Andy James

A New Song

May 10, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 98
preached on May 10, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I get older, I find myself doing something I always hoped others would not—and promised myself I would avoid, too: I am becoming more and more a creature of habit. Rather than trying new things, I stay close to what I know. Rather than exploring new options and opportunities, I stick to the familiar things. And rather than seek something different, I return to what I have found before.

In these Easter days, though, the psalmist gives us an important reminder that we might need something more than what we have seen before. He proclaims, “Sing a new song to the Lord!” He knows that what we have been doing for a long time might not be enough to express the wonder of what God is doing. He insists that the mighty and wonderful things that God has done and is doing and will do deserve more than the same old praise, for God’s actions are so amazing that we are called to always be on the lookout for new ways to show our thanks and praise. And he reminds us that God’s victory and vindication—shown in these days in the wonder of the resurrection—shake up our world so much that we must keep looking for new and different ways to celebrate it.

So with that in mind, I invite you to sing a bit of a new song with me today. One of my seminary friends and colleagues, Sarah Erickson, put together a wonderful and different setting of another psalm of praise, Psalm 138, and so today I invite you to sing a new song unto the Lord with me. I will say—or maybe even sing—a line, and then you will say or sing it back with me together. I suspect you’ll hear some old songs in the words we’ll share along the way, but I hope and pray that all this will be some new song for us to share today.

I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; (echo)

My whole heart. (echo)

before the gods I sing your praise; (echo)

Praise, praise, praise the Lord, praise God’s holy name, Alleluia! (echo)

I bow down toward your holy temple (echo – bow)

I give thanks for your steadfast love and your faithfulness (echo)

Great is Thy faithfulness! (echo)

for you have exalted your name (echo)

and your word (echo)

above everything. (echo)

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! (echo)

On the day I called, you answered me, (echo)

you increased my strength of soul. (echo)

All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O LORD, (echo)

Praise ye the Lord, the almighty, the king of creation!(echo)

They have heard the words of your mouth. (echo)

They shall sing of the ways of the LORD, (echo)

Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path (echo)

for great is the glory of the LORD. (echo)

GREAT (echo)

Is the glory of the LORD! (echo)

Gloria – (from Angels we have heard on high) (echo)

For though the LORD is high, (echo)

Lord we lift your name on high! (echo)

the LORD regards the lowly; (echo)

but the haughty (echo)

the haughty (echo)

are perceived from far away. (echo)

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, (echo)

We must walk this lonesome valley (echo)

you preserve me (echo)

against the wrath of my enemies; (echo)

you stretch out your hand, (echo)

YOUR hand (echo)

and your right hand delivers me. (echo)

Great is thy faithfulness! (echo)

The LORD will fulfill God’s purpose for me; (echo)

your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. (echo)

Forever, and ever! (from Hallelujah Chorus) (echo)

Do not forsake the work of your hands. (echo)

Amen.

On the Way Rejoicing

May 3, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Acts 8:26-40
preached on May 3, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It’s kind of amazing, really. We gather every week around a book whose newest parts are over nineteen hundred years old. We trust that these texts written by very different people from a very different cultural context can and will guide us and support us in our own life and living. We hope that these ancient words we offer us good news for our world today, and they usually do. When we are set in the middle of this world as clearly as we are, it is so easy to forget how surprising and amazing it all really is.

Even more amazingly, the transformative power of scripture is nothing new. Our reading this morning from Acts describes an incredible encounter with scripture on a road from Jerusalem to Gaza, where the Holy Spirit joined with an Ethiopian eunuch and the apostle Philip to open these words for new life.

The Ethiopian eunuch was traveling back to his home after a visit to the temple in Jerusalem, where he had gone to worship. The book of Acts doesn’t give us his name, but we learn a lot about him from just a few details. First of all, he was Ethiopian—in that day, something that didn’t necessarily mean modern-day Ethiopia, but he was certainly a darker-skinned man from the mysterious lands of Africa south of Egypt. Then, we learn that he was a eunuch, that is, that he had been castrated at some point, likely before he could have any say in the matter, so that he would be a more valuable servant in the royal household because it was felt that he would pose no sexual threat to the women there. Acts goes on to give us even more details, that he was a trusted court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. His wealth and status meant that he could travel by chariot, carry his own copy of religious books, and read the Greek that was the main language of that day.

