Autumn has fallen
And soon all the leaves
Let go and take flight
From the limbs of the trees.
Burnt-hued acrobats,
Spinning and swirling,
Balance on breezes,
Twisting and twirling.
Upon the earth’s floor,
By true expertise,
Alighting at last
With the greatest of ease.
“Denial of self is the key to the solution of numerous practical questions which perplex the sober-minded believer of today. A right understanding of this basic biblical demand would silence a host of errors regarding evangelism, sanctification, and practical living” – Walter J. Chantry, The Shadow of the Cross: Studies in Self-Denial
The conclusion from today’s sermon:
“Deprived of wine at the Lord’s table, it is no wonder that we fight our battles so timidly, no wonder we stay so nerdy and are constantly plagued by bullies. Wine emboldens the soldier for battle, and wine also flows at the victory celebration that follows. Those who devoured their enemies would devour a victory feast. This is the feast we enjoy: the Lord has aimed His arrows…at all our enemies, at the greatest enemies – sin and death – and has driven them from the field. He makes us boisterous with wine, and He makes us flourish with grain and new wine” (Peter Leithart, Blessed Are the Hungry, 111).
Brothers and sisters, as we engage in ongoing battles, as our faith is tested and tried, as the Lord calls us to fight, to defend, to advance at whatever position He has placed us on the battle-front, isn’t the sign of wine precisely what our faith needs? To be made boisterous for the fight? To see and taste the victory that has already been won, and the rest that awaits when the war is over at last? To take up the cup of the King who reigns at this very moment is to declare His Lordship over all. It is to declare, however poorly faith may see it at the present, that Jesus governs all that come to pass, and is working out all things for the purposes of His kingdom.
And perhaps in the midst of the battle you lose sight of that reality, of that truth. Perhaps in the constant onslaught of headlines of what rulers of nations are conspiring, and how the church is being persecuted as result, it’s hard to see and believe that Jesus is ruling as the King of Kings, as the Emperor over the whole world. Your faith may be challenged in precisely those ways, and perhaps with every new headline you read, there’s a twinge of fear that you sense, wondering what’s going to happen, wondering what the state of the world or even our country is going to be like for your children or grandchildren in the coming years.
When your faith feels small, when it feels weak, and maybe you feel somewhat ashamed to admit your anxiety, then there’s no better place for you to be right now, than to be reminded of what is true, and to receive courage for what lies ahead. See what a gracious King we serve and follow. See what a merciful Savior is ours who invites us week after week to the rest at His table; to this table where His victory is proclaimed, and where we are made boisterous with the wine that He gives.
Your King bids you to come. So come and rejoice and be glad with Him here.
Come, drink with Jesus who serves the best wine.
Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is a modern spin on the classic Shakespeare play. On the whole his stylish interpretation is highly entertaining, driven by Shakespeare’s witty dialogue and a capable cast (many of whom have appeared in Whedon’s other works). I especially enjoyed the characters of Beatrice (played by Amy Acker) and Claudio (played by Fran Kranz). How can you not be engaged by Beatrice’s rapier wit? And the facial expressions Kranz brought to Claudio’s character were as impressive to me as his delivery of the dialogue.
(SPOILER ALERT)
However, there is one glaring problem with Whedon’s Much Ado: the opening scene. The movie begins with what is clearly the end of a one night stand between Beatrice and Benedick (played by Alex Denisof). Though “modern,” Whedon’s choice to give Benedick and Beatrice a history causes significant dissonance for the remainder of the film. When Benedick is later led to believe that Beatrice loves him, one of the three attributes that he extols of her during a soliloquy is that she is “virtuous.” Why would that matter to him since he’s already slept with her? Further, the tension that is created between Claudio and the object of his affection, Hero (played by Jillian Morgese), is directly related to her sexual purity. Why should her purity matter in a world of promiscuity, as Whedon portrays? He holds fairly true to Shakespeare’s dialogue, and would have been foolish not to, but the climax of the movie (brilliantly acted) loses some of its power because of the contemporary context Whedon attempts to infuse. So, if you’re a fan of Shakespeare and/or Whedon, definitely see this film. You’ll probably enjoy 95% of it. Shakespeare’s mastery still shines through despite Whedon’s lack of virtue.
