Look! Up in the Sky

The following are the last few paragraphs of Peggy Noonan’s latest column.  After lauding Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Peggy writes:

“We are at a point in our culture when we actually have to pull for grown-up movies, when we must try to encourage them and laud them when they come by. David Lean wouldn’t be allowed to make movies today, John Ford would be forced to turn John Wayne into a 30-something failure-to-launch hipster whose big moment is missing the toilet in the vomit scene in Hangover Ten. Our movie culture has descended into immaturity, deep and inhuman violence, a pervasive and flattened sexuality. It is an embarrassment.

In Iraq this year I asked an Iraqi military officer doing joint training at an American base what was the big thing he’d come to believe about Americans in the years they’d been there. He thought. “You are a better people than your movies say.” He had judged us by our exports. He had seen the low slag heap of our culture and assumed it was a true expression of who we are.

And so he’d assumed we were disgusting.

Credit, then, to those who make movies for grown-ups.”

’nuff said.

To quote Roger Ebert, “The trench warfare of World War I was a species of hell unlike the agonies of any other war, before or after. The enemies were dug in within earshot of each other, and troops were periodically ordered over the top so that most of them could be mowed down by machinegun fire. They were being ordered to stand up, run forward and be shot to death. And they did it. An additional novelty was the introduction of poison gas.”

Into this hell, on Christmas Eve of 1914, a strange and heavenly peace entered.  History records a spontaneous ceasefire between the allied French and British and the Germans.   It began with the simple singing of carols between the trenches.  Eventually, heads were raised up into what had only recently been the line of fire.  Troops that had been trying to kill each other began to climb out of their trenches and greet one another.  Some exchanged food and souvenirs.  There were even joint burial ceremonies.  For a while, the attitude of ”live-and-let-live” reigned.  

The movie based on this remarkable event, Joyeux Noel (“Merry Christmas”), takes some liberties with history, to the point of inserting a beautiful soprano who’s followed her German lover into the trenches.   The fact that, elsewhere on the front, fierce fighting continued on through the holiday is never mentioned.   But the fierce reprimand given the commanders who’d allowed such fraternizing is an important part of both the film and history.  

I found one scene particularly heart-wrenching.  A bishop scolds his erring priest for daring to celebrate the mass in No Man’s Land.   The bishop then preaches a sermon to motivate his audience of new recruits to kill the evil Germans in the name of Christ.  His text is Matthew 10:34:  “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”      

The scene reminds me of Mark Twain’s powerful short story, The War Prayer, in which an aged stranger enters a jingoistic church meeting to utter a savage prayer of his own:  “…blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!” 

I am not, by nature or conviction, a pacifist.   I love my country and believe in her military defense.  Further, I am a realist.  War happens.  That being said, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take our own sweet time going there.  As Winston Churchill, no stranger to bloody battle, said, “Better jaw, jaw, jaw, than war, war, war.”   But what frightens and repulses me even more than armed conflict is using scripture to justify, if not glorify, our fleshly desires. 

Every time a Christian preacher blurs the distinction between God and country, he preaches idolatry and not Christ.  I’ve seen preachers get their congregations up in the midst of the sermon to repeat the pledge of alliegance to the flag.  Their justification?  They’ll tell you it’s because kids don’t do it in public schools anymore.  They’ll say its on account of a threat to the phrase “one nation under God.”  They’ll point to America’s slide away from God. 

I appreciate their concerns.  It troubles me that America has lost her Christian consensus.  In fact, I am convinced that many of the evils in our land today are the direct result of the loss of that faith.  On the other hand, the idea that America, or any nation, is the Kingdom of God is simply anti-scriptural.  If I understand the Bible correctly, God doesn’t need America, or any nation, in order to prevail in his ultimate purpose.  ”Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).   The kingdom of God comes not by flag-waving or force of arms, but by faith in the the Son of God. 

For a moment, there, on a barb-wire strung field strewn with bodies; for a moment, there, in 1914, on Christmas Eve, that great truth blazed up in the night.  And then the world went back to business.   How sad. 

 But one day, beloved, one bright and blessed day, the world will have no choice but to lay down its arms and surrender forever.  Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.   

Joyeux noel.

