A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on December 14, 2025 by Revd Richard Carter
I have always felt sympathy for John the Baptist in prison. He has given all in his heralding of the one who will come after him. He has not only made a path straight for him, but he has also made way for him, getting out of the way and pointing to Jesus as the Christ – the one they must behold. ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. But now John the Baptist is imprisoned for his integrity because he has had the courage to speak out condemning the unlawful marriage of Herod to Herodias, and is beginning to doubt if he has got things right. Is Jesus really the one they had all been waiting for? And why, if he was the promised Messiah, is John himself still in prison. Once you let doubt in it gnaws away at you. John the Baptist needs some reassurance. It is a recognisable form of doubt that I am sure most of us can identify with. Has he been mistaken? Has his own ministry in the desert been misguided or deluded? How many of us have at times shared this doubt. Is our Christianity just wishful thinking or are we too deluded? Is there really any hope in our faith or is it just a sort failure cult where we convince ourselves that the kingdom of heaven will come however bad things get. It often seems not only to John the Baptist but also to us that its easy to despair: sinners’ ways seem to be prospering while all around us justice is being denied.
We are certainly living in an age where it is very easy to doubt goodness or to believe in the power of righteousness. It seems that so many of our heroes are not all they have made themselves out to be. And doubt and suspicion begins to eat away at the things and the people we once believed holy and invisible. When evil escalates we need proof that goodness works and will ultimately win the day. But it doesn’t always seem like that and it’s easy to get cynical about everything. Like John the Baptist we too need to know. Does Christianity work? Or is it just another delusion. We too want a Messiah who really can save us.
The other night I woke in the middle of the night and turned on the radio because I couldn’t sleep. And yet the news everywhere seemed so utterly anxious and bleak. I found myself in the middle of the night listening to a programme about algorithms in social media and how they are designed to maximize user engagement and time spent on a social media platform. You may be more familiar with this than I was but algorithms prioritise content based on engagement signals. These signals are based on content or shares, or the amount of time, or likes or shares a piece of content or tweet receives. This means that often news and information is generated and passed on not according to its truthfulness or importance but through its capacity to generate response. The algorithm acts as a powerful amplifier. The problem is that that which is amplified is not necessarily the truth and certainly not the whole truth. Rather an algorithm rewards what generates response and the highest form of engagement and algorithms can be fixed to amplify particular responses over others. Negativity and anger trigger a bigger response than hope, or unity and joy. Most of all -the formula of outrage with content framed in controversy and extreme opinion generates the widest response. Words become triggers which conflate issues. Present triggers are- immigration, hotels, small boats, sex offenders, race, etc. Moral transgression prompting users to express fury- anger, fear and the threat of pending disaster is known to generate thousands of shares. Certain words and themes become triggers or click bait for thousands of people to share. Sentences like- “Stop this before it’s too late” “Why is nobody talking about…?” How bad do things have to get before we do something?” “They have been deliberately hiding the fact that…” (followed by an untruth) The truth that they didn’t want you to know….” “Share this with everyone you know before it’s too late” If algorithms are designed to prioritise engagement not truth and most voluminous social engagement is based on highly emotional response and reactions- then those who get the biggest following aim to outrage, produces violent reaction, and escalate fear and prejudice. A social media storm can be generated around something that is factually completely untrue and even when the truth is ascertained the social media storm is so great that the actual facts are powerless to counteract the false truth that has already been generated. What we thus experience is the amplification of what was once called malicious gossip- but now gossip can be generated on an epidemic global scale. Social media can create an echo chamber in which fear and untruth is multiplied The world has always known of conspiracy theories but now such conspiracies can be formulated to generate a social media feeding frenzy to such an extent that as we have seen this amplification of highly charged distortion and outrage can spark demonstrations and riots and dominate the political agenda. Now journalist and commentator and politicians themselves spend much of their time responding to false narratives, crisis and fictions generated and amplified by social media platforms which are the ones most likely to have gone viral. In the last week I have found myself speaking to people who I respect that are living in an alternative reality and who I realise in conversation have been feeding on algorithms totally different from my own. Each person of course feeds on the algorithms that echo and amplify their own fears. And these fears often threaten, just as they did in Jesus’ time the apocalypse but now on a global scale- in other words unless you respond- the end is at hand. Its like the tower of Babel- it is the amplification of division and such algorithms can become highly addictive and compulsive. It is perhaps a lesson to all of us that Australia has banned access to social media for under 16 year olds. It is often dangerous to mental health.
