There is a question that often used to only be asked by jewelers and art critics and those who were looking for counterfeit notes. Is it real or is it a fake? Is this a real diamond? Is this a real money? Is this a real $50 note? Or is it a fake? But now most of us find ourselves asking that question every single day. Artificial intelligence has meant that it is really difficult to tell if that photo or that voice is real. It used to be really easy to tell if an AI photo was a fake, particularly if a human was in it. Do you remember why? Take a look, see if this photo made it in. What was unique about AI when it first started creating fake humans? Six fingers, yes, KFC even did an ad to draw on it because it was such a it just always happened. People just had too many digits. AI has learned. That was the good old days when you could pick it. And by good old days I mean 12 months ago. But we are on this rampant rise of the ability and more of AI. We live in a world where it's harder to pick a scam now. Some of us remember the days when a scam would be on the telephone at home on the landline. Then we saw that kind of WhatsApp thing, you know, it's your kid here, my phone broke, I need a thousand dollars, and it became a running joke of I mean, some genuinely got scammed by it, but for most of it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Now, AI can clone a voice. So you can hear the voice of your child, friend, relative on the other end of the phone. Did anyone see Dale Stevenson's post this week? Pastors, pastors, AI clone voices are ringing congregation members asking for money. And he said, and I will reiterate here, we will not ring you and ask for money. We ring to see how you are. If there's ever an ask for money, hang that phone up, let us know. We live in a world where open AI agents can get into Medicare. We've seen that rise in the last week or so. It's okay. They didn't get our personal details. It says something, doesn't it, that they were able to get in. We live in a world where this kind of thing happens. A restaurant in New York, a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen over Valentine's Day this year allowed bookings for people with a date and allowed bookings for people who wanted to bring their AI chatbot on a date. So they set up on the table the ability for your device to be right in front of you, and you can have a date with that AI chatbot. And it was popular. We live in a world where high-level AI researchers are walking away from the industry, warning that, among other things, upcoming AI agents become autonomous and intelligent enough to continuously upgrade themselves past human control. We live in a rapidly changing world. And believe it or not, this is not a sermon designed to scare anyone. This is more the start of a conversation about how we build a framework to theologically, to biblically deal with the rise of AI. We are finding ourselves on the cusp or in the middle of or at the start of, it depends how you view it, of what was like the Industrial Revolution all those centuries ago. Very similar times we find ourselves in. I don't know if you were aware back in May of Pope Leo's encyclical, which is a letter, a teaching paper. And it was called Magnifica Humanitus or Magnificent Humanity. I love that AI didn't make it into the title. But in the subtitle, it was On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. So back in the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical, prepared and presented an encyclical to deal with the social injustice and justices of the Industrial Revolution. Pope Leo XIV, bearing in mind his name was not an accidental duplicate, the 13th, he named himself Leo XIV because he knew he was standing on the cusp of something just like Leo XIII was. And you could scare us more or you could encourage us more, you could talk about the beauty of how it's changing the world for the better. And many of us use AI every day and we feel more efficient, and there are such good things. I'm not here to give all the pros and cons. I'm here to think about what Pope Leo put in his encyclical because it is a word for our day. Last Thursday we had our ecumenical gathering. We chat out here. There's a group of pastors, ministers, priests. If you feel like there's a joke coming, there's not. We didn't walk into a pub, we walked into the cafe, and we get together once a month and we chat and we pray together, we discuss topics, and I found myself uh next to Justin Uzabiga, who is down at St. Benedict's, a priest who is uh young and vibrant and engaged in this AI topic and really interested in making good changes in the world. And I said to Justin, Oh, I've been reading the encyclical, isn't it amazing? And he said, It really is. I really think he's approached it with the right biblical framework and understanding. He said, interestingly, as I thought and prayed and reflected on the rise of AI much earlier in the year, the two stories that were used by Pope Leo in the encyclical were the two stories that God brought to my mind as a framework for how we approach AI. So I say again: this is a word to the nations, this is a word to our local community, and a word to New Hope. The first story, the first biblical theme is the Tower of Babel. You probably know the story, we're going to read it together, it's quite short. This is what happens in a turning point in history early in Genesis. This is very, very ancient reading. You can either pick up your Bible or have a look on the screen. Chapter 11, starting at verse 1 in the book of Genesis. Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinnah and settled there. They said to each other, Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. Do you get the idea? This is kind of a new technology they found. They've grabbed hold of. They used brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, Come, let us build a city for ourselves with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves, otherwise we might be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building, and the Lord said, If one people speaking the same language have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. And remember, God is God. He knows that all that power and control in one hand is not helpful and not good for humanity. So he said, Come, let's go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. That's why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. This is the word of the Lord. The Anglicans amongst us know what to say next. So, out of fear and out of ambition, this group of people sought to make a name for themselves, to be above others, to ward off any kind of attack. Using a single language, a single technology, building a single direction, they built a tower. It was a project without reference to God. Uniformity over diversity, homogenization over communion. It wasn't about community, it was about pride, it was about self-sufficiency. Does it sound familiar? This tower of Babel theme has been seen all through scripture and actually all through history. This is not the first time we've sat on the edge of our chairs and gone, what's going to happen next? This tower of Babel theme is common. People saying we can find a way to protect ourselves, we can find a way to be the kings and queens of this world, to be in charge, to have all the power, and to lord it over others. It is not an unusual theme. And in the encyclical, Pope Leo says, Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency, and aspires to reach heaven without God's blessing. It's happened before, it's happening now, it will happen again. It's not about the bricks in the story of Babel, it's not about the technology in front of us, it's about what we do with it. It's about human beings acquiring extraordinary power and forgetting what power is for and how it needs to be harnessed. In contrast, we have the story of Nehemiah. You'll remember if you know your Old Testament history, there's a group of people, God's people, the Israelites, who go to the promised land. They're in Jerusalem, they're settled, they have a temple and they have walls around the city, and bit by bit, and bit by bit, they forget about God. They worship other gods, they forget how to treat one another, and God gives them prophets, warning them again and again and again. Guys, you know how to behave as a community, you know what to do, but they kept forgetting the lessons, and eventually they get taken off into exile by the Assyrians and by the Babylonians. And we hit the story of Nehemiah, when Nehemiah is in the province of Persia under the Persian king Artaxerxes. And in that moment, he receives news of what's happening back in Jerusalem. Because although people were exiled, there was still a remnant there, there were still people trying to exist in the midst of scarcity. And what he hears about is the walls have broken down, the temple has been destroyed, and he laments. And he wants to come up with a plan. But this is what he does first. Rather than say, let's make Jerusalem great again, he has these three steps that he takes. Before action, he fasts, he prays, he intercedes for the people. Then he asks the king for permission to return to Jerusalem, and when he arrives, he's silent. He walks around the city in silence, in contemplation, trying to gather and understand what's happened and what God wants to do next. Then eventually, thirdly, he convenes families. He assigns each family a section of the wall to repair all the way around the city. He listens to them, he coordinates their efforts, and he addresses the inevitable opposition. Community working together. A city can be reborn, but not through the initiative of one man, not through building a tower to heaven, but rather the shared responsibility of all. Men and women, priests, artists, heads of household, young, all playing a part. It's an undertaking with God at the center, and it rebuilds relationships before it touches a stone. Nehemiah uses his power to heal and to connect and to protect the common good. But power can be used to divide, to exclude, and to generate new forms of injustice. And that's the point of history we find ourselves in right now. Are we trying to build a Babel? Or are we as a community working on the walls like Nehemiah? AI can go either way. And in some ways it will probably go both. But we are presented with a choice. Will we build the tower or will we work together as a community for the common good of all humanity? These are the questions that Pope Leo is asking. In Babel, we ask, how much can we build? How much can we control? How much can we achieve? How much power and wealth can we accumulate? And we see in all the information coming through this is a race to the top, just like Babel. But Nehemiah asks, who needs protecting? Who needs to be heard? What does God even want us to build with this? How will we rebuild together? How can we work together? And I want to suggest that every single person in this room has some ability to choose if we're building Babel or if we're building a wall in Jerusalem. All of us. AI has the capability of