[6] Insight from Previous Crises - Jason Gaboury

How does one pray when living in New York City during the pandemic? Listen as Steve talks with Jason Gaboury, InterVarsity's New York/New Jersey Regional Director, on how God has called him to minister and pray his rage during several times of crises he's experienced while living with his family in New York City.

LINKS:
Jason wrote a reflection on recommended spiritual practices to observe during crises. Read the full article on InterVarsity's website.

Read a passage from Jason's upcoming book, Wait with Me: Meeting God in Loneliness,  releasing on April 21st from InterVarsity Press.

We've created a website (updated daily) full of resources to help you with Ministering Digitally Through COVID-19: intervarsity.org/online. 

Transcript

Steve Tamayo:   0:02
People have been engaging in ministry during the disruption over and over and over again throughout human history. We thought it would be great to bring you a story from someone who has lived through multiple different disruptions throughout their time in ministry. Thanks for joining us.  

Steve Tamayo:   0:31
Hey, everybody, this is Steve Tamayo. Welcome to Ministry During the Disruption. Our guest today is a Regional Director with InterVarsity in New York and New Jersey. He's moved to New York City full time in 1997. Worked as a professional actor for years. He is a friar in the Anglican order of preachers and he is the husband of one wife father of two children. Thanks for joining us Jason Gaboury.

Jason Gaboury:   0:57
My pleasure to be here.

Steve Tamayo:   0:59
So as we were thinking about ministry during the disruption, you've actually lived through three different significant crises in the life of New York City.

Jason Gaboury:   1:09
Yeah, I was here during 9/11. Ah, and then was also here with young children during the Hurricane Sandy, and then here in New York City during the financial crisis in 2008.

Steve Tamayo:   1:25
And in each of those different crises you engaged in ministry in some pretty interesting ways. 

Jason Gaboury:   1:32
You know, our ministry is with college students and 9/11, what stood out to me was the campuses that were downtown and that were shut down for a number of weeks and just the incredible disruption that that was. Ah, the tragedy, that it was, the suddenness of it. New York got very quiet. But what stood out to me during that time was the incredible spiritual openness that you saw as churches and ministers and different ministry organizations came together to try to provide relief and try to engage some of the questions that people were asking. Try to minister to some of the fears that were going on. And we in InterVarsity were right smack in the middle of that. I remember gathering a group of students at a church not far from downtown Manhattan and remember us praying some of the Psalms together and praying about the anxiety of our own fears and the disruption and the fear of of what could be next, which was very palpable. 

Steve Tamayo:   2:45
For people who aren't familiar with the Psalms. You know, maybe you think about the Psalms and you think "the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want." Are those the Psalms that you were praying? Or were you praying, maybe a different kind of psalm? 

Jason Gaboury:   2:59
Oh, yeah. We were praying Psalms like "the Lord is our very present help in time of trouble." People were praying psalms of comfort in those days because there was a lot, of there was a lot of fear that students were experiencing having witnessed such a violent and sudden, sudden attack on the World Trade Center. So we were praying, ah Psalms about God's protection and God's provision and God's presence in the midst of calamity. And that gave us, then hope to look beyond our own sort of feelings and experience and look out to how we could help, how we could lend a hand, how we could participate and soothe those who are grieving and engage a campus that was completely disoriented.

Steve Tamayo:   3:47
Zoom in with me into that moment after the prayer meeting. So you've had the prayer meeting and you're walking home. What's going on internally for you on that walk home?

Jason Gaboury:   4:00
It just all felt surreal. So there was there was a season of numbness. It just felt like there's this incredible change that's happened and none of us know, none of us know what it's going to mean. The New York City has just been attacked, and we didn't, we didn't know what the response of our government was going to be. We didn't know if another attack was coming and there was a quiet that lasted in New York City. It wasn't, New York City wasn't shut down like it is now. But there was a quiet that was very, very palpable in the city for a number of days. So I wasn't walking home as riding the train, but there was a as you'd ride the train home there's just this kind of incredible stillness. Ah, somber stillness of people who are who are kind of in shock and processing with the grief of what had happened there.  

