media and truth

I remember over 30 years ago hearing Marshall Rosenberg talk about not accepting the truth as coming from the "mind-numbing media." I wonder if we have expected too much from it in the recent life of the United Church of Christ. And now we feel betrayed by it with the brouhaha over Barack Obama and the former pastor of his home church (Trinity UCC in Chicago), Jeremiah Wright. I think the media is what it is. It numbs the mind into expecting it will get it right or get it the way we want it to be. Its almost if we live by the "sword" we will be attacked by the sword.

I was struck on this past Thursday which was Maundy Thursday of Holy Week the reading from the Gospel of John of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples in the lowest rung of the social ladder role of a servant, on the night of his betrayal. And then telling them there is a new Great Commandment. The 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule don't even measure up any more to this singular great one - to love one another as HE has loved us. I wonder how the UCC would be perceived if all of us who claim its identity would have spent the last few weeks washing the feet (or similar action) of other people around us?

Back on Jeremiah Wright - he is being portrayed as a inflammatory demagogue. Even aside from whatever is the reality of decades of his sermons, let along pastoral leadership, I was struck by his successor, whom he personally selected and mentored at Trinity for the past few years - Otis Moss III. I heard Moss on "All Things Considered" of National Public Radio this week. He is a very measured and thoughtful man. He spoke with a good listening of the interviewer AND he conveyed the Gospel in the midst of it. He talked about his wish that out of this whole thing people would know the living Christ and the saving grace of God. Powerful! And the wild-eyed Wright got him as his successor. hmm. Crafty as a fox he is!