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“I feel like I’m drowning.”
“I’m just so sad.”
“It’s too much.”
This is what I heard from a group of parishioners as we gathered before a meeting this past week.
As I walked into the Fireside Room, they were commiserating about the constant and unrelenting stream of information that comes at us throughout the day. One woman talked about deliberately choosing and limiting herself to a couple of digital news sources while ignoring TV and radio. Someone else mentioned using social media in addition to online news sources and reflected that lately she just feels sad.
It’s a common struggle, discerning how and what to give our attention to in the age of the internet and smartphones.
Did you know that 91% of adults report having a smartphone? And for those under the age of 50, it is 97%. Parents wrestle with deciding when to allow a child to get a cellphone. And many adults are conflicted about their reliance upon them.
One year ago, I made a drastic change to my iPhone habits. While I want to stay aware of what’s happening in the world, I realized that exposing myself to everyone’s emotional reactions to the news on social media was having a negative impact on my mental health. So, I removed social media from my life and I couldn’t be happier.
Now, I know many of you have to use social media for work or use it to stay connected to family and friends. That’s great. I am not bashing social media as the root of all evil. What I am hoping we can do this morning is prayerfully consider what captures our attention and become more intentional about engaging in the corporeal world, person to person, soul to soul.
We live in an age of endless information where everyone is an expert and opinions travel faster than truth. When we decrease our time and attention spent staring at a tiny handheld screen, we inevitably increase time spent connecting with others.
When you think about knowledge, we know more than any generation before us, and yet, we are starving for wisdom.
We are saturated with information, data, commentary, and algorithms. It sometimes feels as if we are drowning in a sea of words, memes, and reels. Consider how the online world works. The internet rewards cleverness through the currency of likes and videos “going viral.” Our society rewards winning. And outrage outperforms mercy again and again.
All of this makes Paul’s words this morning feel less ancient and more urgent.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes:
“The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Paul is addressing a divided community. People have drawn a line down the middle and retreated to their extremes. In Paul’s day, it was the Jews and the Gentiles, two groups of people with different ways of understanding power and faithfulness. What is it with humans always pushing people to a binary? But, Paul resists. He doesn’t choose sides or force compromise, he holds the center.
In the introduction to this letter, Paul tells them the world chases wisdom that impresses, persuades, and wins. But God’s wisdom looks like the cross, weak, vulnerable, and rooted in love. God chooses what the world overlooks so that grace, not achievement, stands at the center.
This is what I heard in the Fireside Room the other night. I heard members of this community saying they are saturated, even drowning, in information, but starving for wisdom. Our meeting was all about leading small groups here at Epiphany and that ministry becomes more and more important all the time. We show up at Epiphany with all sorts of emotions and concerns, but we come to be centered, to be in relationship, to be loved. We are here because we are seeking God’s wisdom. Epiphany small groups are one way we practice wisdom.
There is a Latin saying that goes “stat crux dum volvitur orbis” which translates to “the cross stands while the world turns.” This phrase is associated with St. Bruno of Cologne, an 11th century monastic and founder of the Carthusian Order.
“The cross stands while the world turns” refers to the world, society, and circumstances that are constantly changing, while the cross of Christ remains steadfast, an unchanging center of hope, truth, and salvation. This is the lamb at the center Doyt preached about last week.
The internet age rewards cleverness and winning over faithfulness every single time.
Cleverness optimizes.
Cleverness calculates.
Cleverness wins.
But—faithfulness…
Faithfulness risks.
Faithfulness stays.
Faithfulness loves when it would be smarter not to.
So, why should we be faithful and love when it would be smarter not to? Because—
In the Kingdom of God, relationship is primary.
We choose faithfulness because God’s wisdom doesn’t look like winning; it looks like love. (Pause)
In Matthew’s gospel, we are on the mountain with Jesus as he sits and begins teaching. He blesses the vulnerable, to the utter shock of everyone in attendance. These words may seem familiar to our ears, but they were revolutionary in their time. Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and even the peacemakers. This is not a blueprint for success, it is a description of a kingdom.
The Beatitudes, as these teachings of Jesus are called, are what the wisdom of the cross looks like in human life.
Where does cleverness tempt you away from faithfulness?
What are the places where we might win arguments, but lose relationships?
In what ways do we keep Christ at the center in theory, but not in practice?
We are not naïve. And we are not called to live as hermits, opting out of this world. Our task is to be Christians embedded in this world with all of its joys, sorrows, and problems. We are not to ignore the world, but to be intentional about what we let in and what we do with the knowledge that we have. Therein lies wisdom.
Some people might say attending church at all right now is an act of foolishness. But I would counter that it is wise. We come together to worship God, taking time to connect soul to soul. In a world that might view spending your Sunday mornings at Epiphany as a waste of time, I would counter that it is the best use of your time. From the outside looking in, church may appear foolish, and that’s okay.
Church only makes sense if love is stronger than intellect, if mercy is wiser than being right, if relationships matter more than winning.
Church is foolish, unless you realize it as wisdom. God’s wisdom doesn’t look like winning; it looks like love.
Step into foolish wisdom with me. Don’t correct, listen. Stay present instead of scrolling. Choose mercy where cleverness would win. This is the path we choose because relationship is primary. It isn’t efficient and it doesn’t always work. But we do it because love is the wisdom of God.
This is what we do here at Epiphany. I saw it in the gathering in the Fireside Room on Tuesday night and again during the Vestry Retreat the past two days. Choosing to be here is an act of foolish wisdom.
Come back to Have a Heart tonight.
Come to the Super Bowl party next Sunday.
Choose this place and these people, not because everyone is just like you. In fact, it is quite the opposite in this un-curated community. Come because relationship is primary. Come because the neighborhood church is the hope of the world.
Paul says, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.”
That is not an insult to our minds.
It is an invitation to re-center our lives.
In a world that prizes speed, certainty, and winning, we follow a God who moves slowly, who chooses relationship over efficiency, and whose wisdom looks like love poured out.
So we return again and again to the center of the cross, to Christ the Lamb, not because it is clever, but because it is true.
May we have the courage to trust a wisdom that doesn’t scale, to practice a love that doesn’t keep score, and to live as people shaped not by what wins, but by what heals.