this is the shortened version... Erasmus and Luther duked it out over this concept rather heatedly and for all intensive purposes, Luther won out. I side with Erasmus.. but i see the merit in Luther's position, trying to establish God's sovereignity. just as Dawn says at the end, "We're predestined to have free will" love that line and the reactions of the other two seminarians.
the buzzing in Episode One was from the remodeling projects going around at F&M the college across the street. you can still hear it here too. out of our 5 hours of shooting the work lated 3.5 hours of that. so that kinda stunk.
i'm really happy with these small snap shots. originally (in the script) these would have gone on while the credits rolled, after you got the full helping and theological support from each of the reformers (and then you'd know why Erasmus lost) but due to the constraints of shooting, this was the best option. notice how Calvin talks the longest, something he'll be doing from here on out. he has a lot to say and write on all these subjects as he constantly is working on these issues. he's best known for predestination, but he has a pastoral methodology to his work. never does he damn others to hell but simply hopes that they will one day join the church. it is his later followers which do that dirty work, which inturn tarnishes Calvin. but Calvin did set himself up for it.
we humans can use anything as weapons... physically or spiritually.
first episode was really fun to shoot. it was the one where i took the most liberties with the characters... from here on out, largely the Reformers will be speaking words that they wrote themselves in their various debates they had between them.
Some explanation of the episode:
the reformers match up like this: Erasmus modern counterpart is the Anglican, Luther is the Lutheran, and Calvin and Zwingli are UCC.
Zwingli is an iconoclast and that's why he likes the library (unadorned Bauhaus/International style) and takes down the picture of Christ that Erasmus hangs up.
Luther posted the 95 which was very famous. Zwingli had his own list which was 63 aspects of what he thought was the Christian religion. Calvin read all of these, including other works by Erasmus and the Brethren reformers, and encorporated and debated all of their concepts in his Institutes which is a massive work that he constantly worked on. So after Calvin gets the superior parchment and pen (he stole from the Lutheran) he will constantly be working and writing and only looking up to synthesize debates other reformers are having.
I really enjoyed what the actors brought to the script, i wish i had more film training to capture their energy and work, but think this final cut has more pluses and is pretty close to what i had in my mind. Luther's famous "By Satan's Smokey Ass" phrase (that i got the most comments about) was adlibbed by the actor Jim Siburt, who also suggested the ending song by the Super Furry Animals which i love!
I absolutely LOVE Barry Taylor's "Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy." I love it so much that I'm thinking of just submitting this book when it comes to putting in my ordination papers... but i don't think that will fly with my future committee.
here are some great quotes that Barry uses to introduce his chapters that I will use to speak about this wonderful book:
"...At the very cry from the cross: the cry which confesses that God was forsaken by God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods... they will not find another god who has himself been in revolt... They will find only one religion which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G.K. Chesterson: Orthodoxy
Taylor talks about a re-encoding of the message. Taking artistic license, risking and endeavoring to take new routes with stories that have so long been closed to new meanings. No longer can the theological connection point for Christianity be "You are a sinner who will die in your sins unless you repent. You must be born again." Taylor asks "Is it really the only connection with God through the Jesus story? I think not, though I think it is A connection to Christianity and has been the dominant mode of connection in the church post-Reformation." (page 198).
This approach means no pre-packaged dogmas, doctrines, or resting on old answers. Nor is it throwing out all the dogmas, doctrines or old answers. It is a wide net that Taylor is casting... or actually, asking others to cast. It is a multi-disciplinary approach to life that seeks to encapsulate and make room for people "at the foot of the cross... even atheists." It is keeping Christus Victor right alongside all the other forms of atonement and inventing new ones or not having atonement at all! All of these are possibilities depending on context.
