Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
I have a Facebook account, but I rarely post anything personal. I’m pretty sure that the last time I did so was winter 2020 before the lockdown. Bill and I were on the Flight Deck at a UD basketball game thoroughly enjoying the best Flyer men’s basketball season we had ever witnessed. I took a picture of Bill broadly smiling with his glass of wine at half time as the Flyers looked poised to be in the running for a national championship.
Feeling festive, I thought it would be fun to post the photo on my Facebook page. And it was crazy. Almost immediately, I was getting responses. They were all very positive. I got a bunch of “thumbs up,” “likes,” “hearts,” and encouraging messages. Friends and family wanted us to know that they loved the photo and were glad we were having such a good time.
Talk about a boost to the old ego. While I don’t put much up on Facebook, I get it why people do. All that positive response can be a pretty heady experience. I think one reason I don’t post much is that I have an idea that I could develop a serious desire for more and more “likes”!
In the reading today from I Samuel, Saul is in a very bad way because women who come out singing and dancing in celebration of his return credit him with slaying thousands. While thousands sounds like a whole lot of slaying to me, Saul is not satisfied. And that is because the women credit David with slaying tens of thousands. To put it in contemporary terms, David got a whole heck of a lot more likes—by a factor of ten—and Saul was angry as a result. So angry, in fact, that he was plotting to kill David.
That’s really something. David hadn’t done anything personally to Saul (which Saul’s son points out to him later). But the fact that in the eyes of all those women, he was seen as less than David was a big deal for him. And it nearly drove Saul to kill David.
By contrast, in the reading from Mark today, Jesus is getting a whole lot of “likes”. Crowds have followed him from Judea and Galilee. Other crowds have come from Jerusalem, Idumea, and beyond the Jordan to see him. Some are hoping to be healed by him. Others just want to be in his presence. He is, by this point in his ministry, becoming quite the celebrity.
Talk about a heady experience! I could imagine, if I were Jesus, thinking—wow, this is great! People love me! People go to great lengths just to be near me! I’m amazing!
But that’s not Jesus. He resists fame. He insists that folks not spread the word about how he has been healing the sick and casting out demons. He wants to stay under the radar for as long as he can and just do what he came to do—love, heal, forgive.
In our celebrity culture—in which the Kardashians, for instance, are famous just for being famous—“likes” really matter. They have currency. And Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all the rest would love for us to become convinced that “likes” are the measure of us.
As followers of Jesus, I think we have to ask what our celebrity culture is doing to us. What do we value in others? In ourselves? Are we more interested in how we appear and whether we are liked than in who we are and what we do? Especially for others?
Jesus, may we keep you before us always as our model and our measure. May we measure our worth not in “likes” but in the love, healing, and grace we bring to a culture drowning in selfies. Amen.
-Sue Trollinger