McLuhan – “The Message of the Shofar”
Let there (the Medium) be (is the) Light (Message)
Let There be Light – A Sermon Environment at Hebrew Union College 1970
This sermon was conceived as both a textual sermon dealing with the biblical words “let there be light” and an experiential sermon flowing from the statement of Marshall McLuhan “The Medium is the Message.” Following the basic assumption that light has become our electronic technology, the sermon was set up, or rather the sermonic environment was set up so that not only would the effect of electronic technology on us be talked about – but also be experienced through the use of five slide projectors and two video tape monitors.
The content of the slides could be divided into three areas, Jewish history and tradition, contemporary societal problems, electronic technology and its products. The video tape monitors were playing from one video recorder an approximately ten-minute informal talk by the creator of the sermon environment – it was a rather casual “Rap” rather than a tightly written talk. Underlying the talk was the music of the “Rotary Connection” singing “Turn me on.”
Because the sermon was so much based on the experience of being bombarded by the simultaneous use of all the above-mentioned equipment, it is hard if not impossible to recapture that experience on these pages.
Excerpt from the “sermon environment text experience”:
What you are experiencing (in the Beginning) right now is what McLuhan (God created the Heaven and the earth.) talks about when he says that electric circuitry (The earthwas unformed) is (and void) an extension of the (and darkness was upon the) central (face of the deep) nervous system. We get and are capable (and the spirit of God hovered over the) of receiving (face of the waters) a great deal of (and God said) information, (“Let there be light”) much of which is dealt with (and there was light) unconsciously. For example, (all media) the animation of a (are extensions of)person’s body when they (some human faculty) speak tells us much about (psychic) the speaker and the relationship of the speaker to his or her own (or physical) words