But what has all this got to do with the Gospel. I believe a lot because even the Gospel itself and Jesus Christ in today’s culture of distortion and amplification can be misappropriated. On the steps of St Martin’s yesterday what those who gathered hoped to do was to return to the actual narrative of a saviour born for everyone. In other words to revisit the actual narrative of Jesus himself not the amplified false algorithm of Christianity being threatened by migrants and Islam. We do not live in fear of our neighbour- come to our International Group. It’s often the Muslims that remind me I have forgotten to say the prayers before we eat together as one community. God so loved the world- and that means everyone. That love of God was not expressed in violence, division or aggression but through a vulnerable child born in poverty- in a stable. A child whose mother was a humble unmarried woman and a step father homeless in a town where they were destitute strangers- a baby born in a shed whose witnesses were simple shepherds from the fields and magi from foreign lands – a family who had to become refugees themselves to flee the horror of a genocide. This is the story we find in the Gospels. And when rocked and destabilised by the modern storms and amplification of all that generates fear prejudice and hostility- as our vicar said in his prayer we must return to the message of the angels- the voices that at Christmas unite both heaven and earth- peace on earth and good will to all, all people. God so loved the world. That means everyone and that’s why he sent his son.
Back to John the Baptist in prison. Of course in prison John, fearing for his own life, is wondering and perhaps doubting whether he has got things right. In his own echo chamber where are minds can often generate doubt- John the Baptist does what we too are called upon to do. To truth check- he goes back to the source. He sends his disciples to find out more about the one we call the Lamb of God. What does Jesus actually do. What is the nature of the good news that he lives and brings. What is the truth that counteracts all the intrigue, suspicion and fear that so often distorts our world and fills us with doubt. John from his prison cell asks a simple question: “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another” Jesus answer is not just words it is the action of his life. He is not telling us. He is not amplifying fear or hatred or prejudice or self-promoting propaganda. Quite the opposite he is showing, he is living, he is with: his life itself is the witness- his instrument is his own flesh and blood- his own life , and ultimately his platform will be a cross on which he himself is nailed because of the amplification of the fear, prejudice and injustice of his own time, not dissimilar from the lynch mob mentality of fear and prejudice we can still generate. So what is this lived witness. Not words but words made flesh. Words made flesh in a way quite different from those who manipulate fear division and hatred and think they are the kings of our time. Our true king and our saviour shows rather than tells. He shows us the way the truth the life. He shows us that those who were unable to hear now listen, those formally blind now receive their sight, those who were lame walk, those who were lepers and outcasts are now cleansed, those who were dead are raised—those who were poor have good news bought to them. What does this mean. Well I encourage you to see each of these signs as the promises of Jesus not in some never, never miraculous world but as metaphors of what is taking place in you and me here and now through the love of God in Jesus Christ. Yes here even where you are today in this church with its open door that welcomes all. That through Christ’s love even in the blindness and deception of our world we too can through his grace learn to see again really see. We too though our ears pound with the distorted fake news of our time- can lean to hear again. Hear with the ears of our heart. That we too fearful because of own sins and failures and often feeling unclean and unworthy and on the edge can be cleansed and forgiven and included and we too do not have to live in fear because through Christ we too can be raised to life, life, life, in all its fulness. Life that does not echo the fears and viral distortions of our time but lives which are echo chambers of the love of God- but much more love breaking out of the tomb of the ego self- lives which reach out as Christ reached out in love for the world- earth and heaven echoing the love of God for all people.
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch; like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
The Lord hath promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
In answer to the distortions and false amplifications of our time we are called to live Jesus- to discover again the one who restores and heals our humanity, who breaks down the barriers that divide us- the one in whom the whole of creation can become the echo of God’s love for the world. That means God’s love for everyone.
