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I am part of the Communication Group here at Church…. And we have a meeting coming up… so our minds are pretty much tuned into the idea of communication at the moment. It is thus a wonderful thing to be able to talk about part of the Sermon on the Mount as today’s Gospel passage because, golly gosh, the Sermon on the Mount really is a JOLLY GOOD piece of communication!
And that is what Jesus leads the way in…communication. Apart from the small matter of being born to die, born to be crucified for us and thus save us from our sins, another reason He was here was to tell us…
Well, to tell us all sorts, but what He does tell us is told us to improve us… not in some patronising Nanny State sort of way but with love, patience and a pretty good understanding of where we’re likely to foul up. In short, He partly communicates to put us on the right track, and putting us on the right track takes a whole load of explaining…
Yes, good communication…There’s also the parables, for example. Simple, easy to understand but more layers to dig into if you’re the kind of person who likes to analyse stuff in depth. And this, the Sermon on the Mount, is the same.
The Sermon on the Mount is brilliant… It’s like a mini powerpoint with bullet points (if you’re not sure what a powerpoint is, it’s the slideshow we have during the Jubilate services). Yes, the Sermon on the Mount is as vivid as a Powerpoint slideshow without the faff of having to battle with technology. “But there are no pictures!” Oh, yes, there are… Jesus gives us examples that we can picture with each point he mentions.
Ok…So what IS He saying?
He’s partly talking about ‘turning the other cheek’ and, if they want your shirt, then you give them your coat, too… and that if they make you carry something for one mile (apparently, Roman soldiers could demand you carried their clobber for a whole mile – but no more) then you say “No problem, Guv… I’ll carry it another mile for you, if you like!” These are such vivid images that they have become common sayings whether one is Christian or not… ‘Turning the other cheek’ (obviously), ‘The shirt off your back’, ‘Going the extra mile’.
But what’s Jesus SAYING? Basically, he’s saying that if someone is giving you jip, then you say ‘Yup, no problem… and while we’re at it, is there anything else I can do for you?’ This isn’t so we can wallow in some kind of smug, sanctimonious puddle of piety, self-pity and self-satisfaction… Just the opposite. What it does do is hold a mirror up to the other person and, thus, to ourselves.
So, how does this ‘turn the other cheek’ stuff chime with our modern “I know my rights!” society? How does this tally with general flood of self-pity and self-righteous indignation that assaults us daily, with some people spending their precious time here on Earth pointing out others’ mistakes, baying for revenge? Surely there is a ‘danger’ that ‘turning the other cheek’ makes us look weak and vulnerable, gullible, a soft touch? But, it is, in a funny way, putting us back in control of the situation, but not through our own skills… no… it’s because we have put GOD in control of the situation.
Now, although baying for our pound of flesh in revenge isn’t that constructive, don’t get me wrong… there’s nothing wrong with knowing one’s rights… it’s just that a large proportion of we twenty-first century people are barrack-room experts with an encyclopaedic knowledge regarding our rights…. it’s our responsibilities that we can be a little shaky on, sometimes.
And… people demanding their rights is often a good thing… it’s what got us the freedom we have today and it’s a darned sight better that we live in a country we can sound off in than one where we are silenced at every turn.
But, in this passage, Jesus puts the breaks on a little and is saying ‘Yes…. But please don’t forget your responsibilities. I think we probably know that JF Kennedy quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”. Well, this is Jesus reminding us of something very similar.
And this attitude towards others is tied up with this communication thing…
Regarding communication, are we ourselves, as Christians, supposed to be communicators? I think that, yes, we are. Do we have to be people who Tweet and post on Facebook and sound off every five minutes? No… with several hundred million people on Twitter and well over a billion Facebook users, there are probably enough doing that already.
So with whom are we supposed to communicate? Well, God would be a good start… Jesus… and possibly each other, now and then.
And communicate we DO! We sit there on a sofa with our phones and iPads and we have our little say. Meanwhile, we ignore the people right next to us. There is a wonderful pair of pictures out there at the moment (… yes… on Social Media…)… one is a family, hands together, looking down at their food and saying Grace… The other is a family looking down at their food through their iPhones and taking pictures of it to put on Facebook. One picture has those who look all the way to God and the other has those who can’t see beyond their next selfie.
The selfie... what does it say about modern society? That’s so obvious I’m not even going to waste time on it. The selfie was made for, is indeed a product of, Social Media… they deserve each other and may they be truly happy together.
Ah, yes, Social Media…
So… what is the impact of this bear pit, this free-for-all called Social Media… what is its impact on people of faith? For those of you fortunate enough to have NOT discovered it yet (social media, not faith), here is a short introduction to it.
I’m not talking about emails and texts here…
No, I’m talking about our obsession at the moment with ways of communication (for want of a better word) with groups of people on the internet, ways such as Facebook and Twitter. We have an awful lot more ways, thanks to Technology, of saying what we want to say and more people to say it to.
