God at the Movies
A Sermon by Lanny Peters
Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur, Georgia
When I was a small child, my mother refused to go to the movie theater. She had enjoyed going to the cinema as a young woman but after the preacher in our church denounced movie houses as dens of sin and iniquity, loyal as she was to her church, she quit going. I begged to go but she would not budge.
But she would take us to do other fun things. One of my favorites was walking the several miles downtown to go to a pastry shop where we would get a big bag of cream horns. I still cannot go into a bakery without craving one. We would also go in the pharmacy to sit at the counter and get an orange-aid, with the oranges squeezed fresh before your eyes.
One Saturday, when I was five and my brother Jerry three years old, Mama took us to town. But when we came to the pastry shop, she walked on by. Disappointed, we asked, “Where we going, Mama?”
“It’s a surprise,” she replied.
When we walked right past the drug store, we asked again, “Where are we going, Mama?”
She would only say, “It’s a surprise.” We walked another block and at the marquis at the theater, she turned unexpectedly and walked straight to the box office, and said, “Three tickets, please.” My brother and I looked at each other with shock and joy.
We stood there in disbelief until Mama said, “Well, come on, let’s see the movie.
It was “Old Yeller, “ about a yellow mongrel stray dog that shows up on a ranch in the 1860’s. A young boy is taking care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive. The boy doesn’t like the dog at first but after a series of scrapes involving raccoons, snakes, and even bears, he grows to love Old Yeller. Old Yeller even saves the boys life at great cost. We laughed and cried and were carried away into another world. And we thanked Mama over and over all the way home, recounting our favorite scenes.
Of course, we did not talk about the spiritual and theological significance of the movie, but we did experience those dimensions. We did not discuss whether an animal could be a Christ figure, but we did see an example of sacrificial love.
From that moment on, I have never lost my love of movies. Movies were expensive for mill kids, but on Saturday mornings, you could get in to see free movies if you brought four bottle caps from Pepsi products, which sponsored the show. Leah Hilton at the Erlanger Community Grocery would have stacks of four caps waiting on the counter for us kids to pickup on their way to town. I also loved matinees, going in when it was bright outside and walking out of the theater in the dark. I especially liked it if it had rained while we were inside. It felt like I had entered a different world than the one before and that I was a different person. Movies do make that possible. Yesterday Karen and I went to a matinee showing of Hotel Rwanda. Ten years ago some of the worst atrocities in the history of humankind took place in the country of Rwanda. In only three months, one million people were brutally murdered. The movie is based on a true story about how an ordinary man is forced into a situation where he summons the courage and the guile to save the lives of his family and over a thousand helpless refugees, by hiding and protecting them in the hotel he manages. It raises the troubling question of how in an era of high-speed communication and round the clock news, such genocide could happen. Yet it is balanced enough to “make you wonder, despite the universal condemnation of international governments' inaction, how any ‘peacekeeping’ army could've stopped 80 percent of a population intent on cutting the other 20 percent into pulp with machetes.” (Michael Adkison’s review in Village Voice.) The movie sent me to the web learning more about what I could do about the crisis in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, which has been called Rwanda in slow motion.
According to the findings of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, January 25, 2005,
"Government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur. These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis ... The vast majority of the victims of all of these violations have been from the so-called 'African' tribes."
The effects of this ethnic cleansing campaign have been devastating. It is estimated that at least 200,000 people have died and more than 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes. At their best, movies can help create compassion and understanding.
As we saw last week in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus was forever breaking down the barriers that separate us from one another and overcoming hatred with love. “Whatever you have done to the least of these you have done to me,” Jesus emphasized.
Hotel Rwanda stirred my inaction around the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Of course, there are countless movies that are mindless junk. One theme that Hollywood loves and constantly reinforces is the myth of redemptive violence, the concept that revenge brings salvation. But there are also movies that center on reconciliation overcoming hatred, and movies that even embody something of God’s redeeming grace and love.
