Noah: A Second Look (Movie Analysis)

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I’ll assume that you’ve already read this if you’re coming back for more on Noah, that you’ve seen the movie and any spoilers I drop here are not going to ruin your experience. I’ll also assume that you are potentially of the mindset that the film, directed by a man who was raised Jewish but has chosen atheism as his worldview, is not a Christian film but is one that we can learn from.

Again, I am aware that Darren Aronofsky set out to make a film that reflects his worldview: this is the guy who has already explored madness and obsession in Black Swan and The Wrestler. But to say that he took the story of Noah, and stripped God from it? That’s madness in itself.

One of the key arguments I’m seeing here is that Aronofsky’s take on “The Creator” and “the Watchers” is straight from the Kabbalah and “The Book of Enoch.” (Dr. Brian Mattson writes a compelling argument here.) But if we can stop arguing about where the elements of this Noah story comes from, and stop jumping up and down to argue that god’s not dead, we may find that God is moving in the midst of all of this… in spite of Aronofsky or us.

I still have questions about the snakeskin that provides miraculous powers, and yes, the rock monster Watchers aren’t how I would’ve conveyed the Nephilim. I wish the word “covenant” would’ve been used more often, and that there would’ve been a thunderous cloud moment where God used audible, human words and Noah was vindicated. Even on a second viewing, I get that. But what if we’re missing the points that we should be holding onto? What if instead of destroying opportunities for conversation and the prevenient grace of God (have I mentioned I’m a Methodist?), we focused in on the beauty of what this primordial story tells us about God and humanity? In the last week, I’ve received plenty of pushback on my thoughts on Noah, to the point where some people feel like Aronofsky hijacked ‘our story.’ I’ve been called pretty close to a heretic in some situations, and yet… I feel like we’re missing the point.

This is art, not Scripture.

This is make believe, not facts.

This is parabolic, not doctrinal.

I hope that these words of truth from our experience of God will shine a different light on this piece of Hollywood entertainment.

1. God may not “speak” but God is active and moving. There is no scientific explanation that justifies the growth of the trees that the ark is built from; there is no reasoning provided for the water that suddenly begins to flow in a very arid land. While Methuselah is the ‘actor’ in the healing of Ila’s womb, we must recognize that he is the remnant of the first ones whom God created in the image of God, and by healing her womb, he acknowledges that God doesn’t waste anything or anyone. We will sincerely have to put aside our attention to detail to not acknowledge that the rain stops at the birth of the twins or that suddenly, after days or months of fighting, that Noah’s heart is turned toward his family at just the right moment. Without the divine, where does the water come from that grows the land? Where do all of the trees for the ark come from? How do all of the animals know to travel to the ark? Noah and his wife certainly acknowledge that the miraculous is happening and that God is speaking after the first ‘miracle flower’ and the vision Noah has; heck, even Tubal-Cain acknowledges that!

2. The flood happened and everyone short of those eight people died. Whether you take it as a mythical truth about good versus evil and the way God still provides hope, or you read it literally as a historical piece, Aronofsky did not make up that God’s direction and action lead to the death of several generations of humankind. The absolute destruction is sickening; the Bible is not ‘G’-rated! [One viewer told me that Noah’s holding the knife over the twins’ heads made her wish it was rated ‘R’. Are people struggling with it because it’s so moving?] We must take heart in that rainbow, but recognize that God’s “atsab” at seeing the wickedness of people butts up against God’s holiness. Instead of exploring the ‘cruelty’ of God as Aronofsky might be inclined to do, I instead understand that God saw humanity living out an eternal wickedness and chose to stop that perpetual sin. God’s use of the flood by baptismal proxy was justice mixed with mercy, as Noah must come to understand in the film.

3. Prayer matters, more for how it changes us than how it ‘changes’ God. Both Tubal-Cain and Noah pray, but the first prays for his will to be made truth and Noah prays for God’s will to be done. Too often, we are more like Tubal-Cain, not ‘hearing’ because we don’t listen or we don’t like the answer we get, and putting it back on God that we are unloved or unheard. Do I think Aronofsky feels that way? Sure! But watching the film, I still acknowledge that God speaks and we hear, if we’ll listen.

4. As a pastor, I have been in my fair share of situations where I knew God was speaking, directing, pushing, leading me somewhere (or away from somewhere) but I didn’t have the complete picture. Common Protestant understandings of ‘speaking in tongues’ reflect a belief that one can’t speak in tongues and interpret oneself. In life, it often seems that visions from God or hard decisions don’t work that way either; none of us lives in a vacuum. Naameh provides the grounding, the mercy, to balance out Noah’s justice, because God is community, God is love. God is justice and mercy mixed together. Without one or the other, the message is flat, violent, or too watered down; together, it is the conveyed plan of God for the future of the world.

5. Redemption happens. Noah “gets” it. The Watchers are freed from their crusted-rock prisons. There is a new world, with new blessings to be had. And even though we still have evil in men’s hearts (Noah’s drunkenness; Ham’s inability to forgive), we see that the world has been granted the opportunity to start anew.

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: What Do You Pray For? (John 17:1-26)

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Think of a relationship that matters to you. A spouse, a child, a parent, a friend. How do you show that person that they matter to you? Is it by giving gifts? Spending quality time? Physical touch? (Those are just a couple of the “love languages.) What would happen if we didn’t talk at all to the people we care about?

Unfortunately, that’s how many of us approach our “personal relationship” with Jesus. We talk about prayer, we read about prayer, we even say we want to pray better. But too often, we don’t actually TALK to God.

