Category Archives: Pop Culture

The title of this week’s episode of AMC’s “Mad Men” is called “The Good News.” Don’t worry, no spoilers here other than a single quote directed to Don Draper, while he’s only wearing boxer shorts and a paint-speckled T-shirt, no less:

I know everything about you, and I still love you.

As I mentioned in last week’s sermon about the Preacher and Don Draper, glimpses of the gospel in this series are fleeting. Nevertheless, they do appear at times. The quote above is definitely one of them. It describes the way that God always relates to us and that we, hopefully, relate to each other now and then. God looks at us in whatever undignified state that we can imagine ourselves and, unbelievably, speaks those words to us. In spite of it all, as St. Paul reminds us in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, love remains:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

That is good news indeed, and I can’t think of a better response to it than the following words from The Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Yesterday’s news was dominated by the unveiling of Apple’s new iPad – an electronic tablet that bridges the gap between a smartphone and a laptop. Not even scenes of Haitian suffering or the State of the Union address could overshadow the gathering of true believers who sat at the feet of Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, and listened to his every word about this “truly magical and revolutionary product.” The incredible hype and wild speculation in the media that has preceded all of this for months and months is captured well, I think, in “Steve ‘Moses’ Jobs Delivers Tablet” – a wonderful illustration by Dale Stephanos. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, which was quoted as part of yesterday’s presentation, put it this way:

Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.

Hmmm . . . Steve Jobs as the new Moses? I don’t think so. I’ll stick with Jesus. But it’s a funny image that dovetails pretty well with the way many people react to his creations. However, there is something that sets the leadership team at Apple apart from the rest of us mere mortals. It’s something that was highlighted on a blog post entitled “Apple’s Secret? It Tells Us What We Should Love” in today’s online version of Harvard Business Review:

[The level of excitement that Steve Jobs' presentation created] was validation of Apple’s peculiar innovation process: Insights do not move from users to Apple but the other way around. More than Apple listening to us, it’s us who listen to Apple. . . .

Firms that create radical innovations make proposals. They put forward a vision. . . . Their non-user-centered proposals are not dreams without a foundation. Sometimes they fail. But when they work, people love them even more than products that have been developed by scrutinizing their needs.

So maybe Steve Jobs does have something in common with the person at whose feet I sit and listen. It was Jesus, after all, who taught me to love God with my whole being and to love my neighbor as myself without asking me about my perceived needs beforehand. It turns out that I perceive those needs differently when I’m not in a self-centered frame of mind and that life is much more interesting, rewarding, and meaningful than I could have imagined on my own.

My wife and I are finally catching up with the rest of our generation by watching the award-winning AMC series “Mad Men.” Set in 1960s New York, it’s about the men and women of Madison Avenue’s fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency (Madison Avenue ad men = “Mad Men”). Having become rather crunchy since our move to the state of Minnesota, we don’t have cable television. So we’ve been downloading episodes on iTunes and loving every minute of them (although the adult themes explored aren’t suitable for children). Lots of other people do too, including Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He’s fascinated by the “cultural exegesis” that’s necessary for the creation of advertisements and that’s reflected in the staff brainstorming at Sterling Cooper. As he writes in this thought-provoking essay,

I enjoy the show’s depictions of discussions about how to present a product. Indeed, I find them spiritually and theologically instructive.

The Creative Director at Sterling Cooper is Don Draper. In the final episode of the first season, he pitches an ad campaign for Kodak’s new “wheel” slide projector to the client with pictures of his family and these words:

Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. . . . ‘Nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship; it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel; it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.

That scene reminds me of just how powerful the words are that are spoken each week at the Lord’s Table. Our gifts are offered to God with thanksgiving, the words of Jesus at his last meal with his friends are recalled, and the Holy Spirit is asked to make that memory a reality – right here, right now. It’s where ordinary bread and wine become holy food and ordinary men, women, and children become holy people. It’s where we know we are loved as members of God’s family. It’s where we arrive back home again. The words of Jesus from Matthew 18:3-5 also come to mind:

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.