Sunday’s Sermon Today: In Between Lost & Found (Gospel of Luke)

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

In Luke 14:15-24, Jesus tells a parable of about a banquet. Maybe that’s too old-fashioned or strange to you. For me, in the month of March when both of my boys have birthdays, I can look at it this way.

We’re preparing for the birthday party, wrapping up months of straining and thinking and negotiating and bargaining about how we’ll spend the money we have allocated for gifts and the actual line-up of the party. What will happen? What will we eat? Do the boys need something specific to wear? What should the going away gift be? When will it happen? How do we work around nap time and meal time and out-of-town guest travel? How do we avoid …the weather? It’s all exciting but it’s also marvelously nerve-wracking, too!

But after all of the plans have been made, and the subject of the party is satisfied, the question remains: who should get invited? The people who would most appreciate the party and celebrating the subject of the party, in this case, one of my sons… are they people whom we, his parents, want to come! Who will get it? Who will he have fun with? Who will be the people most willingly to be present?

And then we invite them. We do our best. Invitations are worked on (okay, my wife works those out… I’m just the roadie!) and sent out. There’s probably a post office run to get stamps! And then we wait.

But what would happen if we sent out all of the invitations and then no one RSVPed? (Okay, truthfully, we have several friends who just can’t seem to RSVP. It’s like they don’t get it. I’ll not name names here because they are our friends…) But what if no one came? What if no one showed up to celebrate one of the two people my wife and I have anchored our lives around, who we value above all others?

That would be crushing, right?

In our parable of the banquet, the master sends his servant to invite all of the people he is sure will want to come, who he knows will ‘get it,’ and they all have excuses. The master and his servants have labored over preparations and the preparation is done. It’s been planned, bought, set up, and delivered – but the people aren’t coming? They are…

Too busy. Too much to do. Not enough time. Better offers. Whatever.

All of this has been laid out for the great party, and none of them want to come.

None of the answers preclude the ability to come to a party. The land to try out will still be there after the party. So will the oxen that need “tried out.” And of course, the new wife could actually “come with.” But they see the invitation and they reject it.

In this case, God has set all of creation before us because God loves us and wants us to enjoy it, so that we could, for lack of a better word, party together forever. And the first people he invites, they all reject him.

Now, in Jesus’ day, this held a pretty specific theological and historical implication: Jesus’ parable says that the Jews should’ve known better but they were rejecting the good news that Jesus was sharing. The religious leaders, the elite, the people who had studied the Scriptures, were all saying that Jesus’ invitation was… not worth RSVPing for.

So, in our parable, the master sends the servant to go everywhere and invite in everyone because the master wants his house to be full. He goes so far as to say those invited who found themselves too encumbered or disinterested in coming would find themselves uninvited.

Would find their post “unliked.” Would find their relationship “unfriended.”

But this is much more serious when we consider the great God of the universe is the one who has been offended, right? The patient and loving God who has finally had enough?

If we pull on the string further though, we might realize that the elite, those in the know, those who should get it are US. We know. We know we’ve been invited. We’ve heard the good news. 

Jesus’ parable about the banquet is not directed at those on the outside who have no knowledge of the good news of the party, who don’t know about God’s love, who haven’t heard about what God is doing in the world. It’s directed at us – the people who should know better.

In Avicii’s song, “Wake Me Up,” he sings, “So wake me up when it’s all over/When I’m wiser and I’m older/All this time I was finding myself/And I didn’t know I was lost.” Too often, we can focus in on the correctional, disciplinary aspects of the Bible and think they’re about “others,” out there. We know we were lost and are now found – we figure they need God’s grace to let them see it. But Jesus’ parable focuses on something different.

Jesus’ parable says we’d better be careful to not assume that we’ve made it, and that God’s invitations are to be taken for granted.

If we’re honest, we’ll admit that we fail to RSVP sometimes. We fail to be obedient. We fail to be… the church. We fail to care for “the least of these,” to follow through on our membership covenant to participate in our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. We mail it in, but we forget to put a stamp on it.

