March 10, 2019 (Lent at the Movies I) -Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Lent at the Movies I – Green Book
First Sunday in Lent – March 10, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Today we have a story in Deuteronomy that tells how the ancient Israelites
Ordered their society around generosity to the economically disadvantaged.
Every year, they were to take a tenth of the first fruits of the harvest –
that is, the first and the best – a full tenth of their income – to the priest and then,
after presenting it, have a big party, a feast, where all – even the landless –
were welcome: resident aliens (or, as we would say, immigrants)
and even the lowly Levites, who had no land of their own.
Generosity and hospitality are the hallmarks of those who had come through slavery and
wandering in the wilderness for 40 years to a land God gave them.
Their thanksgiving is to be expressed in generosity and hospitality toward
the economically disadvantaged.
Every third year they were to distribute their tithe directly to the economically disadvantaged:
the Levites, widows, orphans, and immigrants – in short, the landless and the vulnerable.
Now this is admirable and shows how the Israelites were to imitate God’s own concern for
the vulnerable.
Now the story as it’s told took shape long after the events it describes.
It describes the time when the Hebrew people first entered the Promised Land even though
the story itself was told and written down long, long after – maybe 700 years
after – the events it describes.
Interesting, right?
It’s a story told about a long ago past that depicts the people who first entered the land as
obedient, generous, hospitable, and inclusive.
It’s a story worth telling and hearing, right?
The excellent Peter Farrelly film Green Book – this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture –
similarly tells a story that happened long ago, also based on true events.
The story is set in the 1960s and is easily summarized:
A black, educated, upper-class, classically trained pianist from New York
is about to embark on a concert tour of the deep south,
where racism is still rampant and the danger to folks like himself is high.
His name is Don Shirley.
He needs to hire someone who will a. drive his car from place to place and b. protect him.
He finds the perfect person in Tony Vallelonga,
a recently out of work Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx.
Tony is not free from racism himself, as it turns out.
Early in the film we see his wife offer two black men making some repairs in their apartment
a glass of lemonade on a hot day.
Later we see Tony place the glasses they drank out of in the garbage.
Nevertheless, Tony needs the money and so he takes the job.
In the course of this odd couple’s wanderings through the inhospitable south,
they do indeed encounter racism and prejudice of all sorts.
And slowly we begin to see a change in Tony.
On the one hand, he witnesses first hand just how degrading human beings can be to one another.
He sees how even the people who hire and respect Don Shirley as a musician still subject him to
demeaning behavior.
At an upscale mansion where he is hired to play, he is not allowed use the same restroom as
all the white guests – he is shown the decrepit outhouse out back, which he refuses.
On the other hand, Tony genuinely comes to respect Don for both his art and his morals.
When he learns that Don is also a homosexual we see him accepting that too, for as he says,
“I work in a nightclub in New York – I know the world is a complicated place.”
The two become friends.
By the end of the film Tony’s racist attitudes are clearly a thing of the past and we learn that
the two remained lifelong friends until their deaths much later just a few months apart.
Now: it’s a great film.
We love hearing stories like this, stories of change.
Stories where people are changed by the relationships they form with people who are different.
Stories where people are changed by witnessing first-hand the humiliations human beings are
capable of visiting on each other.
But here’s the thing: the film was roundly criticized on several fronts.
The most important of which was the criticism from Don Shirley’s own family.
What you need to know is: for whatever reason,
his family was not consulted in the making of the film.
Rather, the movie was written by Tony’s son!
Don’s family maintains that Tony was nothing like what the movie portrays,
that he, in fact, remained racist in his attitudes.
The most interesting review I read of the film was by a person of Italian-American descent.
He remembers the stories told of his Italian-American grandfather,
who his father maintained was nothing like their racist neighbours and
who would never tolerate racial slurs in their home.
Nevertheless, the reviewer remembers finding postcards from his grandfather that
did, indeed, contain racist comments.
And this sets him to wondering:
perhaps the stories about his grandfather weren’t the whole truth about him,
but perhaps that is not such a bad thing: the point of the stories wasn’t their
absolute historical accuracy.
The point of the stories was aspirational, about how we should be.
(Vince Mancini for Uproxx at https://uproxx.com/movies/green-book-review/)
Maybe it’s the same with Green Book:
maybe criticizing the film for its inaccuracies misses the point.
Maybe the point of the film is aspirational:
maybe it’s about how we should be, not how things were.
Forming relationships with those different from ourselves,
and witnessing the world from their point of view, walk in their shoes for a while.
These are the things that change us, after all.
The Hebrews had walked in the shoes of slaves for a good long while in Egypt.
They had endured oppression and racism.
They knew what it was to be landless.
In Deuteronomy, God is telling them: don’t forget what that was like.
Be sensitive to those who are right now undergoing the same thing.
Were the Hebrews always so obedient to God as the story implies?
Were they always so generous? So inclusive? So hospitable?
Probably not, right?
But to think that and wonder about it is, like Green Book, to miss the point of the story.
The point of the story is aspirational – it’s about how we should be:
generous, hospitable, inclusive, with a true heart for the vulnerable and
the economically disadvantaged.
This got me to thinking about my grandfather, who was Danish, my mother’s father.
He came here as a young man because he was a person of ideals.
He was, as many of you know, a communist, and he came to this country because
he would have the freedom here to realize his dream, the dream of operating
a co-operative dairy.
He ran dairies both in Preeceville, Saskatchewan and Flin Flon.
My mother adored her father and often told stories of his uprightness and fairness,
particularly when it came to his dealings with First Nations peoples,
which were always conducted, she said, with fairness and generosity.
There was a lot of racism at the time, of course, and in her telling my grandfather
stood out as a beacon of progressiveness and tolerance.
And I wonder: was that always true?
And to be honest I have to say I have absolutely no idea.
I actually never met him because he died before I was born.
But today I am wondering: does it matter?
My mother wasn’t telling me the stories in order to convey accurate historical information.
She was telling me the stories in order to shape and form my character.
The stories were aspirational:
they were about how I should be, and how I should conduct my life.
Think about the stories your parents told you about your grandparents.
Deuteronomy, Green Book, my mother’s stories about my grandfather: they are aspirational.
And they are rooted in the larger scriptural story of a God whose concern is always,
always always for the vulnerable – a concern incarnated so beautifully in Jesus.
I am so grateful for the film in helping me to think about
this aspirational aspect of story-telling and story-receiving.
If these stories open our eyes to the current plight of the vulnerable – refugees, immigrants,
and all at-risk populations – the story-tellers will have been honoured.
If these stories make us conscious of our own lingering ever-present prejudices,
the story-tellers will have been honoured.
If these stories awaken us to the many indignities still visited upon our First Nations
brothers and sisters in Canada in 2019, the story-tellers will have been honoured.
And by the same token: if these stories do not inspire us to be better, and to live up to
our own ideals of inclusion, hospitality, and generosity we will have failed them.
So let us aspire to these ideals, recognizing that the stories are not so much about
our ancestors’ past, but our very own present,
and the God who seeks still to inspire us to be our very best selves.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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