God's Technology

I’d like to inaugurate the new website for Trinity Episcopal Church, and this new blog, with some reflection on technology and religious communication.

If you visit the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, you will see a twenty-four-foot long parchment scroll with the entire book of Isaiah. It was produced by scribes around 150 BC who copied from earlier manuscripts. This process had been repeated in the several centuries since the book of Isaiah took its final form around 500 BC.

This was advanced communication technology for the time: carefully scraped sheep hides, ink made from the soot from olive oil lamps, honey, vinegar, olive oil, water, and gall; pens hand-cut from reeds. That was as high-tech as it got for many centuries.

When printing presses with movable type came into use in Europe in the fifteenth century, among the first major works to be printed was the Bible. A century later, the Book of Common Prayer was set in type for the use of the congregations of the Church of England.

Inexpensive printing, mass magazines, radio and television, the internet, social media, cell phones and texting, YouTube. . . whew! All in the name of connecting our lives with the holy, and with each other in our spiritual journeys.

I am always the last guy to adopt new communications technologies. I managed without a cell phone for a long time, fairly happily.  Also, my computer with the 8086 processor was all I needed forever. Cable TV? What’s that? Oh yes, that thing in the box on top of my VCR.

So. . . here we are, you and I, with this lovely new website for Trinity Church. May we find ways to know each other, bless each other, and open our hearts and our lives to the presence of the God of All, and our brother Jesus. And may we learn new ways from each other to serve as Christ’s hand and heart in this world.