There is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount about keeping up with the Joneses. But we all go about it assiduously. Let the flowers go their own way but we humans (Matthew 6.28) have the Joneses to think about. We can’t languish with our button-hooks while our neighbours are zipping ahead of us. Nor can we listen anxiously by our crystal-sets while Mr and Mrs Jones switch on their FM or try to get a DAB signal.
The arrival of the digital age has unleashed capabilities and enthusiasms galore. Digitalised worship, it may be said, benefited from the unleashing in time to make online worship a practical matter for the Sunday morning programme. The technician who knows how to solve digital problems is a must for any project committee. He or she will have to learn that discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to injecting new technology into old committees.
Of course, it can happen that the means become more enticing than the ends. Worship remains a matter of paying homage to a Creator and Redeemer but that does not require sack-cloth and ashes, Jacobean language and tunes from a serpent or a sackbut.
The Joneses may have a habit of leading the pack but they don’t necessarily have any better understanding of a destination than a lamp-lighter assuring sleepers that it’s two o’clock and all’s well. An HS2 will doubtless be able to whisk a worshipper from London to Birmingham and vice versa quicker than he can say Jack Robinson but whether worship is improved by such mobility must be considered unproven.
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