Steve Tamayo:   4:56
A  heaviness.  

Jason Gaboury:   4:57
Yeah, heaviness. That's right.

Steve Tamayo:   4:59
So as people engaging in ministry, like if if maybe college student is listening to this and they're trying to lead a small group right now and moved it online and maybe they're starting to feel that heaviness. The disruption has gone from being an inconvenience, to a loss, to maybe even something that they're feeling afraid of. What sort of spiritual practices could help someone who's feeling that heaviness right now?

Jason Gaboury:   5:29
I think praying the Psalms is really important as a really key practice for us. And and, as you know, Steve, there are multiple kinds of Psalms. There's there's great Psalms of orientation where you're just, you're praising God for his goodness and his power and his provisioned and those were the ah lot of the praise choruses e sing, "as the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs at longs for you." You know these kinds of pastoral "The Lord is my shepherd" kind of Psalms and those are great. But there's also Psalms where the psalmist is clinging to God for protection, for provision, for deliverance, for rescue. And finding those kinds of Psalms to pray in a moment like this are really, are really critical. Praying a Psalm, for example, that says you know "How long Oh, Lord" you know "will you have abandoned us forever? How long is this gonna go on?" and you, you pray these Psalms. And praying the Psalms is so meaningful because it, it puts you in touch with this tradition where people bring their, the full range of their human emotion to God.

Steve Tamayo:   6:44
Well, and I want to talk to you about that because I read an article that you wrote, where actually we asked your permission to republish it on the intervarsity.org/online page. And you've listed five spiritual practices that you have picked up through living through these crises moments in the life of New York City. And New York is in the midst of a crisis right now. And one of those that just jumped right to the top of my vision was something you called 'pray your rage'. I've never heard anyone else say that before, and it struck a chord with me. Could you explain a little bit more about what you meant by that? 

Jason Gaboury:   7:22
Sure. The Psalms give us such a great invitation to pray all of our emotions and sometimes particularly in the evangelical tradition, but in a number of Christian traditions, we associate our spirituality with nice feelings, the warm feelings, the friendly feelings. So if it's not nice, we don't think it's Christian spirituality. But read the Psalms. Psalm, um, 3:7 has this incredible line, "Lord, break the teeth of the wicked." That that's not a nice thing to say. The Psalmist is praying their anger at the situation that they're in, and they're raging at the fact that they feel overwhelmed by enemies, by people who seem to be prospering. And the Psalm is calling on God, God, would you would you break their teeth? And would you, would you come and do something? And so, so the idea of praying your rage-rage is inevitable in moments of disruption. Rage just happens when we're, when we're suddenly faced with locked down, when we're suddenly faced with our loved ones being vulnerable to an illness. We don't know if they can get the treatment we want. There's a certain part of us that is outraged at that, were angry. We're outraged. And if we don't learn to pray our rage, we'll direct our rage somewhere else. We'll director rage at at the people we love, we'll direct our rage at the people we want to blame, we'll direct our rage, sometimes internally at ourselves. And so what I've learned over the years, Steve is the safest place for me to take my outrage is to God.

Steve Tamayo:   9:05
And in this moment, that is one of the things people need to hear this. And I feel like you have the credentials to tell us this. Like you've lived through crisis after crisis after crisis. You're in the midst of one right now, and you've been able to do this, to pray your rage. And it has deepened your relationship with God. Is that correct?

Jason Gaboury:   9:29
Oh, absolutely. After I started learning to pray the Psalms and to pray my anger, I learned that, I I learned what it meant when Paul says be angry and do not sin. The only way I could be angry and not sin, is to tell God just how angry I am and to turn that into prayer. And then ultimately release that that anger to the Lord. And then you are then able to receive from God compassion, grace, forgiveness in the place of anger. But a lot of times people feel like I can't pray. I'm too angry. Ad I want to say no, no, no. Anger is a great place to go to prayer.