I am not a big doom and gloom guy when it comes to the world or the church. But in Lent, we’re supposed to be introspective. We’re supposed to ask ourselves if we’re really following Jesus the way that we should.

And I find myself realizing that I’m in-between lost and found. I know Jesus died on the cross for me and rose again- I believe that with my whole heart. But I also know that I don’t always succeed in acting like it.

I get angry.

I worry about things I can’t control.

I fail to give of my time and attention and money generously.

And I realize that while Jesus has claimed me, I still have room to grow to claim Jesus – to make sure that people know that I know I’m loved and that they are loved too. 

Do you know you’re invited? A month til Easter, do you know that Jesus came, fully God and fully man, to live on the earth WITH US, and to suffer and die on the cross for your sins? And that God loved you so much and God loved Jesus so much that he refused to let the story end that way?

If you’ve been at my church for more than a minute, you know I say that a lot. God sent Jesus to die and refused to let it end that way. Because of love.

I think it’s the most important set of words in the world: You’re invited. You’re loved. By God.

But an invitation can just be a card in an envelope on the kitchen table. If we don’t RSVP, we’re leaving that invitation unused, unpotentialized (I made that up!), un-maximized on.

We’ve got to accept the grace and live like we’re saved. We’ve got to respond to go to the party!

I pray today that you know that you’re invited, that you’ve checked “yes” to the invitation, and that you are getting ready for the party by the way you live, and love, and move.

The party starts with bread and juice at the communion table, and lasts eternally with the Great God of the Universe who loves us more than we’ll ever be able to put into words.

Just check “yes” to get started.

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Chappie: Neil Blomkamp’s Tackles Nature Vs. Nurture (Movie Review)

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

chappie1

Chappie is Neil Blomkamp’s ode to robot films of the 1980s, like Robocop and Short Circuit, and this little Walt Disney flick, Pinocchio, from 1940. It has a big heart, the desire for its protagonist to be a “real boy,” and some social issues to sort through. But while District 9 told a story that stuck to its narrative, Chappie feels muddled, overlong, and a few f-bombs overdone in the shock-and-awe department. Relax, sci-fi fans, Blomkamp next takes aim at an Alien reboot. Surely, Sharlto Copley can’t be far behind.

Here, we’re introduced to the world of Johannesburg circa 2016, where human police forces are being augmented by robotic cops. On one side, inventor Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) created the original attack robots and longs to imbue them with artificial intelligence; on the other is his rival, Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), who has created an ED-209-like machine that is controlled by a human but is deemed to expensive. The two of them clash over funding distributed by their mutual boss, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver – because what sci-film of note hasn’t had her in some role…), and ideology. For the record, Moore is pompous, violent, and racist; it seems no coincidence that Blomkamp casts Jackman with his flowing mullet in the same depiction as the street life thug Ninja (Ninja… yep.) Moore is the (main) villain here, but stupidity is the disease.

chappie robocopBlomkamp’s love of his birth nation shows up frequently – District 9 is a great example – but here it’s a bit overblown. Ninja and his former partner Yolandi Visser (who plays… Yolandi) are so over-the-top in the film, until you realize that’s their stage presence all of the time.chappie short circuit Seriously, there’s a bit of thumbing their nose at reality with art imitating life imitating art. Or some such nonsense. Which is what Chappie feels like at times, like the answer to the question, “What would you get if Robocop and Short Circuit had a baby?”

Idealistically though, Blomkamp is chasing the age-old sci-fi question (or rather the oldest human question): what does it take to create real life? When it comes down to it, Chappie wants to know what it would look like for human consciousness to transcend the physical, in some Zen/Buddhist mash-up that involves the machine. Sure, it’s better than Transcendence, but the way it all plays out doesn’t really make a ton of sense… and it doesn’t explain the morality that comes into play.

