God of wind, word, and fire, we bless your name this day for sending the light and strength of your Holy Spirit. We give you thanks for all the gifts, great and small, that you have poured out upon your children. Accept us with our gifts to be living praise and witness to your love throughout all the earth; through Jesus Christ, who lives with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever. Amen.
from Tirabassi & Tirabassi’s Before the Amen: Creative Resources for Worship
Chuck knows . . . .
Roger Ebert called Superman III a “cinematic comic book,” and he didn’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Richard Lester’s direction took the film series from complex, thoughtful elements to more campy, silly moments. Ebert is correct in his assessment: this third film is not nearly as good as the first two. On one hand, Superman III can stand alone and can be watched without the foundation of the first two films. Yet, it does nothing to support the story-line that the first two films worked so hard to develop. Perhaps this is the cost the studio had to pay when they shifted direction in the second film from Richard Donner to Richard Lester (who directed Superman III as well).
One of the areas in which there is a disconnect from the first two films and the third, is the complex relationship between Kent/Superman and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). Lois leaves for a vacation at the beginning of the film, and it is clear that Clark didn’t know anything about her plans. Clark, meanwhile, heads back home to Smallville for his high school reunion and to cover a story about small town life. It is at the reunion that he begins to spend time with Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole), his high school crush. And so begins a relationship between Clark and Lana that includes picnics.
Richard Pryor plays the brilliant, yet befuddled, Gus Gorman. At first, this may seem like a brilliant casting move in 1983. And it is. But Lester doesn’t seem to tap into the smartness of Pryor. Pryor seems limited and reserved. He pretends to be a liquor salesmen and General, which Pryor does well, but seems so out-of-character for Gus. When we first meet Gus, he is in the unemployment line to get his check for the week. But he is denied because the thirty-two weeks are up. When he asks someone for a light for his cigarette, the matchbook is from the company owned by Ross Webster (Robert Vaughan). He suddenly feels that he can be a computer programmer, even though he could not keep a job at a fast food restaurant and other such places. And he gets the job.
It is his job that introduces Gus’ secret gifts to Webster, who wants to use them to gain power and control of the earth’s resources. First, he sets his sights on coffee, and then on oil. There is only one problem: Superman (Christopher Reeve). Webster and his colleagues recall that there is one thing that will destroy Superman, kryptonite. That small, green rock that can bring the Man of Steel down. But they have no such rock. Webster has Gus use a weather satellite to scan kryptonite that is floating through space to see what it is made of. One of the elements is “Unknown.” Gus, worried to submit such a report to his boss, fills in “Tar” for “Unknown.”
The tar-laced kryptonite results in Superman becoming a big ole meanie. At first, it appears that Superman is being selfish, wanting to spend more time with Lana Lang, and arriving at an accident too late. “If only you had gotten here sooner,” the rescue workers say to him when he finally arrives. We watch as the transformation happens. Superman’s tidy hair and clean shaven look disappear. Even his uniform appears darker and dirtier than it usually does. It is obvious that even Superman is not exempt from the struggles of this world.
It gets so bad, that in one scene a crowd that includes young Ricky, Lana’s son, is gathering outside a bar, watching Superman get drunk and smash bottles with peanuts. Ricky is the only one who can see Superman beyond the meanie he is acting like. In a pivotal scene to the messy plot-line, Superman lands in a salvage yard. He begins to destroy junk, frustrated that he is behaving the way he is. In the midst of destroying junk, Clark Kent emerges from meanie Superman. The two then fight. The scene is filled with very little dialogue, which at first may seem odd, but is actually quite brilliant. It is not a fight between meanie Superman and good Superman, it is between meanie Superman and Clark Kent—the humanity of the Man of Steel.
