Just when I think that all this talk about A.I. or Artificial Intelligence is a bunch of artificial air, something happens to show me that maybe we're further along the AI path than we think. Maybe the worlds of the born and the words of the made are coming together faster than we ever imagined.
In researching this week's theme of betrayal, I undertook a Google search to reference a disturbing news story I remembered hearing the last week of October. Here's the Associated Press news release:
TACOMA, Wash. (Oct.28) - A seriously wounded 8-year-old boy calmly described his father's deadly knife rampage during a call for help to 911. "My daddy killed me with a knife and I'm gone," the boy told a dispatcher. "Can you please send the Army men or the ambulance?" The soft-spoken child gave a wrong address and then hung up. But a second dispatcher called back, keeping him on the line while a frantic search was under way. On Wednesday, authorities released the remarkable tape of Anthony Sukto's calm courage during the Oct.22 ordeal, and the frantic efforts to find him. "What's going on there?" asked dispatcher Kristine Woodrow. "My daddy killed me with a butcher knife," Anthony said. "How did that happen if you are talking to me?" Woodrow asked. "Because," Anthony answered, "I don't know what happened, but something. He grabbed knives. I woke up. My dad, he was killing my mom and then my, my, my dad told me to go onto the other bed and then he's like, 'You're next,' and then he killed me. I'm still alive. I kind of survived." Woodrow said she wasn't sure if what she was hearing was for real. "He was extremely calm," she recalled Wednesday. "It wasn't a typical response from someone who had just witnessed what he witnessed or had just been attacked." Woodrow said while police and firefighters tried to find where Anthony was calling from, she tried to keep him on the phone.
Can you think of any worse betrayal? A father willfully stabbing to death is own family, and his young son's inability to comprehend such betrayal.
Can you think of anything more sickening? Yet such behavior isn't unknown to human beings. It's not beyond our belief.
Yet when I Googled "My daddy just killed me" to find the complete text of this terrible story, the Google search engine, a complex computer brain, began arguing with me. It refused to believe such an event could transpire.
"Do you mean 'My daddy just called me'?" Google asked.
No, I replied and input: "My Daddy just killed me."
Repeatedly Goggle refused to believe in the possibility of such a moral outrage. "You mean 'My daddy just called me?'"
No, I typed, "My daddy just killed me?"
Google: "You mean 'My daddy just kissed me?'"
No, I typed back, "My daddy just killed me."
The Google search engine might not yet have wholly human intelligence. But here was something that had a higher sense of moral standards than human beings. The logical world of the computer could not comprehend a circumstance that would result in a child calling a stranger to announce, "My daddy just killed me." It was literally inconceivable for the computer.
Jesus experienced betrayal repeatedly during his lifetime. The most famous betrayer in history, of course, is Judas. For Dante, betrayers got the innermost circles of hell: Judas, Brutus, Cassius. But if truth be known, all twelve of Jesus' disciples, not just Judas, betrayed Jesus.
His closest, most intimate, most cared for and carefully instructed followers, continually betrayed his confidences, his teachings, his leadership. Jesus' own family, his home-town, his neighbors, rejected his words and chased him out of town.
The religious establishment of Jesus' day - the powerful Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes - all put aside their differences in order to join together against a fellow Jew. Here was one of their most dazzling preachers, teachers and healers, and they turned him over to the hated Roman authorities.
Even the Romans betrayed their own legal boundaries and rules of order, enabling them to put Jesus to death, despite his innocence.
In this week's gospel text Jesus cautions his disciples that if they remain faithful to him they too will experience the bitterness of betrayal even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends. We can even be betrayed by strangers.
There was another national news story the last week in October. Maybe some of you remember it.
A woman from Douglas County, Georgia went on vacation to Greece for 2? weeks. When she returned home, she saw the lights on and a strange car in her driveway. She called police, who confronted the imposter but the imposter claimed that she was renting the home.
Here as a stranger who literally took over the home owner's identity. She wore her clothes. She changed the utilities over into her own name. She replaced carpet and repainted rooms with colors she liked. She took down the owner's pictures of herself, and put up her own pictures. She even moved in a washer and dryer and a dog. (See The Orange County Register, 23 October 2004, News 28.)
Yet despite our own personal, painful experiences with being betrayed by those we have trusted and loved, depended upon and believed in, not one of us can escape the fact that we're ourselves betrayers. Not one of us can claim to being a perfectly faithful follower of Jesus, a disciple who never fails to proclaim Christ with our every step.
