HOMILETICS

Fritz Lang, Director

Eric David is an author, film critic and reviewer and all around nice-guy.

He also is a contributor to Homiletics, and gives us his ideas of film clips that might work well with certain themes and texts. He lives at ground zero for the film industry: Culver City, California.

Eric has published in a variety of venues, including—frequently—Christianity Today. His latest piece, published last week, is about the film noir director Fritz Lang, seen here left.

Lang, was born in 1890 of a Jewish mother who later converted to Catholicism. His father was Catholic in name only. This religious background created an ethos for Lang that provides grist for the mill in terms of interpreting his body of work over the years.

Although some of his movies were popular with the Nazis, he fled Germany before the war, and continued to make films. Today, scholars still debate the extent of and the nature of the religious themes in his work.

I insert here, forthwith, the last three paragraphs of David’s essay. You can read the entire thing—and it’s worth a read—right here.

David writes:
In 1967, when asked about making a film that might discuss God or morality in a time when many did not believe, Lang said, "Naturally I don't believe in God as the man with a white beard or such a thing, but I believe in something which you can call God in some kind of an eternal law or eternal mathematical conception of the universe. When they said in the States that God is dead, I considered it wrong. I said to them 'God has only changed his address—he is not really dead.' That seems for me to be the crux: naturally we cannot believe in certain things that have been told us over the centuries."

In 1973, the Director's Guild honored Lang with a special award. The man, who had not made a film in more than a decade, stunned the audience by saying, "All of my German films and the best of my American ones deal with fate. I don't believe in fate anymore. Everyone makes fate for himself. You can accept it, you can reject it and go on. There is no mysterious something, no God who puts the fate on you. It is you who makes the fate yourself."

Lang died three years later, asking on his deathbed for a priest to help him remember the words of the Lord's Prayer. However Lang's widow and third wife Lilly Latte, who had married him in the presence of a rabbi, rather than a priest, told others that Lang wanted to be remembered as an atheist. To the end, Lang kept people in the dark, perhaps even those closest to him, about where he stood with his Maker.

The Importance of Shoujing

Our Taiwanese “daughter,” (I call her that because she lived with us for two years while studying at the University of Colorado for a master’s degree) Shu-ling, sent us some travel brochures recently. She wants us to come visit her in Taipei someday.

Reading casually through one book, I came across an ancient rite called shoujing. It’s a very common sight, especially at the Xingtian Temple. Shoujing is the practice of “retrieving the soul.” When a person is deeply frightened by some event, the soul may flee the body, it is felt, and must be coaxed back.

A person whose soul has fled, goes to the temple where specially trained blue-robed lay workers ask a few questions, and then a fistful of burning incense sticks are waved over the soul-empty person, and a few incantations or prayers are recited until slowly, the soul returns to its place in the body and the person is whole again.

It’s a lovely metaphor. It recalls the psalmist who positions himself in green pastures and still waters, and then says of God, that he “restores my soul.”

What are the chances that there’s a goodly number of people in church on a given Sunday who feel soul-less? Who feel—because of an illness, a death, a loss of financial resources, loss of a marriage—that their soul in this frightened state has left them. They’re numb and lifeless and wondering when they’ll be whole again.

I feel like this from time to time—not for any particular reason. I find that sitting at the ocean’s edge “retrieves” my soul. This simple little meditative activity seems to put breath and life back into every cell of my body. Being in the mountains has a similar effect, but perhaps not as strong.

Possibly, we all have particular remedies, of which being in the house of God, or in a garden, art museum, in a boat fishing, at the ocean—somehow restores our souls. Perhaps this is what Oscar Wilde meant when he said that “nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

Ted Kennedy Served Well

I have watched Teddy Kennedy for many years. When his older brother died in Dallas, he was only 31 years old, and the general consensus was then, that of the four Kennedy boys, he, the youngest, was the runt of the lot, intellectually, emotionally and in other ways. Chappaquidick did little to alter that perception. He was the one Kennedy kid who didn’t seem suited for politics.

And now he’s dead at the age of 77, and he’s long since proved his critics wrong. Turns out that of all the Kennedy’s, including his father, he’s the one who has rendered his country the greatest service and provided the greatest value.

I certainly didn’t agree with all of his political views. Well, let’s be honest. I’d wasn’t comfortable with most of them. But you’ve got to acknowledge that his positions were honestly taken, defended with vigor and integrity, and were plausible and defensible, even if often wrong—in my view. He served the people of Massachusetts for many years, as he did our entire country.

He is one of those public servants who fought the good fight and keep the faith. He was a patriotic American. You have to honor a man like that. And now that he’s gone, he leaves an example of what it means to put together a body of work, a lifetime of achievement and meaning. His life had that.

You can’t ask a person for more.

