ªAfter the Gospel according to Luke 12. verses 13 - 21).
So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God.
Are not rich towards God?
Maybe a better translation is the Jerusalem Bible
So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are a pauper in the sight of God.
So if wealth and possessions will not bring us true peace of mind, true spiritual health, everlasting riches, Shalom, what will? One answer is suggested by the summer blockbuster movie; Toy Story 3. And I think it is a good one. A good movie and a good answer.
Toy Story 3 is made by Pixar, the company that has revolutionised animation in recent years, first with the original Toy Story, then A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Monsters Incorporated The Incredibles, Walle E, and the second and third Toy Story films. Each film has been a box office hit, each one is a wonder of artistic achievement and technological know how, and every one was packed with sound moral values.
The Toy Story films follow the adventures and misadventures of a group of toys, owned by Andy, who was a small boy when the series began. These toys, Woody the sheriff, Buzz Lightyear the Astronaut, Jenny the Cowgirl, Mr and Mrs Potatohead and many more are brought to life on screen with true depth and pathos, sophisticated emotions playing clearly across their faces. Even the faces of Mr and Mrs Potatohead.
All 3 TS story films are about their little community; their friendship, loyalty, and willingness to work for each others interests, and if necessary, sacrifice themselves for each other. All in the greater context of their relationship to Andy. They are defined by being his toys, his creatures, and by their love and loyalty to him.
But by the time of the latest film, TS3, Andy is 17, and off to college. What to do with his toys?
There are three options. To throw them out, to store them in his attic, or to donate them to a local Children’s Day Centre. Well, he makes his choice. And the toys have to make the best of it.
TS3 has, it is reported, moved grown men to tears, as this simple children’s story touches on adult issues of unresolved grief, the losses we all experience as we grow up, and the guilt that accompanies the disloyalty of moving on, even if that simply means giving up a transitive object, such as a teddy bear or toy.
These are called transitive objects because their purpose is to help us move on, to transition.
When I was a child I loved the things a child loves, but now I am… a teenager,
And there is no room in my affections for silly toys. So I move on, and they get left behind.
But what if … what if these toys cared for me, as I once cared for them. And still do? What if their loyalty outlived mine?
This film explores the meaning of love and loyalty, loss, grief and guilt. It is simple enough to engage a four year old; but psychologically realistic enough to engage any adult. It also has jokes that work at all sorts of levels, and cinematic references to amuse the movie lover.
And it is about love. The love we call agape; the self-giving love that is inseparable from loyalty, responsibility, self sacrifice and courage. Time after time these toys place the needs of the others over their own.
They face hard times, dangers, even the prospect of death and destruction, together, but in the end love and friendship conquers all.
Yes, of course it has a happy ending; but it is not a happy-ever-after ending tacked on to make us feel good.
This is an ending that has been earned. It is brought about by virtue. These characters have stored up the things of heaven. Loyalty and self-giving love in action. This is not an overtly Christian film, but it a story about the same things that Christianity is about; or would, be, if we really paid attention to Jesus, and to his stories. Because if films such as TS3 are concerned with love and loyalty, guilt, loss and grief, then they also implicitly address the things that stand in opposition to them.
Love and ..no, not hate, but apathy.
Loyalty and faithlessness,
Guilt and forgiveness,
loss and reconciliation
Grief and healing,
Apathy, faithlessness and guilt are the things that shatter our wholeness and compromise our true health, they disrupt our shalom. Love, loyalty, forgiveness and reconciliation heal us, and help to make us whole, as individuals, in personal relationships, and in community. They are the stuff of our shalom.
So films that hold out the hope of these things being real and effective in our lives, can lead us towards shalom.
These films, no more than coloured shadows thrown on a wall, can be truly Enlightening. They can bring us Godly messages. Remind us of the heavenly things worth storing up, not for some hypothetical future spent elsewhere, else-when, but for here and now, in the Kingdom of heaven on earth, the kingdom Jesus announced, and lived out, and lived in. Jesus, who possessed nothing, was never a pauper in the sight of God.
So let us truly value the friendships we share in now, and have shared in during our lives. Thank God for the undeserved love and affection of others, those who chose us, just as we are, and offered us loyalty, comfort and support, true compassion; agape. And for the opportunities we have had to offer these to others.
Especially those who are unlolved, those we find it hard to even like, and end up rejected, abandoned, lonley. Surelymn therse are the verympeople Jesusmwould befreind.
These are the things that make us rich in the eyes of God, and are the foundation of shalom, of true peace of mind, true spiritual and emotional health, everlasting riches, Shalom
. -+Inception is directed by Christopher Nolan the man who made Dark Knight, the most shocking of the recent Batman movies starring Heath Ledger as the tragic monster The Joker. That movie made so much money they gave Chris Nolan $160 million to make a film of his own.
And he has made a thriller about dream hackers, people who infiltrate and influence other people’s dreams, either to extract information, or in this case, to insert information, to influence the subject to make a decision favourable to their client.
Leonardo de Caprio stars, leading his gang into deeper and deeper psychological and emotional levels, dreams with dreams, within dreams. Dreams within which even the laws of gravity can be repealed.
And yet, beneath the flash, bang and considerable wallop, this film is also about love and loyalty, loss, grief and guilt. The gang leaders dreams are also bound up with his feelings about his dead wife, the love if his life, and the unresolved issues about her death literally haunt his dreams.
To be honest, it is not as emotionally engaging as TS3, But that may be because this film takes us on a dense and paradoxical journey, on which we may be too busy thinking to feel very much; and at first I wondered if Christopher Nolan is simply less committed to the explicit exploration of emotions. And then I remember that his earlier film, Momento, a film he wrote and directed which also about a man who had lost his wife, and his memory, and was trying to discover the truth about her death, and about his relationship with her. That too was a real intellectual, puzzle, a film told backwards, with each new revelation making us rethink everything that we had already seen.
So maybe Chris Nolan needs an intellectual device to explore deeply emotional issues.
Toy Story 3 and Inception are apparently so different, and yet so similar in the themes they explore. And both of them are, in the end, life affirming. That’s what I look for in movies; not happy endings unrealistically engineered to make us leave the cinema feeling good, but genuine affirmation, realistic hope, even if it is just a glimmer. And sometimes we may even find some kind of redemption.
I don’t expect to leave a good movie feeling happy, But enlightened. Movies are, after all, made of light.
And they are an important part of our literature; they help us to enter other people’s worlds, to stand in their shoes, to understand their world and their predicaments a little better, and so to learn a little more empathy, and to understand ourselves and our world and our situations a little better. We can call that Theology.
The moving, coloured shadows on the wall can be truly Enlightening.