With minor spoilers, it becomes a question of nature versus nurture, but the battle is really between the “creator” Deon (wait, are we channeling Aronofsky’s Noah again with all this creator stuff?) and Ninja, who wants to use Chappie as a super-thief. Deon tells Chappie stuff he thinks he should know, but Yolandi provides Chappie with nurture and Ninja tries to corrupt his “nature.” Yolandi works her head around understanding what Deon has said about Chappie’s “development” while Ninja just wants to “raise” him to be gangsta. There’s a bunch of that “type” of stuff to unpack, but the movie can’t focus in enough on it (or provide a justifiable ending) to merit real kudos.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t have such a beef with the open-ended situation that the story leaves us with about its morality/spirituality, if it weren’t so derivative. The initial attack robots sound like Peter Weller’s Robocop; the goofy way Copley’s Chappie dances (and ‘dresses’) looks like Short Circuit- I was just waiting for a joke about ‘your mother was a snowblower’! In the end, Chappie has its moments, but it’s not great, merely serviceable, like something you use to hold the gap, not something that does exactly what it was intended to be. rating: borrow it

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The Red Tent: Parallel Stories (TV Review)

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

Red-Tent-Movie-PosterLifetime/Sony’s The Red Tent takes Anita Diamant’s 1997 New York Times Bestseller and adapts it into a two-part, three-hour miniseries about the wives of Jacob from the Old Testament in the Bible. Starring a strong cast that includes Minnie Driver, Iain Glen, Morena Baccarin, Debra Winger, Rebecca Ferguson, and Will Tudor, the film focuses on the under-appreciated character of Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah, from Genesis 34. It’s all about the survival of women in a patriarchal society intended to control and limit them, but does it really jive with the Biblical narrative?

I’m not absolutely sure. I do know that the men in the narrative are painted as a major… jerks. It seems fair that the revisionist, male-dominated history would write the stories of the women smaller and make the men heroic, but the level of “court intrigue” and dramatization certainly seems to play into the crowd-loved Game of Thrones (where Glen and Tudor are regularly found). Jacob knows upfront that Rachel (Ferguson) has duped him with Leah (Driver) but he contrives tension so that he can wed both of them (and their maidservants). When Jacob tells Dinah the story of his friction with Esau, he has some negative things to say about his mother which may or may not have been “factual”. [Again, how you read this narrative from the Bible as myth or literal probably makes a difference.]

But in a cinematic landscape where atheists Darren Aronofsky and Ridley Scott can deliver Noah and Exodus, respectively, what can we make of The Red Tent? Using the Jacob/Esau storyline as an example, we can see that the actual confrontation could’ve played out that way, that specifically, that intense. But what of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel? Taking Diamant’s Jewish background into consideration, the wrestling was still true to the Jewish narrative, and the divinity of the moment has been stripped down and bared. [Now, it may or may not be true to the book, I don’t know.] But forgiveness is important to the moment that director Roger Young (Barabbas, Jesus) does bring across, even if he ignores the divine.

Ironically, I found myself thinking of Maleficent, the Angelina Jolie-reimagining of Sleeping Beauty. The reimagining for itself isn’t bad, but the feminist overtones where men are either evil or (at least) moronic, they make the story somewhat off-putting when comparing to the scripture. The men and women aren’t any more or less smart in the Biblical narrative, but the combination of the removal of God’s immediate action (like Exodus) and the overarching, thematic agenda (like Noah) made this one more than I could recommend. rating: burn it

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The Red Road: Trouble Finds You (TV Review)

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

A battle royal is brewing between the worlds of the white townsfolk and the Native Americans who live in the hills in the Ramapo Mountains of New York. It’s slow-building and multi-layered, a mix of cultural fear, addiction, and violence. Fans of HBO’s Banshee, the Christian Bale/Woody Harrelson thriller Out of the Furnace, or Longmire will appreciate Sundance’s The Red Road, and find themselves gripped by its innate tensions.

