February 22, 2015 – Mark 1:9-16
Mark 1:9-16
The Struggle with Satan – American Sniper
First Sunday in Lent – February 22, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle,
a US Navy SEAL deployed on several occasions to Iraq to fight in the Iraq war.
He is a trained sniper and the film is based on the true story of Kyle and
his memoir of the same name.
The film has attracted a lot of controversy.
Some say it is pro-war and that it glorifies violence and people who are essentially
American trained serial killers – Kyle was acclaimed for having more documented
kills than any sniper in American history – 160.
But others say it is an ant-war film that takes a clear-headed look at the effects of war upon
those that engage in it.
Eastwood himself, in response to the criticism of his movie as a glorification of war,
simply said that the biggest anti-war statement any film can make is “the fact of what war does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did.”
At one point in the filma memorial service is held for
a fellow soldier of Chris Kyle’s.
During the service the man’s widow reads excerpts from his last letter home.
The letter says, among other things,
Glory is something that some men chase and others find themselves stumbling upon, not expecting it to find them. Either way it is a noble gesture that one finds bestowed upon them. My question is when does glory fade away and become a wrongful crusade, or an unjustified means which consumes one completely?
Whatever Eastwood’s politics may be, it seems clear that his movie does indeed seek to depict
how war can “consume” one completely, so that one’s humanity is lost.
When Kyle returns home from one of his deployments,
his wife Taya says to him, “You’re my husband, you’re the father of my children.
even when you’re here, you’re not here. I see you, I feel you, but you’re not here.”
He is consumed by his experiences in Iraq.
His first and second kill in the film show him having to shoot a woman and a young boy who
are attempting to throw a grenade at an American Convoy.
After that he admits that he didn’t think war was going to be like that.
His obsession with the war and, perhaps, with what that required him to do seems to cut him off
not only from his family but from his whole life back at home.
Even from the ability to engage in conversation with a young vet who recognizes him in
arestaurant.
His horrific experiences of having to kill other human beings are shown to somehow
cut him off from all human beings.
It isn’t explicitly stated why, but it’s clear in the film that his experiences cause him to
lose something essential to being human.
His wife also says to him on one of his returns home,
“I need you to be human again. I need you here.”
In the war, he has somehow lost his humanity.
The nickname given him by Iraqi insurgents is “The Devil of Ramadi,” or in Arabic,
“Shaytan al-Ramadi,” the city where he made many of his kills.
Literally, they call him “The Satan of Ramadi.”
Here is a man, perhaps, who has become divided against himself,
who struggles with Satan, with what makes us less than human.
In the wilderness this morning, Jesus too contends with Satan.
Mark gives us a very brief account of Jesus’ temptation or testing by Satan in the wilderness.
He doesn’t give us the conversation with Satan that Jesus has in Matthew and Luke.
Yet, we know that in the biblical imagination, Satan is, literally, “the adversary,”
that force that is opposed to God’s intentions in creation,
that force that is opposed to us becoming all God intends us to be,
that force that is opposed to us becoming fully human.
Irenaeus said almost 1800 years ago that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Fully alive in compassion, in mercy, peace-seeking and justice-doing and community-making.
Fully alive in manna-sharing and mercy-giving.
Fully alive in feeding and forgiving and healing.
These are the traits that, in the eyes of the scripture, make us human.
They are what we are for.
And yet, we know all too well, as do the biblical writers, that there are forces at work that
contend against this.
Jesus has to contend with this force right after his commissioning in his baptism to be
God’s beloved Son or apprentice in the world,
and right before he engages in his public ministry.
It is as if Mark is relating to us a circumstance we can all relate to:
that moment of time between a commission to act and the act itself.
What does T.S. Eliot say in his poem “The Hollow Men”?
Between the idea and the act falls the shadow? Something like that.
The shadow is what is known in the biblical world as“Satan,”
that force opposed to the compassionate acts of God.
The thing that stops you from asking a homeless person their name.
The thing that stops you from buying a hungry person a meal.
The thing that stops you from going to the walk against racism.
The thing that stops you from sacrificing some of your time and talent and treasure to
the ministry of Christ.
The thing that sees only things to criticize rather than things to laud in others.
The thing that makes you put your own well-being before the well-being of others.
The thing that sees me, not we.
The thing that, as Paul writes somewhere,
prevents you from doing the good you know to be good.
That force can go by many names: could be simple indifference or simple selfishness.
