Here is the Fake News! Er-?
Preacher: Revd Jane Barron, Honorary Church of Scotland Chaplain
Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
In Alan Rusbridger’s recent book called [1]‘What to believe in a Fake News World’ he writes, What can you believe any more .. I am writing this at the peak – or so I hope – of the most vicious pandemic to have gripped the world in over a hundred years .. The question of what information you can trust is, all of a sudden, a matter of life and death …
This morning, I wanted to share some statements with you from people who responded to a plea in the New York Times to send a [2]Six Word Memoir to describe their experience in lockdown … I’d like to read you an assortment, and I don’t think they’re fake … these are from the heart, no agenda, no other reason than reflecting and sharing experience under pressure … The memoir is entitled ,’I am thankful to be thankful …’
The first one is just that … I am thankful to be thankful
Hearing granny laugh of the phone
Ambulance took him, he came home
I watched her learn to read
Tried, failed, failed worse, tried again
We’re falling in love over FaceTime
I held my dying husband’s hand
The crinkling eye above the mask
The Six word memoir attracted more than 10,000 responses … do look it up in the New York Times and read so many more … in fact – why not write your own? Nothing fake or false … no to persuade or cajole or corrupt, but straight, feelingly from your heart …
On the second Sunday of Advent 2020 I’ve been drawn to the subject of fake news because we hear a lot about it, and it’s timely for today’s scriptures – this is the day when churches could have sandwich boards outside their doors proclaiming headline news with mastheads quoting Isaiah … such a headline might scream – “Comfort My People” says prophet after Babylonian King denies human rights abuses … “ Mean
while, “Prepare the Way of the Lord” cries breathless acolyte Mark, after Herod cries treason!” Both Isaiah from chapters 40 – 55 and St Mark are purveyors of Good News … But is it real or fake?
Just yesterday morning an Associate Professor of Politics from Richmond University said words to the effect … “If you believe the news you’re hearing and it suits your ideology or agenda then you’re more likely to believe its true .. when we hear news which we don’t want to hear we may call it fake news …”
Remember back in school. when we started to learn more complicated math and the teacher would say, I don’t want to only see the solution, I want you to show your work … meaning I need to see evidence proving how you got there …. our maths teacher used to say, Even if you get the final solution wrong, as along as I can see your working you’ll still get marks because I can see you’re thinking in the right way or even a highly creative way …
I think we can see the working in our scriptures … I think we can trace themes of goodness, longing for peace and justice throughout the text … it scares out at us today of course in shouts of Good News after awful years of suffering – and these headlines are heady, exciting, wonderful News … and both these breaking news items In Isaiah and Mark come in moments of national crisis when people are exhausted and mentally, physically depleted, economies and livelihoods shot …
Can I suggest that because of the Pandemic even in our relatively pampered, wealthy, insulated late C21st lives we can experience something of the relief both Isaiah at verse 40 and St Mark chapter 1 proclaim today … Prepare the Way! Comfort, O
Comfort my people says your God … and the image is of God as a kindly shepherd
leading homesick, exhausted stragglers home to Jerusalem and encouraging them back to faithful living … And when we see news footage today in hospitals of people struggling to breathe on ventilators and the instances of PTSD
many medics and other key workers are experiencing we want to hear good news shouted from the rooftops … and we already hear so much hopeful talk about how we individually and in our societies learn better ways of living because of the Pandemic … we are exhausted and we’re on the edge of our seats for Good News …
At 7a.m. last Wednesday news presenters across the UK were seriously hyped … and in the same excited vein Mark opens his gospel with the sort of breathless good news announcement expressed by the BBC Breakfast presenters I heard last Wednesday morning announcing the UK regulator MHRA had approved the Pfizer BioNtech vaccine … Even by today’s 24 hour rolling news networks standards Mark’s heady headline gets straight to the point … with no preamble he writes, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God … As it’s written in the
