Curate’s sermon. Luke 3.1-6

I am not a particularly active social media user. I am on Facebook but don’t look at it more than once a month. I am on Instagram but can’t remember the last time I posted anything there. I am not on TikTok and I have deleted Twitter because it is depressing. Having said all this, I do spend enough time online, especially on YouTube, to know exactly what happens on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok and to at least be aware of some current trends. Thus, I have discovered something called the Main Character Syndrome. It has been defined as ‘a tendency to view one’s life as a story in which one stars in the central role, with everyone else a side character at best. Only the star’s perspectives, desires, loves, hatreds and opinions matter, while those of others in supporting roles are relegated to the periphery of awareness. Main characters act while everyone else reacts. Main characters demand attention and the rest of us had better obey.’
We could have described this as just being rude or selfish but we would miss the ‘narrative’ aspect of this phenomenon, which I think is quite important. The Main Character Syndrome is a particular feature of short videos or things like reels – series of photos presenting a story. In all of these the creator acts as the main character in the story, curating all aspects of it, including their movements and appearance, often dancing or lip-synching to a song or showing off a skill, frequently in a public place, while everything and everyone around them acts as a backdrop. The person is the protagonist in the story and also the script-writer, the producer and the director, which gives them full control over the narrative. It is probably not surprising that with such a degree of consistent control over the storyline, one indeed starts to see other people as secondary backdrop characters, rather than other agents in the narrative. This results in the main characters’ often shockingly rude responses to the public and markedly selfish behaviour recorded on camera and then uploaded on the internet.
One argument is that the use of social media is encouraging and perpetuating self-centred attitudes and the Main Character Syndrome. But there is another argument that this is part of natural human behaviour, which has just found an outlet through social media, having previously been suppressed by things like etiquette and social expectations.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book ‘The Denial of Death’, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker describes how one of the cultural truths humanity lives with is the idea of ‘heroism’. Becker says that our natural narcissism creates in us a desire ‘to stand out, to be the one in creation’, to be the hero. The same narcissism leads us to believe that in our heroic narrative someone else will suffer, someone else is going to fail, someone else is going to die, but not us. After all, I am the main character, and like John McClane in ‘Die Hard’ I am going to do the impossible to survive and save the day. However, Becker argues that culturally, ‘the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it’ and so we conceal it. We may blush when we are praised but, as Becker says, ‘underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it’.
After the initial internal protest against this outrageous suggestion of universal narcissism, I had to admit that this feeling of getting all shy when complimented while quietly thinking that I’m actually pretty good is familiar. In my case, it is a weird mix of this with quite a bit of self-criticism, but it is there. Or doing something that appears selfless but in fact validates me in the eyes of others so I can be the hero. This feeling does not even have to take a form of internal triumph at the recognition of one’s own superiority, it can be quite the opposite. We can sometimes feel superior in our own victimhood. I remember years ago reading the book called ‘Games people play’ on social psychology. Among other things, the book described a pattern of interaction titled ‘yes, but’. It goes like this. Someone is upset because they have a problem. You suggest a solution and they respond ‘yes, but…’ and pose another problem or point out a flaw in your solution. You propose another one and get another ‘yes, but…’ in response. And so it goes on, and no matter how hard you try, you will never solve it, because the point of this interaction is not to solve the problem but for the suffering respondent to be the centre of attention.
You may or may not recognise yourself in these, but I wonder how much truth there is in this theory of natural selfishness. And is the social media just highlighting something we know about ourselves but refuse to admit?
And this is what (finally!) brings us to John the Baptist. And Jesus. Today’s Gospel reading tells us that the role of John the Baptist is to ‘prepare the way of the Lord, to make his path straight’. He has no illusions about being the Messiah, despite many people asking whether he is, when he appears on the public scene. In his responses to those wondering, he expresses certainly in not being the main character. Describing the Messiah, he says he is not even worthy to untie the straps of his sandals. John’s life’s work is not about himself; it is about the one who will come after. If Becker’s observations of our innate selfishness are correct, John’s story is a dramatic challenge to human nature. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to do good things in secret and not to boast about them. This alone is difficult to do. It is good to do a good thing quietly, but are we able to do it entirely selflessly or is there a selfish sense of moral reward that we are seeking at the same time? And if this is hard, how much more is required of us to dedicate our whole life to being someone else’s predecessor!
And yet, this is what we are. We are a generation among many, and none of the stuff around us is really about us. As psalm 39 says, ‘the span of my years is as nothing before’ God, ‘everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure’. And the book of Ecclesiastes echoes this saying ‘all is vanity’! We may be remembered for something we have done or we may not, but fundamentally, we are here in order that we can be replaced. We all are making a way for someone or something. We are responsible for the upbringing of our children, for the moral choices we make, which will shape the communities of the future, for the state we leave this world in to the generations after us. We all live in order to step aside to let someone else go ahead, if only we had the courage and the wisdom to admit it!
Becker’s argument is that the fear of death leads us to create narratives in which our life obtains significance. There are a number of narratives to choose from, apparently ranging from mental illness to art. If this is the case, it is no wonder that social media are exploding with the ‘Main Character Syndrome’ hashtags. We live in the age when death is a taboo. We have come to deny it to such an extent that we have no choice but to chase our own greatness. It seems the less willing we are to accept our mortality, the more selfish we become in trying to draw everyone else’s attention to our heroic selves. I feel the answer is in accepting that we are not particularly significant. Even the emperors and rules and governors and high priests listed in our Gospel reading are mere names that gave way to someone who came after them to replace them in their roles. Whether confessing and abandoning our selfishness is against human nature or not, I don’t know, but as we believe in the God who created all nature and can respond to our longings and desires, we have the option of making true humility our prayer to Him. In our Christian faith, we have the comfort of God’s eternal love in the face of our fear of death, we have the role models of John the Baptist, many saints and Christ himself, who lived selflessly and taught us to do the same. We have the power to choose a different narrative and to follow John in having no fear and leading the way for those greater than us, who will follow in our footsteps. Amen.