Joe was a young preacher in eastern Kentucky. One night, he was driving home from a revival meeting in the rain. Through the swipe of the wipers and glare of the headlights, he saw a figure hunched against the wind, walking alongside the guardrail. He thought it was a woman, but he couldn’t tell. Being the sort he was, Joe didn’t have to think about it. He slowed down, rolled down the passenger side window and hollered, “Hey! Want a ride?” She jerked as though shot. It was a woman all right. Evidently, the last thing she expected was for someone to stop.

For the rest of the story go to http://www.preaching.com/sermons/11660613/

“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’  I do not think that is the best way of looking at it.  I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature:  either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.  To be the one kind of creature is heaven:  that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.  Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I recommend an article at National Review Online, “Tim Tebow’s Religion, and Ours,” by Daniel Foster.  Here’s a quote: 

“That’s way too much earnestness for the ironic. It’s way too much idealism for the cynical. And it’s way too much selflessness for the self-absorbed. In short, people aren’t upset at Tebow’s God talk. They’re upset that he might actually believe it.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284806/tebow

If you’ve seen A Christmas Carol humpteen times and you’re red-eyed from watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed, here’s a Christmas movie you might try, Funny Farm.    Oh, I suppose “Christmas movie” isn’t quite accurate.  Three quarters of the film goes by before the Yuletide season arrives.  But, let’s face it, even It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t quite a Christmas flick.   It just has that reputation. 

This Chevy Chase vehicle first appeared in 1988.  It’s a fish-out-of-water story about a married couple who move from NYC to a rural Vermont community where everybody is a bit…odd.  To give just a few examples, the sheriff can’t drive, but rides around in a taxi.  The antique dealer seemingly stocks only items that belonged to her dead husband and relatives.  The local diner serves a delicious, but unidentified, dish that turns out to be pig testicles.  The drunken mailman throws the mail out the window of his old pickup as he rockets by.  Chase’s wife, played by Madolyn Smith, finds a body buried beneath her flower bed. 

Chase’s character, Andy Farmer, has left his his lucrative sports-writer position to write a novel.  Unbeknownst to him, his wife Elizabeth has written a children’s book.  When she tearfully confesses that his book is unreadable, he throws a fit and burns the manuscript.  Later, he breaks his arm and is unable to return to writing.  When his wife hits paydirt with her children’s story, he seethes with jealousy.  

One day, his publisher comes looking for his long overdue manuscript, threatening to make him pay back the advance money.  In desperation, Chase pawns off his wife’s book as his own.  The betrayal drives a wedge between man and wife, putting them on the road to divorce.  They decide to sell their house, but worry that the oddball townspeople will scare off potential buyers.  They hit on an inspired plan.  At a town council meeting, they distribute old copies of the Saturday Evening Post with covers painted by Norman Rockwell.  They tell the citizens that if they’ll start acting like the people in the paintings, they’ll not only present a $10,000 check to the town but a $50 bonus to the participants in the scheme.  The climax takes place during the Christmas season with the enterprising Redbud-ians on their best Yule behavior, caroling like mad and uncaging deer to run across the frozen lake to awe prospective home-buyers. 

 It really doesn’t sound all that funny, does it?  But, trust me, it plays that way.  The plot is as odd as the citizens of Redbud, but somehow the movie works.  Roger Ebert praised the film’s comic vision, adding that it isn’t just funny, it’s likeable.  I agree. All this could have been served up in sloppy, over-the-top fashion, but director George Roy Hill makes it work.  He finds the right tone and sticks with it.  Chase and Smith play two flawed but loving human beings trying to remain sane in a not-quite-sane environment.  You root for them, even when they don’t deserve it.   
 
I recommend Funny Farm.

Let me preach about preaching for a moment.  I’ve never liked the word “sermon.”  It sounds bad—like a slithering serpent swallowed a sour lemon and the result was this horrible hybrid,  the ser-mon.  Roman Catholics call it a homily.  In the non-instrumental Churches of Christ, they call it a lesson.  I find “message” pretty palatable.   Regardless of what we call it, however, it’s been around a long, long, long time.  

Nehemiah and the priests read and explained, read and explained.  In the Jewish synagogue, someone read from the scroll and commented on the text.  The practice carried over into the church and has remained in the church ever since.  What Justin Martyr wrote in the mid-second century AD has characterized Christian worship through the centuries: 

On the day called Sunday there is a meeting of all believers who live in the town or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read for as long as time will permit.  When the reader hs finished, the president in a sermon urges and invites the people to base their lives on these noble things.

