14 April 2024 Luke 24:35-48 Dr. David C. Campbell
Madeleine Delbrel was a French social worker, essayist, and mystic in the years immediately following World War 2. She saw the secularizing trend of the post-war years before almost everyone:
Christ seems himself limited to his house, which crowds desert; for many he is the undesirable…. The Parish floats in the crowd like a message in a bottle, sealed, containing a wonderful treasure and floating in the middle of the sea, with no interest from the waves in what it contains, until human eyes discover it. Here, the priests in the crowd. Within them the Word of God, within them the continuation of Christ. In this train that they are taking, in this street that they are walking up, is the flock of lost sheep to whom they are sent, but none of them will come to ask them for this Word for which they live. If we insulted them, it would almost be better, but we ignore them, we pass them by as we pass by the statues on our squares. They speak in their pulpits where the street does not go. (The Holiness of Ordinary People, p. 56, 60)
Madeleine Delbrel noticed this happening early, but by the 1960s it was out in the open for everyone to see, and it has gotten more obvious in the decades since. Secular forces have crowded the Church back into its Upper Room, and even when Jesus turns up in the flesh, still brushing the dust from the tomb off His clothes, the Church looks at Him startled and terrified (Luke 24:37), doubts in their hearts (24:38), seeing the wounds from His crucifixion that don’t bother Him anymore (24:40), and yet still they don’t believe (24:40). They are quiet, and the street does not notice.
The Church still gathers in its Upper Rooms, hides in its Upper Rooms, diminished in numbers as well as in faith, Upper Rooms “where the street does not go.” Nobody can hear the places where the street does not go.
To all those churches “where the street does not go” Jesus offers the same solution as he offered the disciples in the Upper Room: “He opened their minds to understand the scriptures” (24:45). The witnesses who are most confident and effective are those who can describe from the Bible who God is, what God means to do, why God intends to do it, and why that is exceptionally Good News. The witnesses who are most effective are those who can show how all the things we value and count on day by day are things we have received from the careful and intelligent reading of the Bible – things like science, objective moral values and duties, the rule of law, and the existence of human/civil rights; institutions like hospitals, schools, colleges and universities.
Those things have not become less true, or less valuable. It isn’t even that we want them less. They are just harder to hear with all the racket.
There is much talk in our time about “the algorithm,” as if it were some kind of living thing, conspiring malignantly to degrade the way we think so that we won’t notice, or won’t object to the degeneracy creeping in everywhere. Algorithms are, in fact, much more simple. They are just sets of commands to accomplish a task or solve a problem. When it comes to computer applications and internet platforms, an algorithm is trying to do just two things: 1. get you to spend more time on the platform, and thereby 2. make the platform more profitable in advertising dollars. In other words, algorithms don’t create anything new. They just amplify what is already in us, what we already want.
In other words, algorithms are us, with the volume turned up. If we don’t like the way we are, something has gotten too loud. We have to turn it down, and turn something else up.
The words of the Bible are just the kind of thing that can redirect streets to where the Church is, can redirect Churches to where Jesus is. If they are not doing that, turn the volume up. The street will go where the noise is.
Comments