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“September 24, 2004, Oceanic Flight 815
disappeared and crashed on a Pacific island.” I have to
admit, I have never watched the show, but you can catch a
rehash of the entire series in eight minutes on the website.
Suffice it to say, Gilligan’s Island it is not! It is
a whole lot more like William Golding’s island in Lord of
the Flies—an island filled with danger and mystery,
surprise inhabitants and unwelcome visitors, terror, deceit
and revenge. Through it all, the survivors band together,
break apart, love each other, and hate each other as they
discover that they are lost, but not alone on the island.
I suppose the lingering, underlying
questions which give this drama its suspense and appeal are,
“Who will rescue us? Who will save us?” It’s the question we
ask in a variety of ways and a variety of times and places.
But the place I would like to begin this series on “Living
in Prime Time” is to ask the question about the media
itself:
1. Who will save us from a world
of violence?
Lost is only one of a host of TV
shows, video games and movies which raise the crucial
question of violence in our world, and especially violence
as entertainment. Take a jaunt on your remote control almost
any night and you can get more than your fill of violence in
all its forms:
-
murders, abuse,
brutality, guns, guns, and more guns
-
police and detective
stories built around violent crimes all-too-vividly
displayed
-
crime site
investigations, police raids and morgue visits
It’s nothing like the old 1950s cops and
robbers or cowboys and Indians I grew up with. We are
talking about brutal, frontal, in-your-face violence every
night of the week.
If we are, in fact, “Living in Prime
Time,” and if our values and morals are being formed by the
media, I can’t help but feel that the greatest threat to
“family values” in America has little to do with most of our
political issues and everything to do with the spread of
violence-as-entertainment undermining basic values like
dignity and decency, the sacredness of human life and the
worth of every individual, trust and honesty, tolerance and
respect. The values we view in prime time run in complete
contrast to the values St. Paul calls “the fruits of the
spirit”:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Gal.
5:22)
And it isn’t just evening drama. Take a
look at Jerry Springer or The Maury Show and
tell me how long they would survive without fisticuffs
between jilted lovers and fights between would-be fathers.
We are constantly barraged with violence as entertainment.
In response, we either become so hardened
that we no longer feel the pain of other people’s suffering
or we become so addicted to brutality that we simply can’t
get enough of it, until as a society we no longer see human
life as sacred, death as a tragedy and violence as sin...it
is all just “entertainment.” And gradually we come to see
our world as a dark, dangerous place in which to live. We
begin to believe we are in fact living on an island of
terror, and we respond to everything with fear and
trembling.
Am I overstating the case?
Perhaps. But what if I am not? And if I am not, “Who
will save us from this island of violence?”
2. But the question is not only,
“Who will save us from this island of violence?”, the
question is, “Who will save us from ourselves?”
The fascinating thing about Lost
is that the violence comes not just from the “others” on the
island or from outside the island, it also comes from
within. Lost on this desert island, you would think the
survivors would turn toward each other, learn to depend upon
each other, seek strength from each other. But tragically,
they bring with them all their own inner turmoil, anger,
resentments, and more than once the threat comes not from
without but from within. Who will save us from ourselves?
These deserted island stories always
point up the significance of community, the importance of
life together. We simply cannot save ourselves. Remember Tom
Hanks in Cast Away? Totally alone on a deserted
island, what does he do? He creates a companion from a
floating volleyball, because we are made for community. We
are created for life together, and we will either rise or
fall together.
I remember the story of a Baptist who was
lost, alone on a deserted island. When he was finally found,
he was showing his rescuer around the island. He showed him
the church he had built for himself, a lovely little chapel
all his own. Then the rescuer pointed to another chapel
further down the beach and said, “What about that church?”
And the man said, “Oh, I used to belong to that church, but
I left it and started this one.”
Who will save us from ourselves?
The shaping and forming of values happens
in community—in the bonding and breaking, the caring for
each other, the building of a common life. And when we allow
our prejudices and politics, the petty issues which divide
us, to become more important than the common bonds which
unite us, the island indeed becomes a place of terror.
