A Bifocal Faith
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
And in the spirit, [the angel] carried me, [John], away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Sermon
Buckle up, because you’re about to receive my confession. I am in a complicated relationship. Sometimes folk call it a “situationship.”
I’m in a love-hate, complicated situationship with TikTok. For those of you who don’t know, TikTok is that infamous app where you receive a curated set of videos in a never-ending feed that keeps going and going and going. It’s designed to hotwire our brains—my own brain included—and numb us out. It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s always showing me something new.
For the average user—and I will plead the fifth on my own habits—they spend an average of 95 minutes per day on TikTok. That’s 34,680 minutes a year. If we gave the most conservative estimate on the number of videos that a user watches each year, it’s about 120 videos a day, or 3,600 videos a month.
But the number is likely massively higher, because most users watch only a few seconds of a video before swiping onward. Personally, if I had to take a ballpark guess, the real number is closer to 200 videos a day for the average user.
In addition to the benefits of an expanding digital world, one its ramifications is that we’re inundated with photos and videos and visual media. These images and videos we see on a daily basis aren’t neutral; they have very real, profound impacts on our psychology and physiology.
We don’t need a moral panic, but we do need to ask questions about how the influences of artificial intelligence, social media, misinformation, and unfettered corporatism affects our spirituality. We still don’t understand the changes we’re undergoing, but there is evidence that we are increasingly experiencing attention deficit symptoms; our social and emotional intelligence is declining; we’re enduring more social isolation; and the quality and quantity of our sleep is suffering.
Societally, we’re also seeing the damaging effects of impune corporations running amok. We live in ecosystems that are calibrated to manipulate us, whether it’s Facebook, TikTok, or sensationalist news organizations. And though we sometimes think of misinformation—where falsities are amplified online—as a bad but inevitable part of society, the reality is that misinformation has the capacity to literally end human lives.
“We need to ask questions about how the influences of artificial intelligence, social media, misinformation, and unfettered corporatism affects our spirituality.”
All that to say, we carry our souls into the digital world, and it plays out on our hearts and minds and strengths. The images we see, the videos we watch, the TikTok feeds we consume are not immaterial to our faith. The theology and worship and formation of Sunday mornings is essential to our online ethics and the digital world that tosses us around.
Given that it’s Memorial Day, veterans have been on my mind the past week. So much of our understanding of war is shaped by images, videos, and the news media. But for veterans, they are on the other side of the camera. Or more often, they see and watch the pain and complexity of conflict firsthand. I’ll continue mentioning veterans today, and as an aside, I’m speaking to those who have suffered pain, injury, or turmoil as a result of service. For many members of the military, there is joy, connection, and a sense of identity that stems from it. What I’ll say today is not to discredit any of that; but this Memorial Day weekend, it’s fitting that we remember the cost of service.
There’s volumes and volumes of research on veterans, combat, and the repercussions of those things. There is well-documented evidence that those who experience combat are overwhelmingly more likely to experience PTSD, substance abuse, moral injury, homelessness, and assault by peers. The images of combat are ones that don’t go away quickly. Sometimes they never leave.
“The theology and worship and formation of Sunday mornings is essential to our online ethics and the digital world that tosses us around.”
It’s easy to be lost in despair, or feel like these challenges are insurmountable. But as much as we need strong policymaking, clinical counselors, effective nonprofits to fill in the gaps, we also need a way to make sense of it all. We need a set of eyeglasses to keep us from living in despair, or succumbing to cynicism or willful ignorance.
There is a temptation to see the suffering of the world, or the challenges unique to veterans, and simply tune out. We are tempted to shut the realities of this world out of our hearts, or start retreating inward with an individualistic, self-absorbed faith.
But God has never called the church to tune out; instead, the church of Jesus Christ has always been called to serve one another, to love its neighbors, and open itself to the joy and pain of living. In the Book of Acts, the church is described as “holding everything in common” (Acts 4:32). In today’s reading from Acts, we hear of Dorcas, who seems to have served everyone she knew. Throughout the epistles, we hear of a church that is grappling with complicated ethics surrounding Roman worship, political despots, and infighting. In the Book of Revelation, we hear of churches that are tossed to and fro in their beliefs and common life, with stern warnings to “listen to what the Spirit is saying!” And even in the composition of Revelation, we know that its early leaders were exiled on account of their ministry in the world, like John of Patmos. The church has never, ever, ever been called to tune out. It has been called to be tuned-in, with a heart and set of eyeglasses that give it a different lens.
