Summer Movies
Ephesians 6: 10-19
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 
When our sons Andrew and Josh were 6 and 12 years old we visited England. Now, you may know the Tower of London as the location of the crown jewels and site of ancient historic tragedies.  But for our guys – it was all about the weapons! The Tower -- fortress, prison, scaffolding (6 year old Andrew informed us that the first recorded execution there was in 1388). We visited, at great length, the sword room, the weapons room, the arms and armors room, the cross bow room, the cannon room, displays of axes maces, the traitors’ gate, bloody tower, ... sigh.

Andrew was prone to graphically violent drawings and stories of battles.  We did not have toy guns in our home, but whether we were in Yosemite or camping at the coast Andrew would find twigs that would transmogrify into all manner of weaponry – and the sound effects that boy could make rivaled any in Star Wars movie.  I was worried that we were raising a serial killer  (and not the compassionate vegetarian/musician we now know and love) until I read some books on child development.   At the time, it was helpful to know that our guys were working out existential issues of power and powerlessness through imagination and play.  I think.

When summers came, I shuddered at their fascination at the outpouring of “blockbuster” movies filled with violent conflict and battles of every kind – past, present, future. We carefully negotiated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and prohibited Terminators.

The dominant culture of summer movies hasn’t changed much. The 2009 summer movie season illustrates this preoccupation with conflict and an emphasis on special effects.  Summer movies geared toward teens and ‘tweens, kicked off with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra, ...

In a review of GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, Manola Dargis pretty well sums up the formula: “The story here...follows the contemporary militaristic movie template.  Bad guys square off against good, amid heavy-metal machines and regularly timed explosions, with conspicuously planted American flags.”

This morning’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians would seem a spiritual companion to this culture of good guy/bad guy war movies.  But a closer look helps us see with more discerning eyes Paul’s subversive imagery of armaments.  “The whole armor of God”  “the breastplate of righteousness”, the “belt of truth,” the “helmet of salvation,” “the sword of the Spirit” encouraged communities of resistance to stand against empire.  This is a letter written to a persecuted religious minority in Asia Minor, people who were being subjugated, oppressed, martyred, not battling for domination. The call to stand, to stand firm is not a call to arms.

Paul helped the Ephesians claim the Spirit’s role in confronting powers and principalities. They resisted violence even as they understood the magnitude of the forces of evil at work in the world.

The powers and principalities, what William Stringfellow called the ideologies, institutions, and images that make idolatrous claims upon human beings, cannot be defeated by violence.

Here is a translation of our text this morning that comes from Australia: It’s time to stand up and be counted. Kit yourselves out in truth, righteousness, peace, faith and salvation, and you’ll be ready for anything. Truth is like a belt on which everything else hangs.  Justice and righteousness protect your heart like a bullet-proof vest.  Your passion for spreading peace will get you through the hard miles like a sturdy pair of boots. Faith is like a shield that protects you from the fire bombs and anything else the evil one throws at you. God’s salvation is like a good helmet – even if you do get knocked down, it will keep your head in one piece!  

The whole armor of God is forged by God, not by us.  Jesus did not choose the armor, nor the means of the domination system of empire.  He did not choose violence.  He chose weapons of the spirit.

Gandhi observed:  “Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teaching is nonviolent ... except Christians.”  

While I was campus minister at UCLA, we brought the French filmmaker Pierre Sauvage to campus.  His 1989 documentary “Weapons of the Spirit” tells the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon ... a tiny Protestant village in the mountains of south-central France.  During World War II, that village of 5000 people sheltered and saved the lives of 5000 Jews. The whole community, together, defied the Nazis and the French collaboration government by giving safe haven. Not one person was turned away.

Sauvage was born in Le Chambon while his family was sheltered there. But didn’t even learn about this history until he was 18 years old.

The villagers themselves didn’t talk about what they had done until years later.  Decades later they were reluctant to be interviewed by him for the film.  In part, he said, it was because they didn’t want him to romanticize or sentimentalize what they did. They didn’t think of it as heroic ... One said, “How could you call us ‘good?’  We were doing what had to be done.” They were “ordinary people with simply a good hold on what is important.”  

The day after France surrendered to the Nazis pastor Andre Trocme reminded the villagers: “The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through weapons of the spirit.”  

In a 2006 interview with Bill Moyers, Pierre Sauvage said:  “Rescuers during World War II were exceptional because there were few of them.  The vast majority of the rest of the people were not murderers, they were simply apathetic. They simply did not rise to the challenge.”

The antidote to the violence of our (summer movie) culture is not a counter-crusade, but rather a revolution of spirit ...

In a new book titled On Kindness, Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and Historian Barbara Taylor have written a history of kindness, showing how we have come to believe a lie: the lie that people who are truly kind are the saintly exceptions...

A reviewer wrote, ”The punch line of the book is that we are, each of us, battling back against our innate kindness, with which we are fairly bursting, at every turn. Why? Because “real kindness is an exchange with essentially unpredictable consequences.  It is a risk precisely because it mingles our needs and desires with the needs and desires of others, in a way that so-called self-interest never can. Kindness involves us with strangers....”  (August 2, New York Times)

Maybe that’s what it takes ... rediscovering the well of kindness that really does reside within our deepest and best selves ... daring to live and act out of love rather than fear even as we absorb the magnitude of evil and violent forces at work in the world and in us... trusting that the armor of truth and spirit and right relationship will be our strength when we dare to live in its power.

Paul said, “put on the whole armor of God ... This does not require special effects, car chases, guns, armor, or even especially heroic or saintly souls.  All it takes is us ... ordinary folks ... doing what we already know is right.  Amen.