Wrinkled and crinkled. Heroically reluctant to give up. Forever touring
the world on a mission to make us scream.
Mick Jagger? Paul McCartney? Madonnna?
Perhaps.
But more likely ─ according to New
Yorker film critic Anthony Lane ─ Godzilla, recently revived from the ultra-oceanic
depths by director Gareth Edwards. And proving once more that ─ hard as you may
try, over and over and over again since his Japanese film debut in 1954 ─ you
can’t kill Godzilla ─ or, Gozira, as
the Japanese style the nuclear-triggered monster of biblical proportions.
And speaking of “biblical,” is there a subtle theological message in
going from ‘Gozira’ in Japanese to ‘Godzilla’
in English? Darned if I know, and I’ve Googled every which way to find out. No
luck. But there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is: There just might
be a dissertation in this. The bad news: Why do I think there’s even the
remotest possibility that only in America might someone ─ somewhere ─ be tempted
to say, “We’re the folks who put ‘God’ in Godzilla”?
But I digress.
To refocus: Doing a riff on an observation made by Slate.com film critic
Dana Stevens awhile back, what if, roughly a millennium from now, an archaeologist
were to unearth a DVD of the latest Godzilla reboot? The
archaeologist would ask, “Why did the people of the early 21st
century still need Godzilla?”
It’s an excellent question, because we have good reason to be ambivalent
about a monster that, while not fond of humans, often comes to our rescue,
fending off the likes of by-far-more–menacing MUTOs (Massive Unidentified
Terrestrial Organisms).
So, why do the people of the
early 21st century still need the likes of Godzilla? “Nostalgia, repetition,
compulsion,” explains Stevens, “and love of big, dumb spectacle.”
Note that “nostalgia” heads the list. Why? In the wake of the latest
installment of ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Indiana Jones,’ critic Alain Spira
of Paris Match suggests: “[With these
franchise movies,] you know what you’re going to see. What you see is what you
get. And when you leave the theater, you’re happy.” Altogether, I’d say these
phenomena drive the engine of nostalgia.
And then there’s
the math-laced business plan. Nostalgia ― lumbering up there on the silver
screen or splayed out on your own domestic flat screen ─ sells tickets, DVDs, Netflix
subscriptions, Saturday morning cartoon spinoffs, even cinematic
retread/sequel/prequel-themed mega-Whoppers at Burger King.
Problem is: Down
here on the ground ─ far removed from entrepreneurial Fantasyland ─ nostalgia
subverts the reality we have to deal with. That’s because nostalgia is made up
of what has to be true about the past ─ as our imagination edits it ─ in order to
make the present more endurable and less complex. When we’re dealing in
nostalgia, a lot of reality ends up on the cutting-room floor.
Result? Because
nostalgia has a low tolerance for nuance and contradictions, it makes for false
memories.
And this creates
a problem for the matter at hand this morning: Memory ─ stripped of false
recollection or even wishful thinking ─ is especially critical today as we
celebrate Corpus Christi (the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ).
After all, what is Jesus’ command at the first Eucharistic meal? “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Not much wiggle room for nostalgia.
That’s because when we faithfully follow Jesus’ intent for the Eucharist
― when it comes to where the Eucharist may take us ― we don’t always know what we’re
going to see. God is full of surprises!
Then, too, what you see ― bread and wine ― isn’t really what you get:
the true Body and the true Blood of Christ!
And the Eucharist definitely isn’t about making sure you “leave happy.”
That’s a hard one, because, this enterprise ─ the Mass ─ isn’t about our
happiness. It is about memory: doing “this”
(the music, the prayers, the readings and reflection, bread and wine) in
remembrance of Christ. Happiness not guaranteed. Better, in fact, you should
leave troubled.
Why?
Each Eucharist we celebrate is designed ― by Jesus himself ― to
have in it a heavy dose of Jesus himself: the unpredictable, the
dangerous, and the threatening.
Brings to mind Jesuit theologian and gadfly Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “The
Eucharist must invade our lives.”
That’s what comes with believing, as Catholic Christians in the Anglican
tradition, that Jesus Christ himself is truly present in the bread and in the
wine we consecrate in this and every Eucharist.
And if Jesus Christ is truly present here, the dangerous way Jesus led
his life is also here truly present.