I’m Getting My Eyebrows Pierced

About three weeks ago, I am in the Netherlands visiting a friend. We’re on a train to Rotterdam. I get off, and I leave my clip-on sunglasses on the train. When I go back to retrieve them 30 minutes later, they’re gone.

It’s not a big deal. They cost $9.95 at Wal-Mart. I know, because over the past few years I’ve bought probably a good three dozen. I’m forever losing those clip-ons, or butt-crushing them when I absent-mindedly slide them into a back pocket.

Then yesterday, my colleague and staff writer at Homiletics, Kari Myers, passes on a blurb she saw on www.totallyabsurd.com about stud spectacles. Don’t like the way your glasses fit? Rather than slide on your eyeglasses over your ears, instead you use body-piercing studs through your eyebrows and simply hang your glasses from those studs.

So, this sounds like something that might work for me, only I’d make it more permanent. I’d fasten my clip-on sunglasses and swing them up or down as needed, but just leave them there.

And—and—this gets more interesting because think of the possibilities. I am always losing keys, too. I could drill a stainless steel stud into my left hipbone, and fasten my keys to the bolt with one of the neat retractable cords that zip in and out of a receptacle. On the other hip, I might attached my wallet with a similar device so that it would be impossible for me to leave keys and wallet on a toilet top in the men’s bathroom of some restaurant, or in a taxi, or at the dentist’s office. You get the idea.

I’m not crazy about getting my body all pierced and scarred like this, but you have to do what you have to do. Body-piercing may be the answer for the problem I have of leaving stuff behind.

Still, as my wife pointed out when I mentioned this possibility, it probably won’t work. I forget stuff and leave stuff because I’m not intentional and I get distracted and I don’t have “procedures” I follow.

Then it hit me, that this is precisely what Jesus was getting at in that famous Sermon-on-the-Mount piece where he talks about lust and temptation and “plucking out an eye” –not eyebrow plucking, but actually gouging out an eye, and lopping off a hand, as it would be better to do that, he says, than to commit the sins of lust or something else.

I heard a sermon the other day in which the preacher actually assumed Jesus was speaking literally here.

He’s not. He is using the language of the absurd. He could’ve been a writer for totallyabsurd.com. He's saying that—if you REALLY claim that it's your eye that's causing you to look lustfully, and if it's actually your hand that's committing the sin, then, you better gouge out your eye and cut off your hand. He mentions the right eye and right hand specifically, because Jesus knows that if you were to be an idiot and totally insane and actually commit either of these follies, you’d still have the left eye and left hand with which to look lustfully and do bad things, and therefore you’d have to gouge and lop again…and the long and short of it, to be free of sin, using this logic, you’d have to undergo a series of amputations that would leave you looking like a freak and then – ultimately, you’d have to commit suicide.

Jesus is saying: You guys are nuts. It’s not your eyes and your hands: You have these problems because something is goofy INSIDE. You’re messed up.

So, I guess I WON’T get my eyebrows pierced. I’ve started to work on what my wife calls “procedures,” i.e. habits with respect to my glasses, keys and wallet. For example, she says I should NEVER lay my wallet down on any surface for any reason, but instead always return my wallet to my pocket—except at home in the evenings, and then I should put my wallet on the same surface (a desk or nightstand) every time … and so on. She’s trying to manage my dementia.

So what was I talking about?

Temp Check

H1N1 is not going away.

The numbers don’t seem huge to me. I’m not reading of people keeling in swarms of fever and sweat, in something like a global “wave” of death.

But, authorities say that H1N1 is a “pandemic” because it IS global, and it’s a monster that evidently is still viral, still active, and lurking—who knows what lies beneath—and could explode into something huge if appropriate measures aren’t taken.

At my wife’s school, no one gets into the building and on the campus without their temp taken. Period. I visited the school yesterday, and watched as hundreds of kids and teachers were channeled into a line, and in turn, placed their feet on some yellow “feet” outlines taped to the floor, looked a gun that was very similar to a radar gun. This apparatus shoots some kind of beam at your forehead and registers heat, and relays the information back and instantly gives a temperature reading. If you have a fever, you can’t get in, and are sent home, and told to stay there.

I pass this on, as a metaphor you might be able to use, about the importance of daily temperature checks, i.e. quiet time, study time, meditation time, prayer, whatever. These periods of reflection, perhaps no more than 10 minutes, are still a powerful way to check the pulse, the temperature of our inner life before stepping out into a world where who knows what kind of “infections” we’re going to encounter.

Today’s Lesson on Leadership is About When You Should Not be a Leader

So let me tell you about yesterday, and thanks for reading. Up at 6:50 a.m. I set out for the first time on my bike in over two months. I had failed to check my equipment. The tires were low—halfway to flat, and as a result I was getting halfway to nowhere, and it was wearing me out. It’s tough to push the pedals when you’re flat—and therein lies a moral. But anyway, I knew that unless someone in the men’s group from church had a hand pump to push some air into my tires, I wouldn’t be able to make the 36k trip to the ocean and back. Fortunately, someone did—always seems to be someone who knows what you’re gonna need. So I was set.

