The picture that comes to mind when most of us think of someone being a “medium” is probably a person is speaking for some dead person in a romantic comedy; they are a “medium” dressed like a gypsy, groaning with communication from the other world. That is sad.

I am going to say more about this tomorrow and all summer, but we Christians should wake up on Pentecost and surrender to the reality that when the Holy Spirit fills us WE are the medium. The church is God’s medium of communication. We are God’s media. God did not fill devices with his Spirit, he filled his people. We Jesus-followers may express ourselves in a variety of ways, but when it comes down to it, WE are God’s media, not the tools we use.

A LOT of dead things are speaking for the spirit of the age. Every box with a screen would love to suck us in and make a permanent relationship. We believers often use the deadening media of our technologically-overrun era to relay the message of Jesus to good end — we can redeem what is dead, after all. But more often we just conform to the enslaving power of the mass and social media machines, get squashed into their general mold and mimic their style and content! We have become tools of the tools.

So for the summer season of Pentecost, I am going to keep shaving off elements of the social media, in particular, that have diminished our awareness that we, the church, are the media. I want to communicate face-to-face or as directly as I can rather than being mediated by some monster that is commodifying my content and working on charging me to offer it. Today I start with Facebook. I blacked myself out.