Again I Will Say...Rejoice!

"Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time.

And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD."

--Zephaniah 3: 14-20

"Surely, it is God who saves me; *

I will trust in him and not be afraid.

For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, *

and he will be my Savior.

Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing *

from the springs of salvation.

And on that day you shall say, *

Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;

Make his deeds known among the peoples; *

see that they remember that his Name is exalted.

Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things, *

and this is known in all the world.

Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, *

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel."

--Isaiah 12: 2-6 (The First Song of Isaiah)

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

--Philippians 4: 4-7

"John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people."

--Luke 3: 7-18

Years ago while serving as a youth minister I was helping our young curate – assistant priest for the uninitiated – with a lesson on Advent with our kids. At the end a one boy asked him what the deal was with the pink candle, to which this curate, eager to show off his newfound church knowledge, explained that we take the purple of Advent and mix it with the white of Christmas and voila, we get the pink – or rose – candle. To which this little kid said very plainly, “Purple and white don’t make pink?” The curate shrugged and said, “That’s the best I got, kid!”

The pink candle lit for the Third Sunday of Advent

The pink candle stands out because this third week of Advent stands out from the rest of the season. We called this past Sunday "Stir-Em-Up Sunday", drawing from the first word in our Collect, but its more popular name is Gaudete Sunday.  Gaudete is Latin for ‘rejoice’ taken from the traditional opening chant, or introit, prescribed for the day. It’s also reflective of the rejoicing that permeates throughout our Scriptures.  The prophet Zephaniah says, “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” and “the Lord will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you with love.”  In our canticle, the First Song of Isaiah, the prophet sings, “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.”  The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Philipi, calls them to “Rejoice in the Lord always—again I say, rejoice!”  And in Luke’s Gospel we hear John the Baptist yelling at the brood of vipers. Oh, there’s rejoicing there, too, we’ll get to that! 

For some of us, it’s easy to rejoice this time of year. Hearts are practically giddy in anticipation of Christmas. but when we peel back the layers of our Scriptures, I suspect we will find that the voices calling us to rejoice are not doing so with the giddiness that we often experience around us this time of year, but rather they are crying out from a place of deep longing, anchored to an acknowledgment of God’s love and presence in human life, which is often anything but joyful.

The prophet Zephaniah puts in a rare appearance this week.  If you know your prophets—and I’m sure you do—you’ll know that some of the gloomiest passages in all of the Hebrew Bible are found in Zephaniah.  It’s true!  In the first chapter, starting with the second verse, we hear God say through the prophet:  “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth…humans and animals…birds of the air…fish of the sea…I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth.”  Yikes!  But just two chapters later, we hear a different tune being sung, one where the word of God, which began as irredeemable judgment, has been transformed into transcendent gladness, and that which once anticipated the sorrows of the people now celebrates their chorus of joy. 

We hear from another prophet this week, as our canticle, is taken from the 12th chapter of Isaiah. In this First Song of Isaiah we hear the promise that God is the people’s stronghold and defense, that they should rejoice in God and call upon God’s name, especially in anticipation of disasters the prophet had said earlier will come if folks don’t change their ways. Even during the exile, which starts in chapter 40, this instruction to rejoice in God’s deliverance endures.

Speaking of disasters, does anyone know where Paul was when he penned the letter to the Philippians and told them to rejoice in the Lord always?  He’s in prison!  What’s more, the church in Philippi was itself enduring great hardships and persecutions, and many more were to come.  Yet somehow out of that pain Paul is able to construct not only a message of hope but one that dares proclaim that the people should rejoice…always!

Then there’s John the Baptizer.  Where’s the joy in this guy? As he stands by the River Jordan every sort of wayfaring stranger from tax collectors to Roman soldiers are gathered. He calls them a brood of vipers, out there fleeing to him, so as to hide out from their wickedness. We talked a lot about the lack of joy in John’s message in my parish's Tuesday Bible study last week, but we also discovered a kind of joyful invitation that he offers. Notice how much of what he says is rooted in economic justice – Own more than you need? Great! Half of it can go to others, and you can start sharing from your bounty instead of stockpiling more. John’s calling the people to see their own intention and to be more than they have been; you’ve been thinking you already know yourself, well, look again, because your same-as-always life is over. There’s a tinge of fear and lots of hesitation on our part when we hear John (or someone like him) call us to metanoia, to turning ourselves around, but I’d like to think that such an invitation is worth rejoicing over. That, I believe, is why Luke refers to what John's doing as "proclaiming the good news."

Make no mistake, each prophetic voice this morning is speaking amongst communities that have experienced pain, trauma even, with dark, foreboding horizons ahead. How could any of them rejoice? It is the promise of God’s abiding presence, breaking into the world again, to which each of these voices proclaims. Zephaniah says, “The Lord your God is in your midst.”  Isaiah says, “The great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.”  Paul says, “The Lord is near.”  And joy and excitement can be heard in John’s voice as he declares, “One who is more powerful than I is coming, who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’ 

How is such joy possible, especially when we consider that each of these prophets was killed? It is a lesson, I suspect, that is taught to us by suffering. That is not to say that God causes or is glorified by suffering, far from it, but it is to say that when someone understands that God is still in suffering, in the absurdity of it all, they have a perspective that allows one to see beyond the suffering, to rejoice in the same way the prophets rejoiced. The Incarnation is so extraordinary, in part, because it takes place in a time when folks were desperate, when many felt the world had been left empty, and in the midst of Empire, Emmanuel arrives. The arrival of Love incarnate does not replace all suffering with joy – we need only look around, perhaps at our own sufferings– instead it makes joy possible. It allows us to dare to be joyful, to dare to hope, to dare to hang on to the mercy and love of God even when we may feel obligated to do anything but. In some ways it is the most radical and revolutionary thing we can do, to rejoice in the midst of a world filled with pain.

So rejoice, rejoice, believers!  Rejoice not because Christians are called to believe that everything will be ok, or that the pain will stop, but we rejoice in the saving grace of a God who loves us so much as to not only come among us, but to promise never to leave and to never give up on us.  This is the joy being stirred up today. This is joy for all who long to know the peace of God that passes understanding.  For this we rejoice…always…and again I will say, rejoice!  

Unlikely Prophets

'In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"'

--Luke 3: 1-6

I feel an incredible privilege whenever I get to stand among the people of God and say, “The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!” and to then proclaim the evangelion, the Good News. But there are times when doing so is, frankly, kinda funny. This week is one of those times because, as the folks in my congregation couldn't help but notice this past Sunday, despite it being the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself doesn’t make an appearance. And he won’t next week. Or the week after that. Seems a bit odd to proclaim the “The Gospel of the Lord!” when the Lord is nowhere to be found.

Or is he? Because, while Jesus himself isn’t mentioned, the same spirit with which Jesus preached, the same ethos that he embodied, the same message about God’s workings in the world is here, as we are first introduced to John the Baptizer.

If you know your biblical genealogy you know that John is Jesus’ cousin, the son of Elizabeth, who herself is the cousin of Jesus’ mother Mary. John’s birth, like Jesus’, was a bit of a fluke. Both Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were well past the usual age for child-bearing. The angel Gabriel had visited them and told them that they would have a son who was to be filled with the Holy Spirit and called to turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, to borrow words from the first chapter of Luke. Zechariah, though, didn’t believe Gabriel, and so he was struck mute until the day of John’s birth, at which point he gave his own prophecy, which we read together this week, the Song of Zechariah, in which he not only praised God but foretold his son’s role as a prophet. 

Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John

To be sure, Elizabeth and Zechariah were unlikely forebears, but isn’t that how God usually works? John himself would seem an unlikely prophet, but in him the folks were reminded and continue to be reminded that the places and situations and people considered to be of great importance in our world might not be the places and situations and people God considers when God’s next big work is about to occur. It seems God has a fondness for tapping on the shoulders of the anonymous, the unknown, and the ill-prepared.

Tiberius Caesar had been reigning for 15 years, Pontius Pilate was an experienced governor, Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee, and Annas and Caiphas were the all-important High Priests, yet to whom does God ‘s Word go when God speaks it? Not to those powerful, big deal folks, no, but to John, son of Elizbeth and Zechariah, found among the unsuspected. 

God sends the message not via the Temple or the palace, not to the important somebodies of the world, but via the desert – or wilderness, as Scripture calls it. From the least habitable of places, the Word comes. To the most deserted and desolate of people, the Word blossoms with meaning and life. 

John speaks it loud and strong for folks to repent, to “Prepare!” Make straight those crooked paths, like Isaiah said long before; smooth out the rough places of despair into plains, make those mountains of troubles low. And all flesh, whether powerful or powerless, will see God’s new thing…together. No longer nobodies and somebodies – a sign of the new realm among us, or as Jesus will call it: the Kingdom of heaven.

My first boss out of college was a fellow named Rick Bentley, who was the Sports Information Director at what is now the University of Pikeville. I was his assistant, along with being assistant baseball coach, and he and I couldn’t have been more different. But we both loved sports, and we both loved Jesus. Rick was a Freewill Baptist, so this Episcopalian often clashed with his thoughts on Scripture, the role religion should play in society, and the nature of sin. Yet one day, as we were making one of our long road trips to cover a basketball game, he said, “You know, partner” – that’s what we called each other – “I figure when I die there’s gonna be a whole lotta folks I’m surprised to see in heaven, and there’s a whole lotta folks who’re gonna be surprised to see me!” In a car on a road in eastern Kentucky was the unlikely wilderness where my friend Rick, I believe, was not too far from the Kingdom of heaven when he made that little anonymous prophecy of his. 

The one and only Rick Bentley, who represented the Free Will Baptists at my ordination in 2012.

What John called the people in the wilderness to was repentance. The Greek word is metanoia, which means to turn oneself around. This call was for everyone, for the somebodies and the nobodies alike. It’s a word, perhaps, modern church-goers aren’t fond of because it evokes notions of wretchedness, or that somehow we are inherently evil and must constantly repent before a priest or some other confessor and be saved. I mourn that a great many preachers over the years have treated the concept of repentance in this way, an abusive tactic used to get folks to over-commit their time and their treasure to the church because, after all, only the church could save them. I am sorry if you are someone who has experienced that kind of message from a clergy person or a congregation of other believers. Still, if we are to accept the somewhat radical notion that my Free Will Baptist brother proclaimed, that heaven is something we will all inherit, then can we not all also accept the invitation to repent, to turn ourselves around, back toward God, back toward forgiveness, back toward mercy, back toward justice, back toward whatever new call God has in store for us during this season in which the world itself is about to turn, 

What in your life is not yet ready for God’s new call? What part of you is in need of repentance, of being turned around? John the Baptizer asked that question a little more boldly than me, but it is a question, nonetheless, that is offered to us all, the powerful and the powerless alike. I know there is much in me that needs to be turned around, not the least of which is my capacity to truly love those with whom I so strongly disagree - my friend Rick helped me with that. Who, I wonder, are those voices for you? Who are the anonymous, unknown prophets imparting wisdom, perhaps even a challenge or two, for you? And do you have ears to hear them? 

