Augmented Reality in Jesus’ Name

How many here have heard of or played Pokemon Go? It is one of the hottest games on smartphones since 2016. Pokémon Go. Players walk the streets like zombies, staring at their phones and hunting for collectible characters. But what they actually looking at?

For starters, they are looking at the world.

For some players, Pokémon Go is a health booster and a social connector. Kay Collins, a 22-year-old health care worker in San Francisco, played the game for half a day straight one Sunday. "My pedometer says I've taken way, way more steps throughout the day than I used to before I started playing this game," she said, adding that it had helped her explore her neighborhood.

Brad Ensworth, a San Francisco State University student who plays the game on weekends, said he had never been a fan of augmented reality gaming before Pokémon Go, but was drawn in by the game's surprisingly social aspect. "You'll just run into people and spark up conversations immediately," he said, describing his experience while playing the game in Golden Gate Park.


Streets, parks, houses and public buildings. The game is tied to real-world landmarks, and the most popular sites have true historic significance.

The buildings and parks are real, but the Charmanders and Squirtles around them are not. They are Pokémon characters, exotic cartoons who seem to be living in and around churches, houses and other places in the real world. From parks in San Francisco to the White House in Washington, characters are popping up everywhere.

Pokémon Go is an example of what is formally termed “augmented reality” -- the real world, but different- enhanced.

Augmented reality.

We need to know about it so we can better prepare for a future that will definitely be augmented. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook wants to make the smartphone "the first augmented-reality platform." Facebook already has begun adding camera effects to its apps, letting users overlay objects, animations and filters on their images. I have used it myself a few times on uploaded photos.

In the future, we'll have smart windshields on our cars, projecting information on where we are and where we are heading. Teachers will use augmented reality to give students a virtual tour of the human circulatory system, or our solar system.

To save lives, experienced surgeons will view operations remotely and provide instructions to physicians who are doing the surgery. Smart glasses will be worn by blind people -- glasses that send a video feed to a customer service agent, who tells the person what's going on around them.

These are all examples of augmented reality- the real world, but -- in these examples -- better.

Our Monday evening Bible study group has discovered another example of Augmented Reality in reading The Book of Acts. In this case, in the early Church the real world was made better through innovations that were spiritual instead of technological in nature.

One day in the city of Jerusalem, the apostles Peter and John encounter a crippled beggar. Peter says, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk" (3:6).

The beggar has been lame since birth, sprawled on the ground day after day asking people for money as they enter the temple. According to Acts, Peter augments this beggars reality; offering healing in the name of Jesus. Acts tells us that "jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God" (3:8).

Actually, augmented does not do justice to the transformation this lame man experienced. His reality was completely altered! It was more than augmented; he was, to use Paul’s language, "a new creation."

Unfortunately, this healing upsets the status quo. As one colleague put it, “Not everyone wants you to mess with their reality ... their truth.”

The captain of the temple, the priests and the Sadducees come to Peter and John, "much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead" (vv. 1-2).

Jerusalem's religious leaders arrest Peter and John and place them in custody.
Acts 4:5-12 begins at this point. Without any direct reference to a specific courthouse or courtroom, clearly the scene is a legal one as both accusers and accused face off. The narrator names three categories of accusers: "rulers, elders and scribes" (v. 5). Meticulously, the actual names of the highest-ranking officials are also cited: "Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John and Alexander." They, along with many others, have an irrefutable pedigree because all of them "were of the high priestly family" (v. 6). This contingent -- an inequitable jurisprudent cohort that seemingly held all the power -- "made the prisoners stand in their midst" (v. 7).

With accusers and accused facing each other, the prosecution team commences its interrogation. Drawing upon Peter's oration from the previous day, the complainants ask, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" (v. 7; cf. 3:12).
 "What is the secret to this transformation?" they want to know.

Peter responds with words that are not entirely his own. Acts tells us Peter is helped, guided -- you might say augmented -- by "the Holy Spirit" (v. 8).
"Rulers of the people and elders," he says, "let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead" (vv. 8, 10).

The secret to augmented reality or a completely new creation is the power of God, seen in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the work of the Holy Spirit. Jerusalem's leaders are threatened by this new reality that is appearing around them, and shocked that their authority is being questioned by two "uneducated and ordinary men" (v. 13).
We are told that 5,000 people decided to become followers of Jesus, even if the number is exaggerated this is sure sign that something new was happening outside the realm of the religious authorities’ control.

