Andy James

Peace Enough to Share

July 19, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 85 and Luke 24:28-43
preached on July 19, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago I was in my final interviews and negotiations to become your pastor—I’m actually pretty sure that exactly ten years ago today we met with the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry—and it is maybe even harder to believe that I remember anything at all about that whirlwind experience! Still, I recall very clearly talking with the pastor nominating committee about worship—what was important to you, what you might be open to doing differently, and especially what was distinctive in worship here.

One thing that the committee talked about at length was the passing of the peace. They told me with great enthusiasm about who it involved everyone greeting everyone else with the warmth of God’s love and how the service would just not be the same without it. Over ten years, I have discovered that the committee was very much correct: the passing of the peace is a very important part of our worship here. Still, I must break some difficult news to you, and after ten years I hope you are able to hear it with the honesty and love that I intend: passing the peace is a very important part of worship for a lot of small churches, not just this one!

We do something right here in making the passing of the peace an important part of the service. As you know so well, this is not just a perfunctory greeting—it is the embodiment of God’s love and peace and hope that we are privileged to share with one another. This time of greeting one another is not about saying hello to the people we haven’t seen since last Sunday but rather about extending God’s welcome to all who join us for worship. This time of sharing peace assures us of God’s peace with each one of us in a way that opens us to live out that peace in and with our world.

All these things are embodied in our scripture readings today that give us a deeper perspective of God’s peace and so inform this practice of our worship. Each text brings a different perspective on what this peace is and how it spreads in the world, but both make it very clear that the peace that we share in this weekly ritual comes from God.

First, Psalm 85 describes how God’s peace is offered to us in words so that it can be lived out. Amid the brokenness and pain of our world, with the memory of past salvation and reconciliation close at hand, the psalmist describes how God’s people await a word of peace that will show God’s salvation and glory for the whole earth. But this peace is not just some wonderful and hopeful concept, offered only in beautiful flowing words. This peace actually gets lived out as “steadfast love and faithfulness… meet” and “righteousness and peace… kiss each other.”

This strange and wonderful imagery of peace had to stand out in the world of its first hearers. As contentious and fractured as our world so often seems to be, ancient Israel was touched even more regularly by war. I suspect that peace was far more often a dream than a reality in that day and age, for Israel stood at the crossroads of world culture and commerce and was always under attack by some outside culture or empire. So to hear a proclamation of peace like this had to be quite startling.

If that wasn’t enough, the meaning of the word used for peace here, shalom, went far beyond a description of the absence of conflict. This shalom points to not just the absence of conflict but also the presence of wholeness, completeness, and safety—the deeper elements of peace that come from God and are offered to us to share. Shalom is a transformative way of life that makes the world a different place, emerging from the ashes of human conflict to bring hope, stepping out of changed relationships so that we can live differently, in harmony with one another and all creation. And so each week we are invited to share this peace, not just a peace of greeting one another in the usual way at the usual time but a transformative peace that breaks down the barriers that divide us and demonstrates how we can live and share God’s peace in the world.

One of the best examples of sharing God’s peace in this way is on display in our New testament reading for today from the gospel according to Luke. This story of Easter evening presents us with a situation filled with fear and excitement as Jesus appeared to his disciples on the night of his resurrection. Jesus had been revealed to several of them earlier in the day, including to two of them who had walked with him on the road and not recognized him until they sat down to share a meal. But when he showed up as all eleven of the disciples were gathering on that Easter Sunday evening, they were “startled and terrified.” They didn’t quite know what to do—they “thought they were seeing a ghost” because they just had not figured out how their beloved teacher who had been executed and buried just three days earlier was now alive again. So Jesus’ first words to them set the stage for our sharing each Sunday: “Peace be with you.” These were not magical words to automatically fix everything, for Luke reports that “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering,” but in sharing this peace, Jesus invited them to take comfort in the gift of his presence so that they might share it with others.

The peace Jesus shared with his disciples continues to be shared in these days. When we pass the peace each Sunday, we bear this kind of wholeness and new life into our lives and our world. In worship, we pass the peace following the confession and pardon so that we can celebrate the ways our forgiveness enables us to walk in newness of life. But when we pass the peace in worship, it is not so much about receiving something to bring us comfort for our own lives but rather about sharing this confidence of new life so that we can live in new and different relationship with one another and the world. What good is God’s peace, after all, if it does not transform how we live with one another? Why is this peace worth passing and sharing if we do not try to make it real with others and our world? How can we expect to be reconciled with God if we do not find reconciliation with one another?

