Back when I was a teenager, we made mixtapes. Any of you ever make a mixtape?
On my mixtape there were songs by John Mellencamp, Boston, The Cars, Billy Joel, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Jackson…
I would make these mixtapes by recording songs from vinyl record albums that I or my friends bought—or, sometimes, we’d record it right off the radio, sitting around, listening, waiting for a song we liked to come on, hoping the DJ wouldn’t ruin it by talking over the start of the song…
And when I was done making my mixtape… I would pop out that little tiny tab in the corner of the cassette, the tab that, once removed, would prevent anyone from accidentally or intentionally recording over the songs I had so carefully selected.
But sometimes, I would want to record over a song, or several songs, that I had put on my mixtape. How do you record over those songs, when that tab is removed?
You put a little piece of Scotch tape over the spot where the tab was. Voila! Now you can record.
And if I would go on a long car ride, like when I was in boy scouts and we were off on some trip, I would take my walkman and my headphones, and listen to my mixtapes to pass the time.
And when I went to college, I got a nice boombox for my dorm room that could play my mixtapes… although that boombox could also play a brand new thing called a compact disc, though I didn’t have any of those… yet.
Well, hardly anyone makes mixtapes anymore. Most people don’t even listen to CDs these days. Instead, we have custom-made playlists that can be streamed digitally.
This is just one way that our world has changed. Our world has changed a lot. So much is new and different in this digital age, and these changes have affected everything.
Including religion.
Right now, we have folks joining us for worship via our livestream. It’s not the same as attending worship in-person, but what a blessing it is for those who are unable to be here, for whatever reason.
We have meetings that take place over zoom.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The internet has completely changed how we access information. It’s completely changed how I prepare and write sermons. It’s changed how we shop. It’s changed how we communicate.
Really, it has changed everything! - - - -
Phyllis Tickle was an American author and lecturer who spent a lot of time analyzing these changes. She died in 2015, but people still talk about how she described this period of change as a giant rummage sale.
And she said that the church has one of these giant rummage sales every 500 years.
Every 500 years, she said, the church is compelled to have a giant rummage sale in which it trots out things that have accumulated—things like doctrines, traditions, and practices—and sorts through them to see what should be kept and what should be discarded—just like one would do at a rummage sale.
We are in one of those time periods right now, no doubt about it. Doctrines, traditions, practices—everything is being sorted through, reevaluated, and some of it is being kept, and a lot of it is being discarded…
Religion is changing. It will never be what it once was.
In case you’re wondering, the last time the church had one of these giant rummage sales, 500 years ago, we were experiencing the Reformation, when Luther wrote his 95 theses and the Protestant branch of Christianity began to take shape. That time of change was fueled to a great degree by the invention of the printing press, just like our own time of great change is fueled by digital communication.
500 years before the Reformation, it was the Great Schism that shook up religion, when Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity split over issues like the source of the Holy Spirit, whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used during communion, and the jurisdiction of the pope.
500 years before that, the church was dealing with the aftermath of the conversion of Constantine, when Christianity went from being an oppressed religion of the poor, to the established religion of the empire.
And 500 years before that, we had Jesus.
Every 500 years, a time of radical transformation. And we are living in one of those once-every-500-year periods right now. And the changes we are experiencing are even more profound than just the evolution of music media, from mixtapes to CDs to streaming.
It’s an exciting time to be alive!
So, yeah: if it seems that the world is changing so fast, it’s not just you. It really is a time of radical change, the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in at least 500 years.
But the change doesn’t happen in an instant. We don’t just snap our fingers, and all of a sudden, we’re living in a new age.
This time of transformation is spanning several generations. It takes several generations to get used to the changes… and the changes are still happening.
But so many wonderful things have come from it all. The ability to livestream worship, for example; or, the ability to carry around an entire music library or an entire book library in a device that fits in the palm of our hands. Even Gene Roddenberry couldn’t have imagined all the things we can do with a cellphone.
But sometimes, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it feels that things are changing too fast, that there’s too much change. Sometimes, we just want to retreat, to go back to a time when life was simpler, and easier to understand. We long for the days of mixtapes, or even 8-tracks; we long for the days of manual typewriters and rotary phones and roll-down windows, and…
…and if any young people are listening, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?
If you’ve ever felt that way, if you’ve ever longed for the old days, despite all the advantages of modern technology, then maybe it won’t be too hard to understand the frustrations of the Israelites, as they journeyed toward the Promised Land.
Life in Egypt was far from perfect. After all, the Hebrews were slaves to Pharaoh; they had few rights; they were forced to labor long hours.
Freedom was their dream, their hope; and when Moses led them out of Egypt, they were overjoyed…
But the journey to a new land and a new nation was a huge change. Their transformation as a people was a lot more challenging than they anticipated. They wanted the time of transition to be over quickly. They wanted someone to snap their fingers, and bam: new life, living easy!
But that isn’t how transformation works.
For the Israelites, it took 40 years. An entire generation, and then some. They grew impatient. They began to grumble, and complain.
And the changes that did come, the changes they were already experiencing… well, it wasn’t what they had expected, and it was all so new… they had never done things this way before!
