I remember once at a Presbytery Meeting in Port Simpson BC, when we were celebrating the final retirement of a colleague in ministry. As the service progressed he took photos of the Choir, the congregation and the various happenings in the service ... In the middle of his sermon, he paused and took a picture ... At the time it seemed an absurd departure ...
Today, at worship, I paused in my sermon to take a picture of the congregation.
I'm not retiring ... but rather I wanted to illustrate a point about the technology that exists around us, and that we take totally for granted without even a second thought. I took the picture as part of my reflection on the Lectionary reading from Luke, wherein Jesus' is purported to warn his followers that the news of wars and rumours of wars are a sign of the end times ... It is a passage that people may take too literally today with the news of wars and rumours of wars. Some in the Church see today's news broadcast as evidence that we are living in the end times ...
I took a picture of the congregation and with the press of a couple of buttons while standing in the pulpit, I had the picture ready to post on the Internet ... In Jesus' day it took months for news to travel across the countryside, while in our modern era it takes merely seconds to transmit news around the world ... it is the same news that has for centuries been occuring and happening ... the difference between the time of Jesus and today is the time our technology for transmission takes ...
The news today and in Jesus' day is the same - it is equally bad and equally bleak ... the difference is that today we hear about all of it instanteously ... The end isn't at hand ... we can just do something about these things if we chose ... and therein lies the difference ...
No comments:
Post a Comment