Well, why not? Several factors keep us from praying.

1-  We don’t know how to start, also known as the “but I’m not a prayer warrior” excuse. I sometimes look around and start ‘tagging’ people I know, who I respect and look up to, as ‘prayer warriors,’ and my prayer life seems to pale in comparison. People like Bishop Young Jin Cho. And my mom and dad. And that little old lady at church [any church].

2- We don’t think we’re worthy of God listening or we don’t think God really cares. Let’s be real: we all know that no matter what anyone else thinks of us, unless we’re pretty egotistical, that we are not as cool as people think we are. And if God really knows what we’re like… then why would he care what we had to say?

3- We think we can do it on our own AKA “I’m too busy to pray.” It struck me a few weeks ago that I often pray about an issue after I’ve exhausted all of the other options I see, including to hashing it out with people I care about. Jesus started just about every day we see chronicled by going off on his own to pray– he prayed before, during, and after the situation… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

4- We don’t actually believe prayer works. There doesn’t seem to be a point. This is usually the case when we prayed about something, whether it’s somewhat trivial like passing a test or not having the cop see us speeding to something more serious like the health of a loved one, and we didn’t get what we wanted. If we’re not going to change God’s mind from that perspective, then why pray in the first place?

5-We’re too busy to stop and talk to God. Even though we have some inkling that we come to church and participate, that we think something worthy of our attention happens here, we don’t really think that developing a conversation with the creator of the universe is that big of a deal. (Some of you are thinking I’m lost in sarcasm, but I’m serious, this is a regularly given reason for why people don’t pray!)

So, what would it look like if we REALLY believed in prayer? What would it look like if we threw all of that information in the spin cycle, and pulled it out in a different order?

I think that our attitudes might change, and our expectations. We’d probably carry less of our pain and suffering, because we’d given it over to God. And ultimately, our outlook on the world would probably be different.

But why do we treat prayer like it’s some kind of secret code? We know what real prayer looks like. We know people who have experienced prayer’s impact, even seen it ourselves. We know that there are example after example of how to pray in the Bible.

Consider Jesus’ prayer life. This is a guy who got up early in the morning over and over again to go and spend time with God. He WANTED to talk to God. He WANTED to know what God thought and what God wanted and what God would do.

But instead of praying just as a method of last resort, he prayed all of the time. And this prayer, not his last, but maybe his greatest prayer, from John 17, shows us a lot about what Jesus thought about prayer. (And maybe what we should, too.)

Jesus addresses God intimately, jumping right in to a conversation that is already going on. There is no fronting, no long laundry list of superlatives. Jesus calls God his father, often using the colloquial “daddy,” and launches into the conversation.

Jesus asks that God would be empowered IN Jesus. Jesus definitely wants God to show up and show off. He’s obviously filled with an expectation that God will move in Jesus’ life and that it will be abundantly obvious to everyone.

Jesus wants God to show up and show off in his life SO THAT OTHERS WILL SEE GOD’S glory. It’s not about Jesus, even in the middle of his prayer, even as he’s approaching the end of his earthly ministry. Does he know that? (Depends how you interpret his being fully God and fully human.) I don’t think it matters. That’s how Jesus has prayed every time.

Mark 14:36 puts it this way: “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Matthew 26 even emphasizes that Jesus is struggling with this so mightily, the way that the rest of his ministry would play out, that he prayed it twice! Luke takes this prayer of Jesus so intensely in Luke 22, that he says Jesus’ sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood. Jesus isn’t looking forward to what’s about to happen but he still keeps putting himself in the middle of God’s will. In John, Jesus focuses on all of the ways that God has shown up already. How Jesus has been obedient and used by God, and how he wants God to do it again!

Seriously, if we are going to pray, can we be that bold? Can we put out there what we really, really hope for- healing of a loved one, peace from the struggle, alleviation of our financial woes- and then step back to say, “your will be done?” Do we “put in work” when we pray? Do we get sweaty, worked up, fired up, when we pray, or do we go about it nonchalantly, like we don’t really expect anything to happen? Jesus is WORKING.

That’s hard core prayer. But Jesus isn’t done yet.

Instead of turning inward, dealing with his internal struggle, Jesus prays for his disciples. The first twelve disciples of Jesus are specifically placed in God’s presence, as God asks for them to be protected from others and from evil, to unify them together, and to “sanctify,” or purify, them in God’s word. Then Jesus prays for all who will believe, both present and future. He asks that they would be one just like the Father and the Son are one. And this unity, Jesus prays, will show the world that the Father sent Jesus and that God loves Jesus’ followers.

There’s a laser like focus there: Jesus’ last will and testament is that God would use Jesus’ life to unify the body of believers and make them holy. In the midst of his struggle, Jesus spends the time praying for others. Is that how we pray?

Fast forward to the cross, and Jesus talks to God. In Matthew 27, he says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In Luke 23:34, Jesus says, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” In the first, he’s quoting Scripture, but he’s also expressing the divide between he and the Father, in the hour of his death. Jesus acknowledges that the death experience isn’t great- that this is the loneliest place he’s ever been. In the second, he’s still back at it, forgiving the very people who are putting him through this, even to the death.

In John 14:6, Jesus told his disciples that “no one comes to the Father except through me.” People don’t like it because it seems like Jesus was excluding people there, that he was saying that not everyone would be considered by God. But what if Jesus was including people? What if Jesus was right, and none of us were really acceptable to God without Jesus?

