Sunday, July 14, 15, 2007

Sermon: "Five Second Adlets"

Scripture: Luke 10: 25-37

Reverend Larry Gerber

Jesus gives a one-second commandment on which hinges all of the Old and New Testaments.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand.

You can now hear radio ads that are shorter than that.
In fact, you probably already have. Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio company in America, operating some 1,100 stations, is offering time slots for commercials as short as one second. As of last report, no advertiser has bitten on a slot that miniscule yet, but they are buying the two-second and five-second slots. That is a big change, because traditionally, radio ads run for 60 seconds each.

The five-second ads are being called "adlets" and the two-second spots have been dubbed "blinks."

But what can you possibly communicate in tiny time periods like that?     More than you think.

Here, for example, is a two-second ad you might have heard on the radio recently: "The Simpsons ? tonight on Fox."

And here is a five-second ad: "?I'm hearing people's thoughts.' (whisper: Heroes on NBC)."

The regional president of sales for Clear Channel conceded that "With the one-second ad, there's a lot you can't communicate," but he quickly went on to say, "You really need one and a half to two seconds to get [a] point across."

Television is trying the short ads as well. There, the usual time slots have been 60, 30 and 15 seconds, with 30 being the most common, but over the past 18 months, advertisers have been testing shorter ads as well.

One reason radio is especially interested in these shorter ads is because studies have shown that 13 percent of listeners change the station as soon as a commercial break begins and another 20 percent switch channels after hearing one ad. Thus, if radio can shorten the time devoted to commercials, they should be able to hold listeners longer, which, in turn, helps advertisers to continue to see radio as a viable venue for their ads. And that translates into revenue for radio companies.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand. Two of the most important messages in the Bible can also be stated in an adlet and a blink.

Consider this one from the gospel reading: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind." Five seconds flat. Adlet length.

And this one also from the same reading: "[You shall love] your neighbor as yourself." Two seconds. A mere blink.

Can you communicate anything of great meaning in an adlet and a blink? Well, elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus said about these two statements, "There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:31). And in a parallel version of that conversation, Jesus said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:40). The "law and the prophets" ? that's pretty much the Old Testament ? so Jesus is saying that without these two commandments, which can be summed up in statements as short as one adlet and one blink, well over three-quarters of the Old Testament would not exist.

What's more, if we read the New Testament with these two commandments in mind, we quickly see that most of that testament wouldn't make much sense without them either.

In the gospel reading, these two commandments came from the lips of a lawyer who had asked Jesus what he needed to do to receive eternal life. Jesus responded by asking him "What is written in the law?"

To that question, the lawyer recited this adlet-and-blink summary of the law.

That was the right answer, said Jesus. "Do this, and you will live."

The trouble was, the lawyer, who had no trouble remembering the "advertiser's" version of the law, had forgotten the even shorter admonition from the law that Jesus stated: "DO THIS." That's not even one one-thousandth long, but this lawyer's next question to Jesus is a dead giveaway that he'd skipped internalizing that part of the law: "And who is my neighbor?"

It's easy to point out the shortcomings of this lawyer. Too easy, in fact. Even Luke can't resist doing it: "But wanting to justify himself, he ...." Yielding to that temptation is not helpful, however, because nobody wants to identify with the lawyer in this incident. But let's give him some credit; he at least had some sense that though the law could be stated in an adlet and a blink, it was asking for a significant commitment.

Consider that in the first command, the one about loving God, the Greek word rendered as "love" in English is agape, best translated as "self-giving" or "sacrificial compassion." And here's a question that command can generate:

How do I know that I am giving myself to God? Well, because I am doing his will.

But how do I know his will? Well, because I am praying and listening for him and reading the Bible.

But how do I know that what I am understanding from the Scriptures and prayer is leading to behavior that is really God-loving? Well, uh ... At that point we may drop into a sort of scorekeeping, some kind of Pharisaical auditing process. And then, this adlet-length command starts to sound extremely complex.

And if that is not enough complexity, consider what loving God might mean in terms of each aspect of our being that Jesus said should be put into the business of loving God. He said we should love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind, and those four words are not simply four synonyms for the same thing.

? The heart, biblically speaking, is the seat of the spiritual life, of the inner being.

? The soul is life itself, and that includes feelings and desires.

? The mind refers to our understanding and intelligence, meaning that we put those things at God's disposal.