Somewhat surprisingly, though, this man was also intrigued by the world of Judaism. He had traveled a long way to worship at the temple even though he would not be fully welcome there. If he was a Gentile, he would have been excluded from the inner court of the temple on that basis, and if he was a Jew, he would have been kept out because he was a eunuch. Still, scripture was clearly a gift to him. He spent his trip home reading the words of the prophet Isaiah, trying to figure out what it meant and whether or not this faith and practice could have any meaning for him. These words, written at least five hundred years before his own time, to people who lived very differently from him, in a way that was often interpreted to exclude him, managed to penetrate his own life, and he wanted to respond.

So by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit, Philip shows up in this eunuch’s life. Philip had set out on his own journey along this same wilderness road, and by the guidance of the Spirit, he caught up with the chariot, heard the eunuch reading Isaiah, and asked him if he understood what he was reading. The eunuch invited Philip in to help him with that interpretation, and together they explored how these words stepped beyond their original context in the exiled people of Israel and into their lives.

They were reading and discussing a passage from Isaiah 53, words that point to “a sheep… led to the slaughter,” “a lamb silent before its shearer,” and one “in his humiliation justice was denied him.” The eunuch asked Philip directly, “About whom is the prophet speaking, himself or someone else?” He was wondering out loud if this text might connect to someone in his own situation, someone who knew what it was like to be humiliated, to be slaughtered a bit, to face the denial of justice for himself. Philip then connected these words not just to the eunuch but to Jesus, invoking Jesus’ experience of suffering and injustice in his lowly and outcast state, connecting the eunuch not only to the prophet’s words describing the experience of Israel in exile but to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. By the power of the Holy Spirit, these amazing words reached beyond their original time and place to not only resonate in the life of one who knew what it was like to be cut off but to describe the incredible possibility of new life that has come to all humanity in and through Jesus Christ.

From here, the eunuch could do nothing more than to respond in joy. He wanted to be a part of all this for himself, to connect this message to his living in the royal court, to seal it on his life for all the days to come. So when they came upon some water along the side of the road, the eunuch asked Philip if he could be baptized, and so they shared in this ritual cleansing that led them both into new life. Even after Philip was “snatched away,” the eunuch went on his way rejoicing, for these words he admired so much were finally now connected to his life, and he could live in joy and praise all his days.

Scripture should be such a gift to us, too, to send us on our way rejoicing. Just as it broke into the world of this Ethiopian eunuch, scripture speaks into our time and place, into our lives and our world, as we see and hear God responding to the things around us. Scripture breaks into our lives to show us God present in the pain and hurt of our lives, to offer us God’s voice speaking out against the injustice of our world, and to remind us that God steps in again and again to transform brokenness into new life. Scripture challenges us to connect these ancient stories into our own world, to sort out how God’s presence among a backwater people who were never all that important in their own day and age matters for us today, to connect God’s affinity for the poor and outcast of scriptural times with the oppression of people in our own time, to look for God stepping in to bring new life in places where disaster seems to be all around.

In these days where we face the challenges of everyday life and living, where we wonder what kind of justice can settle in our nation amidst so much conflict, where we cry out “How long, O Lord?” because of the depth of pain and suffering around us, we need scripture to speak to us more than ever. How can we see God in our individual lives when things turn weird and everything seems to be going wrong? How then are we to understand how God is present amidst those who have been humiliated or denied justice in our world? How can we imagine that God will step in to bring relief to those who know the deep horror of destruction in the face of natural disaster?

Scripture assures us that we need look no further than Christ himself, who stepped in to bring comfort and peace when things went weird and wrong, who knew for himself the pain of systematic brutality and the horror of unjust punishment, who offered comfort and compassion to those who suffered so that all might flourish and go on the way rejoicing.

So may the Holy Spirit inspire us too along our way, that like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch we might know and understand God’s call in our lives and world, remaining present with those seeking a new way, walking with those who need a word of faithfulness and hope, and looking for scripture and the Holy Spirit to continue to speak to us so that we can join the eunuch and so many others and go on our way rejoicing. Thanks be to God! Amen.

After the Party

April 12, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on John 20:19-31
preached on April 12, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

What do you do after a big party? Hosting a big party is always a bit of a chore to begin with—the host always ends up doing the dishes, cleaning up the random messes, and getting the house back in some sense of order—but whether you’re hosting or attending a big celebration, there’s the way everything seems to go downhill a bit when it is over, how the exhilaration of expectation and festivity shift back into the routine of the everyday, how the excitement of the party eases down into something much more normal. Even when there is a general sense of relief that the celebration is over, I for one am a little sad, too, and end up counting the days until the next time something like that will happen—even though I know that the strange blend of busyness and exhaustion and exhilaration and relief will only leave me feeling like something is missing yet again after the next party, too.