So: maybe it began with just a few people, standing around a campfire one night. One of them says: “You know, back in Egypt—hear me out! I know we were in slavery, but in Egypt, at least we knew where we would be laying down to sleep each night. And at least we knew we would be getting food to eat. And at least we knew what the future would hold, because every day was the same…
“No worrying about where we were going, or what we would eat… No being overwhelmed by how different and new everything is…
“Was it really so bad?”
And someone else around the campfire would chime in: “In Egypt, Pharaoh made us work hard. But this journey through the wilderness is hard, too.”
And the thing is, they were absolutely right. Any kind of transformation is hard work.
And freedom is hard work. Liberation is hard work. It’s hard physically, and it’s hard mentally.
Just like many of the changes we are experiencing today are mentally exhausting.
I don’t know about you, but when I ask one of my kids to help me with some tech issue, it’s usually not because I’m not capable of learning or figuring it out; it’s just that I’m tired, mentally, from all the learning and all the figuring out that all these changes have forced upon me.
And… it makes me lazy. I don’t want to learn it.
And sometimes, people get mentally tired trying to keep up with all the other changes taking place in our world… demographic changes, for example. Neighbors speaking different languages. Neighbors redefining love, redefining gender, redefining what constitutes a family. Neighbors who insist on eating things like curry, or boba, or avocado toast.
I never heard of curry or boba or avocado toast when I was a kid.
All these changes are a lot to adapt to. No wonder so many people long for the “good ol’ days.” And yes, I know people for whom the good ol’ days include a lot of curry, but that’s not my experience….My point is that when the world changes, it’s hard to adapt to, and we’re tempted to grumble and complain about it all…
Well, God got upset with the Israelites. God got upset with their grumbling and their complaining. God was trying to lead them to freedom and liberation and a new beginning and new life, but their minds were stuck in the past.
But what could God do? God wasn’t about to say, “Don't make me turn this journey to the promised land around!”
So, God sent snakes. Poisonous serpents. Which bit many of the Israelites; and those that were bitten started dying.
Now, I heard our General Minister, Terri Hord Owens, say the other day that the snakes are, in her mind, a “narrative device,” because God doesn’t intentionally inflict evil on people. And that may very well be so. But let’s stay immersed in the story, and treat the snakes as real, something that was causing great pain among the people…
So the people went to Moses and said, “We’re sorry! We sinned by complaining and grumbling! Please, pray to the Lord, to take the snakes away and heal us!”
So Moses prayed, and the Lord told Moses to make a serpent of bronze, and put it on a pole, so that anyone who was bit by a poisonous serpent could look at the serpent made of bronze, and be healed.
Now, you may be asking: Why snakes?
In several different ancient religions, snakes were considered divine beings. Snakes also symbolized new life, or eternal life, because of the way they shed their skins.
When a snake sheds its skin, it casts off the old, and becomes new once again… and isn’t that what God was calling the people of Israel to do? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their old way of living, and the old mindset that went with it, and embrace a new way of living and a new mindset? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their slavery mindset, and embrace a liberation mindset?
People often wonder why it took 40 years for the Israelites to get out of Egypt. Well, I once heard it said, it didn’t take 40 years to get the Israelites out of Egypt; it took 40 years to get Egypt out of the Israelites. It took 40 years to get that Egypt-mindset out of them, and for them to fully accept and embrace the new life God was leading them to.
This season of Lent is a time of transformation. Lent is 40 days, a reminder of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, but also a reminder of the 40 years that it took the Israelites to transition from life in Egypt as slaves, to life in the Promised Land as a new, free, nation.
And during the season of Lent, we are challenged to examine our own lives, and discern what it is that we need to leave behind. What needs “casting off” from our lives, just like the old skin that is cast off by a snake? And what new way of living is God calling us to embrace?
Jesus, who compared his death on the cross to the snake Moses lifted up on the pole, is always calling us to leave behind this world, this kingdom, and all that this world says is important, to embrace a new future of life and wholeness and freedom.
But to do that, we have to die to our old selves and our old ways, to let go of so many of our ideals. The values of this world are not the values of God’s kingdom. This world: profit margins and a scarcity mindset. God’s world: generous giving, and an abundance mindset.
This world is about divisions and barriers and us vs. them. God’s world is about unity and acceptance and coming together as one body.
God is calling us to leave behind the ways of this world, and embrace the ways of God’s kingdom.
God is calling us to leave the past behind. We can remember the past; If the past was good, we can give thanks for the past; if the past was harmful, we can heal from our past.
But God’s not calling us to live in the past.
God is calling us to live into a present and future glory. God is beckoning us to live in God’s kingdom. The kingdom of transformation. The kingdom of freedom and liberation. The kingdom where the old is made new. The kingdom of eternal life. ⚫
Btw, curry is really good. A member of my last church made the most amazing curry, from a recipe she brought over from Pakistan when she immigrated to the U.S. Meanwhile, my son Tristan in California loves avocado toast. But boba: I still think boba is kinda weird, but let’s keep that between us; I don’t want God to send a snake to try to convince me otherwise.
No comments:
Post a Comment