[Digging a little deeper here, no, really, really deep: We can argue and critique what is sin and what’s not, but here’s the thing: God is pure, absolute goodness. And even the best of us has something that isn’t good. (C’mon, I’m not asking for examples, but be realistic!) That little bit (or big bit, for those of us being realistic) keeps us from being able to handle God’s purity, God’s holiness. Why else would Jesus pray that God would see us through him [Jesus]? He knew God the Father needed to see us through God’s Jesus lens, to make us appear like Jesus to God.]

Do we get it yet? Somehow, it carries more punch when it’s advice and modeling coming from a guy who said, “If there’s another way, that I not die here, and yet, you know best,” who later died and rose again. Jesus exampled that prayer was selfless. That it was conversational. That it was necessary work to pursue the life of God. That it was life-giving. That prayer wasn’t just asking for what we wanted, but acknowledging that God had a plan for our lives and that we would be better off if we lived like that.

I wonder what it would look like if we recognized those truths about prayer. What would change?

Would we see other people differently, if we recognized that praying for them put them in the presence of God?

Would we see how important prayer is to God and to us for relationship, and by correlation, how important we are to God?

I want to do a study to prove that prayer works. But the thing is, prayer is a pretty hard thing to find a mathematical equation for, like faith. Every once and awhile, a study like this presents itself:

A group of physicians used in double-blind “drug” studies of the efficacy of Christian prayer on healing. Patients from the San Francisco General Medical Center were randomly divided into placebo and test groups. Patients in the test group were prayed for by Christians; the placebo group received no prayer. There were no statistical differences between the placebo and the prayer groups beforeprayer was initiated. The results demonstrated that patients who were prayed for suffered “less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently intubated and ventilated.”

But from what we’ve looked at today, is prayer simply defined as feeling better or getting what we want? I think that’s selling it short, and quite possibly, failing to see the full potency of faithful prayer.

I wonder, if the prayer we say more often than not, our Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6, wouldn’t come alive if we saw the words through Jesus’ prayer focus, if we recognized how intimate this prayer was to Jesus.

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”

The same elements are here, with different words, but what if we wrote it in our own words? Here are mine.

Our now and forever parent, 

We honor your name by how we live,

We long to do your will now and in the future,

So that heaven would come to earth.

Give us what we need to live each day,

And forgive our mistakes against you and each other,

As we forgive those who have hurt us too. 

Keep us away from things that would cause us to sin,

And protect us from the things that would do us harm. 

I hope you’ll consider as we close in on the last weeks before Easter that Jesus wants us to pray. Not because it’s the ‘rule’ or the ‘expectation,’ but because he knows we need it. We need to know God’s will. We need to know how to live. We need to learn how to forgive.

Maybe prayer isn’t a math equation; maybe it’s a dance. Maybe prayer is the Biblical version of the tango, two hearts learning to beat as one. Maybe it’s the living water that Jesus was talking about. Maybe it’s the synchronization of our life with God’s will, like setting our clocks to Daylight Savings Time. Maybe it’s learning to play the right notes that the composer has set out for the greatest song in the world.

Whatever analogy works for you, it seems like this prayer thing, it’s pretty essential to life.

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When A Dream Dies (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

I almost made it this year.

You think I mean that I didn’t fall for any April Fool’s pranks, right?

No, this year I almost made it through all of April 1st without remembering that seven years ago, my dream died. Not to put it too strongly, but my dream job became road kill. I still don’t know why.

But as Phil Vischer wrote in his book, Me, Myself & Bob, when a dream dies, God will work in us and through us in ways we can’t imagine.

I never imagined I’d be a pastor of a local church.

I never imagined I’d be a church planter.

I never imagined that my love of reading and writing would be realized in blogging.

I never imagined I’d mentor others in what it means to care for and lead others.

I never imagined, seven years ago, as I sat in a stairwell and sobbed, that the death of one dream meant the birth of another.

Maybe I never would’ve made the move into pastoring without the death of the dream; maybe this blog would’ve never been.

Phil Vischer likes to talk about the Shummanite woman when he talks about dreams. You can read her story here in 2 Kings 4.

For me, Jeremiah 29 has always held a special place. There, God tells Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back.”

Tonight, I don’t know if anyone is living through the death of a dream. I know that hurts. And that even the people closest to you won’t always understand how much. But I do know this: while I still don’t know why that dream died, I do know that the Almighty Creator of the universe loves us enough to breathe new dreams into our souls.

And even in the midst of the death of a dream, that gives me hope.

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Noah: Behind Every Great Man (Deluxe, Spoiler-Laden Review)

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Noah isn’t your Sunday School, felt board version of the story found in Genesis 6-10 of the Bible’s Old Testament, but an epic, Hollywood-size thriller about a man who receives a vision of what God wants in a world full of violence and destruction. By now, you’ve probably heard how the film has divided Christian critics; some denounce the movie as heretical, others find the film full of images about the way that God works in our world. Honestly, it’s not for everyone; just don’t judge it before you see it! Full disclaimer: I can’t wait to see it again.

This review is absolutely intended for those who have already seen the movie and want to discuss deeper issues. If you don’t want any spoilers, stop reading and go here!

From what I have read, the people who are denouncing the movie (whether they have seen it or not) have two major gripes. The first is that Noah “was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God” (Genesis 6:9) and they don’t feel like the film portrays that well. [I will make the aside here that Noah is blameless compared to the others around him and like the broken leaders of the Old and New Testament, he is faithful, not good. God makes a person righteous, not their own actions.] The second gripe is that they feel that God’s voice has been silenced, stripped away from the narrative. I will explore the second in detail. But both of these play into their ‘beef’ with the film as atheist director Darren Aronofsky’s focus on environmentalism, that these critics say is all about humanity and nothing about the divine.

