The "CNN Complex" 1
11-30-08
I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving holiday this year. I know I felt very appreciative to spend the day with family and friends. I found, however, that my mood was affected by the violence in Mumbai, India. I didn’t have a clue that it was even happening until the morning paper landed on the doorstep. I found myself sneaking off throughout the day to watch CNN coverage of the evolving standoff. I watched the same pictures over and over again as if they were somehow new. I was addicted to the news coverage.
There is a name for such an addiction. It is called the "CNN Complex." The syndrome was first identified and named during the Gulf War, when people from around the world were glued to their screens, watching the same battle scenes and ballistic attacks over and over again. Again, people were glued to their televisions, radios, and computers for days…for weeks following the September 11th attacks in 2001. The CNN Complex has come to mean more generally the postmodern addiction to news and bulletins, and most generally the postmodern addiction to information. You see, whether or not we understand or comprehend the information is immaterial. We have become pathologically addicted simply to the information itself. We ingest information without digesting it, and we do it all the time.
I tried an experiment on the road this week. Take this test. Next time you see someone glance at their watch, go to them immediately and ask them the time. Not one person was able to tell me the time without looking at their watch again. Almost everyone you ask will need to look at his or her watch again to give you the information you need.
The second experiment I tried is while stopping into a store this week I approached the counter and the cashier asked if I had found everything I needed. I replied with a simple "no". The cashier said, "good," and continued to ring me up. She sought information with a simple question, but did not internalize the answer. We have come to crave information for information's sake, and we take in information constantly without comprehending or conceptualizing it.
The challenge of the Advent season is to break us out of the CNN Complex and to bring us into a world where information not only becomes knowledge, but also moves from mere knowledge into wisdom. If we let it, Advent is capable of breaching our psychological, intellectual and spiritual systems that build up immunities against wonder, mystery, magic and surprise. Each year Advent carries with it the potential of rebirth, new life, surprise transformation, new discoveries about ourselves.
Of course, most of us have a love/hate relationship with surprise. On the one hand, for some of us working folk, and those retired folk who work more now than before they retired, the every-minute-scheduled sameness of our lives drives us crazy. A 9-to-5 job combined with the 5-to-11 demands of our families leaves little time for spontaneity or adventure or surprise. We compensate through the unpredictability and excitement of sports events and weather reports, because we never really know what is going to happen. On the other hand, some of us hate surprises -- and do our best to insulate our lives from the unexpected and uncontrolled. Consider security systems -- for our homes, our offices, our automobiles. Most security systems do what? They operate by letting off a screeching siren when they have been breached. They don't protect us from attack, or robbery. They don’t let off pepper spray or booby traps. They don’t instantly put up an invisible barrier when a glass window or wooden doorframe has been broken. They don't incapacitate the intruder in any way. What they do is to take away the element of surprise. The screeching siren is for our benefit. It tells us that someone has intruded into our lives unwelcomed and untimed. We know someone has broken in; we know there is an unexpected presence in our home or car or business.
Even as recent as a few years ago when I started ministry, it was socially acceptable to just "drop by" someone's house for a visit. These days it seems that unexpected callers were as welcome and refreshing as a getting hit in the face with a runaway hose.
The gospel text this week reminds us that, as we are now entering Advent, the Season of Surprise, we had better be on our toes. Our God is a surprising God, who has acted in surprising, unpredictable ways since the creation of Adam. Our God is the type of God that will show up unannounced, at a really inconvenient time, and God will want to stay for longer than a cup of coffee. Advent is a time to prepare for the miraculous birth of Christ into our world, but from year to year we can never really predict just when that event will occur for us in our own lives. Christ does not enter the world at the stroke of midnight on December 25. And if you think you have a sure handle on the "day" and "hour" of Christ's arrival, you can pretty much count on the fact that you are wrong.
"I hope I'm not intruding." How many times have we heard or said these words? You know we are, by and large, an un-intrusive people, for following such an intrusive God. We don't usually like to take people by surprise, or to interrupt their settled plans and processes. Big surprises, good and bad, are the surprises of CNN legend. Sure we can try and keep God and Christ at an information level only, but there is little chance of transformation there. And if we keep God and Christ as an informational blip in our lives, then they can be turned off and on as easily as a television set.
Yet, just as Christ has a way and potential of intruding into our lives, there are moments in life when a Christian is called to intrude in the lives of others. Intrude is a strong word, but you might call it an intrusion of grace. I’m not advocating that we suddenly go out from here and be totally obnoxious people. However, we are called to intrude in such a way that the story of Christ becomes more than just a story, but becomes a tool by which to live life; that Christ’s story becomes our story as well. Faith aimed at nothing generally scores a bull's eye. It hits nothing and nobody.
Jesus' final example in today's gospel lesson notes that when the master left on his journey, he assigned his servants specific tasks to carry out while he was gone. As Christians, as disciples of Christ, we too have been given a very definite assignment. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the news of the Holy Spirit's surprising presence in our midst, is only good news if it is told and retold, through our lives, our action, and our words, until all have heard and all have felt Christ's love. To intrude can be as simple as showing up consistently and being there for someone who needs a Christian presence in their lives. Intruding can take the form of paying more attention and using information to form wisdom, and then using that wisdom for transformation. Intrusion can be telling the truth, as you understand it, without shame or blame. And in all of these things, we should be open to the outcome, without being attached to the outcome. God’s grace can have some amazing and complex results when share in someone’s life.
Why intrude? Because we have an intrusive God. Indeed, Jesus the Christ was the biggest intruder in all of history. His birth, the Word made flesh, was The Great Intrusion, of eternal into the temporal, the divine into the human, the spiritual into the material. The entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, testifies to the power of an intrusive God to break into our channel-flicking, mall-shopping, movie watching, gas-guzzling, lifestyles, sometimes by side-swiping, sometimes by rear-ending, sometimes by coming head-on, with the news of God's amazing grace and love.
Are we willing to be open not just to the story of Advent but the power of Advent this year? Are we willing to intrude into others' lives in order to reveal the surprising gifts God has in store for them? Are we open to the possibility that Christ may show up on our doorstep at anytime with a powerful message? Are our lives lived in such a way that we are capable of receiving Christ into our lives and our homes? These are important questions to ask ourselves as we enter into this season. I hope and pray each of us will allow this Advent season to surprise us with new life, rebirth, transformation. And I hope and pray that the stories become more than information, but become vehicles of wisdom. And I hope and pray that we have the boldness to share our stories of transformation with others, so they too may be blessed by a God that breaks into our lives, often in inconvenient ways, with a message of challenge, a message of love, a message of grace. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 I’m indebted to the Homiletics text from November 1996, called the "Great Intrusion." I did not take much time to prepare my sermon this week, and relied heavily on the aforementioned article. The article is a written reflection by Rev. Bob Taylor.
Blessings,
Melissa