The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still is being released December 12, a re-make of the 1951 black and white classic. I can’t wait to see it.

A emissary for the galactic federation comes to warn Earth about its bad environmental habits. We’re trashing up the neighborhood and our heretofore unknown alien neighbors don’t like it. At least, that’s my hunch on the warning the alien emissary brings. Could be something else; the trailers I’ve watched aren’t very explicit. But since green is in and everybody and his sister is warning us already, I don’t see why aliens from the galactic federation shouldn’t stick their oar in the water too.

In any case, I think it is less likely the emissary will bring the same warning he brought in 1951. That time it was war, violence and atomic weaponry. He was against all three, should you wonder. Earth’s neighbors in the Milky Way Galaxy were uneasy over the way we Earthling’s settle disputes and positively shocked that we had acquired atomic weapons for use as tools of argument. Combine atomic weapons with space travel and, really, poof! there goes the galaxy.

The visitor from out there – Klaatu – was sent originally to bump us off. A trip to the Lincoln Memorial, though, convinces him that Earth is sometimes capable of producing great persons of sensitivity and feeling. (Okay, group sigh, everybody.) Unfortunately, shortly after reaching this conclusion, soldiers shoot and kill Klaatu. But he is resurrected by his faithful robot companion, Gort.

You’d think this life-death-life experience would confirm Klaatu’s original intention of wiping us out, but Klaatu sticks with his plan for a warning. So instead of a little galactic pest control, Klaatu decides to give Earth a wake-up call. A world-wide blackout where nothing moves, he thinks, might get our attention. It does and in his farewell speech to some gathered world scientists — a kind of Sermon on the Ramp of the Departing Spaceship — Klaatu warns that if his warning goes unheeded, Earth will be destroyed. “The decision rests with you.” Then he turns on his heel, puts his spaceship in drive and goes up, up and up. This is a techno-ascension. Cool.

This is the way a lot of “alien as messiah” films go, and the 1951 version had more than its share of religious stuff, including Klaatu’s reference to “the Almighty Spirit,” plus that climatic Lazarus-like resurrection — thanks to a medical science far beyond our capacity to understand. In these alien/savior films, everything is beyond our capacity to understand.

In the 1982 E.T. we have both resurrection and ascension, awe-struck humans looking upward at their departing friend. You want more religion? There’s Jeff Bridges as the Starman in 1984. He impregnates an Earth woman and promises that her Child will be a Teacher. That’s my capitalization of the two words, but you can’t miss the capital letters dripping from the Starman’s accent. There was even a short-lived TV series based on the product of that union. Starman, by the way, resurrects a deer killed by a red-neck hunter — so, take that you awful NRA people! Were the film being made today, I think an Alaskan moose, shot by a governor with a pony tail, surely would take the part of the dead animal. While there is no resurrection in Starman, save for the deer, the ascension scene is not to be missed – another picture of slack-jawed humans gazing wonderingly upward, something not seen since the biblical epics of the 1950’s.

We want to believe there’s Somebody Out There, somebody wiser, stronger, smarter, kinder than ourselves, somebody capable of bestowing stern warning and unparalleled blessing equally. Surely in this vast, vast incomprehensible cosmos there must other beings prepared to snatch us out of our troubles. A lot of science fiction is depending on it.

I think a more interesting story-line would be the ultimate discovery that we are alone, all alone in the universe. Get familiar with something called the “Rare Earth hypothesis,” and you might be convinced of it. It is a scientific hypothesis that stirred up great a amount of opposition from other scientists bent on believing we do have galactic neighbors.

Because to believe that this earth might be the only earth is just too, well, peculiar.

Ancient theologians had something similar: the "scandal of particularity." This is the notion that God uses particular people, particular places, and particular times to show himself, and does it in such a way as to create perplexity if not outright shock. Today we’d use the word peculiar.

That’s how we’d summarize a strange sort of God who leaves but hints of his existence, let alone his handiwork in creation, and who even hides himself within his work.

And, more peculiar still, when he does disclose himself it is upon a cross— “upon which,” goes the Good Friday liturgy, “was hung the salvation of the whole world.” ("World” can also read “cosmos.”)

