St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

March 8, 2009

Preamble

“The Dark Knight” is perhaps not a movie you might expect to see featured in worship, even in an Oscar Sermon Series. It’s violent, brutal and dark. I gather that when it was shown last Friday in the church salons, a chance to see the film before today’s sermon, at least a few people walked out. I understand that; who wants the Joker’s almost sadistic grin emblazoned upon the imagination? Indeed, there is speculation that playing this role contributed to Heath Ledger’s untimely death. Who’s to say? And yet, “The Dark Knight” was the blockbuster of 2008, the biggest grossing film of the year; more people have seen this film in the past year than any other. When Lois Keebler, who is with our Reel Spirituality Ministry Group, went to rent the DVD for last Friday’s showing, the young clerk raved about the film; “I’ve seen it eight times!” he said. On Saturday, as I was leaving the Younger Adults who are on a Retreat this weekend, over on Bowen Island, one of them said, “Why did you have to choose “The Dark Knight” for this Sunday, when we’re not around? It’s the most “young-person-friendly” film of the series.” It’s one of those films that defines the generation gap. Which is probably why we need to talk about it. If one of the purposes of this Oscar Sermon Series is to address issues that are current in popular culture, then there’s no question that “The Dark Knight” needs to be included. And if one is concerned about the amount of violence… in the film, and frankly, all around us – how many gang murders have there been in Vancouver this past month? … then what better opportunity to have some discussion than to take a closer look at this movie. So here we go…

The film opens in shades of black and blue; light seems to have a hard time escaping from the dark pull of what is to be revealed. Has the movie really begun? Are those the credits? Am I missing something? Then the screen fills with a roiling cloud of darkness, with flashes of cobalt, almost like watching the spinning birth of a malevolent galaxy. The music kicks in, high-pitched, irritating, and the camera lens moves closer and closer to a vast skyscraper, windows looking like the panels of a giant mirror… like the Wall Centre across the street; closer and closer, until suddenly glass explodes outward, glinting viciously, and in the empty space, almost as if a scene from The Alien has lurched into this movie, we catch a glimpse of a clown-masked creature, gun in hand, ready to launch mayhem upon the world. The Joker has been born, or better, re-born, and all to soon, in the midst of a bank robbery, dead bodies all around, we get our first glimpse of this creature… grotesque, leering… half-caked white make-up smeared all over his face; darkened eyes darting in every direction; his tongue obscenely licking his crimson, slashed-on grin; enjoying every second of the chaos.

The Joker is the stuff of nightmares. He is an insane psychopath, a sadist; he calls himself a freak. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you… stranger.” Indeed. At times though, he seems less like a person, and more like a force of nature. When later in the film the Joker is temporarily captured by the police, they really have no idea who he is… no name, address; no police record, no DNA matches, no dental records; it’s as if he comes from nowhere. Batman says at one point, “I have to figure out what he’s after.” And his butler, Alfred, responds, “You can’t; you won’t. He’s not logical; he’s not looking for money; he can’t be bought, reasoned with, negotiated with. Some men just want to watch it all burn.” The Joker himself says, “I’m an agent of chaos.” It reminds of Yeats’ classic poem, “The Second Coming”, written as the world collapsed into the horror of the Second World War:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Chaos… things falling apart; anarchy. Maybe that’s what the Joker represents. Now, let me take you on a quick side-trip, back to the Bible… it the very first verses, the Genesis stories of creation. Our theology proclaims a creation out of nothing, but this story talks about there being “stuff” that precedes God’s creative action. When God speaks, it is to bring about order, so that inchoate matter is organized into structures of meaning. Throughout the Bible there is a sense that chaos is lurking all around the edges, just waiting to explode. It is symbolized in the great beasts of the depths… Leviathan, Behemoth; forces of destruction that can overwhelm the human enterprise, indeed the whole world. One might push even further, and take another look at the old snake story in the Garden of Eden. If you read it without the later additions of fallen angels, and Satan, the devil, what you have is mysterious voice that comes from nowhere and simply raises questions and possibilities… not exactly evil, but rather a force that pushes towards the dissolution of order, a force that seems to be part of creation itself. Things fall apart… entropy the scientists call it; it takes energy to create and maintain structure and order. One theological school, Process Theology, even suggests that the divine purpose working throughout the universe is to bring creation into greater and greater expressions of complexity, harmony and beauty. That is God’s desire… but there seems to be an inbuilt resistance to this movement: call it the Joker if you like; the wild card at the heart of the universe. As the Joker himself says to Batman, “I don’t want to kill you; this is too much fun. I need you; you complete me. I think we’re destined to do this forever.” Now that’s a scary thought… but maybe it’s true.