So, looking at the good old days before social media, what did we talk about? We talked about the weather, what we watched on TV, what we had for dinner, good things happening in our lives and bad things happening in our lives.
Amongst other things.
And now, while online, on the internet on social media, we can talk to our group of friends around the world, and involve words, pictures, even movie clips when talking to that group of ‘friends’… And it happens in real time, where the response of the people involved can be immediate. So, now we can have a literally instant, world-wide conversation with others all around the planet, and, thanks to things like Google, we have an infinite well of wisdom and knowledge at our fingertips, as well… so… what do we talk about NOW?
Well, pretty much the same darned things. The difference is that now we have umpteen ways of saying, yes, what we had for dinner… we can tweet it, write about it in a blog (if you don’t know what a blog is, it’s a kind of usually self-obsessed online diary… don’t worry – they’re generally no great shakes... in my humble opinion… I know mine never are) We can write a critique of our dinner of sausages and mashed potato on Facebook… indeed, we can take a picture of our dinner as well and wait for wonderful comments and little blue thumbs-up symbols to appear on or screen, this being people saying ‘Oh, you ARE clever to have had sausages and mash for tea tonight – and thank you SO much for posting a picture of it… I’ve always wondered what sausages and mash looked like!” I mean, heaven forbid, you can even take a movie of your plate of sausages and mashed potato and post it Youtube! And let’s face it, a movie of a plate of sausages and potato is so much more interesting than just a simple photo of it, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t.
And just what does all this fawning mutual adulation to to our minds as Christians? What does it do for the ‘turning the other cheek’, ‘walking an extra mile’, ‘give him your coat also’ approach in the Sermon on the Mount? Blimey… it really doesn’t bear thinking about.
Social media can also be good, though, as a Christian. You can find out about all sorts of issues that you’re concerned about and also a whole load more that you weren’t concerned about (but you’re glad they’ve been pointed out to you)… but a whole lot more still where you’re thinking ‘ok… um… WHAT!?’ The good causes can affect one’s life of faith in a good way and praying for those causes can focus the mind and one’s concern… and, who knows, could even spur one onto action
And, if you DO fancy practising what you preach, you can also, on social media, find out about campaigns and days of action concerning causes that you think are worthwhile, things you can physically get involved in. I went on my first demonstration ever because of social media.
You can also discover interesting people and events from other cultures, never a bad thing if one has a faith. For example, I found out on Facebook last week about a demonstration of Chinese printing put on by the Oxford University Chinese Society…. And on that very same day…
But this is where social media can fall down actually as, what wasn’t obvious (to me, anyway… no change there…) was that it was only for the Chinese Society… but, despite the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be there and was one of two rather puzzled outsiders in a room full of over 60 fluent speakers of Chinese, we were made to feel really welcome and asked to join in the food… and the whole evening, normally conducted entirely in Cantonese, was done solely in English, just for us two… in the end, I witnessed a wonderful, beautiful generosity of spirit, so perhaps not a mistake to go, after all.
Just in case you’re sitting there thinking “Ooh, hark at him up there…. He reckons he’s some kind of morally superior being and above all the rest,” let me tell you… regarding social media, I am one of the worst offenders.
Ever.
I signed up for Twitter in its infancy and have been a regular tweeter ever since… and I used to scroll through Facebook in school staff meetings (I was, to put up some feeble, inadequate kind of defence, hardly the only one… Yes, I know that doesn’t excuse me…) and I can easily spend hours at a time on Youtube
There is, of course, as well as the distractions of Mammon, a risk when using social media as a professing Christian… just as there is when anyone nails their colours to the mast. If you DO nail your colours to the mast as a Christian, you can suffer any amount of abuse and, before you know it, it can soon get personal… And, personal though it is, you just have to remember that, in a world where people are witnessing to The Lord at the cost of their own lives, it is hardly anything to get seriously upset about. Perhaps it is just part of turning the other cheek.
And one can be provoked on social media, too… and it’s so easy to bite back, to bite back so it hurts. Very Christian. Very Sermon on the Mount.
No, it definitely isn’t
You see, there isn’t that face to face with ‘real’ people and the person on the other end is just a row of letters, of impersonal typed letters that don’t even have the smallest touch of human presence the same way that, say, handwriting does, so this person on the other end is fair game.
No, they’re not
We are, in the modern world, getting good at treating others as if they are not real people but some impersonal kind of abstract idea on the other end of the line. A very extreme case is someone sitting in their office, someone who controls drones for a living, drones that fly over villages in a far-off land and kill people. They’re not targeting real people, they tell themselves, they’re just zapping smudges on a satellite image. Then, when that person has finished bombing and burning people on the other side of the world, they get their coat, leave the office and pick up a pizza in the supermarket on the way home to cook for the family tea… Perhaps saying Grace first before they eat…
The Sermon on the Mount can be such a HARD taskmaster… “turn the other cheek:… but that drone operator… and we, very often, can find some, oh, extremely good reason’ why, in this or that particular case, we don’t have to.
