We need to talk about emojis. No really emojis. Those cute little symbols. People add to emails and texts to tell the reader what their feeling. I used to sneer at emojis. Uh, I used to think that emojis were for people who can't write properly, uh, whose vocabulary is weak, so they put smileys or frowns or tears of laughter in their texts because they don't have enough words.
Sometimes they can be confusing as well. I read about an Atlanta law firm in the Wall Street Journal that was handling a very serious case in which a business person had used the unamused emoji in some correspondence, and the case hung upon what this emoji meant and what the writer intended when they used it.
Uh, if you don't know the, uh, unamused emoji, it's a, a face with raised eyebrows and a frown. Perfect when you want to send a message that you are not amused. Except that the lawyers who met for the case conference couldn't agree amongst themselves, uh, that the, the emoji looked unamused. Uh, can you imagine, uh, lawyers spending hours and, and thousands of dollars debating the meaning of an emoji?
This emoji is defamatory of my client. Uh, no, it's not. It's actually a compliment of your client. But now I get it. Uh, after years of upsetting people who think I'm being serious, when I'm actually making a joke, I've come to appreciate the smiley face emoji. In fact, I am so converted to the goodness of emojis that I think they should be compulsory.
No more will I have to read and reread and reread a short, abrupt text from someone and try to work out if I've upset them, or if they are merely being businesslike, just stick a smiley on it, dude. Then I won't have to stay up all night worrying that I've upset you. And now I've discovered the avatar.
I've created my own cartoon character that looks just like me. I've actually brought him along to show you. Now, I was pretty pleased, uh, with this, but uh, the more I look at it, the more I think, who am I kidding? Uh, this is just one big vanity project. Uh, this bloke looks, looks like he's 25 and has way more hair than I do.
But there he is, this tiny, whimsical, cute version of me that inhabits this other world, this digital universe of avatars and emojis, a virtual environment that intersects with the real one. There's an alternative universe all around us, and we are oblivious to it unless we have a smartphone. But then this has always been the case.
That's what Paul says in today's reading from Colossians. There is a dimension beyond our usual awareness and above human understanding. Since then, you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Paul beckons us into this other universe. Actually, he doesn't beckon us, uh, so much as tell us we are already there. We live in two dimensions. The rules of this earthly universe don't apply in the other. It is heavenly. This is a realm where we have mysteriously died and been raised with Jesus, but it's not physical death.
Paul is not talking about what happens when we die. We are dead, buried and raised to new life now while we are still living in these mortal bodies. It happened at our baptisms. Now we are seated above this universe in this other dimension. The citizen of two kingdoms. Now we are hidden in Christ securely and eternally protected beneath his loving arms.
Life on the dance floor is exhausting. You spin and stride and whirl. You waltz, you rock, you tango. You tire. Your feet ache. You long to sit, but you can't step off because there is always one more dance. One more shimmy across the floor. One more light. Fantastic to trip. So you focus my, do you focus? You need to.
It's bewildering on the dance floor. It's all people and music and limbs and unpredictability and self-consciousness. If you don't concentrate, you will step on someone's toes, trip and fall, or just make a fool of yourself. You lose yourself in the dance. When you are in the dance, that is all you can see, all you can feel, hear and think about.
On the dance floor, you get no perspective. You are adrift on the hard word of bewilderment, but there's this other dimension, this balcony to get perspective on what's happening on the dance floor. We walk to the foot of the stairs, climb them, look over the railing and watch. We look down and observe the dance, you'll understand it better.
You'll notice patterns. You could not when you were caught up in the intensity on the floor, you'll discover the reason why people did what they did. And then when you studied, learned and reflected, you can return to the floor and dance and dance and dance. This time with understanding. This time with perspective, we are seated in heavenly places with Christ, but we also live on the dance floor.
How essential is it to have that heavenly perspective to go on up to that other dimension and live there too? And how much more important is it when the dance floor is the place of chaos? The venue of madness. The first casualty of suffering is perspective. When we are in the crushing pain of here and now, it is desperately hard to leave the dance, climb the balcony, and survey the world from the perspective of the reign of God and the lordship of Christ.
We live with disorientation, instability and bewildering change. Confusion and decay are all around us and within us, but we have died with Christ and have been raised with him to the balcony. Seated with him, we receive a new vision of hope and serenity.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes about perspective in her book, learning to Walk in the Dark. She was walking with her husband along a beach in Georgia and encountered a huge loggerhead turtle. She writes, she was still alive, but just barely her. Shell hot to the touch from the noonday sun. She had come ashore during the night to lay her eggs and when she had finished, she had looked around for the brightest horizon to lead her back to the sea.
Mistaking the distant lights on the mainland for the sky reflected on the ocean. She went the wrong way, judging by her tracks. She had dragged herself through the sand until her flippers were buried and she could go no further. Her. We found her where she had given up half cooked by the sun, but still able to turn one eye to look at us.
When we bent over, I buried her in cool sand while Ed ran to the ranger station. An hour later, she was on her back with tire chains around her front legs being dragged behind a park service Jeep back towards the ocean. Finally, the Jeep stopped at the edge of the water. Ed and I helped the ranger unchain her and flip her back Over then, all three of us watched as she lay motionless in the surf.
Every wave brought her life back to her washing the sand from her eyes and making her shell shine again. When a particularly large one broke over her, she lifted her head and tried her back legs. The next wave made her light enough to find a foothold, and she pushed off back into the water that was her home, watching her swim away slowly after her nightmare ride through the dunes.
I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hand that turn your life upside down.
The poet in Psalm 46 weighs in on the topic of perspective. God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though it's waters raw and foam and the mountains quake with their surge.
We are living in times of global transition when continents are colliding, when ancient truths are shaking and trusted institutions are crumbling, but we've not yet witnessed the mountains falling into the heart of the sea. This is the very worst that the poet can imagine. But even if the very worst does happen, the poet will not fear because he says the Lord Almighty is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress. We have a new identity in Christ. We have taken a new location in the heavenly places, and so says Paul, we need a new outfit, a wardrobe that is fitting for the dress circle. In the verse after the end of our reading, he says, this wardrobe includes compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience bearing with one another and forgiving each other.
And this new suit of gorgeous clothes is all held together by love. When we put on this new set of clothes, we build an emoji, one large communal image of Christ, where we all have a part and all contribute. Get rid of anger, he says. Wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language do not lie to one another because you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
In that renewal, there is no longer Greek and Jew, Republican and Democrat, apple and Android, Alabama, or Auburn, but Christ is all and all together in community. We create the avatar of Jesus, but we can only do it in community. No more narcissistic representations of a false perfect self, but a communal avatar that represents the body of Christ to the world.
This morning, we are sitting in two dimensions, this material universe, but also a dimension in which we are seated with Christ in heavenly places. We have died and been buried in baptism. We've been raised to new life with new perspective. We have a box seat on the balcony sitting next to Jesus, whose life gives us safety, whose perspective gives us hope?
Whose presence gives us courage and whose spirit gives us grace? Get on the balcony, then go and live boldly with joy and serenity. Amen.