"Poetry will reach a superior dignity, it will become in the end what it was in the beginning---- the teacher of humanity." Friedrich Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology
Taylor constantly uses pop culture to talk about his spiritual outlook. He is quite wise to point out the difference between the movies Stigmata and the Exorcist. He then uses movies and art and poetry to classify 4 movements and expressions of spirituality in the world: 1. Zen Culture 2. The Next Enlightenment 3. Retrolution and 4. Resistant Communities. here are some brief descriptions:
Zen Culture: a "westernized Asian Thought" is being seen through the growing popularity of Anime, ancient wisdom, and use of imagery in movies. Think THE MATRIX here, where it is a blend of Christianity, Gnostic, and Mystic western thought mixed with Tao, Buddhist, Zen, and Kung-Fu eastern notions. Much like the music that's produced by Washington D.C.'s own Thievery Corporation:
Next Enlightenment: Rational Mystics Taylor terms them. Books like The Celestine Prophecy and the Golden Compass are about finding ways to connect to the divine and trusting one's self to do that without the traditional support structures of formalized religion. This approach is all about the WHOLE PROCESS of things and emphasizes community, relationality, and level playing field... there is a "serious concern for their inner lives with a strong penchant for social activism, including a commitment to a sustainable future." but Taylor notes that it's equally important to see their dislikes and those are "social inequality, intolerance, and the Religious Right." U2 would be the biggest band in the strain, but then you get Springsteen, Saves the Day, and the Flobots here as well. Here's one of my fave songs by Switchfoot:
Retrolution: Postmodern Gothic, a blend of ancient and modern.. like what we find in The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, and Donnie Darko. These stories "explore the old and a little under the surface deal with the new; past literary forms and present concerns exist side by side." The is also an element of mystery and shock value and no guarantee for happy endings. Think spirituality ala Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. can't count the amount of social and religious imagery found in my fave Manson video (not to mention the cheerleader like chant within it, i LOVE this song!):
Resistant Communities: the religious right, street preachers, and the like. Jerry Falwell style, that is directly engaged and obsessed with "the other". This community has a desire which is commoditized and the motivating factor is fear. The Left Behind Series would be an example here. Of course my bias is showing here... not Taylors.. because i'm rather sick of these communities and i deal with them all the time. they want to rest of "old answers" yet ignore that the answers they're coming up with are new permutations of old things... there is many positive aspects to these communities, it's not all bad.. and there's even some good music coming out of it... well it's been awhile, but here's what I remember being "cool" when i listened to "Christian Music":
I highly recommend this book! I'm all about it! I feel that it perfectly articulates many of the crazy thoughts zooming around in my head. I hope you'll check it out!
I worked for the last year as an intern at Trinity Reformed United Church of Christ in Mountville PA. The pastor there, Pastor Nancy, is awesome and we had a great time. I have a life-long mentor and friend here. She has started her own blog, quite awhile ago, and i neglected to promote it. Well, here's a great sermon by her talking about faith. My fave. quote is "Faith is a person’s or group’s way of moving into the force field of life. It is our way of finding coherence in and giving meaning to the multiple forces and relations that make up our lives."
Julia O'Brien is the prof of Old Testament here at LTS. She has started a new program on her blog called "Reading the Bible as an Adult." The jist of it is "This project helps readers from differing backgrounds engage the Bible as grown-ups: showing them how to read carefully, pointing out the human dynamics of the text, and providing questions that invite discussion about the dynamics of the stories and the realities of people's lives." Check it out here, i think it's extremely facinating.
American Idol judge Simon Cowell is also the creator of a show called Britain’s Got Talent. He wasn’t having a good day at auditions this past April. “God this is horrible.” He said before the show went to break. When it came back from commercial, Simon was greeted by a middle-aged lady who looked… well, like nothing special. Susan Boyle looked homely and she’s from nowhere special. Simon immediately dismissed her, but since he had to talk to her, he punctuated all his questions with eye rolls, shrugs, and a body-language that said “Oh please.”
How many of you have heard Susan Boyle sing? Was it what you were expecting? [Watch the video here]
Susan sang. The crowd went NUTS for her singing and the judges just stared at the song bird that landed on the stage. Simon… well not just Simon, everyone was expecting failure. It’s the oldest sin in the show-biz book, judging a book by its cover.
In today’s scripture we hear one of Paul’s greatest pieces of wisdom, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Susan Boyle is the embodiment of this phrase. She showed a sexist, ageist, fashion-concerned world what it means to live by faith. In her short 90 second performance, she offered a one woman antidote to all the cynicism that had engulfed the world during this recession. She wasn’t a greedy banker, or corrupt politician. She wasn’t in this for fame or fortune. She had no interest in being another celebrity or raking in piles of cash. She had spent her entire life dreaming of being a professional singer and she had faith that she could do it despite being the full-time care-taker of her mother, despite not looking the way the world expects, despite never going 60 miles from her hometown; Susan had a gift and she had confidence in this gift. She knew it would take her places beyond her wildest dreams. She walks by faith.
We’re steeped in a world that loves what it sees. We are in a world that lives almost exclusively by sight. My college degree was in advertising, so I was set to make my career selling things to you all by sight alone. Doctors Michael Brower and Warren Leon state that “The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day, and globally corporations spend over $620 billion each year to make their products seem desirable and to get us to buy them.”
