Sometimes Flesh Matters.

by Dr. Stuart Blythe

My wife and I live across the Atlantic Ocean from our parents and adult children. Therefore, for us, communication technology is a gift. Through social media and communication platforms, such as Skype, we are able to keep in touch regularly and cheaply. We can talk, message, and see one another. We can share information, audibly, and visually. The exibility means we can easily negotiate time dierences. As we expressed on social media at Christmas: “Technology is wonderful.” Yet when we part at airports, we hold, hug, and at times shed a few tears, for we will not “see” one another for at least several months. We will not be together. We will miss one another. Technology helps us keep in touch. But the nature of our relationships will be dierent. We will be apart. We will be distant. It is simply not the same, talking to a loved one on Skype, as it is physically sharing time and space with them. In some situations, there can be a compensation for the lack of, but no substitute for, embodied presence.

I recently taught a course with three virtual seats. That is, three students joined virtually on-screen in our high quality “Zoom rooms” where other students were physically present. In various ways, I sought to include these virtual students fully. I tried to remember to look at the camera as well as around the room when presenting. With the help of my teaching assistant, I included in-class students with the virtual seat students in online Zoom break out rooms. I addressed the virtual seat students directly. We negotiated how they would deliver their sermons in a meaningful way to allow peer feedback. Indeed, the technology meant I was able to listen, evaluate, and give feedback on sixteen sermons in a reasonable time frame. I heard some live and watched some recorded in a group managed by my teaching assistant. For the students, the virtual seat option minimized the costs and time of travel, which might otherwise have prohibited them from taking the course. Technology gives. Yet, technology also takes away. I was not able to quickly improvise with in-class practical activities, move rooms, or take the class for a coee. On the last day, I could not share the donuts I had bought with the virtual seat students. These are perhaps small prices to pay but pay them we did.

While writing this article, I watched a recording of me preaching at an event. Although watching yourself can be a bit awkward, it is also very instructive about the medium. What is apparent is the recording of a sermon does not make

a good or a lousy sermon any better or relevant. It does, however, make it dierent. The medium used controls the perspective, content, and possible responses. Watching such a recording may be a good experience, but it is not the same experience as being physically present at the live event. This is the case even with live streaming. For what you are participating in is not the live event but the “streaming” of a live event.

In the theatre, they talk about the “fourth wall”. This fourth wall is the invisible wall between the performers on the stage and the audience. When material is presented on the screen, there is fth wall; quite literally, the screen. Reach out, and you will touch the screen, not what it is representing. We might decide that this is okay; it may be benecial. But, we should also recognize what we are watching. I was interested in watching the recording of me preach; it was simultaneously me and not me.

I hope that the three lived examples above demonstrate several things. First, I appreciate the benets of

technology. Second, that technology can simultaneously oer opportunity and impose restrictions, benets as well as drawbacks. This is the case both for those participating physically and those connecting virtually. Third, to connect with people through technology and to share time and space with embodied physical presence are not the same. They are qualitatively dierent.

By the time you are reading this, Christmas will be over for another year. For a few weeks a year, or maybe just a Sunday or two, we stress that Jesus was real; real baby, real human. If we stretch into the Gospel of John, we talk about the Word becoming esh. We speak the doctrinal term, incarnation. There is, however, a danger as the weeks pass. A risk that we lose the ongoing signicance of the meaning of the incarnation. For if we understand the Scriptures correctly, the incarnation was not merely one communication technique equal to the rest. It was, instead, the supreme form of communication between God and humanity. Here was the sending of the Son of God to become a “Son of Man” so that the children of humanity could become the children of God. To put that more simply, the embodied physical presence of Jesus mattered in God’s plan of revelation and salvation. Flesh counts. It is through embodied humanity that God’s self-revelation nds its fullest expression, and salvation achieved.

Of course, our faith comes to us today, not through the physical embodied presence of the human Jesus. Rather, it comes to us through the experience of Scripture and Spirit. Yet, it is precisely our task as believing people, as the body of Christ, to put the esh on this experience. We do this to communicate as Jesus communicated: through embodied human words and actions. I will illustrate this with respect to preaching. And I will do this by drawing on the imagery of a writer called Charles Bartow in his book “God’s Human Speech.”

With Scripture, we have “blood turned to ink.” That is, we have the story of people’s experiences with God recorded in print. It is the responsibility of the preacher to turn this ink back to blood. They do this as they seek to communicate the words of Scripture in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit through their embodied human words and actions. Through them, the words of Scriptures take on “esh.” Similarly, it is the responsibility of all the people of God to put on the esh of Scripture and Spirit in incarnational and embodied words and actions. For this is God’s primary way of revealing God’s self as in his Son, Jesus Christ. If we follow this argument when we record a sermon, we are turning blood not back to ink, but to code and data, something to be transmitted in a medium. Again, that may be ne, but it is what we are doing.

The missiologist, Michael Frost, in one of his books, warns about “excarnation.” Excarnation, he explains, is the process of “deeshing.” One feature of such deeshing is the rise of “screen culture and virtual” reality. Frost claims that this separates people from the necessity of navigating reallife relationships and complexities. Among the examples he cites, is the use of technology in churches where people connect on screen from a distance rather than in person. Instead, he argues for the necessity of “an embodied, placed, fully present expression of faith in an age of disengagement, dislocation, and dystopia.”

Do not “hear” me wrong. I am not arguing that we should not use technology in theological education or congregational life; I have, and I do. I am instead arguing that we need to think not merely practically, but theologically. We need to think theologically about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what the consequences are of such actions. We need to ask honestly to what extent the free and physical embodied presence of people is necessary. To what extent are they essential to make an event what we claim it to be? Generally, you need to be in the room to share a meal, whether that be steak and fries or bread and wine.

We also need to ask honestly to what extent embodied physical presence is necessary to express and foster the type of relationships we claim are part of such an activity. Can technology birth and build the depth of relationship we want to name “fellowship”? To be sure, technology can sometimes be a compensation for the absence of embodied relations. Various strategies can be put in place to enhance the experience of all those participating, and we can arm the value of technology. This is what we seek to do in our educational practices. At other times, however, this technological compensation may limit the freedom of those participating in real space and time. Such instances may or may not include worship services. In such cases, the technological solutions should be dismissed both for the sake of those participating physically and for those participating virtually. They should be rejected because the mediated thing is not the thing, and we should not pretend that it is. In such a case, we should take the harder route of nding embodied solutions.

Sometimes flesh matters.

Dr. Stuart Blythe is the John Gladstone Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Acadia Divinity College, as well as the Director of Doctoral Studies, the Director of Simpson Lectures, and the Dean of the Sarah Daley Nickerson Chapel.