Rise of the Beasts: The More Things Change...

WARNING: This post is LONG and contains massive SPOILERS for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts!

Is it Transformers 7, or Bumblebee 2: Electric Boogaloo?!

Beast Wars 

In the beginning came the beasts and all that creeps, crawls, and flies. But nature lies...they're robots in disguise!!

With those words, the Beast Wars began in 1996. In order to fully understand the importance of the most recent live action movie, Rise of the Beasts, one first has to understand how important Beast Wars was, and still is, to the Transformers franchise as a whole.

Simply put, Beast Wars saved Transformers. Like most 22-minute toy commercials from the 1980s, Transformers was on its last legs when the new decade dawned.  A failed reboot - Generation 2 - looked like the end, and Transformers was about to go the way of Spiral Zone, Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors, and Silverhawks. But Hasbro gambled in 1996 on a new concept: transforming robots, yes, but now they would be animals. The idea was handed over to Kenner, a newly acquired Hasbro subsidiary, who took the toyline in directions it had never seen before, introducing ball-and-socket joints, greater articulation, and the ability to store weapons in alternate modes. Meanwhile, the accompanying animated series, which fans initially rejected for its crude 90s CGI and apparent disconnect from the original cartoon, soon won us all over with its story of the heroic Maximals and evil Predacons, descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, who used Transwarp technology to travel back to prehistoric Earth, engaging in a fight for their own future. Memorable characters like Dinobot and Waspinator, and the insistence by the writing team that this was a science fiction show, not a toy commercial, insured that Beast Wars would hold a beloved place in the hearts of fans. Because of its success, there has never been a year since its initial launch in which there weren't Transformers toys on store shelves and a cartoon on tv. It's that important. 

The original logo for Beast Wars, which ran from 1996-1999.

With that in mind, one can understand how excited most fans were to hear that the seventh live action Transformers movie would feature characters from Beast Wars. The live action series of films were initially directed by Michael Bay, and for a decade were, for good or ill, what people pictured in their minds when they heard the word Transformers. They had huge action set pieces, amazing visual effects, and a terrific series of film scores by Steve Jablonsky. They were also filled with sophomoric humor only a teenage boy could appreciate, as well as rampant misogyny, and stories that made no sense and often contradicted both the source material and earlier films within the series. The formula grew stale, and after the failure of 2017's The Last Knight, Michael Bay announced he was done as director.

The 2018 solo Bumblebee movie, directed by Travis Knight, appeared to usher in a new era for the live action films. Everything from the robot designs to the camera work were modified for the better with the new film, not to mention an end to, well, everything that Michael Bay includes in all of his films. Bumblebee had heart and humor, the qualities that fans loved about the original cartoon, as well as Beast Wars. It was a character-driven story, much like Beast Wars, not dependent upon Macguffins and character motivations that were little more than "we need to do this because the plot dictates we have to." Could this new film, which was marketed as a sequel to Bumblebee, live up that standard?

Bumblebee and Charlie in the 2018 Bumblebee movie.

Like most things related to Transformers, opinions on Rise of the Beasts have been mixed. Critics are pretty meh, as they usually are with movies in this genre. The general public, more or less, loves it, while longtime fans are quick to point out its shortcomings. As usual, my opinion is also mixed, and is just that, my opinion. I welcome other thoughts and feelings that you may have had, but for now, come join Father Prime as I attempt to review Transformers: Rise of the Beasts!

The Plot

Rise of the Beasts both is and isn't a Beast Wars movie. Yes, the Maximals are here, specifically Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rhinox, Airazor, and Apelinq. Instead of battling the Predacons, their main foes are the Terrorcons, a name borrowed from a Decepticon combiner team from Generation One but is here assigned to the Heralds of Unicron. Yes, THIS Unicron:

Unicron about to consume planet Lithone in the opening minutes of The Transformers: The Movie (1986).

The same Unicron that made his debut in the 1986 animated movie, voiced by Orson Welles in his last performance, was revealed in the second trailer for Rise of the Beasts to be this movie's new big bad.

Unicron about to consume the planet Eukaris in the opening minutes of Rise of the Beasts (2023).

While it is never explicitly stated that the Maximals are the descendants of the Autobots, hints are dropped that they hail from the future, just like in Beast Wars. For this movie, however, the writers took a page, literally, from IDW Publishing, with the Maximals inhabiting a planet that, while nameless in the movie, is known as Eukaris in those comic stories. This was a great touch.

When Unicron shows up to destroy Eukaris, he sends his Herald Scourge ahead of him. Scourge, named after an original Herald of Unicron from the animated movie, is voiced by Peter Dinklage. There is a sinister quality to Scourge that hints at something deeper, some kind of life that he had before Unicron captured and enslaved him. Scourge is sent to subdue the Maximals and obtain their greatest artifact - and this movie's Macguffin - the Transwarp Key. 

Scourge, Herald of Unicron.

While it's nice to see Transwarp technology, which had been introduced into the franchise with Beast Wars, the use of a Macguffin was something the Bumblebee film moved away from after all five previous films relied on them as the central plot device. Nevertheless, at least it's a Macguffin that feels familiar to fans of Beast Wars, so I suppose it gets a pass.

Maximal leader Apelinq sacrifices himself at the hands of Scourge in order to allow Optimus Primal and the rest of the Maximals to escape using the Transwarp Key. They arrive on Earth, although exactly WHEN they arrive is never made clear. 

Fast forward (I guess) to 1994, seven years after the events of Bumblebee. Optimus Prime had arrived at the end of that film and now he and Bumblebee have been joined by Mirage, Arcee, Wheeljack, and Stratosphere - more Autobots may possibly have been a part of this team, but they are never mentioned. When a human manages to activate one half of the Transwarp Key, which had been separated and hidden in Peru before being discovered by archeologists, it sends a beacon which, for some reason, is only visible to Cybertronians. Prime and his Autobots see it shoot into the sky, but it also draws the attention of Scourge and the Terrorcons, who arrive on Earth to retrieve the Key and summon their master. 

