Beyond the Text

skit and sermon by Carrie Eikler
Romans 12:1-2

Skit-
Alice is staring at smartphone. Hugo sits next to her, Alice doesn’t realize it. Hugo looks at her. Looks around. Looks back at her. Alice is getting frustrated, not noticing Hugo is sitting there. Hugo starts to get frustrated/humored.

Alice (speaking her text): “Hugo. Where are you? You said you would text when you got close. BTW love the new profile pic on Facebook.

A bleeping comes from hugo’s pocket. He reads the text

Hugo: [scoffing]“Where am I?”

Hugo: (Texting/Speaking) “I’m here already. LOL.”

Alice phone bleeps, reads the text.

Alice: (texting) “No, you can’t be. You didn’t text me...

Hugo: (bleeps, texts) “No, I’m here. Next to you.”

Alice: (unaware and still texting/speaking) “Did you put that on FB?

Hugo: (text) No. I am here.

Alice: I’m going to look up his location on my GPS. (bleep. Bleep) What? it says he’s here. That can’t be right. (Looks up at him surprised) Oh, you’re here.

Hugo: (incredulous)Yeah, I told you I was here.

Alice: But you said you would text me.

Hugo: Does it matter? I’m right here.

Alice: But you said you would text…

Hugo: it doesn’t matter…

Alice: That’s really funny…I’m going to post that on Facebook.—just a minute. (turns from him and puts up finger to hold him).

Alice: OK, so you’re here. Now, what do you want to talk about?

Hugo: Well, I want to talk about… us.

Alice: Oh. Us…

Hugo: yes, well (clears throat). You know we’ve been getting closer these past few months and.. (Alice’s phone bleeps)

Alice: oh wait, just a minute. (checks phone…laughs.) Sorry. Sydney likes my Facebook post.

Hugo: Sydney?

Alice: Yeah, Sydney. She’s one of my Facebook friends. I met her last year on spring break. You know, I hate to brag, but I have 537 Facebook friends. (thoughtfully) Syndey has 650… (recovering) Isn’t it great how Facebook and Twitter bring people together from all parts of the world so we can share with each other the intimate parts of our lives? And when I get my new android, it will be so much faster. This “stupid” phone is a year old and I can’t get as many apps as I’d like. I really feel out of touch. Now, what were you saying?

Hugo: Oh, uh, well I wanted to say I really like being with you and, well…(bleep, Alice checks her phone and laughs). I mean, I think we are getting close and (Alice phone bleeps, she checks, scoffs)…(Hugo getting frustrated) Can you just turn that off?

Alice: What?

Hugo: I really want to talk to you.

Alice: So talk!

Hugo: I mean, just you…not you and whatever conversation is going on in your phone with Syndey or…

Alice: oh, that wasn’t Syndey it was…

Hugo: whatever, I mean. I just wanted to say, I want a relationship with you.

Alice: a relationship.

Hugo: (sighs) yes, a relationship.

Alice: (excitedly) I’d get to change my relationship status on Facebook from single to “in a relationship”!

Hugo: well, yeah., but…

Alice: (gasps) I hope people would click that they liked it!

Hugo: well, I don’t think that’s the point, really.

Alice: Wait, you mean like a relationship relationship? (tentatively) Like conversations, and dreams, and…stuff.

Hugo: Yes, all of that.

Alice: no word limit to what I say?

Hugo: no. no word limit.

Alice: But what if you don’t like it?

Hugo: Then I’ll say… I don’t like it?

Alice: like…with words? From your mouth? You wouldn’t [quoting with fingers] “unfriend” me?

Hugo: No, I won’t [quoting with fingers] “unfriend” you. And yes. Like words from my mouth. In a relationship, with you, and me and real talking and (taking phone and turning it off) attention to each other.

Alice: attention?

Hugo: yes.

Alice: to one thing? Like, to you?

Hugo: yes.