Martin Henderson’s cop, Harold Jensen, works hard to keep the peace, at his job and at home. But his emotionally unstable and alcoholic wife, Jean (Julianne Nicholson), makes things complicated – and that’s before she accidentally runs over a Native American young man in the woods. Soon, Jensen is tangled up with a tribal roughneck and drug dealer, Jason Momoa’s Philip Kopus. We’re sure things won’t go well.

It helps that Momoa give off ‘that’ vibe. The one he’s cultivated with Game of Thrones and Conan, a powerful, coiled weapon about to explode. [I think that’s part of why he’s been cast as Aquaman in the next DC hero flick- Aquaman is no quiet, happy hero in the comics. Sorry, Superfriends.] How will things work when Jensen presses the case of a disappeared college student? How hard will Kopus ‘press’ back?

Already, the show is filming its second season – and this one is only six episodes long. It’s pretty gripping, well-shot, and powerfully scripted by Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners, Contraband) [although Josh Whedon’s brother, Zach, gets one of the episode credits]. It’s terse, with darkness in the background of the shots and in the terror we can feel coming. The nearly balanced opposition of these two cultures doesn’t stay pent-up for long.

I’m still feeling my way through, but so far, so good. rating: borrow it

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The Bible Says What? “The Arc of the Covenant” (Genesis 6:5-Genesis 19) #3

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

noah

You know the posts that lead off with “10 Ways to Make Your Body Look Good in Under 20 Minutes” or “See What that Puppy Did to Save a Life”? Well, someone just clicked on this just to scroll down and tell me “it’s Ark with a ‘K,’ dummy!”

Sorry. Yes, there’s an Ark of the Covenant that will show up under Moses’ oversight thanks to God’s direction. But right now, here in early Genesis, I want to talk about the arc (a move with a trajectory) from the covenant God establishes with Noah, and the way it’s ‘re-upped’ or fleshed out with Abraham. I think (gasp!) it’s the same thing, or rather the broadening of the covenant from one family to a whole community, race, and nation. [New Testament readers, hold tight, and let’s not get ahead of ourselves.]

Before the covenant, God saw that people were bad news, so he decided to destroy the world. Yikes! We were thisclose to not being here. Somehow, that’s part of the story that we leave out of the way we explain the story of Noah to the young people in our Sunday School classes. We skip past the way that there were folks that drowned in this story because only Noah’s family made it on the ark. [You can knock Aronofsky’s Noah but watching those folks drown should stir your heart. Seriously.] We put a fun, furry picture (see above) on the felt board and think we’ve made this ‘safe.

So, here’s Noah, described “as a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God” (Gen 6:9 NIV). So he’s so good that other people notice, and he’s the opposite of what God is seeing in the world. God is friendly enough with Noah that God tells him that destruction is coming and gives Noah the instructions for the ark that God will use to save Noah’s family and two of every animal.

Waters rise, water falls, and Noah’s obedience finds his family safe on dry land. He and God have a conversation that echoes what God said to Adam (Genesis 9:7) and the covenant isn’t just God with Abraham but with humans, too. God says that destruction won’t come from water again, and they live happily ever after…

Not so much. By halfway through Genesis 9, Noah is naked and drunk (probably not in that order), and his son Ham disgraces him. Even the first family of Covenant 2.0 is exhibiting sin. [*Sidebar: I’ve typed it enough times, it’s making me think I should say that I define covenant as an agreement between two parties: it’s like a contract but there’s more goodwill involved. In my understanding, historically, there was some expectation that one side would have more to give up than the other – in this case, God is surrendering a lot by ‘covenanting’ with humanity, who has less to offer.] Sin continues in the “Tower of Babel” scenario that finds God scattering people because of their hubris, the people’s belief that they could reach heaven with a human made artifice or building.

