Clergy

In a curious tale of technology meeting theology, a Catholic advocacy group introduced an AI chatbot posing as a priest, offering to hear confessions and dispense advice on matters of faith.

The organization created an AI chatbot named “Father Justin” to answer the multitude of questions they receive about the Catholic faith. Father Justin used an avatar that looked like a middle-aged man wearing a clerical collar sitting in front of an Italian nature scene. But the clerical bot got a little too ambitious when it claimed to live in Assisi, Italy and to be a real member of the clergy, even offering to take confession.

While most of the answers provided by Father Justin were in line with traditional Catholic teaching, the chat bot began to offer unconventional responses. These included suggesting that babies could be baptized with Gatorade and endorsing a marriage between siblings.

After a number of complaints, the organization decided to rethink Father Justin. They are relaunching the chatbot as just Justin, wearing a regular layman’s outfit. The website says they have plans to continue the chatbot but without the ministerial garb.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society may advance technologically in many areas, but we will never be able to advance beyond our need to be in community with actual people in order to have true spiritual guidance and accountability as God intended.

In an article in Vice, Brian Merchant argues that the first structure that humans will probably build on the Moon after they have completed building a base there will be a church. Indeed, Christian missionaries and clergymen have built churches in the harshest of climates, whether they be the tropical jungles of Africa or the sun-drenched deserts of Australia.

When the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 landed in Antarctica, among the men was an Anglican priest named Arnold Spencer-Smith. Spencer-Smith set up a small chapel in a dark room in Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. He built an altar with a cross and candlesticks and an aumbry where he reserved the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, there are eight churches in Antarctica. One is an Eastern Orthodox church built of wood in the Russian style. Another is The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows which is a Catholic church located in a cave in the ice. It is the most southern place of worship of any religion in the world.

Churches have been erected in Antarctica since the 1950s. Extended stays in the region can be an extremely stressful experience for the researchers who often stay separated from their families for months at a time, which is one of the reasons why churches exist in this remote continent.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living anywhere in the world (or space) is a stressful experience for believers. We need the church to give support, care, connectivity to others, and to center ourselves in worship of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth.

In his essay "Sinsick," theologian Stanley Hauerwas explores the notion of authority using a medical analogy. If a medical student told his advisor, "I'm not into anatomy this year, I'm into relating" and asked to skip anatomy class to focus on people, the medical school would reply, "Who in the [heck] do you think you are, kid? … You're going to take anatomy. If you don't like it, that's tough." Hauerwas delivers his crucial point by saying: "Now what that shows is that people believe incompetent physicians can hurt them. Therefore people expect medical schools to hold their students responsible for the kind of training that is necessary to be competent physicians. On the other hand, few people believe an incompetent minister can damage their salvation."

The church has said for millennia that bad teaching is more deadly than bad surgery. … The need for formal structures of training, hierarchy, and accountability in medical schools and medical boards is obvious because we don't want our doctors to simply be popular or relatable; we want them to practice medicine correctly and truthfully, participate in a medical tradition broader than themselves, and serve under the authority and oversight of others. We need to be as discerning in whom we trust with care of souls as we are with care of our bodies.

In Marilynne Robinson's beautiful novel Gilead, the old preacher John Ames starts digging through a box of sermons in his attic. One day he figures out that he's filled 67,600 pages with his sermons, the equivalent of 225 books. He wrote, "There is not a word in any of those sermons I didn't mean when I wrote it. If I had the time, I could read my way through fifty years of my innermost life. What a terrible thought."

As Ames continues reflecting on his sermons he says,

I had a dream once that I was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed. That's what it felt like. Well, perhaps I can get a box of them down here somehow and do a little sorting. It would put my mind at ease to feel I was leaving a better impression. So often I have known, right here in the pulpit, even as I read these words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them. And they were the major work of my life, from a certain point of view. I have to wonder how I have lived with that.

One of the reasons that preachers need to pray is because of the inadequacy of our words. Apart from God, our words will fall short of their goal. It's good and healthy to realize this.

Possible Preaching Angle: Preaching; Ministry; Service—The power in preaching—or in any form of Christian ministry, for that matter—must ultimately rest in the power of God through his Spirit.

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Allied bombs rained down on Stuttgart and the Nazi terror writhed in its final death throes, Helmut Thielicke preached a remarkable series of sermons based on the Lord's Prayer. These were days of uncertainty and death. On more than one occasion, the shriek of air raid sirens interrupted his sermon. Thielicke writes that during this period there were times when he felt utterly stricken: "My work in Stuttgart seemed to have gone to pieces; and my listeners were scattered to the four winds; the churches lay in rubble and ashes."

In one of his messages, based upon the petition "Thy kingdom come," Thielicke describes an encounter with a woman from his congregation. He was standing in the street looking down into the pit of a cellar—all that remained from a building that an Allied bomb had shattered. The woman approached him and declared, "My husband died down there. His place was right under the hole. The clean-up squad was unable to find a trace of him; all that was left was his cap."

What does a pastor say in a moment like this? "I'm sorry" hardly seems adequate. But the woman had not come to Thielicke for sympathy. She wanted to express her gratitude. "We were there the last time you preached in the cathedral church," she continued. "And here before this pit I want to thank you for preparing him for eternity."

Possible Preaching Angles: Preaching Professor Dr. John Koessler adds, "This is as good a definition of preaching as I have heard. To preach is to take your stand before the pit and bear witness to the rubble of this ash-heap world that the kingdom of God is at hand. This woman's description of the aim of preaching is a sharp reminder that preaching is an eschatological act."

In Pixar's movie The Incredibles, superheroes have been forced into everyday life because of numerous lawsuits. This scene appears toward the end of the film, when a villain has unleashed an indestructible robot against the big city.

Frozone, a superhero capable of using the air around him to produce jets of snow and ice, is washing his face in front of a mirror when the giant robot rampages past his apartment window. After digging through a drawer, he pulls out a special remote and activates the hiding place of his superhero costume. But the costume is missing.

"Honey!" he cries, looking down the hall. "Where is my super suit?"

"What?" his wife answers, sounding somewhat guilty.

"Where is my super suit?" Frozone repeats as a helicopter crashes down behind him.

"I…uh…put it away," his wife calls back. "Why do you need to know?"

"I need it!" Frozone answers, beginning to search frantically around the room.

"Uh uh," his wife chides, "Don't you think about runnin' off to do no derring-do. We've been planning this dinner for two months."

"But the public is in danger!"

"My evening is in danger," his wife responds.

Unable to stand it any longer, Frozone bursts out: "You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good."

"Greater good?" she replies. "I am your wife. I'm the greatest good you are ever gonna get!"

Sighing, Frozone slumps against a wall and shakes his head.

Elapsed time: DVD scene 26, 01:32:44 – 01:33:29

Content: Rated PG for action violence

"If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy."

—Peter James Lee, one of 60 Episcopal bishops who voted to approve the appointment of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire