sabbatical — Andy James

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!

Doing What Jesus Did

September 9, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Mark 7:24-37 for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
preached on September 9, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

In high school, many of my friends and classmates started wearing bracelets with four simple letters: WWJD. “What would Jesus do?” It was a pretty simple concept, an attempt to remind the wearer and anyone else who saw it that the difficult decisions in life could be addressed with this seemingly simple question and that the best response to any situation would just be to do what Jesus would do.

This is a great concept – and then comes today’s text. When I read this, I think this may be one of those rare moments when I think we ought to do what Jesus would do rather than what Jesus actually did! Now don’t get me wrong: Jesus started out actually trying to do something really smart here – he was trying to get away and rest and reconnect, and I can say from personal experience that that is a really wonderful and good thing to do sometimes. Jesus knew that he needed some time away from the pressures and stresses of his ministry in Galilee, time away from the draining work of teaching and healing that had occupied him for a year or more at this point, time apart from the difficult challenges of this work that his family just didn’t understand and his disciples kept misunderstanding. I can’t criticize Jesus’ time away one bit – my own sabbatical over the last two months was a very similar and very necessary moment for me, a time to step away from the stresses of this ministry and to recenter and reconnect with why I do what I do – so maybe we should do as he did and try to get away sometimes.

But then Mark tells us that Jesus “could not escape notice.” Word had spread about him well beyond his hometown, and even in a non-Jewish region people were seeking him out for his wise words and healing touch. One particularly persistent woman approached Jesus while he was trying to rest and get away and begged him to heal her daughter of an unclean spirit. This woman had little or no connection to Jesus or Judaism – Mark tells us that she was a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin, and I suspect she approached Jesus because she had heard of his healing powers that probably seemed more magical to her than anything else. I doubt that she came to him because she was convinced of his relationship to God or had been moved by his teaching. Whatever her reasons for seeking him out, Jesus was not happy to be bothered by her. He was trying to get away from the pressures of his healing ministry and rest and relax a bit, and the last thing he needed on his too-brief sabbatical was another controversy with the Jewish authorities brought on by an interaction with an impure Gentile woman.

So Jesus tried to get rid of her with some pretty strong words: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This does not seem like the same Jesus that we think we know, the Jesus we see pictured in our stained glass back here, the good shepherd who loves children and invites them to come to him, the gentle savior who offers a quiet and restful place to those who are weary and tired, the light of the world who comes to transform all people. No, Jesus here seems to me at least to be a grumpy and tired man who needed a break from a very demanding call – and who just couldn’t get away from the stress of life no matter how hard he tried.

This sounds very familiar in our world, really. We too can’t disconnect from the stresses of life – we’re tied to our work day and night, with calls and texts and emails dinging constantly, and there are very few places where we can go and not be found by someone who wants our attention for our work or our family or something. An article in the Times last year reflected on this tendency, and one overconnected tech executive noted, “The good news about technology is that you can be anywhere and still work. The bad news is that anywhere you are, you have to work.”

In the midst of this kind of world, I think it is easy to do as Jesus did and snap back at those who call out to us for help when we’re trying to slow down – but even when we need some time to step aside and disengage, there are ways to do it without being mean and angry about it, as I think Jesus was here. So this is that rare moment when I think maybe we shouldn’t try to do as Jesus did!

Instead the real one to emulate here might actually be this Gentile woman, who did not let Jesus’ initial grumpy and insulting remark be the last word but instead showed an incredible and faithful and yet frustrated spark and spunk in interacting with him: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus was impressed and moved by her persistence and quick response. “For saying that,” he said, “you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” She left, probably a bit puzzled that he could pull all this off without actually seeing her daughter, but she found her child well when she got home, and that’s all she really wanted. After this strange healing, Jesus gave up on his sabbatical and headed back toward Galilee, where he continued his ministry by healing a man who could not hear nor speak by instructing him to be opened – perhaps just as he had been.

These two remarkable healing stories are wonderful statements of the power of Jesus’ ministry here on earth. Nonetheless, I think the most remarkable part of our reading today for us is more this example of what Jesus did when he was interrupted in the midst of his larger purposes. Interruptions are actually pretty common in the gospel of Mark. On several other occasions, Mark tells us about times when Jesus was trying to do something and ended up getting interrupted along the way. He tried to go heal the daughter of a local Jewish leader and got interrupted on the way by an unclean woman who touched his cloak to heal her constant bleeding, and in the end this interruption set up a situation where Jesus raised the little girl from the dead. Jesus was also interrupted one day as he was teaching by a man who was lowered down into the house through a hole in the roof so that Jesus could heal him. These are just two of the more familiar examples, but there are plenty more. On the whole, it is fair to say that a lot of Jesus’ ministry as recounted in Mark happened in the interruptions.