prophet Isaiah, I am sending a messenger who will prepare your way …” Lillian Daniel’s comment is, [3]“Mark begins his gospel like a breathless messenger … nor does he linger over the baby Jesus as do Matthew and Luke … no .. he launches into his story about another messenger, John the Baptizer who also bursts on the scene with good news to tell …
I was a radio news journalist before I was called to Ministry … if anyone has any doubt about the atmosphere in newsrooms being on more than occasion fraught, bad tempered, tense, ringing with very bad language … argument / counter argument how to distill a story into a top line and capture with equal drama facts and narrative all with the aim of capturing listeners’ attention which won’t have them channel hopping
to find something juicer – do not have such doubts … But – and this is very important … David Johnson the then editor insisted on two things … report the facts and do it in relatively few BUT engaging words … it was, it is an art … you can be entertaining but when it comes to the news you must be true …
I’ve already mentioned Alan Rusbridger who was the Editor of Guardian News and Media and is Chair of the Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford …‘What to Believe in a Fake News World’
Alan Rusbridger writes, People everywhere feel ever more alienated from – and mistrustful – of news and those who make it .. we no longer seem to know who or what to believe … we are living through a crisis of ‘information chaos’ … this book is a glossary for this bewildering age, from Bias to Brexit, from Climate Change to Fake News, from Clickbait to Trust this is a definitive guide for how to stay informed, tell truth from fiction, and hold those in power accountable to the modern age …
So … where does this all lead on this morning of Good News? We haven’t got time to debate nuanced definitions of truth … what is true, what is truth? In brief, some might say something had to be evidenced, laid out in front of them like my math work – if that’s the case, why are we bothering to sit in a Christian Chapel, listening to sacred scripture, and yearning for evidenced meaning? Faith is not science. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we leave now and put the lights off on our way out … So where does this lead us? Where does this leave the state of our belief in our scriptures today? Can I suggest the following thoughts, which you may rightly deem true, false, showing momentary promise or just plain bunkum!
When we do narrative criticism of any good piece of writing be it William Shakespeare or sacred scripture we pay attention to themes running through … and once we’ve grasped these they act like major conduits, motorways to guide and advance
our understanding of the whole, even though there will be off ramps and side roads leading us to a plethora of images and ideas all adding to the quality of storytelling …
I take very seriously the Genesis statement in the creation myth found there – that when God had made everything he looked on it and saw that it was good … in amongst, around and within all the complexity and diverse characterisation and incredible storytelling in our Old & New Testaments this is my personal default .. this is how it began and, I believe the benchmark for everything that’s followed and will follow us … for me, because this is a starting point for belief, I take seriously God’s longing for peace and justice in the created world … which means God is always going to be drawing us/ longing for us/ working with those who work for peace, prosperity, health and sustainability for the created world, human and other … which is why when I read today’s Good News stories I don’t believe they’re fake … I believe the theme of God’s longing for the world to be good, as it was made to be is always there, even when we’re making a right mess of things … these Good News Stories come at time of national horror, times when enough is enough … times when certain characters are called on beyond the noise of the earthquake and chaos to restore calm, allow exhausted people to recover … bring fake news despots to their knees and pay close attention to truth … Today John the Baptist cries again in the wilderness of our post pandemic world asking us to believe that the horror is not God’s endgame … and that in a man called Jesus we will hear not just nice stories but his demand for truth … his demand for human rights … his calling time on greed and vengeance … and his iteration over and over again that we are loved even as he calls us to love one another …
I choose to believe this is not fake … I believe the working is there, and reasoned by faith … and in the words of the ‘Six Word Memoir ‘… on this Advent Good News Sunday I pray we are all thankful to be thankful for Good News we can believe in …
Amen … and thanks be to God for the Good News of the Gospel …
[1] ‘What to Believe in a Fake News World/ A. Rusbridger/ Canongate 2020
[2] New York Times/ 26th Nov 2020
[3] Feasting on the Word Year B/ Page 45