Our world needs this kind of peace now more than ever. We have not had to look far in our news this week to see the need for changed relationships of wholeness and peace to take hold. When months of diplomacy resulted in a new agreement with Iran around limits on nuclear and conventional weapons and an end to extensive sanctions, some people said that continued conflict and even potential war was preferable to a pathway towards peace. When the nation of Greece found themselves in the midst of deep economic depression and went to their neighbors and partners in the European Union for assistance, some people labeled Greeks as lazy and incompetent, demanding deeper suffering and continued austerity without any real help to open up new possibilities for wholeness and redevelopment. And when a young Muslim shot and killed five people at two military recruiting stations in Chattanooga, some people immediately labeled him a terrorist, even in the absence of conclusive evidence for such, and Franklin Graham, a minister and son of the beloved evangelist Billy Graham, even called for an end to all Muslim immigration to the United States, continuing a history of xenophobia and racism against our faithful Muslim friends just as their holy month of Ramadan came to an end.

Amid all these seeds and sprouts and full-grown conflicts, God calls us to live out the peace that we pass and share each Sunday in our worship. The psalmist calls us to listen for the peace that God speaks to us so that we might be a part of what is sure and certain to be ahead:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

And Jesus calls us to set aside our fears and live in reconciliation and peace with one another, recognizing how his resurrection brings new life into being here and now for all the world. If this peace is good enough to share among one another, then it is good enough to share with all the world. It is good enough to inspire us to live in a new way with those who are different from us. And it is good enough to offer to the world as even a glimpse of God’s steadfast love, faithfulness, and righteousness in our actions and beyond.

So may God continue to inspire our worship as we share the peace with one another and give us strength to share that peace with all the world so that we might stand as a witness to new life and hope in our broken and fearful world until all things are made new in the peace and joy of Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Confession Is Good for the Soul?

July 12, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 51; Romans 5:6-11
preached on July 12, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

An old Scottish proverb says that confession is good for the soul, and there’s a lot of truth to that statement. There’s nothing quite like clearing your head of something that is bothering you. There’s a real gift in letting go of those burdens that unknowingly weigh us down. And there’s something wonderful about seeking God’s pardon so that we can be made new and whole again.

But when we gather for worship each week and offer a prayer of confession, is this really what is going through our minds? Are we really trying to clear our heads and get our souls in order, or is there something more going on here?

Our readings today suggest that there is more than just something good for the soul happening when we confess our sins together in worship. Confession and pardon not only open us to what we have done wrong—they show us how God changes us long before we even think of confessing our sins and assure us of the depth of God’s amazing grace each and every day.

The beautiful reflective words of Psalm 51 that we read responsively this morning are the most direct in their thinking about sin and pardon. These words are traditionally attributed to David, seemingly serving as his response after he is confronted with evidence of his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and David’s inexcusable actions to get her husband Uriah out of the picture by sending him to fight at the front of the Israelite army.

From this place, the psalm speaks directly to the depth of pain, hurt, and brokenness in all souls that comes when we are confronted with the reality of our sin. These words reveal the depth and breadth of our wrongdoing:

In my birth and my beginnings were the seeds of my distress.
In the womb, from my conception, my brokenness began.

These words expose how all our sinfulness is an affront against God’s holiness:

Against you, you alone, have I sinned.
I have done what is evil before your very eyes.

And these words express how deeply we need to be changed, sharing our continual cry:

Create a pure heart in me, O God;
put a new and right spirit within me.

This psalm, then, is quite likely one of the first recorded prayers of confession. It is no wonder that we use it each year on Ash Wednesday, when we reflect at length on the depth of our sinfulness and the pain that it causes God, our world, and ourselves. Building on the example of this psalm, our prayers of confession cover the full gamut of our sin—the things we have done that go against God’s intentions, the things we have left undone that God has called us to do, the ways that we have violated the image of God in others and ourselves, the harm that we have done to God’s creation, the myriad ways in which we have broken relationships and abused others, the pride that has driven us to think of ourselves as better than what we actually are, the self-deprecation that leads us to think less of ourselves than we actually are, and the brokenness that results from all the ways we rebel against God’s intentions for our lives and our world.