Now, if that doesn’t surprise you or make you scratch your head in perplexity, you haven’t been paying attention.

Personally, strange as all that is, I find it far more satisfying than yearning for some jumped up other-world visitor messing with our planet.

And if God did act for the whole creation, that leaves open an interesting possibility — maybe, if the aliens ever do land for real, their first words won’t be “Take us to your leader,” but “Where can we worship?”

Perfectly Normal

This is just so biblical. An Israeli couple rushing to catch a charter flight to Paris got all their kids on board, but left their three-year-old daughter behind at the boarding gate, according to an Associated Press report from August 4. The AP quotes the Israeli Haaretz newspaper quoting the child’s grandmother: “We’re in shock. They [the parents] are very responsible and organized, top-notch people. Apparently one relied on the other, and this is what happened.”

Biblical, like I said, sort of like that time Mary, Joseph and their 12-year-old son, Jesus, went off to Jerusalem for a festival, reported in St. Luke’s gospel. The boy, remember, ended up missing. St. Luke laconically reports: “When the festival was ended, Jesus stayed behind but his parents did not know it.” Of course they didn’t know it. They’re parents. What makes anyone think they knew anything at all? Jesus decided to hang around the Temple and chat it up with the teachers and rabbis. In which case you wonder why one of those guys didn’t ask, “Shouldn’t you be getting back to your folks about now.” To which every sensible 12-year-old boy would reply, “Naw. They won’t mind.” Point is, if the 12-year-old knew where he was, why bother his parents with the information?

Mary and Joseph head back to Nazareth with the other pilgrims. Joseph walks with the men, thinking Jesus is with Mary. Mary walks with the women, thinking Jesus with Joseph. They travel the entire day like this and stop for the night. Apparently, to quote a contemporary Jewish grandmother, one relied upon the other. The conversation at this point, according to a Gnostic variant invented for this purpose, goes like: “What do you mean, you haven’t seen him? I left him with you.” “Whoa, buddy, what do you mean you left him with me?” So they turn back to Jerusalem – another day of travel – to undertake what becomes a three-day search. The boy, in short, is five days missing.

Where would you begin a search for a 12-year-old boy? I’d start at the mall. Maybe they did too, prowling the Jerusalem bazaars, because I’m certain no one would begin with the church. Then, perhaps to pray for the safety of their son as other parents have done, they turn to the Temple. There he is, talking to the teachers and religious leaders, “listening to them and putting questions,” notes St. Luke. St. Luke also notes, “and all who heard him were amazed at his intelligence and the answers he gave.” This, should you wonder, is gospel-code for, “Pity that kid’s rabbi.”

Mary, upon whom generations of Christians have lavished all manner of exalted titles except Typical Mother, becomes Typical Mother. “Why,” she demands, “did you do this to us?”

Parents tend to take these things entirely too personally. When a kid does something parents always feel it was done specifically to them, because they are parents. They just can’t comprehend any other reason. It is the only thing that can account for their child’s behavior. By parental thinking, kids do things to demoralize them, worry them, test them, cost them extra money, embarrassment, peace of mind, sleep at night, extra laundry, gas in the car and tread on the tires. And every parent has the right to ask, “Why did you do this to me?”

The 12-year-old Jesus responds as Typical Pre-Teen. “Mom, Dad. Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know where I’d be?” To 12-year-old minds all parents possess GPS implants – “where’s my” fill in the blank – which extends also to their personal location. No worry, no problem. Cool. But then the boy adds that coy hook, a guilt-inducing jab. “Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”

I’m a parent, you know, big time, seven kids. That remark hits me like my oldest, when 12, once telling me in all seriousness, “You know, I only tell you these things so you’ll be a better parent to the other children.” Uh huh. And I, my heart full of the love that only a father can feel for a son, replied, “Talk to me like that again and I’ll knock the wheels off your skateboard.”

St. Luke takes a milder approach. He merely reports that Mary and Joseph “didn’t understand what he was saying.” I don’t doubt it. The boy is missing five days and when they find him, he nonchalantly dismisses their worry and casually questions their intelligence. There the story ends, sort of.