Gina Delfonzo of the The Atlantic wrote this excellent review.
A couple of years ago the writings of Patricia McKillip were recommended by Jeffrey Overstreet. I began with The Alphabet of Thorn, then read The Book of Atrix Wolfe, and am presently reading The Bards of Bone Plain. McKillip is a beautiful writer, and masterfully weaves the power of story and words into her own stories. The very subject she is creatively exploring she is also creatively employing, setting off the reader’s imagination to wonder about words.
In the following excerpt, from Chapter Seven of The Bards of Bone Plain, McKillip deftly describes the challenge of beginning to write.
He sat at a table in the school library later, thinking idly of the encounter, then of Jonah, and then ruthlessly clearing his head to think of nothing at all. He gazed intensely at a sheet of paper, breath suspended, a word on the quivering point of his pen poised and waiting to fall. Monoliths of books and manuscripts rose around him. All were crammed with words, words packed as solidly as bricks in a wall, armies of them marching endlessly on from one page to the next without pause. He forced the pen in his tight grip a hairsbreadth closer to the paper so that the word stubbornly clinging to it might yield finally, flow onto the vast emptiness. Point and paper met. Kissed. Froze.
He sat back, breath spilling abruptly out of him, the pen laden with unformed words dangling now over the floor in his lax fingers. How, he wondered incredulously, did all those books and papers come into existence? In what faceted jewel of amber secreted in what invisible compartment of what hidden casket did others find that one word to begin the sentence that layered itself into a paragraph, that built itself into a page, that went on to the next page, and on, and on?
Stumbled across some interesting parallels in Luke’s birth and resurrection narratives:
A. An angel of the Lord appears to announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, and they are filled with fear (2:8-11).
A’ Two men (angels) appear to the women at the tomb (announcing the resurrection) and the women are afraid (24 5-7).
B. The shepherds are given a sign of “a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (2:12).
B’ Peter sees the ‘sign’ of the “linen cloths by themselves” (24:12).
C. After the angel host departs, the shepherds go Bethlehem to “see this thing that has happened” (2:15), “with haste” (2:16).
C’ After hearing the women’s report, Peter runs to the tomb and sees the linen cloths by themselves (24:12).
D. The shepherds make known the saying that had been told them concerning the child (2:17).
D’ The women told the eleven and all the rest “all these things” (24:9).
E. The people who heard the shepherds “marveled” (2:18).
E’ Peter goes home “marveling at what had happened” (24:12).
You also have Mary specifically mentioned as treasuring up all these things and pondering them in her heart (2:19), and two Marys specifically mentioned as among those who announced the resurrection to the apostles (24:10).
The parallels and overlap of language are hardly accidental. Theologically, these parallels seem to indicate that the incarnation of Jesus foreshadows His resurrection. His first birth from the womb points forward to His second birth from the grave. This also means that you cannot have the Jesus of Christmas without the Jesus of Easter.
Alternate title to this post: “Oz the Great and Powerful…Not So Much.”
I have to admit that my expectations were probably a little bit higher than they should have been going into this movie, but the previews were tantalizing; Sam Raimi is the director (Spiderman trilogy); Rachel Weisz is in it; I’ve liked James Franco in other movies; and having enjoyed Alice’s most recent trip to Wonderland , I was especially looking forward to the re-imagination of the land of Oz. So, what was my overall reaction to the movie? General indifference. As Steven Greydanus puts it, “When I look at it, I believe this is Oz; it’s only the story, characters and dialogue that fall flat.”
Spoiler Warning!
The movie has some nice moments, and it doesn’t take long to realize that the movie is supposed to be fun. There’s plenty of humor when Oz (played by James Franco) is introduced, especially the interaction with his assistant Frank (played by Zach Braff). It’s clear that Raimi has respect for the 1939 classic, “The Wizard of Oz,” and there are plenty of hat tips in that regard. Starting the movie out in black and white, with the screen at a 4:3 ratio is one of them. As the moviegoer, once Oz arrives in the Land of Oz you know the screen will widen and reveal brilliant colors. Which it does. Later in the movie the Munchkins begin to sing, but Oz cuts of them off and tells them to “Take five.” It’s funny because you expect Munchkins to sing. So the movie has its moments, but they’re too few and far between to sustain it in the midst of its weak story and dialogue (as already noted). Rachel Weisz does well with her part. Mila Kunis is not convincing at all, and the only lasting impression of her is that she has a beautiful face (maybe that works because she’s later turned into the Wicked Witch of the West), but the delivery of her lines is empty. Also, her skipping down the yellow brick road seemed very out of place. Was I supposed to think of Dorothy from the 1939 film? I did, but the image didn’t fit.