Confession opens us to the full reality of who we are so that we can live in the new and different and changed way that God intends for us and opens for us by the mercy and power and grace of Christ. Even with our sin laid bare in this way, we actually don’t start with our sinfulness when we consider it in worship—we begin instead with God’s grace. The wonderful Baptist preacher and southern writer Will Campbell put this about as well as anyone: “We’re no damn good, but God loves us anyway.” (Brother to a Dragonfly, p. 220)

The apostle Paul makes this abundantly clear in our reading from his letter to the Romans when he says,

While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.

God’s grace comes first—before our confession, before our knowledge of our sin, before even our sin itself. Paul goes on to assure us of this:

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

So when we confess our sin in worship we begin not with the depth of our sin but the breadth of God’s love and grace. We do not have to offer our confession in order to receive this. God’s love and grace for us is not dependent upon the accuracy or even presence of our confession. And God’s mercy is sealed upon us even before we can understand it and make it our own. And so before we confess our sin, we are called to confession with words that reveal this depth of grace:

While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.

Our confession comes not from any fear but rather from deep hope—hope for restoration of brokenness, hope for changed selves, hope for a different way of life, hope for deep and real newness of life.

If the deep hope that inspires our confession weren’t enough, we receive more assurance in the words that proclaim God’s pardon. Since the earliest years of the church, we have associated the words of our reading from the prophet Isaiah with Jesus:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases…
he was wounded for our transgressions [and] crushed for our iniquities.

These and so many other words give us confidence that God in Christ has transformed our sinfulness and made our brokenness whole. These words show us that God understands the causes and effects of sin better than anyone else ever could and seeks a new and different way that transforms us and our world. And these words assure us that God’s response to sin is not retribution or punishment but grace and mercy, enabling us to approach one another with those same gifts. So the assurance of pardon reminds us that even amid our brokenness, God loves us so much that we are freed to love others, that we can find a way to a new and different way of life, that we can embody God’s love and grace and mercy in our lives, our church, our community, and our world.

Confession is certainly good for the soul, but it is good for so much more, too. It helps us to understand and experience the depth of God’s amazing love in our lives all the more. It opens us to the ways that we can be changed by the gift of God’s mercy and so live in deeper and greater hope. It models a different way for us to respond to the pain and hurt and sorrow of our world so that we do not offer retribution or retaliation when we are wronged but instead seek the path of reconciliation. And confession shows us how God makes brokenness whole, how God brings grace out of pain and struggle, and how God changes hurt into new life.

So may we know the depth and breadth of God’s amazing love every time we confess our sin so that we can offer and share it with others each and every day as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Prayers for Greece

July 5, 2015 By Andy James

As some of you may know, I’m spending the next few days in Greece, on tour with the New Amsterdam Singers. We planned our travels a year or so ago, quite a while before anyone realized that this summer would bring a currency crisis and challenging referendum to this beautiful and storied country.

Over two days in Athens, we’ve seen some incredible and beautiful sites filled with some five millennia of history, even as there is more history in the making. What has struck me more than anything, though, is the incredible difficulty that this country is facing in this time. Buildings are abandoned in the middle of construction. Storefronts are empty, boarded up because there is no business that could take place there. Development projects of every sort—repairing ancient ruins, repurposing the old airport, even improving transit around a city of five million people—are stalled indefinitely. After enduring multiple years of deep economic depression, there are no easy answers, even as the people are faced with a nai/oxi (yes/no) vote today.

The vote today gives no easy answers. As best I can tell and have heard, neither response is without consequences. A yes vote means to accept even deeper austerity measures imposed on the nation by outside creditors, and a no vote to turn them down will likely deepen the currency crisis as debt limits run out and already-limited access to funds dwindles even further.

As we moved around the city yesterday and sang a concert with a Greek choir last night, I found myself reflecting on this whole experience already, wondering what I could do, questioning what might be possible to offer beyond spending my cash.

Two things stick with me, from the beginning and end of the day. First, a gathering of people at prayer, overflowing out of a Greek Orthodox church near the Acropolis as we wandered up the hill. Though I certainly could not understand anything of what they were saying, I quietly joined in their prayers that surely were for their nation and people in this difficult time. I remembered reading the prayer request from our Presbyterian partner church in Greece, the Greek Evangelical Church, and shifting my prayers from self-concern to those in deeper need, and these only deepened as the day went on.

11201930_892972994082323_7379152011597856451_n Then, at the end of our concert, in his only real reflection on the crisis of this moment, the Greek choir’s director suggested that there was at least one thing we can do in these days: dance and sing until it passes. This sits so very well with the song that we opened the concert with, “Abendlied,” quoting Luke 24:29 and remembering how Jesus appeared at the end of a long day’s journey when his disciples didn’t even recognize him:

Stay with us, for quickly falls the evening,
and the day is past and over.