Fastforward again, and God is covenanting with Abram in Genesis 12 for the first time: if Abram will get up and go, God will make him a great nation (Gen. 12:1-3). With a minor deviation where Abram tries to pass his wife Sarai off as his sister (what in the world? Genesis 12:10-19), God makes Abram a second promise (Gen. 13:14-17), a third (Gen. 15:1-3), and a fourth (Gen. 17:1-2). In this final installment of the ongoing ‘negotiation,’ he gets a new name, fruitfulness imperative like Adam and Noah, and the strange introduction of circumcision. [Sidebar #2: I’ll let you look that one up…]

If you’re still with me, God has shown an incredible persistence in setting up Abram and his descendants as God’s people. Were other people offered the option and refused? We don’t know. Was Abram a good guy? We’re not inclined to think so [see, “meet Sarai, my sister”]. But God sees something in Abram that makes God ‘bank’ on this covenant, the arc from Noah to Abram, as being the right one. But Abram/Abraham is the torchbearer of ‘righteousness’ after Noah: God even bends toward him to discuss the strange case of Sodom and Gomorroh – and acquiesces to Abraham’s plea for mercy if God can find ten righteous men in the cities (Gen. 18:32). Ultimately, the men of Sodom prove to be inhospitable to strangers – angels unawares, so to speak – and Abraham’s pleas ultimately don’t matter.

God wipes out the sin of Sodom – and then Lot’s daughters get him drunk so they can sleep with him and have offspring (Gen. 19:30-33). For every annihilation attributed to God in the name of cleansing sin from society, there’s that element that immediately shows up in the next story. Speaking of the next story, I’ll wait until next time to tackle the (more legitimate) sons of Abram and the covenant redux. [There are thirty chapters to go that will basically break down into the story of Isaac/Jacob/Joseph.] Quite frankly, the rest of Genesis is about fathers and sons. Great stories an English teacher once said come from those kinds of dynamics… stay tuned.

[A footnote: Because Abraham and Sarah got ‘cold feet’ about waiting on the covenant God had promised, that their children would pass on a legacy of blessing, they set in motion something that literally (or figuratively) the parallel and collision of Judaism and Islam. Sarah gives her servant Hagar to Abraham to make a son [biology 101] when Sarah is perceived to be barren (Gen. 17); when Isaac is born to ole Abe (Gen. 21), the now jealous mother Sarah has him send Hagar and the first son, Ishmael, away. And Arab national foundations are laid…]

Questions, comments, concerns? What did I miss? [Short answer: a lot. But still…]

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For the Win? Lessons From The Hardwood (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

The parents surrounded me. The final basketball practice had just ended, a scrimmage between the parents and players.

“You know, we’re playing the team that beat us the first game of the season. They’re undefeated.” I’m aware, I think to myself. But is that what I’ve coached your kids all season?

“We should’ve won,” one of them says. “They had one player hit like five threes at the end of the game. We were killing them.”

“Our defense can definitely shut them down,” says another, head bobbing.

I smile, numbly (and dumbly). What am I going to say? Should I tell them how we talk in the team huddle about not worrying about the scoreboard, about how we talk about playing together and doing our best? Should I tell them I have a “no celebration” rule, and that I tell our kids weekly that someday, they’ll be on the receiving end of a blowout?

Fast forward to game day, and I’ve received a few absentee notices. But we still have six players, enough for a full team plus one substitute. We talk about looking for each other, playing our best defense,  Still, I know we’re in trouble: one player tells me his dad told him to shadow another team’s ‘best’ player wherever he goes… even though we play a 2-3 zone. [He’s the same dad heard telling his son to ‘throw an elbow’ if anyone gives him a hard time.] After another one of my players picks up his third foul, I hear his dad tell him to “keep swinging.”

Did I mention we were 7-1 on the season heading into the last game, outscoring opponents by an average of ten?

Have I mentioned that all the players are under eight years old?