There was about 16 of us, and before we left—we had to pray about it, which sort of irritated me—which is surprising I guess me being a pastor and preacher and all—but praying like that just seems so unnecessary because it assumes that we aren’t sacramentalizing everything we do in our lives, from pulling weeds, to running spreadsheets, because I think all of our activities are sacred and offered to God and I don’t understand the need to sanctify everything with a prayer, whether it’s saying grace all the time, or praying about a bike ride. You don’t pray, “Lord bless me as I flip this burger, or as I prepare this ad campaign, or as I give this lady a Surerest perm,” do you? This stuff is our worship. The apostle Paul said that we’re giving thanks always and in all things! So why are a bunch a guys at 7 a.m. dressed in garish shirts, effeminate Spandex pants and plastic helmets holding hands and having a prayer?

Okay maybe I answered my own question (What has happened to men, anyway?). If I were dressed like that I guess I’d be praying too, and certainly need a lot of prayers. But I shuffled in with the circle of men and said “Amen,” as the prayer concluded. Really.

To continue:  It was a 36k ride—18 out and 18 back—but the group went a little faster than I was comfortable with. First, I had not ridden for more than two months, and second, the group tended to go as fast as the faster rider—and we had some hardcore riders there on their pencil thin tires, and decked out with gloves, pads, garish helmets and special biking shoes, and so on. Me—I had a pair of black jogging shorts and a T-shirt, and running shoes.

I kept up okay, but didn’t enjoy it. Typically, the men were riding as though the objective was to get from Point A (church) to Point B (ocean). I thought the purpose was to enjoy the journey and stop to smell the jaozi! But, still I had a good time chatting with Bud, Nate, and some of the other guys.

One interesting thing happened: On the way back, a young man with lots of energy, rode to the front of the pack (an earlier, faster group, had already peeled off) that numbered about eight riders including myself. He must have been 40-50 meters in front of Bud and I, and when we should’ve made a left turn, this fellow continued straight ahead.

Knowing that there was more than one way to get back to the canal, we followed him for a few minutes. Bud and I remarked, “He must know another way.”

But as we continued, we began to express doubts that he was leading us in the right direction.

Finally, I asked Bud to move ahead and check. So he did. Bud told the chap that normally we would have taken a left turn back a quarter mile or so. Oh! The fellow didn’t know where he was going. So he was leading the pack—why?

So we turned around and headed back to the intersection, and again, this lad pedaled furiously out to the front leading the rest of us and upon arriving at the intersection aforementioned, turned left (which would have been correct had we been coming from the other direction). The entire group yelled at him, “No, right turn! Right turn!”

He stopped, puzzled. He was wearing those Spandex pants a little too tight or something. So he fell in with us, and from then on meekly stayed in the pack and allowed others to alternately take the lead.

So there are times when you might feel like leading, taking the lead, being a leader, but here’s the deal: If you don’t know where you’re going, don’t be a leader. Be a follower.

As Bud and I were riding together later, I remarked about this lesson in leadership. Here’s a leader who charges out in front assuming to lead—when he doesn’t know where he is or where’s he going and could not possibly know when he got there.

I reviewed the corrective process: First, we gave him the benefit of the doubt, i.e. “He probably knows a different or better way.” This was the only fair and reasonable attitude.

Second, we started to have doubts, comparing together our own experience on the journey with what was happening in the present time.

Third, we appointed someone to confront him and ask him what was going on.

When we got the right leader, we quickly got on the right path, and moved forward toward our shared objective.

Good change happens when we’ve got good leaders. Bad things happen with bad leaders.

Groovy, baby

This weekend is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

I didn’t even know there was a Woodstock until well after the fact. So I can’t really comment about it. But I guess it was amazing, and that it turned out to be one among many events of the sixties that sort of captured the mood of the times. This weekend orgy of excess tells the story of the sixties lyrically, and the singers/messengers are mostly dead, some dying within a few years. They played the tune in the sixties, but paid the piper in the seventies.

I was more in to the Jesus Movement, but no Jesus freak or anything—although the apostle Paul might have approved with his talk about being a Jesus fool and all. The Jesus movement which, as I recall, began soon after Woodstock, moved into the early and perhaps mid-seventies before fizzing into the mainstream again.

What was cool about the Jesus movement was that it was so groovy, baby. It was cool to like Jesus, to look like Jesus—as many of us did, to teach Jesus, just to be into Jesus.

Not cool to be a Christian, but very cool to be into Jesus.

It was something I could live with, and still can.

Karl Menniger on how to prevent a nervous breakdown

Here’s the second piece sent my way by Brian Bowen—thank you Brian. It’s a little blurb from Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.