And so we did exactly that last night, joining our voices together with these words of comfort and hope to offer space beyond these challenging days as we sang from our different traditions and even shared in singing two Greek folk songs.

So I hope you’ll join me in prayer and song for the people of Greece today. However this ends up, I and my tour group will be just fine, and I hope and pray that the people of this great and storied nation will find the path to a new day, whatever the challenges that may come along the way.

Songs I Can’t Get Out of My Head

June 28, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 42:10-12; Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 98
preached on June 28, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

If I had to guess, I think I walk around with a song stuck in my head at least half the time. Sometimes it is a hymn from Sunday that manages to stick around through Wednesday or Thursday, sneaking up on me when I least I expect it. Other times it is a song that we’ve been singing in the New Amsterdam Singers, where one song once got stuck in our heads so easily that several of my friends and I dubbed it “The Song That Shall Not Be Named” because even the name would get it started! And other times it is something I hear on the radio or from the computer that I end up listening to over and over again because it is in my head anyway!

When songs get stuck in our heads like this, I am reminded that song is one of the main pathways to the depths of our being and at the core of what makes us human. So it is no surprise, then, that the Bible talks a lot about singing, and that singing has been at the center of the worship of God since the beginning. There are a lot of interesting and different perspectives about singing in the Bible, and our Bible readings and psalm this morning are ones worth getting stuck in our heads in some way!

The prophet Isaiah gives us a vision of what it might look like if all creation broke forth into song, with sea and coastland and desert and town singing God’s praise in a new and joyous song. The story of Paul and Silas singing in jail shows us the power of song to break down barriers and inspire people to a new and different way of life. And the beautiful words of Psalm 98 give us yet another version of the repeated call to “sing a new song to the Lord” and offer our praise to God in so many different times and places and ways.

As lovely as it is to talk about singing, it is even more beautiful to actually do it! Now some people say that they simply can’t sing, but I am convinced that a good number of those people have either never tried or never been taught by the right people! One of my favorite teachers of congregational singing, the Scottish pastor and hymnwriter John Bell, blames this fear of singing on a culture that overvalues performance and so easily tells people that they can’t sing.

When people are told they can’t sing, they feel that there is a label round their neck or a mark on their file indicating a permanent disability. What they need to do is move from that negative assumption or label to a positive one. And this transition is a very biblical thing, because God is in the renaming business…. People who have been told in front of others that they can’t sing have to be encouraged, in the presence of others, to sing. (The Singing Thing, p. 103, 106)

We have been truly blessed over the last year and a half by the presence of Sandy Babb, who not only offers her beautiful voice in our worship but also teaches other people how to sing every day. As part of our time together today thinking about singing, I’ve asked her to give us some simple and practical advice about how we can sing better and offer our voices in praise to God in our worship together.

(Unfortunately Sandy’s thoughts on singing are not included in the manuscript for this sermon.)

So today I have two songs I can’t get out of my head that are worth sharing with you. The first one got stuck on Friday night, when I settled in to watch President Obama’s eulogy for the murdered pastor of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Clementa Pinckney. If you didn’t get a chance to hear it, go home this afternoon and watch it online—it is a far better sermon that what I am offering you from this pulpit today! But the song that stuck in my head from that incredible sermon is the very familiar hymn “Amazing Grace.” Our president used the incredible imagery of those words to call us all to a new way of thinking about and acting out the grace we have received. He reminded us that the shift from blindness to sight is more than just a spiritual shift, for God’s grace transforms how we see one another and our world, how we act in relationship with one another, and especially how we see the sins of our past and work to make the world different as we live out that grace in new ways. Then he made that vision of God’s grace so very, very clear as he broke out into song, using his remarkable baritone to lead that arena full of mourners in that beloved song of confidence and hope. I sure hope that song—and that incredible challenge that it offers us—stays stuck in my head for a long, long time.

The second song I just can’t get out of my head is a little newer and likely a little less familiar to many of you, though I’ve probably been singing it for longer than I have sung “Amazing Grace”! As a member of the Sesame Street generation, many of the early songs I learned were from that great children’s show, but the classic “Sing, Sing a Song” never seems to be able to escape my head. Its words gave voice to the philosophy and theology of singing for me long before I ever could:

Sing, sing a song,
sing out loud, sing out strong.
Sing of good things, not bad;
sing of happy, not sad.

