Beyond Talking Points

"Beyond Talking Points"--June 20, 2017

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so we wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." [Matthew 10:16-20]

The ancient Greeks used to have this recurring thing in their plays and dramas where the action would happen on stage--say, Oedipus has a fit of rage, or Antigone takes a stand against her uncle the king--and then this group of performers called the chorus would all chant in unison a sort of summary of what just happened.  They would basically narrate what had already happened in the scene, just in case you missed it while it was happening.

You could say that this theatrical trope was a bit ham-fisted, but hey, it was the dawn of theater and people were just figuring out how to tell stories through performance.  Plus, for whatever strangeness there is to having a chorus of characters all chant at you what you have just seen, it did have the function of making sure everybody got the same story, and that everyone in the audience was on the same page.  If you are wanting to drive home a clear, unmistakable message of "This is what just happened," a Greek chorus will do the job.

We might imagine that, in the age of CGI-enhanced summer blockbusters, Broadway musicals, and action-packed video games, we have dispensed with the Greek chorus and have found more "sophisticated" ways of telling stories.  But not really--we have just shifted them over to news channels on TV and the internet, and we call them "pundits" now.  Because basically, at the end of every news cycle, there is now the 21st century American version of the Greek chorus, giving us their respective party's version of "the story" that was the day's news.  This is one of those realities that crosses party lines--you'll get one set of pundits on one set of channels and another set on different stations or websites, but the role is basically the same: take what just happened in the day, and give your side's official "take" on what the story really is.

And it's all theater, really.  Rarely are these talking heads on television actually having a real conversation, in which someone might say something surprising that leads people to think in a new way or come to an unexpected conclusion, but rather, this is all the Greek-chorus all over again, telling us a scripted version of one way of seeing "the story" that has all been talked out before the cameras go live, with a set of bullet-point ideas that are going to be the highlights of the program.  It happens on both sides of the political aisle, and it happens on all the news channels--every so often, you'll hear a report about a released "talking points memo" that has been circulated by one group or another, to give their respective pundits and official party line for how to spin, or discuss, or defend, or attack, whatever (or whomever) the day's news has been about.  And, really, I don't mean any of that description as a putdown, per se--it's really just the Greek chorus all over again.  And you can either like it or not like it, or just like one set of pundits versus the other, but it's basically one way of trying to make sure people hear your side's "version" of the story. 

What I do think is noteworthy in this age of ours, with talking points and pundits who trot out the official story of their side when they go on the morning news shows, is that by now, we all know the game.  We all know when we watch someone being interviewed on some news show, we are going to be getting a rehearsed and rehashed version of someone's list of talking points.  We aren't watching a real exchange of ideas, in which one person actually listens to another person, considers the merits and weaknesses of their ideas, and together they arrive at a conclusion they can agree on, or at least sparked a new insight or understanding for one another.  To be honest, we aren't even really watching people talk to or with each other, but more like they are talking at each other--just interrupting one another during pauses for breath to regurgitate the same polished talking points they have learned to spit back regardless of what the question might be, or where else the conversation might have gone.  That tells you: we aren't watching a conversation, we are watching a contest, as scripted as pro wrestling, with favorite moves, favorite stars, and favorite rivalries.  Now, you may like one channel's scripted pundits or another's, and you may be willing to stomach some channels or change some others the moment you see them on, but you and I all know what it is we are watching.  We just live in an era with a lot of Greek choruses, each trying to tell us from their scripted lines what they want us to take away from their version of "the story."

But the followers of Jesus are meant to be different. 

We are called to dare to go beyond talking points, and into the (scary, perhaps) realm of real, genuine, open, Spirit-prompted conversation.  That doesn't mean we have nothing to say in the world's marketplace of ideas--but it also means that we have something to listen to in that same exchange of ideas.  And a real conversation is something open-ended, something that is to some degree unpredictable.  A real conversation might start at Point A, but then wind its way to Point Q before circling back at B and D and then sticking a pin at Point L until you can have some more time to talk.  And a real conversation requires that the people who are not currently speaking actually listen to the people who are talking at the moment, so that they can consider the input and respond to what was actually said, not what they planned for someone to say.  In an age of pundit-saturated, talking-point-reciting Greek choruses, Jesus invites us to something different--to be something different. He dares us to trust that the Spirit will nudge us, if we dare to see conversations less as battles to be won and more as laboratories for honest exploration and discovery.  Jesus dares us not to use conversations as weapons, and part of how we will do that is not to plan out how to 'attack' people with sharpened (but stale) talking points.  In fact, Jesus' direction to us is that, when we find ourselves even in hostile situations (and to be honest, sometimes Christians have brought that hostility on by being jerks), our response is not to fall back into talking-point argumentation, but to trust the Spirit to help us actually have a conversation.

How radical!  How refreshing!  How different from the temptation we feel to prepare weaponized speech to shout over people because we are feeling defensive!  My goodness, it would be amazing, in this era, in which we think we already know what someone else is going to say because we know what channel they are on, and we have already predetermined to agree or to disagree because we have heard their version of the Greek chorus before. It would be amazing, and countercultural, for the followers of Jesus to actually take Jesus' direction seriously and to trust the Spirit enough to allow for an actual conversation, even knowing it might mean we won't be able to control it, or shout our way out of it, or ignore the other person if they say something we don't like. 

But what possibilities could be in store, too!  We might learn to see things in a way we had never thought before.  We might find we still think what we did before the conversation, but have found a way to put it into words in a way we never had.  We might discover we were wrong in what we assumed from "the other side" and that we had been fooled by the caricatures told to us by some TV Greek chorus.  We might find that someone else is led to be a part of the Way of Jesus because they saw it lived, graciously, in the way we listen and talk with open ears.  If nothing else, we will find we are in for surprises, because we will leave the scripted talking points aside and simply trust that the Spirit will direct what we say, when we speak, and how to listen to the other...

O Living Spirit, give us the courage as you move us to dare to have real conversations with others, rather than shouting over them or dismissing people we don't think we will want to hear.  Give us the courage to trust the direction of Jesus to go beyond talking points.