Gary Hall - Youtube-charist
Am I the only one, or is there anyone else here who finds the whole idea of the “U2charist” kind of goofy? Although I have nothing but admiration for Bono and his charitable endeavors, when I think of U2 as a group I think of the 1980s. Trying to speak to contemporary teenagers with the music of U2 would be like trying to appeal to the acid rock youth of the late 60s with the music of Glenn Miller. There seems to be a bit of a cultural lag time here. There are some church camps I know of where they still sing “Puff the Magic Dragon”. This is not the music of young people. This is the music of old people trying to remember their youth.
Now I have a much better idea for a culturally relevant liturgy. You may remember that Time magazine ended 2006 by naming you and me Person of the Year–they even had that neat reflective mylar computer screen on the cover. Time’s article lauded “you”–meaning those who have no lives outside the internet–for having the time, energy, and passion to “make a movie starring my pet iguana . . .mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals . . .blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street.” In typically breathless Time magazine prose, the editors concluded, “It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” Or maybe not. Maybe it’s all about online shopping and a fantasy of being famous. Whatever.
So here’s my idea: instead of the already passé “U2charist” we here at Seabury might construct what I want to call a “YouTube-charist” Think about it: while charitable superstars like Bono may represent the altruistic side of show business, today’s youth seem to have their heads in a slightly different place. According to UCLA’s annual survey of college freshmen, nearly 3/4 of those surveyed last year “thought it was essential or very important to be ‘very well-off financially.’” That 75 percent compares with 42 percent who said that in 1966. [Chicago Tribune 1/23/07] And here’s another figure: according to a recent study the average college student in 2006 scored higher than 65 per cent of the students who took the same standard Narcissism Personality Inventory test only twenty years ago. [The Nation, 1/29/07] According to a recent Harris poll, 60 per cent of young adults expect to be famous at some point in their lives. The advent of cyber fame has lowered the bar for achieving renown: in the old days you had to do something like win the Trojan War; today, on YouTube, all you have to do is mouse. I think this YouTube-charist has real potential. We could all log on and share bread and wine to videos of pet iguanas and the music of 50cent.
[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’–Luke 14.12-14
You and I may live in a time of escalating narcissistic individualism, but we are not the first people on the planet to become self-involved. The Pharasaic diners whom Jesus addresses in this passage had previously been seen to have chosen for themselves the places of honor at the table, and Jesus told the “Friend, move up higher” parable as a not-so-subtle rebuke to their rather exalted image of themselves. Today’s admonition takes this Biblical logic one step further. When you give a dinner, don’t invite those who will enhance your own image of yourself. Invite, instead, “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
We worry a lot in the church about how to appeal to the YouTube generation. We also worry a lot in the church about how to develop strategies that will bring the kind of affluent, influential people back to the Episcopal Church who used to fill our pews and so return us to the heyday of our formerly ascendant cultural glory. What we keep forgetting, of course, is that the Gospel is both counterintuitive and countercultural. The Rock Masses and Folk Masses of the 1960s did not bring us a lot of people who stuck, and I will bet that when the last U2 anthem falls silent we won’t have realized many new members from the U2charist, either. I’m all for worshipping in the idioms of our culture. But we shouldn’t be Romantic about the possibilities. People stick when they “get it.” And they “get it” when the Gospel helps them make sense of their experience.
Jesus did not tell us to invite the young, the hip, the famous, and the rich. He told us to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” He told us that because he knew that all we finally have to offer is the cross, a paradoxically life-giving symbol of death, and that the community which gathers around that cross is one in which all of us who are lost or wounded or broken or alone find meaning and hope not in a fake vision of wealth and fame but in solidarity with those who have found resurrection out of sin and death. In a world where everyone wants to be rich and famous, that kind of community makes absolutely no sense at all. It makes, in fact, just as little sense as a society banquet to which one invites the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
The poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. That’s who we are. And we’re guests here–guests of a host who has called us not because of our brains or good looks but just maybe because our poverty and weakness might open us up to the possibility of something else. For that something else, and for the gift of the community in which we receive and find it, we proceed in this Eucharist to give thanks. Amen.