These days a lot of people are turned off by preaching.  I heard a country song about two fellows talking about life over a beer:  “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.”   That’s what a lot of people think church ought to be:  if not burping God-talk over a beer, then pooling ignorance over coffee at Tim Horton’s.  

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck have written about the modern revulsion toward the pulpit.  I recommend their books, Why We’re Not Emergent and Why We Love the Church.  They conclude that much of the current disdain for preaching is really an uneasiness about authority and control.   To put it more simply, nobody wants to be told what to do!  

Some believers dress it up by saying preaching is a monologue and nobody’s listening anymore.  They say modern preaching is said to be a product of the European enlightenment.   It impedes the progress of the individual as he makes his lone, spiritual journey, the quest of self-discovery.    The truth is, God has always spoken through priests, prophets, and preachers and nobody wanted to listen to them either! 

I, for one, am committed to preaching and teaching because I’m committed to the Word of God.  My mandate is crystal clear: 

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.    2 Timothy 4:1-4

Sometimes I fail at it.  I swing hard every Sunday, but sometimes I over swing the ball and fall right on my, uh, notes.  But I won’t quit.  Whether I’m paid or not, I won’t quit.  Because it’s important.  Preaching matters.  Underneath the ridiculous mask of the preacher-teacher, God approaches.  So sermon time is not just my time.  It’s our time.  Woe unto you if you will not listen.  Woe unto me if I don’t hear what I’m saying! It’s not just a monologue—especially if we do what it says!

Can I get an amen?

“Every time a man raises his hand against his neighbour in the name of his faith, he renounces his faith!” 

I haven’t written about my favorite Man of Steel in a while.  I’m overdue.  Since I recently came across the above quote in a Superman comic, I figured I’d spend a little time here with my pal and yours, the Big Blue Boy Scout himself. 

First of all, let me praise and recommend one of the finest comic book shops in the midwest, The Bookery in Fairborn, Ohio.  That’s where I purchase comics old and new.  In addition to a store stocked with the latest stuff, everything from DC to Dynamite, just across the street they have a warehouse with thousands of back issues.  They also have quite an inventory of pulps, paperbacks, hardbacks, and inexpensive DVDs.  The Bookery is where I bought the three Superman comics I’m about to briefly review:

 SUPERMAN #3 is the third entry in the (latest) reboot of that title.  Superman has discarded the red trunks for something described outside the comics as a “Kryptonian battlesuit.”  Oh well, at least it’s blue.  And he still wears the red cape and the chest emblem, an Kryptonian family crest that happens, happily, to resemble the letter ‘S’.  Some things you just don’t mess with. 

In this one, Superman continues to battle an unearthly menace.  First, it took the form of a fire monster.  This time, it’s a super-cold creature that chills its victims literally to the bone.  Supes gets rid of the thing, but the victory isn’t complete.   Meanwhile, a skeptical Galaxy Communications (the outfit that bought the Daily Planet) reporter is out to cook Superman’s goose in a  TV documentary.   It seems that ever since the flying man arrived in town, Metropolis has become a target for highly destructive menaces (including, via flashback, Titano, the super-ape, a King Kong-ish holdover from the Silver Age).   I don’t like this Supes-basher any better than you do, but I have to admit, he has a point.  Superman attracts super-bad guys like flies–and people get killed in the melees.  

Still, I found all this rather depressing.  Though I liked the interaction and dialogue between the Planet/Galaxy staffers, the story was joyless.  To be fair and balanced, I remember that the Silver Age Superman stories, which I adored, weren’t particularly gay either.  In fact, at times, they could be real downers.   But that was long ago and, in the interim, it’s become fashionable to fear and suspect super-heroes.  It’s getting tiresome.  Does Superman really have to be a super-powered version of Batman?  Does he really have to be hated, feared, and suspected?   Well, in this continuity, they’re just getting to know the guy.  Hopefully, more will warm up to him–those that don’t freeze to death in the meantime, that is!     

Meanwhile, I’m intrigued enough by certain Kryptonian-spouting mystery people to keep buying a while.  I’m also wondering if the flashbacks featuring the “Fleisher” robots (a clever nod to the old Fleisher Studios Supes cartoons, one of which featured giant robots) and Titano are tales yet to be told in the pages of ACTION.  (In case you weren’t aware, the latter comic currently depicts a jeans-wearing,work-booted Superman in his earliest days.)   