Their voices join the voice of the Baptizer, who all Advent long is out there in the deserts, in the wildernesses of our everyday lives, crying out for us to not only repent, to be turned around, but to prepare. To till the soil of our souls, that something fresh and new may be born. 

The Beginning (of Everything) Is Near

'Jesus said, "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

"Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man."'

--Luke 21: 25-36

There is a meme that shows up around this time of year and makes its rounds on the social medias. It’s a picture person holding a piece of cardboard with the words written on it, “The Beginning is near.” There are many variations of this blog, including the one below with a person wear a Guy Fawkes mask. I couldn’t find the origins of the image, but it seems obviously a reframing of those street preachers with signs proclaiming “The End is near,” and in that way, it’s a perfect encapsulation of Advent.

The beginning…of everything…of a new hope…of the kingdom of God, is near. Yes, preacher, we know. We’re good Episcopalians who understand that today not only marks the start of a new church year but also this season of preparation for the birth of Jesus. All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and the beginning of the greatest story ever told is right around the corner. We get it.

If that were the case, though, why does Advent not start on a joyful note? Instead, our Gospel fills us with something more like despair. We start the new church year the exact same way we ended the last one, with Jesus talking about a coming time that sounds anything but joyful. 

We find Jesus teaching on the last week of his life while sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s a scene that is Luke’s version of one that we heard about from Mark just two weeks ago. Instead of one disciple commenting on the magnificence of the Temple, Luke uses the generic phrasing “Some were speaking about the Temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.” Jesus gives the familiar prophecy about the Temple being destroyed, along with the destruction of the whole of Jerusalem, which some of Luke’s audience would have experienced roughly 20 years earlier. They ask for signs – how will we know these awful things will take place? – and Jesus borrows imagery from the prophet Daniel and paints this picture of doom and gloom – the sun darkened, the moon not giving light, stars falling, and heaven itself being shaken, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria; in fact, Jesus quotes Daniel verbatim when talking about the Son of Man coming in the clouds. It sounds pretty hopeless. Sure ain’t joyful.

Yet if we remember the purpose of this kind of rhetoric – the kind prophets like Jeremiah and Daniel used and that Jesus himself uses– it’s to reveal something to the people, to reveal hope in the midst of hopelessness. This is, once again, apocalyptic, a tearing away of the veil so that the people can see the truth. 

Advent is an apocalyptic season. It serves a dual purpose. The first is to remind us that, in spite of the very best intentions of the people of God, the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed to have already come near, hasn’t quite come in its grandest fulfillment, and so the prayer of Advent is that Christ will come again to rule among God’s creation with grace, mercy, and justice. The beginning of such a time, we hope – in the words of our Creed – is near.

The second purpose of Advent is to take us back to the beginning, back to that time of Jesus’ first Advent. And in the midst of our own times of hopelessness, to capture the spirit of hope folks felt back then, a spirit of yearning for that which some might’ve said was too good to be true: a new and unique expression of God’s intention to save this broken world was breaking through.

Capturing that spirit of hope is, I suspect, what Jesus means when he uses a fig tree as a parable for being able to observe the signs of the times. Such observing means paying close attention to all that is happening in our world, regardless of what we are afraid to see. This hope enables us to see our day’s news with the eyes of the heart, and not hide out in the fog of secular numbness or hyper-sensitivity. We often pretend to be remote or untouchable, shrouding ourselves in willful ignorance, but to read the sign of the times is to dare to acknowledge what is hidden in plain sight – what is being revealed to us right now– and to dare to find our part to play, our song to sing, our small task to fulfill in the unfolding drama of God’s Kingdom coming on earth as in heaven. No, we can’t take in all of the heartache and pain we see – our species wasn’t designed for it, our brains literally can’t handle it, which is why the overflow of information that we experience creates in us anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Yet we can find that small task in our small corner; because we’ve all got our part to play in that promised day’s arrival.

Such a day can’t get here fast enough, we might say when we see all that plagues this world, which may lead us to reading such signs less as an invitation to participation and more as a portent to something we must fear. Still, Jesus says, we need not be afraid, but we must remain on guard, yet without our hearts being weighed down. Be ready for that day, but don’t worry about it. So hurry up….but wait?! What kind of Messiah double-talk is this?

It's active waiting. Sounds oxymoronic, but that’s Advent, and it’s how we operate in a kingdom that has both already come and not yet come. For those of you who host holiday parties or are expecting loved ones to visit this year, think about how you prepare for those guests. You wait for them, sure, but is it passive? Lord no! I bet you’re looking out for the stray dust bunny to sweep or making sure the beds are prepared for those overnight visitors. It’s the same way for those of us living in the Second Advent, waiting actively for Jesus to be born anew in our lives, neither trying to predict when it’s gonna happen, nor being passive – but surrendering to God’s timing while actively looking for the one who is already here, finding our place in this kingdom that is both already and not yet. 

The days are getting crisper. I’ve felt the wind in the air lately. It chills me with how abrupt it can come on. That’s Advent, coming like the wind to wake us up to the reality that all that we see is not all that there is; that you, and I, and them, are more precious and more important than any of us can ever know;  that the love that came down at Christmas is as real now as it was then, and it’s coming again – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

The winds are blowing. The signs are all around. So, you there, who keep falling asleep in shallow waters, floating on the surface of your life, wake up! Stop staring blankly, numb to the wonder of who you are and whose you are. The God who searches for you in the holy mundane of your life is near. The revealing of your true self, and your role in the unfolding of this kingdom, is near. The beginning of everything is near. 

On Kingship and the Lions of the Coliseum

'Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”'

--John 18: 33-37

One lasting image of kingship for me is Arthur, King of the Britons, giving his credentials to man named Dennis and an unnamed, poor woman – who, it should be noted, didn’t vote for him. Arthur recounts the story of how the Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest, shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by Divine right that he, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.  “That,” Arthur tells them, “is why I’m your king.”  But Dennis sums the whole thing up best when he retorts, “Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government! Arthur is having none of this political commentary, so he represses Dennis, and then rides away.

Arthur, King of the Britons.

That scene in the early moments of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a classic. Our system isn’t perfect, but at least we don’t rely on strange women distributing swords to declare who our leaders will be – though, maybe we should. We may not think much about what kingship or sovereignty mean because this is ‘Murica, and we literally fought a war not to have a king, but Christ the King Sunday, or, Reign of Christ Sunday, as it’s also called, comes around each year to invite us to do just that.

The Solemnity of Christ the King was established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to be observed on the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar. The world was just seven years removed from the Great War, but fascism was on the rise, and in less than 15 years there would be a Second World War.  In response to the growing popularity of authoritarianism, the pope wrote in his encyclical Quas Primas, that the faithful should gain strength and courage from the celebration of this new feast, as they were reminded that Christ must reign in their hearts, minds, wills, and bodies, and that the leaders and nations would see that they were bound to allegiance to Christ, not the state. It is Jesus alone who is our sovereign, and the one to whom all of our praise and adoration is directed because he is the only one worthy of any of it. More folks need to remember that right now, I suspect.

Curiously, the Gospel for this last Sunday of what we call Year B doesn’t feature Jesus in a very kingly position. Instead, he is face-to-face with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, moments before his death. Why this story for this day? Perhaps because it illustrates how wrong we often are about what kingship, sovereignty, or power really look like. The regalia of the Roman governor? Or the rags of an itinerant preacher? The whole script is flipped on its heard. 

So Jesus and Pilate engage in this beautifully Hellenistic battle of wits: Are you the King of the Jews? Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me? So you’re a king? You say that I am. What have you done? No answer. It’s brilliant. Jesus is no stranger to cross-examination, so he’s wise to not refer to himself as a king because that’s a political term, and if he’s a king – of the Jews, or anyone else – that’s treason because Caesar is king of, well, everything. His kingdom, then, isn’t a physical one – at least, not yet – it is in the mind and heart of the believer, where the mighty rich are sent away empty and the mighty are cast down, where the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled with good things; a kingdom that has, indeed, come near, but not in a way Pilate or anyone else would recognize. It’s a kingdom for those with eyes to see and ears to hear….the truth.

What is truth? That’s Pilate’s answer to that last line in our Gospel, and shame on the lectionary folks for cutting it out. What is truth has been at the heart of every political debate and every family argument for at least the past eight years, but, honestly, we all know it goes way beyond that. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 reduced regulation, enabling the handful of corporations dominating the airwaves to expand their power further. The result was the end of local news outlets, and a consolidation of media that established the Big Six – six corporations major corporations from which all forms of media became outsourced. This led to a boom in big tech that can be directly connected to THESE little things and the ways that we drink from the firehose of social and mass media daily. Whatever we want to be true can be, through confirmation bias made possible by algorithms that tell us what we want before we even know we want it. You are your own Cassar with your own truths, what could be more American than that? What else could possibly matter?

This is where, I believe, it matters that on a day when we designate for the solemnity of Jesus’ reign as sovereign of all, we get this particular encounter. Because truth is not about the loneliness of one’s own existence, but the revelation Jesus presents about the nature of humanity and of our world, namely, that none of us is their own Caesar, the center of their own existence – the very “truths” that media of all sorts and conditions feed us today. The truth Jesus offers sets us free to discover God’s will in a future that is open to possibilities because it is a future rooted in community, rooted in unity, in the counterintuitive motion of downward mobility that openly mocks and shames when the modern Pilates tell us we should move in the opposite direction. 

When we declare that Christ is King, or Christ is sovereign, we lay claim to his own downward mobility and we own being members of him, over any other group, clan, or tribe. Claiming Jesus as sovereign says that his truth – strength through vulnerability, justice through mercy, and power through weakness – is our truth, despite what the algorithms would have us believe. Two kingdoms stand face-to-face: to which one will we choose to belong?

