It is a hard time to be a church.  Goodness is losing on so many fronts.  Our country is flirting with wars and the potential deaths of innocent people are not the biggest story.  Much of our attention is given to sex scandals.  Most of the time it is about men treating women terribly.  Our sexism has made us less aware of growing racism.  The gap between the rich and poor is getting wider.  U.S. students now rank near the middle of the pack.  The trends are heading the wrong directions—toward more division, more self-centeredness, and more despair.  It is a hard time to be a church, but that is when we most need the church.

When the culture says we are becoming more isolated we need a family.  Almost everyone at Plymouth attends coffee hour—which is not the case in most churches.  We “Meet, Greet and Eat.”  We go to the theater together.  We tell the story of Plymouth’s amazing history.  We share the life of the church with our youth.  We have young adult groups, parenting groups, Bible studies, and book studies.  At the heart of these activities is the hope that we will overcome divisions and be family for one another.

When the culture says we are becoming more self-centered, we need to worship God.  Many of us are learning to give ourselves in worship.  We sing.  We pray.  We confess. We listen.  We give.  We engage.  We pass the peace exuberantly.  We celebrate the many children in our congregation.  We baptize.  We observe communion.  We welcome new members.  During Lent, five members inspired us by honestly sharing why they find it hard to be a Christian.  We are growing as worshippers as we move from worship as a spectator event to worship as a shared experience of God’s love.

When the culture says we are less caring, we need the church to help us serve.  We build houses with Habitat for Humanity.  We host conferences on anti-trafficking.  We help parents talk to their children about racism.  We work with the Hope Project, preparing people for job interviews.  We push for bail reform.  We provide shelter for the homeless.  We support the Mission School of Hope in Cameroon.  We share ministry with Plymouth Church School.  We pack groceries for Brooklyn Delivers.  We raise money for hurting women through the Thrift Store.  We need the church, because people are hurting and we need to help.

This is a good time in the life of Plymouth.  We are taking care of old things and trying new things.  God is helping us love one another, worship honestly, and care for the needy.

You know – FAANG.  Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google!  What’s the next big FAANG, and why should you care?

I wonder if they gathered in the local Brau Haus pondering what would follow Gutenberg’s printing press?  Henry Ford’s move from hand crafted to line produced was a game changer.  Ever think about what will take the place of Al Gore’s invention of the internet?  Steve Jobs and Bill Gates initially helped to automate tasks that might have taken hours or days down to minutes.  The blessings and curses seemed discernable regarding mass production, easy accessibility of goods, accelerated forms of communications and quality of life.  Automation and speed were the name of the game.

I was excited to find I would be required to learn FORTRAN computer programming when attending Gettysburg College, a strong liberal arts college (we also were required to swim).  We ran data on stacks of punch cards to generate results from research.  That beast of a machine automated the data I compiled and fed to it.   I still needed to interpret what the results meant.  Just a few years before 2001: A Space Odyssey was all the rage in the movies.  This 1968 film tells a different story.  HAL (aka IBM) starts calling the shots with astronaut Dave.  HAL was not simply a machine for automation, HAL was autonomous.  Truth be told, I did try to talk to the computer at school but never got a response.

Then there is Joshua, the computer Matthew Broderick, David, used to play War Games in the 1983 film.  Ultimately nobody won and Joshua invited David to a “nice game of chess.”  Joshua, like HAL, was not simply a machine going through its paces.  Joshua, C-P30 and R2-D2 make us feel somewhat comfortable with autonomous machines.  They’re cute in their own way.  (HAL is definitely not warm and fuzzy.)

What’s the next big FAANG?  Boston Dynamics would tell you drones are yesterday’s technology.  They are building “thinking” robots with names like Spot and Sand Flea.  They are leaps above the Jetson’s Rosie the Robot.  While Lyft drivers still get lost even using Waze, smart cars will be perfected and automate driving at some point.  Will a line be crossed for you when you get into the car and the car decides where you are going to go rather than you making the call?

Artificial intelligence (AI), autonomy, goes far beyond automation.  We all want help with our schedules.  We want more time.  Imagine everything you could get done in the passenger seat if the car was in charge of the driving and knows how you like your coffee.  The United States is in a race with other super powers to make lethal action a matter of AI decision making.  Should Siri or Alexa be deciding how nations relate to one another?  (Honestly, Alexa doesn’t always get my music right.)  Currently the U.S. requires at least one human intervention before potentially lethal action is taken by any war machine.  That isn’t true for every nation.  Will human intervention always be true for the U.S.? The next really big FAANGs are not headed to your kitchen and not hitting the road.  AI will begin “deciding” acceptable numbers of human casualties unless we take a deep breath and consider what that means.