Living by sight means that you have to have the new product, wear the deodorant that gets you the girls, but make sure that you’re wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, and completely defining yourself by appearance. If the world was like advertising would have you believe, then one paper towel can hold a bowling ball. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris. Household cleaning products hold the key to personal fulfillment. Medieval peasants would have perfectly straight teeth. And if you buy this SUV, you can take it off-road, it will never get dirty, and you’ll never drive in traffic, ever.
Living by sight is SO limited because we so often get it wrong. We misunderstand or misinterpret things which are right in front of us and get too concerned with just staying on the surface of what we know. Here are some examples:
In the year 100, Roman engineer Julius Sextus stated “Inventions have long since reached their limit and I see no hope for future developments.”
In 1893 a journalist wrote “Law will be simplified over the next century. Lawyers will have diminished and their fees will have vastly been curtailed.
In 1895, a teacher wrote to a father of one of his students that this student… this Albert Einstein “will never amount to anything.”
In 1949, a computer scientist stated that “It appears we have reached the limits of what is possible to achieve with computer technology.
The head of the patent office in the 1960s wanted to close up shop because everything had already been invented.
I could go on and on. The world is chock full of examples of living by sight. So how does this concern you? When you pick up your paper or watch the news, it’s easy to fall into despair. Shootings at the holocaust museum, global warming, war, famine, bail outs, company layoffs, the list goes on and on. Paul is seeking to remind us of where we get our purpose and direction from. Sight, Paul argues, is the surface layer; faith is the insight that gets below the surface to goodness, truth, and love.
However, living by faith and sight can be done at the same time. Sight and insight operate together as they do in looking at a painting, where we see not only the forms and colors of the scene but also its beauty. To see beauty, it takes insight. It’s easy to see the beauty in the Hollywood actor or actress, much harder to see it in Susan Boyle or our neighbors. That takes insight. Beauty is something which cannot be measured or completely understood, but we know it when we see it through our insight, through our 6th sense which is our faith.
Walking by faith does not mean that we walk entirely in the dark by a kind of blind trust. It doesn’t mean taking what the bible says, what authorities say, what institutions say literally and unchallenged. A struggle takes place. An interested investigation launched. Remember Doubting Thomas?
There will be times when we have to walk by the light of our faith with only the memory of the insights that were once clear to us. Walking by faith doesn’t mean that once you have an insight, that’s the final and absolute truth… no. We as Christians believe in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit moves and guides and changes and challenges us and provides us with new insights… some of which contradict the old.
Walking by faith is asking questions and questioning the answers. This form of inquiry in many ways resembles the scientific method. But science fails to address such important human concerns as sorrow and joy, suffering and love. Walking by faith doesn’t mean you’re standing still. Resting on old answers. When we walk by faith we follow the Spirit and Christ. Jesus walked the walk. He was born out of wedlock. He hung out with the wrong crowd. He was from some backwoods town and couldn’t possibly amount to anything. He was put to death in his culture’s most shameful way and yet here we are 2,000 years later still talking about him, calling him the Son of God.
Walking by faith takes a lot of courage and effort and many just don’t want to do it. But there is power in it. It is a power that the world doesn’t really understand, not really, because there’s no guarantee. In fact, it actually looks like losing. The power of walking by faith is a paradox; it’s power that looks like weakness. More than that, it is not guaranteed to stop all evildoers. It might, of course, touch and soften their hearts. It enables you to recognize God’s power positively at work in the world.
This way of living comes at a price. It can leave us with the sense that we don’t know the answers after all, that we are much further from knowing than we’d ever realized before. This humble way of living shows us that there are many more angles by which to examine life than we ever imagined. As the ancient rabbis said, “Those who say they know are much further away from the answer than those who say that they don’t know.”
Take care to distinguish between externals and internals. Question your snap judgments and check to see if they hold water. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck externally, internally that duck may think it’s a flying tiger or a Tyrannosaurus Rex. That frog maybe a prince in disguise. Just like Susan Boyle who looks as plain as the day is long, but inside has the voice of an angel. Jesus, who looked like a backwoods carpenter well he’s divine. He’s the way, the truth, and the light. AMEN.
Constantly curious about everything under the sun: politics, science and religion. I am a DORK about many a thing. I know a little about a lot. I'm in my third year of Seminary and hope to be a parish minister for the United Church of Christ.
I say "RAWK" a lot.
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