At halftime, losing by two, I gather the kids, who are completely gassed, into the huddle. They’ve played hard, but they’re used to having a near line-change, not one sub for all five positions. They’re kids, they’ve played hard, and they’re spent. They’ve done everything I’ve asked of them.

I huddle them up and tell them, “Look, guys, this is the most fun I’ve had coaching in ten seasons. I’m proud of your hard work, the way you look for each other, and the way you play defense. Remember, it’s doing your best that’s important. Who’s ready for one last half of basketball this year?”

The kids charge onto the court like rhinos, but it’s pretty clear they’ve given their best on the floor. One player tries going one-on-five three possessions in a row, clanging it off the rim; another demands that he get to dribble the ball down the floor, bouncing it off his foot on several, successive possessions. With a minute left on the clock, and down six, the refs call a timeout.

I gather my guys into the huddle. “We’re about to lose,” I said. “But do you remember what I said at halftime?”

Faces downcast, probably because of the way they’ve heard their parents talk about the season. I finally get them to look me in the eye, and then the kid that never spoke all season, says, “You said you’re proud of us!”

“That’s right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter that we’ll lose – I’m still proud of you guys and how hard you played.”

I really do hate to lose. I’m not going to lie. I probably hate losing more than I love winning. The losing just eats at me; it always has. That pit in my stomach still hasn’t completely gone away as I write this. I wanted to win. I wanted it for them.

But. There’s that but. Someday, I hope one of those kids remembers that strange, countercultural thing their coach said in the huddle. Not the 2-3 defense or the games of knockout or the ladders we ran as a team. I hope they remember that thing that went against the way their parents talked about the game on the way in … and afterward. Or the advice they heard screamed from the crowd sidelines.

I hope they remember:

“Coach said he was proud of us because we played right- that we did our best.”

For the win.

What’s a story from your competitive experience where the bigger lesson was in losing? Share below!

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Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast (Movie Review)

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

NeverBeastIn the seventh story about Peter Pan’s favorite mini-sidekick and her extended tribe of fairies, Tinker Bell’s friend Fawn (Ginnifer Goodwin) has a knack for rescuing lost animal souls. A baby hawk with a broken wing? No problem. A snake or a vampire bat needing some TLC? Bring it on! But when she uncovers the historic arrival of the NeverBeast – and he has a hurt paw – she begins his care and gives him a name, Gruff.

Nyx (Rosario Dawson) is the tribe’s chief warrior – and she believes the violent legend of the NeverBeast, that Gruff is a threat. Two sides of the situation, two completely different vantage points. It’s interesting, that the situation plays pretty well in adult situations, too. On one side, we see something as different, dangerous, “other”; on the other side, we see the beauty, opportunity, and wonder of a friend we haven’t made yet. How we approach new opportunities and people determines a lot about how much we enjoy life, and the peace we have (or don’t) in life. The Legend of the Never Beast is certainly making a point.

I have to give it to Disney – they know how to market. My kids were well aware of Miles from Tomorrowland (the new Disney Jr. TV show and now a family favorite) and Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast MONTHS before they premiered. Thankfully, the animation and humor make these more-than-endurable direct-to-DVD/TV output by Walt Disney Studio: they are fun for the whole family!

Joining Goodwin and Dawson are Mae Whitman (Tinker Bell), Lucy Liu (SilverMist), Raven-Simon (Iridessa), Megan Hilty (Rosetta). The voice cast is pretty impressive, and the animation is pretty excellent – like a more detailed version of Sophia the First or Doc McStuffins. It simulates real human movement, expression, and emotion, while at the same time not being too realistic (and therefore scary to little ones).

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Bosch: Michael Connelly’s Wounded Warrior (TV Review)

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

BoschI’m so far under the stack of things I’m sent to review – constantly- that I rarely stop to watch something just for fun. But the fact that Amazon’s original series Bosch is based on Michael Connelly’s series about Detective Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver, impeccably) made this one that I’d stop and stream. [I had previously voted for it to be developed on Amazon Prime.] After re-watching the premiere, I was hooked, and I went through the ten episodes in less than a week. Bosch is out to stop a serial killer, clear himself of a wrongful death, and solve a twenty-year-old murder – all in a week’s work for an LAPD veteran.

