A Fourth Church Sermon by John W. Vest

August 12, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Big Brother Jesus

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 50
Isaiah 1:1–20
Luke 12:32–40

“You also must be ready,
for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Luke 12:40 (NRSV)

Big Brother is watching you.

George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four

One of our culture’s guilty pleasures is the proliferation of so-called reality television. You may not like to admit it in sophisticated company like we’re in today, but there is surely at least one of these television shows that you find yourself watching when no one is looking. With simple “plots” and cheap drama, these shows are undemanding brain candy, the perfect way to zone out at the end of a long and busy day. I myself confess a fondness for the cooking show Top Chef, with its interesting culinary challenges and childish drama between contestants. And who can deny not finding at least some morbid fascination with people making fools of themselves in front of a national audience on American Idol or America’s Got Talent? It’s that primal impulse that won’t let you turn away from a train wreck, no matter how gruesome it is.

It’s only a matter of time, I suppose, before there are explicitly religious reality programs. For all I know, there may be one already. I have noticed that religious themes sometimes surface in existing shows. From time to time a caricature Christian finds his or her way onto one of these series and plays the stereotype to predictable ends. But on the other hand, who could have predicted the fascinating chemistry between the late Tammy Faye Messner and such costars as Vanilla Ice and Ron Jeremy on the second season of The Surreal Life?

But surely the day is coming when the mix of religion and reality television will reach its natural and ugly conclusion. I can only imagine what monstrosity of popular culture and public religion will emerge. Perhaps preachers like myself will be judged American Idol-style in an elimination competition. “To vote for me, please text ‘jvest’ to the number on your screen.”

Or perhaps we could throw together a bunch of Christians with wildly varying theological perspectives and see what Christian community is really about. Oh wait—we do that already and call it “church.” And there’s probably enough drama in most churches to make for a pretty interesting reality show.

Or maybe we could decide difficult church controversies in reality TV style. “Will the openly gay seminary student seeking ordination be voted off the island? Tune in next week to find out in the stunning finale of Survivor: PC(USA)!”

You laugh, but it’s coming.

Alternatively, we could conceive of our theology in concepts drawn from reality television. By combining elements from the shows Big Brother and American Idol, we can envision a panel of three judges (let’s call them a “Trinity”) deciding the fate of individuals, always under the watchful eyes of television cameras (let’s call that “divine omniscience”). A person’s inner thoughts, revealed through one-on-one “confessionals,” and their external actions, every one of them recorded on tape in what we might call the “book of life,” would be judged against a standard set by the trinity of judges, one of whom is the only former contestant to successfully complete every challenge. The contestants would have opportunities to make course corrections and plead for forgiveness, but in the end it all comes down to that final judgment. Who will be in and who will be out?

I don’t know about you, but I’m not entirely comfortable thinking about our faith in those terms. I’d like to think that the church can find better models for how it orders its life and how it conceives of God.

Yet I must also confess that I’m not entirely comfortable thinking about our faith in the terms that we find in today’s Gospel lesson either. This passage from the Gospel of Luke is one of several we find in the Gospels that encourage followers of Jesus to be vigilant and ready for the imminent return of Christ. Be on your best behavior, these stories seem to say; Jesus is watching and will be coming when you least expect it. You never know when there will be a pop quiz or a surprise inspection. “You also must be ready,” says Jesus in this Gospel, “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

I suppose that what bothers me about this type of theology is that it is ultimately based on the manipulation of fear. Like the ever-present cameras on a reality television show, Jesus is always watching, always judging, and good disciples must be ever ready when their master comes. Taken at face value, this type of theology can only produce a life lived in paranoia and fear of failure. Is today the day? Will I be ready? Am I good enough to answer that door when Jesus comes knocking?

And if I live in this fear of being judged, I will want a simple set of rules that I can follow, almost a checklist of what I can and cannot do. In order to avoid slipping up, I will want this set of rules to be as black and white as possible, with no room for shades of grey. And I will want to adhere to this set of rules as closely as possible. I will follow these rules with zeal, never varying. And I will encourage others to do the same. I may even try to force others to do the same, transferring my own fear of being judged into an attitude of judgment toward others. If I think I can, I may even try to make things easier for myself by creating a community or a society based on my narrow set of rules. Anything outside of those rules will not be allowed. Consumed by fear, I will be less likely to tolerate and more likely to criticize and judge; less likely to love and more likely to hate.

