in August I spent a week with family and friends in Mississippi and Alabama. But the real highlight of this time was twenty-five days in Scotland and Iceland! In Scotland, I visited friends in Portmahomack, then joined up with a group on pilgrimage to church sites in Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Stirling, and Glasgow. I concluded my time there with a week on the Isle of Iona, an absolutely incredible spiritual site with history dating to the sixth century. On the way back to the US, I spent four days enjoying the incredible natural beauty of Iceland. It was a trip of a lifetime! The most lasting piece of my sabbatical persists even now, though: I grew a sabbatical beard!

identified as “talent” at the White House

This fall, after completing several major leadership responsibilities in the church and presbytery, I took up singing with the New Amsterdam Singers. We are a group of about seventy gifted and committed singers who rehearse weekly in Manhattan and take on challenging music for our three concerts each year. In December, I was part of a smaller group who were invited to sing at the White House as part of the holiday tours. It was another once-in-a-lifetime experience!

It has been good to hear from many of you during the holidays this year. I hope and pray that your Christmas was joyous and your New Year is filled with much love! Look me up whenever you are in New York City—it is always wonderful to see friends!