1992 was a
watershed year for American television.
That year the
cable channel MTV began airing a program called The Real World.
The cast
members, all eighteen to twenty-five, were chosen by audition
to live in
a house with six other strangers
for
several months at a time,
while
cameras monitored their every move.
The best
and most dramatic moments were edited, spliced together,
and aired
in hour-long segments for the entertainment of viewers,
mostly
also aged eighteen through twenty-five.
Largely
credited with starting the genre of reality TV,
The Real World still airs to this day,
and it is
credited by some with allowing people to ‘get real’
with
topics such as sexuality, religion and politics, and prejudice.
One
wonders how slapping seven strangers
into a
house which they don’t pay for,
giving
them trips to exotic places which they don’t pay for,
and
recording their every move for an eager audience
approximates
the real world.
But for
some reason, the show was a hit,
perhaps
telling us less about the actors and more about the audience,
perhaps
telling us about ourselves.
From The Real World, we were given plenty
more opportunities
to watch
other people’s lives and comment on them to our families and friends.
Who was
more at fault, Jon or Kate?
Was it
right for them to be putting their kids on TV all the time?
Who should
be voted off the island or exiled from the house,
and who
should pack his knives and go home?
With the
coming of text messaging,
reality TV
producers learned the revenue potential of giving us a vote.
Who should
advance to the next round?
You
decide, America!
Some of
you or even most of you may not watch these kind of shows.
But from
the fact that they are produced and shown,
we can
learn something about the world we inhabit.
It is a
world that loves drama, loves competition;
it loves
to cast people into two categories: winner and loser;
it
believes that things are better
when there
is less social convention and more ‘honesty.’
It loves
to judge and it loves even more
when there
is an opportunity to participate in judgment.
Is this
the ‘real world?’
Do these
television shows depict for us how the world ‘really’ is?
Or is
there another reality beyond the drama and the backbiting
and the
conspicuous consumption and the product placement
and the
survival of the fittest?
We
Christians are often accused of refusing to live ‘in the real world.’
But it was
not only recently, but fifteen hundred years ago
that this
saying was attributed to St Antony the Great:
‘A time is coming when men will go mad,
and when they see someone who is not mad,
they will attack him, saying, "You are mad;
you are not like us."
Is it not
madness when people agree to live their lives for other’s entertainment?
Is it not
madness when we cannot be bothered with human trafficking
but are
obsessed with Thursday’s TV lineup?
Is it not
madness when our desire for cheap stuff
outweighs
our desire to give thanks?
Do we not
have our own personal madnesses,
our
addictions, some of them trivial, some of them not;
our
fantasies, our escapes from reality,
our ways
of controlling our realities so that nothing uncomfortable will happen to us?
If this is
the real world, there is reason to throw up our hands in despair.
But in
opposition to all of this,
Advent
announces the coming of the real world.
The real
world is wholly different from the so-called ‘real world.’
The real
world is the one where God is judge and no other,
and his
judgment is tempered with mercy.
It is the
world where conflict gives way to community;
where
swords are beaten into plowshares
and
nations do not go to war against each other any more.
Isaiah
says of this world:
‘In days
to come
the mountain
of the LORD’s house
shall be
established as the highest of the mountains…
Many
peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let
us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the
house of the God of Jacob,
that he
may teach us his ways
and walk
in his paths.’
This world
is not the present world,
nor can we
make it the present world by our efforts.
Some
preachers act as if the world’s problems all could be solved
if they
could simply make their own congregations feel guilty enough.
But we are
called to walk in the present as if the future was certain,
as if the
world that was coming is the real world now,
as Isaiah
calls to the house of Jacob,
‘Come, let
us walk in the light of the LORD!’
Amidst the
overindulgence and the empty festivity
and the
forced cheer and the frenetic pace
of this
‘Christmas season,’
we who
call ourselves by the name of Christ,
who will
celebrate the ‘Christ mass’ on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day,
we are
called to be Advent people,
looking
beyond this present world
to the
world to come.
We are
called to live the life of the world to come
even as we
live in this world.
We are
called to a life of self-control, as St Paul writes:
we are
called to lay aside the works of darkness
and put on
the armor of light.
We hear
Jesus’ call to be ready for his coming.
This does
not mean to stockpile canned food
or to put
our trust in every crackpot with the date of the Rapture;
neither
does it mean to have everything ready for your holiday celebrations.
It means
to live now as if God was present;
and of
course he is present.
To be
ready for his coming is to live in his presence.
How can we
do this while we live in the world?
For
certainly we love this world of ours,
with all
its electric lights and
with its
beautiful holiday traditions,
its
frantic and fumbling searching after joy,
and its
nuggets of true love buried under the dirt and dust.
To be
ready for Christ’s coming is to understand
that
Christ died for this world, the real world,
that he
longs to transform the entire creation,
that he
longs for us to yield to him
and
receive the love that he so fervently desires for us.
It is this
love that by the power of the Holy Spirit
was made
incarnate of the virgin Mary and was made man.
It is this
love that will come again to transform the world
and grace
it with God’s reality,
a reality
that comes into our lives now by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us
walk in the light of the LORD,
who was,
and who is, and who is to come.
