Propaganda

Comes to you naturally, as your own idea

I.

In political science there is something called the Overton Window. It is used to track the stages an idea moves through, from being unthinkable to becoming public policy.

Politicians succeed or fail by their ability to detect where the window is on any given issue, at any given moment.

But it’s not the job of a politician to shift the Overton Window. That’s the job of Public Relations.

PR is the business of world-building. The father of PR, Edward Bernays, wrote:

“Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.”

¹

For instance, to sell pianos, Bernays advised that home builders build music rooms, that fashionable magazines show pictures of fashionably dressed housewives and fashionably dressed children playing the piano in these music rooms, so that when Mr. Blandings finally builds his dream house, he unconsciously builds it with a music room, which, of course, he must furnish with a piano. When the piano salesman comes knocking, Mr. Blandings has already been sold, and buying a piano comes to him naturally, as his own idea.

²

Bernays’s advice to salesmen and politicians is the same. They must be creators of circumstances.

³

They must create the circumstances in which people will demand the product they are selling or the policy they promise to enact in law.

Bernays taught that if you control the circumstances, you will control the outcome, effortlessly, like destiny, as if that new car (or that war) was meant to be.

II.

Today’s reading from 1 Peter is talking about those who accept Christ and those who reject Him.

Quoting Isaiah, Peter calls Jesus a stone, specifically a cornerstone:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone.”

Peter continues:

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

“The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes people to stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

It’s important to note that Christ is a cornerstone both to those who believe and those who do not believe. He is the same thing because Christ doesn’t change.

The point of difference is also important. To those who believe, Jesus is precious, but to those who do not believe, Jesus becomes the reason they fall.

It’s obvious here that this is a word of judgment. Unbelief has negative consequences. But Peter adds something here that makes me think of Edward Bernays:

“They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for” [emphasis added].

Peter is not denying free will. The unbelievers stumble because they choose to. But also they stumble because they were destined to fall.

Now, this seems contradictory, but think: Why did Mr. Blandings buy his piano? It was his idea (free will and all that). But why did he think he needed a piano in the first place?

Someone, in this case the Home Builders of America and their Madison Avenue PR departments created all the right circumstances for the Piano Builders of America to sell pianos.

Why, it’s as if it were just meant to be.

Peter, however, is talking about building a different kind of home. He says:

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

III.

Have you ever had an argument, or maybe just a long-running discussion, with someone, and you know that neither of you will convince the other?

Sure, you have.

That’s the point I think we’ve reached today, in the church, in the country, on any number of topics. Our long-running discussions have reached a point where we know neither side will budge.

I think that’s because we are increasingly living under different sets of circumstances. We can live next to each other, even attend the same church, and yet live in our own worlds.

Bernays wrote in the 1920s, at the beginning of the radio age, the dawn of mass media. He quickly realized its power to create the same set of circumstances for millions of people at a time.

Now we live in an age of media fragmentation and media tribalism.

But I don’t think that media’s fragmentation means that media’s power to create circumstances and to create worlds has diminished. And each of these worlds is destined for a certain outcome.

How many of these worlds will glorify Christ and call Him Lord?

I submit to you that the same power that once rallied the masses to mass destruction now speaks to us individually on little blue screens.

And what is behind those little blue screens?

Silicon, which comes from the Latin word silex or silicis, meaning flint or hard stone — the very opposite of the living Stone Himself.

IV.

Peter says we are to come to Jesus, “the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God” and that when we do, we will become like Him, like “living stones.”

That means that our worlds will change, that our circumstances will change, and that even our destinies will change.

No longer are we destined to fall through disobedience, but destined to stand with Him, who, for our sake, fell upon the cross and now stands at the right hand of God.

To this fact, Stephen, the first martyr, bears witness in today’s first reading:

“Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’”

But those to whom Stephen was speaking could not see what Stephen saw, because they were living under entirely different circumstances, as children of another world and children of another father.

⁴

So, instead:

“They covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.”

We can tell that Stephen belongs to a new world, one that operates by a very different set of circumstances than ours, because the last thing he does before he dies is fall on his knees and cry out:

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Lord, do not judge them by their circumstances.

Lord, do not let them be defined by their sins.

Lord, do not let the prince of this world determine their destiny and decide their fate.

⁵

V.

Could you show that kind of mercy towards those who would murder you? What about those who would murder your wife, or your husband, or your children?