Five thousand people. We could describe them as people hungry for a transformed life, looking for a better world.

Reality is things as they are. No fantasy. No illusion. No wishful thinking. Augmented reality is things as they should be. Through the power of God, we can move from the world as it is to the world as it should be.

It's a radical augmentation that makes us virtually new creations in Christ!
The editors of Homiletics described it like this:

In reality, there is human effort. People can cook meals, build houses, write books, deliver medical care, teach children and compose music. Some people can even perform different functions at the same time.

But in augmented reality, the power of the Holy Spirit is the extraordinary add-on. When we open ourselves to the Spirit, our human efforts become part of God's work in the world. We still cook meals, but now we add a way to feed our hungry neighbors; we still build houses, but now we engage in ministries for the homeless. We continue to write, to teach, to provide medical care, to compose music- but now we write books to uplift and inspire, help deliver medical care to the poor, teach children in underserved communities and compose music that glorifies God.

What made the words of Peter powerful was that he was "filled with the Holy Spirit" (v. 8). The same is true for us when our words and actions are augmented by the Spirit.  
There's a verse in Paul's letter to the Colossians, a sort of blessing: "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,…. (3:17). Do everything -- everything -- in his name.

Think about the implications of that. Think about what it means to not only go to church in the name of Jesus -- to not only pray, or serve in the church any of those other churchy things -- but to go to work in the name of Jesus; go to school in the name of Jesus; live in a family and community in the name of Jesus; conduct all of life in the name of Jesus.

What would it mean for the way we live, if we strove to conform everything we do to the way of Jesus, doing all those things in his name?

Could we ever tell a lie in the name of Jesus?

Could we gossip in the name of Jesus?

Could we lean on the car horn, expressing our road rage in the name of Jesus?

Could we cheat on our spouse in the name of Jesus?

Could we utter a racial slur in the name of Jesus?

Yes, it does seem to matter in what name, and in what way we live our lives.
In God's augmented reality, the one Peter declares, we find transformation and eternal life. The grave is not the end for anyone who trusts in Jesus because Jesus is the one "whom God raised from the dead" (v. 10).
This is an augmented life that is connected to what we know in this world; but goes far beyond it. As Saint Augustine said in one of his prayers, "We shall rest and we shall see. We shall see and we shall know. We shall know and we shall love. We shall love and we shall praise. Behold our end which is no end."

The augmented reality Augustine describes is spiritual, not technological. Peter and John experienced it in the resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent work of the Holy Spirit. We may experience it today by combining our human efforts with the same Spirit, and trust that God is leading us as we follow Jesus.
Closing story:
--Debie Thomas, "A Light to See By," Journey with Jesus for August 6, 2017. journeywithjesus.net. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
I came across a C.S Lewis quote this week that stopped me in my tracks: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

For reasons I'm still puzzling out, the quote is feeding my soul. I've spent a long time now moving away from a version of Christianity I can no longer affirm in good faith -- Christianity as certitude, Christianity as fundamentalism, Christianity as a rabbit's foot, securing my safety and good fortune. All the while, I've tried to find an essential core that I can still hold, and that will hold me. I wonder now if C.S. Lewis's analogy is that core. What would it be like to accept Christianity, not primarily as a set of doctrinal claims, but as a lens? As a means of seeing? If my faith became my eyes, my light source, my sun, what sort of reality could I live into?

At every point, Christianity calls us to hold together truths that seem bizarre, counterintuitive and irreconcilable. Die to live. Pardon in order to be pardoned. Bless those who persecute you. And yet these seeming contradictions are what give the religion credibility and verisimilitude. If I live in a world that's chock full of contradiction, then I need a religion robust enough and complex enough to bear the weight of that messy world. I need a religion that empowers me, in Richard Rohr's beautiful words, "to live in exquisite, terrible humility before reality. ..."

I am held and braced by a God who is too big for thin, one-dimensional truth. I am held in a deep place. A mysterious place. A high place. Of course, the light is different here. It's filtered, shady, complex. It requires more from my eyes -- more patience, more alertness. A longer gaze. But the view? The view is worth it. The view from this place is spectacular.

--Debie Thomas, "A Light to See By," Journey with Jesus for August 6, 2017. journeywithjesus.net. Retrieved October 12, 2017.

In Christ God offers us augmented reality- a life and a world transformed. May we, like C.S. Lewis, have eyes to see. Amen.