Maybe Happy Ending: Connections, Love, Memory & Mortality
Maybe Happy Ending: Connections, Love, Memory and Limited Battery Life
I Corinthians 13:4-8, 12-13
August 23, 2026 God on Broadway
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA
PDF OF SERMON LINKED BELOW
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
In a culture that once knew many more Bible verses than it seems to know now, here is a passage that most of us know pretty well. It’s familiar to a lot of us, probably one of the top five favorite Bible texts. 23rd Psalm has been read at many funerals, 1 Corinthians 13 at many weddings.
Our culture gives us many messages about what love is. Hard to put into words. Maybe we can say what it is not. Maybe we have some clues about what healthy relationships look like. I wish there was more than one word in the English language for love. I love James Taylor, I love Mexican food, I love my husband Jeffrey, I love being a pastor. One word….
Paul wrote a letter to church in Corinth because he loved them and because there was a lack of cohesion in this community of followers of Jesus. That community of early believers was in conflict about many things – food, theology about who were insiders & outsiders, and about love. Corinth was a large wealthy Greek port city. It was a center for art, philosophy and Greek mythology and religions. Temples throughout the city honoring Aphrodite. It was a fast city. Maybe we would say an ancient Las Vegas. Paul was writing to clarify how their behavior and values, rooted in their living in Christ together, differ from that of the culture.
So this passage I read about love had a broader purpose. What kind of love is Paul talking about? When we read the word “love” in the Bible, what kind of love are we talking about? And does this kind of love show up in today’s Broadway musical about humans and humanoid robots and their relationships?
There were 4 types of love reflected in the Greek of the New Testament and in Greek and Roman cultures of Jesus’ time and early church
Storge - affection. This is the love between parents and children, family circles.
Philia - Brotherly or sisterly love, the love between friends Jesus loved his disciples with kind of love. Think of the friends you love. A rich part of life
Eros - Intimate, sexual, romantic, erotic love. Being in love. The kind of love lovers are in. Pleasure and joy. Longing for the beloved.
Agape - selfless love, sacrificial love, unconditional, a gift Jesus embodied this love. Universal love. Comes from the Source of Love. Divine Mystery. Broad and deep. Inclusive. All are part of kin-dom of God. This is the love of I Cor 13.
We hear it and reminds us of some of best of human love and relationships. Qualities of love – build trust, experience joy, offer forgiveness. Friendship, affection. Written for a community and applicable to individual relationships.
Broadway musicals have themes of love in many different contexts – some lots of fun, some deep, some a mixture. I am interested in how playwrights, composers and lyricists look at modern life and create new shows that explore the human condition and relationships – pain, hope, despair and love.
In Maybe Happy Ending, Oliver, an outdated Helperbot 3, and Claire, a cynical Helperbot 5, meet in a retired robot apartment complex near Seoul and embark on an unexpected journey that redefines their understanding of relationships and love and mortality.
Act I: Isolation and Accidental Encounter
• Oliver’s life as a retired Helperbot, a human-like robot made to assist people, is contained, routine, and stable. In the perfectly-made up box of his home, we see 12 years of the same routine: wake up, brush your teeth and eyes, and water your beloved plant, and listen to jazz because that is what you did every day with your human James. He is holding out hope that James, will return.
• Claire, running low on battery knocks on Oliver’s door to borrow a charger. He is surprised. His daily routine is disrupted. He tells her about James – It is a visceral memory. Oliver with James. He is reliving it and describing it.
• They realize they are both obsolete models discarded by their human owners. Claire discovers her battery is degrading fast, meaning her lifespan is ending.
• Oliver reveals he has saved enough money for a trip to Jeju Island to find James; Claire agrees to drive him there in her car. Always wanted to see fireflies.
There are moments they each reflect on their relationships with their humans. However, it lacks true emotional connection. They talked and did things together. Their algorithm kept teaching them what their human liked. The robots got better at it.
Act II: The Road Trip and Connection
Setting off together, the rigid, nostalgic Oliver and the pragmatic Claire.
They realize that on This trip they will be among humans and need a human backstory. So they Invent one because human couples do - talk about how and where they met.
Surrounded by nature and quiet roadside motels, their interactions transition from functional companionship to what seems like a genuine bond.
They find out James died a number of years ago.
Facing the reality of their mechanical limitations, they must confront what it means to care deeply even in the midst of endings and mortality.
They were not programmed for grief and loss and the complexity of human emotions and needs. They do store memories. These Helperbots have access to their memories, so much so that they can replay them on demand.