running a mark, and many would say already has. You don't need to understand AI to know what seems healthy and what doesn't. Your instincts are helpful. Your wisdom is helpful. You know what's good and you can sense what's not. You might find that you're struggling to come up with creative ideas these days. I spoke with a young person not long ago who said I have to write essays regularly, and I find I can't I do not know where to start because I've become so reliant on AI that the creativity just doesn't, those wheels aren't turning. And I would say for any of us that have that have kind of disconnected from creativity because we've gotten our brains have gotten a bit lazy, let's change that. Let's say, actually, I'm gonna be creative on my own, I'm gonna get out in nature, I'm gonna visit an art gallery, I'm gonna gather some friends together, and we're gonna wrestle with a topic, and no one is allowed to look up the internet in any way, shape, or form. Getting back to absolute basics can be helpful. You might find yourself in a position where you in your profession are able to ask the question, is this ethical? I'd encourage you to do that. Often. It's not about walking in on Monday morning and saying, Well, that's it, no more AI. That is not the reality of the world we live in. But what we can do is ask what's ethical. We can ask who's worse off if we use this technology in this way. That's looking after our world and our creation. Because Nehemiah, at the moment of rebuilding the walls, he's hearing about what's happening at a distance. He is in the service of King Artaxerxes, he is outside of his homeland, he's hearing about News over there. How easy would it have been for Nehemiah to say, not my problem. I am powerless to do anything about it. So easy for him to lament and move on. But he didn't. He didn't stand back and say, ah, not my problem. And to quote Pope Leo again, he said, we need to be men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history, research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions, and local communities in order to rebuild what has collapsed and to protect what is threatened. Like Nehemiah, we too are called to unite listening and courage, prayer and responsibility, so that even when a technocratic mentality or partisan interest seems to prevail, even when all this seems to be racing out of control, the human city may become a more fitting place to live. He is absolutely spot on. Nathan, if you want to pull up that quote, that is something people might like to look over. Remember, the people who were rebuilding the wall ended up with a tool in one hand and a sword strapped to their side. Such was the opposition. We too have tools and we have weapons at our disposal, every one of us. Our weapon currently is prayer. It's not nothing to be gathering together in small groups, speaking to God on our own and saying, God, what do we do at this point in history? And our tool, the tools in our hand, uh, whatever skill, whatever ability, whatever position God has us in. Have you seen movies like Lay Mies and I'm trying to think of other movies where the Industrial Revolution was at its height, at its peak, and you see these depressing landscapes where all the green has just been swept away, and where it's factory after factory after factory, we've all seen those images, right? In movies on TV, we've read about the Industrial Revolution. Do you know the average age in England at the peak of the Industrial Revolution or the peak of its depth? I don't know how to say that, the life expectancy went down to 40 because people were overworked, they were underpaid, they were living in terrible conditions. And it was really this Tower of Babel on steroids. It was the rich getting richer, it was the poor getting poorer. Green spaces were gone, smog filling the air, completely unregulated workplaces, children in factories. Two brothers, George and Richard Cadbury, the chocolate guys, they took over their parents' business and they were located in Birmingham. And Birmingham was one of these smog-filled cities, and theirs was just another factory in that environment. And they realized that the crowded, unregulated, squalid urban slums that were smoky and not helpful, they said this is unethical and unhelpful and unhealthy. They were people of faith. They were Quakers. And they decided that even though they couldn't hold back the Industrial Revolution, no one could at that time. They couldn't hold it back. But they could choose their spot on the wall and work with all their heart to make some lives better. So they moved location. They built a factory a few kilometres down the road by a river. And the river was the river Bourne, and they named the place Bourneville. And if you buy the cocoa, you'll know it's the best cocoa there is. Bourneville was this place that wasn't just a factory on a river. They decided to build homes. Initially, they built 16 homes, beautiful homes, functional homes, not the terrible location that most people were living. And over time they grew this Bourneville village into something magnificent. They built parks, they lined the streets with trees. They built schools and halls so people could gather together. They couldn't change the course of history, but they could change the course of some people's history. And they absolutely did. They gave their workers sick pay, they gave them reasonable working hours. They made change and significant change in their world at that time. Might have felt like a drop in a bucket, but for every person positively