Aronofsky is a self-proclaimed atheist who took the story of Genesis’ first boat captain and spun this elaborate exploration of Noah’s mental, emotional, and spiritual state. He provides dialogue throughout a movie that revolve around a man who doesn’t have a line of dialogue in the Scripture until Genesis 9:25; he has Russell Crowe (and not Anthony Hopkins, who looks like Father Time) play a man who is supposed to be 500 years old when he receives his vision from God; he gives life, names, and voice to hundreds of people who don’t make it on the ark (even though they are a nameless, forgotten mass in the Scripture); he empowers the Nephilim (the “fallen ones” or “giants” depending on your preferred translation) to be active players in the Noah narrative, even though they are only mentioned twice (Genesis 6:1-4 and Numbers 13:32-33) in the Hebrew O.T. I will call that creative license and move on.

The truth is that I have never heard God use words to audibly speak to me, so Noah’s vision of a world overtaken by water works in my understanding of God ‘speaking’. I know that God speaks to me, that God has a plan for my life, and that God communicates with me. And I know people who have heard God speak to them audibly. But in the Bible, there are people who heard from God as an audible, tangible voice via Jesus, as a “spirit like a dove,” as a vision pictorially (Acts 10:9-16), and even as the voice of an ass (Numbers 22:25-28). Not all of these people received the full picture of what it was that God wanted them to do but their faith was measured in full by how they followed God. The beauty of the vision that Noah receives is that he knows what he’s supposed to do but he doesn’t know how to do it.

Because Noah gets the message but not the entire picture, Noah has to wrestle with the vision through conservations with his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), his sons (Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, Leo McHugh Carroll), and his enemy Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone). Recognizing that God speaks to people in different ways, one of the most interesting explorations of the film for me was how we hear from God and how we interpret what God says. Seriously, when you feel like God is telling you something, how do you determine whether it’s bad meat in the Taco Bell burrito you ate at midnight or the divine voice of the Almighty? I think maybe we are inclined to read the Gospels back into Genesis, when their understanding of the Creator was not as developed. We can’t read the Incarnation of Jesus Christ into a prehistoric story, accurate historically or covenant-explaining mythology, that doesn’t have the same understanding of how God works.

We know that it’s clear to Naameh and Tubal-Cain that God has spoken to Noah; they don’t doubt that God has given him a message for longer than about ten seconds. But the way that Noah feels compelled to work this out is what makes the film. He doesn’t hear God in a vacuum and he’s not the only one who God speaks to. (I appreciated the conversations with Methuselah even though I wouldn’t have done it that way.) But we also understand that Tubal-Cain believes that he wants to hear from God but his own selfishness prevents him from stopping to actually listen. Tubal-Cain represents Cain’s desire to possess and be the best, as well as the arrogance of the Tower of Babel building, to be like gods. Again, the film from an atheist director is the first one in years to find me reading my Bible before and after, and to make me stop and really consider how I see prayer.

So, Noah gets this message, and he understands that God wants to experience the Garden of Eden all over again. He sees that as God and the animals, kind of Dr. Doolittle-ish, with humanity killed off. Noah has always, per this depiction, had a sympathy for animals that not everyone has- it’s natural that his vision would’ve emphasized the two-by-two of the animals. On the other hand, Tubal-Cain has made God in his own image, and he sees that humanity is supposed to dominate and take what it wants because he’s selectively heard that from the Creation story. [Frankly, I think both Noah and Tubal-Cain speak to our ‘hearing what we want to or are inclined to hear in Scripture.] But rising up out of the middle (the moderate Methodist middle? Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience?) is Naameh, to say that God is about justice and mercy, that there has to be room for grace. None of these people can understand the full picture on their own, but unwrapping God’s mystery is best done in community, no? [I can’t encourage you to just see this movie, because you need to be able to discuss it afterward!]

The elephant in the room (no pun intended) is that Noah sets out to kill off his family, even to the point where he holds a knife to innocent, infant twins. Noah, to this point, understands that this is all part of the message God has given him, and it takes a long time for him to get over the shame he feels in not ‘succeeding.’ This is the point that lurks behind every negative reaction to Noah because it’s interpreted that the atheist Aronofsky is harping on the violence and anger of the God of the Abrahamic major world religions. Isn’t there a foundation in the Scriptures for Noah understanding this, that’s not environmental?

Go read Genesis 22:1-19. (I’ll wait.) Or how about Jesus’ cry to his ‘daddy’ in Mark 15: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?) Noah’s whole worldview, as it is for most people of the Old Testament is about the passing on of the birthright and inheritance to their offspring. Noah (in the Aronofsky version) doesn’t hate his children or grandchildren; in fact, he loves them very much and wants to teach them faithfulness to God. But he understands the vision of God similarly to the way that Abraham heard God tell him to sacrifice Isaac, and he proceeds with faithfulness. Noah may be crazy, but if he is, then so is Abraham… and so is God.

Watching the film, I’m practically in tears as Noah, Naameh, Ila (the wonderful Emma Watson), and those two babies are on the roof of the ark. And I realize that behind every great man (is a great woman, yes), there’s a devotion that borders on insanity, a faithfulness that most of us will never understand because we never get there. Thank goodness Noah had Naameh to help him… weather the storm.