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee as they appeared at the end of the Bumblebee movie.

Optimus mentions that the Key could finally give them a way to return home to Cybertron. The audience isn't told how the Autobots came to Earth in the first place, but we can presume they all arrived in a similar fashion that Bumblebee did in the last film, in an escape pod launched from Cybertron. The Autobots and Terrorcons converge on the museum housing the Key, and a battle ensues, with Scourge overwhelming Prime, killing Bumblebee (more on that later), and making off with half of the Key. 

Suddenly, the Maximal Airazor arrives to drive Scourge away. She explains the nature of the Maximals, that they are "from both your past and your future," which is...a thing. She also details who the Terrorcons are, that they serve Unicron, and that the dark god intends to use the Key to travel through time and space until all worlds, all realities are consumed. Though Scourge believes he has achieved his victory, Airazor further explains that the Key had been split (a fact about which Scourge - as well as the audience - was unaware), which prompts the team of Autobots, humans, and Airazor to travel to Peru to retrieve the second half and keep the Key out of Scourge's hands. The Macguffin hunt is on.

Airazor as she appears in a promotional poster for Rise of the Beasts.

It should be noted here that the human character Elena is the one to discover both the first half of the Key and the location of the second half. She is a young Black woman who dreams of being an archeologist. More on her, and the other human lead, Noah, in a little bit.

Of course, the Terrorcons attack when the good guys make it to Peru, and it is here that the first red flag in this film was set off for me. During the battle, Optimus Prime confronts Scourge and tells the Autobots, "I'm going to take the Key from Scourge, and then I'm going to take his head!" 

Immediately, my mind went to the portrayals of Prime in the Bay films and the sheer brutality with which he was depicted, garnering him the dubious moniker of Murder Prime from some fans. He didn't just beat the Decepticons, but he savagely tore them apart with melee weapons, even when they were unarmed. 

Here's a rundown of Prime's "heroic" actions from each film, in case you missed them:

Transformers - Is willing to sacrifice his own troops to achieve the mission; decapitates Bonecrusher after disarming him.

Revenge of the Fallen - Executes a defenseless Demolisher; rips Grinder's face apart with hooks; tells The Fallen to "Give me your face!" before ripping it off and smashing his hand through his fleeing opponent's chest,  crushing The Fallen's spark in his bare hand.

Dark of the Moon - Executes a defenseless Sentinel Prime; tells Shockwave "You die now!" before tearing his eye from his head; decapitates Megatron with an axe; gives the memorable line, "We will kill them all!"

Age of Extinction - Actually kills a human; has memorable lines like, "He is going to die!", "I'm going to tear them apart!" , "I'll kill you!" , and "You defend my family or die!" (said to Grimlock and the Dinobots) 

The Last Knight - Turns evil (becoming Nemesis Prime); uses his sword to viciously slice through enemies in the final battle while reminding them what is name is.

Optimus during his heel turn as Nemesis Prime in The Last Knight (2017).

There's more, but you get the idea. For being such a hero, Optimus Prime was depicted as a bloodthirsty, rage-filled angel of death that is totally cut off from the emotions of others. In wrestling terms, he is supposed to be the babyface (the good guy), but his words and actions felt more like a heel (the bad guy) in those movies. When that happens in any story, you know you're in trouble.

What's more, it was so hard in those five films to hear Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime going all the way back to 1984, say those kinds of lines. Peter himself made public comments about how uncomfortable he was and how he tried to get Michael Bay to understand that that just isn't how Optimus Prime would act, but Bay gonna Bay and Peter said the lines anyway. 

To turn the clock back briefly: Peter Cullen has often told the story that he based Optimus Prime off his older brother Larry, who was a Marine during the Vietnam War. When Peter got the gig as Prime, he told his brother that he was going to be voicing a truck who happened to be a military leader.  Larry told him: "If you're going to be a leader, Peter, you have to be strong enough to be gentle." That shines through in Peter's performances in the original cartoon and animated movie, but because Michael Bay knows nothing of real human dialogue and emotion besides the horniness and rage of a teenage boy, the Prime of the live action films lacked the nobility and gentleness of the character to whom Peter Cullen had first given voice.

Peter Cullen with an Optimus Prime Voice-Changing Helmet in 2007.

Even though he made a brief appearance in Bumblebee, Prime was truly returning to the spotlight with Rise of the Beasts, and my deepest hope for the film was that it would continue the positive trends begun by Bumblebee and move further away from the tone and style of the first five films. But in this halfway-point fight with Scourge, I felt like my hope was being dashed. There are dozens of ways Prime could've given voice to his desire to beat Scourge: for example, "I'm going to take him DOWN!" rather than "I'm going to take HIS HEAD!" Most folks in the theatre probably didn't notice, but I was put back on my heels, worried that the character that was one of my earliest heroes, one who always found a different way to deal with his enemies than brutally annihilating them, was slinking back into a version that I had hoped had been put to rest when Michael Bay left the director's chair. They're not really gonna do this, are they?

Following the battle with the Terrorcons, in which Airazor is hit with a mysterious object by Scourge that seems to infect her with some Unicron-like virus thats slowly turns her evil, we finally meet back up with the rest of the Maximals in the Peruvian jungle. At last, the Autobots and Maximals are on screen together, including both Optimuses...Optimi....leaders!

The Autobots meet the Maximals in Peru.

It is here that we meet, in earnest, Optimus Primal, voiced by Ron Perlman. His performance is one of the highlights of the whole film. Geek culture movie fans know him best from Hellboy, Pacific Rim, and the original Teen Titans. His casting choice may have surprised some, but he had actually portrayed Primal once before, in the third part of Machinima's Prime Wars Trilogy web-series, Power of the Primes. The less said about that trilogy the better! 