Perhaps the greatest reason I was disappointed with the movie is because it flirted with a great idea, and then didn’t really do enough with it. The best scene in the movie is when Oz repairs the China Girls’ broken legs with super glue. In the context of the movie, you’re to think back upon the crippled girl that challenged Oz in Kansas to make her walk (both played by the actress Joey King). To the China Girl, Oz’s use of super glue is magical, and later on Oz comes to a semi-realization that he does possess a certain kind of “magic” through his scientific knowledge. The problem is, though, that neither Oz’s character development nor his dialogue really bring this out in such a way to make you believe that Oz sees the “magic” in his “ordinary” scientific knowledge. Perhaps it is expecting too much for Sam Raimi to channel “The Ethics of Elfland” from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, but if Oz could have had an epiphany that Kansas was as magical as the Land of Oz, then that would have been something great… even powerful.
“Consciously or subconsciously Christians have accepted the whole ethos of our joyless and business-minded culture. They believe that the only way to be taken ‘seriously’ by the ‘serious’ – that is, by modern man – is to be serious, and, therefore, to reduce to a symbolic ‘minimum’ what in the past was so tremendously central in the life of the Church – the joy of a feast. The modern world has relegated joy to the category of ‘fun’ and ‘relaxation.’ It is justified and permissible on our ‘time off’; it is a concession, a compromise. And Christians have come to believe all this, or rather they have ceased to believe that the feast, the joy have something to do precisely with the ‘serious problems’ of life itself, and may even be the Christian answer to them.”
– Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 53.
“To confess Christ as King means that the Kingdom He revealed and inaugurated is not only a Kingdom of some distant future, of the ‘beyond’ and thus never conflicting with or contradicting all our other earthly ‘kingdoms’ and loyalties. We belong to this Kingdom here and now, and we belong to it and serve it before all other ‘kingdoms.’ Our belonging, our loyalty to anything in ‘this world’ – be it State, nation, family, culture or any other ‘value’ – is valid only inasmuch as it does not contradict or mutilate our primary loyalty and ‘syntaxis’ to the Kingdom of Christ. In the light of that Kingdom no other loyalty is absolute, none can claim our unconditional obedience, none is the ‘lord’ of our life. To remember this is especially important now when not only the ‘world’ but even Christians themselves so often absolutize their earthly values – national, ethnic, political, cultural – making them the criterion of their Christian faith, rather than subordinating them to the only absolute oath: the one they took on the day of their Baptism, of their ‘enrollment’ in the ranks of those for whom Christ is the only King and Lord.”
– Alexander Schmemann, Of Water & The Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism, 32.
“…there is no doubt that all pious folk throughout life, whenever they are troubled by a consciousness of their faults, may venture to remind themselves of their baptism, that from it they may be confirmed in assurance of that sole and perpetual cleansing which we have in Christ’s blood.” – Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.XV.4
“When men want to play God…they can only impose their will over a large area by using implements of force and violence. To get a uniform culture, they have to impose it from above, and this works to nullify all local diversity. In a Biblical society, the larger government sets only general policy, and serves as a court of appeal; but in a humanistic state, the larger government sets all policy, specific as well as general, thus destroying local diversity, and there is no court of appeal because all local courts are manifestations of the central court.” – James B. Jordan, Judges: A Practical and Theological Commentary, 184-185.
From Lesslie Newbigin’s, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society:
In discussions about the contemporary mission of the Church it is often said that the Church ought to address itself to the real questions which people are asking. That is to misunderstand the mission of Jesus and the mission of the Church. The world’s questions are not the questions that lead to life. What really needs to be said is that where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer. And that, I suppose, is why the letters of St. Paul contain so many exhortations to faithfulness but no exhortations to be active in mission (119).