Could be physical or mental illness.
Could be the result of poor decisions you have made – or that others have made that affect you.
Could be loss – the loss of a job, or of a significant person in your life.
Could be disappointment with people or institutions.
Could be addiction.
Could be grief.
My point is: it’s powerful and it’s real and that none of us are unaffected by it.
All of us have our encounter with what the biblical imagination calls Satan,
maybe every day of our lives.
And its shape takes many forms.
For Chris Kyle its name was war.
And in Eastwood’s eyes it made him less than human as it afflicted him with
what we have come to known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
which afflicts many veterans who return from conflict.
PTSD is characterized by depression, insomnia, anxiety, and recurring flashbacks,
all of which made it difficult for Chris Kyle to relate to people outside of
extreme battle situations.
Kyle eventually finds some help in a conversation with a navy doctor.
Kyle’s frustration in life back home appears to be that he wants to protect and help other soldiers,
as he did in Iraq, an ambition he is apparently thwarted from.
But the doctor suggests he take a stroll down the hallway of the hospital where
there are countless returned soldiers who need help – as they have returned from war with
various scars: physical, mental, and emotional.
Eastwood used real vets who returned from conflict with real wounds for this scene,
and it is very affecting as we see those who have lost various body parts as a result of
enlistment.
To me, the most interesting part of the film is Kyle’s recovery of his humanity in
helping these veterans regain a sense of theirs.
He finds his purpose in compassion for those veterans who have returned scarred like him.
This is given short shrift in the film, and that is too bad.
It’s not clear that the real life Chris Kyle healed as completely as the film suggests.
And maybe he just wasn’t given the chance in life to heal completely:
for, as the end credits of the film tells us, Kyle was shot and killed by
one of the very veterans he was attempting to help, a young marine who was
also suffering from PTSD, whose mother in real life claimed that
his experiences in war had taught him that no one could be trusted.
And so, as Kyle and a friend took the young man to a shooting range –
where Kyle ironically took many of the vets he attempted to
help find a sense of purpose again –
the young man shot and killed both Kyle and his friend.
The film is not an easy one to digest and its message is not clear cut.
What is clear is that whether or not you think killing in war is sometimes justifiable,
that killing has a very adverse effect on those asked to do it by their countries,
on their families, and ultimately of course on the wider societies they live in.
War does dehumanize us:
anything that asks us to treat some lives as worth less than others dehumanizes us.
And there are many things that seek to dehumanize us similar ways.
Kyle is to be lauded for trying to find a way to regain his humanity by serving those in need.
Jesus withstands the temptation and similarly lives a fully human life by serving those in need,
by feeding and forgiving, by healing and including, by advocating and challenging,
by mercy-giving and justice-doing.
By not just commissioning us in our baptisms, but by giving us his Spirit in our baptisms so
that we can do the same.
In that final letter home that I started with, that young fellow soldier of Kyle’s says what
amounts to the same thing, and clearly sounded a note of importance for Eastwood:
I have seen amazing things happen here; however I have seen the sad part of war too. I have seen the morals of a man who cares nothing of human life…I have seen hate towards a nation’s people who has never committed a wrong, except being born of a third world. . . . It is not unknown to most of us that the rest of the world looks at us with doubt towards our humanity and morals.. . . [July] 4th has just come and gone and I received many emails thanking me for helping keep America great and free. I take no credit for the career path I have chosen; I can only give it to those of you who are reading this, because each one of you has contributed to me and who I am.However what I do over here is only a small percent of what keeps our country great. I think the truth to our greatness is each other. Purity, morals and kindness, passed down to each generation through example. So to all my family and friends, do me a favor and pass on the kindness, the love, the precious gift of human life to each other so that when yourchildren come into contact with a great conflict that we are now faced with here in Iraq, that they are people of humanity, of pure motives, of compassion.
So many have struggled with Satan, with that which makes us less than we were created to be,
with that which seeks to make us less than fully human.
And if we are honest with ourselves, each of us here knows the same struggle.
The good news this morning is that Jesus, the fully human One, overcame the temptation to be
less than the One he was created to be.
The good news is that Jesus became the fully human one – so that we too could
share in his life and become what we were intended to be by giving us his Spirit so that
we too can contend against all the forces that would dehumanize us –
and become people of compassion, people of peace, people of nurture,
people of generosity, people of justice, and people of grace.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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