But Perlman was great, bringing a kind of wisdom, kindness, and perspective to the role of Optimus Primal. It's clear that new director Steven Caple, Jr. was playing Primal off as the one who would show Prime how to embody the kind of gentle strength that is needed in a real leader. Optimus Prime is shown in this film to be beleaguered and war-worn, broken by the weight of loss and the responsibility he feels for stranding his Autobots on this alien world while Cybertron remains unprotected from the Decepticons. It made sense that the film was painting Optimus Primal, a time-traveling descendant named after him, as the one to show Optimus Prime what it means to be a true leader, the kind that will become legendary in the history of the Cybertronian race. At one point Primal takes Prime to a small human village, showing the Autobots how the Maximals and humans have lived together for centuries, as the bots protect the humans while they safeguard the second half of the Transwarp Key. This role of protector for innocent lifeforms is what Prime is meant to take on, and it's from the monkey that the truck learns this lesson.

Primal and Prime.

Prime begins the movie with an unreasonable mistrust of humans, despite their aid to Bumblebee in the previous film and Prime's commendation of his scout's duty defending them against the Decepticons. After talking with Primal, Prime does come to trust his human allies, especially when he realizes that Noah would destroy the Key if it meant keeping Earth safe from Unicron. Prime sees in Noah a reflection of himself, someone who just wants to protect the ones he loves. The audience is meant to pick up on this parallel between two soldiers - Noah, it's said earlier, was in the army but was discharged for unknown reasons. They both only want to save their families: Noah tries to take care of his single mother and his ailing younger brother, while Prime is trying to get his troops home. This is great! It finally looks like we have a Transformers movie with an actual character arc for one its bots! Maybe he won't turn out to be Murder Prime, after all!

After Scourge secures the second half of the Key and Optimus Primal is forced to kill Airazor when her infection causes her to attack her friends (in one of the most emotional scenes of the whole film), the stage is set for the final battle: the Autobots and Maximals fighting together against the Terrorcons as Scourge opens a Transwarp portal to bring Unicron to Earth. The film's climax goes as expected, with lots of CGI and nameless/faceless Terrorcon drones for the good guys to mow down, and of course the inevitable dramatic return of Bumblebee from the dead (although, if you saw literally ANY of the film's trailers, you already knew that was going to happen).

Seriously, nobody was surprised by this, no matter how badass it was meant to be.

There are some fun moments in the battle, especially when Optimus Primal calls for Rhinox and Cheetor to "Maximize!" which was the command code used in Beast Wars for whenever the Maximals transformed from beast mode to robot mode. It was one of those 'stand up and cheer' moments. Meanwhile, the human allies are tasked with shutting down the portal while the Optimi....Optimuses....Prime and Primal make their way through the Terrorcon hordes to get to Scourge. 

It is in the final confrontation between Optimus Prime and Scourge that the film finally plays its hand. Has Prime moved past his rage? Has he changed at all?  As I sat there, I thought of several ways that this could go , which would, in some ways, redeem the Bayverse Prime and debunk the myth of redemptive violence that was so prevalent in those earlier films (and summer blockbusters, in general):

• Prime could destroy the device that harnesses the Key's power to create a Transwarp portal, which would cause the approaching Unicron (in planet mode) to collapse in on himself, keeping him forever from returning to this universe.

• Prime could make the ultimate sacrifice and go straight for destroying the Key itself, leaving Unicron defeated but ensuring that the Autobots and Maximals cannot return to Cybertron; perhaps he'd even give the line, "No sacrifice, no victory!" as a callback to the first live action film.

• Prime could destroy the device and/or the Key, which could then emancipate Scourge from Unicron's servitude, at last granting him freedom and a sense of peace; we never get any information on who Scourge was before becoming a Herald, after all.

• Prime could pull some fun, 1980s cartoon shenanigans and simply humiliate Scourge the same way he did Megatron, leaving the bad guy leader to shout "Retreat!" and vow to fight another day.

No. None of these scenarios happen.

Instead, Prime does what he did in all five Bay films. Despite the fact that Scourge bested him earlier in the film - twice! - Prime attacks him with such ferocity, as to cut off both of Scourge's arms, and in that moment when his opponent is defenseless, shouts, "Now you will see the real power of the Primes!!" and promptly rips off Scourge's head with his energon blade, complete with Scourge's spine attached. Prime went full-on Sub-Zero on Scourge, and.I actually let out an audible "No!" despite the theatre erupting in cheers.

The Maximals and Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Terrorcons.

They really did it. Despite what Steven Caple, Jr. had said about this film being a reboot, that it was a fresh direction and had no connection to the Bay films, the studio ultimately won out when it came to the portrayal of Optimus "Give me your face!" Prime. The aggressive military leader that had been willing to sacrifice his own troops and would brutally slaughter defenseless enemies, was still there. Sure, one might say, it wasn't as bad as those previous portrayals; after all, Scourge had it coming and Prime had no choice after having lost so much. 

But this misses the point of who Prime is supposed to be, who he always was before Paramount got hold of him. He's the guy that's supposed to find another way. He's supposed to learn from his mistakes - as he says in the original cartoon, "Sometimes even the wisest of men and machines can be in error." (from the episode SOS Dinobots). 

Here, however, there was no growth beyond that anger, that pain. He just beat the bad guy. That's it. Even when Unicron entices Prime to be his new Herald, saying, "I can give you everything you want," Prime responds by saying, "Then die!" as he smashes the Key. This is who Optimus Prime is in the live action films, and because he was the reason I got into Transformers in the first place, I am heartbroken that the studio couldn't move on from this, despite everything else that was so good about Rise of the Beasts.

As if Murder Prime wasn't enough of a clue that this is the same continuity as the Bay films, Unicron isn't destroyed. Instead, Primal explains that the dark god is trapped, leaving open the very real possibility that he could return. Seeing that this film is set in 1994 and that the producers had stated repeatedly that this was a prequel to the Bay films, one can reasonably assume that Unicron will remain trapped until the events of The Last Knight (the final Bay-directed film), where it will be revealed that Unicron is at the core of planet Earth itself. Sunrise, sunset. Once again, they couldn't bring themselves to separate from the Bay films, despite The Last Knight ending on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved.