One of my favorite folk singers is a fellow named Pierce Pettis, who has a song called Lions of the Coliseum from his now out-of-print album, Chase the Buffalo, released in 1992. It speaks brilliantly to our modern experience of information overload by those who’ve co-opted this Christianity thing we love. The lions are the ones on the satellite tv preaching from their lap of luxury; with politicians and millionaires, you won’t see Mother Theresa there; the lions rob the poor for pocket change, and whose hypocrisy has made the church a museum where cobwebs hand like a rosary inside a mausoleum, whose surfaces are clean and white, while inside rotted corpses lie; so they like to keep the lid on tight. In the final verse, Pierce sings: “there’s rebel graffiti on the walls inside the coliseum, down below in the catacombs the defiant ones are meeting; hiding in the underground, blood brothers and sisters pass the cup around; and they pay no heed to the roaring sound of the lions of the coliseum.” Jesus’ kingdom is here…head…and here….heart….and here…the people. Yes, it will come in physical form – we affirm that each week – but it’s already here. Hold on to that assurance and pay no heed to the roaring sound of the lions of the coliseum.

Lions of the Coliseum, by Pierce Pettis

This is the scandal, the truth, of the Gospel; that if we are members of Jesus’ kingdom, we’re not members of any other; and if Jesus is king, then nobody else is. Empires fall, all terms of office and reigns of those in power end, but Jesus shall reign wherever the sun doth its successive journeys run, his kingdom stretches from shore to shore till moons shall wax and wane no more

Of Holy Fools and Apocalypses

'As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”'

--Mark 13: 1-18

I wanna talk about the apocalypse. Seems fitting.  I don’t know what pops in your head when you hear it. Maybe the “end of days” stories in things like the fictitious Left Behind series, which has no basis is biblical scholarship? If you’re of a certain age, maybe you think of the X-Men villain named Apocalypse? Anyone? Maybe that's just me. The word itself, apocalypse, is a Greek word being ‘unveiling,’ or ‘revelation.’ It is, in fact, the Greek title of the last book of the Bible.

En Sabah Nur, better known as Apocalypse.

This week's reading from the Hebrew scriptures was from the Book of Daniel, a piece of apocalyptic literature that heavily influenced the writing of the Revelation to John. The same imagery is used in both texts, as Michael the archangel makes an appearance, and both promise a victory for God’s people over the forces of evil. Apocalyptic stories like Daniel or Revelation are not meant to be blueprints for the end of the world, despite what some folks may suggest, but instead they speak to the current climate, to the need for people to have the veil pulled away from their eyes to see what is really going on, and using symbolism and metaphor they try to make sense of current events and experiences by casting them in a larger, cosmic framework, and in this way give comfort to people who are currently suffering or being oppressed.

Our journey this year with the Gospel of Mark comes to an end this week, as Jesus channels his inner Daniel with his own apocalyptic imagery. Right after watching that widow dropped in her two pennies, right after Jesus pointed out what real abundance, real power looks like, one of the disciples points out the impressiveness of the buildings and how mighty the stones are in the Temple walls. You can almost see the “Facepalm Jesus” meme happen in real time here:

Surely Jesus is disappointed, once again, in the slowness of the disciples to learn, well, anything. He counters this acclamation by telling them that this building and all it represents will cease to be. That famine and disasters will occur, and others will claim to come in his name. Yet it will all be the beginnings of the birth pangs. Something is being revealed, Jesus is trying to get them to understand.

The audience for Mark’s Gospel would’ve understood Jesus’ imagery immediately. There had been the great famine in Palestine in the year 50, the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that destroyed Laodicea and Pompeii in 61 and 62, and, of course, the destruction of the Temple itself by the Romans in the year 70, just before this Gospel started to be proclaimed. Their world  was changing, quickly, in ways that folks struggled to understand, and within the framework of the Gospel narrative itself, Jesus’ own journey is rapidly coming to its climax. 

He communicates all of this while standing on the Mount of Olives, the very place where the Messiah is meant to first appear – which, by the way, is why folks to this day pay top dollar to be buried on that mountainside, so that they can be the first to behold the Messiah’s coming. Just a few days earlier it was the place where Jesus had entered the city in humility on a donkey at the same time Pontius Pilate was coming in from the opposite end in the grand imperial procession of Rome. The turning point of human history is here – for the participants in this story, for the people who first heard it, and for us who have inherited it. Jesus and his teachings, Jesus and his earthly journey, are approaching convergence, and his way is moving steadily on toward fruition. It is, in a word, apocalyptic.

View from the Mount of Olives facing the Temple Mount. Notice the sarcophagi along the hillside.

What is being revealed in these final days of Mark’s Gospel is the promise of God’s victory over the powers and principalities of this world, though few will have the eyes to truly see it. They will only see a body on a cross, even when a group of women tell them about an empty tomb. The Gospel practically begs the audience to have eyes to see what is going on around them, what is truly real. It isn’t the grandeur of your buildings, the might of your empires, no. It is quiet humility, frailty, even poverty, that which is foolish in the eyes of people, but not God.

How many of you know the stories of the Holy Fools? They were a peculiar bunch of ascetics who acted intentionally foolish – some thought they were genuinely out of their minds – in order to irritate and shock people into paying attention and changing their own, truly foolish ways. They included folks like Basil, who shoplifted in order to feed and clothe those in need, going naked and weighing himself down with chains. There was also Simeon, who drug around a dead dog and threw nuts at people when he walked into church, then he'd crawled around the building on his butt, causing children to point and yell “There goes a crazy abba!” The Holy Fools themselves were apocalyptic, revealing the absurdities of their time, pulling people out of their everyday trances by means of absurdity. We got any Holy Fools in our congregations these days?

St. Simeon, the Holy Fool

Have we, like the disciple staring in awe at the magnificence of the Temple, become complacent and in need of some foolishness to draw the veil away from our eyes? This is, I believe, an apocalyptic moment, as so much new is being revealed and coming to light, in our parish, in our local communities, in our state, and especially in our country, as some people believe literally that the president-elect was chosen by Jesus and has come in his name. The events of the past fortnight have revealed truths that we may never have wanted to know, and yet now that we know them, what will we do with them? And with ourselves?

One of the best pieces of apocalyptic storytelling in the 21st century is the Wachowski siblings masterpiece, The Matrix. Spoiler alert for a movie series a quarter of a century old, but The Matrix paints the picture of a world where humanity is caught in a simulation of reality – known as the Matrix –  boring, mundane, and safe. But the true reality, the “real” world is one in which humans’ minds are being kept in this simulation while their bodies are used as batteries to power an empire of machines. Once you see what is real, it is almost impossible to go back into the safe simulation – though one character tries, taking a bite of virtual reality steak saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” In the end, though, all of humanity is not freed from the Matrix, but they are given the choice to leave of their own accord. They can remain in a virtual world, pretending that they are free, or they can venture out into a world that, though frightening and hard, is truly real. The choice is theirs.

Keanu Reeves in The Matrix Reloaded, the second entry in the original trilogy.

And the choice is ours. As it was for Jesus’ disciples. Now that the veil has been pulled away, now that things have been revealed for what they are, what will we do? There are Holy Fools all around us, calling us to forsake our false sense of security and be reckless witnesses for the very morals and ethics of Jesus himself.  What lies in front of us may not be a reality that we would choose willingly, but it has chosen us. What will we do going forward?  Some may choose to remain in their own version of the Matrix, blissfully unaware of the trials and tribulations around them – to borrow from the French-born American essayist Anais Nin, it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. They have much in common with that disciple staring at the Temple walls. As I asked members of my congregation, I'll ask readers of this blog: is that who you are??  I seriously doubt it. Yes, to choose to see things as they are means to choose the cross, but it also means to choose the hope of an empty tomb. To have such hope may seem foolish, but it is also holy. We are in the midst of the birth pangs.   

It Is Enough...For Now

'The word of the LORD came to Elijah, saying, “Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.” She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.'

-- I Kings 17: 8-16

'As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”'

--Mark 12: 38-44

This past Sunday was only my third one serving the folks of the Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill. The seats are set up monastic-style, facing each other, so for the first two weeks I chose to preach from the center aisle. Not only does it feel more natural, but the Advocate doesn't exactly have a pulpit, more like a lectern/ambo that is used for the readings and prayers. However, at least for one Sunday, that lectern/ambo served the purpose of a pulpit, which is the visible symbol of the authority given to a preacher to proclaim the Good News. Despite the tumultuous week that we had just experienced, that is what I intended to do for the people whom I have been called to serve. 

It's times like this when I’m glad that the burden does not fall on me to choose our Scriptures for the each Sunday. I might have resorted to something like Psalm 3, which says in its seventh verse:  

“Rise up, O Lord; set me free, O my God; surely you will strike all my enemies across the face; you will break the teeth of the wicked.”                                               

Because that’s where I’ve been since last Tuesday. I’ve wrestled with a lot of anger, and also fear – for myself and my spouse, for my queer siblings, for our immigrant neighbors, and for everyone who faces an uncertain and unclear future when the calendar turns to 2025. I’m not going to tell you that things are still ok because Jesus was Lord the day before the election and he’s still Lord now; that things are bad but God is still good. That’s called spiritual bypassing, and it’s a form of gaslighting and abuse. I’m not going to do that. Because for so many things are not ok, and that kind of rhetoric does very little to heal the hurting that folks are feeling or assuage the legitimate concerns that the most vulnerable among us face. I’m not compelled to lean into that right now. 

As I told my folks on Sunday, I don’t exactly feel like I have much to give right now. Maybe you don’t either. And that’s ok. We say it every week at the Advocate: bring what you’ve got into this space, bring it this Table, give it to God and see what happens. I’m gonna try to give what little bit I have and see what happens.

I’ve heard it said before, and you’ll hear me say many times, that there is a difference between fact and truth. Facts are things that are provable, while truth is something deeper, it’s about meaning and feeling. I studied for a summer in the Holy Land several years ago, and our guide regularly told us that if we had come there looking for facts we would leave disappointed, but if we came looking for truth we would find it. Facts, as we have seen recently, aren’t always enough. Our Scriptures, likewise, are not always factual, but they are filled with truth, with meaning, with life lessons told through myth, metaphor, hyperbole, song, prose, and poetry. It might be hard to believe that God factually did all those things in our Bible stories, but it matter that we hold to the truth God that can do them. And there is truth in our Scriptures this week that maybe, just maybe, can send us on our way with some modicum of hope.

