The above sermon was previously preached at Central Peninsula Church and First Christian Church of Napa.

In 1949, shortly after the atrocities of the Holocaust and the Second World War, George Orwell published his increasingly classic novel, 1984. The book is a dystopian novel that imagines Orwell’s native Britain as the fictional Oceania that has been taken over by a tyrannical political regime that governs through emotional manipulation. Individual thinking is a crime against the state, citizens are under constant surveillance and through propaganda, misinformation, and state sponsored hate against a mysterious “other,” Oceania is stabilized.

Every day the citizen of Oceania are required to participate in a ritual called the “Two Minutes Hate.” The “Two Minutes Hate” is a dramatically produced film that depicts and demeans Oceania’s enemies. It is dramatically produced with what the narrator of the book describes as “hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil…” Its’ singular purpose is the proliferation of hate and collective rage as a ritual event that unifies the citizens of Oceania and distracts them from other political and cultural issues.

Maybe the most haunting line comes from the main character’s reflection on this ritual. He says…“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid jumping in.”

My assumption, is that we would all agree that we have felt the sweeping immersive effect of hate increase in our culture. Much like Orwell's Two Minutes Hate, our constant connectedness, 24-hour news cycle, and ever increasing polarization has swept us all up in the proliferation of hate.

How do we reverse this? How do followers of Jesus live and embody an alternative way that refuses to be consumed by this hate. The above sermon is my attempt at offering a way forward.