Steve Tamayo:   10:11
That's when you should pray. When you feel angry. It's a signal to go to prayer.  

Jason Gaboury:   10:15
Exactly.  

Steve Tamayo:   10:16
Yeah, I wish, you know if I could hop in a time machine and go back and spend some time with Steve Tamayo in Durham, North Carolina, right at September 11th. And sit down with him and say, "Hey, you're feeling rage right now. Your fear is transforming into rage. Take it to God." I wish that I'd had someone like you to give me permission to do that and guidance to do that. Jason, thanks so much for offering that to our InterVarsity staff, to faculty who are listening to this, to students. Friends, if you're listening to this and Jason's comments about these spiritual practices, he actually has five spiritual practices that he's mapped out and a short article we're sharing on the intervarsity.org web site. Go to the site, check it out. We would love for you to get it and to share it. Jason has a very powerful and insightful voice, and I'm so glad Jason that people get to hear from you. Now, is there anywhere else that people can hear from you? Anything coming up on the horizon? Maybe, I don't know sometime April 21st.

Jason Gaboury:   11:23
Absolutely. Yes. I have a book coming out with InterVarsity Press called Wait with Me, Meeting God in Loneliness. And it's a book that super relevant for this time of social distancing and social isolation. It's a book that began in a relationship with a spiritual director. Somebody was helping disciple me and who challenged me in a moment where I felt incredibly lonely and and isolated and distraught. And taught me how to, instead of trying to run away from that, to press into that, to lean into that and to discover a deeper life and friendship with God. So I think, not only is it a meaningful message for all time because loneliness is one of those universal human experiences, but particularly at this time it's very meaningful.

Steve Tamayo:   12:19
Yes, so, hey, check out the book. We're gonna put a link to it in the show notes. You can preorder it. You could actually get a sample chapter from InterVarsity Press's website if you want to start reading it before it's released. And subscribe to the podcast so you can catch other stories of ministry during the disruption. Jason, before we go, one of the things that we've been encouraged to do is to pray for our guests. You live in New York City. You minister in New York City. Your wife, your children are in New York City. Your team is in New York City. Could you maybe give us one prayer request that we could pray for New York? 

Jason Gaboury:   12:55
You know, Steve, uh, it may sound trite to say this, but my experience of New York is, in this particular crisis, it feels different than every every other crisis I've experienced in New York. And that is that it's, it's a crisis that's happening in slow motion. And, you know, two weeks ago you didn't know anybody who was sick and there was, it was just this chatter about this virus. And then, ah, week ago, you knew friends of friends who are sick. And now it's the people you know and love who are sick. And you see the lines at the hospitals. You see the medical professionals begging for more resources. You see people doing incredible things, you know, trying to serve in this crisis. But all of the nurses, doctors and medical professionals I'm talking to are exhausted and, um, carrying a lot of emotional weight and anxiety. And all of the people who I know who know people who are sick are carrying that weight as well. And so, uh, I think the thing that we can all pray for New York City right now is for an end to this plague, an end to this pandemic and for God's grace in the midst of a unrelenting ever, it's encircling sense of vulnerability. And everybody I know is experiencing that right now.

Steve Tamayo:   14:37
Okay? Yeah. Let me pray right now. Jesus, You have born our sufferings. You joined with us in our common humanity. And we ask that right now you would shoulder this burden with the people of New York, with the people of the United States, with the people of the world. Would you lift this burden off of our shoulders? Would you caused this plague to end quickly. Jesus, we call out to you. We used these words from Psalm 13. "How long? Oh, Lord, how long will you hide your face from us? How long must we wrestle with our thoughts and day after day have sorrow in our hearts. How long will this plague triumph over us? Look on us an answer, Lord, Our God. Give light to our eyes or we may sleep in death. And this plague will say I have overcome them. This plague may rejoice when we fall but we trust in your unfailing love. Our hearts rejoice in your salvation. We will sing your praise, Lord, for you have been good to us." Jesus, help our friends. Amen.  

Jason Gaboury:   15:49
Amen.