As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church
February 13, 2022
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
Narcissism. How slippery the slope.
In recent weeks in the world of NCAA football, a couple of acronyms have been widely tossed about and they can cause confusion. They are NLI and NIL. And they relate to colleges recruiting high school football players. The recruiting process has created special days for promising young football players to announce what college they intend to attend. They do this by signing a Letter of Intent, hence the acronym NLI for National Letter of Intent Day. But now there is also NIL which stands for Name, Image, Likeness. And what is that all about? Kids going to college and playing a sport now can "sell" their names to advertisers to use to promote their products. Long forbidden, now it is de rigueur. And media meccas like Los Angeles will most likely benefit mightily. But will the kids?
Self-promotion is a rather common phenomenon in society today. Not that it was ever far from the surface in any society, present or past. But with social media, we have taken it to a new level: high or low? You decide!
Sometimes we are just talking about hype. Marketing. A company may bring out a new product, or try to resurrect an old one in a new guise, and they need to get peoples' attention in order to sell it. In the "old days" this may have involved billboards on roadsides around the country. When radio was king and TV was new, one company would sponsor an entire program! Ah for the good old days. Now, a seemingly endless parade of advertisements, often 15 seconds in duration, saturate the airwaves. This has taught us all about getting messages out in short sound bites. But it is no longer just hucksters. Social media has made it possible for all who want to weigh in, to become their own huckster. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are at the top of the social media pyramid.
And what do we find there? From the most benign perspective, we find the kind of personal information that may have been passed on in the past by letters and postcards to family members and special friends and acquaintances. But private communications are now on public display. And they can be designed to excite and titillate. But most importantly, they are about ME. The 1970s were supposed to be the Me Generation, as Tom Wolfe described them. Something tells me we have long ago surpassed that era in emphasizing ME.
But as today's gospel parable reminds us, this human itch for self-promotion, self-actualization, and self-absorption has a long pedigree. I remember my mother telling me "If you don't blow your own horn, who will?" Exactly! Who will?
If we stop to ponder this parable closely we may discover messages to us from all the characters. We may realize that we too can harbor thoughts about others that parallel those of the pharisee. We may be better able to keep them to ourselves, but they are still there, lurking in our hearts, waiting for the right trigger to launch them. After all, the Pharisee may not have gone into the temple planning to pray as he did, but those thoughts, always there, were triggered by standing next to the hated tax collector. And out came the hidden thoughts!
The Publican is no better than the Pharisee only he is in a different place in his prayer. He has reached rock bottom. He has finally seen his real self, the one who goes to poor villagers and exacts Rome's taxes and then extorts more for himself. Remorse has welled up in his heart and he now regrets always striving for more for himself without regard to the impact on others.
The antidote for self-promotion is a concern for others. Maybe that tax collector in the temple walked outside to become Zacchaeus in the Sycamore tree. After asking for mercy, he received the grace to recognize how to turn God's mercy into his mercy for others. Even the kids now signing up for the NIL promotions may not slide down the slippery slope but instead set up their own charities to help others. And maybe we too will turn that uncharitable thought about another into an act of mercy for that person. And just maybe, that is how we can embark on the coming Lenten Season, by turning self-denial into self-offering. And isn't that what Jesus did for us all?
Glory be to Jesus Christ!
