“What makes us human is beyond the reach of the algorithms — and so it is what the algorithm fears most: compassion, love and the capacity to see and treasure the divine in each other.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, December 2, 2018.
“On the earth, nations will be in anguish, distraught at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the earth… when you see all these things happening, know that the reign of God is near.”
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How did we get here?
Instantly, the image bounced around the world. Maria Meza, a Honduran woman, grabbing her twin daughters and desperately fleeing the smoke billowing from tear gas cannisters shot by U.S. border patrol agents.
Maria fled for her life and the lives of her children. 2,000 miles she had traveled … and we welcomed her with tear gas. A horrifying image of an even more horrifying truth. And I saw it because of the algorithms that determine my social media feed.
Now, those algorithms know two things:
They know who among us are most likely to be moved by a picture like this, moved so we will click on the story and share the story … and thus share the advertising that goes with it to make more money for the companies that support the platform.
They also know we are not likely to ask the question “How did we get here?” in any way beyond hand-wringing and despair.
In fact, they are counting on it.
Because if we did ask that question. If we looked deeply into Maria’s eyes and let her humanity move us truly to explore how we got here, the easy, reactive answers the social media algorithms are counting on us to spew so we can feel noble and absolved and so our profiles can be refined so we can be marketed to some more…
If we truly asked “How did we get here?” those easy reactive answers that keep us both sufficiently secure in our righteousness that we believe we are not the ones who need to change and uncomfortable enough at what is before us that we will continue to self-soothe with consumption…
If we truly asked “How did we get here?” those easy, reactive answers damning the current president and his inhumane policies, answers which certainly are true — just not the whole truth…
If we truly asked the question “How did we get here?” the entire algorithm would begin to collapse on itself.
Because if we truly asked “How did we get here?” we would have to go back to the genocide of the native population that enabled us to establish the border in the first place and the kidnapping and torture of black bodies that built the economy we now so fearfully defend.
We would have to go back to 1904 when Theodore Roosevelt declared the U.S. right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America.
We would have go back to a century of U.S. military intervention to facilitate the plundering of resources by American business.
We honor the memory of President George H.W. Bush because faced with our current president he makes us nostalgic for a gentility and statesmanship for which we long, and yet he, too, is part of how we got here.
The refugees massing at our border are in part the legacy of Reagan and Bush, who took the baton passed to them and funded the murder and oppression of thousands upon thousands of people while allowing the flooding of our communities of color with cocaine
…which in turn Bill Clinton turned into mass incarceration of those same communities
…and which under George W. Bush accelerated into what is now a nearly $5 billion dollar a year for-profit prison industry,
…which when young black and brown activists finally took to the street to protest during the Obama administration, with that president’s support were met with the same tear gas with which we greeted Maria and her children.
If we looked in Maria’s eyes and truly asked the question “how did we get here?” it would not just lead to the current occupant of the White House but to who puts all presidents in office … the business interests marketing to us through the algorithms that put the image of Maria and her children in front of us in the first place.
Which means it would lead us right back to ourselves.
In last Sunday’s forum, Adelaide Esseln said of the Trouveres’ civil rights choir pilgrimage, “I got a chance to look history in the eye and it’s a living breathing thing.”
History is a living breathing thing.
It is the last dying breath of the native and the enslaved.
It is the shallow breath of the child hiding from violence on the streets of Tegucigalpa and Los Angeles.
It is the wheezing breath of the mother, daughter and protester trying to escape the smoke of the tear gas cannister.
It is the deep sigh that tries to relieve the grief in our chest when we see the picture of Maria and her children.
It is the measured breathing of each of us as we click and read and forward and buy … and the cycle of the algorithm begins again.
Machines do algorithms. And … we can become slaves to the them, ingesting and spitting back what they tell us. Raging when they tell us to rage and despairing when they tempt us to despair. They can grant us sufficient absolution if we buy what they are trying to sell. We can let the algorithms tell us who we are. And soon we become indistinguishable from them.
There is a mechanization of humanity happening. It is nothing new. It has been happening since before Pharaoh’s Egypt. It is not the creation of our robot overlords, it is us becoming them. It is our own mechanization. Reducing ourselves to nothing more than increasingly efficient means of production.
And yet what makes us human is beyond the reach of the algorithm. It is what the algorithm fears the most because it is what has the power to destroy it.
What makes us human is compassion, love, and our ability to make meaning.
What makes us human is face to face, eye to eye, hand in hand.