For example, Jesus grounds the first Eucharistic meal ― which we call
the ‘Last Supper’ ― in the Passover meal of his own Jewish people: a meal that
is a dangerous meal because it’s a disruptive, liberating meal. It celebrates
the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. For oppressed and
oppressor ─ or for the 99 percent and the 1 percent ─ a disruptive campaign all
around.
But Jesus makes of that meal something even more liberating, more disruptive
because Jesus sets that Passover meal, as St. Paul reminds us, in the context
of Jesus’ own betrayal, arrest, and death: “The Lord Jesus on the night when he
was betrayed,” Paul says, “took a loaf of bread … he took the cup also.”
That means, in the breaking of bread and in the sharing of wine ― Jesus’
body broken, his blood poured out for the life of the world ― Jesus perfects
the threatening pattern of his own life: the parameters of the new world, the
new kingdom, the new creation that is coming into existence at the very moment
he himself appears most powerless.
Bottomline? Jesus makes that first Eucharistic moment a moment of
ultimate solidarity ― God’s solidarity ― with all the powerless down through
history even to this present moment. What could be more dangerous?
Meaning: through this Eucharist, Jesus is truly present with ─ and in
solidarity with ─ our neighbors all around the country ─ neighbors everywhere ─
reeling from the devastation of tornadoes, severe weather, and climate change.
Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with the targets of genocide in
parts of Africa torn by religion-on-religion violence.
Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with every homeless person on
our streets … and with the ignored and neglected elderly … with hungry and
starving children everywhere … with same-gendered couples fighting for marriage
equality in jurisdictions that conspire with the most religiously-constrictive to deny
them equal protection under the law.
And this morning, Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with each immigrant
child on our soil held in confinement waiting for our leaders in the Senate and
Congress to summon the courage to adopt sweeping and progressive immigration reform.
Read: Jesus ― revealed before our very eyes in simple staples of
bread and wine ― doesn’t hide, veiled behind the pointed pining ─
by a threatened few ─ for a past that never was … like claiming (as do some) that slaves on antebellum plantations ─
many whipped, beaten, and shackled ─ were happier and
better off before emancipation.
If that were the case, there would be no Passover, no Eucharist.
Breaking bread and sharing wine before his suffering and death, then, Jesus
delivers a devastating indictment to all who benefit from the failure to love neighbor and God, either through direct duplicity or, far more common, the complicity
of silence and denial.
Jesus delivers a devastating indictment to anyone who thinks this Eucharist
is a blueprint for keeping things the way we imagined they once
were before “Those Evil Awful People Over There” mucked things up by demanding what they are owed: to
be treated with dignity and respect by all and at all times and for all time.
And Jesus delivers a devastating indictment to anyone who thinks this
liturgy is merely an exercise in good taste. Because as Richard Cardinal
Cushing said, “Liturgy which does not move its participants to action is
mere ceremonialism. Action which does not find its source in the liturgy
is mere humanitarianism.”
The point is: The Eucharist as designed by Jesus yanks us kicking and
screaming into reality. It’s seldom pretty. But it’s a reality ― if we
take the Eucharist for what it is in all its menacing potential ― that will morph
into the shape of God’s kingdom.
This is the point made by Frank Weston, the legendary Bishop of Zanzibar,
in the early decades of the last century. At that point, the long struggle to
recover within Anglicanism a more Catholic understanding of the Real Presence
of our Lord in the Eucharist was for the most part won. And tabernacles (or
aumbries) for reserving the Sacrament were becoming increasingly commonplace.
With the dust beginning to settle, Bishop Weston declared: “If you are
prepared to fight for the right [to adore] Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then
you have got to come out from before [the] Tabernacle and walk ― with Christ
mystically present in you ― out into the streets, and find the
same Jesus in the people of your cities and your [communities]. You cannot
claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the
slum.”
That’s letting the Eucharist “invade” you!
And if we fail to embrace the danger, the risk, and the opportunity of
that invasion, what then?
Picture this: We started with Godzilla
and other movies that appeal to our hunger for nostalgia. In a wildly popular
movie of the genre ─ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ─ after a spate of the
requisite swashbuckling acrobatics, Indy retrieves the coveted Cross of
Coronado from one of his arch-enemies. Brandishing the brilliant artifact, Indy
shouts hoarsely, “This belongs in a
museum!”
The villain’s response? “You belong in a museum, Professor Jones!”
No danger, then? No risk in this Eucharist? No opportunity?
We all may as well be in … a museum!
Amen.
