3.25.2026
While talking with a friend recently, I was struggling for a description of the sort of things that pass for Bible studies, and the following rolled off my tongue: “Oooy, gooey, rich and chewy inside” and the other person, without dropping a beat, replied, “Tender cakey, golden flaky outside.”
Where did that come from?!? How many years ago did that ear worm invade our collective consciousness?
1975 – and it is still, STILL inside our brains somewhere. Can I remember a memory verse from two years ago? No. But can I remember the Big Fig Newton advertisement from 51 years ago?
Yes, without a hitch.
“O be careful little ears what you hear . . .” is the absolute truth. Especially when you’re young, jingles (“My baloney has a first name”), tv commercials (“mama gonna skin you alive feeding that dog hamburger”), tv show theme songs (“Here’s the story of a lovely lady”), etc., get stuck (“I am stuck on Bandaid brand”) in your head FOREVER (“A Diamond is forever”). AAARRRGGGHHH!
But it’s not all bad.
A few weeks ago our opening hymn was “I Sing the Almighty Power of God.” To show you how times have changed, when I was in the 3rd grade, that was our VBS theme song, and I sang it as a solo for our closing program. And the words have stuck with me ever since, and have not only stuck with me, but those words have shaped the way I look at creation, especially the last verse:
There's not a plant or flower below but makes your glories known,
and clouds arise and tempests blow by order from your throne;
while all that borrows life from you is ever in your care,
and everywhere that we can be, you, God, are present there.
Which, now that I think about it, may explain my love for Psalm 65, where the psalmist portrays all of creation praising God by simply being what it is created to be:
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.
I write about this psalm every autumn, and I can confidently draw a line from my love for Psalm 65 all the way back to that 3rd Grade VBS.
So the stuff we hear from childhood sticks with us and helps make us who and what we are, but the problem is the amount of useful (and necessary) info that we WANT to shape our lives versus the useless stuff we’re unwittingly bombarded with. Like advertisements.
I have to be careful when I express disdain for advertisements. Our family business was outdoor advertising! I almost feel disloyal when I talk about something that put food on our table when I was growing up. Before opening his own company, back in the 1950s, Dad painted signs and trucks and drugstore walls for Double Cola, and if you ever go to Greenbrier Restaurant (their catfish is the best, IMHO), on the back wall are some old Double Cola signs my dad painted.
But since those days, advertising has gotten out of hand. Back in the 1970s, people were exposed to roughly 500-1,600 ads per day. Now? The average person sees 4,000 to 10,000 ads a DAY! This includes digital, television, and print ads, although because of “ad fatigue,”the average person ignores most of them and so fewer than 100 make any impact.
When cable TV was first introduced, one of the big selling points was that it would have no commercials, because paid subscriptions would fund programming.
That didn’t last long.
All this to say, consumerism acts as a secular "alternative liturgy" by shaping human identity and desires through daily rituals of buying stuff rather than spiritual practices.
And we are going to be shaped by something. We have to make a deliberate effort to make sure we’re being shaped by the best things.
Of course, the most important shaping that happens comes through worship. At Christ Church, we are liturgical, because the liturgy shapes us into followers of Christ. Each week our worship, through songs, scriptures, prayer and communion, tells and re-tells the story of how “God so loved the world.” It’s our story, and it shapes us into who we are as children of God.
And there is no better time for that to happen than during Holy Week. Starting this Sunday, Palm Sunday, we’ll experience spiritual whiplash as we go from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” all in one service. We’ll experience a sweet service of love and fellowship on Thursday night and relive the brutality of the cross on Good Friday. Then on Easter morning, we’ll move from darkness to light as we blow the roof off the sanctuary with our Easter celebration!
It’s the most important week of the year! Come, bring a friend and join us as we remember and celebrate God’s love!
Blessings,
Pastor Terry