The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2024
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The video of this worship service is not available. However, the audio version can be found here.

For two thousands years, the Church has proclaimed a simple message – Jesus is Lord. The Lord God known to us in Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. And because of that, the Holy Spirit is in us and we’re commanded to love God and to love our neighbors. It’s simple. The tricky part is how to communicate that message. And I mean that in the simplest sense, even just the basic technology the Church uses to do that.

Think through with me, first, we wrote things down on papyrus. Think of Saint Paul, writing letters, and sending them by messenger from church to church across the ancient world. That was a technology. Then the technology changed, and we started putting things into books, written on pages of cow skin; and that was revolutionary, because it so much easier to carry around stuff in a book rather than rolls of papyrus. Then came the printing press, and we started printing Bibles like crazy. All because we wanted to communicate the gospel. 

The technology changed again. Preachers started going on the radio, churches held revivals on television, and in color. It changed again, we started using the internet. We broadcast our church services on YouTube. The message has not changed, it’s just that the Church is always using the newest technology to get the point across. And it continues still.

Earlier this year, some folks launched an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot for the Episcopal Church. I am not kidding. This AI bot is named Cathy. I promise, I am not making this up. So, I asked Cathy – “How long is the ideal sermon in the Episcopal Church?” She wrote back, “The ideal sermon in the Episcopal Church, [particularly for the “Sermons That Work” series,] should be 1,200 to 1,400 words in length. This guideline helps ensure that the sermon is concise yet comprehensive enough to be useful for a wide variety of congregations.” Last week I was long winded and went for 1,500 words. Sorry, Cathy. I asked Cathy, “Why should Episcopalians go to church, even on Labor Day weekend?” “Episcopalians, like other Christians, are encouraged to go to church for several reasons. Gathering for worship is an opportunity to be nourished by Christ in the sacraments, to hear the word of God, and to be part of a community that supports and encourages one another in faith. [As mentioned in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” This sense of community and shared faith is vital, even on holiday weekends like Labor Day.] Additionally, every Sunday is considered a feast of our Lord Jesus Christ, making it an important day for worship regardless of the secular calendar.” You’re here today, so clearly, Cathy is not wrong.

And the real kicker, I typed in, “Cathy, what is the good news of Jesus Christ?” “The Good News of Jesus Christ, central to the Episcopal faith, is the message of God’s love, liberation, and life-giving presence. It encompasses the teachings of Jesus, whose life, death, and resurrection offer salvation to the world. This Good News proclaims that God loves every individual without exception and seeks to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Through Jesus, we are invited into a loving, liberating, and life-giving relationship with God, one another, and all of creation.” Same message, new technology. (See below for references.)

Now, is Cathy and AI a little weird? For sure. Are there huge moral issues with the use of Artificial Intelligence? Absolutely. There are massive ethical issues about preachers cheating by using AI, and about the enormous amount of energy it takes to run all those computers. But don’t tell me it was completely okay to slaughter a bunch of cows just to use their skin for paper. But, can the Church use evolving technologies to communicate and interpret the gospel to a changing world? One hundred percent. Because that is what we have always done. My grandfather’s sermon were recorded on cassette tapes. Mine are on YouTube. Who knows what they’ll be using by the time I retire, but I know that the message will be the same – Jesus is Lord. 

I promise, this is all rooted in the gospel lesson for today. It says, “When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles) (Mark 7:1-4).” I know, it sounds like inside baseball. Who cares about all those ancient traditions? We follow Jesus so we don’t have to worry about all those rules and regulations. But this is crucially important. The fact that the Gospel of Mark has to describe the tradition of washing their hands, cups, pots, and bronze kettles, shows that the first people actually reading the Gospel of Mark didn’t know anything about that stuff. All that washing, all those purity rituals, were traditions of the Pharisees and of the ancient Jews. So the people reading the gospel clearly were not Pharisees or ancient Jews. They would have been Gentiles. Outsiders. People for whom all those traditions would have been a mystery. So Mark has to spend some time describing all those traditions because the readers of the gospel would not have known them. 

Think of this way – if you were describing what you did on Labor Day weekend to a fellow American, you could just say, “Labor Day weekend.” And we know that means. If you were describing Labor Day to a foreigner, you would have to go into detail about the end of summer, an extra day off, labor unions, and putting away your white shoes. The very fact that the Gospel of Mark has to describe what the ancient Jews were doing, shows that the readers of the Gospel of Mark were not Jews. That’s the first point. But the second point is even more important. The fact that the Gospel of Mark was written for non-Jews shows that this message, this gospel, is for everyone.

See, the early church wanted to communicate the gospel to people who didn’t know anything about Jesus. Those early disciples of Jesus spent the time and the energy and the money writing down the stories, copying them, sharing them, using the technology at the time to spread the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Because the good news of Jesus Christ is not just for the people who have already heard it, but for all people. This was interpreted and communicated so that people who were once on the outside would be brought inside. 

And that’s the purpose of the Church. To preach the gospel. To tell the grand story. And we use whatever technology we can, as ethically as possible, to invite the outsiders in. As we hope that one day, there will be no outsiders. Or, as Cathy put it, “God loves every individual without exception and seeks to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

This gospel story is not about the washing of hands, cups, pots, and bronze kettles. And this sermon is not about Artificial Intelligence. No, it’s all about the good news; the good news that everybody, everybody, is invited into this loving life with Jesus. And as that message has been given to us, we are called to communicate it back to the world.

At this point, I have preached one thousand two hundred and fifty-two words, so I had better wrap it up. What I want to say is this, and it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning – the Church’s purpose is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ; to draw the outsiders in. Whether they find Jesus through Cathy the AI bot, or through the Gospel of Mark, or through watching this sermon on YouTube, our mission remains the same. Our purpose, the mission of the Church, is to let the whole world see and know that we Christians love God and love our neighbors for simple reason that Jesus is Lord.

References

All AI references were accessed on askcathy.ai on August 28, 2024.