We are facing issues requiring ethical thought and socially responsible consideration.  Who decides?  I think Dave would caution us and Joshua would tell us to play chess.  How does our faith inform our thinking?  How do your beliefs inform your thinking?  I don’t have the answers, and I’m not asking Siri.  I do know I’ll continue to ask the questions and look carefully for the next big FAANG.  I hope you’ll join me.

How is everybody doing tonight? You look great.  You’re less sober than the people I usually talk to.

I’m surprised to be at the Comedy Cellar because — and I know how this sounds — I’m a minister.

Saying that you’re a minister shuts down conversations with barbers, waitresses and the person sitting next to you on the plane. That last one is helpful.

I’m not a minister who thinks he’s cool enough to fit in anywhere. I’m not the Unitarian campus minister at NYU. I don’t wear a tweed jacket and a turtle neck. I don’t run a soup kitchen in Hell’s Kitchen. I don’t do nearly enough of the stuff I tell everyone else to do. I’m not the chaplain for U2 — which is not a real job — but I can dream.

You might be surprised to learn that churches talk about some of you a lot.  How many of you went to church more often when you were 9 years old?  You’re the ones churches talk about. Churches think they can get you back.  Churches are your mother trying to get you to come home for the weekend by promising the beef noodle casserole she insists you loved when you were a kid.

Some churches think they’ll get you to come back with bad drummers.  They believe there are 20-year-olds who wake up early on Sunday mornings and say to themselves, “I feel like singing along with a 60-year-old drummer playing 18 century hymns.”

Some churches have started meeting in pubs for “Theology on Tap,” where they drink beer and talk about God. They hope you’re looking for an inebriated minister to explain the meaning of life.

Some churches have changed their names with you in mind. If a church has a name that sounds like a ’70s band — Journey, Passion, The Bridge — you’re the target audience.

We know the church can be disappointing, but we also know the church can be wonderful. If you decide to give us another chance, we’ll try not to act cooler than we are. We’ll learn your name and ask how you’re doing. We’ll find gracious ways to say that we find hope in believing in something bigger than we are, and think you might, too. You can help us with hard questions about meaning and purpose. You can help us do things rather than just talk about them. You might find that you enjoy being part of a group of friends trying to live better, more authentic lives.

Some Christians stop eating meat.  Some give up Facebook.  Some read the Psalms.  When I was a young minister in Indiana, I began reading the obituaries for Lent.  The Paoli News-Republican came out on Tuesday and Friday.  A normal edition included two or three obituaries that were written by the newspaper’s staff.  No family was ever charged for an obituary.

The writers interviewed the deceased’s family, friends, and ministers to help them express their gratitude for the person’s life.  These tributes included sentiments like, “He never met a stranger” and “She laughed every day.”  Reading the obituaries reminded me that people are often good and that I need to make my days count.

The obituaries in The New York Times are different from the ones in The Paoli News-Republican.  Most of the people in Paoli would balk at paying $263 for the first four lines and $52 per line thereafter with 28 characters per line.  Most of the people in my old church would not be able to read the tiny seven point san serif font without a magnifying glass.

But it is Lent, so on Sunday I sat down with my hometown newspaper to look for what matters in that day’s obituaries.  Here is what I found—still in alphabetical order:

Lerone Bennett, Jr., 89, wrote Before the Mayflower in which he noted that the first blacks arrived in the colonies in 1619, the year before the Mayflower.  He worked to prepare students to live in a multi-racial society.

Leonard Gubar, 81, was a dedicated fan of the Mets, Giants, Rangers and Knicks.  He was a nationally ranked Scrabble player and a routine finisher of The New York Times crossword puzzle.

Marvin S. Hans, M.D., 91, was a music lover—especially Frank Sinatra.

Robert B. Hiden, Jr., 84, served as a vestryman and Junior Warden of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Zita Kremnitzer was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922.  She survived the Holocaust and immigrated to New York in 1947.

Elizabeth Landauer, 80, served as a Girl Scout leader for many years.

Patricia Rashkin, 74, chose a career as a guardian for those unable to fend for themselves—spending more than three decades with the City of New York’s protective services.

William Selden, 70, businessman, philanthropist, sportsman, dog-lover, and innate comedian.  He was a long-time supporter of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind.

Alan Lewis Stein, 88, founded the not-for-profit affordable housing entity, Bridge Housing.  Bridge has participated in the development of more than 17,000 units of housing, providing homes for 42,500 people.

Constance Sultan, 84, worked for 30 years at Mt. Sinai Hospital, where she was the charge nurse in the baby nursery.

Reading the obituaries sounds gloomy, but that has not been my experience.  I am glad to be reminded that people are often good.  Being encouraged to make my days count feels like preparing for Easter.