So the Autobots fly...somewhere...aboard Stratosphere, while Optimus Primal gives a mighty roar from a cliffside. Elena gets to become a real archeologist, and Noah gets a job offer with G.I. Joe. That's it. Pick up your trash and exit the theatre in an orderly fashion. Thanks for coming.

Initial Impressions

The portrayal of Prime and the apparent connection to the Bay films made it impossible for me to love this movie, despite how much I wanted to. Instead, I came away merely liking it. For some, including my wife, the film was a breath of fresh air and a huge hit. I don't disagree with that; in fact, I think that the film was entertaining and poignant in ways that the Bay films never were nor could've been. Though, if I'm honest, that's not a very high bar to clear.

Steven Caple, Jr., director of Rise of the Beasts.

Steven Caple, Jr. presents a Transformers film that is deeply and intentionally Black, which is a very good thing. It is steeped in the experience of Black and brown people, and I loved that! Before it even premiered we noticed this in the music in the trailers and the soundtrack that dropped on Spotify, filled with 90s hip-hop and appropriately entitled Rise of the Beats. 

The main human protagonist in this film is Noah, who comes from a working class Latino family. It is he who serves as the character that bridges the human and Transformer stories - the way Charlie did in Bumblebee and Sam and Marky Mark did in the Bay films. He is committed to taking care of his family - his "home team" as he calls them. He struggles to get regular work because his brother's illness requires him often to drop everything for his sake, resulting in Noah not being able to land a security job at the beginning of the film. When he goes for the interview, he's told that "people like you" don't have a place in the company. This hits hard. The would-be boss tells him it's because he's not a "team player" but we cannot separate Noah's racial identity from this moment, nor should we. Like many young men in similar situations, he resorts to crime to earn the money to pay his brothers' hospital bills, which again, is a story that certainly resonates with communities of color.

Furthermore, Elena is a wonderful addition to the human cast in this franchise. Her own experience is a commentary on colonialism - working for a prissy, white boss in a museum that houses artifacts gathered by white folks from indigenous cultures. Elena longs for the day when she can be the one "there when the discovery is made" and gets to live this out when she and Noah are charged by the Autobots with retrieving the second half of the Transwarp Key in a buried Incan temple that Elena had discovered earlier in the film. We get a great "Black Indiana Jones" moment during this part of the Macguffin search, which was excellent in its deconstructing of the image of "white guy goes into indigenous area and obtains rare object for a museum." With apologies to Indiana Jones, but it's kind of messed up that he wouldn't just leave stuff alone!

Elena and Noah

For once, we have a Transformers story featuring multiple humans in which both of them are not only great actors, but great characters as well. Their relationships, both to each other and to the Transformers, are among the film's highlights. Most importantly, this isn't just Noah's and Elena's story with the Transformers guest-starring, which was often the case in the Bay films. The humans interact with the bots fluidly, and see their heart and emotion. The parallel stories between Noah, Elena, and the rest of the Autobots and Maximals is in keeping with what the Bumblebee film established with the relationship between the title bot and Charlie Watson. What Bumblebee started in this regard, Rise of the Beasts continues, and then some! If the human element of the live action films maintains this trend, it's a big positive. 

Speaking of relationships, the breakout star of this film from a Transformers perspective has to be Mirage. Voiced by comedian Pete Davidson, Mirage is witty, irreverent in just the right moments, and still brave and loyal to the Autobot cause. He is hilarious, but he cares deeply for his family - both the Autobots and Noah. The two first meet when Noah agrees to steal a car to help pay for his brother Chris' medical bills. The car just so happens to be Mirage, so when Optimus Prime calls on the other Autobots in the wake of the Transwarp Key being activated, Mirage rolls out with Noah in tow. After their actual face-to-face meeting when Mirage transforms, Noah meets the other Autobots, and though Prime is upset Mirage has brought a human into their midst, he agrees with Mirage's plan to use Noah to steal the Key from the Ellis Island museum. If he succeeds, Mirage says, Noah can still "sell" him to cash in before the Autobots use the Key to go home to Cybertron. When the plan fails, Noah insists on joining the Autobots and Airazor in the search for the other half of the Key. But he accidentally reveals Mirage's existence to Chris, who then makes Mirage promise to protect Noah, no matter what. In the film's climax, Mirage puts himself between Noah and Scourge, taking the full force of the Terrorcon's blasters until he finally goes into stasis lock (a kind of Transformer coma). When he finally wakes up, Mirage can't move on his own, so he activates a program that allows his body to split apart and reconfigure around Noah, creating a kind of Exo-suit, similar to what Spike and Daniel Witwicky wear in the 1986 animated movie. Together, this bot-human hybrid (also a visual nod to the old Pretenders concept) manages, along with Prime and Primal, to save the day.

Mirage meets Noah.

This moment encapsulates what appears to be one of the chief themes of the movie; that is, the coming together of two different species for the common good. The tagline for the film is "Unite or Fall" with several posters showing Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal in a sort of face-off that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Optimus vs. Megatron posters from the first live action film. Fans, of course, knew the Autobots and Maximals were on the same side and wouldn't stay at odds for more than a minute, meaning the tagline was ultimately not even about the Autobots and Maximals, but instead was about the Transformers and their human allies. Noah spends much of the film not entirely trusting the Autobots, especially Optimus Prime. However, when they are met with their darkest hour, Autobot, Maximal, and human alike all come together as one. There is even a "Till all are one!" moment for fans of the old animated film, which worked perfectly here. Perhaps that is the ultimate message of Rise of the Beasts: that our two species - human and Cybertronian - are both "more than meets the eye" and are able to transform our ways of thinking and being to come together when all hope seems lost. If that is what Steven Caple Jr. was going for, then I think he succeeded.