Alice: (puts phone down and takes a deep breath.) I don’t know if I can do it

Hugo: You can. It just will take some practice.

Alice: Geez. A real relationship, with real words, like…with someone.

Hugo: novel idea, I know.

Alice: [pauses] Um, let me think about it (glancing at phone). Um, you just sit there. I’ll text you when I have my answer. (typing on phone)…


Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the lingo about Facebook and friending and word limits, this skit may not have made any sense to you. But I bet, the experience that it was portraying is not…
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” So says Paul in his letter to the Romans.
What a great scripture…a great scripture. This is a great scripture because we can take it, and put in any popular social ill or personal cultural pet peeve and tell the faithful people to avoid that contemporary golden calf: this is that thing that we should not conform to.
And Mennonites and Brethren, who for so long have understood themselves to be a people who are “in the world but not of the world” have idealized, if not idolized, this scripture passage as well.
Take our traditional dress: plain, simple, no zippers (of course not). Neck ties…don’t even try it. Slacks for women (scandalous!). In my home Church of the Brethren, ages before I was born, disciplinarian action was taken against a family who installed in their home (wait for it) a bay window. That’s right. Too worldly for such a humble and modest and simple people.

Now, it is easy for me to laugh at that. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, because these are the same people who have shaped Brethren and Mennonites to critique the things of this world that I do feel need to be questioned:
Militarism. Materialism. Racism. Individualism to the point of isolationism. All those –isms that I believe we are right in doing our best not to conform to so yes!! I will happily slap down Paul’s words to the Romans and say be not conformed to that! Take the higher road that leads to God. Transform. Don’t Conform.
And while I have a certain zeal against these social ills just as my old Brethren of Illinois were zealous about that bay window, I know… that we can easily take Paul’s words so seriously, that we take them too lightly. Applying them to anything we don’t like. Loosely tossing around condemnation.
As my skit shows, I will be quick to urge others not conform to this technology-saturated society. It irritates me when I go out with friends and they are surfing the net or checking their Facebook status and our time together is shortchanged. But I have to realize that while there might be good reason behind my critique, it is mostly about me. After all, neither Jesus Christ nor Paul said anything about handheld wireless communication.

And I’m reminded of the English writer GK Chesterton who wrote “Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils.” Romans gives us the perfect opportunity to exorcise both out of ourselves.
These false gods and false devils. It seems to me that Paul’s equation is a bit like the chicken and the egg conundrum. We should not be part of this world but renew our minds so we can discern. But isn’t discernment an essential part of knowing how genuinely be in this world but not of it? To discern the false gods and the false devils, and hopefully avoid them both?
You know, no one ever accused Paul of being too simplistic or elementary, have they? And if people do think he is simple…I’d seriously question their reading of Paul.
Because he is anything but simple and clear. Passionate and wordy, yes. Inconsistent, you betcha. In some letters he is eager to give the laundry list of things to avoid (debauchery, licentiousness, etc etc), but this isn’t the predominant theme in Romans.
Paul appears positive, welcoming, encouraging. It wouldn’t fit his letter if he told the Romans what exactly they should not be conformed to (that is, what they should avoid), but gives ample suggestions of what to live into, what to take on. Next week we’ll explore more in depth some of these things that we can strive for. But this week…
This week, I think we might be seeing some of Paul’s insight into our real struggle…the human condition. And it is something that I believe we each know in our hearts. It’s one thing to tell us not to do something. It’s another to address what is at the heart of our desire to sin. What it is that is so seductive that we engage in the willing, though maybe unknowing, isolation of ourselves from our God, from each other, and from our own spirits.
Perhaps Paul can speak to our tendency to mindlessly fall into routines that have consequence for our lives, especially routines in which the consequences aren’t so apparent, or so immediate.
And really, it makes sense that hese mindless activities are the ones we are least aware of? Unless you are a sociopath, you know it is wrong to steal, or cheat, or kill, or hurt. You even know that cigarette will hurt you, or that it’s not such a good thing to wake up not remembering what you did last night, or that meaningless sexual exploits can leave you feeling more lonely than fulfilled. We recognize them, because they are pretty big. Pretty in-your-face. But it’s those things that seem inconsequential that can add up. The things we do without even thinking…our mindless actions.
Paul calls us to the renewing of our mind. When we think about the word “mind” we likely think brain that does the strenuous work of thinking and giving impulses to our body. But Paul was a Jew who lived in a Greek world 2,000 years ago. Our contemporary physiology and our view of mind and body were not available to him.
For Greeks, the mind was a function which was defined as the ability to realize fully “the true nature or essence of a thing, [beyond] its surface appearance.” the main function of the mind was to discover the ‘real’ world or the ‘real’ character of the world as a whole, in contrast to other erroneous beliefs of most human beings.”
Jewish thought saw the mind as the same thing as the inner spirit of the person.
So Paul, being a Jew who lived in Greek world, with its way of thinking, is not referring to our thinking caps. He is referring to our inner eye. That part within us that discerns, that sees beyond this world. Perhaps he is referring to what we might experience as our intuition.
Our Western world doesn’t have much of that language, but our world isn’t devoid of these ideas. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, in most, if not all of the Asian languages, the same word that is used for mind is also used for heart. If we are mindful, we are looking at the world and our experiences with our inner wisdom, and we are awake to dimensions beyond the obvious, below the surface.