? And our strength is our capacity and power to act.

So if Jesus was saying that to love God means that we put all those parts of ourselves at his disposal, then this five-second statement is complicated indeed.

Now consider the second command, love your neighbor as yourself. The same Greek word for love is used in this command also, but here, there is no reference to all our heart, soul, strength and mind; instead there is something more specific: Love your neighbor as yourself.

But again, how do I know when I am doing that? Is it when I have an outpouring of concern for another person? Is it a higher form of self-love? Is it when I am working for another person to have the same opportunities, privileges and well-being that I have?

This blink part of the law got a real workout on the upper slopes of Mount Everest last year. On the morning of May 26, less than 1,000 feet from the summit, American guide Daniel Mazur abandoned his own climb toward the top of the world to save another climber who had been left for dead by his own team. Despite the fact that Mazur's decision to aid the fallen mountaineer meant that none of his group, which included two paying clients, would make it to the summit, Mazur's action acknowledged who his neighbor was.

The fallen climber was Australian Lincoln Hall, who had succumbed to the oxygen-poor altitude the previous night and become desperately ill. The two guides with him tried to help, but they eventually had to leave to save themselves.

Hall was declared dead, but when Mazur and his team found him the next morning, he was sitting up, though disoriented. Mazur's team gave him emergency assistance and set to work to bring him down the mountain. They also radioed for help, but by the time others arrived to take over the rescue, Mazur's group had expended too much energy at that life-sapping altitude to complete their own summit bid.

While Mazur's team was helping Hall, two Italian climbers passed by en route to the top, and Mazur asked them to assist. The pair claimed not to understand English and kept moving. Later, their claim was discovered not to be true.

Hall has recovered from his near death on the mountain.
Just 10 days before Hall was rescued, another climber froze to death near the summit while 40 other mountaineers passed by without attempting to save him. In the world of high-altitude climbing, such behavior is often accepted, especially when the fallen person is judged to be too far gone. And there's always the possibility that others might die in those harsh conditions attempting to help the victim. Still nothing in the Bible suggests that the "love your neighbor as yourself" blink is a sea-level commandment, or in any other way altitude-specific.

There's enough meat in these two brief statements to keep us chewing on them for years, and, if we're so inclined, to send us into a scorekeeping kind of living where we constantly examine our every move and rate whether it was loving or not. Some of us might even conclude that living up to these two commands is not humanly possible.

But come at these from another direction. Note that Jesus was not commending a new or strange set of commands or even a new emphasis on them. Both of these commands come directly out of Judaism. The lawyer was quoting them from the Hebrew Scriptures.

So our problem is not with understanding the commands.
 Most of us don't need to spend a long time further defining these two commands because, whether we can articulate them or not, we know instinctively what Jesus was talking about.

A long time ago adlets were in operation. Around 1954 I remember sitting I the living room with my grandfather. It was time for John Cameron Swazey and the news. It would start every night with "It's light up time" and even before that my Grandfather would have his hand o his cigarette pocket, ready for action. As John Cameron Swazey pulled his pack out so would Grandpa. As Swazey lit his Camel cigarette so would my Grandfather, on cue, every night. John Cameron Swazey had my grandfather and millions of others at his command. They knew what to do. They knew the command: Do this?..

Until the lawyer asked his self-justifying question, Jesus did not even elaborate on the two commandments. Rather his response was "Do this." Apparently Jesus, too, assumed that our difficulty is not one of understanding but of performance. Thus, if we are to follow Jesus, doing these two commands is not optional, whether we are at the Dead Sea or the Everest summit or any altitude in between.

Although it's possible to get lost in questions about how to define these commands or how to measure our compliance with them, it's really not hard to recognize when a person is operating out of love for God and love for neighbor. And we're not talking just about Mother Teresa types; we're talking about everyday Christians in common walks of life. With God's help, we can even include ourselves in that number.

An adlet and a blink can tell us when the next episode of Heroes or The Simpsons will air. Or they can remind of us of the greatest commandments that are filled with a lifetime of meaning and an eternity of reward. We need only to take action. DO THIS!

Sources:
"Ad buyers eye Clear Channel's ?blink' spots." The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2006, B1.

"Good Samaritans save Everest climber." The Wired Word, June 18, 2006. TheWiredWord.com.

Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts