A MORAL COMPASS
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Matthew 6:19-24

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

March 29, 2009

 

When I was watching “Slumdog Millionaire,” up at Fifth Avenue Cinema a strange thing happened. The movie was dancing away to its ending, the train station full of a vast singing and dancing ensemble, with Jamal and Latika twirling together, true love found at last; and everyone in the world, it seemed, singing Jai Ho – and just as the lights began to glow, and the credits were rolling, the entire audience at the theatre burst into applause; a little hesitant at first, almost shy… what an un-Canadian thing to do, to clap wildly with enthusiasm at the end of a movie – but then, finally, a fullout standing ovation. Indeed, it took some effort to restrain myself from dancing in the aisles.

Though I must admit, the clapping came with a touch of irony, knowing that it was at that exact location, Victoria Terminus Train Station, that the terrorists attacked during last November’s assault on the Mumbai. Not singing, but shooting; not dancing, but and death. And yet, in all truthfulness, it is precisely this dynamic of contradiction that lies at the centre of “Slumdog Millionaire”, a celebration of the wild exuberance of life, while simultaneously recognizing the moments of horror that are part of the journey. Maybe a bit like a fairy-tale, where good finally wins the day… except that it begins with torture in a police basement, and ends with a brother dying in a hail of bullets.

Ah…. but the arc of the story captures our hunger for hope. … a slumdog, a chai wallah, not only finds true love, but also wins the game show – he gets the girl and the money. We know life isn’t always like that. And we could imagine several different endings, many of them more plausible than what happens in the film. Jamal could have died young; same with Latika. Or, maybe they survived, but when fate first separated them, they never found each other again; maybe they married elsewhere; maybe they pined for first love and never met a second. Or another scenario, maybe they did survive, and maybe they did reconnect…. but then Jamal blows the final question of the game show, and loses all the money. How to live without a nagging disappointment haunting all your days?

But that’s not what happens in “Slumdog Millionaire.” And you can carp all you want about all the coincidences straining the mind’s credulity… your heart will be singing. You know, clapping at the end of the movie, wanting to dance in the aisles.

Sometimes life is like that; the good news story. Hey, and isn’t that one of the reasons we go to the movies, to see dreams come true? It reminded me of a poem… naturally… by Sheenagh Pugh… a Celtic person who doesn’t seem afflicted with existential despair.

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives, the crops don’t fail.

Sometimes [a person] aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man; decide they care

enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

Some [people] become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Sometimes you win the game show; sometimes lovers find each other; may it happen for you. But I am a preacher man, and I want to go deeper or further than “sometimes”. With a Biblical vision… which recognizes the pain and brokenness and suffering of life; our human propensity for just screwing up -- in petty ways and big time. Sometimes it just happens; sometimes it feels like a mystery; and sometimes the Bible just names it for what it is – sin! But before any of all that painful stuff, the Bible talks about the wild exuberance of life, the beauty and goodness of it, the joy and wonder of it all… “And God saw everything that God had made… and behold, it was very good!” -- all of it, down to the tiniest quark and electron. A blessing… not just a sentimental optimism, but rather a deep-rooted hope that rested in faith in God, not just in the circumstances of the moment. Ultimate goodness, despite how broken the present moment may feel; God working through all things for good; not in all events, but through all events… goodness is the deepest affirmation.

One of my favourite Scripture passages comes from the prophet Habakkuk. Doesn’t get a lot of press, only three short chapters; you’d easily miss it as you’re skimming through Nahum and moving on to Zephaniah. Habakkuk starts off with a full on lament surrounding a “How long, O God?” question. Everything’s going wrong, and the bad guys are winning big time. On and on the kvetching goes, until suddenly, at the very end of everything, this strange twist, the final verses of the last chapter:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vine;

though the produce of the olive fails,

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold,

and there is no herd in the stalls;

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

When everything is falling apart… that’s when this prophet chooses to cry out his faith; he rejoices and exults in the Holy One who has promised to bring forth a final wholeness out of all the brokenness. The word on which everything hinges comes near the end… “Yet” says our translation; other versions suggest “nevertheless,” or “however,” or “but”. Though the fig tree does not blossom; though the resume brings no job; though the treatment brings no cure, though the produce of the olive fails… yet, however, nevertheless, I will trust in God. It sounds much better in Hebrew… “Wettah” is the word… though the fields yield no food, though the economy collapses, though I fail the exam… WETTAH… I will rejoice in the God who is present, in the midst of every moment.

You want a more modern translation? Well, found scratched on the wall of one of the sleeping huts in a World War II concentration camp…

Even when the sun is not shining WETTAH… I believe in the sun.

Even when I am alone… WETTAH… I believe in love.

Even when God is silent… WETTAH… I believe in God.

At the very centre of “Slumdog Millionaire” lies a great “WETTAH”. The film throws us into the pulsing energy and vibrancy of life, the light and colour of it all. The camera zigs, zags, zooms, spinning your eye in all directions; the sound-track swoops you up into a rollercoaster spin. Did you notice how many scenes of running there were? --the film’s opening, for instance: kids playing cricket on the airport runway; the police chasing them off, and into the slums, running, this way and that, yet still full of laughter. In later moments, running to escape the mobs, or the gangs, or… always in motion, on the move, alive. And at the center, the resilience of Jamal, and his moments of discovery, love… and joy. Life is very good!

“Slumdog Millionaire” is a love song for life, for people, for Mumbai, for India… for hope. And precisely because of this love, the movie is determined that we see the other side as well, the sin -- the poverty of the slums, their shining tin rooms flashing for endless miles; the religious rage that leads to murder… angry Hindus leaping into the slums to kill any Muslim they met, including the mother of Salim and Jamal - true event, those anti-Muslim riots of 92-93. We watch children picking a living through endless mountains of garbage; a modern day Fagin, right out of Dickens’ Oliver Twist, slides out of the darkness, kidnaps the kids and transforms, and sometimes deforms them into professional child-beggars; we get to see Maman burn out the eyes of a young lad who happens to sing well – because blind singers bring in double income. We watch the class, caste system in action; catch glimpses of prostitution, police brutality, gangs and murder. WETTAH…. Jamal keeps faith, in love if not in God. Despite everything, he perseveres, and simply lives.

There is scene that captures this dynamic better than any words I could offer. You might remember the scene where Jamal is trapped in the latrine, his brother having jammed a chair against the door. Jamal hears the helicopter arrive, his favourite movie star is about to arrive in the slums for an autograph-signing session. Jamal has a picture postcard that is crying out for a signature. But there’s only one exit… through the pool of excrement that sloshes below the toilet. So holding his nose, Jamal jumps, and emerges, postcard intact, but everything else covered in … well, excrement. He runs to the crowd, which parts swiftlyt… hey, and who wouldn’t get out of his way, the smell alone would do it… and I just had my suit dry-cleaned. Jamal gets the signature; oh, and you should have seen his shout of sheer triumph and joy! He gets his hearts desire precisely because he was covered in excrement. How else would a little person get to the front of the line? Though I am covered in the excrement of life, WETTAH… I will hold onto hope, and act accordingly… WETTAH

Within this reality “Slumdog Millionaire” explores the exercise of choice. Life sets the stage; it is what it is; but there is always choice. How will you respond to what comes your way? Will you be open to the possibilities of hope? Will you act accordingly? There is a classic statement of this challenge in the book of Deuteronomy… another one of my touchstone passages. The people of Israel are just emerging from forty years of wilderness living; a lot of time to keep on proclaiming “WETTAH”… though truth be told, the Bible gives us a lot of stories where the people stopped trusting in God… a lot of kvetching goes on in any of the wildernesses in which we find ourselves. But somehow they had held onto the WETTAH, and were about to enter the Promised Land; and Moses, speaking on behalf of God, presents the choice:

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways… then you shall live…. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish… I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…. Deut. 30:15ff.

The commandments of God… shorthand for a choosing to live a life rooted in justice and compassion, freedom and hope. The film uses the archetypical pattern of two brothers, one good, the other bad; a story as old as Cain and Abel. Here is Salim, the elder brother, hard-headed cynic, the realist, go-getter, make a buck, look after #1 kind of guy, who ends up working with the gangs, ending up as the enforcer for one of the key crime bosses. When Jamal asks him what he does for this gangster, Salim responds, “Whatever he wants me to do.” We watch him kill his first man; rape his first woman, the lovely Latika in fact… fortunately it ends behind closed doors.

On the other side… there is Jamal, the passionate dreamer, with his indomitable faith in love, and hope. Not that he’s a goodie two shoes; you’ve only to watch him operate as a tour guide for tourists at the Taj Mahal to discover that he has an imagination only limited by the gullibility of his customers; and he’s been known to pick the occasional pocket or two. But you sense his essential goodness and truthfulness; throughout the film, over and over his moral compass leads him into love.

Watch for the brothers’ first encounter with Latika… Salim and Jamal, a few hours after their mother was beaten to death; the rain teeming down, the little lean-to the two boys have found offering only a modicum of shelter…. Jamal sees a little girl, some fifty metres away, standing in the open road, drenched, alone. He beckons to her; Salim spits out, “Piss off!” and turns his back on the girl. Jamal pauses, then goes out into the rain, offering his name, his hand and shelter to the girl who was in need. The moral compass; choose life. WETTAH.

I was reading the short thank-you speech offered by A.R.Rahman, the composer of this year’s “Best Song,” that “Jai Ho” number that had us on our feet at the end of the movie. Rahman said, “The essence of the film… is about optimism and the power of hope in our lives…. All my life I had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I’m here. God bless.” You don’t hear “God bless.” Spoken very often at the Academy Awards, and not often in a tone where you realize the person really means it. Rahman is a Sufi Muslim, who converted in 1989 from an atheism shaped by a painful, poor childhood. A choice of hate and love… I put this day before you… WETTAH. Always choices, on a game show like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”; in life itself. “I chose love … and I’m here.”

Sounds familiar to our ears, doesn’t it? Like in today’s gospel reading, the kind of thing Jesus said all the time, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And, “No one can serve two masters… you cannot serve God and wealth.” Wealth… in the Hebrew, “Mammon,”…meaning not only money, but everything that goes with it -- power, privilege, luxury, status.

But remember, it’s never over until the fat lady sings… there is always the hope of … well, I’d say, redemption; of turning one’s life around, making a different choice. You carry some of the consequences of those past choices with you, but you are free to make a new choice, over and over. Choose life, not death; some people become what they were born to do; sometimes we do what we meant to. Not Mammon… but something different… God. It is Salim’s love for his brother that connects him to a saving grace. Remember that scene of blinding the child? Well, Jamal was to be the next victim, and Salim was to bring him to the slaughter… the price demanded for his own move towards power. Instead Salim chose to rescue his brother; he chose love... and life.

And, at the film’s end, he makes a similar grace-filled choice, choosing to sacrifice himself so that Jamal and Latika might finally be together. Talk about a symbolic death … Salim fills a bathtub with money, bills floating all around, flowing over the bathtub lip; mammon in all its glory. Then he jumps into the tub, stretches out… and waits until the door opens, at which point he opens fire and kills the gangster boss, but ends up being shot by the other bodyguards. Mammon leads to death; but at the very end, even in his dying, Salim chose love, life, his best and truest self; I would say he chose God.

I began this sermon with a story about clapping… it seems fitting to end the same way. A story by a long-ago friend, Sue Laverty… maybe it happened, maybe not, but it feels true. Way out on the back roads, in the 1940’s, a small village in a distant Muslim country, and it’s movie night down at the local cinema, and everyone has gathered to watch a film of…the life of Jesus. They’d heard the name, but didn’t know the story, and so they watched with interested attention, right through to the crucifixion; silence in the theatre; and then, so unexpectedly, a resurrection. And it is said that the entire audience leapt to their feet and applauded; a standing ovation. “Goodness had won the day! Evil had been defeated, and apparently, that was worth cheering, no matter in whom or in what you believed.” (Sue’s words). WETTAH!! WETTAH! WETTAH! Choose life, and discover what it means to become the person you were born to be.