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No
one can say for sure when it started or who is to blame. The list
of suspects is long, and the changes didn't happen overnight. What
is clear is that our culture is crumbling and families have become
casualties. I have an ongoing debate with a friend about the event
that precipitated the downhill slide. He says the disintegration started
when they took the fins off the back of the Chevrolet Bel-Air automobile.
I say it started in 1971 when the Ed Sullivan Show was taken off the
air. Since my friend isn't here to defend his thesis, I'll give you
mine.
From 1948 through
1971, Ed Sullivan brought millions of families together on Sunday
night. His variety program had a mission. He sought to entertain
all the people some of the time. Three generations
of Bibbees spent many a Sunday in my grandparent's living room watching
comedians, impersonators, opera and Broadway singers, rock bands,
acrobats, jugglers, poets, sword-swallowers, knife-throwers, plate
spinners, the Muppets, Topo Gigo, and my favorite, Senor Wences.
I would not have learned to play the guitar if Ed Sullivan had not
debuted the Beatles.
On no other
show would the Rolling Stones follow an opera star, or ballet dancers
follow belly dancers. My grandmother ordered everyone to be quiet
when Sophie Tucker sang. I wondered how anyone could listen and
not crack up. I got my revenge in the second half hour. I can still
hear my grandpa howl when he heard Janice Joplin belt out, "Take
Another Piece of My Heart."
At the start
of each program, Ed Sullivan said, "Tonight, we have a really
big show." And he did. He did something that hasn't been tried
since-he made a show for everyone. Millions of families watched
it-- together.
Today there
is a TV in every room of the house. Each generation, gender, race,
and religion has its own network. There is Spike TV for men,
Lifetime for women, MTV and VH 1 for adolescents,
the Cartoon Network for kids, the Eternal Word network
for Catholics, and syndicated reruns of Lawrence Welk for
my mother.
Interests and
tastes take people in different directions. We are isolated and
insulated from people who are different, and live as though everything
we need to know comes from out own little circle. Learning and growing,
however, requires venturing into other circles.
The church could
learn something from Ed Sullivan. The church of Jesus Christ is
a church for everyone-- at least that is what it's supposed
to be. Today we have specialty churches. Fix yourself on
the profile and go to the church that matches your niche.
There are churches
that cater to twenty-somethings, and churches that target
baby-boomers, and churches where the pastor preaches the
Bible and nothing but the Bible, and churches that don't want anything
to do with politics, and churches that try to influence politics,
and churches that are into relevant messages, and churches that
practice that "old time religion," and churches that follow
the strict order of the worship manual, and churches that let the
Spirit do the leading, and churches that are totally traditional
and churches that are completely contemporary. Do you get the picture?
Each one is a church unto itself. Each one does its own thing.
Jesus debuted
a program like no other. Until he appeared, the emphasis was on
the long arm of the law. The promises of God were reserved exclusively
for Israel. But Jesus said it is all about relationship. God's relationship
with people isn't about "shalt and shalt not." It's about
God's grace and God's great desire to be in loving relationship
with his children. Jesus said that God had a much bigger family
than the people realized.
Again and again,
Jesus equates the Kingdom of God with a party. A great table is
spread with the finest table service. The food is gourmet all the
way. There is no head table. The help won't have to eat in the kitchen.
Everyone will get an invitation. There will be assigned seating
for everyone. No one who comes will be turned away. The distinctions
that we think matter will melt into a puddle of nothing.
Millionaires
who slept between silk sheets will sit across from the homeless
who slept in cardboard boxes. Israeli's will break bread with Palestinians.
Roman Catholic priests will share a toast with Pentecostal pastors.
People of every color will see past pigment and behold fellow children
of God. Sophie Tucker and Janice Joplin with arms on each other's
shoulders will lead the singing of the Doxology.
It will be a
really big show… a show for everyone. Today is a dress rehearsal.
We gather around a tiny segment of a long, long, table, mindful
that millions and millions of Jesus' people are doing the same.
It isn't something we just wait for. We strive to live it-starting
right now. We live it by being sure that Jesus' Really Big Show
is for everyone. Now let me leave you with this thought by Henri
Nouwen:
Communion
with Jesus means becoming like him…communion leads us to
a new realm of being. It ushers us into the Kingdom. There,
the old distinctions between happiness and sadness, success
and failure, praise and blame, health and sickness, life and
death, no longer exist. There we no longer belong to the world
that keeps dividing, judging, separating, and evaluating.
There, we
belong to Christ, and Christ to us, and with Christ we belong
to God.
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