The wonderful thing about really well-crafted movies is that
they bring one-dimensional images to life, sucking the audience into the world
of the film, tearing down the strong barriers of time and place and even self. For
me, the recent movie, Lincoln, is
just such a film. I knew a little bit about Abraham Lincoln’s life before I saw
the movie, but in my imagination, he was just one more heroic American figure,
a writer of beautiful speeches, a martyr whose tragic death changed history,
the stereotype of a self-made man. The movie, however, brought the flat
historical figure to life. It gave him an imperfect human voice with an accent
that I recognize and a penchant for saying dumb things like my dad and for
wandering off into annoying stories like my colleagues at clergy meetings. It
gave him a marriage strained by tragedy and death. It made him a real
politician, not above buying votes and manipulating his opponents. It made him
a real lawyer, ready to stretch the truth to reach his ends. It made him a real
father, in conflict with his oldest son and distractedly spoiling his youngest,
all while trying to do his job. It gave him the depths of anger and frustration
and grief common to each of us human beings, no matter when or where we live or
what we do.
Even more
importantly, however, the movie took the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution and brought it to life. The
movie might be called Lincoln, but
its real heart is Lincoln’s courageous testimony to freedom in fighting for the
passage of the amendment that banned slavery once and for all in this country. Indeed,
the movie shows that the Amendment is a document born not only of Abraham
Lincoln’s all too human gifts and frailties, but of the courage and cowardice
of politicians, the sacrifice of soldiers, the hopes of slaves, the prophetic
power of abolitionists, the grief of widows, and the brilliance of statesmen.
Freedom for all human beings is the truth that lies beneath the lives and the
politics that we watch on the screen, and Spielberg’s genius is to use that
truth as the backlighting that illumines the whole story.
After seeing what
Spielberg did with Lincoln, I couldn’t help but wonder what he would have done
with Christ the King? I can imagine an exciting movie about King David, making
real the one-dimensional idealized portrait of the King that we read today in 2
Samuel. The piety of these supposed “last words of David,” could be ripped open
to unveil the lustful David who uses his position as King to make the married
Bathsheba his own, and the conniving David who has her husband Uriah killed. The
movie could portray the difficult relationship that David has with his children,
especially his son Absalom, against whom he goes to war, and at whose tragic
death he sobs in shattered grief. The movie could even show how David’s relationship
with God connects—or fails to connect—with his political aspirations as King of
Israel. Jesus, however, is more than King David.
Or, Spielberg
could make a great movie about Pontius Pilate and the political dilemma that he
faces in sentencing Jesus. The flat “crucified under Pontius Pilate” of the
Creeds could become, in Spielberg’s talented hands, the story of a multifaceted
Roman functionary, negotiating a rocky marriage and the troubled path between
his Roman superiors and the rebellious Jews with whom he must deal. Bringing
Jesus’ trial to life would have us sitting on the edges of our seats as Pilate
hesitates over and over between his scruples and political expediency.
A movie about
Christ the King, however, would be much more complicated. Spielberg could
certainly bring the real humanity of Jesus to life on the screen, a hero dealing
with fear and exhaustion and bickering disciples (and perhaps even a wife who
wants more of his time….?) But he would also need to show Jesus somehow negotiating
the complex historical inheritance of King David’s political mantel, not to
mention reflecting the power and majesty of the cosmic Judge on the heavenly
Throne, the Alpha and the Omega that we read about in our second lesson today. Could
even such a talented director as Spielberg convincingly portray humanity and
divinity in the same frame?
Nevertheless, just as Spielberg’s movie
conjures up the hope of freedom through the political story of the 13th
Amendment and Lincoln as its champion, the intangible and illusive truth, hope,
freedom, and justice of the Kingdom of God must focus on the face of its King, this
divine King with a human face. “The reason that I have been born, the reason I
have come into the world,” says Jesus in our Gospel lesson, “is to testify to
the truth:” the Truth of God’s reign of grace, love, freedom and justice on
earth. Behind the politics of Christ the King lies the truth of God’s Kingdom,
a truth that is the backlighting of our story.
Richard
Lischer asks in another context, “What is more important, the political power
that openly rules the world, or the kingdom of God that secretly consecrates [the
world]?”[1] The
secret consecration of the mundane, the slow process of goodness eating away at
evil, the one-step-forward, two-steps-back character of God’s action in the
world, is often hidden by politics and institutions and other tainted human
constructions. Perhaps perceived conflict between human politics, on the one
hand, and divine power, on the other, is one reason why Christians tend to pull
our collective hair these days over the image of Christ the King.
“Kings are autocratic rulers,” we
grumble, stuck on politics, “an outmoded image for our Savior.”
“Talking about Christ as King leaves
out women,” others protest.
“The whole metaphor is too political,”
say yet others, yearning for the spiritual.
Many of our brothers and sisters in
England were in despair this week over a very political vote at their national
synod on whether or not to approve the ordination of women as bishops. Most
people in the church and in the government, after years of debate and study, thought
that a yes-vote was assured. Surprisingly, the motion did not pass. One priest
wrote, in an attempt to move on from disappointment: “Sometimes when we feel furious with or hurt by the church, the
only thing to do is to reinvest in the kingdom. Maybe, today, in this moment of
despair, that’s where hope lies.”[2] Hope does indeed lie in the Kingdom,
and in the deeds of love that build it up, but I’m not so sure that the kingdom
and politics, whether that is church politics or secular politics, can be entirely
separated one from another. They lie intertwined, waiting for the right story,
the right testimony—not just from Spielberg but from each one of us—to bring
one-dimensional images to life, to tear down the strong barriers of time and
place and even self, to suck us into the world of the Gospel, into the world of
Christ crucified and risen.
Lights. Camera. Action.
[2] Sam
Wells, “Talking Points,” November 21, 2012, found at http://www.smitf.org/press-releases/response-to-women-bishops-vote/
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