What I Loved

• Arcee and Wheeljack were wonderful! It's clear that the two of them have some kind of prior relationship, and I wanted to see more from them. Wheeljack's design was...different, but it seemed to fit his character in this movie. And Arcee's use of her visor was straight out of the 86 movie. Classic!

Arcee and Wheeljack return fire in a fight with the Terrorcons.

• The action set pieces, while bigger than Bumblebee, were not the headache-inducing kind seen in the Bay films. There's no shaky cam, and it's a lot easier to tell the difference between the bots, making the action much easier to follow.

• The Terrorcon Nightbird is voiced by Michaela Jae Rodriguez, making her the first openly transgender person to give voice to a Transformers character. This is awesome!

M.J. Rodriguez, who voices Nightbird.

• David Soblolov is the only Beast Wars alum to return for this film. He had a memorable performance as Depth Charge in the tv series and here lends his talents to Rhinox, Battletrap, and Apelinq. He also voiced Blitzwing in the Bumblebee movie. I met him at TFCon a few years back. He's a helluva nice guy, and I'm glad to see him involved in this film.

• I can't say enough how much I loved the pairing of Mirage and Noah. It's what the first Bay film was going for with Bumblebee and Sam, only this time the robot can talk. Also, the fact that someone besides Bumblebee was in that human liaison role was a big breath of fresh air.

• Unicron was done very well, even if I didn't like how they seemed to connect him here to his "appearance" in The Last Knight. His planet mode was imposing and looked like his debut performance in Transformers: The Movie. He felt like a real threat, in my opinion.

• The score and soundtrack were top notch, which is something I must say all seven live action films have in common. Pieces of Arrival to Earth from the first film, as well as Vince DiCola's Unicron's Theme from the animated movie were subtly dropped in, as well. I'm definitely picking up the 90s hip-hop soundtrack! (Even though Mirage mistakenly says, "Wu Tang in the house!" while playing the Notorious B.I.G.)

What Could've Been Better

• Rhinox and Cheetor are terribly underutilized in this film. Cheetor gets four throwaway lines, and as far as I can tell Rhinox gets no dialogue besides some grunts. These two were seminal characters of Beast Wars, as well as its sequel series Beast Machines. Cheetor was the Bumblebee-type that started out as a cocky, headstrong bot but grew into a leader. Rhinox was both the muscle and brains of the Maximals, often acting as Primal's' right-hand, only to eventually betray his comrades and become one of the best villains in TF history. I wanted more out of these two.

Rhinox as he appeared in Beast Wars.

Cheetor as he appeared in the first season of Beast Wars.

• The large cast, in general, made it tough for all of the characters to get a chance to shine. This happened with all of the Bay films but was corrected with Bumblebee, which focused on just three Transformers. When it was announced that we would have Autobots, Maximals, and Terrorcons I had a feeling that it was likely several characters wouldn't have much to do, which is exactly what happened here with more than a few bots. Airazor, for example, never transforms, which is always a huge pet peeve of mine in a movie called, you now, TRANSFORMERS!

• Bumblebee's apparent death at the hands of Scourge is not only spoiled by the trailers, but his return makes very little sense in the context of the story. It's not even clear if he's dead or just in stasis lock. Obviously having him get stabbed by Scourge was meant to raise the stakes, but did anyone actually think the mascot character for this whole film franchise wasn't going to come back? This isn't 1986!

He gets better...somehow.

• The film had five story credits, and it shows. Nearly all of the dialogue shown in the trailers is missing in the final film, as are a few scenes. Fans learned that an entire scene involving a fight between Prime and a Decepticon called Transit - who turns into...wait for it...a freakin' bus! - was cut near the beginning of the film. Knowing this, it begs the question: what else was left on the cutting room floor? The film even feels rushed in the second half, and I can't help thinking that this was the result of studio interference, something common with Paramount movies, perhaps because they didn't want a two and a half hour slog like so many comic book movies these days. Multiple screenwriters and missing dialogue/scenes between trailer and final film often are clues that things weren't copacetic between the director and studio, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case here.

Transit, the Decepticon bus and this movie's true star, who we never got to see.

• There are a few plot holes that bug me: 
•  If Unicron can't travel through universes, how did the Terrorcons come to Earth? 
• Who were the other Maximals that apparently came to Earth with Primal's crew?
• Who were Scourge, Nightbird, and Battletrap before Unicron found them?
• Did the humans actually do something to make Prime REALLY not like them?
• How did the Maximals create the Transwarp Key? Could they make another?
• Are the Maximals Cybertronian? Are the Terrorcons?
• Are the Freezers and Scorponoks Terrorcons or Predacons? Are they even sentient?
• Where are the Decepticons and why are they never mentioned?
• Where do the Autobots go when the battle is over? 
• If Mirage can turn into anything, why not a spaceship to get them off Earth?
• Where is the ship that brought the Maximals to Earth? Can't they use that?

***EDIT: A recent post on TF fan site Seibertron.com shared a number of changes between one of the test screenings and the final film. Several of the plot holes, as well as Optimus Prime’s overall demeanor, are explained by scenes that were removed between the test screenings and the finished product. I don’t know why the changes were made (I still call studio interference), but I feel some of my issues could’ve been mitigated had some of the older material remained in the film. At the very least, Rhinox would’ve actually talked!

Final Thoughts

It's hard for me to fully encapsulate my feelings on Rise of the Beasts. As a Transformers fan, I want to see nearly every aspect of the franchise succeed. However, it always bothers me when it feels like those who are in charge don't understand what made the original story - and Beast Wars, for that matter - so special. It wasn't the war, or the blows-em-upsies, or any of the machismo that gave rise to Transformers and other cartoons targeted at boys during the height of the Cold War. It was the characters. Thanks to the profiles written for Marvel Comics by Bob Budiansky and the superb voice actors directed by Wally Burr, the 80s cartoon had heart, humor, and character-driven stories, even if they were designed to sell toys in 22 minutes. That carried over into Beast Wars, when writers Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio focused on a character-rich story that flew in the face of Hasbro's "Sell more toys!" mandate and resulted in what may be the most beloved Transformers cartoon series of all time. These qualities can be found in other examples like the comics done by IDW Publishing from 2005-2021, and the much-beloved Transformers: Animated that aired from 2007-2009 (with voice direction by Sue Blu, the original Arcee, as well as the voice director on Beast Wars). A good Transformers story understands the humanity of the bots - that they can think and feel and love and cry. The best parts of the franchise do this, and Rise of the Beasts does have moments, however fleeting,  when it captures that magic.