If we can learn anything from Jesus’ actions here, we can learn the importance of responding faithfully in the midst of interruptions. We can avoid graceless, insulting, and angry words like those he offered to the Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin and instead try to be a little more gentle when we are interrupted. We can also remember that Jesus never ignored someone in need. He always took the time to stop and show them a glimpse of God’s healing mercy and grace, even if he was a little frustrated at first in doing so. And most of all, we can learn from Jesus’ particularly amazing ability to stay focused in the midst of all these distractions. While he certainly paid attention to these who needed his care, he did not let their very real needs distract from his broader ministry and mission.

This seems to be the challenge for us when we get distracted. How do we find this balance that Jesus found so well between paying attention to immediate concerns but also to the transformation of the world that will bring an end to all suffering? How can we be both gentle when we are interrupted and still stay focused on the bigger picture that is before us? And how do we lay the groundwork for a new and different future when we are consumed with much more immediate challenges? I think Jesus offers us a wonderful first step here when he steps away from it all, when he recognizes that he cannot do all that he is called to do without recharging and renewing.

I hope and pray that time away I’ve had on sabbatical over the last two months will be something like this for me and for us – a time for reconnecting and recharging that link with new experiences of amazing places and a good bit of rest to renew me for the service that we share. I also hope and pray that all of us can all find some time and space like this sometime, ways to balance the very real needs of the moment with the call to reflect and stay focused on our bigger call to join in God’s work of making the new creation real in the world here and now.

So may we remember what Jesus did well – and what Jesus could have done better – in his encounter with this woman, so that we might do as he did and find the rest we need along the journey, show the grace we are called to reflect toward others along the way, and stay focused on God’s call to us to join in the incredible work of making the new creation real in this world until Jesus comes to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Sabbatical, Day 64

August 31, 2012 By Andy James

Today is the last official day of my sabbatical. While I don’t preach on Sunday and don’t go back to work until Tuesday, my two-month sabbatical officially runs July and August, so today is the official end of my sabbatical and as good a time as any to reflect a bit on the events of these last two months.

reset button

More than anything, I view this time as a giant “reset button” in my life. This may not be the case with all sabbaticals, but the other things going on in my church work and in my life made this very much the case for me. In the last three months, I have moved to a new apartment, moved to a new office, attended General Assembly for the first time in ten years, and traveled Europe for 25 days. All these experiences mean that so much of what I do when I return to the office next week and to the pulpit on September 9 will be quite different from what I was doing when I left on June 28.

I’m actually very excited about these changes. I am looking forward to having better separation between work and home because my office is no longer on the first floor of my home. I am excited about taking up some new things in life that have been inspired by my experiences this summer, most notably as I begin singing in the New Amsterdam Singers this fall. And I am looking forward to how my experiences of worship this summer at General Assembly, in New York City, and in Scotland will inform and transform my leadership in worship at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone.

At some level, I think I expected more immediate things out of this time away than I can see right now. However, I know that the full meaning of this sabbatical will emerge over the coming weeks, months, and even years as I take what I’ve done and bring it into my daily life. This is not particularly comforting or hopeful – it would be easier if I could say right now that these are the things that have changed. But the reality is that they haven’t yet – and that’s very much normal. The way of following Jesus in general is like this: it takes time to figure out what it all means and sort out how to integrate it into daily life. So if I can start that process, keep remembering all that I have experienced in these days, and begin to apply what I have learned in this time, I will fit very much within the long tradition of this way of life.

In the end, I suppose that has been the goal of these days as much as anything, to sort out a more faithful way to walk with Jesus, and I hope and pray that such will emerge as I continue the journey ahead beyond this time away into the calling of life I live every day.

The Old and The New

July 30, 2012 By Andy James

I’ve always been a fan of new things. I’m often accused by family and friends of a preference to throw things out and replace them rather than getting them repaired, and their accusations are based in a good deal of truth.

modern sculpture amidst the ancient cloisters at Iona Abbey

All around Scotland, though, I’ve seen countless examples that might just change my mind. The old things that have survived here have an incredible beauty and usefulness that is noticeable and wonderful. Old castles and churches still stand after hundreds of years. Some foundations that date back well over one thousand years are still being used to support more recent construction.