Jon Kabat-Zinn knows a lot about mindfulness. He is a doctor and the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Mindfulness, according to Kabat-Zinn, is simply paying attention, it’s about a way of being, not a way of doing something. When we slow down our lives, examine the people and situations with appreciation and prayer, we are living mindfully: fully in our mind, meaning fully in our heart, fully in our spirit.
And we can cultivate mindfulness, it’s not just reserved for the monks and nuns and yogis and those who spend all their time meditating. It can happen by stopping and breathing before running onto the next thing. It can start by actually writing down every single thing you do in your day and see where your energy and time and heart went. It can happen by searching for the beautiful in everything that exists, no matter how horrible, how sinful, or how devastating.
Kabat-Zinn says “mindfulness has the potential to penetrate past surface appearances and behaviors and allow us to see [our lives] more clearly as they truly are, to look both inwardly and outwardly, and to act with some degree of wisdom and compassion on the basis of what we see.”
I wonder if Paul was seeing us in our hectic lives, how he would restate Romans 12. I certainly can’t say, but it might not be too far off to say: Please, please please slow down. Look at the world. Focus. Still the mind and you will be on the way to a new life.
So yes, I used the skit to poke fun at my personal pet peeve. We are so connected and wired that in many ways we have disengaged from the world around us. But if we’re honest, it isn’t a plight of those with Smartphones and Blackberries. Who hasn’t run out the door without kissing their child.
Gobbled down our food without taking pleasure in what we eat.
Or looked at God’s creation and focused only on the grass that needs mowing, rather than the habitat that flourishes.
Or thought, God could have gotten it better than good, but perfect, if God just created more hours in the day.
It’s not conforming to this world to recognize beauty, to delight in small earthly things. Rather, it’s the dominant story of this world that the small things aren’t worth noticing and that there is nothing underneath the surface of our lives. It’s the dominant story of this world that it is more productive to do more than one thing at a time. That our minds are organs for multitasking, rather than the minds giving us ability to uncover God, to discern what is good and what is harmful.
It’s these small things that reveal the real places of God, and the real working of destruction. And we must renew our minds, so we can see with the mind of Christ.
There is room for slowing down in each of our lives. My mind needs to see a new. I know I am missing so much goodness because I don’t really know how to see it. And Paul seems to know this too, and Paul seems to patiently commiserate: “what a shame.” he almost whispers through the text. “How much you are missing.” Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.