I am thinking of Dead Man Walking, a film that does not trivialize the horror of murder, the complexity of criminal justice, or the overpowering healing of Christ’s redeeming love. It is a film adaptation of the autobiography of Sister Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun in Louisiana who brings the love of God to a man on death row, as well as to the families whose children he murdered. As Sister Prejean explains, when she comes to be with a murderer on death row, she is simply trying to do what Jesus did. His love is not based on the merits of the person, nor is it withdrawn because of a heinous act; Jesus’ love is available to all who will receive it. Painfully real, the parents want nothing to do with a nun who would reach out and love the murderer of their children. They too are like “dead men walking” as they continue to reel directionless from the grief and pain of the evil done to their children. “The presence of Sister Prejean in the lives of the prison guards, families and Matt himself gives a powerful image of the effectiveness of the love of Jesus Christ working through a willing person’s life. Often this is the beginning of ministry. We are seldom asked to minister God’s love to those who are easy to love, but rather, we are most often asked to love a person in the midst of their sin and accept them as a person valuable both to God and to us.” (Steven D. Greydanus)
Another depiction of genuine faith coexisting with sin is The Apostle, with Robert Duvall as Euliss “Sonny” Dewey, a Southern Pentecostal preacher whose whole life is permeated by religious sentiment yet who is prone to fits of violent anger. One reviewer said it was about a man who genuinely and sincerely preaches Jesus Christ and the gospel, as he understands it everywhere he goes — who, indeed, cannot help preaching Jesus Christ, who knows nothing but preaching Jesus Christ — but who also cannot stop sinning. The Apostle is in the end a vindication of belief without being a vindication of every believer.
One of my favorite movies with a powerful image of true communion and grace is Babette’s Feast, a quiet celebration of the divine grace that meets us at every turn, and even redeems our ways not taken, our sacrifices and losses.
The costliness of grace is depicted in the movie, The Mission. There is an episode where a former slave trader who has killed his brother. To prove that no penance can save him, he follows a priest’s demand that he haul a huge burden of weapons and increments of war up a huge mountain. When an Indian boy finally cuts his burden loose, his sobbing is one of the best images of conversion ever filmed. It also shows the power of music to bring people together, when the priest introduces himself to the natives using his oboe.
Movies can be quite disturbing and complex. One I found so is Dogville, with its cynical view of how we fail to respond to grace and pessimistic views about forgiveness. But this week I was talking with a woman who was able to get in touch with the way she tends to give herself away until nothing is left. Good movies, like good worship, do not require that everyone come away with the same message and experience.
Humor is such an important part of the human experience and we also need movies that make us laugh. Bruce Almighty is an entertaining film where Jim Carrey once again shows that he is talented and funny. In a humorous way, the movie helps us see what a big mess we would make of things if we had the chance to "play God". The film underscores why "God is God and I'm not". In the midst of a lot of silliness, the conversation with God (played by Morgan Freeman) about miracles and prayer is mighty good theology.
As the quote on our bulletin cover says, “On a simple level, movies are the stories and myths—the parables—of our times. There is no other medium or institution today that so broadly intersects our society, and there is no other medium as critical for us to understand. These stories and myths touch upon the deepest hopes of our generation.”
Jesus used what could be called secular stories to connect his teaching to the existing framework of the culture around him. At their best, movies can serve as parables to deepen our understanding of life, of love, even of God.
In the most recent issue of Hospitality, the little magazine of Atlanta’s Open Door Community, the cover article by Ed Loring is “Motorcycle Dairies, Musings on a Film.”
He compares with Jesus’ parable of the Sower this movie about Che Guevera and Alberto Granado on a motorcycle trip through Argentina, Chile, and Peru in the 1950’s. It tells the story of Che Geuvera’s transformation from being a person of privilege to someone with a deep solidarity with the poor. The climatic scene occurs around a leper colony on the banks of the Amazon River. Loring points out a number of connections with Biblical themes, some literal such as Jesus reaching out to touch and heal lepers, and others symbolic, like Moses leading his people across the water. Though Guevera himself would later fall captive to the myth of redemptive violence, there is still hope in his story and a reminder to us of Jesus’ solidarity with the poor and his call for us to do likewise.
Last Sunday, the closing song of Motorcycle Diaries won the Oscar this year for Best Song. It resonates with the hope of the gospels with these words:
I paddle my oar in the water, I carry your oar along with mine,
I believe I have seen a light on the other side of the river.
The day will overcome, little by little, the cold;
I believe I have seen a light on the other side of the river.
Refrain: Above all, I believe not everything is lost—
So many tears, so many tears, and I am an empty glass.
I hear a voice calling me like a whisper: “Row, row, row…”
On this side of the world, that which is not expressed is vain;
I believe I have seen a light on the other side of the river.
I am very seriously rowing, smiling a lot inside:
I believe I have seen a light on the other side of the river.