In a way, this scenario reminds me of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In a bleak future ruled by an oppressive totalitarian regime, all of life is tightly controlled and closely monitored. Through telescreens and Thought Police, the populace toils under the ever-present domination of the regime’s leader, Big Brother—the inspiration, by the way, for a reality television show of the same name. Under Big Brother’s watchful eye, a strict orthodoxy is enforced, deviation from which brings the ultimate punishment. You must think a certain way. You must act a certain way. You must be ready at all times to defend the Party. Posters everywhere proclaim the slogan of the regime: “Big Brother is watching you.”

And so I wonder this morning, are we too being watched by “Big Brother Jesus”?

Lest you scoff at my comparison or find offense in its implications, let me remind you that to portray Jesus or God in such a way has not been uncommon in Christian history. In both the Old and New Testaments, God is often portrayed as a strict and wrathful judge. In the New Testament book of Revelation, Jesus is a violent divine warrior drenched in blood and wielding a sword to “strike down the nations” and “rule them with a rod of iron” with “the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” In the medieval church, Jesus had become such a fierce judge that many devout Christians turned to a much more appealing intercessor, the Virgin Mary. And in the Puritan past of our nation and our own faith tradition, Jonathan Edwards preached passionately of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

From our vantage point as twenty-first-century progressive Presbyterians, it is perhaps easy to dismiss such theologies as relics of the past. We can attribute the beliefs of the early church to their persistent expectation that the end would indeed soon be upon them and that the return of Jesus really was near at hand. Almost 2,000 years later, most of us do not live in daily expectation of Jesus’ imminent return, and those who do are often mocked and ridiculed in our culture. We have found ways of being church on a marathon pace instead of a sprint. We have accommodated our practices—and to a certain extent our theology as well—to the idea that God has called us to live in this world for a little longer than the first Christians expected.

But to dismiss this theology of fear so easily is itself a dangerous enterprise. On the one hand, there are still plenty of Christians in today’s world who are motivated by this type of theology and live it out in their daily lives. In many respects, Christians like this are the most vocal and visible in our society. And on the other hand, dismissing this theology of fear can easily result in a spirituality that lacks any kind of expectations or standards at all, a faith that ignores the reality of consequences and the biblical teachings about piety and holiness.

What we need is a good balance between these extremes, something between “Big Brother Jesus” and a God who leaves us to go on our merry ways in anonymity and indifference.

It seems to me that God doesn’t want us to be scared into living rightly. This type of motivation feels like something from childhood, and God wants us to grow up. Parents often contrive very artificial systems of reward and punishment to help their children learn how to behave in appropriate ways. At certain levels of development, the fear of punishment may in fact be a primary motivation. But we would never want our children to remain in that state of being. Our hope is that children learn to do the right thing on their own, because they want to, not because they are forced to or fear punishment if they disobey. At some level, perhaps, fear can be a good motivator, but it won’t create a positive environment for long-term commitment and responsibility. Ultimately, fear will produce only paranoia, resentment, rebellion, and rejection.

In the scripture lesson we heard a little earlier, the prophet Isaiah understood this dynamic. God speaks through the prophet and says this: “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.” Like a parent raising children, God gave Israel a set of rules to follow. According to the prophet, Israel’s failure was not that they didn’t follow these rules. Israel’s failure was that they followed them simply as rules and never let the underlying spirit of those rules transform them in such a way that the rules were no longer necessary. They brought sacrifices and offerings, but their lives were not changed. They never grew up beyond being forced to do chores into desiring to take responsibility for themselves. Fear was still their motivation.

Friends, how very often we find ourselves in the same situation. How easy it is for us to go through the motions of Christianity without letting it transform who we really are. What motivates us to live as we do? Is it fear? Guilt? A sense of duty or obligation?

Could it be instead a sense of selfless service? Could it be instead an overflowing of love for God and each other?

The difference may be in the Jesus we follow. If we follow a Jesus who inspires fear and guilt, we will live by fear and guilt. But if we follow a Jesus who inspires love and service, we will live by love and service.

Now you may hear this as me telling you that you need to pick and choose which Jesus, or at least which portrayal of Jesus, you should follow. Perhaps you’ve seen the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights. In this film, Ferrell’s character Ricky Bobby has a habit of offering passionate prayers to “Dear Lord Baby Jesus.” At one point Ricky’s wife, who finds it odd to pray only to baby Jesus, points out that Jesus did eventually grow up. To this theological critique, Ricky offers the following response: “Well look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m sayin’ grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown-up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus, or whoever you want.”

This isn’t exactly what I’m saying this morning. What I am saying is that it’s time for us to grow up. It’s time for us to follow God through the way of Christ, not because we are afraid of what will happen if we don’t, but because we know in our heart that this is what God desires for us, that this is who God created us to be.

Another Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, was given a vision of a new day for God’s people:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31–34)

Friends, may it be so in our midst.

Amen.