Farewell NCIS, I Knew Ye Well

You may already be wondering what NCIS could possibly have to do with my widowhood.  Well, as with most interesting things in life there is a bit of a story behind the story.   When my husband passed away last January I had to wait until May to schedule the burial.  It was a difficult time and my mom came to stay with me the week after the service.  

Mom has watched NCIS faithfully for the past ten plus years.  She watched a few episodes with me that week on one of those NCIS Marathons on USA Network.  The character development was so fantastic and upon her advice I started watching old episodes on those marathon days.  Apparently there had been a huge NCIS phenomenon this past decade and I missed the whole thing.  Late in the summer I was reading a book by Debbie Macomber about a widow rebuilding her life when I ran across a reference to NCIS.  An elderly neighbor of the main character had to run home to catch Mark Harmon on a marathon day.  All roads led to NCIS.

As the months went by I actually came to love the show and all the quirky characters-  Gibbs, Abbey, Ducky, McGee, DiNozzo and Zeva.  Those were dark days for me and it gave me something new to focus upon -  something unrelated to my husband.  By last fall I was so 'caught up' on the show that I began watching each new episode on Tuesday night on CBS.  Until this week that is.  

On Tuesday a video was posted to YouTube in which Michael Weatherly - actor on NCIS- portrays Jesus in a pro-abortion skit with Sarah Silverman.  Now we live in a free country.  While  I do not support abortion,  I would never judge someone who does nor treat them with blatant disrespect.   If only Sarah and Michael had thought about common courtesy, respect and appropriate behavior before filming this video.  Or before posting it to YouTube.  Really, they had to go there.  They used foul language and mocked Christ.  It was a deeply offensive portrayal.  It went beyond expressing an  opinion.   It crossed a line.  A line between acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior.  A line that we as a society have allowed to move beyond boundaries once considered forbidden.    Billions of Christians know that Jesus Christ is God.    What were they thinking?

I know what I am thinking.  I recall a homily my parish priest shared with us at church a few months ago.  He discussed the early days of the church when Christians were martyred.  They were dragged out of their homes and convicted of being a follower of Christ based on evidence or testimony by someone else.  Then they were tortured and executed.  2,000 years later this still happens in some areas of our world.  In the US we are blessed with religious freedom.  And sometimes we take that freedom for granted.  At the end of this sermon he asked us to consider our homes.  If a stranger were to visit your home, is there enough evidence there to 'convict you' as a Christian?  And I thought yes, there is - I have crosses on several walls and I actually have bible verse on a wall in the entryway.

Today I am processing the concept of what 'home' means in this age of social media.  Is not my Facebook wall, Twitter feed and blog space also my home?  And so I am sharing how offended I am by this YouTube video.  I am offended that so many days after it was posted that YouTube still has it online.  I am offended that CBS has not offered an apology for the actions of an actor under contract with that network.    And so I sent feedback directly to both CBS and YouTube prior to drafting this blog post.

I urge all Christians to express an opinion when something like this happens.  I believe that if we did vocalize our outrage then offensive moments like this would happen less often.   Why are we allowing our Christianity to be marginalized?   And so today I choose to stand up for Christ.   Farewell NCIS, I knew ye well.