The sense of history and place that results from this is incredible. Yesterday I worshiped in a church building that has stood in one way or another in this place for well over twelve hundred years. As we received bread and wine at communion, I felt strangely and wonderfully connected to countless saints of the centuries who have shared this feast so many times before in this very place.

the crossing and central worship area in St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh

However, what is even more amazing to me is the ways in which so many of the wonderful old places I have visited in Scotland have been adapted to fit changing needs and times. During the Reformation era, many of these churches were cleaned of their “popish” tendencies, with stained glass and icons removed and the buildings made far simpler. In more recent times, many of these buildings have been adapted once again to fit the changing needs and context of the church. In St. Giles’ Cathedral (the High Kirk of Edinburgh), the four “wings” of the church that once housed separate chapels now face the central area of the building where the communion table and pulpit are now housed. In the Abbey Church on Iona, the ruins of an ancient abbey have been reconstructed to house a modern transient monastic community that encourages an engaged spirituality with a center on this small, remote island and yet with a strong sense of presence in the everyday life of elsewhere. Even in the old castles at Edinburgh and Stirling, we saw evidence of how the castles changed over the centuries, first with changing tastes of individuals and generations and later with their repurposing as more modern military compounds.

Iona Abbey

I think I’ll leave my second visit to Scotland with a better sense of how space can be adapted and adjusted to meet these kinds of changing needs. I don’t think I’ll change my attitude toward the old substantially, as I suspect I’ll still prefer new things to the old. Still, maybe I can be less inclined to replace what can be repaired, out of a heightened awareness of the past and an attention to the limited resources that we have for the future. I think our culture can benefit from a bit more of this – a better sense of the importance of place, a stronger hope for repairing rather than replacing what is broken, and an attention for the future that builds on the best of where we have been and seeks only to make it stronger.

Why I Go to Church

July 12, 2012 By Andy James

Being on sabbatical has already provided a space for me to ask some important questions about my life. What is my ongoing call to ministry, both in the congregation I continue to serve and beyond? What do I really do with all my time at “work”? How does my work impact my daily life and living?

the interior of St. Bart’s Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan, July 8, 2012

Most importantly, though, I’ve wondered a bit about why I go to church. I’ve now had two Sundays where I had no responsibilities to lead worship, and yet I still went to church. Some of my friends – in church and otherwise – were a bit astonished at this. They suggested that on my sabbatical I should actually try living like most of the world does, sleeping in, reading the Times, enjoying a favorite morning beverage in my pajamas at home, etc. While I might still try this out sometime in the eight Sundays that remain of my sabbatical, I think I’ll most likely end up in church every week.

Why, you might ask? Well, here are four good reasons.

Repetition. There is something important about setting aside regular time to gather with a community – even an unfamiliar one – to sing praise, listen to God’s Word proclaimed, and spend time in prayer for God’s world. Sometimes even the most familiar words can speak in a new and different way to the experiences of the moment. All this repetition makes worship a very important part of my week, and something feels off if I miss it.
Tradition/Habit. I’ve worshiped nearly every Sunday I can remember. In high school, in a time when my parents were not active in the church, I kept going. I can count on one hand the number of Sundays in college I was in town that I missed worship. For better or for worse, my life doesn’t feel the same when I’m not in a church for at least a little while on Sunday. Normally, “we’ve always done it that way” is a really awful reason t0 continue practices in the church, but in this case, I think it is a valid and reasonable way of thinking.
Community. I grew up surrounded by a very personal orientation of faith, where the individual’s actions and perspective were incredibly important and participation in a community of belief and practice was not nearly as important. Over the years, though, I’ve come to believe that I can’t take this walk alone. There remain times when the faith of the community “bears me through the swelling current.” Worship reminds me that I do not walk this road alone, that I have companions on this journey whom I may or may not know, and that I can trust God to keep working and keep speaking beyond my understanding and even my comfort zone.
Preaching. I’m a good Presbyterian, so this comes as no surprise. Wherever I worship, I need the Word to be proclaimed in faith, hope, and love. As I plan my worshiping communities this summer, I’m not beyond checking church websites to see who is preaching and what the text might be! Still, I trust that what I will hear is inspired by the Spirit and will open me to what I need to hear on a particular day. I found this very much to be true this past Sunday as I worshiped at St. Bart’s Church in Manhattan. Their current priest-in-charge (very similar to a designated pastor in the Presbyterian system) is also a native Mississippian, and his words about home resonated so well with me in my thinking about my home state and even my understanding of home in the Presbyterian Church (USA) after attending General Assembly last week. I couldn’t have asked for a better word in the midst of these times, and I was beyond grateful for it.

So over the course of these two months, I plan to keep up my practice of worship as best I can. There’s also the reality that I am doing reading and thinking about worship revitalization while on sabbatical, so experience worship in different styles and forms will be incredibly important all around. There will likely be a week or two where I can’t do this for practical reasons, but on the whole I plan to be quite the churchgoer for a New Yorker in July and August! Look for more on these things as the sabbatical progresses.