That truth is conveyed by two widows, separated by roughly 900 years. The first is caught up in a time of drought and famine. Her household has succumbed, and all that remains is her and her son. There’s not much left, just enough meal and oil to bake one last cake for the two of them to share before they die. She’s met by Elijah, the so-called Man of God, who has the audacity to ask her to make a cake for him first. A bit presumptuous, if you ask me, but the widow has nothing to left to lose. She offers what little she does have, and dips into her jar of meal and jug of oil to make the Man of God’s cake…and then she makes one for herself…and another for her son….and another…and another….for days on end. The jug and jar did not fail. It was all she had, but it was enough. That’s the truth of this story, even if such a miracle is, perhaps, not factual.

An Eastern mosaic of the story of the widow's mite.

We find Jesus today, on the Tuesday before he died, in the temple teaching and preaching. Beware, he warns those gathered, of the scribes, of those who were the entrepreneurs of the religious establishment, a literate class in an illiterate society who, as Jesus puts it, devoured widow’s houses, usually by administering loan agreements and then foreclosing on widows’ property when they couldn't repay the loan.  It just so happens, there in their midst, is another poor widow, who gives two copper coins worth a penny into the general treasury. What an unlikely candidate to be teaching in the temple. Others are certainly considered more powerful, more important, more holy than she, yet it is her faithfulness, her willingness to bring all she’s got, no matter how insufficient it may appear, and in so doing, offer a lesson on the quality of real power, which doesn’t look like the pomposity of the scribes but the humility of this widow. Does it factually make sense that a woman would hand over, as our translation puts it, “everything she had, all she had to live on.” Not really – why would anyone do that? - yet the truth of her story remains, that real power comes not from the top-down or from an abundance of privilege, but from the bottom-up and from self-emptying when it would seem there’s nothing left. The mite of this widow not only blesses her but everyone who witnessed it.

A Greek word so often used in the New Testament is kenosis, which means to empty oneself. Paul uses this word to not only describe what Jesus does on the cross, but also what we are meant to do for one another.  Both of the widows in these stories embody kenosis, they empty themselves. They’ve got no idea what is going to happen, how God might show up – if at all. Yet here, at the end of their ropes, and because they do not fear to lose what little bit they still have left, they can offer it with the slimmest of hopes, that something – anything – might be possible.

What little bit you have right now is enough. As I said on Sunday, even if you feel empty, the fact that you are even here is enough. If all you have is a lament, or even a curse, it’s enough. For this place and this time, it’s enough. I wish that all we have experienced in these latter days had not happened in our time. But as Galdalf reminded Frodo, all we have to decide now is what to do with the time that is given us. I don't know about any of you, but what I intend to do, like those two widows in our stories this week, is give what little I have each day, with the slimmest of hopes that, to quote another prophetic voice from The Lord of the Rings, there is some good left in this world and it is worth fighting for! And I promise you that I will fight and I will preach – with words, when necessary – in the name of the Lord Jesus and all that he lived, died, and rose for, until I have emptied myself of all that I have to give. And it will be my greatest honor to do that by your side.

Samwise Gamgee: hobbit, hero, prophet.

It is important that we acknowledge the grief that is all around us and to honor that every person may be in a different stage of that grief – whether denial, sadness, anger, bargaining, or acceptance. As an aside, for any of you who are not experiencing grief right now, I say, "Thanks be to God!" But for those of us who are, it's important to name it. No doubt the two widows were also grieving for what was going on in their own times. Yet we also know that, to paraphrase Richard Rohr, those who do not transform their grief and pain will transmit it. Hurt people hurt people, after all. We're watching that play out in front of us. Perhaps not today, but some day, together, we will transform this grief and this pain and will steel ourselves to do what we are called to do as followers not of Caesar but of Jesus!

Our Psalm for this past Sunday was Psalm 146 which, in the second verse, says it pretty plainly: "Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them."Our trust is in, again to quote that Psalm, the One who gives justice to those who are oppressed, food to those who hunger, who sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, who cares for the stranger, sustains the orphan and widow, and frustrates the wicked. That is our work and it always has been, and our work does not change. We keep showing up, we keep emptying ourselves, we keep filling one another with the Bread of heaven and Cup of salvation, we keep praying, and we keep letting what we say and do every Sunday inspire us to go out there and live it every single day. The meal and the oil did not fail. The widow’s mite blessed her and those around her immeasurably. Did God really, factually, do these things? Maybe, maybe not. But the truth is God can. And at least for right now, that is enough. 

For All the Saints

In the second act of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, the four remaining lead characters – the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack – come together to sing the show’s penultimate number called No One Is Alone. After the long, arduous journey they’ve been on, each one having experienced tremendous heartache, they try to understand the consequences of the things for which they have wished throughout the show, and they begin to decide to place community wishes over their own. The song itself serves a dual purpose: first, to show that each of the characters’ actions – and by extension our own – are not made in a bubble and that no one is guaranteed to be the protagonist of their own story. And second, the song demonstrates that even when life throws its greatest challenges at us, we do not have to face them alone, that there are still people who love us, believe in us, and are cheering for us.

Red Riding Hood and Cinderella sing their parts of 'No One is Alone' from the 2014 film adaptation of Into the Woods.

I would add, even when we cannot see them. For that is what the Feast of All Saints is about, the companions we have had along our journey through the woods of our own lives, those who showed us the way, who may have gone on to glory, but whose lessons, whose love, whose spirits live on and inspire us to keep going and remember, to borrow the last line of that song: things will come out right now/we can make it so/someone is on your side/no one is alone.

Most of y’all, I suspect, are familiar with the Paschal Triduum, which are the three sacred days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. They are the holiest days in the Christian calendar, marking Jesus’ passing over from death to life. This springtime Triduum of life is mirrored by a Triduum of death in the fall of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which happen on October 31, November 1, and November 2, respectively. They teach us that death is every bit as sacred as life – two sides of the same coin. All Hallows Eve was the day when Christians remembered that death doesn’t have the final say, and thus is not something to be feared, so they dressed up and mocked demons and devils to their faces. All Saints marked the celebration of the apostles and martyrs, confessors and doctors of the church, the big deal folks who have stained glass in their honor and stuff named for them. All Souls, then, was the day to remember everyone else, all the faithful departed. Over time, though, and because All Saints is one of the few major feast days we can move to the following Sunday, All Saints and All Souls got conflated and merged together, while All Hallows Eve became an almost entirely secular holiday that a lot of Christians, if you can believe it, even openly opposed. 

Which is where most of us found ourselves in our churches this pat weekend. All Saints Sunday is not just about remembering the big deal folks, but all those who we love but see no longer. Personally, this day always takes me back to little All Saints Episcopal Church in Norton, VA, a place where the directory is the front and back of one sheet of paper. This place baptized me – along with my mother and sister – they confirmed me, and ordained me – and later my dad. And while they didn’t have a staff or lot of programs, they have lived into their name. Saints that worshiped there included Joe and May Straughn, who sang in the choir, and were the kind of old couple that made you ask, "How are they together?!" but who were madly in love. Frances Herndon, the cantankerous yet faithful altar guild chair who insisted I preach her funeral even before I was ordained. The Rev. Fran McCoy, the finest priest I have ever known - who was so good that I didn't even know men could be priests! - and the one person most responsible for me being one today. And my mother, Susan Mitchell, who I still see in the crowd every place I preach. They are just some of the saints, the companions on the way, the ones who reminded me and many others that none of us is alone, even if now they do so on a far greater shore.

The Rev. Frances J. McCoy, Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Norton, VA

And that is what the saints truly are to us, our companions. That word is taken from the Latin com, meaning “together or with,” and pan, meaning “bread.” Our companions are literally the ones with whom we share bread. And just as your closest companions are the ones you invite to share bread at your dinner table, at the holy Table, Christ brings us together – he who himself is the bread of life, the bread of heaven, the bread that feeds and sustains us. We share this Bread with each other, yes, but when we come forward and reach out our hands we do not do it alone. None of us is alone. The heavenly banquet that we know our loved ones are sharing right now is nothing less than the Eucharist itself. In the great prayer of the Church we hear Jesus’ words to his apostles, echoed through eternity for all the saints, “Do this for the remembrance of me.”  Remember.  We do not partake in this holy meal to simply recall an event in history, no.  We re-member; that is, we become a member again, we reconnect with Christ and with all the saints who partake in this Communion. We reaffirm our place in the communion of saints by the Communion of Christ’s own body and blood.  With those words of his, the lid is blown off of time.  The past is brought into the present, and the eternal is now.  We are tied to all who have ever offered this prayer before us, bound together with all throughout history who have shared the bread and cup.  We are united through the future to the heavenly banquet, where the feasting never ends.  In the midst of that celebrating, while moving beyond time, we are joined by the saints of God right beside us.  Our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, grandchildren, and dear friends.  They are here with us.  We named them on Sunday. And each time we come to the Table we share with them in what Saint Ignatius of Antioch called “the medicine of immortality.”

No one is alone. Salvation is not something we achieve on our own – contrary to popular opinion, we do not go out and “get saved” by ourselves. We pray, we break bread, we study, we grow, we fail, we fall, we repent, we forgive, and we keep moving closer and closer to salvation together. The lives of the saints remind us of that fact. They remind us that no one is alone.  

Sometimes I’m asked why we Episcopalians pray for the dead; after all, they’re fine now because they’re with God. There’s two reasons, really: 1) to remember that, as the prayer says, in death life is changed, not ended, and that those we love are still alive in the presence of God, and 2) because they are praying for us. On that side of the Kingdom is the Church Triumphant, those who have finished their earthly course and have found their triumph and bliss with Christ, and it is their ministry to pray for us here in the Church Militant – a term we use for us here on earth who are still in our struggles. We pray for them because that relationship is not over because it is rooted in love, which is the very nature of God – because if it ain’t about love, it ain’t about God, right? I am fond of reminding folks that love is the most powerful force in the whole universe, it cannot be destroyed by time or space. Love never dies. Love is what unites us, the living to the dead, and reminds us that we are not alone. This day is all about love.

The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c.1365

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blest. And let the church forever say: Alleluia! And Amen.

Lessons in Courage From Bold Bartimaeus

*This post is unchanged from my first sermon at the Church of the Advocate, Chapel Hill on October 27.

'Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.'

--Mark 10: 46-52

When I was in college everyone – and I mean, everyone – knew me as Transformer Joe. Not Baseball Joe, not Theatre Joe, not Episcopal Joe, or even Hillbilly Joe, no, I was only Transformer Joe. You see, word got around that I collected action figures, specifically Transformers, and folks would even come to my dorm room to get a tour of what at that time was a modest collection. I was asked to write a piece for the school paper, and when my roommate told someone that he roomed with Joe Mitchell they asked, “Who?” but when he told them Transformer Joe they said, “Oh you room with Transformer Joe?” It’s kind of bummer only being known for one quality or aspect of who you are. Even now I’d like to think that I’m more than Transformer Joe or Father Joe or whatever. We’re all more than just one thing.