But the live action movies as a whole have missed the point again and again. I'll admit that in 2007 I walked away from the theatre thrilled to have seen Optimus Prime on the big screen. But at the same time, it felt like it wasn't really the Transformers' story. As those films continued, it was clear that everyone from Michael Bay to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura not only didn't understand the basic fundamental parts of the Transformers franchise, but they flat out didn't care. Transformers is a series that is constantly reinventing itself, and that's fine. Hell, it's in the name! But reinvention doesn't mean completely forgetting what made the thing special in the first place. And there are, at least for me, some moments when Rise of the Beasts does this too - especially in the portrayal of Optimus Prime, and the damn-near criminal lack of screentime for the titular beasts themselves.

In the end, Rise of the Beasts does manage to get more right than wrong. It does continue to display the heart and humor that Bumblebee had. The robot designs, which had been a harsh criticism going back to the first film, seemed to take a step back, looking a bit more like they came from the Michael Bay School of Making Robots Look as Weird as Possible, but they were still not as egregious as, say, Skids and Mudflap from Revenge of the Fallen. The human storyline is one of the best that we've ever seen, and though it didn't feel like they totally nailed Prime's story arc, at least this film tried to offer a more relatable portrayal of the most famous Autobot of all time. I really did want to love this film. But the elements that were kept from the Bay films and clear indication that the studio is unwilling to move on from them, together with the many gaping plot holes and non-sensical moments, were too hard to ignore. I guess I've just been hurt too many times.

Score

If you made it this far, congratulations! As a reward, I'll give an actual score to Rise of the Beasts for those of you who like such things. 

The movie gets a solid 7/10 for me. 

As for where it ranks among the live action Transformers films, that’s tricky. It is miles ahead of most of the Bay films, even though I still give a slight edge to the first one due to the storyline making a bit more sense and the ambitious scale that that film was going for (and somehow managed to achieve). However, I still give the top spot to Bumblebee, which is a film that I feel nails everything good about the Transformers franchise as a whole:

1. Bumblebee
2. Transformers
3. Rise of the Beasts 
4. Dark of the Moon
5. Revenge of the Fallen
6. The Last Knight
7. Age of Extinction

Of course, none of them can stand up to the 1986 animated classic. They have neither the touch, nor the power.

The greatest scene in the history of cinema.

Till all are one!

-Father Prime 

NOTE: all images are courtesy of www.TFWiki.net

I Desire Hesed

Last week I went to lunch and was wrung up by a young person with multi-colored hair and piercings in their nose. I’d seen this person the last time I’d been to this particular restaurant a few weeks prior and had said as I left at that time that I liked their hair, which elicited an enthusiastic response of "Thanks!"

This time, though, as I was being wrung up, it was the young person who noticed my, how shall we say, uniform. I was dressed in all black, wearing my color, along with a pectoral cross with a rainbow cord, which I got many years ago when I went through a Cursillo weekend. 

This person said, “I like your…uh…necklace?”

 It was tucked into my shirt, so I said, “There’s a cross at the end. I’m wearing it all month.” 

The person smiled and asked, “Are you a…uh…what’s the word?” 

“A priest?” I interjected. 

“That’s it!” 

“Yes I am.”

They smiled again and said, “You might be the coolest one because most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty mean to folks like me.” 

“Well,” I said, as I was handed my lunch, “Jesus isn’t.” And the person smiled, wished me a good day, and we both went our separate ways.

The rainbow pectoral cross I'm wearing each day during Pride Month.

And that, my friends, is why I have made being out in public and having lunch in my collar an important part of my ministry ever since I got ordained. Wearing the uniform isn’t about me. It’s not about drawing attention to myself, though I admit that that does happen. It’s about being a visible, living symbol for others, especially those who have been mistreated by priests and pastors and other church folks. The Lord alone knows if folks like the person I talked with that day will ever darken the door of a church building, but that isn’t the point. Just letting someone else know the steadfast love and mercy and goodness of God are what it’s about.  Our readings from this past Sunday make that pretty clear. 

'As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”

And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”'

--Matthew 9: 9-13

After a long break during Lent and Easter, we are back in the Gospel of Matthew for the foreseeable future, and this week we find Jesus engaging with a group of folks over diner. The great thing about a meal is that you can’t really ignore folks when you’re sharing eating together, which is in part why Jesus does so much of his ministry in the context of meals. Another reason is because sharing meals, having dinner parties and the like, was an essential part of life in 1st century Palestine. Who you shared your table with communicated something about who you were in the society. The Pharisees gathered there – the sticklers for the rules who were the important folks– were shocked that Jesus was eating with those who were ridiculed, shunned, and marginalized. These included tax collectors, who were Jewish folks that worked in collaboration with the Romans and often charged more than was required. They were seen as traitors and despised, and not only had Jesus just called one of them – Matthew – to follow him, but now he’s having dinner with several of them and other so-called “notorious sinners.” This doesn’t sit well with the big deal folks.

