Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 11, 2024
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
The audio of this sermon is available here. The video of the service is available on the Trinity Church YouTube page.
Twenty years ago, I joined Facebook. I was a sophomore in college. At the time, Facebook was fun and small. It was a way to connect with friends, you could send quick messages. It was more of an online directory of people you knew. And I remember when I made one hundred friends on Facebook. That was big. And I knew all one hundred of those people. Facebook was good because it helped people stay in touch.
And then Facebook and social media changed. Along came Twitter and Instagram. And social media became more of a public diary, a journal, a way to share what you were thinking and doing. Even if no one else really cared to hear what you were thinking and doing. This is when we started one-upping people on the pictures from our vacations and how elegant your dinner looked. There were good parts, too. My parents, my aunts and uncles, they started getting on Facebook. And it was a way for them to keep up with what was going on my life. This was the time in social media when people shared funny jokes, memes, cat videos were my favorite. And the number of my friends grew, from one hundred to five hundred. s And then it changed again. This was when the advertising started. And we all came to realize that they often knew us better than we knew ourselves. We would start thinking about buying a new pair of pants and boom! Pants everywhere! And more than that, you and I wouldn’t see the same ads. I remember one woman, a dear parishioner said to me, “you mean, you don’t see ads for pots and pans?” No. They are not selling pots and pans to thirty year old mens This was also when churches and communities really got into social media. And again, it could be good. As a priest, I used Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to connect with people, to invite new people to church. And the number of my friends grew to over a thousand.
And then came the bots. These are the fake humans that show up on social media. In 2023 alone, Facebook took action against 2.6 billion fake accounts. 2.6 billion.1 You see what’s happening, right? These bots are designed to make you angry. You are so angry that you start buying things that you think will make you less angry, but which only perpetuate the outrage. Now Artificial Intelligence, which can create fake images of just about anything that appear realistic, social media has become the darkest shadow of ourselves and our society. Facebook now tells me that I have over one thousand six hundred friends. That is a lie. No one can possibly have one thousand six hundred friends.
Since I was a sophomore in college, social media has grown a harder edge, the conversation has calcified. Conspiracy theories now grow exponentially. The memes and the images have become vulgar, we hide behind our screens and use our keyboards to say things to and about each other that are truly awful. Children and teenagers are now dealing with body image issues previously unimaginable because of social media peer pressure. It’s unconscionable. We have witnessed relationships, friends, churches, and yes, even a country, fall apart over this simmering cold war of digital words and images. As we have since the beginning, humans have managed to turn something good into an opportunity for sin.
Of course Jesus and Saint Paul and the early church had no conception of Facebook and memes and funny cat videos; they had no idea that one day, we would all be staring at our little screens, tapping away at our manufactured outrage. And yet, they knew. They knew the human capacity to turn all things into opportunities for sin.
I do not use that word lightly. But that it is what it is. Sin is the incurvature of our souls. Sin is the process and the result of considering only our wants, our dreams, our desires. And then pursuing those aims and putting ourselves as the highest good. Sin is not just what we do, it’s a power over us.2 That is precisely how social media operates today. We are told what we want and why we should want it. We are given an advertisement for how to get it. And we are given license to put on blast anyone or anything that stands in our way. Sin is a power over us that hardens our hearts.
And that’s why this passage we just read from letter to the Ephesians knocks my socks off. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32). “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
I do not want to stand here today and give some moralizing sermon about how we should be nicer to each other on social. Though that is true. No, what I want to do today is to offer the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ over the power of sin. Because the venom on social media, our hardened political discourse, and the coarsening of our public life is but a symptom of the deeper, human problem. The terrible things we say and share behind on our screens are simply manifestations of our our sin and self-idolatry. We cannot blame the bots for that.
And that’s why those words from Ephesians are so utterly astounding. We are reminded that what we have been given is grace, and forgiveness, and love, and mercy, sinners that we are. And what you and I are called to do is to give those things back to the world. As Ephesians says, “We are called to forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” We can only give away something that has already been given to us. If we are unable to be merciful, have we ever received mercy to know what it is? If we cannot see the best in each other, has anyone ever seen the best in us? If we cannot forgive, then have we actually received forgiveness? “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
That’s precisely what Jesus has done for us. By opening wide his arms open the cross in perfect love, he stretched out his arms and his heart for you. Jesus had no pretensions, no self-idolatry, no desire to get what he wanted. But rather to show us the way of perfect love, by caring only for others.
So when you are tempted to share that horrible meme; when you want to blast away in the comments section; when you want to share that post; ask yourself – are you putting away or showing off your bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander? When you want to say that terrible thing, pause and ask – am I being kind, tenderhearted? And most importantly, when you are holding that grudge, ask yourself – have I been forgiven, as God in Christ has forgiven me?
That’s the crux of the issue. Social media won’t get better by cleaning up the bots or by identifying Artificial Intelligence. Our public discourse and political debates, especially in this election year, won’t become healthier just by avoiding the comments section on Facebook. The problem is not what we do with our fingers, tapping away at our screens and keyboards. The problem is the human heart. And yet, that is also the solution. And what will transform our society is what has already transformed you – the grace and love of our Lord Jesus. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
The Rev. Jimmy Abbott 
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