The Journey 330
Read: Mathew 3: 1-12
The last three days witnessed crazy scenes where people were in a shopping spree. A shopping spree that almost went to mad frenzy, the madness even to buy cheap cell phones worth 45$ which otherwise is also available in other stores as on any other day too. Stores like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and so on saw mad rush of shoppers who had no issues in trampling others and rushing in to the stores for the items that they wanted to pick up. Today the rush is on online shopping, as retailers celebrate cyber monday. As people vie to beat each other in this crazy and neurotic shopping spree, with people shouting at the top of the voice with regards to the deal that they had, there is a feeble but strong voice going out to people, who are ready to listen about the ill effects of this shopping spree and how this consumerism is going to kill the nation. The prophetic voice is that of Rev. Billy Talen. Billy Talen is the clergy of “Church of Stop Shopping”. The CNN news agency carried an interview with Rev. Bill on its channel yesterday. Bill has been a vociferous opponent of the shopping madness that is taking place in this country. According to him he has linked shopping spree of millions of people to factors that will cause disastrous effect like global warming and another hurricane like Sandy. Shopping spree is related to global warming and hurricanes?. Yes and that is what Bill is trying to prove to the people that more and more people are going to be consumers, the effect of these mad frenzied consumerism will be borne by generation in terms of global warming and new forms of hurricanes like Sandy. What Bill does is that he goes round the country and preaches gospel messages that empowers people to get them to stop being a voracious consumers. Billy pointed out a study done in 2009 by Mindclick SGM, which stated that carbon emission due to people driving and shopping on Black Friday was 50 times higher than the normal day. He says as people tend to go on a shopping spree, one cannot forget the millions of people who are without jobs and are looking at all possible means to support their family. People who are desperately to get at least a part time job so that they could at least pull on. For this rather than creating a system and economy based on buy today and throw tomorrow, Bill says that we need to take measures to sustain local economies like the small stores in neighborhood, the farmers market, the thrift shop, the repair shop and so on. What is more remarkable about Bill is his support and concern that we need to bring in a culture and generation that believes that we need to buy things that can be repaired and not just thrown away. It is people like Rev. Billy who are speaking in tones and voices that are different from the rest of us, trying to warn and empower people to create a life style that is sustainable for the future of not only about the next generation but also for us and for the earth. In a world of today it is very hard to find people like Rev. Billy Talen and church whose name is “Church of Stop Shopping”. But it is people like Billy who are ultimately ones who are standing against the powerful patterns of the world, which Paul in Romans says that we should not be confirmed to. In the Bible also we find one person who stood against the pattern of the world, encouraging and convicting people to live a different life, both qualitative and meaningful. The person is John the Baptist. Let us meditate on how John the Baptist becomes a lone voice of resistance and living differently for the Lord.
We are meditating on the theme “Transformed Living” and the portion that we shall use for our meditation is from Mathew 3: 1-12. In this portion we find two distinguishing things about John. The first distinguishing factor is his life style that he followed and secondly is the message that he preached. With regards to his life style we find that he had a strange dress sense and food sense. It is written that he wore a garment made of camel hair, with a leather belt around his waist and all that he ate was locusts and wild honey[ Mathew 3: 4]. Here is a prophet who consciously adopts a life style that is so different from the people who lived at that time. I believe this is an effort of a person to show to others what it means to live qualitatively for the Lord and also how the certain privileges and pleasures in life can be considered as non essential things. John the Baptist had the moral courage to say no to all the worldly things and thus create a new set of values and also life style that is conducive to the message that he preached. It is with this unique life style that he preaches about message of repentance and preparing the way for the Lord. As far as John the Baptist was concerned, there was no dichotomy between his preaching and his life style. So different today in our Christian circles, where you find people preaching about Christian lifestyle but engaging in a lifestyle contrary to the message and the values that is preached. People like Rev. Billy Talen and John the Baptist teaches us that we need to have the ability to say no to certain material thing in life, and to value our relationship, our life on the earth, our relationship with the Lord, more than running around for buying more and more material things, which may become useless and outdated very soon, forcing us to go again on a vicious circle of shopping spree. Do we have the courage and tenacity to resist the temptation of jumping into shopping spree bandwagon and consciously build a life style of being a good steward of whatever the Lord has given to us.