And so when they push back against Jesus he uses an allegory. A physician doesn’t treat a person who is well, right? And so it is with Jesus. He has come to minister to and among those who are sick, both literally and those sick in their spirits and hearts. And then he gives them a command to go and learn what is meant by the saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” 

In case you didn’t catch it, Jesus is quoting here from the prophet Hosea, which was the Old Testament reading assigned with this Gospel on Sunday:

'Thus says the Lord: “I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will beg my favor: ‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.’ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”'

--Hosea 5: 15-6: 6

Jesus quotes the final line of this pericope from Hosea, though in the Bible used in our parish, the line reads a bit different - "I desire steadfast love, and not sacrifice." This is one of those times when translations get confusing. In the original Hebrew, Hosea uses the word hesed , which doesn’t really have a direct English translation – or Greek, for that matter. Hesed is a kind of justice for the poor and marginalized, God’s merciful love rolled down like a waterfall over the whole world. Hosea was preaching in a prosperous time, when those in power had forgotten the poor, the widows, the orphans, the migrants in their land, and he preached the truth to those in power that God’s hesed would be poured out. When the Book of Hosea was translated from Hebrew to Greek, hesed became eleos, the Greek word for mercy and compassion. This is the word Jesus uses when he quotes from Hosea. Our New Revised Standard Version of the Gospel translates eleos to “mercy.” Though the NRSV chooses to say “steadfast love” in the Hosea reading and “mercy” in the Gospel, the Greek is the same – eleos – in both and hearkens back to that Hebrew word hesed and justice, grounded in compassion, steadfast love, and mercy. 

This is God’s desire. This is about caring for and being with people in greatest need, not just doing what is obligated by tradition or law. Jesus spent a lot of time with folks who were just trying to follow the rules. They were thinking more with their heads than their hearts. They did what the Law commanded them – they offered the appointed sacrifices, went to worship at the right times, and sang the songs they were supposed to sing – but their hearts weren’t in the right place. Like the rulers to whom Hosea preached, they’d forgotten about people, about God’s most basic and fundamental commandment to love others as themselves. 

I see a lot of Christians today - or, at least, people who claim to be Christians - who think they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, what their traditions and laws would oblige them to do. They go to church on Sunday and read the right stories and sing the right songs because that’s what is expected. And they try to get folks to join their churches in order to add to the Kingdom. They quote the Bible to others with a kind of snobbery with which the religious fundamentalists of Jesus’ time quoted the Law. Their rigidity has not only driven folks away from Christianity in droves, but it has caused irreparable harm. 

Lawmakers across this country – many heretically invoking the name of Jesus – are denying life-saving care for kids, demonizing people who use art and humor to transform pain into joy, and undoing decades of work toward equality, all because they think it’s what God desires. It’s the exact same pattern to which both Hosea and Jesus witnessed – misguided duty to religious laws that forgets the basic dignity of all people, placing “sacrifice”and obedience above steadfast love and mercy. 

There is a hurting world out there that loves Jesus but won’t go anywhere near a church or a preacher because they’ve been told by such folks Jesus doesn’t love them' at least, not the way they currently are. And if the Church doesn’t make it our mission to get out of our walls and go show people – more so than just tell them – that Jesus only desires love, mercy, compassion, that they are made in his most beautiful and fabulous image, and that he loves them just the way they are, then who will?! When people’s lives are at stake, the cry for hesed and eleos, for steadfast love and mercy is needed everywhere, from a sandwich shop in Asheboro, North Carolina to the government halls of Uganda. 

As a priest who values wearing my color and my rainbow cross in public, I am drawn into these kinds of conversations whether I like it or not. It’s my chance to witness to the Good News, to be an evangelist in the truest sense. It’s harder when we don’t wear collars, or the cross around our necks and on our fingers are not easily seen, but we’re all meant to let our lives be, as our Orthodox friends put it, “living icons” of our faith. If we dare to own our faith in such public fashion as to wear the cross – a symbol of shame turned into one of hope – then we can and must honor the message of the one who died on it. Meet every person with steadfast love, the kind that reminds them that they are loved for who they are, not in spite of it. Show the level of compassion and mercy that Jesus himself showed, not for the sake of increasing the number of folks on a Sunday, but decreasing the number of folks who may harm themselves because they can’t take being mocked and shamed and abused anymore. 

The whole Church must accept this solemn and holy responsibility because, the truth is , not everyone sees a collar or a pectoral cross and thinks they are safe. Y’all - the laity - go places we clergy can’t go. Y’all have a message that can be heard louder and clearer than ours. The call to embody hesed and eleos, steadfast love and mercy, is a call issued to every single one of us in every corner of our lives.  Wherever the road takes us, may we go from here and learn what Jesus means by mercy, not sacrifice, and live our lives as though we really believe it. 

The Dance, Love, and Flow of the Holy Trinity

'The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”'

--Matthew 28: 16-20

Modern Icon, The Holy Trinity by Valentina Samolik-Artyushenko

One summer when I came home from college, I went to church with my Dad like normal, and our priest, The Rev. Fran McCoy, of blessed memory, asked me at Coffee Hour if I would like to preach the next Sunday. To give you some context, this wasn’t that unusual. I’d preached my first sermon when I was 13 and led my first service at 16. It was fun, I thought – I never once thought for the first 22 years of my life that I was gonna actually do this thing forever as, ya know, like a real job or something! So I agreed. “Sure!” I said. “Great!” Fran said, “Next week is Trinity Sunday…good luck!”

I was naïve – or dumb – enough not to really understand why that was a big deal. I didn’t know that it was something of an inside joke for priests to ask their deacon, curate, or some other sucker to preach on Trinity Sunday, to try and encapsulate the defining doctrine of Christianity in a sermon that would or should be – God help us – less than 12-15 minutes. With absolutely no theological knowledge in my back pocket, I tried my best, and while I don’t have a copy of that sermon anymore – he says wishing he could’ve just recycled that one – I do remember talking about the Trinity as expressions of God for us in the world as a comforting Father, as Jesus our friend and Lord, and as the Holy Spirit that still speaks to us and guides us. Not sure what my seminary professors and classmates would’ve thought, but the church didn’t spontaneously burst into flames when I preached it, so that was a win.

