Since 2003, every year Mirriam-Webster dictionary has declared
a Word of the Year. Typically, the Words of the Year reflect cultural events from
the year prior.
For example, the Word of the Year in 2008 was “bailout” due
to the government’s role that year of bailing out banks and financial
institutions due to the 2008 financial crisis. In 2004, the Word of the Year
was “blog”—a new concept at the time—where writers would post a log of
activities or thoughts on the world-wide-web—a web-log, a blog. In 2020, the
word was “pandemic”. And in 2022, the word was “gaslighting” due to a growing
sense in society that we might not be getting the whole truth about world
affairs.
This year, Mirriam-Webster declared that the Word of the
Year is “slop”. “Slop” is defined as
“the constant flow of digital content of low quality that is usually produced
by means of artificial intelligence.”
“AI Slop is Everywhere,” warned The Wall Street Journal
earlier this year. The internet, but also, our culture in general seems to be
filling-up with machine-made junk-content that’s cheap, endless, and hard to
escape.
And it’s not just media content, is it? Everything seems
cheap lately. Companies are cutting corners; products don’t seem to be
“made-to-last” as they used to. Everything seems to be low-effort, artificial
and lacking deep meaning.
We’ve been experiencing cultural decline for several decades
now, but this flood of slop in the last year or two is deeply concerning as it
seems like it slop and sloppiness has infected just about everything from
government and the education system, to our food, our architecture, our music,
even our human relationships—low-effort, artificial, lacking deep-meaning.
Why do I bring up this idea of slop on this most holy Christmas
evening? Because to us is born a Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.
Tonight we celebrate the birth of the one who is the remedy
for the infection of slop. Again, that infection is not simply technological,
economic, or cultural. Those are symptoms. The deeper illness is spiritual.
What we are experiencing as slop—the cheapening of truth, beauty, work,
and even love—is the fruit of the human heart wounded by sin.
From the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, Sin always
involves lowering our standards—seeking less than what we were made for. Instead
of striving for what is true, good, and beautiful, we sin seeks what is easy,
convenient, and artificial. Instead of meaning, we accept distraction. Instead
of communion, we accept consumerism to make us happy.
Yet, into this world marked by corruption, the Savior was
born. Not in power and spectacle, but in poverty and silence. To save us from
sin, God did not send a lecture, or a policy, or a technological fix. He took
on our very flesh to redeem us. The eternal Son of God enters our broken human
condition from the inside. He does not stand at a distance diagnosing our
sickness; He takes it upon Himself, and becomes our remedy. This is what the
name Jesus means: “God saves.” He comes not merely to inform us and to
inspire us, but to restore us and redeem us.
Where sin trains us to settle, Christ reawakens our desire for
wholeness and holiness once again, by reorienting us to God.
And we might be surprised to learn that God desires our
wholeness and healing even more than we do. The Incarnation is God’s refusal to
let humanity remain degraded. In the Child of Bethlehem, God declares that
human life is worth saving, human nature is worth redeeming. Humanity is not
cheap and artificial, it is worth saving. It is worth dying for.
And that is why Christmas matters so much. Christmas is not about
presents and recreating nostalgic feelings. It’s about allowing God to reorder
our lives to what is most important, allowing God to heal us from the root of
our being. God wants to save precisely those parts of us that settle for
artificial substitutes for the meaning and life that comes from Him.
Those of you who only come to church once or twice a year,
might wonder, why every year at Christmas, the priest invites you to come to
church more often. It’s because God loves you and wants more for you than
artificial substitutes and a superficial relationship. True meaningful purpose
is not found on the outskirts of the Church, but by drawing as near to Christ
as you possibly can, by practicing our religion as fervently as you can.
Artificial intelligence cannot save this world. Nor can
politics or economics, or some lazy amalgamation of religious ideas. Salvation
cannot be found in an idea or technology, but in the person of Jesus Christ who
founded a Church and died for our sins and wants a profound relationship with
each one of us.
As we heard in our second reading from Paul to Titus: “The
grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways
and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age…to
make us eager for what is good”
That is the alternative to slop. Learning again how to
honestly and authentically seek what is truly good for us.
Christ is born to enable us to live as fully human beings
again: men and women who seek truth instead of convenience, beauty instead of
novelty, communion instead of consumption, and holiness instead of distraction.
If you feel exhausted and unhappy, disillusioned, or
unsatisfied—if you sense that much of what the world offers feels hollow and
thin: that restlessness is a sign that you were made for more. And A Savior has
been born for you. A remedy has been given. Seek him wholeheartedly, love him
profoundly.
May the peace of the newborn King—who alone can save—fill
your hearts and your homes this Christmas for the glory of God and the
salvation of souls.
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