Rev. Dr. Joe Joseph Kuruvilla
The last three days witnessed crazy scenes where people were in a shopping spree. A shopping spree that almost went to mad frenzy, the madness even to buy cheap cell phones worth 45$ which otherwise is also available in other stores as on any other day too. Stores like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and so on saw mad rush of shoppers who had no issues in trampling others and rushing in to the stores for the items that they wanted to pick up. Today the rush is on online shopping, as retailers celebrate cyber monday. As people vie to beat each other in this crazy and neurotic shopping spree, with people shouting at the top of the voice with regards to the deal that they had, there is a feeble but strong voice going out to people, who are ready to listen about the ill effects of this shopping spree and how this consumerism is going to kill the nation. The prophetic voice is that of Rev. Billy Talen. Billy Talen is the clergy of “Church of Stop Shopping”. The CNN news agency carried an interview with Rev. Bill on its channel yesterday. Bill has been a vociferous opponent of the shopping madness that is taking place in this country. According to him he has linked shopping spree of millions of people to factors that will cause disastrous effect like global warming and another hurricane like Sandy. Shopping spree is related to global warming and hurricanes?. Yes and that is what Bill is trying to prove to the people that more and more people are going to be consumers, the effect of these mad frenzied consumerism will be borne by generation in terms of global warming and new forms of hurricanes like Sandy. What Bill does is that he goes round the country and preaches gospel messages that empowers people to get them to stop being a voracious consumers. Billy pointed out a study done in 2009 by Mindclick SGM, which stated that carbon emission due to people driving and shopping on Black Friday was 50 times higher than the normal day. He says as people tend to go on a shopping spree, one cannot forget the millions of people who are without jobs and are looking at all possible means to support their family. People who are desperately to get at least a part time job so that they could at least pull on. For this rather than creating a system and economy based on buy today and throw tomorrow, Bill says that we need to take measures to sustain local economies like the small stores in neighborhood, the farmers market, the thrift shop, the repair shop and so on. What is more remarkable about Bill is his support and concern that we need to bring in a culture and generation that believes that we need to buy things that can be repaired and not just thrown away. It is people like Rev. Billy who are speaking in tones and voices that are different from the rest of us, trying to warn and empower people to create a life style that is sustainable for the future of not only about the next generation but also for us and for the earth. In a world of today it is very hard to find people like Rev. Billy Talen and church whose name is “Church of Stop Shopping”. But it is people like Billy who are ultimately ones who are standing against the powerful patterns of the world, which Paul in Romans says that we should not be confirmed to. In the Bible also we find one person who stood against the pattern of the world, encouraging and convicting people to live a different life, both qualitative and meaningful. The person is John the Baptist. Let us meditate on how John the Baptist becomes a lone voice of resistance and living differently for the Lord.
We are meditating on the theme “Transformed Living” and the portion that we shall use for our meditation is from Mathew 3: 1-12. In this portion we find two distinguishing things about John. The first distinguishing factor is his life style that he followed and secondly is the message that he preached. With regards to his life style we find that he had a strange dress sense and food sense. It is written that he wore a garment made of camel hair, with a leather belt around his waist and all that he ate was locusts and wild honey[ Mathew 3: 4]. Here is a prophet who consciously adopts a life style that is so different from the people who lived at that time. I believe this is an effort of a person to show to others what it means to live qualitatively for the Lord and also how the certain privileges and pleasures in life can be considered as non essential things. John the Baptist had the moral courage to say no to all the worldly things and thus create a new set of values and also life style that is conducive to the message that he preached. It is with this unique life style that he preaches about message of repentance and preparing the way for the Lord. As far as John the Baptist was concerned, there was no dichotomy between his preaching and his life style. So different today in our Christian circles, where you find people preaching about Christian lifestyle but engaging in a lifestyle contrary to the message and the values that is preached. People like Rev. Billy Talen and John the Baptist teaches us that we need to have the ability to say no to certain material thing in life, and to value our relationship, our life on the earth, our relationship with the Lord, more than running around for buying more and more material things, which may become useless and outdated very soon, forcing us to go again on a vicious circle of shopping spree. Do we have the courage and tenacity to resist the temptation of jumping into shopping spree bandwagon and consciously build a life style of being a good steward of whatever the Lord has given to us.
Rev. Dr. Joe Joseph Kuruvilla