I have always been fascinated by the New Testament stories of Jesus’ encounter with the demons. Demons are another symbolic representation of dark chaotic, anti-life forces, and part of Jesus’ ministry was to confront them, and to overcome all that they represent. In the story we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, we watch Jesus at work, expelling a demon. It is a healing… demons were a first-century explanation for illness… but they had much more power than this.; it was chaos exploding into lives that struggled to hold things together, that needed structure, order, health. How to cope? Well, the demon-possessed young man is chained – but that fails. He must be banished, pushed to the edges, and he ends up in graveyard, howling around the tombstones. Jesus intervenes – that’s part of his ministry; but not even he is able to destroy the demons; I wish he could. I want them reduced to a little cloud of dust that the wind would blow away. But all Jesus can do is send them packing, in this case, out of the man and into a herd of pigs, that then go careening across the field and over the cliffs, falling to their death. The villagers are not amused; the price for confronting chaos and trying to re-create order is high. This is costly work.

Despite our fears, however, we are endlessly mesmerized by the Joker and all he represents, the destruction he brings about – maybe it’s that same compulsion that has us slow down on the highway when we come across an accident; that has us peer out the window when the sirens come close to home. “Look what I can do to Gotham City with a few cans of gasoline and a couple of bullets,” says the Joker. When school buses are used as escape vehicles; when judges are killed in car bombings; when Police Commissioners are murdered; when the Mayor is almost assassinated; when hospitals are blown up… hospitals --- we know that the blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Gotham City may feel like a comic-book world, and the Joker just a fantasy that creeps around in another make-believe universe. But let’s face it, we have our own crazies, people who seem to enjoy watching it all burn…. Hitler, Stalin and Mao; Asia has had its Pol Pot in Cambodia; Europe, its Milosevic in Serbia; Africa, its Idi Amin in Uganda and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe; the Caribbean, the Duvaliers in Haiti. We talk blithely these days about failed states, where order and civilization disappears… Somalia, Afghanistan… and now we worry about Pakistan, and even Mexico. And when was the latest headline about another drive-by, targeted killing in Vancouver? Let’s not kid ourselves.

And the demons aren’t just somewhere “out there”. It’s far too easy to talk about psychopaths and crazed killers, and avoid any recognition that demons lurk inside us. The good citizens of Gotham, they’re a mixed bag. But aren’t we all? Almost as if what the Joker represents is contagious, his terrifying mixture of chaos and evil can infect the body politic; all its members; you and me. There’s a very disturbing hymn about demons in Voices United… #620. I had thought maybe we might sing it today. “Great words,” I said. “Yes,” agreed Darryl, “but unsingable tune; see those first couple of lines… that’s actually just one irritating note repeated over and over. Not much fun.” “Okay, okay,” I said… so just listen to the words:

“Silence, frenzied, unclean spirit!”

cried God’s healing Holy One.

“Cease your ranting! Flesh can’t bear it;

flee as night before the sun.”

At Christ’s words the demon trembled,

from its victim madly rushed,

while the crowd that was assembled

stood in wonder, stunned and hushed.

Lord, the demons still are thriving

in the gray cells of the mind:

tyrant voices, shrill and driving,

twisted thoughts that grip and bind,

doubts that stir the heart to panic,

fears distorting reason’s sight,

guilt that makes our loving frantic,

dreams that cloud the soul with fright.

Silence, Lord, the unclean spirit

in our mind and in our heart;

speak your word that when we hear it,

all our demons shall depart.

Clear our thought and calm our feeling;

still the fractured, warring soul.

By the power of your healing

make us faithful, true and whole.

The central tension of “the Dark Knight” explores how we humans respond to the Joker and what he brings about. Our first reaction, very understandably is fear. The Joker scares us, no matter our strength or bluster. There is a party scene where the Joker arrives with his henchman, and an older chap stands up to his threats: “We don’t have to be afraid of scum like you.” The Joker responds quickly, “Oh Brian, yes you do.” The Joker threatens our way of life, this is civilization under attack; and we crumble easily. I’ve heard it said that after three days without food, all our pretenses of civilized behaviour disappear, and survival becomes the name of the game. Do you remember the water crisis here in Vancouver a few years ago? Crisis is too grandiose a term, of course, but due to hillside flooding, our water was dirty and we were all on notice to boil our water before drinking. Well, the most scary newspaper headline was about a fist fight in the aisles of Safeway, as people battled each other to get the last supplies of bottled water. Excuse me… chill out people. But frightening actually – just think of what might happen if there were truly were a shortage of something important.

Our human fears lead very quickly to anger and to violence. I know we bemoan the state of violence in modern culture, and it does seem to be glorified as almost never before… though if you take a quick look at past cultures, well, the patterns seem very similar, quite frankly. From the very beginning we humans have quickly turned to rock, blade, spear, gun, missile. Is it our survival instinct? When faced by the challenges of the Jokers of the world, what are we to do? Perhaps the greatest challenge is to discover how to confront evil without becoming evil oneself. If you are fighting someone or something with no rules – and let’s be clear, the Joker has no rules… then do you have to abandon your own moral code to vanquish them? How can we protect ourselves from evil without becoming the very thing we fear?

As a second response, it would seem that we very much want to be rescued. “Who will save us?” we cry out, looking wildly around for messiahs and saviours. Have you ever stopped to wonder why there has been such a plethora of superhero movies in the recent past… Batman, Superman, Ironman, X-men, Hulk? Occasionally I find myself wondering if the hopes we have placed in Obama come from that same place.