These memories are also part of the way we understand their world. Each Helperbot has a password, and whoever knows that password can erase memories. Claire’s owner has given her this password just in case “it all becomes too much.” How do memories affect emotions? What happens when our memories start to face or someone we love begins to lose their memories – dementia or Alzheimer’s? Memories ground relationships.
This musical makes us wonder about some of the larger questions of technology and AI and how we interact with relational AI. Are these relationships? Friendships? A mirror? a tool for reflection? Is it more than that? These are questions for adult ed classes and book study and Bible studies.
As I was working on this sermon, I came across articles published this summer that are part of this conversation right now.
At the General Assembly meeting of PCUSA in July, a policy paper was approved and is now published - “THE ALGORITHM AND THE ALMIGHTY: Navigating Artificial Intelligence through a Reformed Lens.” The policy guides the PCUSA on AI, emphasizing human dignity, stewardship, and theological reflection. It highlights AI’s potential for good and harm, urges transparency, responsibility, and ethical use, and calls for aligning AI development with God's creation, justice, and flourishing, while cautioning against idolatry, pride, and misuse.
There is a section . Companionship and Dependency
While AI offers potential for fostering social connections, relying on AI alone to alleviate loneliness can lead to decreased human interaction and increased social isolation. AI companionship can create emotional dependency between humans and machines rather than encouraging human-to-human contact and can distort the nature of true human relationships…The hospitality of local churches can foster meaningful and authentic relationships with God and with one another.
The pope, in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas released in May 2026, addresses artificial intelligence and human relationships, noting that AI systems lack bodies, lived experience, and the capacity for real love or friendship. While acknowledging that simulated empathy can feel helpful, he warns that relying on bots for connection threatens true human dignity and community.
I know of some Christian leaders whom I respect are interacting with relational AI like Claude and finding it deeply meaningful. For some it acts like a mirror. It remembers what has been shared in the past and makes connections. I am not quite sure what I think about that.
A few of you have sent me the NYT article about The Rev. Justin Lester of Friendship Baptist Church in Vallejo, California, who uses a custom digital "twin" (often called PJGPT) trained on nearly two million words of his own sermons and writings. This AI duplicate interacts with congregants via text or calls at all hours, providing scriptural context, advice, and prayer support when he is unavailable. I am not doing that. I am physically present with you today.
When we love each other – with agape love, sisters brothers, siblings in Christ, we are invited to reflect again on the love as Paul describes - in our spiritual lives, our relationships, our church, our community. We seek to be authentic, honest, truthful, compassionate, humble. Not robotic. Not simply following a script or list of rules.
Faith. Hope. Love. Paul says they are all part of our calling as we seek to live into agape love and become fully human, fully alive, fully ourselves, sharing joys and sorrows. Together, they compose a way of life that allows us to see God and each other more clearly, as if wiping a fogged mirror. A blurred image appears on the glass and giving a glimpse of what it will mean to “see face to face.”
In his book, A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer writes:
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. . . (W)e are reminded that human nature, like nature herself, can hold opposites together as paradoxes, resulting in a more capacious and generous life.”
This is what Claire and Oliver are not programmed for.
We feel doubt, despair, and grief precisely because we know faith, hope, and love.
This week, if you feel overwhelmed by doubt, despair, or grief, don’t push them aside or deny their presence. Instead, let them guide you toward their paradoxical kin. Faith, hope, and love. They abide. And greatest of these is love. Amen.
Resources
'Maybe Happy Ending' review — Darren Criss, Helen J. Shen shine in a robotic romance Joe Dziemianowicz, November 11, 2024
'Maybe Happy Ending' Is a Sweet Robot Love Story With Sweeter Human Lessons Zoe Kaplan, Feb 21, 2025
https://nottobedramatic.substack.com/p/maybe-happy-ending-is-a-sweet-robot
“THE ALGORITHM AND THE ALMIGHTY: Navigating Artificial Intelligence through a Reformed Lens” PCUSA policy paper July 2026
https://pcusa.org/resource/algorithm-and-almighty
“AI Twin Pastor at California Church,” NYT 7.30.26
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/us/ai-twin-pastor-justin-lester-california-church.html
“A Complete Guide to Pope Leo’s First Encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas” May 25, 2026
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson, “The Cello and the Field: On midwifing with AI — and why it matters,” Apr 12, 2026 substack
https://elizabethjameson.substack.com/p/the-cello-and-the-field