Ah, but the more things change, the more they stay the same–as displayed in one of the two back issues I bought for a buck each.  In SUPERMAN #348 (1980), Clark Kent is sent on assignment by one Morgan Edge, who runs–guess what?–Galaxy Communications.  A few years earlier, when Denny O’Neil rebooted the character, Kent abandoned the newspaper beat for the TV anchor desk.  By the time this episode rolled around, he was splitting his time between the Planet and WGBS. 

Edge sends Kent out to report on a crisis in Arizona.  A rain-cloud creature, apparently conjured up by an old Indian medicine man,  is causing flooding in the desert (there’s something you don’t see every day, Chauncy!).  In actuality, it’s a creature from another dimension.   Interestingly, this issue and the issue mentioned above are similar in that they both center around a menace affecting the weather, one drenching things, the other freezing them.  I enjoyed Curt Swan’s artwork, the dialogue between Lana Lang and Clark, and, best of all, the fact that it was done-in-one.   

Finally, we come to the title from which I quoted above, ACTION COMICS #517 (1981).  It was a Christmas tale centering around religious conflict.  Written by Gerry Conway, it starts out at a Christmas party at the Daily Planet.  Clark’s super-senses pick up a disturbance outside a nearby synagogue.  Whooshing to the scene, Superman pulls Jewish and Christian (or, at least, Christmas-observing) boys apart, then proceeds to give them a lecture on religious tolerance.   It’s here that he preaches

 about raising our hands against each other in the name of Faith. 

Of course, to this Christian preacher, religious intolerance is one thing; trivializing the vital differences between Christianity and Judaism (or between Christianity and Islam) is quite another.  For believers in Jesus (as opposed to mere Christmas-tree putter-uppers), the problem is twofold:  1) Knowing what we actually believe.  2) Being able to articulate it to non-Christians in a clear but winsome way.   

Rather than continue on in the sticky area of Jewish-Christian relations, however, Conway immediately embroils the Man of Steel in a conflict between two alien races over a holy artifact, subtly dubbed “the grayl”   Along the way, someone reads a prophecy about “the Son” who will end the aliens’ holy war.  It’s never explained who or what the Son is.  Is it Superman?  Christ?  Perhaps I should go back and read the story again.  I might’ve missed something.  Anyway, the story, “The War for Peace,” was interesting if a bit heavy-handed.  for you fans of fins,  this issue was rounded out with an episode of an ongoing Aquaman tale.  

And that’s the news from Metropolis!

After their long captivity in Babylon, the Jews had at last straggled back to their homeland.  There they found ruin and rubble.  They rolled up their sleeves and went to work rebuilding the temple and the altar of sacrifice.  After they laid the foundation, they paused for a praise party.  Perhaps they paused too long, long enough to see how ugly the Samaritans were getting.  They faced opposition from these people who’d had the run of the land while they’d been in exile. 

So they quit.   They lost the grand vision and began looking out for Number One.  There wasn’t much in the way of building materials in the vicinity, but there was timber in the hills—and these people went and got it.  They built paneled houses with it.  The foundation of the temple sat for years, mute testimony to a people who’d lost their nerve and their faith. 

Enter Haggai the prophet, who administers a holy kick in the pants:  “You say it’s not time to build the Lord’s house–but it’s time for you build your panelled houses?  Wake up!”–or words to that effect.   

There was a time when I thought that a church building was unnecessary.  God didn’t live in temples made with hands, so what was the big need for a church building?   Through the experience of church planting, the Lord taught me I was right, but only to a point–the point being Haggai!    

I’ll let Eugene Peterson take it from here:  

“Compared with the great prophets who preached repentance and salva­tion, Haggai’s message doesn’t sound very “spiritual.” But in God’s economy it is perhaps unwise to rank our assigned work as either more or less spir­itual. We are not angels; we inhabit space. Material—bricks and mortar, boards and nails—keeps us grounded and connected with the ordinary world in which we necessarily live out our extraordinary beliefs. [Therefore] repairing the building where we worship is an act of obedience every bit as important as praying in that place of worship.”

Among the many things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving is our church building.  I’m also thankful for the dedication and skill of the hands that work to keep it nice.  Our building is a sanctuary, a tool, and a launching pad.  It’s a house of brick and wood, and an amazing portal into a world unseen. 

And so’s yours.   Amen.