Good News, I’ve Got Good News
So the Jonas Brothers and I both went to church today. I went to my home church and I also tuned in online to Saddleback Church’s (the author of The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren’s Southern California mega-church) Easter service from Angel’s Stadium, at which the Jonas Brothers were guests. I was intrigued when I heard they were playing. Lots of kids will go anywhere to hear the Jonas Brothers do almost anything, and they have to bring a parent or two. Ergo, lots of people to hear the Easter Message. I’m down with that, I’m a believer myself and though Pastor Warren is a little too Evangelical for my theological taste (I’m a Presbyterian) I’m always happy when people who might not otherwise hear the Good News have an opportunity to do so. That’s something that can happen on Easter, and it’s great when it does.
The Jonas Brother’s set was short, not surprisingly, coming as it did at the end of a lengthy service. And their song choices were somewhat surprising to me, and yet not. They played acoustic guitars in their classic “Jonas” set-up of three across on third base. Nick even quipped that being on third base at Angel’s Stadium was a personal dream come true for him (not surprising to any of us who know what a baseball lover he is). The first song was Hold On which seemed not an obvious choice, but it was, I suppose, in keeping with the idea of hope in adversity, which was the overall theme of Pastor Rick Warren’s remarks. Next followed Nick’s personal testimony song A Little Bit Longer, which was written about his struggle with Type I Diabetes. This song was not a surprise, and is certainly relevant to having hope despite being in a tough situation, being obedient to God’s will no matter how difficult it is, and choosing to make personal difficulty a means by which to inspire and educate others and hopefully do some good in the world. The last song was Gotta Find You, and I was completely perplexed at this choice until Joe Jonas informed us that the song’s writer was a member of Saddleback Church. This is true, one of the song’s writer is Adam Watts, who has written many, many songs for Disney movies, including two for the Jonas Brother’s movie Camp Rock: Gotta Find You and This is Me. So apparently that’s the connection between the Jonas Brothers and Saddleback Church.
The brothers looked very nice and churchy in some very nice suits and ties (I’m guessing they were the most dressed up people there, even Pastor Rick wore jeans and converse). And they performed beautifully, like they know how. I would be curious to hear the numbers of people who turned in the request-for-more-information forms from the program or elected to be baptized following the service in one of the four pools immediately outside the park. Maybe the numbers will be big, and that’s great, because I’m sure that’s what Saddleback Church is hoping for. And I’m certainly not going to deny Pastor Warren’s obvious sincerity and passion. But honestly, I personally found the service curiously unmoving. It was obviously intended to move non-believers to belief, so perhaps I’m just not the target audience here, since I’m a believer already. And perhaps it did move many non-believers to belief, maybe you had to be there, and it was the fact that I was watching online that left me feeling curiously separated from an emotional connection to the events.
But that is not always the case, for just this last week I watched something of a religious nature online which had me sobbing and reaching for my Bible in the middle of the week-day, no less. It was a showing of the movie Amish Grace, which was made for Lifetime Movie Network, and shown on their website. Now I’d never try to convince anyone that Lifetime Movie Network is any great purveyor of art and taste, much less spiritual enlightenment. This would an impossibly tough sell, and also impossible for me to accomplish straight-faced. But believe it or not, this movie was artful, tasteful, and spiritually enlightening, not to mention genuinely moving, evocative, and powerful in its theological truth.
The movie is a dramatization of the events surrounding the 2006 Amish school house shooting in Nickel Mines, PA. The movie did not focus on the shooting itself, the shooter was never on screen, nor was the shooting itself in any way dramatized. Instead, the movie focused on the aftermath of the shooting, specifically in regards to the families’ of the victims complete forgiveness of the shooter himself, their forgiveness of and reaching out to the shooter’s widow and family, and the affect the whole event had. The film’s central character was one mother who struggled mightily to do as the rest of the families do, and initially refused to forgive, even to the point of considering leaving her community. Ultimately the mother re-embraces her faith and comes to forgive.
I was literally sitting in front of my computer in tears, so deeply did I relate to the idea that while the power and necessity of forgiveness is perhaps the most important thing God ever asks us to do, it is at the same time the most difficult, especially in the face of such a wrong as murder. But forgiveness is at the crux of being a Christian, for how can I accept God’s unconditional forgiveness of my wrong-doings, if I can’t offer that forgiveness to others? Heavy stuff, especially for mid-morning on a Tuesday. But hey, I figure anything that takes me out of my complacent sense that faith is something that’s designed to make my petty little life more comfortable and easier to deal with and has me questioning, probing and searching through scripture for answers is a good thing. Regardless if it stars Kimberly Williams-Paisley and shows on Lifetime Movie Network. God does indeed work in mysterious ways.
So while I didn’t find Saddleback Church’s Easter service to be a powerful thing, I’m sure many did. And many people I’m sure wouldn’t find this movie to be as mind-blowing as I did. To each their own. I’m a firm believer in spiritual growth happening in the time it’s meant to, if it’s meant to happen at all. I spent enough years as a doubting, skeptical, non-church-goer to know the truth of that.
And what of my visit to the Easter Service at my own church today? It was somewhere in the middle for me, more moving and powerful than the service in the stadium, not as emotional or difficult as my private film viewing. And that’s good, not only because stereotypically Presbyterians get mighty uncomfortable when people sob and carry on in church. My church is very un-stiff and casual for a Presbyterian church, if someone was moved to cry, people would roll with it. It’s good because while a mountain-top experience is great, it’s not where my real work of living my faith gets done. That happens in the day-to-day of slogging through the little miseries of life: like trying to convincing my younger daughter that just once she could wear a dress to church, making sure I don’t burn the casserole I’m taking to the between-services brunch, or figuring out how I’m going to find time to write the scripts for the Vacation Bible School teaching dramas in my copious—not spare time. This is where I am right now, where I need to meet my faith and where I need my faith to meet me. And my pastor spoke to that eloquently this morning. He reminded me what there is in today’s News that will be there in the kind of harrowing times I took a mercifully brief look at on Tuesday, and also in the not-so-harrowing but very often tedious times that usually fill up my days. And for that, I’m grateful.
So Happy Easter to the Jonas Brothers, and everyone else. May everyone find a sense of hope from somewhere on this day, and carry it onward.
[Via: ocregister.com (Photo)]