Today, a celestial being reveals to John a new land, and mystically tours John across its landscape. Like the rest of the Book of Revelation, the language is intentionally vivid. Taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound take the place of semantic language, and instead stitch together a text of irrational experience and coded language.
In this vision, John recounts a sensory-rich journey to the river of the water of life and the tree of life, planted in the very epicenter of this new creation. It is always a season of harvest, where even its leaves become a balm to the pain of all nations. Within this tree, nestled in its very trunk and leaves and sinewy roots, is the throne of God Almighty and the risen Christ.
This language and its sensory-richness sucks us into the pages of our Bibles, into the very vision of John of Patmos. We’re there, too.
“The church has never, ever, ever been called to tune out. It has been called to be tuned-in, with a heart and set of eyeglasses that give it a different lens.”
This was written to the churches living in the midst of a world on fire. There were licentious deeds done in service of the gods; Pilate desecrated the temple sacrifices; and an imperial power used its money, influence, and power to destroy rather than protect.
The church had a keen awareness of its world, having no pretenses about it. The church was tuned-in, not because it wanted to be, but because it had to be. And here, John of Patmos gives the church another lens to see the world.
The sights and sounds of despair rippled throughout humanity, but the church now had a different set of eyeglasses. It had a pair of bifocals: eyeglasses that could see the pain, and terror, and despair of its world, while also seeing love, joy, hope, and a new creation of unmeasurable peace.
The Book of Revelation is not a blueprint to those new heavens and a new earth. It’s not a Dan Brown novel that we have to decode with secret numbers and secret coincidences. And it doesn’t call us to an “evacuation theology,” wherein we condemn infidels to conscious eternal torment.
Instead, the Spirit of God and Jesus Christ beckon us to a bifocal faith. This bifocal faith accompanies us into a digital ecosystem that is rife with images and videos of pain and despair, and in accompanying us there, unites us and that world with unmeasurable hope. It does not see despair and hope—or death and life—as opposites, but as conversation partners who are always speaking to one another. Partners who are always found in proximity to one another.
“A bifocal faith does not see despair and hope—or death and life—as opposites, but as conversation partners who are always speaking to one another.”
This bifocal faith—of seeing the world’s pain and seeing a new creation—is what widens our hearts and minds to those who have served our country. Through this work of the Spirit, we don’t have to shy away from the tragedies of conflict or complexities of war. We might pray that this bifocal faith would prevent us from committing the same sins when Vietnam veterans returned from service. It might prevent us from assigning moral failure to veterans who are traumatized, navigating addiction, or who end their own lives.
And for those who are veterans, this bifocal faith might offer the freedom to speak openly. In seeing both the pain of conflict, and the vision of a new creation, God draws us to the full acknowledgment of our experiences. We don’t have to slap a bandaid of positivity on experiences of suffering or pain; and one can be critical of one’s treatment by society or institutions while remaining deeply compelled by the mission of serving in the armed forces.
For all of us, there are images and scenes that will stick with us. So often, we see violence abroad, images of suffering in our country, and the devastation of natural disasters or the climate. Or there might not be a single image or scene stuck in your mind, but you feel the cumulative weight of being bombarded online.
But Jesus Christ extends to us a different way of seeing and understanding these things: that bifocal faith that allows us to see the full pain of humanity and the full hope of a new creation. Through the Spirit, we can acknowledge the brutal cost of war and conflict, while protesting for a future of peace and safety. We don’t have to choose. We can celebrate those who have served, and the sacrifices they made, while crying out in hope for an end to war and geopolitical bullying.
This week, we don’t have to be afraid of checking the news, or swiping on TikTok, or sending a friend a message on Facebook. It’s not because those places are safe, or won’t try to manipulate us, but because we see through a different lens. We see resurrections of the saints, new landscapes of peace, and the very presence of Jesus Christ and God Almighty, who are bringing wholeness to a new creation. We see hope where there is despair; love where there is hatred; and peace where there is war. And if we cannot see that, rest assured, we’re in luck. Because that means we have a ministry to do.
You and I, and all those called into life by Christ Jesus, all of us have this special, bifocal faith. So keep one eye on the turbulence of this planet, and keep one eye on a river, and tree, and Lord of life.
Sources
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