c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) Writing time completed, I settle in with the Sunday New York Times.

When theologian Karl Barth said a preacher should stand in the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, he must have envisioned muscular clergy. For the Sunday Times is a hefty load.

But it does preach. Like everything else, the Sunday Times changes continually and offers a mirror of who we are.

The largest section, at 42 pages, is Arts & Leisure. While there may be as many aspiring ballerinas and flutists as ever, this section is primarily about movies. This is a cinema age _ passive entertainment, affordable ticket prices, celebrity faces filling enormous screens, exciting special effects, an increasingly derivative art form devoted to sequels, whose box office revenues are considered newsworthy. We watch ourselves watching someone else pretend to live.

Next is the first section, whose front page is studied by newspaper editors everywhere to see what news is fit to print. Today’s page one has political news and, inexplicably, articles about a pro football coach and, of course, the movies. Nothing on North Korea and only a photo on Iraq. No need to address war in today’s sermon, evidently.

The ads in section one reveal our economic malaise. Cell phones, 75 percent-off sales, and not a single ad for a $10,000 Rolex. Missing are the Fifth Avenue department stores. Welcome, TJ Maxx.

Three sections concern money. Not one section concerns religion or education.

The oddest section, in my view, is Sunday Styles, which focuses a fawning (and, I surely hope, ironic) lens on the wealthy and trendy of Manhattan. Today’s lead: “How the Well-to-Do Are Making Do.” Photos: $850,000 jet, $150,000 Bentley, an ungainly $5,625 wedding dress, and tacky $6,500 rings. Now, that will preach.

Still as potent as ever is Week in Review, which offers in-depth analysis and great political columnists. Here I find Korea, fraud, race and terrorism. Maybe Karl Barth would allow today’s preacher to hold just this section on Sunday.

Imagine John the Baptist wading into this river to proclaim a messiah. He is “more powerful than I,” John would say. But is he more powerful than entertainment, passivity, derivative culture, obsession with money and fashion, and news about war, greed and fear?

For that was the challenge then and surely is the challenge now. Any charismatic figure can found a new religion. People do it all the time. Getting people to believe in something is relatively easy. Look at how deft our politicians have become.

But can messiah stand against greed, lust, power, fear, self-loathing, passivity and despair? Can messiah point, not to a better way of formulating religion, but to a holy way of living, to victory over the darkness? Can messiah speak to today’s version of the golden calf worshippers of Exodus, who want to believe that something readily attainable _ wealth, comfort, style, sacrifice in the form of a cut-rate Bentley, and power, always power _ will make their lives worth living?

This, I think, is where the preacher puts down both Bible and Times, stands forward as John stood forward, and says, Yes, there is such a messiah. His name is Jesus. He isn’t my weapon against my enemy, my badge of worthiness, my gotcha in an argument, my big-screen hero, my substitute for the $10,000 Rolex which I won’t ever own. He isn’t my entertainment or my path to wealth and fame. No editor renders him fit to print.

He is simply Lord. And someday, says the preacher with hands free to beckon, may we dare to kneel before him.

No more arguments about what the Bible does or doesn’t say, no more proof-texting, no more trivial disputes over ancient Hebrew and Greek words, no more scouring concordances to win armchair battles. And no more parading of political opinions as absolute truth, no more honoring the venal, no more searching for easy ways to make life worth living.

Empty both hands, if that is what it takes to bend the knee. John the Baptist conquered hubris. Until we do the same, we have little to say, no matter how muscularly we wave our weapons.

DEA END EHRICH