AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Incredible Sermon

This afternoon, Pip and Si and I ambled downtown to see The Incredibles, which Pippa had waited a full day for since the release. I think it’s probably my favorite Pixar release — I’ve seen that some reviewers were unimpressed, but I can’t think what they objected to. I thought the plot and characters were not simply derivative, but evocative and allusive to their predecessors, and that the complexities of the characters’ personae, situations, and ages worked both as an enhancement of the [predictable] narrative line and as commentary on heroism, aging, and our investment in heroes. I did rue the racial politics that relegate Samuel Jackson’s character to a small supporting role — can’t even a cartoon family be interracial in Hollywood? — but seeing the movie with Pippa and Si was balm to my frayed nerves.

On the other hand (as I observed in an IM conversation), “A movie about a middle-aged guy in a family with extraordinary powers, who needs to balance the exercise of his powers on behalf of others, with remembering to put his family first — who can identify with a movie like that?”

I do have to write a sermon for tomorrow evening’s service at Canterbury Northwestern, where I’m subbing for Heather-in-Korea. Just the other day I subbed for Cynthia at St. Giles, and it was the first time I filled in for one of my students; this makes the second time, just three weeks later. The readings for the Sunday After All Saints will be Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31. I’ll lump them all in one big file, and see what happens.

No, I won’t preach on The Incredibles. I don’t preach on pop-cultural topics, since they’re usually less universally known and understood than their proponents tend to believe, and because I get little enough chance to preach the gospel that I don’t feel I can afford to foreground the latest movie, TV episode, or hit single if it means taking time away from Scripture. Plus, so many of those sermons (I remember a spate of sermons on The Lion King) end up lame, that I’d feel awkward thinking that mine was, by contrast, actually likely to be worth the airspace: sort of “mediocrity by association.” That doesn’t mean other folks can’t do it, just that it doesn’t come out right when I try. I prefer to add cultural allusions as grace notes, as hidden pleasures for those who discover them, as communication-building between me and hearers who get them, as elements of a long enough list that I may never actually have time to work on the sermon itself tonight. . . . oh well, on to that.)

But do see The Incredibles. If the jungle chase scene begins to take a little too long, use those moments to think about your own loved ones, and how rarely we can show them how we love and appreciate and need them.

DRMA (and song for the term, in a variety of ways): As Cool As I Am by Dar Williams (she turns the lyrics wonderfully, but greatly as I admire the whole thing, the lines “Truth is just like time — it catches up and just keeps going,” and “I don’t know what you want / I want somebody who sees me,” catch in my throat every time. You may not know this, but Margaret and I invited Bruce Springsteen to our wedding (because his songs had touched us so), and he responded — not with a card, but by dedicating “Born to Run” to us in Akron Ohio, the 1981 tour (I don’t recall whether it was the 29th or 30th). Someday I’d wish to reach out to Dar Williams, for similar reasons; “As Cool As I Am,” “What Do You Hear In These Sounds,” numerous other songs from her first three albums, and really almost all of The Green World, knock me out.

Posted by AKMA at November 6, 2004 08:02 PM | TrackBack