The scene captures well the struggle that Paul describes in Romans, “I do the things I know I should not do, and I do not do the things that I know I should do.” Oftentimes when we struggle with making good choices or bad choices, we too struggle with ourselves. The scene depicts what many of us feel when this struggle takes place; the struggle between living in the Light and dwelling in the Darkness; the struggle between holiness and sin. The dark, dirty look the film gives meanie Superman reminds us of the ways in which sin leaves us dark and dirty, while the clean, bright Superman reminds us of how grace leaves our dark and dirtiness bright and clean.
Eventually Clark defeats meanie Superman, and things go back to normal. He works to fix all the destruction he made when he was meanie Superman. And he prevents the world from being destroyed and controlled by the Big Bad of this film: Ross Webster. In doing so, Superman fulfills his calling as the messiah from another world.
The previous episode was the emotional cliff-hanger that HIMYM has become known for. It gripped us to the point that we were anxious to know what was going to happen in those extra 45 days before Ted met Mother, and for the moment when we could stop referring to her as “Mother.”
This episode, while it may have been a necessary evil, really did not do much to move the story along. It did not fulfill the emotional cliffhanger we were left with. If anything, it has left us with more questions, especially knowing there are only about three episodes left to this season and the show has been renewed for a 9th season.
As the episode opens, Ted’s voiceover is describing how Marshall and Lily’s life. He says, “Life was a well oiled machine.” Which is the first clue that something is about to change. The Captain calls Lily to inform her that he is going to Rome for a year and wants Lily to come with him. Lily freaks out a little bit. She can’t even imagine that he would ask her to make such a move when she has a baby and a husband with a great job. Without talking with Marshall first, she declines the offer. When she goes to surprise Marshall at work, she quickly learns that Marshall’s great job isn’t all that great.
Marshall convinces the Captain to offer the job to Lily again, which he does. But Lily declines the offer once more. While Lily says no a second time, Marshall is in Little Italy preparing himself for his new home. After some urging from her friends, Lily finally talks to Marshall and they decide that they will in fact move to Rome.
What does this mean for season 9? Is it possible to have Marshall and Lily in Rome while the others are in New York, especially when Ted meets Mother? Or will Ted meet Mother before the end of the season 8?
In the meantime, Ted and Barney are at MacLaren’s when a woman Ted recognizes from his yoga class walks in. According to Ted, her body is “redonkulous.” But she is wearing a huge winter coat. Barney becomes almost obsessed with finding a way to get her to take her coat off to see how “redonkulous” she is. Turns out, she is Robin and Barney’s wedding planner. Barney eventually asks her if she wants to take her coat off, showing confidence in his love for and relationship with Robin.
Is this woman in the oversize coat the Mother? Or she is just a distraction? And for those fans who are longing for Ted and Robin to get back together, there was this small exchange between Ted and Barney:
Ted warns Barney that he should be careful how he acts around Robin. Barney very boldly and sternly replies, “You’re not getting married in three weeks, Ted. I am. Robin’s marrying me, not you.” And that put an end to Ted offering Barney advice.
Is this some strange foreshadowing on the writers part? We have been promised a wedding, but will we get a marriage?
We never know for certain what life will throw our way. But each of us has a vocation, a calling, a purpose in life. It is challenging, as Lily experienced in this episode, to discern that vocation. And if we’re lucky, we have a spouse or a friend who will sit with us on the sidewalk as we ponder our way through what God is calling us to. Thank God for those sidewalk sitters in our lives.
Every Wednesday I spend part of my evening at the L’Arche community in Lynchburg. There are L’Arche communities all over the world made up of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Wednesdays is the Lynchburg community’s Spiritual Life Night. Since October I have been leading this time which we spend in prayer, scripture reading, and singing.
Last night at the L’Arche Spiritual Life Night, we sang a bunch of songs, as we usually do. One of them was Jesus Loves Me, which we sing almost every week. It is a song we often think is just for children. As we sang it last night, one of the residents, Steve, was in a different part of the house. As we sang, he stopped what he was doing and walked into our space. He stood next to me and uttered sounds that told us he was singing along. He looked in the direction of my songbook, and I handed it to him. He took it from me and started “singing” louder. As the song started to to come to an end, Steve moved on.
