Connecting People

This is the text of a short address given at St Catherine's, Bramley. The chosen reading was Mark 14: 22-26. This term's sermon series is based on famous advertising slogans - and last night I was preaching on Connecting People. To be honest, I couldn't readily recall which company used it - so after a quick search online I came to the Nokia website. The first thing that came to mind was Nokia's seminal ringtone. 

So that's where the sermon began: by playing the ringtone

Nokia’s ringtone is, quite possibly, the most well-known and frequently heard melody across cultural boundaries. 

First used in an advert in 1992, and installed on the Nokia 2110 two years later, this short refrain from the Grande Valse by Fracisco Tárrega is played an estimated 20,000 times a second.  

One tech blogger wrote that it ‘continues to signify much more than an incoming call’.

The music was chosen because it was originally played on an acoustic guitar. It offered a more human feel than the themes often associated with technology adverts. It embodied the Nokia motto Connecting People.

More than 20 years later, that slogan remains in use: Nokia - still connecting people.

Nokia have been through turbulent times. Out-designed by Samsung and Apple, they stopped making mobile phones to focus instead on servicing and infrastructure.  

As the world becomes ever more connected - across multiple devices and different media - the Nokia jingle sums up our digital age. If it beeps, it’s connected... we’re connected. 

In order to continue Connecting People, Nokia is reviving its brand - renowned for its simplicity, quality, reliability and ease of use. It’s investing in extending battery life; keeping data costs down; engaging in social media, reaching beyond the familiar platforms of Twitter and Instagram to RenRen and Sina Weibo in China.

Connecting people: enabling them and us to capture experiences, exchange ideas and share images; connecting the unconnected. In the words of, its own website: ‘Nokia is shaping the technologies at the heart of our connected world, to transform human experience’; and ‘we create the technology to connect the world in a responsible way. Together’.

There are echoes of the values of God’s Kingdom in some elements of Nokia’s vision for connection: solving global social and economic challenges; empowering individuals; increasing efficiency and productivity; and creating shared value. The connection business is about sustainable technology, sustainable growth and contributing to the United Nations Goal on sustainable development.

Connecting in this way is undoubtedly invaluable: whether that means shaping enterprise culture, healthcare and banking in Uganda; or the conversations, research, entertainment and convenience that we enjoy. Mobile communication is also fraught with risk from social media trolls and pressure around body image to grooming and sexual exploitation.  

Connecting people: is it more than this?

Connection in a digital world is more than an exchange of data, the number of likes we get on Facebook or vanishing images on SnapChat.  Paradoxically, mobile devices and social media helps us overcome a sense of isolation whilst also increasing loneliness. 

Connecting people: it’s about chatting over a mug of hot chocolate; sitting down together at long tables for this evening’s meal; breaking a bar of chocolate in two to share it; passing popcorn along the row at the cinema. There is comfort in food that is shared; connection in spending time together. 

As my culinary hero Nigel Slater puts it: ‘it is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you… once the warm, salty butter has hit your tongue, you are smitten’.

Connecting people: that is what Jesus was doing in his entire ministry: in his life, death and risen life. Drawing people back into community; exploring with them big questions of suffering, wealth, failure, forgiveness, relationships and faith; connecting them to their purpose in life. Connecting them, and us, to God; the one in whom all our longings, hopes and fears are met.  

And Jesus does that, in part, by eating with them. 

Regularly. 

At weddings and on hillsides; with the powerful and the vulnerable. 

Les Noces de Cana, Louis Kahn (1949)

Even on the night before he died… 

… He had supper with his friends. 

He took, blessed and gave thanks; he broke, poured out and gave. 

Ordinary stuff. 

Bread and wine. 

To bring us into communion. 

Every time we break bread we remember; we connect; we become members of a body; more than the sum of our parts.  Each time we share communion we are connecting people; and we become people who make connections.  How we take time eating together can be a sign of God’s Kingdom. Connecting people: in kindness, generosity and friendship. 

©  Julie Gittoes 2018

Do this!

Now we turn to the events of Maundy Thursday: an upper room is prepared, feet are washed and bread is broken. God's faithfulness is remembered. Yet Jesus' own words this night disrupt and deepen the meaning of redemption. All that the psalmists hoped for is made flesh.  Take, eat, this is my body. Do this. Remember me.

The psalm we hear on this night is draws us into the expression of the goodness of God. In psalm 116, the writer declares his love of one who is gracious, compassionate and faithful: ‘I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications’ is the opening tribute to God.

It’s a claim rooted in personal experience.  Cries for help had been heard: in the face of death and at the lowest ebb; in tears and affliction; in consternation when confronted with lies. Is this perhaps an expression of grace? The psalmist loves God and calls upon the divine name – the one who’d remained faithful to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would surely remain faithful in this generation?

Praise takes on a visible and tangible form: offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving; fulfilling vows in public; being a servant of the Lord. A life dedicated to God becomes a form of witness – in what we do as well as what we say; in the strength we find in worship as well as the freedom we find in God’s service.

But let’s go back to the psalm and hear these words in the context of the unfolding drama: ‘O  LORD, I am your servant’. 

Tonight we remember how our teacher and Lord disrobed, wrapped a towel around him and washed his disciples’ feet; we remember how Peter resisted; how he was challenged about what it was to be one with Jesus; how his whole-hearted response – wash my hands, my head – led to the command to wash each other’s feet. ‘I have set you an example’ says our Lord, ‘if you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.’

Even when, perhaps especially when, there is disagreement, mistrust, consternation and affliction, this is what we are to do. This is who we are to be. This is at the heart of our witness. How do we learn to improvise faithfully on this command? What does it look like – where is the Spirit calling us to serve?

We do not do it in our own strength but by being nourished by Christ himself. ‘I will lift up the cup of salvation’ says the psalmist ‘and call upon the name of the Lord’.  Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember God’s mighty acts of creation and salvation; we pray that by the power of the Spirit the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands might become for us Christ’s body and blood.  

We remember this night. On the night that he was betrayed, he had supper with his friends. Our remembering is more than subjective recollection – remembering that something happened, once upon a time. It is more than that. Our remembrance is a point of encounter with our Lord: we receive what we are, we become what we receive, the body of Christ. And because we remember in the light of the resurrection, we also catch a glimpse of a new future. The horizons of God’s Kingdom are extended; we commit ourselves to work for justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. 

Every time we break this bread; we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. But on this evening, we stand as those who are penitent in the face of our own acts of denial.  We do so in the assurance that Jesus’ giving of himself; his laying down of his life for his friends, liberates us from the snares of death, distress and anguish.

© Julie Gittoes 2016