As much as I feel this way in my own life and in the life of the church after a celebration such as we shared last Sunday for Easter, I can only imagine how much more strongly the disciples felt this in their own lives after their first encounter with the resurrected Jesus. The gospel according to John gives us a little sense of this, showing us an exhilarating first Easter day, when Mary and Peter both encounter the risen Jesus, and a slightly quieter first Easter evening, set in a locked room where the disciples had gathered to take in everything that they had experienced. The core group gathered there was two fewer than it had been before: Judas had killed himself due to his guilt over betraying Jesus, and Thomas wasn’t there with them for some unexplained reason.

It seems that they gathered amidst an overall air of confusion and uncertainty. Only a few of their number had encountered Jesus in person, and so the tales of resurrection were not yet backed up by personal encounters quite yet for most of them. And fear was still very much in their minds, not just fear of the kind of radical change that naturally comes when the certainties of death are broken, even by someone you like, but also fear of the authorities who had arrested and executed Jesus and who most certainly would not be excited to hear that his body was missing, let alone had been resurrected.

So amidst all their fears and uncertainties, inside locked doors, alongside their varied experiences of the risen Jesus, the disciples gathered, not quite knowing what to expect after the party—and then Jesus showed up. Somehow he made it through those tightly-locked doors and even-more-tightly-closed hearts and appeared in their midst. He offered them a word of peace and showed them his hands and his side, and then they rejoiced. He concluded his visit with them on that first Easter evening by breathing the Holy Spirit on them and sending them out to continue his work and ministry.

After that first party, the disciples kept up their gatherings. As they got ready for another Sunday evening meeting, they told the absent Thomas what they had experienced on that Easter evening, and like them he said that he would not—maybe even could not—believe it until he experienced it for himself. So when they gathered again the next Sunday, when Thomas was with the disciples in that locked room, Jesus again appeared among them. Thomas’ uncertainties were resolved when Jesus not only appeared there but offered up his wounds for Thomas to touch, and they again found that the experience they shared together made the resurrection all the more real for them along the way as they moved on from that initial moment back into the everyday.

As we too recover from the celebration of Easter and move back into the everyday, I think we can learn a few things from the disciples as we figure out what comes next after the party. First of all, the disciples remind us how important it is to keep getting together. In those first days of the resurrection, when they were uncertain or unsure what was going on, they kept gathering with one another, trusting that something special would happen in that time. In the same way, we find greater strength for our walks of faith when we walk together. When we gather with others to practice our faith, we are reminded that we are not alone in this journey. When we come together with fellow Christians for worship, prayer, study, and conversation, we are strengthened for those moments when we are unsure or uncertain, for the faith of others can help fill in the gaps that seem so easy to leave wide open. And when we share this pathway with others, we can open our eyes more clearly to the risen Jesus, for he always appeared to the risen disciples after that first morning not one by one but when they gathered together.

Beyond this, John’s story of these resurrection encounters reminds us of the importance of sticking with those who might want to ask some questions along the way. We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t there on that first Easter evening when Jesus appeared to the disciples, and we don’t know why he demanded to see the risen Jesus with his own eyes as he did, but we do know that they encouraged him and welcomed him back into their midst the next week, where his doubts were resolved by an incredible experience of his risen Lord.

In the same way, we are called to exercise a similar measure of generosity and grace with our sisters and brothers in the faith who have questions and express their doubts along the way. It is far too easy to become the kind of Christian community focused on determining who is in or who is out based on beliefs and systems and structures and visible practices, but when we do, we miss the deep reality that all this comes to us as God’s gift, with grace, mercy, and peace beyond all human measure, that we are given only to share with everyone, not to take away from anyone. Just as the disciples welcomed Thomas into their midst when he was uncertain, we too are called to offer a place of welcome to those who are looking to encounter God in the world, trusting that those who may not understand things so perfectly now will grow in faith, hope, and love through God’s own provision and in God’s own time, for they too will one day encounter the resurrected Jesus and join Thomas and so many others in proclaiming, “My Lord and my God!”

Finally, John’s story of the resurrection encounters remind us of one last thing to do after the party: keep singing. Whenever the disciples encountered the resurrected Jesus, they rejoiced and shared their rejoicing along the way. In the same way, we too are called to keep up our praise for what we have encountered along the way, and I know no better way to do that than to sing. Now some of you will likely quietly object to this, thinking that your singing voice isn’t good enough or finding some other reason for why you should be excused from singing praise for the wonder of the resurrection. However, I won’t accept that excuse, and I don’t think Jesus would, either. The beauty of your voice—or lack thereof—is no good reason not to use it!

