Sermon:
July 23, 2000
Morning Services

Scripture:
Genesis 37:12-28

I have a great idea. Let's stop the sermon, every five minutes, and vote somebody out of the choir. We could do it by show of hands ... by written ballot ... or by punching the first three letters of their last name into the electronic keypad in your pew racks. It needn't be a big deal. It would only be a game. We might discover that "rejection" is downright entertaining. And by voting people out of the choir (one at a time), we can double our pleasure by watching them take off their robes, lay them in Chris Hall's lap ... assuming that we don't vote Chris Hall out of the choir ... and then walk down the long center aisle as Doris plays some appropriate music like "Hit the Road, Jack" ... .or Jill ... or Jane ... or Junior. Gadzooks! Why didn't I think of this years ago? What a wonderful way to answer my critics who claim that church is boring.

I am being facetious, of course. Not so much to make a point, as to launch a sermon. Which will grow out of the TV series that has captured our collective imaginations, even as it has forced Who Wants to be a Millionaire into a not-entirely-planned summer hiatus. Called Survivor ... and aired on CBS (Wednesday nights through August) ... it recently sailed past the 23 million viewers per episode mark and is still climbing. Meaning that somebody is making a whole lot of money, far more than the mere million they plan to pay the last one who leaves.

What is Survivor? Picture 16 people marooned on a tropical island in the South China sea, using their collective wits (along with their fire-making, fish-catching, rat-grilling hands) in order to make their 39 day ordeal a little less onerous. Not that all of them will be there 39 days, mind you. That's because every three days a vote is taken and one of the 16 is voted off the island ... thereby eliminating the unlucky individual from first-prize consideration (which amounts to a million dollars for the last to go). Week by week ... one by one ... this little tribe of castaways will shrink until, midway through the final two-hour episode, only two will remain. At that point, the seven most-recently eliminated will return to the island ... conduct one final tribal council ... and decide upon the final survivor, who will walk away with a million smackaroos.

Each 60 minute episode covers three days of island life, with every move, word and nuance recorded by cameras for later editing. Spicing up the action (in each three day period) are a series of challenges and contests. The winners receive an occasional reward (clean clothes ... a pillow ... cold beer) and, more importantly, temporary immunity from being voted out. Last Wednesday, they were down to nine. The likely one to go could well have been Gervase (who half the castaways find "charming," and the other half, "lazy") except that Gervase won an evening's worth of immunity by being the first to complete a wilderness ropes course. Which means Gervase is still there. Instead, it was Greg (the 30-year-old Brown University graduate) who was sent packing.

Let me share some initial impressions. It is a worse premise than I thought ... albeit a better show than I thought. Living on the island is no piece of cake. Just look at the sores that run up and down everybody's legs. To be sure, there are sizable snakes to avoid. There are also succulent rats to eat, which means that you have to kill them before you can grill them. "Rodent on a Stick," they call it. Which tastes like chicken. Quick, somebody get the recipe for First Church's new cookbook. All kidding aside, the phrase "Man, I couldn't live like that" was invented for this series.

But they are living like that. And, if not loving it, they are adapting to it surprisingly well. It gives me pleasant pause to think of what we could go back to ... if we had to. Would I do it? Most days, no. But responding to the right set of challenges, who knows?

They all had their reasons. A few were hungry for money. More were hungry for fame. As Sean (the 30-year-old neurologist) said: "If we're all gonna get 15 minutes (of fame), I'd rather get mine while I am young and can enjoy it." But some were simply bored and welcomed the change. While others were aware of untapped potential and welcomed the challenge. Individually speaking, there is probably a smidgen of "Robinson Crusoe" in us all. Collectively speaking, this is "Gilligan's Island with Fangs" ("Goodbye, Professor ... it's not that we don't need you ... it's just that some of us ... paid under the table by Mr. Howell ... decided to vote against you.").

On the way to the thing I want to talk about, let me get a couple of lesser issues out of the way. The first I'll call "phony intimacy." And I am not talking, here, about any intimacy that may be taking place among the 16. I am talking about the intimacy that is (or is not) taking place between we the voyeurs (I almost said "viewers") and they the survivors (I almost said "actors").

