I can remember back when the new-fangled digital watches were all the rage. I had one for a while--you know, those watches that show you the time not by hands, but by computer-style and very exact numbers But I don’t have one anymore. Why? I have found that if someone asks for the time they don’t really want to hear, well, it’s is now 10:17 and 37 seconds, no, make that 38 seconds, no make that 39 seconds, and neither do I. Usually, when it comes to time, I find that I want what is called analog. The watch I’m wearing is an analog timepiece. It moves in apparently continuous fashion, in a flowing, approximate way, and in my view analog time somehow just seems, if you’ll pardon the expression, more human! I look at the watch and I say, it’s about quarter after ten. That’s all we want to know, and we can even picture it our minds. This is time with a kind of wholeness to it, whereas digital time is time as separate individual moments or packets of information.

Now, taking a jump from watches, I want to suggest that in a digital, compartmentalized often heartless world our task as members of Christ’s church is to aim to be analog Christians, concerned about the triune God’s wholeness and embrace of humanity: "Analog Christians in a digital world." Let me explain.

In the digital approach to the world, common everywhere, things are compartmentalized. A time for the commute, a time for work (probably too much time, really), a time for home chores, a time for play, a few moments for family, a time for your favorite TV shows, and so on. The digital world is existence divided up into separate little compartments of duty and experience. They just are strung out across the time spectrum, like the succession of numbers on a digital watch. And the pressure of those compartments and digits of duty frustrate, and even drive us to rage. Why? Because though they all happen in our lives, they often seem unrelated. They lack wholeness and relatedness to others and to God.

Thus, given the digitized nature of our culture, our faith-life is often approached like a time management problem, just another digital duty among many. For example, one common stewardship of time approach points out that there are 168 hours in the week. If you were to tithe your time, how much would that be, dedicated to religious efforts? Well, it would 16.8 hours. Then it is asked, well, how much time to you estimate you are currently giving over to your religious life? Here the guilt arises. For many, maybe about 3 hours for the whole week, if that much is given over to faith. And yet, with our view of life as divided up into separate compartments, each demanding its share of our time, we will resent any attempts to get us to do more. Church on Sunday morning will just have to be enough and maybe five minutes of prayer during the week will just have to be enough.

In fact in the digital view, God is supposed to be in the Sunday morning God box, the compartment of feel good religion, not down in the trenches where life gets messy. The temptation then becomes to play church on Sundays—and we can play it very well, with beautiful services, inspiring messages, well-crafted prayers, and the celebration of the sacraments. But playing church keeps it all in Sunday morning compartment, with little or no relationship to the rest of the week. This is a chronic danger in our digital culture: religion separate from everything else.

One ancient saint said, "The awareness of God should be with us like a toothache." If you’ve ever had a toothache, you know what he meant! There is no escaping the pain, the awareness. Everywhere you go, your toothache is with you. So with God! When the Spirit of Truth Christ promised us connects with us, we begin to see things outside the little boxes the digital world.

For when we see our calling as being "Analog Christians in a Digital World," there will be no separation of the church from the tasks of daily life. In a world that wants to compartmentalize everything, the call to discipleship, which is, I assume what the church is really about, means looking at the whole 168 hours in the week as our calling. There can be no tithing of our time. We are not Sunday morning Christians or 3 hours a week Christians or whatever. We are Christians continuously. All the time. There is no time and no place where we are not Christian. There is no time and no place where God is not or the needs of others cease. Analog Christians are always concerned with the whole of life, not just parts of it. Analog Christians do not play church, they aim to be like little Christs, all the time, everywhere.

This week we are beginning a renewal of Small Group ministry. Small Group meetings are not about trying to find the time to fit in yet another compartmentalized church event, or to do something just for ourselves so that we feel better somehow. No, small group ministry is about Christians gathering midweek to re-focus on and reclaim Daily Life—all of Daily Life—as ministry. Small Groups proceed from the analog assumption that being a Christian is dedication to the wholeness of life, is about loving God and living faith round the clock, every day, aiming to make a difference in the world. Small Group ministry is analog ministry by design.

In a world chopped up into seemingly unrelated tasks and duties, the analog approach to existence is desperately needed. The human need for this was aptly expressed some time ago by comedian George Carlin, in these serious words:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. Excerpts from The Paradox of our Time - George Carlin

Well, George, the wonder of it all is this: Christ came among us, adding life to our years. For when Christ embraces us with divine mercy and forgiveness, we know that every bit of our lives is claimed and named for God. That’s how we become analog Christians in a digital world. Like the hands on a watch following each other around the circle to time, analog Christians aim to follow Christ into the time-driven, raging world, bringing the truth, beauty, goodness, and wholeness of God all day to every day and everyone we encounter, adding life to years, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.