When it comes to giving praise to God for the resurrection, we are called to raise our voices loud and clear, to set aside our doubts and uncertainties that our voices are good enough, to stop worrying whether or not we can carry a tune in a bucket, for God’s power revealed in the resurrection is so wondrous and surprising and transformative that it can change our mourning into dancing, our cries of lament into songs of joyous praise, and even our most out-of-tune singing into beautiful melodies that lift up the wonder of God’s love.

So as we journey into these weeks after the party, may we join the disciples in their Easter joy, continuing to come together to experience the presence of the resurrected Jesus, making space for those who are still looking for him to appear in our midst, and singing joyous songs of praise to our risen Lord until he comes again in glory to make all things new.

Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

The End of the Beginning

April 5, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Mark 16:1-8
preached on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

All too often, when I look around our world, all I hear about is death. Whether I turn on the TV or radio to hear the latest news, look up the latest news online, or check in with family or friends, there is some note about someone who has died. Our human stories, it seems, are very much set in stone: we are born, we live for a while and do a few things, and then we die. Life has a clear beginning, middle, and ending.

The story of Jesus ought to be the same, right? The gospel of Mark certainly starts out that way as he tells us that it is “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” And everyone around Jesus certainly thought that his story was just like all our other human stories, with a clear beginning, middle, and ending.

On Friday when he was executed, it seems like his disciples, the women who supported and cared for him, and everyone at the crucifixion thought that it was the end of everything—the end of Jesus’ life, the end of their time together, the end of the story that he had begun by preaching and teaching and healing in Galilee and beyond. When we hear the story of Jesus, it can seem like all we need to remember from it ends on Friday, with Jesus dead after his execution on the cross by the authorities of the day, safely sealed away in the tomb, never to be heard from again.

When the women set out on that Sunday morning to go to the tomb, reality had firmly set in: Jesus was dead, and it was the end of his story. Little did they know, though, that it was really only the end of the beginning. As they carried their spices for anointing the body to the tomb, they were prepared to mark this end, to give Jesus the proper burial that he deserved rather than just the hurried dumping of his body in a friend’s tomb as the sun set to begin the Sabbath. Of course, they weren’t totally prepared—it was only on their way to the tomb that they realized that they might need some help rolling the stone away from the entrance—but they were most definitely not ready for what they encountered when they arrived there.

Their fears of not being able to get in the tomb were quickly replaced by a deeper uncertainty and greater alarm when they discovered that the large stone had already been rolled away—and that someone else had gone inside first! When they went in, rather than being met with a smelly, decaying body, a young man in a white robe was waiting for them. His words shocked them all the more:

Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.

As they left the tomb, the women found it difficult to understand all that was swirling around them. They were alarmed and afraid and terrified and amazed. Not only was the grave empty, but all their assumptions about beginnings and endings and everything that comes in between were turned upside down. While they knew that there was something special about their friend and teacher Jesus, it never sank in that the end of his story might not be the end—that it might be only the end of the beginning. They had never put all the pieces together, never fully listened to him and trusted his words, never sorted out that he might actually die, let alone be raised to new life. So they went away from the tomb, fearful and amazed and terrified at what they had seen and heard.

By all the most reliable accounts, in all the oldest manuscripts that we have, Mark’s story of the resurrection ends right there:

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

There were no encounters with Jesus in the garden, no breakfast fish fries on the beach, no walks to Emmaus where Jesus suddenly gets recognized, not even an encounter with doubting Thomas in an upstairs room. Over the centuries, a lot of people didn’t like that ending, so much so that they wrote two other endings that got attached to some of the manuscripts that have come down to us over the centuries, but I think this is a wonderful place for the beginning of the good news to come to an end.

Even though we never actually see Jesus alive again, Mark makes it clear that the empty tomb is only the beginning, that this story does not end with Jesus’ death on a Friday, his resurrection on a Sunday, or even his ascension some forty days later, because the risen Jesus is on the loose in the world even now, and we too will encounter him along the way.

The things ahead for us and our world now that Jesus is risen will not be like the things that have come before—he is not resuscitated back into the life that he had but is risen into a new life for the future. The resurrection marks the end of the beginning of this good news—because the rest of the story belongs to the women, the disciples, and all of us who would dare to follow him. We are called to go forth with them, into the Galilees of our world, looking, watching, waiting for Jesus, confident that our redeemer lives and has overcome the powers of death, and encountering him wherever stones are rolled away, the power of death is overcome with new life, and the domination of a few is replaced with a future for all. We are called to meet Jesus on his own terms, not as a dead body hanging on a cross or decaying in a tomb, not trying to make his story look and sound like our own. We are called to meet Jesus as a living reality, uncontainable and unforgettable, who goes ahead of us so that we might encounter him again and again in the days to come.