Some things never change.

Bartimaeus of Jericho is, like many characters in the stories of Scriptures, often remembered for one thing: being blind. Among scholars, clergy, and kids in Sunday School he’s known as, you guessed it, Blind Bartimaeus. And that’s really not fair because Bartimaeus is much, much more than this particular physical trait. He displays a level of courage that I suspect is Good News for all of us, and his witness helps us, too, remember that more than one thing defines who we are.

We should point out that Bartimaeus is not a person folks would’ve immediately been inspired by. He’s got three strikes against him as soon as we meet him: he’s blind, he’s a beggar, and even his name is unflattering – Bar-timmaeus, “son of Timaeus,” literally means “son of the defiled or unclean.” Yet as is often the case in the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the most incredible acts of faith, hope, and charity come from the most unlikely of individuals. 

So here is Bartimaeus, sitting on the side of the dirt road in Jericho, a pit stop on the way to Jerusalem. Jesus and his followers are coming through town on their way to the Passover celebration, in fact, the very next event in Mark’s Gospel after this encounter is Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem for Palm Sunday. Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is coming through, and we get his first courageous act: he shouts, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” What’s so courageous about that? It's a political declaration. It heralds Jesus as the Messiah, the heir to the throne of David. Even though he’s blind, Bartimaeus sees what others can’t, he sees with eyes that know God has arrived and God will act. The folks around him want him to hush up. “Stop saying things like that or you’re gonna get us all into a whole mess of trouble!” It’s an act of sedition. Rome don’t take too kindly to folks declaring that someone besides Caesar is in charge, after all. But he shouts again at the very top of his lungs, proclaiming Jesus’ sovereignty and asking for the most basic gift one person can give another: mercy.

There’s boldness in Bartimaeus – maybe Bold Bartimaeus suits him better, you still have the alliteration! Jesus hears him. Let that sink in for moment. Jesus hears the bold declarations of a blind beggar and tells the very folks who were trying to get him to shut up to bring him closer. Then Jesus asks one of my favorite questions, one he doesn’t ask anyone else: what do you want me to do for you? Hoo-boy! What do you do with that?! How would you answer that, or how would I? Peace in the Holy Land? An end to the patriarchy? A direct, pointed question that only Bartimaeus can answer.

An African icon of Bartimaeus being led to Jesus by the folks who told him to keep quiet.

He says, “Let me see again.” What’s interesting here is that the Greek better translates to “That I may receive sight.” So whether Bartimaeus has been physically blind from birth or not, we can’t really know, but we do know that Scripture always has multiple levels of meaning. Yes, he is asking to physically see, but his request is one that the very people who first received this Gospel prayed: let us see what is going on in the world around us and respond to it. Mark’s Gospel was written around the year 70, when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and Rome sacked the city, leaving believers in the God of Abraham bereft and lost. What do we do now? How can we see a path forward in the midst of such misery? “Let me see again,” Bartimaeus pleads, along with every lost and fearful person who first heard this story proclaimed in the town squares.

And here’s the best part. Jesus doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t speak a magic word like when he healed the mute person two chapters earlier. He doesn’t make mud from the dirt and spread it on Bartimaeus’ eyes like he does for another blind person in John, chapter 9. Jesus tells him that his faith has made him well, not any outward gesture from Jesus. His faith, his hope, his charity - another word for love -  of God is what gives Bartimaeus the courage to proclaim what he knows is true about Jesus, to step forward and plead his case before God, and receive healing, in every sense of that word.

Then, and perhaps this is most important, he follows Jesus. Our text says he followed him on “the way.” That’s a lower case ‘w,’ in case you were wondering, but we could just as easily make it uppercase; because the Way was, after all, what the Jesus Movement was originally called, and the folks we call Christians were first known as Followers of the Way. Bartimaeus doesn’t treat Jesus as a kind of cosmic vending machine to whom he makes a request, gets his prize, and then moves on. He is transformed by the encounter, made a new creation, and because of that he cannot help but follow this Way of Jesus, all the way to Jerusalem, to the cross and to resurrection. To think of him simply as Blind Bartimaeus, really doesn’t do him justice, does it?

Bold Bartimaeus knew he was more than just one thing. How about you, folks of the Advocate? What stirs you enough to make a scene like this blind beggar on the side of the road? What are your blind spots, and where do you need to have your sight restored? What could it be that your faith has already healed, you just don’t know it yet? As with Bartimaeus, a new path, a new road, has been opened at the Advocate, and we will walk it together. We too will boldly proclaim the sovereignty of Jesus above all others. We too will seek justice for those who have strikes thrown against them by systems of oppression and those who collaborate to maintain them. We will remind every person that it isn’t just one thing that defines them, and as we pray for our own faith, hope, and love to increase, we will put each of those qualities into action to be sure the world knows what Jesus himself proclaimed when we first began Mark’s Gospel almost a year ago: that the Kingdom of God has come near! He will be there, Jesus will, every step, asking us those same questions – like, “What do you want me to do for you?” – and together we will live into those questions as we follow him on the Way. 

Transformers One (For the Ages)

Please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good...

This is a long one folks, and filled with SPOILERS. Buckle up!

Is Transformers One my favorite movie in the franchise? No. That honor will always go to the 1986 animated classic due to the nostalgia factor alone. It is, though, the best movie in the franchise, and it's not really close. Nearly every aspect of it is flawless, from the casting and story to the animation and musical score. In this blog post I'll be spoiling the daylights out of this film, with details on how Transformers One came into existence, the story it tells, and my thoughts on what makes it the best Transformers film that has ever been produced.

In the Beginning

It’s worth discussing how a film like Transformers One came to be. In 2010 Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, in whose memory this very film is dedicated, came up with a plan to take the toy company and make it an entertainment juggernaut. The first step was the creation of the Hub, Hasbro’s own children’s tv network created in partnership with the Discovery Channel. The centerpiece of that new network was the brand-new animated series, Transformers: Prime.

Poster for the premiere of Transformers: Prime on the Hub.

Prime was to be the first tv show in a new, Aligned continuity that would span not just the small screen, but novels, comic books, video games, and even theatrical releases. Two prequel stories, one a novel – Exodus – and the other a video game – War for Cybertron – had been released in the summer of 2010 in anticipation of the debut of Prime on tv screens that fall. The show was a big hit, and plans were underway for a new animated movie that would detail the history of Cybertron even further. 

But those plans never came to fruition. The reason: too many chefs in the kitchen. Hasbro had outsourced different pieces of this new continuity to various companies and creative talent, nearly all of whom were on different pages. Case in point: the Exodus novel and War for Cybertron game, while both prequels to Prime, couldn’t agree on the order of events or the names of characters. The Aligned Continuity, the grand plan for a multimedia-expanded universe that would not only include the Transformers but a whole host of other Hasbro properties, was scrapped. Even though some series continued, the Hub network was dropped in 2014. Though it is not the same film that was originally pitched, Transformers One ends up drawing a great deal of inspiration from the Aligned continuity, so it's important to acknowledge that link.

The Paramount Writers Room

The first three live action Transformers films from director Michael Bay were each a huge success. Were they good films? Sweet Primus, no!! But they made a whole lot of straight cash homie! That is, until the fourth installment, Age of Extinction, in 2014. The lowest grossing film of the franchise at that time, it prompted Paramount to bring together several writers to create stories for the live action movies that would pump some life into them and propel the franchise into an ever-evolving film industry that was getting further away from the machismo of Bay’s original entry in 2007.

The writers room developed several ideas, including a film set in World War II, one in which the Autobots made contact with King Arthur in ancient Britain, another with Optimus Prime turned into the villain, and one that would feature the monster planet Unicron from the 1986 animated film. Those all sounded like good ideas, which is why every single one of them got shoved into 2017’s The Last Knight, an incoherent mess of a film that marked Michael Bay’s final stint in the director’s chair.

Poster from The Last Knight, showing one of the bots alongside the army of King Arthur.

But three other films were also proposed in that room. The first was a solo movie focusing on the adventures of Bumblebee, who had become the face of the franchise with his reintroduction in the live action series. The second was a live action adaptation of the popular Beast Wars series from the mid-1990s. Each of these would get made into their own films, in 2018 and 2023, respectively. Controversy surrounded whether or not they fell in line with the continuity of Bay’s films, but both proved successful enough at the box office that Paramount and Hasbro decided to pursue a third idea from that writers room, one that had first been pitched during the days of the Aligned continuity: an animated prequel set on Cybertron. 

Please Don’t Hurt Me

My initial reaction to hearing about this new film was a big ole “Meh.” Rise of the Beasts, while solid in some ways, had disappointed me to the extent that I was convinced that no matter who was writing, directing, or starring, the studio and its brass would never, ever let us be free of Michael Bay’s influence on the franchise. Just focus on the stories in the comics and tv shows, I said, and let the films rest for a while. A long while, I’d hoped. 

In my review of Rise of the Beasts I mentioned that I had “been hurt too much” by this franchise, so even a cautious optimism seemed risky. It didn’t help when someone took to the Transformers interwebs shortly after seeing some early test footage of this new movie and not only tried to recreate from memory the designs for this film’s version of Optimus Prime and Megatron but also shared how the plot, as far as they could tell, involved yet another McMuffin hunt – IYKYK – this time for the transformation cog (singular). It sounded bad and looked even worse. See for yourself:

Yikes! (Image courtesy of Seibertron.com).

It did not inspire confidence. No.

Too Good to Be True?

An unnecessary Rolling Stones insert song notwithstanding, the very first trailer had me excited. The voice talent sounded good. The tone was lighthearted, but that was to be expected from an animated film. Maybe there was something to this.

The second trailer had me hooked. Brian Tyler’s fantastic score rang out, and I got the goosebumps. This might work. This might actually work. Slowly early reviews came in. They were filled with praise. Even online Transformers fans, known for being among the pickiest and most miserable in all of nerd culture, loved it. Could it really be this good? Maybe those early reviews were folks handpicked by the studio to watch it and give it praise. Maybe the final product would have interference by Paramount like it seemed all these films did. Maybe there will be some message at the beginning stating explicitly that this was the official prequel story for Michael Bay’s films because those bastards simply won’t die! And then I saw it for myself.