Based on a mashup of Connelly’s three novels, The Concrete Blonde, Echo Park, and City of Bones, the television series follows Welliver’s version of Bosch through a complicated dating relationship with lawyer-turned-rookie “boot” Julia Brasher (Annie Wersching, 24) and a buddy cop relationship with his partner, Det. Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector, The Wire). He’s got a tough deputy chief (Lance Reddick) to contend with, an ex-wife Eleanor (Sarah Clarke) and estranged teenage daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) to emotionally balance, and a knack for doing things above the law.

Jason Gedrick’s breakout in Murder One seems to have set the stage for his off-and-on pattern as a killer. His “obvious” [we know it from the very beginning] serial killer, Raymond Waits, wants to play cat-and-mouse with Bosch, like he’s the only worthy adversary he’s found in a cycle of killing. From his creepy, casual attempts to turn aside suspicion, to his actual committing of the crimes, Gedrick’s killer is terrifying, quietly. Unlike some of these other shows where the baddie is over the top, Gedrick is so subtle, it’s worse.

But Bosch stands out because of the characterizations of Connelly’s principals, and because Welliver & Co. nail their portrayals. Bosch’s relationship with Brasher is complicated: he covers for her at times, but he’s bothered when she wants to stretch the truth. His father/son relationship with Hector’s Edgar is tricky because Bosch is the son of a prostitute and grapples with his own son/father issues. But that makes his connection/parallels to Waits even more brutal when we see Waits lovingly care for his mother. Both of these men have issues, but one uses his inner fire to take what he wants to feed the demons and the other uses the fire to fight the demons of others.

Amazon wins big points for caring even about its “bit” characters. Shawn Hatosy (Southland) plays a wise guy carwash attendant who gets mixed up with Brasher in one episode; Hoon Lee (Banshee) plays Eleanor’s new man; Scott Wilson (The Walking Dead) plays Dr. Paul Guyot. The attention to details by producer Henrik Bastin and director Jim McKay plays out well in the background and gritty feel, but it ultimately is the backdrop for the morality play between Bosch and Waits. For two men with broken lives, who love and fight at the same time, the murder investigation will undo one of them (at Christmas no less)! But what they unpack in their struggle is years of shame, self-loathing, anger, and violence – mostly the result of what others have done to them as children. It’s absolutely gripping – and I urge you to stop what you’re doing and find it now. rating: borrow it (streaming on Amazon!)

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The Bible Says What? “Sin, Come On Down!” (Genesis 3-6:4) #2

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

This is the second in a series – my response to the secular “reading through the Bible” and responding available at your local Barnes & Noble. Unless of course, it closed. and decided to tackle the impossible: read through and comment on the Bible. A chapter at a time, or maybe a whole book at a time, I’ve set out to read through and see what I see. Care to join me?

Cain-and-Abel

Before we get to the first crime of the Bible, the first acted-on violence, we have the first sin: Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge even when they aren’t supposed to per God’s instructions.

What is sin? How we answer that question fully impacts our understanding of ourselves, God, and everything else we could read about in the Bible. In Genesis 2, God told Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because if he did, he would die; in Genesis 3, the serpent tempts the woman about the fruit and she adds “touching” to the prohibition.

But the serpent says that they won’t die (that it won’t cause their death) but they’ll become like God, knowing good and evil. In a way, the serpent is … right (Gasp!) Once they eat of it, they know they’ve done wrong, and they don’t die. But the not dying seems to be more about God’s grace than it has anything to do on the behalf of the man and woman once they’ve eaten. It’s not the knowledge of good and evil that could cause death but the repercussions of it.

