Almost everyone who watches TV at all watches reality shows, from The Bachelor to Project Runway to the Kardashians. Not to mention Hoarders and almost anything on HGTV. But the most popular reality show ever was Survival. Do you know that about 51 million people watched the last episode? It beat that year's Superbowl.
Roger Rosenblatt, one of my favorite essayists on PBS’ News Hour, was absolutely scathing about the show. He described it as “imitation reality for people who have nothing better to do with their lives” or something like that. And I found myself nodding in agreement - after all, wasn’t I one of the ones with too much taste to waste my time on such nonsense?
But then I realized that my own fondness for murder mysteries might be characterized in a similar fashion, although of course I don’t like to think of it that way.
But it got me thinking. We all have hobbies, don’t we? Americans spend more money on leisure time activities than just about any other people in history. Everyone has their favorite TV shows, authors, sports teams, get-away places.... But when do these things become too important?
Relaxation and recreation are good, but when does relaxation become escape? When does recreation move from being a break from reality to a substitute for it?
I know, I know - most of you are absolutely inundated with reality, especially those of you with children. If you do have time to sit down with a book or a TV show you don’t have the energy to care one way or another who wins, it’s enough not to have to clean up after them. During my two weeks with my godchildren, we spent most of our time building, cleaning, sorting, buying, making, cooking, teaching... Even our recreation was child-focused, and definitely had purpose and meaning... If you exercise their socks off, they’re happier and healthier and get into a whole lot less trouble.
But for far too many people, entertainment has become a substitute for reality. And it is my opinion that there are two forces in our society at work in this addiction.
The first force behind our addiction to entertainment is prosperity. When we don’t have to scratch out our very survival on an hour-to-hour basis, like subsistence farmers or sweat-shop employees in the third world, we need to fill the time with other things. Food, shelter, clothing... Once these are taken care of, we move on to meeting more complex needs, needs for relationship, for accomplishment, for meaning. And our society has made it very difficult, over the past few generations, to get a handle on how to meet those needs. Having jettisoned our dependence on God, the substitute routes to “the good life” trumpeted by politicians, sociologists, and the media have proved to be dead ends. And so too many people have given up, and anesthetize themselves against life’s disappointments with substitutes...
Both TV and the Internet have eroded - if not completely replaced - the relationships we used to have with our civic institutions, from sewing bees to town hall meetings. Sociologist Robert Putnam wrote about the subsequent loss of community very persuasively in his book Bowling Alone. Americans are personally connected in a long-term, satisfying way with fewer and fewer people. We have drive-by relationships. And that loss of connectedness, the social isolation too many people live in, contributes in a powerful way to the second force powering our entertainment addiction.
That second force is a sense of meaninglessness, of powerlessness. That’s why so few people watched the conventions and why the number of people voting every year goes down. And the less connected we are to our leaders, people who are supposed to listen to us, to care about what we think and want, the more powerless we feel, and the more time we spend feeding our emptiness with imitation reality.
Well, what has this got to do with Ezekiel 33?
God had appointed Ezekiel to be a prophet to the exiles in Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. They weren’t treated as badly as had their cousins in the northern kingdom, sold into slavery by Assyria over a hundred years before, but it still wasn’t any walk in the park. Many of the exiles had simply picked up their families and businesses and took up where they had left off. But others had lost everything: friends, families and future. Their whole way of life had been shattered. And not only did they feel powerless, they were powerless. The problem was that they also felt hopeless.
The reality that they confronted was more than they were equipped to handle. The whole central belief structure of their world had crumbled. And although this is not the situation that we face here in 21st century America, it is not so far off, not so alien to us as we might imagine. The generation that grew up in Europe at the close of the 19th century saw a similar collapse of their world. Their belief in the progress and perfectibility of humankind was buried in the trenches of the Somme. That “Lost” generation found its answer, its escape, in existentialism.
The generation that won the Second World War came home and built an unprecedented prosperity that should have fulfilled every dream they had ever had for their children - but their children rejected it as empty, and hollow, and meaningless. And the generation that lost Vietnam lost more than a war. We lost a sense of national righteousness that was, in a way, the last fragment of civic glue holding our common identity together.
Back in Babylon, Ezekiel had two jobs. He was fighting on two pastoral fronts, so to speak. On the one hand, he had to counter despair and demoralization among the exiles; on the other, he had to do it in such a way as not to encourage moral indifference and a false sense of security.
This tension between judgment and grace is a familiar one, isn’t it? And the church today has the same two jobs that Ezekiel did. We have to warn people, and we have to reassure people. But the reassurance doesn’t have any meaning unless the warning is heard.
And even in Babylon, where you would think they would be wide awake, spiritually alert, ready to listen to what Ezekiel had to say, that wasn’t the case. The people took the loss of God seriously, but they were either too buried in guilt and despair to pay attention, or they figured they’d already survived the worst God could do to them and they were already lost and why bother since God had obviously abandoned them.