And, of course, we religious folk often use Jesus in a similar manner. Too often various interpretations of Christianity get caught up in anticipation of an imminent second coming, where Jesus the mighty warrior will arrive with armies at his back, ready to smite the wicked, and save the rest of us. Of course, this is to ignore much of what is happening in the Gospels, where it is clear that Jesus has great expectations of all of us, calling us into partnership, so that we discover the resources and power to fight the demons ourselves, here and now. Early on in his ministry Jesus sends out the disciples to heal the sick, cast out demons and engage in other Kingdom actions of peace and justice. Although two thousand years have passed since those marching orders were received, they still stand true. And theres that remarkable passage in the gospel of John that we heard today, where Jesus actually equips his disciples (that’s us, folks) to do the hard work after he’s gone. Did you catch that? “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…” Greater works than Jesus… that’s what we’re capable of; not because of our own resources, alone; but precisely because we will be equipped by God – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever…” The Advocate… a strange word in the Greek, Paraclete; no exact translation… can be Helper, Advocate, Counsellor, Protector; can be Holy Spirit… words that try to catch a word that describes that sense of God’s presence right inside you, that’s keeping you connected to something very Holy; that fills you with an energy, a strength, to work for what is good and true, for peace and justice, for the Kingdom of God, for the Jesus vision. It is this gift of the Spirit that empowers us to confront the Jokers of our own time and place, and in our own hearts.

The life challenge which “The Dark Knight” explores, is how to live with the specifics; when the Joker is once again loose and visible in the world… how will we respond? Take Harvey Dent, for example… the big-smiling, good-hearted District Attorney, elected to bring order to Gotham City. He means well, but he is not able to hold fast; as they might say in another movie, “He went over to the dark side.” Sometimes it happens… life seduces us; or terrorizes us; or breaks us. The Joker wins… as he says in his final confrontation with Batman, “You gotta have an ace in the hole; mine’s Harvey. I took Gotham’s White Knight and brought him down to our level. It wasn’t hard. Madness is like gravity; all it takes is a little push.” When his lover is murdered by the Joker, Harvey crumbles in despair, and seeks revenge, killing as cold-bloodedly as ever the Joker could hope for. Chaos and evil are contagious, hard to resist; we suddenly discover ourselves becoming exactly what we were struggling against such a short time ago. It happens.

But the film presents a more hopeful vision of our human capacity to resist, to hold to the right, to say no to the demons. The ferry scene… quick visual and background: two ferries in the harbour… like English Bay; overloaded with passengers. In the one, the local prison population, a bunch of no-goods with a lot of guards; in the other, a group of decent citizens – like us. Suddenly there’s a voice over from the Joker -- don’t worry about how it happens. He speaks: “Your ferry is wired up with bombs; both of them. At twelve noon I’m going to blow you all up. However, each ferry has been given a detonator. You press it… and the other ferry blows up. If that happens, I won’t press my detonator… you’ll be spared.” You can imagine the discussion; sure it’s comic book science fiction – but it’s not hard to enter the fantasy, and ask youself, “What would I do?” Not to spoil the suspense if you haven’t seen the film, suffice it to say that the dark side lost. No seriously, this is a hopeful vision of human capacity, the willingness to say that there are higher, or maybe better, broader values than survival… I would say that the Spirit was at work.

Then there’s Batman … a superhero, but only sort of. Troubled; tempted by power – “The Batman has no limits,” he says, and you know that such arrogance is primed to go off track. He loses it – desperate for information he brutalizes the Joker, when the police have him in custody. He does what the police can’t… shades of a Jack Bauer on “24”; violence and torture are okay, aren’t they, if it’s for a good cause? But then we discover that there truly is a line that Batman won’t cross; for instance, when he could have simply run the Joker down, killed him by head –on collision, he chose not to. And jeopardized his own life in so doing. And, at the movie’s end, he chooses to be the scapegoat, and accept the responsibility and blame for all that The White Knight, Harvey Dent, had done, when he succumbed to his own demons, and went on his own killing spree. It was important for Gotham to hold onto its hero, believing and hoping that it is possible to defeat the Jokers of this world.

Maybe only a preacher would see a Christ figure in this movie… but we’re talking a lot of sacrifice here; carrying the burdens of others, allowing one’s own reputation to be tarnished, one’s safety put in jeopardy, all for the sake of others -- well that’s the heart of Jesus’ way. Maybe it’s because we’re only four weeks away from Good Friday, but I can’t help but think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, surrounded by the Jokers of his time. I remember that moment of his arrest when his disciple Peter whipped out a sword; and Jesus said “Put down your sword.” You don’t fight the Joker by adopting his methods; ‘cause then he wins. No, you choose to stand firm, committed to the vision Jesus Christ embodied. You choose a different way of integrity, sacrifice, trust in God… and death.

The story continues; it always does. The Joker wears many different faces; and so does Jesus Christ. I will be with you, said Jesus: “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live , you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Amen.