[Propertalk] Fw: PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C - 1

[Joe Parrish]

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From: Joe Parrish 
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Subject: PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C


PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C - 1

PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 (7 of the 70 plus preaching resources available at GoodPreacher.com for this Sunday):


SCRIPTURE & SCREEN: Luke 4:21-30

Some texts shock us, usurping our expectations. Movies that go and do likewise can be a smart match with such texts, including this one.

One of the most shocking and unsettling films is the surrealist, silent, classic short film Un Chien Andalou (1929; dir. Luis Bunuel). This sixteen-minute film opens with the infamous shot of the director slicing open the eye of a woman (Simone Mareuil) with a straight razor. The initial message is lacerating yet blunt: "What you, the viewer, are about to see will assault you, including by overturning your expectations of film." The movie delivers on this threatening promise. With help from the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, Bunuel presents one bizarre and grotesque scene after another, repeatedly catching the viewer off-guard. The plot-as much as there is one-is of a romance between a man (Pierre Batcheff) and a woman (Simone Mareuil), who appears to be married to someone else (Luis Bunuel). The two engage in a relationship that is sometimes almost unsettlingly erotic, sometimes hostile. Mixed in with this "plot" are strange, phantasmagorical images, such as a hand that has a hole in it from which ants are crawling. One of the most famous images from the film is that of the man dragging behind him the following items, which are attached to him by ropes: two grand pianos, rotting donkey carcasses, the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and two bewildered priests (Salvador Dali and Jaime Miravilles). Even the title, which translates as "An Andalusian Dog," is bizarre in that it appears, at least at first, to have nothing to do with the film.

What does all this mean? Beats me. The movie's meaning is difficult to pinpoint; indeed, the meaning's elusiveness is one of the movie's key themes. Our text from Luke does contain meaning, but it is abrasive and shocking. Jesus chastises his hometown for its rejection of him, thereby helping to fortify the very rejection of which Jesus speaks. Thus, Jesus' message to his fellow Nazarenes almost seems designed to be offensive. In any case, the harsh message is offensive, just as Un Chien Andalou, with its bizarre and grotesque departures from film conventions, is at times offensive, or at least disturbing. Just as Un Chien Andalou slices open the eye of the viewer, so also does Jesus slice open the minds and hearts of the people in his hometown, as well as, to a lesser extent, the hearts and minds of us readers/hearers of the text.

Indeed, challenging societal convention is a salient feature of Jesus' ministry as a whole, and sharply criticizing societal conventions, including Christianity, is a salient feature of Bunuel's films, including Un Chien Andalou. In this film, for instance, Bunuel's image of the man dragging the Ten Commandments and priests with rotting donkey corpses suggests that at least mainstream religion is oppressive, a burden. In his Surrealist 1930 masterpiece L'age D'or (which means The Golden Age), Bunuel intensifies his attack on religion through such images as a bishop being thrown out of a window and, most shocking of all, a scene near the end of the film in which a Christ-figure is associated with a murderous orgy. The movie also intercuts scenes of Paris and Vatican City, showing both as sick with decay. One scene shows buildings collapsing on a Sunday and indicates through an intertitle that such activity is typical for a Sunday.

Bunuel also attacks other aspects of bourgeois Western society, giving special attention to the bourgeois Westerner's inability to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. The film features a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) trying repeatedly to have a love affair but butting up against one obstacle after another. For instance, when the two try to be intimate in a garden, the man gets distracted by a statue of Venus. Then he is summoned to deal with a phone call. While he is absent, the woman sucks erotically on the toes of the statue. The two people, especially the man, are inept at having any real relationship. The movie is full of such parodies and critiques, with one of Bunuel's main points being to expose and deride the impotence and hypocrisy of Western, bourgeois society.

Jesus, also, is providing a severe critique of the society in front of him, his hometown. Indeed, his ministry, as we see throughout Luke, challenges religious authority and conventional values. Jesus' words in this text are shocking and lead to a climax and denouement reminiscent of a Surrealist film: The crowd devolves into a mob and tries to throw him off a cliff, but he somehow gets away.

We preachers, then, can offer a new perspective on this passage by highlighting how it resembles these counter-cultural Surrealist films, striving to slice open our expectations with the straight razor-side of the Good News. 

David von Schlichten



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