Buses, billboards -- and brooding

By David Kitchingman in Articles

David reflects on humour and the holy

Hi Jo

Thanks for your two tweets.

Yes, I had heard about the plan to mount a bus advert campaign along the lines of, "There's probably no God - enjoy your life".

Pause for thought, or consider a variation, "There's probably no life (in the long run) - enjoy your God".

And yes, I'd also heard about the church Christmas billboard in Auckland, "Poor Joseph - God was a hard act to follow".

On the contrary, one might respond, "Lucky Joseph - having a son who saw 'Dad' as his model of God".

But there's no escaping the sensitivities when humour and the holy (both terms equally hard to define) smash into each other like particles in a collider. And when they both come from the same nucleus, from within the church as in one of the examples, it can be even more explosive. Dare I therefore ponder, before some joker outside the church does, whether the billboard came first, and the bus ad was then addressed to Joseph?

Part of the problem is that humour and the holy are intimately related. According to my research in the last few moments, both start when a baby is cuddled and tickled by its mother. It giggles gingerly as it feels good and connected, but uncertain and vulnerable, all at the same time. Such apparently opposing feelings belong to both experiences.

Jokes aside, so to speak, these two snippets set me thinking about what they may be saying to the church. They should at least be a reminder of the widespread indifference to intimations of divinity. The traditional personification of God is now problematic for many people. And Jesus as Son of God, sui generis, is even more so. The church's liturgical expression is increasingly a compartmentalised, in-house language. Erudite explanations of it can be offered, but something has shriveled up in public consciousness of the spiritual zone. For many it's an "unknown zone".

What also interests me about your tweets is that, despite your not being involved in church life, you heard about these news items at least as soon as I did and they made enough impression for you to pass them on. That suggests two things about communication.

First, the impact of compressing a message to something like the space available on a billboard or bus ad. That's a huge challenge. Yet even more important than saying anything at all is the need for a new sensitivity within the church to the thought forms and language of High Street. Any mission is vacuous without sharpened senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. That's where we may have to start.

Second, the medium is often as important as the message. Tiresome as it may seem, you don't get very far these days without a touch of novelty, or at least of contemporaneity, such as twitter. Even billboards and buses could become old hat. Imagine therefore how my attention was aroused when I came across the following on the National Police Headquarters website:

WANTED

ALIVE

A. CHURCH

With a light touch, not the dead hand of doctrine
With one eye on Jesus, the other on his double
With one ear to the ground, the other to the inner voice
With a palate for bittersweet, tasting pain and joy
With a scent for old roses, yet catching a whiff of new hybrids
And with a sixth sense for inspiration, also known as Spirit

I haven't heard how it's going, but I'm hoping that the hunt is on.

David Kitchingman

-- A Connections article, reprinted from the Parish Bulletin for Feb. 14, 2010.