The Story

Orion Pax and D-16

The film opens on what we later learn is the city of Iacon. We follow a young bot named Orion Pax, who is searching through the Cybertronian archives for information on the legendary Primes, the first lifeforms created by the deity known as Primus, who had sacrificed his physical existence to become the planet Cybertron. The Thirteen Primes represented various aspects of Cybertronian life, and together they governed the planet and protected its people and the essential element known as energon, which fueled all life on the planet. But the Primes, according to Orion’s research, had been defeated in battle by the invading Quintessons, and their greatest artifact, the Matrix of Leadership, had been lost. The archival footage ended with a familiar refrain for Orion, that without the Matrix, energon could no longer flow naturally throughout the planet.

When a pair of security bots spot Orion we learn that he is not an archivist – as earlier depictions of Orion Pax in various comics and tv shows had been – but instead he’s an energon miner, part of one of the lowest castes of Cybertronians, who doesn’t even possess a transformation cog and therefore the ability to transform. 

Orion evades the security bots with the help of his best friend, D-16, who is also a miner and a great admirer of Megatronus Prime, one of the original Thirteen. Knowing this, Orion had swiped from the archives a decal of Megatronus’ face for his friend to wear as a kind of tattoo. Wanna guess what it looks like…

When the pair arrive at their mining job we meet their supervisor, Elita-One, who is unceremoniously bumped down to an even lower position in waste management after a mining accident caused by Orion Pax nearly kills a fellow miner named Jazz. Orion is disappointed, but there’s little time for any sorrows because a message was coming over the datanet from Sentinel Prime, the leader of Cybertron and inheritor of the lineage of the original Primes. Sentinel explains that he has been on an expedition on the planet’s surface to retrieve the Matrix, but his efforts have been in vain. Nevertheless, he calls for a day of rest and relaxation, as the biggest sports entertainment event on Cybertron was just one day away: the Iacon 5000! Do I detect Caesar calling for more games while Rome burns??

This guy doesn't look shady at all.

Orion Pax has an idea. Why not enter the race and show the rest of Cybertron that mining bots are more than meets the eye, more than a bunch of workers who have no other lot in life, who can’t even transform their bodies or dream of being something besides what society had told them they should be. If they could beat just one Transformer, Orion tells D-16, they’d be legends, and maybe would even inspire some real change within Cybertronian society. 

But D-16 wants no part of it. He likes order, structure, and maintaining his place. Earlier, when Orion had stood up for Elita after she was fired, D-16 had stopped him, only to be punched by the bigger, bossier Darkwing. “He had every right to hit me,” D-16 later admits, “I broke protocol.” 

Orion, however, dreams of something more than an existence of simply following protocol, so the next day he arranges for D-16 and himself to enter the Iacon 5000 using jet packs! D-16 literally goes kicking and screaming, telling his friend, “If we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill you!” Orion, for his part, accepts those terms.

Orion Pax and D-16 in the Iacon 5000 thanks to their mining jet packs.

After a thrilling racing sequence that features a boatload of cameos from older Transformers series, the two miner bots very nearly win the race, but are hampered when Orion stops to help D-16, who has injured his leg. The transforming racers, including Darkwing, pass them by, and they come in last.

Their antics, though, inspire Sentinel Prime. It’s been 50 cycles – an indeterminant amount of time by our standards – since the Quintessons left Cybertron and the Matrix disappeared. Without the Matrix and the ability to restore naturally flowing energon, bots like Orion and D-16 will need to work even harder to mine the energon necessary for Cybertron to go on living. He wants the two of them to go on a kind of celebrity tour of the mines, inspiring hope and enthusiasm in their fellow workers, that they will do their part to promote the success of this huge machine that is the planet Cybertron. Orion and D-16 are thrilled that their hero thinks so highly of them, but before they even take it all in, Darkwing arrives to bust them all the way down to the lowest level of the Cybertronian workforce: garbage-smelting.

There in sub-level 50 – which no one even knows exists – they meet B-127, a small but chatty bot who seems to be making up for the lack of actual bot-to-bot interaction by talking the pair’s ears off. B-127 introduces them to his other coworkers, the very-much-not-alive A-A-Tron and "Steve", bots that B-127 has created using the garbage that he collects and with whom he has imaginary conversations. 

B-127, the bot we know better as Bumblebee (or Badassatron).

Orion notices a small signaling device that falls off of "Steve" after his head gets detached from his body. It contains a message from Alpha Trion, one of the Thirteen Primes, along with a location beacon. This, Orion believes, could be the location of the Matrix of Leadership. If they could get it to Sentinel, they’d be heroes. D-16 and B-127 are in.

The trio manage to hop a cargo train to the surface, along with Elita, who joins the adventure against her will. For the first time in their lives they see the surface of Cybertron, which is constantly shifting and transforming itself. They pass through the Sonic Canyons and observe strange, almost organic life, including turbo deer. They also spot a huge Quintesson ship. But how can this be, if they left Cybertron 50 cycles ago?

Following the beacon, they come upon a cave in a region that fans will recognize as the Manganese Mountains. Inside they discover the bodies of the Primes, long dead after the final battle. However, they find that Alpha Trion’s spark is still online, and after giving him some energon, they awaken the ancient Prime, who informs them that everything they think they know is a lie.

Alpha Trion, the lone survivor among the 13 Primes.

Sentinel, he reveals, is not the inheritor of the Prime lineage, but rather an imposter who had previously worked with the Primes but who led them into an ambush at the hands of the Quintessons so that he could rule Cybertron as their puppet. Once the group sees Sentinel kneel before a Quintesson enforcer and turn over all of the energon that they mined to the alien invaders, they each react with enormous sadness and disappointment. Orion Pax, though devastated, tries to come up with a plan for revealing the truth to their fellow Cybertronians and stopping Sentinel.

D-16, however, is filled with rage. He doesn’t just want to stop Sentinel, he wants to kill him, to humiliate him, to march him through the mines and let him die in darkness. With everything he believes shattered, D-16 can see nothing but his anger and is ready to burn the whole world down to assuage it.

Alpha Trion notices the lack of transformation cogs in the chests of the young bots, who explain that becaue they are miners, they were born without cogs. The old Prime informs them that every son and daughter of Cybertron is born with a transformation cog, born with the ability to change themselves and, by extension, their world. Sentinel had had them removed before the bots came online, thus creating the caste system that perpetually kept him in power, forcing Cybertronians to remain stuck in their lot, never able to move beyond the place he had put them.

Using some of his remaining power, Alpha Trion bestows on Orion Pax, D-16, B-127, and Elita-One the transformation cogs from four of the original Primes: Prima, Alchemist, Micronus, and Onyx. With the power to transform, the young bots have the ability to change not only themselves but the future of Cybertron.

Our heroes with their transformation cogs restored.

Sentinel’s forces track them down and attack the cave, capturing Alpha Trion as the others escape. Outside, they quickly go through the pains of learning how to transform, but they soon get the hang of it, especially D-16, who uses his new tank mode to blast away one of Sentinel’s Death Tracker bots before it can hurt Orion and Elita. Laughing with glee at the kill, D-16 is ready to turn the full force of his new powers on Sentinel, though Orion cautions him to back off a little. They need a plan, but D-16 is having none of it.

Eventually the four bots come upon an encampment of Transformers that we learn was once the High Guard. These warriors had served the Primes and witnessed Sentinel’s betrayal, and now they fight from the shadows to thwart him at every turn. They include Shockwave, Soundwave, Starscream, and a host of flying bots that fans know very well as the Seekers. 

D-16 tries to walk away but is stopped by Starscream, who informs him that the only thing that matters is the strength of one bot against another. Taking up the challenge, D-16 beats the would-be leader of the High Guard into submission, vowing that this will be the last time he shows mercy. He calls upon them to join him in a raid on Sentinel’s fortress in Iacon, while Orion looks on in horror, watching his friend sink deeper and deeper into rage and madness.

Soundwave, Starscream, and Shockwave.

An attack by Sentinel’s chief lieutenant Airachnid results in D-16, B-127, and Starscream getting captured. Dejected, Orion Pax is ready to give up, convined now that D-16 was right, that only force will beat Sentinel. He had hoped they would be able to show the people the truth, courtesy of a recording given to them by Alpha Trion, but the recording was destroyed, and now there appears to be no hope. Elita reminds him that while she may be better at him in every way, the one thing she doesn’t have is his optimism. It’s that hope for a brighter future that inspires others. She even recalls the incident in which he saved Jazz – an incident that got her fired – and how that reckless disregard for protocol is actually what makes him special. Her pep talk completed, Elita rallies Orion, who calls together the remaining members of the High Guard. They will follow their captive friends to Iacon, share the truth with the people, and defeat Sentinel. Orion’s first order is to “Transform and roll out!”

Back in Iacon, Sentinel gloats to his captives, including D-16. He rips off the Megatronus decal from his shoulder and forcibly welds it to D-16’s chest, while also revealing that after killing Megatronus Prime, he stole his transformation cog. D-16 refuses to yield, but Sentinel continues to beat him.

Meanwhile, Orion Pax visits his fellow miners. He calls them together, encouraging them to stand up for themselves, for a brighter future. Nothing can stop them, he says, if they stand as one. Familiar faces like Jazz, Ironhide, and Arcee cheer Orion Pax and chant his name. They will fight for their autonomy and that of the rest of Cybertron.

Jazz, as he's shown in Transformers One.

With Elita and the High Guard’s help, Orion and the rest of the miners launch an assault on Sentinel’s forces. Orion saves D-16, but his friend has no time for gratitude, as he sets his sights on killing Sentinel. With the false Prime eventually cornered, D-16 takes out his new fusion canon and is prepared to blast Sentinel, but Orion jumps in front of the shot, blowing half his body apart and causing him to fall off the side of a ledge. D-16 manages to grab his friend’s hand, but after realizing that Orion will always be there to get in his way, D-16 coldly says, “I’m tired of saving you!” and drops his friend down a shaft, just as his eyes permanently turn red.

As Orion falls through the different levels of Cybertron, D-16 rips Sentinel in half and steals Megatronus’ transformation cog from his body. He declares the age of Primes is over and calls on everyone to burn down the last remnants of Sentinel’s deceit. He renames himself Megatron and bids the gathered masses to rise up in a violent mob under his rule.

D-16 becomes Megatron.