What makes us human is our ability to see and treasure the divine in one another.
We look at Maria and cry, “How did we get here?” The algorithm knows. The border patrol fires tear gas at Maria and her children, because olice and military are trained to respond not to human beings but to a faceless threat. We stop seeing each other as human beings because that creates moral conflict that compromises efficiency. And we don’t ask the inconvenient and uncomfortable questions that would threaten the algorithms upon which we have become increasingly dependent.
Empires thrive on anesthetic and amnesia. Distraction and distortion.
Empires count on us being content with anesthetic and amnesia because if we truly asked the question “how did we get here?” if we reached for the compassion, the love, the ability to make meaning, the ability to see and treasure the divine in one another, the entire algorithm on which the Empire is built would collapse on itself.
And yet we are reaching a tipping point where anesthetic and amnesia, distraction and distortion are becoming increasingly difficult to justify and sustain.
We are reaching a tipping point. Environmentally. Economically. Sociologically. Morally. Spiritually.
We are reaching a tipping point where our hearts are gasping for air. There is a ghost in the machine and she won’t be silent any more. We look at the picture of Maria and her children. And we hear this morning’s Gospel:
“On the earth, nations will be in anguish, distraught at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the earth. The powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
We look at the picture of Maria and her children and this morning’s Gospel is coming to pass before our very eyes.
And yet those lines are merely prologue.
Thomas Merton writes of Advent and Christmas, “Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.”
Christ comes into our lives not because an algorithm has calculated that Christ is what we want, that Christ is what we will click on, that Christ is what we will buy.
Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room at all, Christ comes uninvited.
Christ comes not because the incarnate love of God will make us comfortable or is convenient.
Christ comes in deep abiding love bearing the sacraments of discomfort and inconvenience.
Christ comes as Maria and her daughters. Christ comes as the incarcerated child of God at Men’s Central Jail. Christ comes as the person sleeping in our colonnade every night at All Saints Church.
Christ is the human face that reminds us that we are not machines. That we can reach beyond the efficient solution, the sensible solution, the popular solution and reach for the human solution. That we can break the chains of the algorithms that bind us.
Christ comes in the face at our border, the face in our prison, the face sleeping on our steps, the face right in front of us. Christ has traveled far and is looking for a home.
How will we greet Christ?
Jesus says: “On the earth, nations will be in anguish, distraught at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the earth. The powers in the heavens will be shaken…”
and then
“when you see all these things happening, know that the reign of God is near.”
Maria and her daughters are the herald of the divine.
They are inviting us to look at how we got here.
They are inviting us to see the difference between the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and who we really are.
They are inviting us to recognize that this world is coming to an end … and that that is a blessed opportunity.
An opportunity to smash the algorithm.
In last week’s rector’s forum, another one of our youth choristers, Phoebe Kellogg, whoa did she drop some Gospel truth! In talking about what she is learning about the history of racism, here’s what Phoebe said:
“It’s not because people just were (racist), it’s always because of money or power or politics. And it also has a lot to do with convenience and what’s easy for people. We see that it’s convenient to go outside this one day and march for that … but then we don’t carry that through, because it’s not convenient every day.
“And so, I think the biggest thing that we can do is not only focus on these movements in times when it’s easy for us and when it’s handed to us very simply in the form of a march or a petition on the lawn or something like that. We need to do things on our own time and when it doesn’t seem like it’s convenient for us. And that’s what I’d ask all of you to do.”
Gloria Steinem said “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
We are reaching a tipping point where our hearts are gasping for air. We are literally dying to see each other as human beings. And that will mean stopping. And asking the questions. And listening with compassionate hearts. And setting aside all we are told is important and standing with each other in the most vulnerable of places.
And it will be uncomfortable.
And it will be inconvenient.
Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room at all, Christ comes uninvited.
Christ comes as Maria and her daughters.
They are inviting us to recognize that this world is coming to an end … and that that is an opportunity.
An opportunity to smash the algorithm.
Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.
Christ is the human face that reminds us of our own. Christ reminds us that what makes us human is beyond the reach of the algorithm. What makes us human is compassion, love, and our ability to make meaning, the ability to look beyond the financial bottom line and see and treasure the divine in one another.
Face to face.
Eye to eye.
Hand in hand.
This Advent, into this demented inn of our lives in which there is absolutely no room at all, how will we make room for the uninvited, uncomfortable and inconvenient Christ? Amen.