He knew the song and wanted to sing along.
It reminded me of a story I heard Connie Hopper tell once about visiting her older brother. She would take him recordings of her family group’s gospel music to listen to. The recording that got the most use, was that of their version of Jesus Loves Me.
No matter what our mental capability, state of our memory, or place in life, there are great hymns and songs of faith that help us remember that Jesus loves us. And there is none better than the song most of us learned growing up in the church as young children. And it reinforces the work of those Sunday school teachers and children’s ministers who teach the essence of the Christian faith, without all of the complexities: Jesus loves me.
The story goes that a student asked the theologian Karl Barth to summarize his theological in one sentence. Barth is reported to have said, “To quote a song I learned from my mother’s knee, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’”
In “Weekend at Barney’s”, Ted plans to bring Jeannette to Barney and Robin’s wedding. In an effort to help him, Barney plans to walk Ted through a number of plays from the infamous Playbook. Yes, the Playbook we all thought Barney burned. Turns out, he kept it the original. When Robin finds out about the Playbook still in existence, she is, to say the least, upset. Barney runs after her and explains that of course he lied. That is all he has known for the last eight years. But the one truth that trumps all lies is that he loves Robin.
Jeannette, on the other name, is less reasonable than Robin. She finds out about the Playbook, and simply goes nuts. A few episodes back we got a hint that Jeannette would go crazy enough for Ted to finally say, “That’s enough.” Well, this is it. It’s all because of the Playbook. The Playbook is officially burned. Jeannette sets it on fire using Barney’s fireworks. With everything going boom as it falls out of Ted’s apartment, he says words that we have been waiting to hear, “No more dating. I’m ready to settle down.”
This episode showed the quality acting by Josh Radnor (Ted) and Jason Segel (Marshall). Radnor does some pretty crazy things following Barney’s Plays. In one scene he is standing in the bar wearing a hospital gown attempting to pick a girl. Barney wants him to say, “penis,” and Ted refuses. While standing in front of the girl, Ted carries on a conversation with Barney that only he can hear. Radnor does a brilliant performance.
Segel as Marshall is trying to make friends and help Lily out at her first art gallery working for her new boss. Convinced there will be no food there, he brings Skittles with him. In a moment when the artists is dedicating his work to his dead grandmother, he asks for a moment of silence. Marshall stands in the back of the room, determined to be supportive of Lily, when suddenly his Skittles start falling onto the floor out of his coat. Marshall does not move. Segel’s humor is often communicated through his body and facial expressions. Here, he makes us laugh by being still, committed to his effort to support Lily.
The episode ends with the whole gang sitting on the side of the street watching Ted’s belongings fall from the window above. This is just another great example and visual of what this show is about. Community. This image of these four friends sitting on the side of the street supporting their fifth friend is what the church should look like. This is the image of small group ministry, supporting one another in times of struggle and pain and grief. If you wonder why young people struggle with the church today, it may be because the church is missing this element of being community.
CBS
“The Ashtray” centers around the appearance of the Captain, a character we haven’t seen in a while since Ted brought it off with the Captain’s ex-wife Zoe. The Captain wants Ted to call him back and Ted thinks it has something to do with Zoe. When he finally talks to the Captain, he just wants Robin’s number. So, Ted gives him Robin’s number. When Robin finally talks to the Captain, the Captain is actually looking for Lily. So, Robin gives him Lily’s number.
The way Lily retells the story about when they last saw the Captain is completely different than the way that Ted and Robin tell the story. Turns out that Lily really liked an elephant painting that everyone else, including the Captain, thought was crazy. “You’re just a kindergarten teacher,” he tells Lily. Lily, upset beyond measure over the jerkiness of the Captain, takes his expensive ashtray that Robin and Ted almost broke. Lily thinks that the Captain is calling because she has his ashtray.