There's a lot, here, not to like. These people have no privacy. We, in turn, have total anonymity. They know absolutely nothing about us. We know virtually everything about them. They are but one step removed from emotional "flashers." We entertain ourselves by spying on them ... drinking it all in, but giving nothing back. Said one woman to me the other day: "I am so hooked on the show. They seem like members of my family." But she's wrong. They are not family. Family are people you bring chicken soup to when they are sick. We have no intention of bringing chicken soup to any of them. Nor they to us. Which, while we're at it, is what bothers me most about television preachers. They talk to us so intimately and caringly. But they don't make hospital calls. Phony intimacy! Television does that to us (over and over again), until we don't know how to give ... or even recognize ... the real thing.

My second sub-issue is "money" (and the degree to which, sooner or later, it colors everything). There are two conflicting dramas taking place on Survivor ... building a mini-society against overwhelming odds ... and then tearing it apart every three nights, because there is money to be won and not everybody can win it. So I ask you: "Which drama interests you more ... the building or the winning?"

Before you answer, let me pose a question. What if the 16 castaways had managed to find a way ... along about day four ... to get together off camera and cut themselves a deal? In short, they would play out the charade for the cameras. They would engage in the competitions. They would come together at the tribal councils. And they would vote someone off the island at every opportunity. But having agreed to split the winner's share equally, they would know that everybody ... whether the first to go or the last to go ... would walk away with $62,500. Now suppose that news of their "deal" were to leak out next Tuesday. Would that lessen your interest in the outcome? I think it probably would.

But, seriously, I hope that's exactly what they did. And I am not alone. Desiree Cooper is with me. And who is Desiree Cooper? She is the Detroit News columnist who, on June 30, wrote: "If they were really interested in creating a productive social experiment, the producers of Survivor would have insisted that nobody win a million, unless everybody survived the entire 39 days." Then she added : "As Americans, we are already pretty adept at excluding people. Wouldn't it be more interesting to watch the participants struggle with inclusion for a change?"

Which brings me to my major issue. I am talking about "community" ... how important is it ... and what makes for it. I confess that while I had read tons of copy (ranging from "puff" to "professorial") about the show, I had never seen it until last Wednesday, when I rushed home from our Outdoor Worship Service to tune it in. As I mentioned, I was surprised by the fact that I wasn't repulsed. There were people to like. But there was an idea to like even more. Namely, that "familiarity" was making it harder and harder for the remaining survivors to reject anybody.

Early on, they broomed a couple of the older people. Upon reading that, I winced. Then they ditched the young female attorney, whereupon the lawyers winced. Then Dirk got bounced because "he prayed and read the Bible all the time," making thousands of Baptists wince. As students of group behavior have predicted, political alliances have been forged among the less able, creating voting blocks designed to give the heave-ho to the more able.

But now, even though there are still some less-than-likable people hanging on, they have forged something of a group consciousness. As Gretchen, the preschool teacher, said:

I thought I could go into this and play a hard game. But it wasn't that easy. When you play football, you never have to say it's time for the quarterback to go. Instead, you are fighting together as a team. Here, somebody is voted off and you don't even get to say goodbye. You just go back to camp and they're gone. You'll be cleaning up the clothes pile on the tree where everybody hangs their stuff, and you'll find a pair of their socks. It just brings it back that they aren't there.

Alas, for all of those wonderful sentiments and perceptive insights, Gretchen (herself) is now gone.

But that doesn't dismiss the fact that the further into this thing they go, the less they want to leave. And the less they want each other to leave. Which means they are bonding ... in spite of the rules ... in spite of the games ... in spite of the tribal councils and the mandated rejections ... and (yes) in spite of the money. Which means that they are building on the good stuff and working through the less-good stuff. Which, I think, is God's intention for community ... even if it takes years rather than days.

Let me step outside the lines of this analysis and tell you a pair of stories. In reality, they are the same story. But, smart people that you are, you'll pick up on that soon enough. Both are survival stories. One comes from the Athabascan Indians, the other from the Jews of the Middle East.

The first, out of Alaska, is the story of two old women. As matriarchs of their nomadic tribe, they thought they had earned the right to relax and let the others take care of them. But one cruel winter, when the herds were thin and the tribe faced starvation, the chief decided to leave the old women and their complaints behind. Stunned, the women waited for their children to come to their defense. But no one spoke up. Instead, the tribe wrapped the women in blankets and deserted them on the tundra with no food or shelter. The only weapon they had was a sharp knife secretly slipped to them by a sympathetic child.