Sure, there’s a little Beautiful Mind going on here, but we fail to see in the Old Testament scriptures that they don’t have Jesus to fall back on. That they don’t know exactly what it is that God plans to do because they don’t understand eternal life or grace yet, just the fear they have in the hands of an angry god. [It’s easy to see that in the Flood story, to focus on the destruction. Don’t most of us go “thank God, that’s not us,” rather than see that God, even in the midst of evil, continues to give humanity second and third chances to get it right? Thank God for that!] Too many critics of the film confused their own literal reading for ‘tradition,’ and read the gospels backward through Genesis, a time when people expected God to speak but didn’t know what was being said, when giants walked the land and miracles were common.

Again, Aronofsky’s vision is one of an atheist who watches religion tear families and nations apart, who potentially wonders if faithfulness isn’t insanity. Noah is a creative adaptation. It’s still not The Book, but aren’t books usually better than the movies they are based on? I actually owe Aronofsky a ‘thank you’: no other movie in recent memory has found me reading my Bible before and after going to see it!

I, for one, am thankful that the Almighty Creator still uses the work of an avowed atheist to show us the way that we are created, intended to be part of the creative process, and redeemed by love flowing with mercy and justice. But standing on the roof of the ark, I wonder if God doesn’t use the glimmers of truth in a mythic Old Testament story as told through an unbeliever’s eyes to show us the bigger truth. We can’t interpret God’s vision for the world on our own. We are meant to be faithful. We need each other. Love wins.

Love it? Hate it? Respond below or find me on Facebook. I’m happy to discuss. 

 

 

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Noah: What We Might Learn (Movie Analysis)

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

What do The Last Temptation of Christ, The Life of Brian, The Passion of the Christ, and Bruce Almighty have in common?

Some Christians found the films wildly offensive; some found meaning and a deeper understanding of aspects of their faith by watching. Personally, I’m not prepared to take any of that quadrilogy of movies in place of reading the actual stories that they touch on, but if I’m honest, each of them has challenged my faith to grow deeper because of some aspect.

Do I really think Jesus and Mary Magdalene did more then talk? No, but Last Temptation made me think about what it really means for Jesus to be human.

Do I really think Jesus was an accidental Messiah? No, but an outsider’s point of view helps me see how what I take for granted about the narrative of Jesus’ ministry and passion.

Do I really think that the serpent/tempter/Satan showed up throughout the narrative the way that Mel Gibson depicted it? No, but what if Jesus was under that emotional and mental torture, even while he was being physically beaten?

Do I really think God looks like Morgan Freeman? No, but Jesus probably looks more like Freeman than he’d look like me.

So, to the rumors that Noah is depicted as crazy by Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe, and that the film talks about preserving the Earth in an environmental emphasis, I say, so what? This serves as my final foray into advance consideration of the film- I’m going to see it tomorrow.

This is the description of Noah we have in Genesis 6 (NIV): “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” That’s right after we hear how “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” There’s nothing there that says that Noah was perfect, but by the standards of the day, he was righteous and blameless.

Sure, someone will jump on how faithful Noah was, even citing Hebrews 11: “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” Oh, wait, Noah responded in fear and his faith in what he was told him to do condemned the world. No, that’s not how we’d articulate Jesus/the New Testament most of the time, but Noah falls in line with a broken line of humans from Abraham to Jacob to David who tried to follow God, all while butchering the method and message which God conveyed love to the world.

I’m not saying everyone needs to or wants to see a movie that has a tag “if you liked Gladiator” because that’s not for everyone. But seriously, let’s not condemn the movie a) without seeing it or b) without considering that a self-proclaimed atheist is doing us a favor and helping us see Noah creatively and from the outside of the tradition. I, for one, am thankful for the opportunity to see the story from a different perspective.

I may hate the movie, but it will make me think. Are you willing to be open-minded?

Stay tuned for a review, coming Monday.

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Michael Hidalgo’s Unlost: Embrace Your Identity (Book Review)

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Hidalgo wants us to understand that being found by God is bigger than the escapism of having our ticket punched to heaven, and he’ll show us how God’s plan is so much more. 

C.S. Lewis could’ve written the forward to the new book by Michael Hidalgo, pastor of Denver Community Church, Unlost. In fact, his quote from Lewis wraps up nicely the overall vibe and message of the book: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Through a quick exploration of the Old and New Testament, Hidalgo wants us to understand that we aren’t maggots, but rather the beloved creation of God (in His image!) who can be restored to right relationship by God’s grace.

In the brief overview that covers both the entrance of sin into the Garden of Eden and the process of rescuing God’s people from Egypt, Hidalgo focuses on the way that “atsab.” That’s the fear of what will happen if one comes out of hiding (shame), that causes us to distance ourselves from the God who loves us. (He also highlights that it’s the word that describes God’s broken heart when seeing humanity’s sin in Genesis.) That shame ties into the way that prisoners (like in Shawshank Redemption) can’t adapt to life outside of prison, and Israel’s need for the Ten Commandments to set boundaries in a world that was intimidating outside of Egypt’s confines.

A few more highlights to tide you over until you can read the book for yourself:

-Sin entered the world with a person and spilled into creation. In Jesus, renewal, redemption, and restoration work from a person out into the world.

-The Pharisees and others who judged Jesus believed he was doing with sinners behind closed doors what they would have done with those people behind closed doors.

-The people put Jesus to death because it was simpler than killing the parts of themselves that were needing to be “killed off.”

-Anger, hate, and killing will always be on the other side of Jesus, regardless of how ‘justified’ we feel like those things are.