Meanwhile, Orion’s near-lifeless body drifts through Cybertron until it comes into contact with the planet’s core, Primus himself. The voice of Alpha Trion speaks as the visages of the other 12 Primes surround Orion. He has been deemed worthy by Primus, Alpha Trion says, to inherit the very thing that Sentinel sought but could never obtain: the Matrix of Leadership. With the Matrix placed in his chest, Orion’s body begins to heal, and his destiny is laid out. In a scene reminiscent of the climax of the original The Transformers: The Movie, the voice of Alpha Trion speaks, “Arise, Optimus Prime!”

Orion Pax is granted the Matrix and becomes Optimus Prime.

The newly christened Prime returns to Iacon and meets his former friend. After lamenting that the bot formerly known as D-16 had chosen to destroy Cybertron the same way Sentinel did, Optimus Prime engages in his first battle with Megatron. Thanks to the Matrix, Optimus proves victorious and banishes Megatron, along with the High Guard, to the surface of Cybertron. “This isn’t over…Prime!” Megatron snarls before retreating.

Using the Matrix, Optimus Prime restores not only the naturally flowing energon to the planet but also the transformation cogs of all the miners who had had them removed. Now, with the power to transform their world, and filled with the burning desire to expel the Quintessons from their home once and for all, these autonomous robots – Autobots – roll out with Optimus Prime taking the lead. As they do so, in a dark region of the surface, Megatron uses the face of his namesake, Megatronus Prime, as a brand on the members of the High Guard that have chosen to follow him. They will not be deceived by this new Prime, for they are Decepticons, and they will rise up!

Themes

I said at the start of this review that this was the best Transformers theatrical release. The best, Jerry! How dare I make such a bold claim? It comes down to one particular aspect of the film:

Relationship. 

The very best stories are ones that get at the heart of the human condition, primarily the relational component. For all of its winks and nods to 40 years’ worth of Transformers history and lore, this film is first and foremost the story of a relationship between two best friends – D-16 and Orion Pax – and the slow, agonizing journey that they take to becoming bitter enemies. 

We can see the joy and enthusiasm shared by the two bots in the early goings, as they joke with each other and promise to always have the other’s back. When D-16 receives the Megatronus sticker you can see the gratitude that he feels, and later when he is moved by Orion’s gesture of securing them the perfect seats for the Iacon 5000, he asks, “You did this for me?” and Orion replies, “No. I did this for us.” The audience knows where this is going, and it’s painful to watch.

They are a team. Brothers. And throughout the film you can’t help but wish that D-16 won’t go down this road, even though we all know that he is destined to do so. Against every rational thought, you find yourself rooting for D-16, and even when the truth of Sentinel’s betrayal comes to light, you hope that he won’t let his rage take him to a place from which he cannot return. It’s not unlike the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith. Despite knowing that he must don the black suit and become Darth Vader, we are still somehow wishing and hoping that he won’t. 

Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Image courtesy of Google.

When the dust settles, though, and you look back at their friendship, the seeds for D-16’s fall are there from the start. He’s a fascist, one who believes that order is the way of things, that everything works as long as protocol is followed, and that if it isn’t, everything will collapse into chaos and confusion. Repeatedly he chastises Orion for dragging him on this adventure, and even when he learns of what Sentinel has done, his immediate reaction is to blame Orion for making him break protocol, certain that to have lived a stagnant life as forced labor and never knowing the truth was a much better fate than this new reality he is seeing with open optics. Naturally, when he gets his hands on Sentinel, the now-Megatron replaces the former Prime’s brand of tyranny with his own. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.

Transformers One is a Greek tragedy, a tale as old as time. Both Orion Pax and D-16 are flawed – the former is impulsive to the point of recklessness, and the latter is committed to the lie that rigid obedience will keep everyone, himself included, safe – but when the two of them are faced with a truth that undoes their whole reality, Orion pivots to a position of “OK, this is really happening, now what do we do about it?” whereas D-16 can only rage against the injustice done to him personally. One sees the bigger pictue, while the other only sees how he is being affected. That place of stuckness is the only thing that feels safe to D-16, and once he shows his strength by defeating Starscream and capturing the loyalty of the High Guard, there’s clearly nothing his old friend can say to bring him back. As Optimus says to him before their first battle, “It didn’t have to be this way.”

While Transformers One isn’t the first story to postulate that Optimus Prime and Megatron were friends before the war, it’s the only one that has this level of humanity to it. Take, for example, the novel Exodus, in which Megatron is a miner turned gladiator, who uses his popularity in the arena to propel himself to a position where he can denounce the unjust caste system that has kept Cybertronians bound to their lot in life. Orion Pax, who is not a miner in this story but a data clerk, agrees with Megatron’s goal but disagrees with his methods. They’re more like colleagues than friends, so when Orion is named the new Prime Megatron’s betrayal isn’t especially tragic, you sort of expect it once Orion Pax ceases to be of use to him. 

Pre-war Orion Pax and Megatronus from Transformers: Prime.

That’s not the case here. We see two bots that have worked, laughed, and cried together. Theirs is a familial relationship, and anyone who has ever felt the heartbreak of losing a best friend or loved one to their inner demons of rage and pain can relate to what we see happen to Orion and D-16. As Robert Frost once coined, “the only way out is through,” and that is something that Orion Pax understands, that D-16 can never grasp. It’s something anyone who has been through trauma understands, and it is extremely well done here. D-16 and Orion Pax encapsulate what Fr. Richard Rohr means when he talks about we either "transform our pain or transmit it." True to the name of the franchise, Orion Pax can transform his experiences of pain and loss and see even the glimmer of a possibility that things could be different, while D-16 unleashes the pain caused by Sentinel onto the rest of Cybertron, the endless war that has characterized the robots in disguise for the last 40 years.

Yet it’s not just the relationship between Orion and D-16 that makes this film so good, but it is also the character of Sentinel Prime and his relationship to the citizens of Cybertron under his rule. The first mention of Sentinel Prime was in the Marvel stories published in the UK, which listed him as the immediate predecessor to Optimus Prime. Years later, Transformers Animated offered a new take on the character, one who was self-centered and always looking to seize glory for himself. This version influenced the depiction of Sentinel Prime in the live action film Dark of the Moon two years later, in which the former Autobot leader betrays his student Optimus and becomes the film’s primary antagonist. Since then, Sentinel Prime is most often portrayed as an ego-driven despot, one who will do anything to maintain order on Cybertron and keep his position of power. In this film we see what happens when the masses turn to Sentinel as a savior, one who is nothing but a charlatan that will do anything to retain his power, including cozying up to the enemies of his own people (sound familiar??). He's a character that stands as a textbook example of a narcissist, and the disillusionment that the people of Cybertron experience when his treachery is revealed makes it that much easier for them to fall for the strong-willed fascist that D-16 becomes. It's not hard to see how Sentinel's arrogance leads to the impending war that will devastate his world, not unlike the Weimar Republic that gave way to Hitler or the current landscape of geopolitics that is seeing a surge in authoritarian regimes.

(L-R) The Sentinel Primes of Transformers: Animated and Dark of the Moon.

The Sentinel Prime of this film draws heavily off the Animated and Dark of the Moon versions. Still, it’s not simply his motivation to gain power for himself that makes him interesting, it’s the lengths to which he goes. By removing the transformation cogs from a sizable portion of the Cybertronian population, Sentinel not only creates the caste system, but he robs these bots of the ability to transform, to be autonomous and self-reliant. He takes away any future that they may create for themselves. It’s a fate far crueler than what many other villains in the franchise have done because he has orchestrated everything in such a way that no one even knows the truth. The ignorance these bots live with is every bit as cruel as the slavery imposed by Sentinel’s Quintesson masters. While I knew that Sentinel would play a big role in the film – perhaps even be the main villain – I never expected him to be THIS evil. Jon Hamm absolutely nails the character, and I’d put this version of Sentinel up there with some of the best bad guys in Transformers history, alongside my favorite, Beast Machines Megatron who, like Sentinel, creates a Cybertron totally under his control and steals the freewill of its citizens in the process. 

Fascist. (Megatron from Beast Machines)

Visually the film is gorgeous. Seeing Cybertron teeming with life, bright and vibrant, was something I wasn’t sure I would ever see on a big screen. The busy-ness of Iacon is mirrored by the quiet of the surface, which itself is colorful and lush in ways we have never seen Cybertron before. I’ve long been a proponent of hand-drawn, 2D animation over CGI, but the job done by Industrial Light and Magic here was exceptional. It’s a very different style to the 1986 film, which is to be expected. I can’t say it’s better, but I can say that for a 21st century piece of Transformers animation, it is among the very best. 

Cybertron's surface, complete with wildlife.

Brian Tyler’s music holds the same level of gravitas as Steve Jablonsky's scores for the five Bay films. Tyler had previously been the composer for  Transformers: Prime, and he even uses the motifs in that show’s main theme at various times here, especially in the Tomb of the Primes. Can he be compared to Vince DiCola and his work on  The Transformers: The Movie? No. Mostly because that score was a product of its time, with uniquely 1980s synth tracks that were meant to excite and move you. Tyler’s music, however, is more in keeping with the sweeping, epic movie scores from folks like Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore. I may not put it on my workout playlist like I have Vince’s music, but for a score meant to evoke the awe-inspiring rise of one of the greatest heroes in modern fiction, it works really well. I wouldn’t be mad if we got more of Brian Tyler’s music in future Transformers stories.

A Love Letter to the Franchise

Transformers One somehow does the impossible. It manages to be a unique story while tipping its hat to nearly every single element of the 40-year history of the Transformers.  It could serve as a prequel to almost any Transformers series that has existed (if you squint hard enough!). This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are just some of the easter eggs and series that were referenced in this film:

• Generation One Cartoon

• A whole lotta stuff!!
• "More Than Meets the Eye" is the title of the mini-series that began the show.
• The city of Iacon appears in the pilot mini-series.
• The  Quintessons are introduced in the 1986 film.
• Autobots starting as worker bots and Decepticons starting as warriors.
• Transformation cogs played key roles in two episodes in the show's third season.
• Optimus Prime's younger self is called Orion Pax

Orion Pax's first appearance in the 1985 episode War Dawn.

• Marvel Comics

• The Matrix is first introduced in the early issues of the comics, though it is very different.
• Prima, the very first Transformer, is introduced in the comics.
• Megatron starts the war.
• Sentinel Prime is Optimus’ predecessor, killed by Megatron.
• Primus is both the creator of the Transformers and the core of Cybertron.

Primus at the core of Cybertron in issue #60 of the original Marvel Comics.