This is followed by a beautiful moment between Marshall and Lily. Lily is struggling with her vocation. She is a great kindergarten teacher. But she has always wanted to do more with her art history degree. She feels like she is wasting it away. “I am just a kindergarten teacher,” she tells Marshall. Marshall assures her that she is not just anything. She is Lily.
Turns out that the Captain went back and bought the elephant painting that Lily liked so much. And in the year and a half since he bought it, the artists has exploded. The Captain was able to sell the elephant painting for thousands of dollars. He was trying to get a hold of Lily to ask her to be his new art consultant. She was the only one who saw the potential in the elephant artists.
So many of us have been, or will be, where Lily is. Is this what God had in plan for us? Is this my vocation? Is this my purpose? It reminds me of Abraham in Genesis 12, when God calls him to “go.” Go where? “Go to the land I will show you.” Abraham isn’t given a road map or a GPS. He just has to go until God tells him, “You’ve made it.”
Too often that’s how it feels when we are fulfilling our calling or vocation in life. We go through life until we feel like we’ve heard, “You’ve made it.” Lily hears it when she is offered a consultant job, which she accepts.
“Bad Crazy” just confirms that Ted is his own worse enemy. The only thing holding him back from a committed relationship and finally finding “your mother” is himself. Saturday Night Live‘s Abby Elliot guest stars as Jeanette, who turns out is a police officer and slightly crazy. And it doesn’t look like this is the last time we’ll see her either. The guys tell Ted he should break up with her. Lily finally tells him to stay with her. Because Ted’s in a crazy stage right now. “And when it all comes down in flames,” Lily tells him, “and it will, we’ll be here for you.”
This is what the show has always been about. It is the essence of what community is. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:16, that when one suffers, we all suffer. When one cries, we all cry. When one rejoices, we all rejoice. This is Paul’s image of the Body of Christ – the faith community. This is what the HIMYM gang not only tell us, about show us. When it all comes down in flames – and we all know that it will one day – we have a community who is there for us. Who is your community?
The other story line in this episode was about Robin’s discomfort in holding little Marvin. It has been eight months and Robin has successfully avoided holding the baby. When she and Lily are out one day, Lily leaves Marvin with Robin alone. Marvin starts to cry and Robin isn’t sure what to do. She relies on the kindness of a stranger to help her. It takes Robin seventeen years to tell Lily the whole story, including that the kind “old woman” was really Mike Tyson. The episode ends with Lily handing Marvin off to Robin while Robin is talking, and it takes a few seconds before Robin realizes that she is holding the baby. A first for her. And one that was not as scary as she thought it would be.
Robin is like so many of us, the less we focus on the scary, the less scary it is.
In “Ring Up,” Ted’s new girlfriend is 20 1/2. The gang can already tell that the relationship is doomed. Ted is trying to be someone he is not. Barney encourages Ted to go for it with the 20 year old. Until he finds out that the 20 year old is his half-sister. When Barney finds out that it is his sister, he calls a stop to it! We have been watching Barney transform for awhile now, and it seems that the transformation is complete. He no longer sees a need to pretend to be someone he is not just get with the girl or to get what he wants.
Robin has gotten her engagement ring back after getting it re-sized But after her first day of wearing it, she realizes that things are different. People are treating her different. Marshall and Lily point out to her that it is the ring. The ring has power. Now that she has an engagement ring on her finger, men are not buying her drinks, her coffee is not free, and so forth. At first, this is difficult for Robin, her daily lifestyle is changing. But Robin comes to realize the true power of the ring.
Ted continues to be someone he is not to be with a girl – any girl. Which leaves us wondering how on earth he ever did meet the mother. Who will be the woman who will make it okay for Ted to be Ted? When will the need for the charades end?
