Sermon for January 10th, 2021

Usually, in our annual sermon series on Faith & Film, we explore biblical and spiritual themes in movies that came out in the past year. And every year we've done this, people have asked me, "how come we can't do such and such movie that came out back in 1983--it's the best movie ever! And my usual response is that the films that we make, and flock to see, hold up a mirror to the things we're currently thinking about and experiencing. Current movies give us insight into who we are right now, and how we perceive our faith. That's been the rule for the past eight years, anyhow.

Then along came Covid19, and movie after movie scheduled to be released was canceled. As a result, the academy awards for this year have been pushed back all the way until late April. I'm sure the effects of Covid19 will feature prominently in movies for the next several years, but this year, there just weren't many to choose from. So we're looking instead at the best movies from the 20th century--the movies that shaped us all in childhood or throughout our lives--and the biblical and spiritual connections that you may or may not have ever picked up on.

Psalm 8:1-5

1 O Lord, our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor.

John 14:8-11

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, 4 who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.

Faith & Film IX - Rebel Without a Cause

• Film Clip #1 - Trailer

Three Minute Film Synopsis

Jim Stark (played by James Dean) is a high school student whose family has recently moved to Los Angeles. The film begins with Jim being arrested for drunkenness and taken into the juvenile division of the local police station. There, he meets two other "juvenile delinquents" his age: Plato (Sal Mineo), who has been brought in for shooting a litter of puppies, and Judy (Natalie Wood), who is in for curfew violation.

All three are eventually released when their parents (or in Plato's case, his nanny) come to get them, and after we get to see the significant dysfunction in each family.

The next day on a school field trip to the local observatory, Jim takes Plato under his wing, and gets into a knife fight with the leader of a neighborhood gang, who also happens to be Judy's boyfriend. Jim disarms the gang leader, who then challenges him to a game of "chicken" later that night, which results in the death of the gang leader when his car goes over a cliff.

Jim, Judy and Plato run away to an abandoned house, where they fantasize about being a family for each other. This is interrupted when some of the remaining gang members find them. Plato, in an attempt to protect his new family, draws a gun he has stolen from his mother, and shoots one of the threatening boys, wounding him. By now the police have been alerted, and Plato escapes, breaking in to the observatory they had visited the previous day, and barricading himself inside. Jim and Judy find him, and talk him into giving himself up to the police outside. Jim takes the gun from Plato, and removes the bullets before giving it back to him. When they finally come outside, Plato panics in the face of the bright lights, and when the police see the gun in his hand, they shoot him.

As Plato dies, Jim and Judy comfort him, grieve, and Jim's parents arrive on the scene. Jim reconciles with his father, introduces his parents to Judy, and they drive away as the sun rises on a new day.