Again, I don’t need to read this as historical fact to understand the point. Humanity made poor, self-interested, disobedient decisions, and crossed the lines of obedience and order God had created. But even as God booted them out of the Garden of Eden, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever'” (Genesis 3:21-22). God cared for the disobedient, sinful, expelled humans even while he justly knew they couldn’t continue as they were – they couldn’t stay in an eternal place as unholy, sinful people. It wasn’t mean to expel them; rather it was kind.

Things, unfortunately, get worse for humanity after that. Cain kills Abel because God favors Abel’s offering more; the thing is that Cain brought “some” of his crops and Abel brought the best portions of his flock. It’s not that God punished Cain because he didn’t offer up his best but rather that he couldn’t deal with his own shame, and so he took it out on his (oblivious?) brother. But Cain’s awareness of his own crime comes when he’s held responsible, when he’s called into account, when he’s called out for what he’s done. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve done some stupid, sinful, even evil things in my life — I sometimes need someone else to point them out to me. Still, when I can recognize what I’ve done, I feel regret, shame, even remorse.

Cain understands that. He mourns what he has done and what he has lost. So God puts the sort of reverse hex on him (my terms, not the Bible’s) where anyone who kills Cain will actually reap a fiery sort of whirlwind, seven times vengeance. And before Dion, we have the wanderer, the transition from landed (Adam and Eve) to gypsy (Cain).

The quick generational recap of Genesis 5 traces the Judeo-Christian foundation from Adam to Noah. It’s not really a third creation story but with its male centric overtones, it still doesn’t answer where all of their wives came from, or how, if we take the Genesis 2 story literally, where all of the wives came from. Honestly, as a teenager, it finally came to me that I should probably assume that Cain and Abel slept with their own siblings to end up married with wife and kids, if I was going to buy this as functional narrative. Seriously, that’s never been taught in my Sunday School class. #sticktothefigurative

But Genesis 6 is quick to point out that there’s plenty of wickedness, and God has had enough. But before we get to Noah, there’s some weirdness that Darren Aronofsky took advantage of with his depiction of the first sea boat captain: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (6:4). Whaaaaat? I’m reasonably convinced that the average Christian had blown right post this one on the way to the fuzzy little lion on the ark, next to the sheep, and never asked who these heroes of old were!

I can’t honestly say that I’ve got a solid lock on what the point is. It fills a lot more of the mythology to explain how there are people with crazy powers, or strong size, or, you know, Shaq and Yao Ming, if sons of God and daughters of men were conjugal back in the day. It’s a side effect of the pre-scientific nature of the Old Testament: we long to explain things we can’t understand and so we struggle to put words to them.

What’s your definition of sin? How do you understand these “Nephilim”?

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You Are Not Alone! (Deuteronomy 2:7) The Bible Says What? #12

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Jacob Sahms

 

Deuteronomy 2:7 The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.

After a year sabbatical, we’re … back. Exploring the strange or amazing or head scratchingly curious moments in reading the Bible. Let’s be clear: I’m doing this for me but if you want to read along – and comment – please, be my guest!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt like I was in the wilderness a lot lately.

The weather is up and down.

My health has been up and down.

The election potentials have me… down.

The schedule of racing here and there, checking off this and that thing, has me up and down.

And then there’s this tidbit of inspiration stuck in the middle of an otherwise, reasonably boring passable about what the Lord expects from his people after their wandering: Even while you were lost and wandering (and punished), you weren’t without.

In other words, even in the wilderness, God was with them.

Even in the wilderness, God was with them.

Wow. Intellectually, I know that; spiritually, I believe that.

But sometimes, I need to be reminded.

The angels reminded Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds — that they were not alone! That God was with them (Immanuel).

I don’t know exactly what you’re going through – if you’d like to message me, I will pray for you – but I am encouraged by the reminder that even in the midst of life’s storms or wildernesses or junk, the good news is that God is with us.

We are not alone.

The best of all, God is with us. — John Wesley

 

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