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Guiding Worship

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Watching for Jesus in movies

by Henry Krause

We live in a culture saturated with screens: computers at work and scattered through our homes, cell phones with games to play on our daily commute, televisions mounted above the tellers at our local credit union. We can’t help but spend much of our day looking at screens, and the people sitting in our pews waiting to hear the gospel are the same ones who spend much of their lives watching a screen.

We preachers know that stories help when we're delivering the message of the Gospels. I grew up in the church and listened to a lot of sermons. My friends and I were the little guys up front on the "men's side," fidgeting on the hard wooden bench. I don’t remember much about the sermons, other than that they were long and boring, but I do remember looking up whenever the preacher would tell a story. The preacher's tone changed, the language was different, everything felt more alive and real when a story was used. My friends and I all perked up, at least momentarily, as the preacher’s tale played on the screens of our minds.

Just like a good parable, a movie can open our eyes and give us new insights.

We know Jesus understood the human interest in stories by the way he taught. Stories help us locate ourselves in the things that are important. Just as Jesus grounded his parables in the experience and settings of his audience, we can ground our lessons in the stories playing in the movies, because these are the stories people listening to us know.

In Finding God in the Movies: 33 Films of Reel Faith, Catherine Barsotti and Robert K. Johnston write, “Like stories more generally, a good movie helps us make sense of the world even as it provides a temporary respite from it . . . By focusing reality for the viewer, a movie provides us metaphors for understanding life . . . They fill us with the dreams, hopes, and fears of others, enabling us to move from ‘here’ to ‘there.’”

Movies are a large part of many people’s lives, so they provide ready-made opportunities for helping people engage with the gospel. But just like Jesus’ parables, not all movies contain stories that we understand right away, and not all are nice or tame. Often the parables that Jesus told were open-ended and needed interpretation, as are many movies people watch. Some need translation in order for us to understand what it is that we are being invited to participate in. Jesus’ challenge was that “if you have eyes to see,” you will see.

We can use movies in various ways alongside the gospel story. For example, in the film The NeverEnding Story, a young boy enters a bookstore and discovers a book of a kind he has never seen before, one that you don’t just read but rather become part of, one in which the stories become real. “This is a dangerous book,” the store owner tells him. “You become part of the story.” It is this idea of danger and wonder that captures all our senses that we long to pass on to those who journey with us in our wide-eyed attempt to follow Jesus. The gospel is an adventure, a neverending story that we are part of.

We can come to a better understanding of God’s unending parental love in Finding Nemo and learn about the complexity of reconciliation in The Kite Runner. We are caught up in seeing grace in the most unlikely places in Juno and can feel what alienation and loneliness are like in Lost in Translation. We begin to understand the promise of baptism in O Brother, Where Art Thou? We experience the power of friendship in Shrek and get a glimpse of self-sacrifice in Stranger than Fiction. Some movies tell a story similar to the gospel, and others show a world that runs contrary to the gospel, providing opportunity for reflection. Just like a good parable, a movie can open our eyes and give us new insights.

Stories help when we’re delivering the message of the Gospels.

As part of my sabbatical, I spent time looking for films that connect in some way to the Gospel readings for Advent through Pentecost in this coming church season. The guide I produced, "Watching Jesus Wide-Eyed," can be found on the website of Mennonite Church Canada: www.mennonitechurch.ca.

Henry Krause is pastor at Langley Mennonite Fellowship in Langley, British Columbia.