Sing, sing a song,
make it simple to last your whole life long.
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
for anyone else to hear;
just sing, sing a song.

Sing, sing a song, let the world sing along.
Sing of love there could be,
sing for you and for me.

Sing, sing a song,
Make it simple to last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
for anyone else to hear;
just sing, sing a song.

So may these songs of grace and hope never get out of your heads so that you might sing praise and thanks to God and live out God’s hope in these joyous tones until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia! Amen.

Gathered

June 21, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Micah 6:1-8; John 4:19-24; Psalm 100
preached on June 21, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord. (Alexander Gondo, transcrb. I-to Loh)

For countless generations, women and men of all ages, all around the world, have gathered to praise our Maker and worship the Lord. The shape and form of worship has changed and shifted in a variety of ways, adapting to local customs of words and songs, adjusting as we have come to think in new and deeper ways about God, and guiding us to more faithful and hopeful ways of living out our faith and our worship in the world. So over the next several weeks, we will take a step back from the lectionary readings and begin pulling apart the worship service, looking at the meaning of its various parts, thinking more carefully about why we do what we do, and trying to sort out how we embody in our worship God’s call to gather in this place and go out to serve.

Just as our worship begins with the gathering of God’s people, so too this journey begins as all God’s people come together to praise our Maker. Our readings today lift up different elements of why and how we gather: the command from the prophet Micah to bring a different kind of offering of justice and kindness and humility to our worship; the instruction from Jesus to gather for worship in spirit and in truth; and our sung psalm that directs us to “sing to the Lord with cheerful voice” and “enter then his gates with praise.” But whatever the reason for our being here, whatever we bring with us, whatever we do when we arrive, when we gather for worship we come together in the presence of God.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

Coming together is an important thing these days. Our world is an increasingly lonely place, and coming together seems less and less important. We live in a day and age when we can limit our interactions with others by doing things online with a few clicks rather than by phone or in person. Especially in this large city, we can easily avoid the sorts of social interaction that were once the norm and make it just fine, it seems, on our own. We so easily become consumed with our own affairs that we miss the ways in which we can and should interact with others along the way. We allow ourselves to become comfortable with the way things that we become afraid of the differences we might experience with others. And all this culminates in the attitude shared by so many that it is just fine to worship on our own on Sunday mornings, maybe with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Times, maybe with a leisurely and relaxing morning without the stress of getting ready by a certain hour, maybe with time shared by choice with our favorite family or friends.

But the core of our worship of God begins as we come together across all our boundaries, beyond our families of origin and choice, stepping outside our comfort zones, to worship as God’s one people. Coming together to worship shakes us out of our complacency in thinking that we can make it through anything and everything on our own. Coming together to worship reminds us that we gain strength for living our faith as we gather together. And coming together for worship gives us the energy and courage we need to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

Coming together for worship might seem to be an easy thing, but this isn’t always the case. Just ask Jesus’ disciples, who even on the night of the resurrection gathered together under cover of darkness in locked rooms for fear of who might find them out. Just ask the early church, who were gathered for worship underground, in secret, for decades in the face of persecution. Just ask those who sought reform in the church over the centuries, who were challenged and even killed for trying to shape worship as they saw fit. Just ask the slaves of nineteenth-century America, who gathered under cover of darkness when their human owners told them that they could not worship as they pleased. Just ask our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, who were looked upon with suspicion in our own country for centuries because of their commitment to a particular way of worship and leadership that seemed unusual to others. Just ask the victims of the Holocaust, who were forced into gas chambers because of their heritage of prayer and worship. Just ask our Muslim friends, who gathered to pray alongside suspicion and spies for years after 9/11 because others were afraid of what might be said there. And just ask our sisters and brothers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, who gathered for prayer and study this week and even welcomed a guest into their midst only to have him murder nine of them after their conversation.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

In the face of all these challenges, confronted with all these fears, we keep coming together for worship, trusting that God will be present in our midst. It’s not that this is the only place where we see God at work; it’s not that we think that God lives here in the church, nesting somewhere in these rafters or bunking next to the boiler in the basement; it’s not even that we find that something special happens when we gather here. We gather to worship because we know of no better way to be in full and deep and real relationship with our sisters and brothers and no better way to show our gratitude and thanksgiving for all that God gives us along the way.

So just have you have come to worship today, keep gathering here in this place, trusting that God will be here with us and that in sharing this time with one another we can worship in Spirit and in truth, offering our praise and thanks to the God who made us and who makes all things new. Thanks be to God!

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.