I bet you would have a hard time with that. I do too. 16 years ago, there was a horrible home invasion in Connecticut where two men broke into the home of a doctor, tied him up in the basement, and then raped and murdered his wife and two daughters while he had to listen, helpless.

When that happened, I could only think of my own wife and daughters. I personally wanted to bring justice to these killers. I am sure many other husbands and fathers felt the same way.

I tell you this to illustrate how very different the world Stephen was living in the moment he died is from ours, how very different the circumstances, how very different the destinies.

Many preachers will proclaim that the death penalty should be abolished and that murderers should be spared. They will tell you it is society’s fault, which is a way of telling you that it’s your fault. But that’s blame shifting, just like Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.

They will use Stephen’s example to make their point. After all, Stephen was only echoing Christ’s words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

⁶

But they preach a cheap grace and a false mercy. They do not understand that the penalty for disobedience to God’s law is, in fact, death and that this whole world stands condemned to die because of it.

“They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.”

These are the circumstances into which we are born, this is the world we live in, this is our destiny unless we turn to Jesus Christ, rejected by humans but precious to God.

We humans reject Jesus because we cannot accept any other set of circumstances than our so-called right to choose for ourselves what is good and what is evil, what is true and what is false.

We’ve constructed a world that promises us freedom when we sin and assures us of mercy when we disobey.

But that is a false gospel.

It is not the gospel Christ died for. It is not the gospel Stephen died for.

Here is the gospel both men died for, in Peter’s words.

First, we are a chosen people. God has chosen us, which means He determines the circumstances in which we live, now and for eternity.

Second, we are a royal priesthood. Priests are intermediaries. The Latin word is pontifex, a bridge builder. We are to build bridges between our communities, God, and each other. There is no better way to do this than to implement just laws and to administer them fairly.

Third, we are a holy nation. This means that Christians are a definite and distinct group of people and should behave as such. We’ve been reading from 1 Peter this entire Easter and his letter is focused on this distinction and why it matters.

Fourth, we are God’s special possession. This amplifies the Greek word genos, translated as nation, but maybe race is the better word. The Christian race has nothing to do with ethnicity precisely because this race is composed of every ethnicity. It is a spiritual race, a chosen race, defined not by color or culture but by creed.

⁷

In other words, what we believe — or, I should say, who we believe in — defines us. Does Jesus define you?

Does this mean that color, culture, race, and nation disappear? No. They are important parts of who we are. God delights in our diversity. But it does means that we are no longer defined by them. Our faith in Jesus Christ now defines us.

Finally, we are all these things, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, God’s special possession so that we may “proclaim the excellence of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Darkness. The set of circumstances that determines our earthly fates. The world in which we were born, condemned to die.

Light. Well, to explore this light fully would take another sermon. Many sermons. But we catch the first glimmer of this light in God’s mercy: mercy we can’t possibly deserve and can’t possibly begin to imagine.

Peter writes,

“Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.”

Amen.

Preached on May 7, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.

Easter 5, Year A – Notes

Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

1.      To believers and unbelievers alike, Christ is a ____________.

2.      This is because Christ does not ____________.

3.      Peter does not deny ____________.

4.      At the same time, those who do not believe were ____________ not to.

5.      Explain why the one who controls the circumstances controls the outcome.

6.      Silicon comes from the Latin word silex or silicis which means ____________ or ____________.

7.      Stephen was the first ____________.

8.      Stephen saw Jesus ____________ at the right hand of God.

9.      Explain why Stephen’s persecutors could not see what he saw.

10.  Stephen prays to God not to judge his murderers by their ____________.

11.  We stumble because we ____________ God’s message.

12.  Describe the gospel for which Stephen died.

(1) cornerstone; (2) change; (3) free will; (4) destined; (5) circumstances influence our unconscious decisions (6) flint / hard stone; (7) martyr; (8) standing; (9) they inhabit another world / operate under different circumstances (10) sin or circumstance (11) disobey (12) the gospel of God’s undeserved mercy on His Church that rescues us from our circumstances and fate

1. Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda: With an Introduction by Mark Crispin Miller (New York: Ig, 2005), 74.

2. Bernays, 78.

3. Bernays, 120.

4. See: John 8:44.

5. See: John 14:29-31.

6. Luke 23:34.

7. Iain M. Duguid et al., Hebrews-Revelation, vol. 12 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 319.