The book is another thought-provoking exploration for 2014, and it’s written comfortably enough to speak to interested readers, regardless of their place on the journey.

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Sunday’s Sermon Today: Who Would Reject Jesus? (Luke 20:9-19)

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

My District Superintendent recently sent out this survey, asking local churches to consider how they would respond on a scale of 1-10. It asked several questions about how we perceive the world around us, and what it means for us to be Christians in the world.

Can you overlook unChrist-like attitudes and lifestyles in your efforts to connect with others? Are you able to suspend your judgment for long periods of time around not-yet Christians? Do you consistently seek to understand the not-yet Christians you know before seeking to be understood by them? Do you like people who are far from God? In your relationship with not-yet Christians, do you typically offer kindness rather than “righteous”? Is your heart consistently broken and filled with compassion for the not-yet Christians in your life?

Those are some tough questions! Wouldn’t it be simpler if the survey was like the ones we passed as elementary school kids, “Do you like me? Check yes or no.” Simple, right?

In the world we live in, the separation between church and relevance is growing, as those who don’t know Jesus see the church differently than they saw it fifty years ago. But again, fifty years ago, the church was the cultural and social cornerstone… and now, it’s not.

Some days, it feels like the church is playing catch-up; on other days, it seems like maybe the church doesn’t even know that the world has moved past it. But if we’d set aside our judgment of those outside our walls and consider the movement of Jesus in our world, both long ago and in the present, we might learn to see ourselves differently.

Consider Jesus’ parable today, about the man who owned a vineyard and the tenants who ultimately rejected him as their authority.

The man is the creator of the vineyard; it’s by his effort and creativity that the vineyard, the garden which will supply livelihoods and nutrients (work with me on the wine here!) But the owner puts others in charge once he has set it up: his regular presence will be absent for the time being, and someone else needs to cultivate the vineyard.

At a later date, the vineyard owner sends a servant to collect some of the ‘fruit’ of that vineyard. We understand that, right? He wants some of what is his, and he expects that the tenants will happily provide it to the servant who is his emissary. But they beat up his representative, the image of the owner himself, and send him off.

The same process is repeated again, and again. And finally, the owner takes it next level and sends his son, “whom I love.” It’s interesting that this comes in the same language that the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism. If we haven’t been clued in before, we can see that this is a story about God and humanity now.

But remember, this is pre-crucifixion, pre-resurrection, Jesus sharing the story with his listeners in Jerusalem. He has come into the city of David, to celebrate Passover and reconnect with the testaments and prophecies concerning the way that the Messiah will lead the people of Israel.

And he’s telling this story before any of the events concerning his passion, and final days of earthly ministry, in story form. About himself.

No wonder the Pharisees get angry! They know that the next part is about them! “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

Jesus wasn’t mincing words! He went right at the point of God’s issue with his people, that they had lost sight of the fact that they were his people, and not just out there on their own.

But as far as the political leaders were concerned, this was banging drum of a revolution. Jesus was willing to call a spade a spade, and to struggle against the forces of privilege and power. And we listen to this unfold, and we ask ourselves, “who would reject Jesus?” It’s the question that puts us on the same side as Jesus, instead of considering what it means for us to be like Jesus, and recognize that too often we are not.

That’s the same reaction that most of his listeners had when Jesus told the story. They all said, “God forbid!” and Jesus goes on to speak in metaphor about a rejected stone and the way that God will use it to build something even greater. The Pharisees are mad, but most of the people don’t seem to get it.

Unfortunately, I think most of us don’t see ourselves here. We might see that God created everything and that we have the words of the prophets to live by. We might even accept that Jesus is the Son of God. But we’d never reject Jesus, would we?

I imagine that Jesus never imagined that he would reject Jesus when the motley band of disciples starting assembling. There was Matthew the tax collector, Peter the fisherman, …Judas the Zealot. Judas, the guy who believed that the Jewish people would actually rise up and violently overthrow the Roman rule. Judas, who believed that Jesus was the answer to the question, “who will lead us in overthrowing our overseers?”

When we get to the point where Judas is selling Jesus out for thirty silver pieces, I imagine Judas still thought he was doing the right thing. Maybe he thought Jesus would be pushed into military action from his perceived position of peace, or maybe he thought Jesus had to die to get everyone else fired up enough to fight.

Whatever he was thinking, I still think that Judas is more sympathetic, even as he’s rejecting Jesus, because I don’t think most of us wake up in the morning aimed at being that kind of person. So how do we get so divided? How do we get so turned around?

Too often we paint our lives of faith as “us against them.” We see people who deny Jesus by rejecting that he is God, whether that be Muslims or Jews or atheists. But what about when who we are and how we act fails to live up to the name of ‘Christian’ that we say we are? Do we actually start off headed that way on purpose? Of course not! But sometimes it’s a slippery slope from acceptance to rejection.

Consider these slopes of slipperiness:

What happens when my friends know I’m a Christian but I make fun of someone else, a Christian or not?

What happens when people know I’m a Christian, but I delight in things that are harmful to me or others?

What happens when I say Jesus matters to me, and I fail to make going to church, being in a small group, or giving back to God a priority?

Aren’t those more insidious forms of rejection? Rather than being rejected by absolutes, it’s rejection by thousands of piranha size nibbles!

Brennan Manning said, “The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

That’s pretty harsh, isn’t it? But we need to admit that sometimes, we’re atheist- causers. We need to consider how our brand, our depiction, of what it means to follow Jesus impacts those around us.

