An After-Easter Postlude: Themes Larger Than the Resurrection
The few times I’ve gone radio scanning on AM radio have been, well, scary. AM radio is either music or talk, most of which is hard to take, and it’s fully possible to ruin a good drive through the countryside by listening in on the desolate world of AM radio. If it’s music, there are usually only a few styles of music available - this maxim is truer the farther you are from a major city. Drive out in the country and the range of choices gets unbelievably small. But there are plenty of talk stations and they’re scary because they’re almost always by loud-talking folks hyped up on some energy drink - folks who talk faster than humanly possible. Who talks that fast and that anxiously with anything worth listening to? Most of the time, it’s either bad religion or some right-wing shock jock. Either way is scarier than hell.
The right-wing raving lunatics on AM radio are scaremongers who pump anxiety into the world with their speculation and conspiracy theories. Liberals can do this too, but they’re not usually so loud in doing so and eventually they talk themselves down off the ledge. I’m not talking about the mainliners who are regarded as conservatives without being crazy (of whom there are precious few); I’m talking about the fringe element, some who have been accused recently as being seditionists.
We’re living in weird political times where even good-hearted Christians post on Facebook page their sweet prayers about how God has taken their favorite actors or actresses and their favorite musicians and, oh by the way, “my President is Barack Obama,” insinuating that perhaps God could take out the President too. That form of hate speech masquerades as humor but should be seen as the hate speech it is. As one of my preacher buddies would remind us, “All humor is serious,” and should be taken as such.
But far worse than the scary political speech is bad religion. I drove one day across Missouri where all I could get was AM radio and not being close to any cities, I heard a range of radio preachers whose version of the good news was hateful pronoucements of God’s vengeful wrath they would love to unleash on God’s behalf if given half a nod by God to do so.
A couple of weeks ago, pastor-buddy Marcus McFaul and I were driving west on I-10, headed off to three days of foolishness in the desert land of the Big Bend National Park and we landed on a preacher while channel surfing the AM dial. Actually, the preacher was a pretty good preacher so we listened along. “Not exactly how we would have said it,” we boasted to one another (you understand that we preachers do this with one another, don’t you?) as if any one preacher is actually better than another one.
He was from a different theology and from a different style of preaching, but still it was obvious the minister had prepared and had done a diligent amount of study. There were illustrations that supported the man’s themes and they were woven into the sermon in a thoughtful, but clumsy, way.
The announcer informed the audience that the sermon was one in a series of sermons the pastor had been preaching recently on “Spiritual Maturity.” This was that kind of sermon series where the church rolls their eyes that everything has to be counted as though the preacher was a kindergarten teacher counting the class as they came in from recess each “point” made in its order but not necessarily illustrative of the larger theme. The sermon titles weren’t an acronym for anything simplistic nor were they alliterative titles all sounding alike but the list itself was the first hint of the boredom to come and a sure indicator of the pastor’s lack of imagination.
Mind you this was the Sunday after Easter … We assumed this was his sermon for the day kicking off just such a series as the high, holy week of Easter had come and gone and the church was settling back into its old routines as though Easter had not occurred, as most churches seem to do. At the end of the sermon Marcus guessed he was a Presbyterian and almost on cue a melodic voice came on announcing this was so! Marcus beamed with his insightful observation.
Then the ton of bricks hit us as the announcer proclaimed this was a tape-delayed sermon from Easter morning! The sad part was that there was no mention of this in the sermon. No Mary going to the tomb in the early light of dawn. No weeping women tagging along. No angels announcing, “He is not here.” No Peter, no sleepy disciples … no nothing! We had just heard an Easter sermon with no mention of the resurrection!
It was apparent this good soul had themes larger than the resurrection.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
I have reached a place where I just can’t listen to radio or tv preachers anymore. It used to be funny. Then kind of sad and depressing. And right now, it’s horrifying. Bad for my soul.
If I was with you and Marcus on the way to Big Bend, I could have done it.
April 28th, 2010 at 1:33 am
Next time we head west, we’re inviting you! Bring your good tunes and then we wouldn’t be listening to AM radio