I am probably one of the oldest persons you will hear say I grew up around computers. A childhood friend once told me that I was the first person she ever heard say “that the computer was on the phone”. Some of us, we grew up with computers and the internet, and there's this unexamined expectation that it's all grown up and mature. When reality is it is a brand new way to communicate and dwell together in community.
We've had many thousands of years of verbal communication and a few thousand years of written communication and a few hundred years of widespread literacy that was shared via paper and mass-produced books. Therefore - comparatively our relationship with one another over the world wide web is an infant. In some ways, this is like handing a 1-year-old an encyclopedia and expecting them to know what to do with it.
Right before what we heard today is the parable of the lost sheep. Sheep which are the precious backbone ancient Judea. Yet sheep - are dirty and stubborn and unable to think for themselves: and Jesus' first hearers knew that. Maybe it can be helpful to read these five verses using some of the parabolic imagination that Jesus practiced and imagine these recommendations for community life being for a cartoon for an assembly of stray cats and sheep - and you are one of them.
I've celebrated more than once in the last 6 months how grateful I am for all of the technology that has made this time safer and not feel quite so isolated that tech already existed. The equipment we film this on the digital waves and hardwires that we share videos on these gifts were not only in existence but installed in my life and in many of your lives. Yet I would have had to have had my head deep in the sand to not realize that we don't know how to live together in peace with these methods of connection and communication.
Our five lines of the Gospel of Matthew are part of a larger chapter of teachings about community life. When you read the whole chapter you will find it is mostly a Jesus’ greatest hits playlist. Teachings about how we are to live wholeheartedly together in complicated communities. If we go back to the beginning of the chapter Jesus starts off with calling us to become like children and welcoming children. Hold on a second though: remember Jesus's audience hears children and thinks about something like we would imagine stray cats. Germy grubby independent creatures who have their uses and but also love to rumble.
Right before what we heard today is the parable of the lost sheep. Sheep which are the precious backbone ancient Judea. Yet sheep - are dirty and stubborn and unable to think for themselves: and Jesus' first hearers knew that. Maybe it can be helpful to read these five verses using some of the parabolic imagination that Jesus practiced and imagine these recommendations for community life being for a cartoon for an assembly of stray cats and sheep - and you are one of them.
The Christian assemblies for which the sacred storyteller of Matthew wrote originally were new-ish. Probably a mix of first and second-generation Jesus followers and in this gospel, mostly people who are Jewish and dwelling closely with synagogue famil, and with people with who they have many differences. Which created uncomfortable tensions - at the least. These dynamics are set in the middle of a time of terror and trauma most likely in the context of the war that destroyed the second temple. There was widespread anguish, painful illuminations of our limitations,wounds of heart, wounds of body, wounds of community.
Jesus is calling us then and now to grow into mature discipleship in the world one that doesn't triangulate - one that empathizes and one that does not turn away from hard conversations but does tap out Of the unhelpful comments section. In our new community of living together in the digital space, we're rumbling with new ways of figuring out what it means to practice healthy relationships when we can't look the other person in the eye Or feel their feelings in the room with us. All you young cats and precious sheep we've just moved in together online. It's all brand new - even 6 months in - and the troubles are as old as humanity itself.
In this time of challenging connection and so much to fear but also with so much collaborative possibility, Jesus offers us both an ethic and direction and invites us to listen bravely to speak courageously, snd trust that when we live in his way - online and in-person - he is with us.
Christ Church, Ridley Park
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania
No comments:
Post a Comment