At first, the women didn't move from the spot where they had been abandoned. Their world had spoken. They were sickly, expendable and old. Their long lives had earned them nothing but lonely deaths. But then they got mad, got up, and decided to fight back. The women reclaimed the memories and skills of their youth and went looking for their old winter hunting grounds. They ice-fished and trapped rabbits until they found the roaming herds. Determined that they would never face cold or starvation again, they stockpiled dried meat and furs. In the end, they survived in style.

A year later, the emaciated tribe finally stumbled upon its old hunting grounds. The people were shocked to find the old women already there, fat, warm and happy. The tribe was forced to beg the women for forgiveness ... and for some of their bountiful food.

The second story, of course, is about Joseph ... second from the last son of Jacob ... Jacob's favorite son ... who knew it and milked it (as favored children sometimes do) until his older brothers hated him for it. Which is why they plotted against him. One day they saw him coming toward them in the field ... outfitted in that multi-colored sport coat that made him look like a down-on-his-luck aluminum siding salesman. He was coming to bring them word from their father. Or perhaps he was coming to spy on them for their father. The text isn't clear. What is clear is that he hadn't already been working half a day for their father. Which is why they said: "Let's kill him." But wiser heads among the brothers prevailed and said: "No, let's sell him. Same result. Less blood."

So that is what they did, don't you see. A wandering band of Ishmaelite traders, bound for Egypt, happened by with a ready twenty (shekels of silver, I mean), and the deal was done. "Bye-bye, Joseph. See you some day. Assuming we ever get to Egypt."

Well, you know how it all turned out. Once in Egypt, Joseph's fortunes rose and fell like a yo-yo. Potiphar, Pharaoh's chief guard, took him in. Potiphar's wife then tried to take him down. Joseph, summoning all the virtue he could muster, rebuffed her ... repeatedly. So she framed him (proving, once again, that "hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned"). So Joseph went to prison. But he got a cushy work assignment and made fast friends of a few inmates. Who remembered him when they got out. Or, more to the point, they remembered his talent for dream analysis.

So when Pharaoh had this reoccurring "bovine dream" about a bunch of fat cows being followed by a bunch of skinny cows, somebody sent for Joseph. Who, using Pharaoh's dream as his inspiration, predicted a coming famine. Against which Pharaoh instituted a Department of Architecture, installing Joseph as head of the Grain Storage Program. So that when the famine came, Joseph had grain to distribute ... to Egypt ... and (in careful amounts) to Egypt's hungry neighbors.

And who might those hungry neighbors include? You know darn well who those neighbors included. They included Joseph's father and brothers, who were now forced to come begging (hat in hand) to their brother ... to whom the only favor they ever did was sell him rather than kill him. Whereupon followed a tearful reuniting ... a modest repenting ... some zealous hugging ... and a whole lot of healing (after an eloquent speech from Joseph about how God can turn even the worst circumstances around, when it comes to putting back together what we so blatantly tear apart).

Now that's a survivor story. But it's not just Joseph's survivor story. It's the "line of Jacob" survivor story ... making it a family survivor story ... a tribal survivor story ... a nation's survivor story. Which is why the Jews loved it, saved it, and told it (over and over again).

And yet we of the successor tribe ... I'm talking "Church of Jesus Christ" here ... find ourselves enamored, over and over again, with the idea of kicking people off the island.

Don't look right ... take a hike.

Don't pray right ... take a hike.

Too young - too old,

Too rich - too poor,

Too black - too white,

Too left - too right ... take a hike.

Use too much water,

Use too little water,

Use it too early,

Use it too late ... take a hike.

Chew on Jesus,

Chew on Koeplingers,

Chew in the pew,

Chew at the altar ... take a hike.

Babble incoherently when you get the Spirit,

Leap and shout when you get the Spirit,

Sit in a circle silently when you get the Spirit ... take a hike.

Believe in divinely-dictated sentences, words, periods, commas,

Believe in inspired writers - maybe even inspired readers ... take a hike.

Leading to the latest (and most insidious) debate over how love is expressed and who it is expressed to ... take a hike.

My friends, I don't have all that long to go in this business. Which means that there is too little time to waste in attending, or even endorsing, any more "tribal councils," where the primary purpose for gathering (stated or unstated) is to vote anybody off the island. Life is too short. God is too good. And the work is too hard, to thin the troops of Christ's church any further. Even for a million. I guess I'd rather be a little bit wrong ... than a whole lot lonely.