Someone came into the store yesterday and looked quite lost.
And as it turned out they were quite lost.
She was dressed up in formal attire
I greeted her and she asked, “Am I anywhere near Rindge?”
I said, “depends on where you’re coming from.”
Which in hindsight wasn’t the most helpful thing to say.
But when she said she had started in Concord
I knew that this was going to be a frustrating realization.
I’m not sure how she got sidetracked from Concord to Acworth
on the way to Rindge.
Acworth is really no part of that route.
But, she said, she was following the GPS.
And one thing led to another.
She was on her way to graduate from Franklin Pierce
and so I pulled out my little Android phone and put Rindge
in and showed her the best way by the map
and gave her the most immediate directions.
Take a right out of this parking lot and when the road T’s –
take a right on Route 10.
She thanked me quickly and in the distress of someone who
knows they are going to be really late,
But I think this was the first time I met someone who had
been that misdirected into Acworth.
The thing is, GPS works really well, just not in places
where there is no reception,
Or in the case of Acworth, where Google has old out of use
roads registered as usable.
Someone who came to visit me once got directed to take Black
North Rd. into Acworth.
They found themselves at a dead end.
And I’ve heard other stories of people finding themselves in
open fields or facing a forest,
Scratching their heads and hoping for at least one bar of
reception.
Technologies are a source of much of modern convenience
But also much of modern anxiety.
We can do amazing things that people who lived one hundred
years ago would never have imagined.
But even with the best technologies,
We can still get lost.
We are in a strange new land in the 21st century.
Those that have trusted the messages of our culture as
innocently as the graduate trusted the GPS
Have found that the message has led them astray.
I love GPS by the way, this is not me saying that technology
is bad.
But I was recently listening to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in the car
And was struck again by these words that he wrote in 1854:
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract
our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end,
an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at;
as railroads lead to
Boston or New York.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from
Maine to Texas;
but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate.”
What good is it if we gain the technological world, but lose
our human soul?
Technology is a funny word.
We instantly think of gadgets like smartphones and electric cars.
But technology in Thoreau’s day was the train and the
telegraph.
And technology in the ancient world was plowshares, pruning
hooks, shovels
Technologies for some of our earliest ancestors were tents,
spears, knives.
Anything that aids us in our human work is technology.
And we have become incredibly apt at finding ways to aid
ourselves in our human work.
Some of you have seen an incredible amount of change in
technologies in your lifetime.
But to quote Thoreau again,
In and of themselves they are “improved means to an unimproved
end”
We are in a strange new land in the 21st century
and a GPS is not going to help us find our way.
We need our technologies,
Our digital projector here, our microphones and sound
system,
We need the technologies like pews that make it possible to
sit,
We need technologies like a church building to make it
possible to worship in all kinds of weather.
But we cannot put all our faith in the technology itself,
Otherwise it’s improved means to an unimproved end.
Technologies, our resources are meant to serve mission and
not the other way around.
Jesus prays for his disciples in the upper room.
And we listen in on his prayer.
And in this part of the prayer that we heard this morning, I
hear two longings that he expresses:
“Keep them safe…so that they may be one just as you and I
are one.” (17:11)
“Dedicate them to yourself by means of the truth; your word
is truth.” (17:17)
Oneness and a dedication to the word of God, the truth.
These are what Jesus longs for.
And as we know from John’s gospel and all of it’s poetic
connections:
When we hear word of God, we think of chapter one:
“the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth.”
Jesus’s existence as the one who fully loved is the
incarnate word of God,
The word of God is love,
and the Spirit pours this love out into our hearts as we trust
God, and seek to follow the way of Christ.
Out unity, our oneness is
our dedication to the truth,
because the truth for us is following in the way of Jesus.
And in that upper room he has made clear that the way,
truth, and the life has everything to do with love.
Love is our mission, our calling.
To love God, to love one another, and to love our community
and do good to all.
We may feel lost in the midst of a changing culture,
In the midst of financial strain,
In the midst of interpersonal difficulties,
We may feel confused in this strange new land of the 21st
century,
But I want to sound a note of encouragement,
Our dedication as Christians, has always been and will
always be to Jesus Christ.
And Christ will be our sound and sure guide into the future.
And this not necessarily by spelling out the answer to all
of our problems
Magically one day as we stair down into our alphabet soup,
Christ will be our guide by reminding us of the true and noble
end to which we have been called.
That we should love one another, and seek God with all of
our heart and mind and strength,
And seek to love the community, love the place, and do good
to all, and seek to live peaceably,
Offering spiritual nourishment with hospitality
to any wayfarer who happens to find themselves lost in
Acworth.
Our use of resources and technologies must have this end in
mind.
Dedication to the love for which Christ gave his life,
The love of basins and towels,
Of Prodigal Fathers for their wayward children.
Our life as a Christian community is founded
In this vision of renewed reconciled and revived community
of faith and hope and love
This vision of the reconciliation of human beings with God
and with neighbors that so animated the early Christians,
is our guiding vision.
God has given us abundant resources.
Whether they are in our human energies and creative talents,
Or our material resources
Our buildings, bulletins, Bibles, budgets, or by-laws
coffemakers, classrooms, chairlifts or committees
projectors, printers, or prayer-stools
We have the opportunity to use these for that beautiful
calling of living into the beloved community that Christ prayed for.
We can put these resources to use for the love that Christ
prayed his disciples would be dedicated to.
Every other use other than love is a waste of time.
We have such a great and beautiful calling – we have been
given a holy and beautiful vision.
To be a community of love, united in this and for this by
Jesus Christ.
This is good news for all of us feeling lost in the strange
new land of the 21st century.
The end, goal, the purpose that we are given
And that God has promised to give us the strength to live
into by the Spirit,
That end is the same yesterday today and forever.
May we follow faithfully in the way of Jesus
and let him be our guide in this strange new land.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment