What’s a Sermon For?

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(Isaiah 55:6-11; Ephesians 4:11-16, 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

I wonder sometimes, as I stand up here, what it is that you think I think I’m trying to accomplish. Do you think I expect you to remember every point of every sermon? Do you imagine I’d like to test you on how much you remember? That would appeal to some pastors, I’m sure. I know one of my favorite professors in seminary, the brilliant New Testament scholar Gordon Fee, started out as a pastor; he told us he became a professor because “I got ‘em three days a week instead of one and I could give ‘em tests!” But then, that’s clearly where God wanted him, which no doubt had something to do with it. But can you see me giving tests?

Honestly, I don’t have any illusions as to how much you, or I, or anyone else, can consciously remember. Cleophus LaRue, who teaches preaching at Princeton, tells the story of going to preach one time in a church which sat right across the street from the state penitentiary. During his sermon, there was a prison break, and the alarms went off and the lights went on—the congregation, it appears, was used to this, but he wasn’t, and it quite unsettled him. As a result, he forgot to keep any record of what sermon he had preached. As it happened, he was back there a year or so later, and he began his message by noting that he might be repeating himself, because with all the commotion, he didn’t remember what he had preached about on his last visit. When he said that, someone in the congregation piped up, “That’s okay, preacher, neither do we!”

Now, some of my colleagues might be a little scandalized to hear me admit that; it’s the sort of story preachers tell other preachers, but not something I’ve often heard in church. Truth is, though, that while we might be so foolish as to consider this some sort of guild secret, I don’t think it’s anything of the sort. I’ve heard that a number of years ago, a man wrote the following letter to the British Weekly: “Dear Sir: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for thirty years and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent elsewhere?”

Now, this letter caused quite a storm, with more letters flurrying back and forth, until finally another one appeared which silenced the debate. That letter read, “Dear Sir: I have been married for thirty years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly my wife’s cooking. Suddenly I discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet, I received nourishment from every one of them. I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.”

That, surely, is the point of preaching. It’s not that you memorize what I say, or that you take notes and keep files. The primary purpose of preaching is to nourish your spirit, in the same way that food nourishes your body. I stand here to proclaim the word of God, to the best of my ability, in the confidence that when God’s word is spoken, it carries with it his purpose and the power of his Spirit. I may not always know what he intends to do—in fact, I can never fully know, because each sermon is going to affect everybody somewhat differently—but that’s really not what matters in the long run. What matters is that God accomplishes his purposes, and we may be sure that he will.

Of course, this requires a lively faith both in the value of the word of God and in the value of preaching, because it means preaching the word of God. Not every preacher has such faith any more, and so many don’t do that; some preach, but draw from things besides God’s word, while others stick to the Scriptures but have thrown out preaching. It seems to me, though, that the first approach substitutes human wisdom for God’s wisdom—and since human wisdom gave us the wars and tyrannies which marred the previous century, that doesn’t impress me much; while the second approach seeks to honor Scripture while ignoring its counsel. Paul tells Timothy, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (that’s in 1 Timothy 4:13), and again, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage, with great patience and careful instruction.” Why? Because “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.”

In other words, the Spirit of God breathed into—in-spirited, you might say, inspired—the authors of Scripture, and he continues to speak through the words of Scripture to us, and to all the people of God, wherever we may be and whatever issues and circumstances we might face; and as such, by the power of the Spirit in its authors as they wrote, in our eyes as we read and in our ears as we listen, these words do us good. They show us what is true, and correct us when our beliefs about God and this world are false; they also correct our behavior, convicting us of the sins in our lives, and show us how God calls us to live. The Spirit speaking through the text does the work; my job is simply to help you open your ears to his voice, to help you better understand the word of God so that you may hear more clearly “what the Spirit is saying to the church.”

There are three parts to that. First, faithful and diligent interpretation. My job is to take whatever texts we’re using and draw the meaning out so that we can see it clearly. That may mean focusing on a single passage and digging deeply into it; sometimes, like this morning, it means fitting several texts together. Both approaches are necessary, because we need to understand Scripture deeply, and we need to understand it as a whole, as a web of interlocking texts. Either way, however, my call is only to teach what Scripture teaches me, to follow where it leads and nowhere else, because only Scripture is inspired by God, and only it is sure to be useful; for anything else, there are no guarantees.

The second part is application, because if truth stays in your head instead of going to your hands and feet, there isn’t much value to that. You’ll notice that 2 Timothy says that Scripture is useful for these things “so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Similarly, Ephesians tells us that God gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” God doesn’t tell us things just so we’ll know them, he tells us so that they’ll change how we live. To learn truth and never put it into practice is like eating and eating and never exercising—all it does is make you fat. God doesn’t call us to spiritual obesity, he calls us to be spiritual athletes, as teaching feeds action; the truths we learn are to be truths we live.

The third part is time and persistence. Do I expect you to memorize everything I say? No, and no pastor with any sense would, though I do hope that at least one thing of importance sticks with you as you leave here each Sunday; but over time, as I am faithful in preaching and you are faithful in listening, by the grace of God, the steady exposure to his word will cause us to grow. As we speak his truth together in love, we will, slowly but surely, grow to maturity in Christ, who is our head. The more we spend time with the truth of God’s word, the more we spend time looking through his word at who he is and what he’s like, the more we will look like him.

No, the sky isn’t falling—yet

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I had a wonderful day today. We drove up to Lake Michigan to see one of our best friends from college (she was in our wedding party) and her family at their vacation cottage on the beach; she and her husband were there, and their three kids (generally the same ages as ours), and her dad, whom I also enjoy a great deal. I haven’t seen her since her oldest was a newborn, and I haven’t seen her husband (or her father, for that matter) since their wedding, so it was definitely too long. We had a great time talking church and family and work and other things, while the kids enjoyed themselves immensely playing together (mostly, though not only, down on the beach). I managed to burn myself in a few places due to misapplication of sunscreen—next time, I’ll go back to using the lotion instead of the spray—but no big deal.And then I got home to read the news from the PC(USA)’s General Assembly (GA): they voted to approve overtures to remove the 1978 Authoritative Interpretation, remove the chastity and fidelity clause from the Book of Order, and approve a new Authoritative Interpretation (AI) to allow officers to declare scruples with respect to ordination standards (which is to say, to declare that they’re going to ignore them). And then I spent some time reading the reactions from a number of my fellow conservatives in the church: Presbyterians for Renewal essentially conceding defeat, the Rev. Jim Berkley calling it “a sad, sorry episode,” the Rev. Dr. Alan Trafford declaring that “a line has been crossed” and that his congregation will no longer use the denominational seal, and perhaps most painfully, the Rev. Toby Brown shuttering his blog in grief. Clearly, there’s the feeling on the part of many that the disaster has come; the sky has fallen in.At the risk of making it sound like I think these folks are Chicken Littles—I don’t, especially as I think Jim’s exactly right that these actions “will precipitate much rancor and division within churches and presbyteries”—I don’t think the sky is in fact falling. Not yet, at least. Yes, this was a liberal GA, as most GAs are, and yes, it did what liberal GAs do, as do most GAs; but the actual effect of their decisions should be slight. Though these three decisions felt like “three hammer blows to the head,” I don’t believe they’ll turn out that way. To take them in order:Voting to remove the 1978 Authoritative Interpretation that declared homosexual acts incompatible with the will of God was a real and significant blow. However, it was one that was inevitably going to happen, whenever the liberal wing of the denomination decided they actually wanted to do it; and as long as G-6.0106b, which mandates “fidelity in marriage or chastity in singleness” for all officers of the church, is still in force, then this is still the meaning of our denominational constitution, whether there’s an AI to say so or not. Which leads to Voting to remove the “chastity and fidelity clause,” which would be a major change, if that clause were actually removed—but it won’t be. That’s an amendment to the Book of Order, which requires the support of over half the presbyteries, which isn’t going to happen. This one, for all the noise it’s stirring up, is merely sound and fury signifying nothing.Voting to declare that the constitution permits officers to ignore behavioral standards is potentially the significant change, since this doesn’t have to be approved by the presbyteries. However, I don’t believe this one will stand either, though it will take longer to see for sure. The roots of this one go back a ways. The last GA, in 2006, voted to approve an AI that said this; when candidates for ordination actually stood up and announced their intention to ignore behavioral standards, however, and governing bodies decided to ordain them anyway, that action was challenged in the denominational courts (Permanent Judicial Commissions, or PJCs), and the denomination’s highest court, the GA PJC, said, “You can’t do that.” On my read, their conclusion is that “‘shall’ actually means ‘shall,’ that if the church’s constitution says you can’t do something, then you actually aren’t allowed to do it,” and that “stealth amendments” that attempt to rewrite the constitution without needing the approval of the presbyteries (by simply declaring that the constitution doesn’t mean what it plainly says) are not allowed. As I wrote in a letter I sent to Presbyweb a few months ago, “GAPJC has laid down the law that the only way to amend the Constitution is by actually amending it, and that it is not possible to interpret it to say what it does not in fact mean. Stealth amendments such as this ‘Authoritative Interpretation, are in and of themselves unconstitutional.”I wrote on that occasion, and I still believe now, that we can and should expect GAPJC to say so, clearly, when they are given the opportunity to do so. If that happens, then the end result of these high-profile, high-angst votes will have been nothing of practical consequence. Should I prove wrong, then the disaster will indeed have come upon us, and it will be time for those of us who accept the authority of Scripture to pack our bags for final departure. I don’t expect that to happen, but one never can tell for certain with committees.At this point, however, I’m more concerned about the GA’s decision to rubber-stamp the Stated Clerk Nominating Committee and elect Dmitri Medvedev—excuse me, the Rev. Gradye Parsons—the new GA Stated Clerk. Apparently, they decided that the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick’s terms in office were so good that they should continue his administration by proxy. I cannot agree. I’m firmly convinced that one of this denomination’s greatest problems is that the playing field is deliberately tilted, the process skewed in favor of those whose positions are favored by denominational staff, such that violations of constitutional process which produce results the denominational hierarchy likes (such as those which result in practicing homosexuals in ministry positions) are winked at, while those which don’t (such as attempts by churches to leave the denomination with their property) are pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Those who hold liberal positions are given every hearing, while those who oppose those positions are squelched, silenced or overpowered by every means the hierarchy can use to do so. There is no attempt to make the process work equally for everybody, or to allow everyone’s voice to be heard equally. The root of this problem, I’m firmly convinced, has been the practice of favoritism (which is a sin) by our denomination’s highest administrative official, the GA Stated Clerk, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick; I was hoping GA would have the integrity to elect someone who would have the integrity to change this. From what I can see, they didn’t. The defections will continue.

Thought experiment

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I had a session of our inquirers’ class this evening—that’s the class I do for those who want to join the church and those who’re trying to figure out if they do—which left me, as I was driving back home, in a contemplative mood, just mulling over things with the church and praying a little; and as I was doing this, I’m not sure if it was merely my own thought or if perhaps it was God speaking, but I had this thought: Suppose God gave you a choice between two promises. Either you could ask that John McCain be elected president, and that would be granted (though Gov. Palin didn’t figure in here); or you could ask for a breakthrough for this church in attracting young people and young families who aren’t currently attending a church, such that we’d start drawing large numbers of younger folks, and that would be granted. The other might or might not happen, but whichever you chose, you could be sure would happen. Which would you choose?—OK, so it sounds artificial; I don’t dispute it. (That’s probably the biggest argument for it just being my own random thought, and even then, I don’t know where it came from.) Artificial or otherwise, though, the question came to mind; and while it will probably surprise some of you who’ve read my various political posts, I had no doubt of my answer: I’d choose for the church.Part of that, I’m sure, is a matter of direct personal welfare: whether or not this congregation grows will have a more direct and immediate effect on my well-being (financial and otherwise) than who gets elected president. That’s a consideration. It isn’t, however, the main one. The main one is the limitations of my own knowledge. If, through whatever combination of programs, circumstances, and whatever else, a lot of people of my generation and younger in this community started attending the congregation I serve, I have a high degree of certainty that this would be a good thing for our congregation (and, yes, for me and my family as well); and as to whether it would be a good thing for those folks, and for our community, I believe it would be, and I would be able to do everything in my power to make sure that it was. I can look at that possibility as a clear good.By contrast, while I truly believe that Sen. McCain would make a good president, and while I’m equally convinced that Sen. Obama would make a very bad one, I have far less ability to be certain of that. I don’t know Sen. Obama at all, and my only personal knowledge of Sen. McCain is secondhand; there are a vast number of unknown variables (on multiple levels) which will play into the success or failure of our next president; and Sen. Obama has a short enough track record that it’s more difficult than usual to predict how he would govern, making it unusually possible that he could surprise all of us. Then too, even if I’m absolutely right about what to expect from both of them (which is unlikely, no question), it’s possible that for the long-term good of our country, we’d be better off with a worse president for the next four years. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but I can’t say that it couldn’t be—the ironies of history won’t let me.All of which is to say that while I know which candidate will get my vote this November, I’m content to leave the overall outcome of the election to God’s providence; indeed, I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to think I could do better. I’m just not confident enough that I truly know for certain what’s best (nor should I be, nor should any of us be). On matters closer to home, within my purview and my circle of influence, I can be a lot more certain; and there, my responsibility is more direct, as well. (Which is why, if God actually did make me such a promise for my church, I would be thrilled.)

Song of the Week

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Inside of You

You say the river’s too far to go,
And the star’s too high to reach;
In the shade it’s much too cold,
And in the sun there’s too much heat.

Ooh, would you say to me
The sky’s too blue, the sea too green;
In the night there’s too much dark,
And too much crying in your sleep?

Chorus:
Inside of you, how deep does the ocean go?
Inside of you, how loud does the lion roar?
Inside of you, do your feet know how to dance?
Inside of you, does heaven ever really have a chance?

You’re telling me the chair’s too soft;
You’re telling me the bed’s too hard.
You would like to cool your fever,
But the water’s just too far.

So you sit staring at the door
Like something’s gonna walk on in;
Tell me what are you waiting for?
Sitting still’s your greatest sin.

Chorus

Words and music: Susan J. Paul
© 1989 Pupfish Music
From the album Talk About Life, by Kim Hill

God language in a fog

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One of the latest flaps sparked by the PC(USA)’s General Assembly this year (and why are there always so many? The one good side to cutting the number of assemblies in half is that it cuts down the number of fights they can start) comes out of the Committee on Interfaith and Ecumenical Relationships. The committee was considering a resolution which included the statement, “Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship a common God, although each understands that God differently”; when that raised objections, they rewrote it this way: “Though we hold differing understandings of how God has been revealed to humankind, the PC(USA) affirms our belief in one God, the God of Abraham, whom Jews and Muslims also worship.” As Viola Larson notes, that rewrite doesn’t actually change anything—it’s just the same thing in different words.Here’s my question. Some say that Jews, Christians, and Muslims “all worship the same God,” while others object, some vehemently—but what does that mean? What actually is the content and significance of that phrase, and what is it intended to communicate? I don’t think we really have a common understanding of it; our attempts to discuss Christianity, Judaism and Islam are muddled and blurred by the imprecision of our language. I suggest a moratorium on this phrase and all equivalents as counterproductive; whatever we want to say about the relative beliefs of these three religions, we should look for better, clearer, more precise ways to say it. We have enough issues with these sorts of conversations as it is—we don’t need a lack of clarity making things worse.

A bruised reed he will not break

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and a smoldering wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.So it is said of the Servant of God in Isaiah 42:3; so it will be when he comes again. Right now, though, we live in a very different world. I was reflecting on this this morning, thinking about the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. If you’ve been following the news, you know that it looks like Robert Mugabe’s succeeded in hanging on to power (though he said he’s “open to discussion” with the opposition), since the opposition party pulled out of Friday’s presidential runoff in the face of the Mugabe government’s terror campaign, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought refuge at the Dutch embassy in Harare. Freedom and justice in Zimbabwe are smoldering wicks, indeed.There is one small, very small, bright spot, though: at this year’s meeting of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly, the Peacemaking and International Issues Committee approved a resolution in support of the church in Zimbabwe, and against the Mugabe government. I hope and firmly expect to see the whole GA approve it; and I further hope that this encourages the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa (UPCSA), to which the Presbytery of Zimbabwe belongs, to take a similar stance at their General Assembly in September. I miss being a part of the relationship between Denver and Zimbabwe—it’s perhaps the biggest thing I miss from having left that presbytery—and I wish I could have been there. I’ll have to get on top of the schedule and see if I can at least watch the plenary session when this resolution comes to the floor; I suspect my friends from Zimbabwe won’t speak then (since they’d be on video for the whole world, including Mugabe and his thugs, to see), but I’d at least be able to share the moment with them a little.Please, keep praying for Zimbabwe.

Love beyond reason

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Most Christians have probably heard the line that the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint, and we sort of get the idea; but since it would never occur to most of us to actually want to run a marathon, I don’t think the point really sticks with us. We understand that, yes, the life of faith is more than just brief bursts of activity, that there’s a necessary element of endurance there; but we still think that when it gets to the point that we don’t think we can run anymore, it’s OK to stop. The thing about running a marathon is, when you get to that point, that’s when you have to dig down and push through—and that’s the part of the parallel we lose. We basically believe that when it no longer makes any sense to us to keep trying, when we no longer seem to have any reason to do so, we can stop; but that’s not what Jesus calls us to. That’s not the radical obedience and radical discipleship he wants from us. Jesus calls us to a whole ’nother level of endurance.I got to thinking about that as I was reading Jared’s brilliant post, “Love Is Never a Waste.” It’s a long, deep post, and I won’t try to summarize it; but here’s an excerpt or two:

We likely all recall the time Peter came up to Jesus and basically asked, “When I can I stop forgiving someone who keeps wronging me? After seven times?” (I can almost hear him hoping, “Please tell me after seven times.”) But Jesus responds to him, saying “No, not seven times. Seventy times seven times.” . . .Now, Jesus is a smart guy. In fact, if we believe he is who he said he was, we know he has all the omniscience of the God of the Universe. So he knows this is a tall order. He knows it doesn’t “make sense” in our world of abuse and betrayal and pettiness and vindictiveness and pride and arrogance and egotism.So why does he do this? If he knows our capacity for love and forgiveness is finite, how can he call us to persevere in these things toward others? The short answer, I think, is because God Himself perseveres in them toward us. . . .Because God’s love toward us is a) despite sin worthy of eternal punishment, and b) relentlessly patient in its eternal perseverance, we have no Christian right to say to someone who has wronged us, even if they continue to wrong us, “You have reached your limit with me. My love for you stops now.” Doing so fails to truly see the depths of our sin in the light of God’s holiness. And if God, who is perfect and holy, will forgive and love we who are most certainly not, on what basis do we have to be unforgiving and unloving to others?I am guessing most of us agree with this in theory. There’s not too many Christians who will say, despite Jesus’ instructions, that it’s okay to hate your enemies and curse those who persecute you.I think the place where we really have trouble with this stuff is when it comes to people who are hurting us that we actually do really want to love. We really do want to keep forgiving them. But we are weary. They are wearing us out. We don’t know how much longer we can go on. We want to know if we can give up, but we’re scared what that might mean. Surely God does not want to us to keep enduring this pain. Surely he will understand if we just . . . give up. Things aren’t working. The results aren’t being seen. Efforts are not bearing fruit. I’ve changed, but he or she hasn’t.Most of us know 1 Corinthians 13 really well, but let’s revisit a piece of it again:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres . . . Love never fails.

That’s some scary stuff right there. For we who are used to thinking of love as romance or warm-and-fuzzies or butterflies or sex, Paul has Jesus in mind as the model of love when he tells us, “Love is about sacrifice and service. And it keeps going. It never fails.” . . .I don’t think “Love never fails” means “Love always gets the result the lover wants.” I think it means what it says: Love is not a failure.Love is not a failure regardless of the results.This is why: Because God is not a failure, and God is love. When we are loving someone with a persevering, sacrificial love, we are reflecting the eternal goodness and grace of God Himself. We are glorifying God, and there is no higher calling than that. None.We love—not because it will “change the world” (although it may)—but because God loves us (1 John 4:19). . . .Whatever happens, whenever it happens, your love is not in vain. You are not alone, for God loves you and has approved your love through the sacrifice of his Son. Cast off despair; cast all your cares on Him. Love never fails. Love is never a waste.

That’s powerful, true, and critically important; the problem is, we keep collapsing this to the limits of our own self-expectations. We know God says, “Never stop forgiving, never stop loving, rejoice in all things, love your enemies, turn the other cheek,” and the like, but we don’t believe he really means it; we get to a certain point where it just doesn’t make any sense to us to keep going, and we say to ourselves, “Surely God will understand if we quit now—surely he doesn’t want us to keep putting ourselves through this,” and then we quit. We quit because, as Jared says, we don’t see the results we want to see, and we’re quite sure we never will; we quit because it’s not reasonable to expect us to continue, forgetting that it wasn’t reasonable to expect Jesus to allow himself to be crucified for a bunch of smelly, vicious little ingrates, either. We quit because because it’s not fair to keep forgiving and forgiving someone who’s never going to change, forgetting that that’s pretty much what Jesus does for us; and we quit because the agony of loving someone who’s bound and determined to shipwreck themselves despite us is just too much to bear, forgetting that it’s in bearing precisely that agony that we are most truly sharing in the suffering of Christ.In short, we quit because we turn to God and say, “What more can you expect of me? I’m only human”; and he looks at us and responds, “No, you’re not. I’ve put my Spirit within you, and in me, you’re more than you think you are. That’s why I’m calling you to go beyond what you think you can do, beyond where you think it makes sense to stop, and trust me that it will be worth it in the end; I’m making you like me, and this is part of that work.” Ultimately, like everything else, this is rooted in trust in God—trust that we really can do what he’s calling us to do, and that it really will be for our good.At this point, someone’s probably asking, “Doesn’t this just open us up for abuse?”—to which the answer is, “No, but.” No, it doesn’t open us to abuse, because allowing people to abuse us isn’t actually a loving thing to do to them; that merely empowers them in their sin. But, avoiding being abused isn’t the highest good, either. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” And you know what? He meant that, too. Our highest priority isn’t supposed to be self-protection; Jesus calls us to love and serve him by loving and serving others past the limits of what we think is safe, and trust that in truth, whatever happens, whenever it happens, indeed it won’t be in vain—because he who calls us is faithful.

The gospel according to Firefly

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“Oh, but you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. But since that’s a concept you can’t seem to wrap your head around, then you got no place here.
You did it to me, Jayne. And that’s a fact.”—Malcolm Reynolds to Jayne Cobb, “Ariel,” Episode 9, FireflyThis is from the crowning scene of perhaps the best of the handful of episodes we got of Firefly, one of the best scenes I’ve ever been fortunate enough to watch on TV. To explain this line to those not familiar with the show: during the episode, during a raid on an Alliance hospital, Jayne tried to sell out Simon and River Tam, the ship’s two fugitive passengers (Simon, a doctor, is also the ship’s medic, and the one who inspired the raid), to the Alliance. Unfortunately for him, the Alliance officials don’t honor the deal and he gets taken as well, at which point he starts fighting to save himself (and the Tams). They make it back to the ship, and Jayne thinks he’s gotten away with his attempted betrayal; but Mal’s too smart for him, resulting in this (note: there are a few errors in the captioning):

(For a transcript of the episode, go here.)I’ve always been struck by two things in this scene. The first is Mal’s statement to Jayne which I’ve quoted above, which is strikingly reminiscent of the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:40 (though Jayne did evil instead of good). The point is of course different, since Mal isn’t (and doesn’t claim to be) God—but it’s related. From Mal’s point of view, it isn’t enough to show loyalty to him alone: you have to be loyal as well to all those to whom he’s committed himself. Any violation of loyalty to any of them—any betrayal of the crew bond—is a betrayal which he takes personally, and which therefore brings inevitable judgment.The other is what saves Jayne: repentance, as evidenced by the stirring of shame. Jayne’s not much of one to be ashamed of anything—if you don’t count his reaction at the end of “Jaynestown,” the show’s seventh episode, this might be the first time in his life he’s felt shame—so this is a significant moment; and at that sign that Jayne is truly repentant, Mal spares his life (though he doesn’t let him out of the airlock right away—perhaps to encourage further self-examination on Jayne’s part). In the face of repentance, mercy triumphs over judgment.

Story

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I don’t know how many people have ever heard of Robert McKee; I imagine all true cinephiles and cineasts have, but I hadn’t. For those as ignorant as me, here’s some of the dust-jacket copy from his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (which describes him as “the world’s premier screenwriting teacher”):

For more than thirteen years, Robert McKee’s students have been taking Hollywood’s top honors. His Story Structure seminar is the ultimate class for screenwriters and filmmakers, playing to packed auditoriums across the world and boasting more than 25,000 graduates. . . .Unlike other popular approaches to screenwriting, Story is about form, not formula.

I have to say, I’m honestly impressed. McKee shares my belief in the importance and power of story (if anything, he takes it too far; I get the sense that story has taken the place of religion for him), he’s all about teaching people to write good stories, and he has a lot of helpful advice and examples. (I had originally been thinking to quote a passage or two, but there’s too many good ones.) I don’t think he gets all the examples right, but most of them, he does—he really understands what he’s talking about; and while his book is focused strictly on screenwriting, so far, I think everything he says applies to anyone writing fiction in any form.I should note that one of the reasons I appreciate McKee’s work is that he doesn’t buy the pretensions of the artistes. Here’s what he has to say about the “art film”:

The avant-garde notion of writing outside the genres is naive. No one writes in a vacuum. After thousands of years of storytelling no story is so different that it has no similarity to anything else ever written. The ART FILM has become a traditional genre, divisible into two subgenres, Minimalism and Antistructure, each with its own complex of formal conventions of structure and cosmology. Like Historical Drama, the ART FILM is a supra-genre that embraces other basic genres: Love Story, Political Drama, and the like.

Being more of a novel guy than a film guy, I tend to run into this more with the art film’s prose cousin, literary fiction, where I’m regularly irritated by the pretensions of its practitioners and fans that lit fic isn’t a genre and is therefore superior to “genre fiction.” McKee’s right, this is naive; unfortunately, as B. R. Myers has pointed out in his “Reader’s Manifesto,” it’s a naivete that has led to some real distortions in people’s understanding and appreciation of literature. It’s good to have someone come out and say, “You know what? This kind of thing’s a genre just like any other, with its own conventions and expectations, and some of it’s good and some of it isn’t, just like any other genre.”Anyway, coming back to the book: it’s a very good book about writing stories, and I recommend it—especially to fellow aspiring writers, but not only.

Is it Barack Obama’s time?

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It certainly could be; he’s a gifted campaigner with a strong core of support running in a year when the opposing party is weak and unpopular. On the other hand, there are several good reasons to think it won’t be.First, the circumstances that made the GOP unpopular and led to the debacle of 2006 are shifting, and Sen. Obama isn’t shifting with them. For one, he continues to stick to the narrative that “Iraq is spiraling into civil war, we invaded unwisely and have botched things ever since, no good outcome is possible, and it is time to get out of there as fast as we can” (even though he only took that stance out of political expediency) when more and more people (including even the editorial board of the Washington Post) are noticing that the surge has changed all that. As Michael Barone writes, “It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the ‘benchmark’ legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress—all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.” This is particularly a problem for Sen. Obama given that John McCain can take a sizeable measure of credit for that success: he didn’t order the surge, but he’d been pushing for it since 2003, even when the whole idea was wildly unpopular—which means that he can legitimately associate himself with our current success in Iraq while avoiding any blame for the failure of the pre-surge approach, since he’d opposed that all along.Another change from 2006 is that Congress is no more effective or popular now than it was then, but now the Democrats are running it; which is to say that running against “those incompetent do-nothings in Congress” is a strategy that should still have bite, but now it will be biting Democratic candidates rather than Republican ones. This is particularly true since, as both Barone and Dick Morris point out, the dramatic rise in gas prices has put the Democratic Congress over a barrel (so to speak). Sen. McCain can campaign against them hard on this issue, pushing for offshore drilling (where, as he’s taking care to tell voters, even Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any spills), drilling in ANWR (especially if he has the wit to put Sarah Palin on the ticket), and even nuclear power (which has worked fine as a major power source in Europe for years now with no problems), and the Democrats will have a hard time countering him; as part of a broader argument that “you voted Democrat two years ago, and what have they done for you? Not much,” this could be devastating.Second, Sen. Obama has a major demographic problem—and no, it’s not the one you think. (Taken all in all, I’d guess that racial prejudices will mostly balance each other out.) The problem, which Noemie Emery laid out in a piece in the Weekly Standard, is the cultural divide among white voters which Barone identified in the Democratic primaries. In Barone’s terms, the split is between Academicians and Jacksonians; Emery defines it this way:

