Conversion:
Unplugging from the Matrix
Texts: Genesis 21.8-21; Psalm 86.1-10, 16-17; Romans 6.1b-11;
Matt 10.24-39
In the Wachowski brothers’ classic science-fiction film, The Matrix, a
young computer programmer named Neo Anderson is restless and deeply
unhappy with his life. He shouldn’t be, of course. He has a
successful and rewarding job, is good-looking, and has any number of
potential partners knocking on his door. He is actually living
the life that his world defines as successful. But for all that,
Neo must contend, daily, with a feeling that the life he lives is
somehow just a shadow of what it ought to be, and that the world he
inhabits is unreal, somehow, and without meaning. There are no
grounds for this feeling, of course. But it is there,
nonetheless, and it is beginning to effect his performance not only at
work, but at life. Then, one day, something very strange
happens. A message appears on his computer, unbidden. It
says ‘Wake up Neo, follow the white rabbit’. For what happens
thereafter, you will have to watch the film. But suffice to say
that what Neo discovers is that the world he inhabits is indeed unreal,
no more than a huge computer-generated programme called ‘the matrix’, a
programme designed to keep people’s minds busy with meaningless tasks
so that they will never discover the truth: the truth that that
they are no longer free human beings but slaves, battery-cells to power
the machines that have taken over the world. What Neo discovers,
further, is that in order to live in the real world, in order to fight
the all-encompassing power of the machines and recover his humanity, he
must ‘unplug’ from the matrix and its values and wake up to a new, but
altogether more sobering, reality altogether.
Now, let me suggest to you that the story of Neo Anderson can be read
as a parable of Christian conversion. For what we are converted
to in our Christian baptism is a new experience of reality, a reality
in which we are no longer cogs in a machine, parts of a systematic
whole that steals our humanity away, but free human beings who know how
to exercise our liberty for the sake of a commonwealth of truth, love
and justice, a commonwealth announced and inaugurated by Jesus
Christ. Let me illustrate what such a conversion might mean today
with a couple of examples.
One of the wholes of which we are apparently part is the nation state
of Australia. The idea of Australia runs deep in our veins.
It is an idea that most of us have imbibed with our mother’s
milk. The idea of Australia is transmitted to us through stories
and images; and through rousing anthems, like the national anthem,
which tells us that Australia is ‘young and free,’ a place where hard
work is rewarded with ‘wealth’. It also puts forward the idea of
a commonwealth of land, in which all Australians, including those who
have ‘come across the seas’, can share. Now, if I had time, I
would point out that there is a great distance between the idea of
Australia put forth in our national anthem and the reality of Australia
as it has been experienced by, for example, Aboriginal people,
non-Anglo migrants, asylum seekers, or the 14% of Australians who
currently live in poverty. But for now I will only point out that
for a Christian theology drawn from the New Testament the idea of the
nation state is rooted in the very worst side of human
possibility. It is rooted in our sin and fear. For nation
states exist not as instruments to promote the reign of God—that
borderless commonwealth of truth, justice and peace announced by
Jesus—but rather the very opposite of that commonwealth: a
drawing of thick borders in order to defend the wealth and privileges
of a few against everyone else. If that is what it means to be
Australian, and I am prepared to argue the point until the cows come
home, then the Christian is actually called to be un-Australian, to
‘unplug’ from the agenda of nation-specific interests in the name of
Christ’s borderless kingdom, which looks out for the good of everyone,
no matter what their national or ethnic identity.
A second example. Each of us have also been inducted, since
birth, into the idea of the family, the clan, or the tribe. The
meaning of the family is this: that my biological makeup
determines the social reality to which I owe my allegiance and my
work. Everything I do must be for the ‘good’, the social and
economic advancement that is, of those with whom I share my specific
biological makeup. My identity and purpose as an individual, therefore,
is nothing other than the defence of my family’s interests over and
against the interests of other families. Now, in the ancient
world, the idea of the family was of course much more expansive than it
is today. Today the family has all but shrunk to the size of its
nucleus in mum, dad, and the kids. Yet the ancient idea of family
persists in great strength: I am part of a circumscribed whole to
which I owe my loyalty against every other claimant, every other
neighbour. For today’s family, just as in ancient times, the
members of other families are to be regarded as the competition.
I must compete against these others for a slice of the scarce resources
of economic and social capital.
Now, Jesus came to confront and relativise the power of what may be
called, without any irony whatsoever, the ‘family matrix’. That
is why his sayings against the family occur so regularly in the
gospels. Let me quote from today’s gospel text:
Do not think that I have come to
bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a
daughter against her mother . . . and one’s foes will be the
members of one’s household. Whoever loves father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me . . .
Why are we so scandalised by these texts, why do we recoil in horror
when we hear them? If we were really Christians, we would
not! For what Christ confronted in his own society is what he
would confront today: that deep anthropological drive in all of
us towards the idolatry of family, an idolatry that says we must defend
and preserve our own family’s economic and social interests over and
against the interest that God has declared in all families. For
God has declared that there is only one family, the universal human
family, of which the equalitarian community of the New Testament church
is the most potent sign and symbol.
Thus, the Christian can never embrace the slogan ‘family first’, unless
that family is re-understood as a commonwealth of all God’s
people. Christians are called to ‘unplug’ from the drives of
family tribalism and learn instead to share, radically, their resources
and skills with other families as well. In that light, how can I
give my kids the very best my society offers in terms of health,
education, and the development of human potential, if I am not prepared
to work hard so that these goods can be shared with the many who do
not, currently, enjoy them? How could I send my girls to a
prestigious private school, for example, when the weekly fees are
considerably more than what 14% of Australians currently live on in
that same week? For the follower of Christ, to give my children
what I am not prepared to make possible for other children as well, is
idolatry: my family becoming god, so that everything else must
bow to its demands. If we shudder at Christ’s words, perhaps we
have not ‘unplugged’. Perhaps we are still in thrall to the gods
of this world, the machinery that ensures that there is always some who
win, but many who also lose.
But let’s be honest for a moment. ‘Unplugging,’ being really
converted to the way of Christ all the way through, is really, really
scary for many of us. For we know jolly well that being converted
to Christ is to be converted to the love of those neighbours we are
most afraid of, or least understand. Why should we make ourselves
vulnerable in that way? Won’t we get hurt? Isn’t there a
chance that we might lose all that we have worked for, all that we have
made of ourselves? What then? Questions like that go to the
heart of our identities as human beings. Who am I if cannot draw
strong borders around myself or my family or my nation? Who am I
if cannot build a strong future for my children? Who am I if I am
not the member of a successful family, or the citizen of a great
nation? Who am I? It is questions like these, I suggest,
that have made historic Christianity so unpopular today. For
people know that Christianity calls for a radical re-assessment of
personal identity and meaning, and they are afraid. Afraid of
losing who they think they are, however miserable, afraid of the
unknown. That fear is understandable, oh-so-understandable, and
none of us are immune from it. But the good news of the gospel is
this: that there is no need to fear, because what we fear is not
as powerful as it appears. The powers that we fear have no more
power than what we choose to give them.
It’s all a matter of faith, you see, of what you believe. If you
believe that life is about defending your own interests against those
of others, then of course everyone and everything else will feel like a
threat. If these others are people, indeed, then perhaps they
will learn to become enemies because we expect them to be. But
if, instead, we believe in what Jesus tells his disciples in the
gospel, then life may be experienced rather differently:
Have no fear of those who can
kill the body who cannot kill the soul’, he says, ‘Are not two sparrows
sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart
from your Father. Even the hairs of your head are numbered.
So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows . .
. Those who find their life will lose it, but those who lose
their life for my sake will find it.
Can you hear the reassurance there? Can you grasp this
alternative (as in other than native) view of reality? If we
really believed that God loves us, that we are the apple of God’s eye,
then all life’s apparent threats, even the economic and social ones,
would simply fade into shadow. For if God loves us, God also
gives us an identity, purpose and future that is able to persevere even
if our families call us ‘mad’, and our society calls us ‘evil’.
We can believe this, as Christians, because Christ persevered.
His family considered him mad, and his society condemned him to death
as a dangerous criminal. For all this, Christ persevered.
Not because he had magical powers to convince people that they were
wrong. No. Christ persevered because God disagreed with the
assessment of both his family and his society. When Christ was
crucified, God raised him to life: not simply to fight another day, but
to reveal and inaugurate a new reality, a reality that is more real
than the reality our society makes to keep us from the truth. On
the basis of this more real reality, the reality of God, Christians are
empowered to ‘unplug’ from the cultures that enslave us, and dance to
the beat of a different drummer. We can do this if we have faith,
if we trust in God’s reality more than we trust in the reality we are
sold by family, nation or television. Jesus told his disciples
that while the truth might seem hidden now, there would come a day when
it would be out there for all to see. In the meantime, we who try
to tell the secret before its time can expect to be given a hard
time. That is how it was with Christ. Why should it be any
different for his servants?
In the story of The Matrix, Neo Anderson becomes a new messiah, a new
Son of Man (as his name suggests). He blazes a trail for the
liberation of the world from the matrix, from the complex system of
lies and subterfuge that keeps us in chains. For what Neo learns
to do, through a process of conversion that lasts for most of the film,
is to trust not in what his eyes and ears tell him, but in what the
Spirit whispers in his heart. If we can do the same, then we
shall be reborn as well. Reborn to a world in which the
dog-eat-dog dynamics of competition and capitalism no longer rule our
lives. Reborn to a world in which the practises of love, of
sacrifice and giving, become infections that are able to re-model the
world in truth, justice and peace. So tell me, who do you
trust? Whose version of the world do you believe? And
perhaps more importantly, what are you going to do about it?
In the name of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so
now and forever, world without end. Amen.
Garry
J. Deverell
5th Sunday after Pentecost