Coming back to social media itself, there are two kinds of social media user… one is the person who just wants to connect, and the other has a bit of a “Hey, look at ME!” type of thing going on. I, for example, like feedback and so do sometimes, I ‘m afraid, fall into the latter category, sometimes. Shallow? Petty? Attention-seeking? Yep… Afraid so
Well… is this compatible with Christian values, this attention-seeking? It’s easy to dress it up sometimes as witnessing for the common good, but this can be just a thinly-veiled excuse to HAVE OUR SAY… OH, YES, LISTEN TO THE ALMIGHTY ME!!
Regarding our faith, we may feel asked to witness for The Lord… and this often leads to not just being led to speak strictly by what’s in the Bible, but also to pepper it with one’s own thoughts, as well. To have OUR SAY… so that people listen to us and our ‘ever-so-profound’ thoughts.
And that is something we, nowadays, are getting a little too good at, says he, continuing his ten-minute personal rant in the pulpit.
Nowadays, every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Tomasina, Di and Harriet) has a global soapbox to stand on and a smartphone in their mitt, all ready and willing to give us the benefit of their wisdom. Anyone with access to social media will know, though, that quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality.
Until recently, (historically speaking), every Thomas, Richard and Harold of the past only had basic ways of spreading their opinions about his (and yes it was generally just about ‘his’) faith… And that is only if they even felt it was safe to do so. Not only do we have the means of communication now, we can also, for the most part, air our opinions without the fear of being burnt at the stake… which makes the terrible atrocities against people of faith happening nowadays even more horrific to contemplate as they are happening not in 1217 but in 2017.
Social media is a two-edged sword, though, and it’s easy to lose our dignity, something which, as Christians, it’s good to guard against. I’m not talking about some stuffy Victorian, poker up-the-back of-one’s-trousers ‘dignity’ but just a display of seemly behaviour, well-judged restraint, courtesy and consideration. There is, for example, a certain person who lives in Washington (the one who’s just moved into a very big house) who certainly seems to have a different take on dignity than the last guy who lived there. Yes, things can easily back-fire. We ALL have to watch this as, witnessing our faith goes way beyond what we say… it’s to do with how we live it, as well.
Witnessing to one’s faith on social media
In the distant past, one would have generally had to be in the same room as one’s audience to witness to one’s faith, or would at least have had to write it longhand on a piece of scarce, expensive parchment. With only such basic means of spreading the word like letters and personal speaking, it is indeed no less than a miracle that the likes of Paul and other disciples managed to spread the word of Our Lord so successfully.
Nowadays, we can spend less than a minute thumbing a Tweet on a phone and it can be picked up round the world in the time it takes to inhale one’s next breath… Indeed, celebrities with millions of followers can flash an instant message to more people than Paul would have ever seen in his whole lifetime, let alone talked to
While people only had a mouth and a quill and parchment, personal views spread slowly and it was easy for The Church (capital ‘T’, capital ‘C’…) to keep a lid on things and have it pretty much their own way. Then came the Reformation and the challenging of the established church, and it’s no coincidence it happened about the same time Europeans discovered printing. The recent vote on same-sex marriage at the General Synod is a classic example of how things have changed and how the Church, largely because of social media, is accountable to its members at every minute turn… those members not being at all shy regarding their opinions, either (let’s face it, we are talking about the Church of England here).
Do you think though, perhaps, that this whole variety of ways of communicating, this whole vast quantity, waters down our experience? Making it also less of a shared experience? Una Stubbs was saying the other day that ‘Til Death Us Do Part’, a TV sitcom in the 60s, used to get 23 million viewers. With so many online diversions, - such as social media, -plucking at our virtual sleeves for our attention nowadays, any TV programme that gets even just a paltry 8 million viewers is hailed as a veritable blockbusting triumph.
And is this tsunami of competing distractions, in which social media is a big player, affecting life in general? Even regarding the Sabbath, there is so much more on offer… Your average Mediaeval peasant didn’t have umpteen different distractions on a Sunday, such as car boot sales, for example, competing with time he’d have been spending in church. And the nearest they got to the distractions of Facebook or Twitter was the latest village scandal being aired in the tavern the night before.
Church is one of the last experiences around that we share with other people in the same physical space, with even that other cherished, sacred-to-some place, the pub, going rapidly to the wall (52 closing a week, apparently). That other religion, Football, seems to be thriving as a shared experience, which is great, but we as a culture need to rediscover that in our places of worship.
My kids spend hundreds of pounds to go to festivals… to sleep in a cold cramped tent, queue for toilet facilities that any self-respecting feral animal would turn its nose up at and stand for hours in a field watching a speck in the distance that is, as far as they know, a live band.
Why do they do it? For the shared experience.
And, yes, this is what we, as a once church-going nation, need to rediscover.
Amen.
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