If you were watching the news last night, you were likely assaulted by the horrific lead story of a young woman stabbing her three children, leaving them all in critical condition.  As a parent, I was shaken by the story of a young woman who for some undetermined reason decided to stab her two year-old twins and seven month old baby.  As I struggled to understand how a mother could do such a tragic thing, suddenly the always dapper Logan Byrnes reappeared on my television screen to let me know that, oh by the way, a 17 year-old East Hartford High student had been stabbed at his school and had passed away.  Again, I was shocked and saddened, but after a couple seconds was able to return to playing with my 17 month-old, Ryan.  When Logan wrapped up his brief segment on the East Hartford stabbing, Janet Peckinpaugh showed up to alert me to the fact that it had been another deadly day in Iraq, with five more American soldiers dying.  Interesting, I thought.  And again, I went on playing with my son…

I’m struggling to put into words just how normal yet abnormal last night’s scene is to me.  Every night it happens – a well-groomed man and woman stare at me through my television and tell me 15-20 random events that happened in our world today. Typically, they are tragic events such as murders, earthquakes, bombings, and the like.  They tell me all that I need to know, and 30 minutes later they are gone. 

Has this become so normal to us that we miss how odd it all is???

I say that this scene is abnormal and odd because it is completely devoid of any expectation that I’m supposed to make sense of or take action in response to the news of a mother who stabbed her children, or a high school student who has been murdered, or soldiers who lost their lives.  I’m given an update on random events happening around my world, with the goal apparently being to inform me, to let me know that there are some seriously grieving people in Hartford right now, and that there is a family in East Hartford who just lost a son or brother, and that the war in Iraq has claimed five more lives.  And I sit there with my son, more informed, a little more numb to the violence in our world, and not in any way a better person for it.

How am I supposed to respond to this thing called the evening news?  Am I supposed to get sad?  Shrug my shoulders at the chaos of our world?  Get involved?  What if I decided to do something about every story I heard – to counsel women in Hartford experiencing post-partum depression, to send flowers to the East Hartford family, to protest the war in Iraq?  Would I ever be able to remotely keep up with the staggering needs presented on a nightly basis?

And how am I supposed to prioritize the 15-20 stories I hear on the news every night?  Who is to say that a woman in Hartford stabbing her children is the most important story of the day?  What about the soldiers dying in Iraq?  Is that more important?  What about the numerous things going on around the globe that didn’t make the evening news?  Is the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, not an issue today?  Is homelessness in American not a problem today?  Is the AIDS epidemic in Africa not important today?

The question I would like to explore briefly today is: What messages are we being given by the medium known as the nightly news (or Internet news, or the morning newspaper)?  Not just the stories – what are the underlying messages?  What are we being taught by watching two well-groomed people enlighten us about 15-20 random events in our world? 

Some of you may remember a communications theorist named Marshall McLuhan, who became famous for his quote, “the medium is the message.”  Essentially, McLuhan argued that a medium like television, or radio, or a book, sends a message just by being a television, radio, or book, regardless of what the content may be.  A recent book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture by Shane Hipps, has helped me to think about the impact that media such as books, television, and the Internet have had on the very message of Christianity, and has helped me as I consider some of the messages we receive through something like the nightly news.

 As we are told 15-20 unrelated stories full of joy and despair, tragedy and celebration, I believe that one subliminal message is being communicated to us that has a profound impact on the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is a message that cuts across Christian thinking and Biblical teaching and is easily recognizable in the lives of most Americans (especially younger Americans) today.  That message is that there is no metanarrative, no overarching story or truth that organizes and makes sense of these many different events.  Basically, stuff happens – good stuff, bad stuff, but there’s no connection between Britney and K-Fed’s divorce and the falling gas prices, or between Kramer’s racist tirade at a comedy club and the death of a Lebanese Christian cabinet member.  Robert Altman may have died, and a raid in Baghdad killed five people, but these two things have nothing in common and there is no meaning behind them.  Usually referred to as relativism, this message of no overarching truth making sense of the events of daily life is subscribed to by many in our world.

To help us make sense of this message, think about life before the telegraph, which was the forerunner of electronic media such as the television and Internet.  Before the telegraph, information traveled at a speed of about 35 miles per hour, or the speed of a train.  If a mother stabbed her three children in another town, it might take a day to learn that information.  If five soldiers died in a war halfway around the globe, it might take months to notify their family, and the rest of us might never hear about it.  With the invention of the telegraph, suddenly information could be sent from Washington to Baltimore (as it was by Samuel Morse in 1844) in an instant.  Information that was once local and rooted in a local context and history that provided it with meaning now could be displaced and presented with no apparent connection, cause, or meaning.  In 1830, any woman that I heard of who stabbed her children probably lived in my town, and I knew her family and her history.  Today, all we know is that a woman stabbed her children.  We don’t really know who she is or what her story is, except for what the television and newspapers tell us. 

Again – I believe that the subliminal message being sent through the evening news is this:  there is no metanarrative, no overarching story or truth that organizes and makes sense of these many different events.  Stuff just happens, so at least you can be informed.

This past Sunday, I had preached a big picture sermon about salvation history and how it finds its consummation in Jesus.  If you believed me, I was claiming that there is a metanarrative, an overarching story that organizes and makes sense of many different events.  I claimed that the metanarrative is that God has chosen and blessed his followers so that they might bring His blessing to the world, transforming a fallen world of injustice, chaos, and hatred into a place of justice, peace, and love.  I also claimed that the second theme of this metanarrative is that God’s people continually act out the theme of falling away and returning, slavery and exodus, exile and restoration, but that the pattern was answered by Jesus’ death and resurrection, through which is offered forgiveness of sins once for all, an escape from the cycle into a life of freedom from the slavery of sin and perfection in the sight of God. 

If the metanarrative is true, then we can see the tragedies depicted on the evening news as more proof of the injustice, chaos, and hatred that mark our fallen world, and can realize that God has called us to bring justice, peace, and love into the world wherever we go.  We will certainly never be able to address each issue presented in the news on our own, but we can recognize that as chaotic as things may seem, there is a grand story that encompasses everything from a mother stabbing her children to an elderly woman serving at a soup kitchen, from a war in Iraq to forgiveness offered between friends.  This world is fallen, but God is redeeming the world through Jesus Christ and His followers.  As we join God’s mission to bring His transforming love, peace, and justice to this world, we proclaim to everyone who is watching that there is meaning in the chaos. 

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