There are many ways to betray our Lord, and each other:
We can betray our Lord, and each other, through our mouths.
We can betray our Lord, and each other, through our gullets.
We can betray our Lord, and each other, through our dreams.
We can betray God, and we betray each other, with our hypocrisy.
Here's a little test: What did Walt Disney's breakfast consist of? I'll give you three guesses: 1. bowl of kumiss (Mongolian fermented mare's milk) 2. Dunkin' Donuts drowned in whiskey 3. Sushi (on the theory that it would be good for circulation).
The correct answer is Dunkin' Donuts.
But wait a minute: "Here was a man who announced, 'No liquor in my company' (but dosed himself daily on donuts and whiskey). Here was a man who said, 'No facial hair in my organization (but sported a moustache). Moreover, he was a special agent of the FBI . . . But that doesn't detract from the fact that he was a creative, persistent, visionary man. When his brother Roy said, 'Don't make a short animated movie with sound,' he made Steamboat Willie. When his brother Roy said, 'Don't make a feature-length animated movie,' he made Snow White. When his brother Roy said, 'Don't set up theme parks,' he constructed Disneyland." (I got this from Manfred Kets de Vries, The Leadership Mystique [Prentice Hall, 2001], 76.)
We can betray our Lord, and each other, through our know-it-all attitudes.
The following ad appeared in the classified section of a newspaper:
"For Sale: Complete Encyclopedia set. Twenty-six volumes in mint condition. Never used. My husband already knows it all."
We do know a lot. One issue of the NY Times contains more information than the average person in the medieval world would have been exposed to in a lifetime
But the truth is this: the more we know, the more we know we don't know.
We can betray our Lord, and each other, through our fickleness.
A young man spied a beautiful young woman walking through Central Park. He began to follow her. After a time, the young woman turned and confronted him.
"Why are you following me?" she demanded. "Because you are so beautiful," he answered. "I am madly in love with you and I want you to be mine."
To which the young woman replied, "But why don't you take a look behind you to see my younger sister? She is far more beautiful than I."
The young man quickly wheeled about but saw no one. "You're putting me on," he said. To which she replied, "If you are so madly in love with me, then why did you turn around?"
We turn our heads in the direction of every passing attraction.
We can betray our Lord, and each other, with our indolence, our idleness.
The average human brain has the capacity to learn over fifty languages, think faster than the world's fastest computer, and memorize every word/in every book/on every shelf/in any college library.
So tell me: how many languages have you learned recently? Is it less than 50? How many library books have you memorized lately?
Now tell me again: Are you living to the max? Are you living with the pedal to the metal of what God gave you and wants for you? (Carmen Mariano, "Reach for the Stars," Vital Speeches, LXX [01 October 2004], 761.)
We betray God our Lord, and each other, with our safety-first, security minded-ness.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew alone from New York to Paris. He had no radar, no radio, no parachute, no automatic pilot. He could see nothing out of his front windshield because a spare gas tank had been welded to it.
Lindbergh flew for over 33 hours without sleep. He could look forward only by using a periscope that was made from two pocket mirrors.
Are you playing it safe in life? Or are you taking risks for God and the gospel? We betray our Lord, and each other, by trying to go-it-alone in life.
A new class of second-graders was asked to tell how many other children they had in their families. The teacher asked, "Have you any brothers and sisters?" One little boy answered, "No ma'am. I'm single."
No Christian goes through life singly. God created us for relationship. Even if you're "single," you have brothers and sisters everywhere. But you've got to let others be your brothers and sisters.
We all betray Jesus, and we betray each other, by not receiving all that God has to offer, by letting life go by, and by, and by.
One of the most famous paintings in Christian history is that of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper." According to tradition, Leonardo painted the scene to convey the exact moment after Jesus said to his disciples, "one of you will betray me." Have you ever looked at Jesus' eyes in this painting?
I have this image of Jesus turning around and looking as his betrayer, both in the Upper Room, and when "the cock crowed." But his eyes aren't angry or condemning eyes; his eyes aren't rejecting or judgmental eyes. His eyes are the eyes of love, the eyes of compassion, the eyes of "come back."
Jesus looks at us this morning with those same "come back" eyes.
Peter came back. All the disciples except Judas came back.
We're betrayers, all. But the message of the gospel this morning is "come back." Jesus invites us back into his arms, telling us we've never left his heart.
Will you come back?