Glimpses of Glory: Using the Cinema in Preaching

Imagine that it’s 11:40 A.M. Sunday morning, and you’re working hard in the sermon to help your audience understand the difficult and often painful work involved in being forgiven. “Forgiveness is hard,” you say, “because hovering over the broken relationship like a vulture are those deeds done you cannot undo, and those opportunities lost that can never be recaptured.” You made the point clearly and concisely, but in the minds and hearts of the audience, it is still just a “point,” not an experience. Then again, you could tell them a story…

Telling Time

Parochialism takes lots of expressions, but perhaps the least noticed is the way we tell time. Not everyone tells time the way we Americans do. The Chinese tell time differently. Their New Year begins in the spring rather than on January 1. Jews tell time differently too. Their New Year, called Rosh Hashanah (literally “head of the year”), is in the fall. A calendar is merely a way of organizing time for some purpose - social, cultural, commercial, administrative, or religious. How you tell time can be a telling indicator of what you value, what you think important, how you order your life.

Through the Wardrobe with C. S. Lewis

A lot of people got their first introduction to C. S. Lewis in December of 2005, when their kids dragged them to see the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Today, the third installment in the series is released - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I paid a whole $1.95 for the book when I bought it!). The films are based on the children’s series Lewis penned called The Chronicles of Narnia. In the story four children travel through a magical wardrobe to emerge in the strange and mystical land of Narnia where animals speak and the world is locked in a perpetual Christmas-less winter while awaiting Spring that seems destined never to dawn.

My own introduction to Lewis, however, goes back to my college days in the 70’s when I studied English. A professor, knowing I was headed for seminary, suggested that I read Lewis as a model for the minister’s primary task of helping people to make sense of faith in their day-to-day lives. I devoured his writings voraciously, and he became for me a conversation partner with whom to discuss the “big issues.” Lewis’ writings have not only stood the test of time, but he himself has become for me, save Jesus of Nazareth, the single most important intellectual influence on my life.

God Incognito (An Advent Sermon)

One of my favorite Shakespearean plays is Henry The Fifth. The last of his great chronicle plays or histories, Henry The Fifth represents the zenith, the pinnacle of this genre for the Bard of Avon. In many ways, the play is more epic than drama. England and France, ancient enemies, engaged in mortal combat for national supremacy, testing the mettle not only of men but nations. And in that great engagement England is led by her last great hero-king, Henry, Prince Hal of Henry The Fourth, Parts One and Two, now king, with the fortunes of his nation weighing heavily on his shoulders.

My favorite scene in that marvelous play is Act IV, Scene 1, the speeches at Agincourt on the night before the great battle. “If these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it!” says Michael Williams, an ordinary private, sitting around the fire with three other soldiers, all musing about the battle first light brings. They don’t know it, but one of them is no ordinary private. One of them is King Henry himself, disguised as a common soldier so that he might pass among his men and talk with them of blood and battle, life and death – man to man, heart to heart without the constraint of office or ceremony to impede their candor.

It’s a powerful moment, and perhaps more than any other, helps to define the character of the King. Rex Incognitus, the King in disguise. Putting aside privilege and position, he moves among them as one of them, because they matter to the King. And though they don’t realize it at the time, these common soldiers have gained an access to the King that would not have been possible had he remained remote and distant from them.

Now I don’t know for sure, but I think that should the writer of the Fourth Gospel have had the opportunity to read that scene from Shakespeare’s play, he would have said: “Ah, that’s it!”

A Thanksgiving Story

Do you remember E. M. Forster’s classic definition of a story? Story, he says, is the difference between these two sentences: “The king died and then the queen died;” “The king died and then the queen died of grief.” The first, he says, is merely a recounting of events without attendant significance; the second is a story. That is to say, storytelling is a creative act; it assigns meaning to the events that make up our lives.

In Jay McInerney’s 1989 novel, Story of My Life, Allison is a young woman who lives a “grab all the gusto and never look back” kind of life in fast-paced New York. Her life is filled with events but devoid of meaning. She has spiritual and emotional Parkinson’s disease, lots of motion, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Numbed by it all, she shrugs off whatever life deals her with the quip “story of my life.” Her roommate steals her rent money and spends it on a present for a boyfriend: “story of my life.” She falls in love with a guy who dumps her for another woman: “story of my life.” No matter what happens, she shrugs it off: “story of my life.” The quip is an ironic commentary on Allison’s life – there is no “story of her life,” just an aggregation of disjointed events without meaning, without purpose, just one stupid thing after another.

That’s why Faith is such a good storyteller; it puts purpose and “plot” in our stories.

Stan Hauerwas of Duke has argued that the Christian story is most truthfully told when it is told as a “Thanksgiving Story.” It is, essentially, a story of what we’ve been given. “The self is a gift,” he writes, “and we need a story that helps us accept it as gift.” Hauerwas goes on to say that when we learn to tell our stories as the story of being given a great gift, we can then be truthful about ourselves. As long as we are trapped in telling stories about our power or our wisdom or our success, we’re dishonest with ourselves and with others, hiding our weaknesses and our impotency and our failures both from ourselves and from others. The truth is, our story is not about our power or our wisdom or our success; it’s about grace, and coming to terms with that is what sets us free to accept it all, the bad times as well as the good, as a gift from God, as our “story.”

There are, of course, lots of ways to tell the “story of your life”: “Of all the dumb luck!” “They’re just out to get me!” “Life is a box of chocolates….”

Long ago, our fathers and mothers of faith told ours as a Thanksgiving Story: “A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me.” (Dt. 26:5-10)

Now that’s a story!