But at least Ezekiel’s people had a deep awareness of sin. They were responding not only to the hand fate had dealt them, the dislocation and desolation of their lives, they were mourning their loss of God’s protection and blessing. So when Ezekiel got his marching orders - or perhaps I should say his preaching orders - it was very clear what he needed to say and do.
Now, Ezekiel already took his job seriously. In the very beginning of the book, 30 chapters ago, God had already called and commissioned him as a watchman for Israel. Ezekiel already knew the consequences if he didn’t warn Israel that they were still accountable to God, that his judgment was still a factor in their lives. He knew that if he ignored his responsibility, he would suffer the fate of the wicked right along with them. Ezekiel did not have the option of becoming a holy hermit, nurturing his own purity and basking in his private relationship with God. And so he did what God called him to do. He made a public fool of himself in front of the whole community of exiles, acting out the parable to get their undivided attention.
In our society, we no longer have the luxury of assuming that people know what they have done, or know what that what they have lost is a relationship with God.
But we do not have permission, any more than Ezekiel did, to become holy hermits, nurturing our own purity and basking in our private relationship with Jesus.
A friend of mine from seminary whom I’ll call Jeanne heard a sermon on Ezekiel when she was twelve. She was really convicted to tell everyone she knew about Jesus so that they wouldn’t go to hell. And so she started witnessing to all her friends and badgered the pastors and teachers at her church to help her learn to become more effective (we pastors should all have this problem, right?). But they told her that the passage wasn’t for her, that it was only for pastors, and since this was a very conservative church - they only allowed women to teach children, or other women - she would never be a pastor, so she didn’t have to worry about it. Jeanne was forty when we met, and she had never forgotten it.
I know that none of you think that you can’t preach or teach because you’re a woman. But maybe you still think that this passage is only for pastors. Well - it isn’t. It’s for all of us, for you perhaps even more than for me. Because my primary job is to care for you, to teach and guide and comfort and encourage you. But this message is for those outside these walls, where you spend your days.
Scripture makes it very clear in many different ways that we have all been appointed watchmen for one another. At the beginning of creation, Cain asked if he was his brother’s keeper. The answer was, of course, “Yes.” Jesus told us the parable of the Good Samaritan to show us that our responsibility to do good whenever the opportunity arises extends beyond our brothers and sisters to our neighbor - who is everyone God puts in front of us. Jewish law expands the sixth commandment - the one against committing murder - to include sins of omission, letting people die because we did not act to save them when we could.
And if that weren’t enough, there’s the Great Commission. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Mt 28:19-20] That’s for all of us. And “go” as Jesus uses the word doesn’t mean “take a trip to some other place.” It means, “As you go about your life.”
On top of the Great Commission - or rather undergirding it, providing the ground, the motivation for making disciples, is the Great Commandment. “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment,” Jesus said, and then added, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” [Mt 22:37-40]
“The love of Christ compels us,” [2 Cor 5:14] said Paul to the Corinthians. That is where we begin. If that love doesn’t compel us to love our neighbor, there is something missing. To love our neighbor as ourselves means doing good to them and seeking their well-being. It involves seeking their protection and security. And as scary as it may seem, to love our neighbor includes speaking to them the truth of the gospel; to keep silent and let them go to hell is - perhaps not to hate our neighbor, but to be indifferent, which in many ways is worse. And if the love of Christ is not enough, Paul also said, “knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others.” [2 Cor 5:14] Love and fear, judgement and grace. Both are part of the message.
That doesn’t mean you have to march up and down the street, or down the halls and in the lunchrooms where you work, wearing a sandwich board proclaiming “Repent, the end is near.” I couldn’t do it and I’m certainly not going to ask you to. And it doesn’t mean buttonholing strangers or even acquaintances and asking them if they’ve been saved. But it does mean being prepared.
In today’s world we have to be prepared not only, as Peter said, “to give a reason for the hope that is in us,” [1 Pe 3:15] but to tell people that being a nice person isn’t enough. It means being prepared to counter the false beliefs about God and truth that our culture has hammered into their heads and hearts and lives. We need to be prepared to take the occasional risk, to look for opportunities instead of excuses. There are dozens of excuses: “I don’t have the time.” “I don’t know what to say.” “It’s not my responsibility.” “It’s the wrong time - or place.” But there are even more opportunities, if you’re willing to look for them.
The love of Christ compels us to love our neighbor. Wherever God has placed you, there are people who need the Gospel. Each one of us has a neighborhood beat to walk, we are all on duty much like a cop on the beat, looking for open doors and lives off track.
Because, you see, life is not meaningless, and we are not powerless. The most important job in the world has been given to us, and if we start taking it seriously, you will find that the power of the Holy Spirit is right there with you.