I’m getting to this a little after the fact, but last July 22 was the birthday (116th) of Karl Menniger, the man known as the "dean of American psychiatry," born in Topeka, Kansas (1893).  Here’s the rest of the text from the Writer’s Almanac Web site:

His ideas about mental illnesses and how to treat them were revolutionary for his time—and many of the approaches he advocated and developed became instituted in modern psychiatric treatment centers.

Menninger built on some of the foundations that Freud had established, and some of his achievements rest in explaining Freud to the general population through magazine articles, books, and letters. But he also diverged in many ways from the founder of psychoanalysis. Where Freud believed in treating individuals through set therapy sessions, the Harvard-educated Menninger advocated a total immersion experience to help mentally ill individuals get well. He-co-founded with his father and brother, who were also medical doctors, the Menninger Clinic in Topeka. It was inspired partially by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which Karl's father had visited many years prior and had come home to report, "I have been to the Mayos, and I have seen a great thing."

The Menninger Clinic started in a farmhouse with only 13 beds for patients. At first, local citizens sued to stop the opening of a "maniac ward" near them. The clinic expanded greatly and eventually grew to 39 buildings on 430 acres—and to a staff of 900 people.

In addition to disagreeing with Freud on the best approach to therapy, Menninger had differing notions as to what caused mental illness. While Freud attributed mental illness largely to conflicts within a person's mind, Menninger thought that societal influences played a large role in an individual's mental health. He believed strongly that mental sickness often came about because of a lack of parental love during childhood.

Also, he thought that criminal behavior was often a stage of mental sickness and that it should be treated accordingly. He was a lifelong advocate for prison reform, believing the current system did nothing to help stop antisocial behavior. He told Congress in 1971: "I sometimes feel as if I would like to scream out to the American public that they are squirting gasoline on the fire. The prison system is now manufacturing offenders, it is increasing the amount of transgression, it is multiplying crimes, it is compounding evil."

He often said that it would help anyone "to be getting three square meals a day and to know that there is opportunity ahead—things to be done, land to be turned, things to build."

Once, when someone asked him what to do if a person feels he is about to have a nervous breakdown, Menninger replied, "Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them."

Codex Sinaiticus

I am en route back home over a couple of continents, so I'm being lazy. The next two blogs were first pointed out to me by my friend Brian Bowen, and so I will point you to the site of the original blog and then unashamedly reproduce it here.

The first comes from NPR but it was reported in numerous media outlets. You can read it here and read it here: 

The surviving pieces of the world's oldest known Christian Bible have been put back together for the first time in 150 years — on the Internet.

The Codex Sinaiticus, or Sinai Book, was at the Monastery of St. Catherine in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula until 1859, when the book was divided. Part of it remained there, while other parts were taken to Britain, Germany and Russia.

Now, scholars from those four countries have virtually reassembled the 1,600-year-old work and made it available to anyone who wants to look at it for free.

"The whole project rests on an agreement between the four institutions. Each one committed themselves to ... the greater good of the whole to present this virtual codex," Scot McKendrick, chairman of the multinational group that worked on the project, tells Robert Siegel.

McKendrick, the British Library's head of Western manuscripts, says the codex offers an insight into what was happening in the fourth century.

"This is the point at which Christianity is becoming authorized, accepted by authority, and this book very much reflects that," he says. "It also reflects a point where there is still a discussion going on about which texts are in the Bible and which order they should be presented in."

The Codex Sinaiticus Web site is a veritable treasure trove for researchers and others. The site grants access not only to images of the pages, but also to the new transcription of the text, McKendrick says, which allows scholars to search for word patterns, among other uses. The digitized version offers breathtaking detail of the codex, which is written by hand in Greek on animal skin.

"The Web site is wonderful in that it allows you to see that physicality, see a thumbprint of a 1,600-year-old scribe, an insect that bit the animal that the page has come from," he says. "It's like a window in that ... critical era."

Raising Cane

Ephesians 6:10-20 doesn't show up in the RCL for another couple years, I think--August 2012, maybe August 2011.

But speaking of weapons, I read about some senior citizens in Maryland who have signed up for a crash course in cane kung fu, sort of.

These seniors use a cane to amble about, and now they're learning how to lift that cane and use it as a weapon in case some miscreante tries to make off with their handbag or wallet.

One instructor is calling the new program, Cane-Fu. Now when seniors raise cane, they mean business.

If my German grandmother, who was a serious as the catechism, was still around, she could teach these whippersnappers a thing or two about Cane-Fu. She was always raising cane with me. It's a vivid recollection.

And it was all the more scary when she not only raised her cane, but through in some German words to boot.

The Ephesians texts proposes a number of "weapons" for the Christian doing battle in the world, but the cane is not among them.

Of course, a cane's primary purpose is to keep us from falling ...