Does our lifestyle reject or embrace Jesus? Have we shown people Jesus in a way that they would want more of what we have? Has something about your life made Easter look attractive to them?

Asked another way, the question looks like this: do I make Jesus look good?

We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. But too often, we get caught up in our little worlds and our little problems, and we fail to see the good news that we know, and fail to rely on. Have you ever met a grumpy Christian? That should be an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp!

Yet we fail to recognize that for people to meet Jesus, we’re the ones God is using to introduce them.

Jesus came so that we might have a real life, abundantly. I pray that as Easter closes in on this, that we would live it as individuals and as a church.

I would hate to be numbered among those who had rejected Jesus by my lifestyle. But I must admit, there are changes I must make to be more like Jesus.

What changes do you need to make to show people Jesus? Is it with your words, or your actions, or your lifestyle, or your spending?

The flip side of rejection is acceptance. And it’s by our acceptance of Jesus that we get to be part of God’s kingdom work in the world, and the beauty of what God is redeeming and creating in our world today.

It’s pretty simple really: check accept or reject. There are no other options.

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Get Church Right: Stop Being So “Sex-y” (A Mustard Seed Musing)

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

In the opening scene of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom on HBO, Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy loses it, or more frankly, he speaks the truth: “We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chests. We reached for the stars, acted like men, we aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it, it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed, by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.”

McAvoy is talking about the United States, but he might as well be talking about the church. Honestly, my experience for the last ten years has been the United Methodist Church, but some of this may apply to other denominations. McAvoy’s rant is angry, fed up, and ill-timed, but the truth is there: all of these things were stronger in the past tense.

So, what’s the problem?

Maybe, just maybe, we’ve become so focused on sex, specifically on homosexuality, that we have our priorities out of whack. (I don’t mean to say that the LGBT community is not a priority, but hopefully, that will be clear by the end.)

As a moderate Methodist in the middle (see the alliteration?) I find myself shaking my head at both sides of the conversation/argument/war. Seriously, the issue is what we’ve become known for outside of our own walls, even if the church we attend doesn’t even stop to think about the issue or how their perspective looks from the outside. Let me take a look at each from my perspective first.

The “homosexuality is sin” side : Basing this argument on a reading of Scripture, church tradition, and perspective of sexuality, the influx of changes to the church are an absolute affront to church tradition, Scripture, and structure. For the UMC, the Discipline must be upheld as a guiding principle of polity, structure, and obedience.

The “homosexuality isn’t a sin” side: Basing this argument on a reading of Scripture, understanding of biology, and perspective of sexuality, the influx of changes to the church are seen as a natural development of our church tradition, Scripture, and structure. For the UMC, the Discipline can be ignored when the General Conference fails to adapt to the changing understanding of the church.

Both viewpoints, when taken to the extreme, paint the other as an anathema to the church as they know it. Both are calling names, whether it’s “bigot” on one side or “heretical” on the other. Both are sharpening knives, labeling the other, and failing to see the place in where Jesus occupied, in the middle, welcoming in the ‘conservative’ (Pharisee) and the ‘liberal’ (murderer, adulterer, prostitute) in terms of interpreting and obeying God’s law. [I’m sure that got someone’s attention.] Unfortunately, we’ve been ‘held hostage,’ blinded, incensed by, etc. the situation to the point where we don’t remember who we are … or who we were.

What would it look like if we wrote down the reasons we came to church in the first place, five years or fifty years ago? Have we lost sight of them?

If we recognized that Jesus acknowledged people and welcomed in everyone to learn about love from him, then aren’t the conservatives and the liberals welcome there? If Jesus were here right now, that he would see hurting gays and hurting conservatives? Can we see that Jesus blasted the people who were so sure of themselves rather than the people who were willing to open their hearts up to God? Rather than defining ourselves as church over one issue, shouldn’t we remember that all are welcomed in by Christ? Try Galatians 3:28 or Matthew 18:3. Or better yet, maybe Matthew 7:1-5:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Doesn’t that work both ways?

Everyone is a sinner. Everyone has “fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But we’ve made sexuality such an issue, that pride, greed, gluttony, gossip, etc. seem to be fading away, when those are all issues the church should be dealing with, too. How many people in our city are starving? Homeless? Depressed? Lonely? Unfaithful (ooh, doesn’t that work on so many levels)? Angry? It’s always easier to see the problem someone else has as ‘worse,’ the issue that they are dealing with as more necessarily fixed/corrected/solved. That’s why people loved to watch Married with Children: “my family is not that dysfunctional.”

Homosexuality is the issue du jour: I don’t mean that dismissively- it matters. But it’s not the main thing, because the main thing is, how do I learn to love God and neighbor better? Both sides need to recognize that equality and justice for all in the confines of the church can never come at the expense of the rejection of the gospel and the mistreatment of others. That simply answering whether homosexuality is a sin or not doesn’t actually solve the problem that has been created: that we are not as loving as we claim to be. The gospel says that loving God and loving our neighbor are paramount, and if we really do both, then there must be a middle ground, a place in the footsteps of Jesus, that we come together and really learn to love.

Do I know exactly what that looks like? No. But we need to come together, and I hope we find it sooner rather than later.

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God’s Not Dead: Does God Need Us To Defend Him? (Movie Review)

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

What would you do if you had to sign a piece of paper that said that God was dead? Sure, we know that Cassie Bernall said she believed in God in the library at Columbine, but have you ever considered how you say that God is alive (or dead) in little moments throughout your life? That’s the crux of freshman Josh Wheaton’s (Shane Harper, Good Luck, Charlie) problem in the first semester course of Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo): he has to sign a paper saying that ‘God is dead’ to pass the class.

