March 18, 2018 – John 12:20-33
John 12:20-33
Vulnerable Love – Lent at the Movies 5 – Three Billboards
Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 18, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I recently read about one of the guys who was made over on Netflix reboot of Queer Eye.
Yes: it’s a makeover show where guys are taught how to dress, how to groom, etc.
But there’s more going on than that.
One fellow who was made over learned what it meant to be a human being.
Neal Reddy recently said that the show changed how he looked at being a man.
He learned, he said, that a successful relationship depends not on being strong, or self-contained,
but in being vulnerable.
(https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a19445864/queer-eye-aj-neal-netflix-interview/)
This would be in line with Professor Brene Brown’s findings on vulnerability.
Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston’s school of social work.
And her TED Talk – The Power of Vulnerability –
is one of the five most viewed TED Talks in the world.
And the truth is – we are all vulnerable.
On Ash Wednesday those of us who come to worship hear these words as the ashes are
placed on our foreheads: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
It’s one of the most honest things we do in church all year.
And it is so freeing – to acknowledge your vulnerability and
the fragility of those you gather with.
To acknowledge that life is fragile.
Brown’s research focuses on connection which, as much recent research has shown,
is the one thing that above all allows human beings to thrive.
And what Brown’s own research has shown is that the key to successful connection is . . .
vulnerability.
Among her research subjects, Brown found that “those who were most in touch with the fact that they could be hurt, could lose, could get it wrong – but went ahead seeking connections anyway were more likely to be happier, to have more satisfying relationships, and a higher sense of self-worth.” (Ayanna Johnson Watkins at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2015-02/march-22-2015-fifth-sunday-lent)
Like Neal Reddy discovered on Queer Eye, when we engage in methods of self-protection –
which men are particularly prone to – it is then we distance ourselves from what
actually will make us happy and our lives meaningful and rich.
As one observer remarks, “If vulnerability leaves us open to pain, shame, and rejection,
it also leaves us open to love, acceptance, and belonging.” (ibid.)
The recent film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri tells the story of Mildred –
played by Frances McDormand – whose teenage daughter was
brutally raped and murdered seven months previously in this sleepy little town.
Her grief has turned to pure rage in her belief that the cops have been
“too busy torturing black folks” to solve her daughter’s murder.
The film revolves around her attempt to shame the police into doing more to solve the crime.
Many reviewers have noted the rage in McDormand’s performance, which won her an Oscar.
It is a profanity-laden, seething, steely performance that is indeed something to behold.
But – here’s the thing – even more powerful are the film’s moment’s of vulnerability.
There is a moment of vulnerability – all to brief – that Mildred shares with her ex-husband.
There is a moment of vulnerability Mildred has with a deer whom she talks to one afternoon.
“Yah,” she says, “still no arrests. Cause there ain’t no God and the whole world’s empty and people do whatever they want.”
Utlimately, it’s a story of redemption – both for Mildred and the cops she calls out.
It is a journey full of pain for all involved – but finally it comes because the characters are
brave enough – for all their bravado – to be vulnerable with one another.
The two cops involved – Chief Willoughby and Detective Dixon –
are to all appearances irredeemable – they are racist and lazy.
But as Willoughby faces his own mortality due to a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer,
he becomes more open to sharing himself and being honest.
This opens his relationships with both Dixon and Mildred.
After he dies he leaves a note for the seemingly hopeless, immature, drunk cop Dixon.
This is what the note says:
You’re a decent person who could be a good detective. But you have too much anger. What you need to become a good detective is love. Through love comes calm. And through calm comes thought. You need those for detecting. Cause hate never solved anything.
Having a change of heart, Dixon attempts to solve the crime by, of all things,
making himself vulnerable to a beating for the sake of gathering evidence.
In the end, nothing is really resolved.
And – in a very unlikely friendship – Mildred and Dixon team up to go to Idaho to
confront other accused rapists.
But whether they will mete out vengeance in anger is now an open question:
neither seems to have the will for it anymore.
And so Mildred says in the final lines of the film, “I guess we can decide along the way.”
It’s the characters’ vulnerability that define the film.
Their openness to facing their complicity, their shame, and their failures is what allows
life and relationships to take root and grow – not their anger.
The film is also – you should know – full of Easter imagery.
The billboards that set the film in motion are put up on Easter Sunday.
Mildred has butterfly wallpaper in her bedroom and bunny slippers on her feet.
Life, somehow, emerges from death and vulnerability –
not from anger or from the power the characters think they have over one another.
Today in the Gospel story,
“some Greeks” come to the disciples saying they would like to see Jesus.
They want to get to know him, to be in a relationship with him.
When Jesus learns of this, what does he say?
He doesn’t say, “Sure! Let them come and see how great I am and they’ll believe!”
Or, “Sure! Bring them here and I’ll do a flashy miracle for them and they’ll believe!”
Or, “Yah! Once they see me raise and army and crush the Romans they’ll belive!”
Instead, he speaks mysteriously of vulnerability and suffering and death.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
And again he says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
And when he says, “lifted up,” he means “lifted up on the cross.”
I have been working for months with the notion of the vulnerability of God.
And how damaging it is for us to hold to notions of God being all-powerful.
That is just not what Jesus presents to us.
Either God is not all-powerful – or is all-powerful and chooses to lay that aside.
Jesus fully reveals to us who God is, in John’s reckoning.
And what we see in Jesus is so not all-powerful – but rather all loving.
What we see in Jesus is a very vulnerable God.
A God who makes the divine open to relationship with us by being vulnerable.
And in this way bringing life.
What it means to have a loving God is to have a God who can be hurt.
God opens God’s self to us and what we do to God is the cost of that opening:
we put that God on a cross.
But being lifted up on a cross brings the possibility of forgiveness and relationship.
Jesus is the one who says, “I love you,” even from the cross.
Jesus is the one who says, “I forgive you,” from the cross.
Sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – we wish for a big, invincible, powerful God who will
straighten everything out, swoop in and cure all the ills, fix everything,
and make sure that the innocent are not harmed.
I have to believe that God is simply not that.
I believe that that is not who God is.
I believe that, as John tells us, God is love.
Above all, beneath everything, God is love, and mercy, and compassion.
And that on the cross, God becomes vulnerable enough to us to reveal that to us.
To simply be who God truly is.
To be authentic.
And so become open to relationship with us – and open to connection.
So that we can . . . thrive.
So that we, too, can be honest, be authentic, be open – and so open ourselves to
relationships with God and with others.
So that we are not ashamed of who we truly we are.
So we can be open and vulnerable enough to be who we truly are with one another.
So we can be connected, and thrive, and be who we were meant to be:
people of kindness, people who care, people who are willing to be open,
people who work together for the common good of all – people who love.
Stephen Hawking died this week – and he was a person who had deep and great insight into
the workings of the universe.
And yet, in his most honest moments, he wondered why the universe was here at all.
I mean – why is all this stuff here? Really? Why is there something rather than nothing?
He couldn’t answer that question.
But I think we know.
Some mysterious force is at work seeking to make connection,
seeking to bind everything together in love.
A force greatly and mysteriously focussed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth,
who loved, who made connections, who fed, who healed, who stood up for justice,
and was willing to work for it without compromising his principles of
love for all – even enemies.
We are part of something wonderful.
We know why we are here.
To be kind, to love, to heal, to feed, to work for justice, to connect.
To be authentic, to be ourselves, to let God be God’s self and not who we wish God would be.
To allow God to be vulnerable – and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable,
for the sake of connection, for the sake of relationship, for the sake of love.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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