More Notes on the Long Tail

The idea here is that technology now makes it possible to transform mass markets into millions of niches. Technology makes it possible to overcome the tyranny of locality. Whether it me the need for a DVD title to sell well locally or have sufficient interest in Thai cooking in order to keep it on the shelf. This is a world such as movies, and books that continue to work on a business model where the “hit” is the holy grail. He also makes an interesting observation that the emphasis on hits makes a view that the economy is driven by scarcity. The world of technology finds its heart in abundance. (18)

 

Kevin Laws says “The biggest money is in the smaller sales.” (23)

 

The hit began with the Industrial Revolution. “Before the industrial revolution most culture was local.” (27) The industrial evolution created mass culture to go along with the mass, industrial mode of production. But with peer-to-peer trading the manufacture and distribution of music was transformed. The economies of mass culture were increasingly rewritten. We see this not only in the structure of the music industry but also in the new configurations in television. The big three networks are increasingly a smaller part of the market. The hit-driven economy is a hit driven culture. With technology the non-hit has its place. The old water cooler conversation about the latest episode of The Cosby Show is gone. “These days our watercoolers are increasingly virtual…”(40).

Sermon at School of Leadership Training

2 Kings 6:15-23

Sermon Title: More of Us Than of Them

Thank you to President Swartentruber, Dean Stutzman, Brenda Martin Hurst, Linda Alley, and Heidi Miller Yoder who suggested the text for tonight.

This year the theme is Practicing Life Abundant in the Congregation and in Daily Life. You can tell those practicing abundant life by their language, their jokes, for instance. Eagles may soar but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up. My software never has bugs — its just develops random features.

But not everybody gets it. Some folks when you ask them what is the difference between ignorance, apathy, and ambivalence? They respond I don’t know and I don’t care one way or another.

Jokes aside, I want you for the next several minutes to concentrate and don’t think about practicing prosperity. Don’t think about that place where virtue meets hope, where dreams meet sweat.

If we take a family systems way of thinking about this text we see some new things. The practice of abundance finds a way beyond the anxiety of sloth and its sibling violence.

Practicing life abundant is counter cultural. Chris Anderson in his recent book The Long Tail the world ruled by hits is not a world many of us want today. “This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. The differences are profound.” (18) Further he notices that the farther we wander from the beaten track the more we discover that our taste is not as mainstream as we thought.

Lest we once again create for ourselves an imaginary world of biblical times that is separated from harsh reality because it is so religious we need to wake up. The world of Elisha was a world of scarcity. It should remind us a Darfur, a combination of drought and war. This story takes place in the most luxurious part of the region.

The story begins with an attendant. (2 Kings 6:15) This is an interesting translation for a verb that means to minister. The speech begins with an expletive “alas” which only occurs about fifteen times. (Josh 7:7; Judg 6:22; 11:35; 2 Kgs 3:10; 6:5, 15; Jer 1:6; 4:10; 14:13; 32:17; Ezek 4:14; 9:8; 11:13; 21:5; Joel 1:15) The expletive gives rise to a question that has plagued ministry from biblical times to ours. “What are we to do?” This phrase, however, occurs no where else in the Hebrew Bible. The nameless minister attempts to incite anxiety with the “alas” what are we to do speech. Here we are in the midst of the anxiety of sloth. Some might remind us that despair is anger without enthusiasm.

The role of the prophet here, Elisha, is to a non-anxious presence. The speech here occurs thirty-eight times “fear not.” Only ten times do we have the phrase fear not because (Gen 26:24; 1 Sam 22:23; 23:17; 2 Sam 9:7; 2 Kgs 6:16; Ps 49:17; Isa 41:10; 43:1, 5; Ezek 2:6) We might translate this that the multitude that is us is bigger than the multitude that is them.

Elisha’s non-anxious presence is the heart of his prayer. God open their eyes that they might see. Of course when Elisha prayed God answered. The eyes of the servant were opened. They saw horses and chariots filling the hills and they were all on fire, that kind that burns and that is not consumed.

Let me take a moment to do the family systems thing. What were you able to see when your eyes were opened beyond their anxiety? Heidi B. Neumark in her book Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx recounts her stories but what are yours? Richard Lischer in his book Open Secrets recounts his stories but what are yours? Practicing life abundant means reading others stories so that we might be more eloquent in telling about God’s abundant grace in our own lives for the transformation of the world.

No do we have a case of prophetic duplicity. He said to the invaders “This is not the path. This is not the city.”

The story moves along verse 21. The army is now in a different place, Samaria. Real estate agents and brick and mortar business folk tell us it is all about location, location, location.

But in Kevin Amrstrong and L. Gregory Jones book Resurrecting Excellence and Jackson Carroll’s book God’s Potters they all make the point that pastoral excellence is a matter of context, context, context.

The new context brought about a new opportunity for pastoral excellence but also a new opportunity for pastoral anxiety. Here it is the anxiety of violence. The first anxious speech is one of sloth, what shall we do? The second anxious speech is one of violence, shall we kill them? I will not play out in detail how such conversations have transpired in the United States in the last several years but you can talk about that more in small groups.

Both of these speeches of anxiety have their root in scarcity. The prophet reminds the king as he did the minister. Here we see a prophet doing public theology. It wasn’t the sword or the bow that delivered you.

Edmund Winton Pettus, was a brigadier general in the confederate army and later a U.S. senator. A bridge was named after him in Selma Alabama. And on Bloody Sunday March 7, 1965 women and men, black a white, attempted to march across the bridge to decry racial segregation. And they were rebuffed by violent force. Andrew Young tells the story of how they debriefed in a church in Selma. People suggested that the decision of non-violent protest was a mistake. One volunteered a rifle, another, a shotgun, another, a pistol. Young played along for awhile, and then he said, when you collect all those, what do you have in contrast to the weapons of mass destruction of white supremacy. The televised account of the incident spoke volumes about the sin of racism.

So Elisha so many years before said to the frightened king the sword and the bow have not delivered you.

We live by a different economy. Practicing life abundant does a different thing. Kathy wrote something for the Austin American Statesman when she was a pastor in Austin Texas. The people of Austin Texas knew very little of the Mennonites and Kathy introduced them to the party people. These Mennonite farmers on the Kansas prairie spent a whole week celebrating the birth of Christ during the winter. Their neighbors thought them not sufficiently serious if they could spend that much time in celebration and eating.

Likewise, Elisha and early Church of the Brethren prophet and pastor instead of killing the Aramean army suggested a potluck. This week you will examine the range of work started by Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra first with Practicing Our Faith and then with a series of books. One book I hope you will find is Christine Pohl’s Making Room. She shows us about recovering the hospitality tradition of the Bible and early Christianity.

Practicing abundant life is proactive in the face of anxious speech of sloth

Practicing abundant life is hospitable to strangers and friends in the face of anxious speech of violence

Can you believe a story like this?

Can you believe a God like this?

Amen