Duck Dynasty’s Willie and Korrie Robertson, The Newsboys, Dean Cain, and David A.R. White highlight the cast, but the film’s poignant, heart-and-mind aimed focus is on the battle between Wheaton and Radisson. Sure, Wheaton’s girlfriend thinks challenging Radisson is a threat to their five-year plan, and White’s Pastor Dave gets involved as Wheaton’s advisor, but ultimately, it all comes down to the debate in the class: will Wheaton be the ‘only Bible’ his classmates read?

White’s pastor tells Wheaton to check out Matthew 10:32-33: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” It’s classic proof-texting, but it’s also an acknowledgment that we can’t just expect our ‘way of life’ to share what we believe, but we actually have to be prepared to speak when the time is right.

Based on the book by Rice Broocks, the film spins off of a similar Internet forward that spins through the cycle every few years. I took this copy of the presentation from Truth or Fiction online:”A notorious atheist professor at the University of Southern California is known for challenging students about their faith. He dramatically drops a piece of chalk to the floor saying that if God existed, he could prevent the chalk from breaking. This happens year after year until a particular Christian student becomes a part of the class. This time, when the professor drops the chalk, it bounces off his clothing and ends up harmlessly on the floor. The stunned professor runs from the room in shame and the student preaches the Gospel to the remaining class members.”

Radisson and Wheaton go round and round, and there’s certainly not a skirting of deeper issues, like creation, the origin of God, etc. Stephen Hawkins gets some good airtime, and Wheaton’s arguments are torn into by Radisson. The fact that an atheist believes in something (or actually believes in nothing) becomes abundantly clear throughout the film, but it also shows that what we believe matters to us, even if it is, again, a belief in nothing.

I found myself in the same situation in my freshman year in college, with a professor who thought the idea of god was trivial and foolish. I refused to talk about god in those terms and this infuriated her, but over time, my willingness to calmly share why I believed one thing allowed others to speak to it as well. Did I convince her? No. But it was a time when denial of god would’ve betrayed who I was, and I wasn’t willing to go there.

I love the quote (attributed to Francis of Assissi) that says, “preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” Unfortunately, too often, we aren’t willing to speak up, which is certainly NOT this film’s problem; too often, movies like these prove to be too preachy, lacking artful exploration of the subject. I still haven’t made up my mind here, but for what it is, I think this film’s actually pretty good. The characters (except for maybe Sorbo’s Radisson) have fleshed out, real-world complexity, like Wheaton and his girlfriend, a young woman trying to explore her Islamic upbringing, and a young reporter trying to negotiate her new diagnosis with cancer.

In the end, the ‘proof’ of God isn’t an argument- God’s existence is unprovable in mathematic equations. But the proof of God can be seen in the relationships, experiences, and moving of the Spirit in people. The challenges of our first-year student are merely the focal point in a string of events and conversations that allow us to hear the argument, and consider it for ourselves. Will it be enough to convince the disinclined? I don’t know. But it may open our eyes to the way we consider our words and actions and whether or not we’re prepared to explain what we understand about God, for ourselves.

Personally, I don’t think God needs our defense, which allows me to express what I believe without being ‘defensive.’ I think, too often, we act like if we don’t ‘win an argument,’ that we’ve done a disservice. But I believe God gives us the grace to believe, and he provides that grace to others, but we don’t actually make them believe. So, I do think the debate is important because it allows Wheaton’s students to see that not everyone agrees with Radisson, so it’s more of a witness than an actual ‘defense.’

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McCanick: What Obsesses You? (Movie Review)

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Jacob Sahms

Mack McCanick (David Morse, Green Mile, 16 Blocks) celebrates his birthday by setting in motion a manhunt for a recently-released ex-con, Simon Weeks (the now-deceased Cory Monteith, Glee). Defying his Chief of Police (Ciarin Hinds, Game of Thrones, Peabody & Sherman), and drawing in his young partner, Floyd Intrator (Mike Vogel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Under the Dome), McCanick pursues something just off the edge of our consciousness until the bloody, dangerous end. Is it truth or is it something else altogether?

Let’s be clear: we don’t know why McCanick is pursuing Weeks for most of the film. We know he’s angry, that he’s violent, and that he spouts f-bombs with impunity. He’s tortured, frustrated, and impotent, it seems, to do anything about the ultimate problem he has with Weeks. The magnifying glass is on Morse’s senior detective, but we have to wonder if the endgame won’t ultimately be about how his younger partner, Vogel’s Intrator, is affected.

McCanick’s claim to fame may be that its Monteith’s last movie (he died of a drug overdose last year), but the camera seems locked on Morse. Shot in shadows, and constant drabs of brown and black, the film makes this into more of a mental exercise about McCanick’s obsession than an actual murder mystery. Does it matter that McCanick and Green met during the investigation around a politician’s death nearly a decade ago? Does it matter that McCanick shoots his partner? It’s hard to tell what’s “mystery-like” storytelling and flaws in the show build to a finale of Training Day–like proportions.

Ultimately, it may not matter who or what Simon Weeks is as much as it matters what McCanick sacrifices in his pursuit. Are we that obsessed? Are we lost in our own heads? Are we so afraid of the truth that we have to protect it, even if others get hurt in the process? McCanick shows us that even when we start off headed in the right direction (a long time ago in McCanick’s world) we can become distracted by the grind, by our own off-work problems, and end up somewhere that we never thought we’d be.

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