impacted, it was life-changing. We can't stop AI, but like George and Richard Cabry, like the families working on the walls of Jerusalem, we can do something. And we can do something significant. As a people of faith, we have a choice. As a community of God here at New Hope, we have a choice to build Babel or to work together on the walls. So I want to list four things that we can do. Number one, we can make more time for people than for technology. That whole detox of your phone, it's a real thing and a helpful thing. Looking people in the eye is a bare minimum. It's a low bar, but it's important. Two, we can ask God what rebuilding the walls looks like in our own life, in our career, and in our church. And as staff, it's our responsibility, and we are building whatever we can to make sure we are keeping children and vulnerable people safe in our world, in our admin systems. That's on us. And you'll have things that you need to be doing. Ask God. He wants to speak into this space. None of it is outside of his jurisdiction. Thirdly, we can use our power, our wealth, and our influence to create spaces where there's more equality in the world. That's a longer-term project, but one we need to have in our minds. How can you, how can we as a community of faith use whatever is in our hands to create spaces where there's more equality in the world? And four, this is a hard one. When you're scrolling your newsfeed, we will not fear. We will choose faithfulness and love over fear. It's not easy to do, but faithfulness and love are so much more powerful than anything this latest Tower of Babel can serve up. In a moment we're going to take communion. But I do want us to draw one more picture. We had the Tower of Babel built in a city, one of the earliest cities. We looked at the city of Jerusalem with its walls being rebuilt, with the difficult task of rebuilding those walls as a community. And there are lots of cities drawn on through the Bible, but there's one city that we see right at the back end of the story of the Bible. And it's when John in Revelation 21 sees a new heaven and a new earth. He sees a holy city, the new Jerusalem, heaven and earth coming together in a magnificent way. And with the rise of all of this turmoil, wars, and the rise of AI, with the instability of our economy, we need to remember and be people focused on the city that's to come. Not be trapped in a turmoil in our minds or in our lives, but to remember that this city is where God and his people will dwell, where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, when there'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. When the old order of things with AI and politics and injustice and wars, all of it will pass away. Let's keep our eyes fixed on that city where Jesus, seated on the throne, says, I am making all things new. A city that shines like brilliance, it looks like Jasper, John says. And it's clear as crystal. And note, there are still walls on this city. And there are gates in this city. But here's the thing that I want to draw us to before we take communion this morning. There are walls and there are gates. But the gates, it says in verse 25, the gates will never be shut. Why will they never be shut? Because they don't need to be. Because we're not standing with a sword strapped to our side trying to do the work anymore. Because we're not threatened by existential technology. Because we're not impoverished, we're not dealing with injustice anymore. We are free to come and go, to enter the city of God with freedom. Jesus making all things new. That is our future. That's our reality. It doesn't mean we're not building the walls now. It doesn't mean we don't work hard now to do our job in this world, to draw people to Jesus, to bring justice to our world, to fight the good fight, to run the race. That's now. But we have to have our eyes fixed on the finish line. We don't need to be despondent or cynical, fatalistic, even when bad things are swirling around us. Jesus is still at work. Jesus is still king. Jesus is still coming. He's the one who became flesh. You talk about what's real? Jesus, real, flesh and blood, the word becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us. To heal and to teach, to draw us into relationship with him. And when his time on earth had finished, he was gathered in that upper room and he said, This is my body broken for you. Take and eat in remembrance of me. That's real. That's God becoming flesh. And after the meal, he took the cup and he said, This is my blood shed for you. Real flesh, real blood shed that each one of us might come to know the forgiveness and the salvation and reconciled relationship to God. He said, Take and drink this cup and remember my death until I come. In a moment we're going to stand, and you can come to the front, to the back down here, or to this side where there's communion for you. And normally we take time in these moments to be very reflective and very quiet. Head down. It's a moment with us and Jesus to give thanks to Him. Today I want you to look up. This is the body of Christ. This is real. This is humanity. This is the answer to the world's problems. I know, scary, right? God chooses to use us to change the world. This is us gathered together, remembering Jesus and then going out to do his work. Look up, look around, talk to one another if you like. It's gonna feel so wrong. But communion is about community. And this is what we're facing right now. We need to be gathered more as community, not less. As we remember Jesus. Let's pray together.