Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2011, Page 16

you are so great at it, but because God is great, and grace is real, there is no
substitute for living smack in the middle of that, yourself.
So let’s turn to the third part of the title of this lecture, Survivorman,
whom I have come to think of as truly one of the untapped metaphors for
the contemporary preacher. How many of you have heard of Survivormaril
I had not, until relatively recently. I came home one evening and found my
husband and two teenage sons riveted to the television screen with a fervor
that is usually reserved, in our house, for lacrosse games and James Bond
alone. But there they were, transfixed. Here is how one website [Wikipedia]
describes Survivorman:
The title refers to the host of the show, Canadian filmmaker and survival
expert Les Stroud, who must use his skills to survive for seven days alone in
remote locales with little or no food, water, and equipment.
During the filming of each episode, Stroud is alone and operates all the
cameras himself. He is equipped with only his clothes, camera equipment ...
his harmonica, Leatherman multi-tool, and [a few] “everyday items” relevant
to the episodes particular survival scenario. For safety purposes, Stroud car-
ries an emergency satellite phone. However, Stroud has claimed that while
filming several episodes, there were times when his emergency phone did not
work, leaving him totally alone. On a few occasions, Stroud has also been
provided with a rifle for safety reasons or as part of the survival situation.
Les Stroud stopped filming Survivorman after the third season due to
what he described as the significant physical toll of filming each episode.
I wish I had thought to bring a clip to show you, but I’m sure you can fmd
Survivorman in your local library or on Netflix, or by asking any adolescent
male. Watch an episode: it really makes you glad to live in a place where
you are not required to eat beetles and tree crabs for a week, and, since the
camera is running, to look as if you are enjoying this. Which is my point.
The antidote to empire is not to spend seven days in the Kalahari, the
Amazon, or the Alaskan wilderness. The opposite of borrowing someone
else’s sermon is not to turn yourself into Survivorman Preacher. Les Stroud
is fun to watch, but even he had to stop filming the series when the extreme
conditions and intestinal parasites took their toll.
So let’s be clear. Preaching does not require us to enter the text equipped
only with a Leatherman and the shirt on our backs. Les Stroud and John the
Baptist may subsist on locusts and wild honey between sermons, but that is
not necessarily God’s call to you. In fact, “survival” is a pretty limited goal
for a sermon. If we get to the point as preachers when all we are trying to
14
j