Academicians traffic in words and abstractions, and admire those who do likewise. Jacksonians prefer men of action, whose achievements are tangible. Academicians love nuance, Jacksonians clarity; academicians love fairness, Jacksonians justice; academicians dislike force and think it is vulgar; Jacksonians admire it, when justly applied. Each side tends to look down on the other, though academicians do it with much more intensity: Jacksonians think academicians are inconsequential, while academicians think that Jacksonians are beneath their contempt. The academicians’ theme songs are “Kumbaya” and “Imagine,” while Jacksonians prefer Toby Keith . . . Academicians don’t think “evil forces” exist, and if they did, they would want to talk to them. This, and not color, seems to be the divide.

This division in the electorate would be the reason that, even after the May 6 primaries turned out far below her hopes, Hillary Clinton was still able to crush Sen. Obama in Kentucky and West Virginia—an outcome RealClearPolitics’ Jay Cost predicted. Sen. Obama is an Academician to the bone, perhaps the most non-Jacksonian presidential candidate the Democrats have ever nominated (recall John Kerry’s emphasis on his military experience, and the powerful effect of the Republican attack on that experience); Sen. Clinton, through her toughness and tenacity, was able to keep her campaign going against him by recasting herself as a Jacksonian Democrat (something she certainly had never been before), and thus giving those voters someplace to go against Sen. Obama. Now, in the general election, we’ll see the quintessential Academician, a modern-day Adlai Stevenson, up against the quintessential Jacksonian, a warrior politician for the 21st century. Sen. Obama can certainly pull it off, if he can stop talking to Iowa farmers about arugula, but that’s a matchup which Jacksonians tend to win.Third, just as the “bimbo eruptions” didn’t stop with Gennifer Flowers, so there’s no guarantee we won’t see more problems arise out of Sen. Obama’s friends and associates. We’ve already heard about a number of his unsavory connections, but every so often, a new one makes a scene (as Fr. Michael Pfleger recently did, driving Sen. Obama to finally remove his membership from Trinity UCC); and while it might be possible to defend him by saying, “these are all past connections—Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, James Meeks, Bernadette Dohrn, Nadhmi Auchi, Michael Pfleger, they’re all past history, old stories, irrelevant to who he is now,” that doesn’t hold up very well when you look at the people he continues to associate with. How is it possible to dismiss his connections to the Chicago political machine, racist preachers, American terrorists, and international criminals as irrelevant when his first appointment as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was Eric Holder, to chair his effort to choose a VP candidate? At some point, you just have to say, this pattern of associations tells us something important about Sen. Obama—who he is, how he thinks, what he values, what matters to him; and at some point, you have to figure that the problems his associates have already given him aren’t likely to stop coming. Again, he could overcome this; but depending on what happens and when, he might not.Taken all in all, I have to say, I don’t think he will; I think it will be close, but I think in the end, Sen. McCain will come out on top. Sen. Obama might steal a few states out of the GOP column, but between Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, I think he’ll lose a couple as well, and I think the end result will look a lot like 2004 at the presidential level—and at the lower levels, maybe not good, but not a worst-case scenario, either. (And maybe I’ll be wrong about all that; as I’ve already noted, nobody’s been right about much, this campaign season.)