October 25, 2020
The Medium Is The Message
A Reflection for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
1 Thessalonians 2.1-8 and Matthew 22.34-46
“…We had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery…So deeply we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our very selves, because you have become very dear to us.”(1 Thessalonians 2.8)
Canadian philosopher and communications/media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." I think this is related to what the apostle Paul is saying too: the Gospel of God isn't something Paul and his co-workers, Timothy and Silas, share as a message apart from themselves. They are not religious entrepreneurs selling a product called "The Gospel." In fact, their lives are the message - the good news that they are loved, forgiven, healed, and empowered by God to love, forgive, heal, and empower others with the same Spirit of God at work in them. Jesus showed them that.
Marshall McLuhan also said that while we're quick to grasp the content of the medium (the meaning of the words you're reading right now) we're much slower to grasp the messages that the character of the medium are conveying to us (for instance, how the character of this email communication is part of the message too). Maybe that's what the religious leaders confronting Jesus in Matthew's gospel are missing: Jesus is the message. All of him. Not only the content of what Jesus says to them, but his very character and way of life communicate the Gospel he preaches.
And that's what they struggle with. For the past few weeks, Matthew's gospel has made it obvious that the Saduccees, Pharisees, Scribes and other religious leaders are willing to engage with the words of Jesus, but they struggle or refuse to accept Jesus' way of life as part of that message itself: He may be an authority on scripture and wise beyond his years, they think to themselves, but he eats with outcasts and the criminalized, he preaches good news to people who can't help themselves, and keeps company with with tax collectors and sex workers! They are slow to grasp that the character of the medium himself is the most potent message of all.
And so am I. Aren't we all?
When Jesus' questions undo my certainties and leave me speechless, such as happened to the Pharisees that day (Matthew 22.41-46), I don't think he's is simply tying to best me in a war of words or a philosophical argument. I think Jesus is trying to set me on a different path to knowing him, a path that unites the content of his words with the character of his life. Only when these things are taken together do I recognize how the medium is the message: God has drawn close to me, has entered fully into human life in Jesus of Nazareth! Why? So that through sharing my life with his, and his with mine, I may enter more and more fully into God's life.
This is the Gospel of God. And it's a message communicated through you and me when we share our lives with one another, allowing God's Spirit in us to minister Jesus' embracing love, forgiving words, and healing power to one another.
Colin+
Image: Marshall McLuhan, April 6, 1974. Photograph by Yousef Karsh. (https://karsh.org/photographs/marshall-mcluhan/)