In 1 Samuel 16:7, God sends Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint the new king of Israel who will know will be David. God’s instructions to Samuel is to not look on his countenance or height or stature, but God looks on the heart. This reminds us that what is on the outside is not nearly as important as to what is on the inside. It’s the whole, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” thing.
By trying so hard to be someone he is not, just to simply meet girls, Ted is not giving anyone, including himself, a chance to see the real Ted. Of course, we’ve seen this from Ted before. The pattern is that Ted loses the girl because he can’t keep up the charade, or he has to come clean and be honest with her. Week after week we wonder if Ted will ever get it. Will he ever just be himself? Will he ever stop looking in all the wrong places and see the girl with the yellow umbrella?
But, honestly, when we will ever get it? When we will just be ourselves? When we will stop judging ourselves and others by our covers? When we will start seeing ourselves and each other for our hearts?
Today is Shrove Tuesday, which means tomorrow is the beginning of Lent. I was going to write a post about Shrove Tuesday and pancakes. But, Chuck Knows Church has already done a great job of doing that. So, here you go, and go to church and eat some pancakes!
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of guest posts from Bailey Scholars at Randolph-Macon College. Rev. Adam Kelchner graduated from R-MC in 2009, then studied at Vanderbilt University, and now serves at Belmont United Methodist Church in Nashville.
When I was 12 years old I experienced the joy and blessing of leading worship at my home church in Richmond, Virginia. It was after that experience that I began sensing and discerning a call to ministry. This discernment lasted for several years and coincided with the decision on where I would apply to and subsequently attend college. My orientation was toward ministry though I did not know at the time whether I would serve in the local church or beyond it. Honestly, I did not know whether ordination was a part of my life’s calling to serve in the name of Jesus Christ.
Now that I’m writing a guest blog post for Jason Stanley, I’m reminded how thankful I am for his previous ministry with young people at Lebanon UMC. I found refuge in that ministry as a young person and it was Jason’s encouragement that led me to the A. Purnell Bailey Scholar program at Randolph-Macon College.
In mid-January 2005, I knew where I was going to college the following Fall. I knew that a generous portion (which I doubt I could ever repay) of my educational expenses were covered. I eagerly awaited the start of my undergraduate studies at Randolph-Macon College. I understood that the ensuing four years were for the purpose of shaping my mind and spirit as the foundations for a lifetime of ministry.
So looking back now, from my vantage point in an appointment in a vital local church and urban campus ministry setting, what do I see in the Bailey Scholar program? One of my colleagues, Kelly Conner, suggested that the Bailey program offers community-it does! I also want to suggest that the program offers intentionality. The scholarship is structured in such a way that academic formation, spiritual formation, and a call to ministry (present and future) are woven together.
To me, an exam on the writings of Paul was more than an academic exercise. It was preparation for teaching and preaching regularly in my parish setting. A writing exercise on Holocaust literature for Dr. Breitenberg was more than an academic exercise-it was mental and spiritual preparation for a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. An internship at the Virginia Annual Conference Office or with Volunteers in Mission, Southeastern Jurisdiction Office planted deep roots for my present ministry leading mission teams abroad and guiding campus ministry at Belmont University.
I trace a long arc of intentionality through the structure and content of the Bailey Scholar program, my academic formation at Randolph-Macon College, professional internships with church programs, my theological education at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, and my movement into commissioned ministry of the church. Above all, the Bailey Scholar program reminds me of the power of God’s generosity and free grace that transforms our lives.
Rev. Adam Kelchner
For more information about the Bailey Scholarship program at Randolph-Macon College, click here or email Jason for more information.
The Christian season of Lent is a forty-day period, excluding Sundays, in which Christ followers join Jesus on his forty-day fast, spiritually walking in his footsteps. Lent is a season of repentance and spiritual self-examination. It is a time to draw near to Christ, and a time when we recall our brokenness and mortality. This allows us to appreciate the blessings that come on Good Friday and Easter, when Christ dies for us and then is raised to life. (Adam Hamilton, The Way)