I’ve never been able to read this story except as a parent, and I’m glad, even heartened, to find out that Jesus was a normal kid, perfectly normal, pretty much like my kids growing up. The Letter to the Hebrews makes the point, “he was made like his brothers in every respect. . . .” This story tells me that even the best of parents can end up worrying about their children, even if the child happens to be the best of children. So, just as God used that little family in Nazareth to sanctify the whole world, so we may pray that our families will sanctify our small corner of the world where we live. God knows, this world needs it.

St. Luke adds a small post-script after the episode in the Temple. “He went down to Nazareth with them . . . and grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and neighbor.” That’s a fair wish for all our children. May they each grown in stature, find favor with God and neighbor, and maybe even, please, pick up a little wisdom along the way.

Pastor Russ

Sleepy Sermons

by Pastor Russ

I got asked a question a couple weeks ago. “Does anybody sleep during your sermons?”

Huh?

Well, there was a old guy, well in his 80’s and long widowed at my first parish in Nebraska. In the first year I tended that congregation he slept through every sermon from July through October. He also beat me to church every morning. No matter how early I tried to arrive, there he was in the parking lot.

And every Sunday that first summer and fall, he’d go clunk when I began the sermon.

I finally doped it out. He lived way, way north of the church and on Saturday nights he’d go way, way south of the church down to the V.F.W. dance. He’d close the place and rather than drive all the way back north of the church to his farm, he finish what was left of the night snoozing in the parking lot, and there he’d be next morning, ready for another snooze as soon as I started my 20 minute talk.

Winter came and the V.F.W. shut down the dances until the next spring, then he stayed awake, and he wasn’t first at church nearly as often, either.

Nine-second goldfish
I don’t do 20 minute sermons any more. Nobody could handle that. In fact, people today have trouble handling nine seconds.

MIT researcher Ted Selker found out. He did a study on how people browse the internet. Most people hit a web site and spend about nine seconds looking it over. If they don’t find what they are looking for by then, they move on. Nine seconds is just about as long as the attention span of a goldfish.

Even adults practicing what is called “active listening” don't do much better. Figure 420 seconds. Sustained attention to a speaker lasts on average about seven minutes. Attention drifts for some little while, and then refocuses on the speaker, only to drift again. Preachers these days are being advised to package their messages in 7-minute segments, interrupted by attention-getting jokes, flip charts, or by getting the congregation to stand up and stretch.

This is in some contrast to previous generations. I saw a pastor's contract from the 1790’s that specified the pastor would preach at least one hour.

There was an upper limit, though, so there was a church council from this same period that told their pastor they thought a three-hour sermon was a bit too long. Two hours, they explained, would be about right. But, protested the pastor, there were some Scripture texts that took longer than two hours. Ooo-kay, the council said, when you come to one of those Sundays, preach two hours in the morning, and we’ll come back in the afternoon to hear the end of it. Uh huh.

Snack food culture
I ran across this in an issue of Wired magazine:

Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips — in conveniently packaged bite-sized nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is a snack culture.

That about sums it up.

Church services — we are lead to believe these days — that do not come with flashy staging, movie-screen packaging and visually illustrated sermons can't cut it for contemporary Christians. And the sermon is dismissed as irrelevant if it doesn’t tell us something practical, like how to handle the kids, balance the check book, or deal with high gas prices.

Words of the Word
Me, I’m still sort of old school.

I think the words of a sermon should be an encounter with the Word of the Scripture.

A good sermon should tell us something about the Bible we did not know before, something about Christ we had not suspected, something about us and our need for Christ above all other needs that we had not known.

A sermon should tell us how we were lost, and didn’t know it until we were found. It should tell us how we were ransomed from “sin, death, and the devil” long before we even knew we were hostages. It should tell us of a divine love that sweeps away hatred, of a solace that mitigates grief, of a sanctuary in safety.

A good sermon should respond to a call we have heard but dimly, but are now eager to answer.

And if you need to stand up and stretch, well, can you wait until the sermon hymn?

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