John Wesley’s first liturgy prepared for
the People Called Methodist comes down to us as the “Wesley
Covenant Service.” He wrote it to be used on New Year’s Eve
or the first Sunday of the New Year as a way of reminding us
of our covenant with God and with each other…and we do it
together.
The Reaffirmation of the Baptismal
Covenant is a newer addition to our worship, born out of the
need to remind us of the meaning of our baptism, that we are
all marked by the waters of baptism as disciples of Christ
and members of his body. We come to faith together.
And every time we take the bread and pass
the cup, we do it together, as one in Christ. It is a
reminder that we cannot save ourselves. We come to the
table, in community, the Body of Christ.
Now, I know there are those who believe
they can be spiritual without being religious; that they can
maintain a personal relationship with God without the
community and worship God without the liturgy. But frankly,
I am not convinced. All I know is, I need the discipline of
gathering with God’s people. I need the traditions that draw
me into the deep history of God’s work in the world. I need
the reminders of prayer and praise, word and table, covenant
and commitment. I simply can’t save myself. We are saved,
rescued from ourselves, together.
“On
January 31,” the trailer says, “a two hour special…Lost
returns.”
“They’re on their way.”
“Whatever they came for, it isn’t us.”
“Rescue has come…or has it?”
3. Well, the Good News is, rescue has come. God has come
to rescue us.
The Gospel reading of the morning is
Luke’s familiar chapter 15, the great “Lost and Found
Department” of the Bible. It tells the stories of the lost
coin, the lost sheep, two lost sons and a prodigal father.
The basic theme is, “When we are lost, God comes to rescue
us.”
When we are lost like an old penny under
the bed, amidst the dust bunnies, unable to do anything to
get found, God comes like a diligent cleaning woman,
flashlight and dust mop in hand, to find us and reclaim us
and make us useful again.
When we are lost like wandering sheep,
following our noses and nibbling on the grass of
self-satisfaction until we get ourselves stuck in the muck,
alone and lost from the flock, God comes like a determined
shepherd who risks his very life to rescue us from the
violence of our world and draw us back into the safety of
the fold.
When we, like the younger son, get lost
in our pursuit of happiness and squander our birthright of
goodness and generosity…or when we, like the older brother,
get lost in our own self-righteousness and pride…God, like a
loving, prodigal father, reaches out to us and welcomes us
home. The covenant call to worship says:
Thou has remembered us when we have
forgotten thee, followed us even when we fled from thee, met
us with forgiveness when we turned back to thee.
When we are lost, this loving God comes
to rescue us from the violence around us, to save us even
from ourselves, to redeem us, reclaim us, renew us and bring
us home. So that we can say, “Once I was blind, but now I
see. Once I was sick, but now I am whole. Once I was lost,
but now I am found and I am back home at the table of our
Lord, in the warmth of his embrace and in the arms of his
loving care.”
Anne Lamott, in her incredible book
Traveling Mercies, tells the story of her church and her
pastor, Veronica. She says Veronica tells about the little
seven-year-old girl who got lost one day. She ran up and
down the streets of her city, unable to find anything
familiar, totally lost, frightened, alone. Finally a
policeman picked her up, put her in his squad car and drove
her around, until finally she yelled out, “Stop! That’s my
church. I can always find my way home from there.”
Lamott concludes:
That’s why I have stayed close to
mine—because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or
lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people in
my church and I hear their tawny voices, I can always find
my way home.
(Anne Lamott, Traveling
Mercies, page 55)
Here, at this table, in this water of
remembrance, in this bread and wine, God comes to rescue us,
to save us, to bring us home.
NOTE:
On this Sunday, we combined the
traditional “John Wesley Covenant Service” and the
“Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant.” The liturgy
included elements of both, and the congregation was offered
the opportunity to both receive the sacrament of Holy
Communion and renew their baptism by touching the water.
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