• Generation One toys

• B-127’s battle mask looks like the original Bumblebee toy’s face.
• The miners' designs resemble the Action Masters, Transformers that couldn't transform.
• Orion's fake "transform" is a nod to how the original Optimus toy turned into a truck.
• D-16 was the designation for the original Megatron toy in Japan.

Megatron's original Japanese toy with the D-16 designation.

• Generation 2

• Darkwing's appearance resembles is G2 incarnation.
• Several of the Iacon 5000 participants have names that first appeared in G2.
• Liege Maximo, one of the Thirteen Primes, is first introduced in the G2 comics.
• Megatron’s tank alt mode was first introduced in the G2 comics and toyline.

Generation 2 Megatron (1994), the first example of the character transforming into a tank.

• Beast Wars/Beast Machines

•  The spark – a Transformer’s life force – is first mentioned in Beast Wars.
• Orion’s journey to the core of Cybertron is visiually similar to a scene from Beast Machines.
• The idea of Cybertron having any (techno) organic life originates in Beast Machines.

Technorganic life on Cybertron in the finale of Beast Machines.

• The Unicron Trilogy

• The Iacon 5000 is similar to the Velocitron Speedia 500.
• Primus’ transformation is almost identical to his Cybertron toy.
• Vector Prime, one of the Thirteen, is first introduced in Galaxy Force (aka Cybertron).

Vector Prime from Galaxy Force/Cybertron.

• Dreamwave Comics

• Primus’ robot mode is lifted from Dreamwave's The Ultimate Guide.
• The concept of the Thirteen original Transformers, though never named, originates here.
• Megatronus Prime - then only known as The Fallen - was created by Dreamwave.

First appearance of The Fallen (later retconned as Megatronus Prime) from The War Within: The Dark Ages.

• IDW Comics

• Megatron begins life as a miner named D-16.
• Sentinel kills his predecessor to become Prime.
• Orion Pax falls through Cybertron and is granted the Matrix by Primus.

Orion Pax becomes Optimus Prime from Autocracy #9.

• Animated

• Sentinel Prime’s design draws heavily from this series.
• Orion Pax’s design resembles Optimus Prime’s pre-Earth form.

Optimus in his pre-earth form (with Sentinel and Elita-One) in the episode Along Came a Spider.

• Aligned Continuity

• Orion Pax and Megatron were friends before the war.
• Sentinel’s Death Trackers robots in this film look just like the Vehicons from Prime.
• Sentinel creates the caste system.
• The Quintessons occupy Cybertron after the deaths of the Primes.
• Megatron takes his name from Megatronus Prime.
• All Thirteen Primes are finally named in The Covenant of Primus.
• The Seekers begin as Sentinel’s guard in the Exodus novel.
• Airachnid is first introduced in Prime.

Airachnid's first appearance in the episode Predatory.

• Live Action Movies

• Sentinel’s betrayal is similar to Dark of the Moon.
• This film jokes about wishing B-127 (Bumblebee) would shut up (he was mute in live action).
• The Fallen/Megatronus' face is the basis for the Decepticon symbol.

Teaser poster for 2009's Revenge of the Fallen.

And so, so much more!!

Nobody’s Perfect

With everything about Transformers One that I love, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out a few things that I wish had been done better. 

Even though high-profile actors have been used in animated features for decades, I still wish that studios would use actual voice actors for these roles. It isn’t just because these folks are seldom given such a big spotlight, it’s that they’re better at it than regular actors. There’s a cadence and style to a voice actor that folks who are accustomed to being in front of a camera simply don’t have. Chris Hemsworth’s portrayal of Orion Pax and Brian Tyree Henry’s D-16 are great – I’d argue that Henry’s portrayal steals the show – yet there still seems like there could’ve been room for real voice actors in this thing. Only one Transformers voice actor alum is in this film – Steve Blum – and even though he has played several high profile characters like Starscream, he is only used for a couple of throwaway lines by background characters here. It would have been nice to hear some of the surviving original Generation One cartoon voices, such as Dan Gilvezan (Bumbelebee), Michael Bell (Prowl), or Corey Burton (Shockwave). I’m not saying that they had to get Frank Welker and Peter Cullen to reprise their roles as Megatron and Optimus Prime at the end, but having met several of these voice actors over the years, I would’ve appreciated hearing them again. Not many of them are left, after all.

Dan Gilvezan, the original Bumblebee.

Honestly, I thought the film was too short. I realize that it had to be under two hours for the sake of not losing the attention of its target audience, but I would’ve liked about 10 more minutes to show where things were headed after the overthrow of Sentinel Prime. Perhaps a proper introductions for characters like Ironhide, Hound, Sidesweipe and other miners who become the first Autobots.

I could've done without Chris Hemsworth giving a "sounding off" message from Optimus Prime at the end. Not because it was bad, but because it is something that Peter Cullen did for each of the Bay films. The Bumblebee movie discarded the tradition, but it was brought back for Rise of the Beasts, though it was a last-minute decision by the studio to link that film back to the Bay ones.  It again felt like something Paramount wanted, but it instead sounded like Hemsworth doing an impression of Peter Cullen's final narration from the first live action film. Considering there were two additional scenes during and after the credits, it seemed like it could've either been dropped completely or rewritten.

And while I know it’s a nit-pick, this is my blog and I can say what I want, so I’ll just say this: can we PLEASE have the original transformation sound in a movie?! Bumblebee gave it to us in limited quantity, and this one had a slight nod to it with Prime's transformation at the very end, but it could've been used so much more here. It's iconic, and I personally feel that it enhances the experience of every piece of Transformers visual media, especially animation. C’mon, Paramount!

Final Thoughts

The original 1986 animated movie will always hold a special place in my heart. You still can’t beat that soundtrack or animation. The journey of Hot Rod from reckless cavalier to Rodimus Prime is still inspiring, but at the end of the day the story itself is a rehash of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces (just like Star Wars), and the film exists to make way for new toys on the shelves by killing off “old product” that kids had come to regard as faithful characters. It was way ahead of its time, though no one knew it back then. I love it and believe it to be a better film than some would think, but it is still little more than “an 86-minute toy commercial”, as critic Leonard Maltin called it.

Rodimus Prime's first appearance in 1986's The Transformers: The Movie.

The excitement I felt in 2007 leading up to the first live action movie can never be replicated. I followed every step of the making of that film, including reading the first draft of the script a year and a half before it premiered! While I was thrilled by Optimus Prime rolling into the final battle against Megatron set to Steve Jablonsky’s incredible score, I came away disappointed that the Transformers themselves were little more than props in their own movie. It was a worthy effort, but it still fell short of capturing what made the Transformers such memorable characters in the first place. 

Optimus Prime in the first live action film from 2007.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth films…..the less said about them the better.

Bumblebee helped redeem the franchise from a live action movie perspective. It’s the story of discovering who you are, as both the title character and Charlie Watson have to overcome their trauma to find their true selves. I loved it, and I still believe it is the best of the live action entries. For more, click here to read my blog post on Bumblebee.

Charlie Watson and the title character from 2018's Bumblebee.

Rise of the Beasts was ambitious, trying to serve as a Beast Wars movie, a Bumblebee sequel, and a pseudo-prequel to the 2007 film. It was plagued by studio interference, reshoots, and inconsistent characters. Steven Caple Jr. gave us a Transformers story steeped in Black and Hispanic culture, and for that he is to be commended, but there was too much going on for the movie to really land with audiences. For more on my thoughts on Rise of the Beasts, click here to read my review of that film from last year. 

The Autobots meet the Maximals in 2023's Rise of the Beasts.

In many ways, Transformers One gets back to basics, and I don’t just mean the Transformers’ animated roots. It’s both a simple film, one that kids will enjoy, and a deep one, with themes that will resonate with not only those parents accompanying their kids but also the hardcore fans who have followed every aspect of this franchise since its inception. It is an origin story that could serve as the earliest entry for so many Transformers series, but if the rumors are true and it ends up being the first in a trilogy, it’s also a great jumping off point for yet another new chapter in the saga of everyone’s favorite robots in disguise. In short, it is yet another transformation, another adaptation to a story that, when you get down to it, is about the capacity to change. Transformation is a part of Cybertronians' biology, they have to do in order to survive. When Sentinel steals that, he steals a fundamental part of what it means for them to be alive, and the same is true for us, who likewise must adapt, change, and evolve in order to live and thrive in this world. 

Moreover, Transformers One taps into the difficult nature of being in relationships and how we adapt to them. What do you do when you want the same things but disagree on how to achieve them? When all that really separates you is your allegiance, how can you co-exist with each other? Will we transmit our pain or transform it? Maybe there’s truly more to the tale of these robots from Cybertron for our own time and place than meets the eye.

Go see Transformers One if you grew up on Generation One, the Beast Era, or any other entry in the franchise, because you will find yourself giddy with all the ways that this film touches on those characters and themes. Go see it if you have been burned out by Paramount’s theatrical entries and want to get back to something that has the look and feel of a Transformers adventure. Go see it if you have kids. Go see it if you don’t have kids. Go see it if you value stories about relationships, the ongoing struggle between being stuck and being hopeful, and the desire and need to transform both oneself and the world around them. Just go see it!

The first confrontation between Megatron and Optimus Prime.

Score

Thanks for hanging in there this long! The last time I made a list like this I worked only with the live action films, since the 1986 movie was still the lone animated feature to appear in American cinemas. Now that that is no longer the case, I've based this list not so much on my favorites, but on how I genuinely believe they stack up as stories and movie-going experiences. 

1. Transformers One

2. Bumblebee 

3. The Transformers: The Movie

4. Transformers (2007)

5. Rise of the Beasts

6. Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger**

7. Dark of the Moon

8. The Last Knight

9. Revenge of the Fallen

10. Age of Extinction 

**Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger is part of the 1998 Beast Wars Movie Special that was released in theatres in Japan. It is basically an extended episode of the anime-styled Beast Wars II cartoon series, which was airing in Japan at the time, along with a recap of the first season of the CGI Beast Wars cartoon and a preview of the upcoming second season, known in Japan as Beast Wars Metals. It is, technically speaking, the second Transformers theatrical movie, though it never saw a release in the United States. Maybe someday I'll write more about it, but for now I felt this little gem of a film deserved some attention on this list.

Optimus Primal and Lio Convoy together in the Beast Wars Movie Special from 1998.

Till all are one! 

-Father Prime

NOTE: All images, unless otherwise cited, are courtesy of the TF Wiki.