And then we are called to bear the resurrection into the world, to be on the lookout for this Jesus who is on the loose, to live in ways that point to the kind of new life that comes when death does not have the final word, when our world is restructured to make mercy and peace the pattern for our days, when even the most broken things can be made whole again, when love triumphs over hate and life triumphs over death.

So may this Easter be the end of the beginning for us, the end of an old way of looking at things where death has the final word as we begin to proclaim and live the good news of the resurrection each and every day as all things are made new by the power of God who brings us from death to new life in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

A King for the Ages

March 29, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Mark 15:1-39 for Palm & Passion Sunday
preached on March 29, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As they shouted their “Hosannas,” the people were clearly ready for a king for the ages, for someone to come and make everything different. They wanted someone to cast off the chains of oppressive Roman rule, to cut off the aggressive and corrupt tax system, to free them to make their own decisions about life in their beloved holy city. They sought a king to stand in the line of their beloved ancestor David, to have the good of the people in mind at every turn, to bring the temple and the city out of the shadows of the empire and back to its former glory. They longed for someone to bring them together again, to set up a new and glorious age of home rule, to make a way for the scattered people of Israel to be one once more.

The crowds gathered expecting a king for the ages, but the echoes of their “Hosannas” had barely died down before Jesus began to shatter their expectations. He overturned tables in the temple and drove out those who were selling things there. He repeatedly questioned the authority of the religious leaders who focused on the letter of the law while missing its spirit. He taught that love of God and love of neighbor stand far above duty to any earthly kingdom. And when he was confronted by the authorities of the day and charged with upsetting the order of things, he shattered their expectations completely by going to his death when he could have denied it and saved his own life.

With each passing day, Jesus turned their expectations of a king for the ages upside down again and again. By time Friday rolled around, with their expectations of a king for the ages completely shattered, the crowd’s exaltation of this one coming to save turned to new shouts of “Crucify him!” And by the end of that gruesome day, this king for the ages lay dead, convicted on trumped-up charges, sent to his death on the shouts of a blood-hungry crowd, executed by the most cruel means imaginable, all expectations of a king for the ages abandoned forever on that forlorn hill.

Our expectations of Jesus are just as easily shattered. We look to him to give us easy answers that require little further consideration—and instead receive hard truths that leave us pondering how to respond. We turn to him expecting a magic solution to our problems—only to find that the fixes we expected were not what he intends. We think of Jesus as “ours,” as one who belongs to us and so fits in a little box of our own design and construction—while missing the point that we cannot define him at all, let alone try to limit who he is or how he works in our world. And we figure that more careful adherence to his standards will set our world on a better course—while missing the core understandings of justice, peace, and transformation that stand at the center of his words and actions.

The events of this Holy Week remind us that our expectations of Jesus do not define him as king for the ages—instead, he shows us a new and different way of living in the world as he redefines what it means to be king altogether. In Mark’s telling of this story, we hear Jesus repeatedly named as “King of the Jews” or “Messiah”—even though we know that that he will never be the kind of king recognized by his royal robes or bejeweled scepter. This king casts off the chains of Roman oppression not by overturning the government of the day that promised the “peace of Rome” through military power but by instituting a kingdom of peace through submission to the powers of the world that mock his kingdom altogether. This king suffers violence beyond imagination without ever succumbing to it, opening a way beyond domination and bloodshed that still guides us today. And this king brings us hope for something more, for just when we think that all is lost in his death, we learn that God has more in store for him and for us.

Jesus is king for the ages not because the crowds shout “Hosanna” upon his arrival or because they see one who will overturn the political and religious rulers of the day. Instead, he is king for the ages because he shatters every human expectation for a king and gives us a new pattern for life in our world that begins when he sets aside all our fear of death and its minions by opening the way to new life.

So as we journey through this Holy Week, as the echoes of our “Hosannas” quickly fade, as Jesus’ path of self-giving service and love opens before us, as we remember the last meal he shared with his disciples, as we retrace his footsteps through trial, execution, and death, may we set aside our expectations of glory and proclaim this king for the ages in all our living so that we can experience all the more the gift of this week and share it with joy and hope as the pathway through death to resurrection is opened for all. Thanks be to God! Amen.