How do we even preach on the Trinity, really? How do we make sense of something that appears in the Scriptures precisely once – right here, at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, where we have the only time that “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” in that order, appear – and yet, we’ve based our whole theology around it.  The Trinity defines who we are as Christians – at least, in the historical sense, so much so that people who may call themselves Christians but who have not received a baptism done in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not regarded as Christians by the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and most mainline Protestant branches of the Jesus Movement. That’s kind of a big deal, and yet we are expected to sum the whole thing up on one day out of the whole year. Good luck to any preacher who had to preach this past Sunday!

Writer Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun, says in her seminal work A History of God, that we use allegory, metaphor, story, and anthropomorphism – that’s granting human qualities to that which is not human – in an attempt to make sense out of the senseless. The Trinity is such an example. It doesn’t really make sense in a logical, head-based way, but if we consider the ways God has acted throughout human history, and we move into the place of mystery and wonder – which is more of a heart-based place – then it begins to come together. 

The Trinity as doctrine can be traced back to the Council of Nicea in 325, called by the Emperor Constantine after Christianity was made legal. In a show of unity, he gathered bishops together in both the Latin and Greek-speaking churches and made them come up with an answer to the question: who was Jesus?  Easy, right?  Reading the Scriptures and talking amongst themselves about what they knew of the nature of God, they declared that God was one substance in three persons, which they called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It wasn’t just the end of Matthew’s Gospel that helped them get here, but it was clear through the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Greek Christian Testament, that God has always acted in such fashion . But the original version of the Nicene Creed ended with “we believe in the Holy Spirit,” and that was it, so another council was held in Constantinople (not Istanbul!) in 381, where the Holy Spirit’s role was shored up and it was declared that all three persons of the Trinity were God, yet there was only one God, that the Father was equal to the Son and the Son to the Spirit, and that the Father was Lord, the Son was Lord, and the Spirit was Lord, but that there was only one Lord….you know what, forget it! Go read the Creed of Saint Athanasius on page 864 of the Book of Prayer Book if you want to learn more…and give yourself a headache.

Does any of this really matter? Maybe not is we're just trying to win a theological argument – don’t, for starters, tell an Orthodox Christian that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, unless you want things to get ugly! – but for our walk as Christians? Yes, I think it does. The Most Rev. Peter Carnley, former Archbishop of Perch and my ethics and systematic theology professor in seminary, once said that everything begins with the Trinity. Every single conversation we have about God, or even about ourselves, begins with the Trinity.  Or, more accurately, begins with relationship, and how to be in relationship. God, Archbishop Carnley would remind us, is in perfect union, perfect relationship with Godself. The folks at Constantinople called this perichoresis, the Divine Dance, in which the Persons of the Trinity are engaged in a kind of endless waltz with one another. But unlike our human form of dancing – of which I am terrible – nobody leads, and nobody follows. It’s perfect synchronization, each Person moving through each other. The heresy of Modalism, which was denounced at Constantinople, said that each Person had a specific job, and that was it – so the Father was the Creator, Jesus the Redeemer, and the Spirit the Sanctifier. But it was denounced because that’s not perfect relationship, is it? Perfect relationship doesn’t relegate each person to their own role to perform their own task, but instead there is an invitation for sharing, for being at one with each other in each activity, so the Father, Jesus, and Spirit all create, redeem, and sanctify. 

The Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr borrowed this image for his book The Divine Dance, in which he talks about the Trinity being in “the flow.” Anyone who has ever seen a preacher just let loose and be led by the Spirit, anyone who has ever done any kind of theatre improv, those who understand the music of jazz or hip hop, know what “the flow” is all about. Flow is about creativity – play and life. It involves both letting go and being fully present to the movement of what is happening. The flow state is a divine state. There is a scene in the book The Shack in which the protagonist, who meets the three Persons of the Trinity in a rundown shack over a weekend – sees Jesus and the Spirit dancing together. “That was the dream,” God the Father says to him, “that all of you would love each other and be in that kind of relationship.” It’s the flow, and it’s a beautiful. 

Is it even possible? That we could all be in relationship with each other as perfect as the relationship God is in with Godself through the Trinity? For humans by ourselves, left to our own devices, maybe not. But anything is possible with God. And regardless of how possible or logical a thing may or may not be, we still pray for it. We still pray for the kind of unity expressed in the Trinity, that we could possible love one another in such a way, that we could all let go of that which holds us back and just be swept away in the flow relationship grounded in divine love. Trinity Sunday is not just for commemorating the doctrine, but it is a renewal for us to commit our lives to living and loving and being in right relationship with one another as God is with Godself. Who will have this dance? 

To Be the Church

'When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

`In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "'

--Acts 2: 1-21

Happy Birthday, Church! This past Sunday we celebrated the solemnity of the Day of Pentecost, which is regarded as the birthday of the Church – big C – when the Holy Spirit blew through a little apartment in Jerusalem and set a group of misfits’ hearts on fire to go out into the streets and tell the story; a story of hope, of mercy, of love, of redemption, of grace – the story of God’s salvific work in the world, how God’s very self was made known to the world in Jesus of Nazareth, and how, even in that moment, the words of the prophet Joel were being fulfilled, as the Spirit of the Lord was, right then and there, coming upon them. What a day! 

Mosaic of the Day of Pentecost

Pentecost was already a day of great significance. It was, and still is, called Shavout – the Festival of Weeks – and it is called that because it takes place eight weeks after the Passover. It celebrates the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai and is also a thanksgiving for a successful spring harvest. Along with Passover and the Festival of Booths, it is a mandatory high holy day that all Jewish folks are meant to celebrate, which meant coming to the Temple in Jerusalem prior to its destruction in 70 AD. 

So, the scene is set. God’s timing is perfect, with all these folks already gathered together from a wide variety of places in the known world – well, known to those folks, at least. A miracle occurs when that band of misfits who just had to say goodbye to Jesus for a second time go out into those Jerusalem streets, and as they speak the common language – most likely Aramaic – these tourists and pilgrims hear them in their own language. This isn’t speaking in tongues, mind you, but a wild moment in which God seems to erase the language barrier that God had originally set up way, way back in the Book of Genesis when humanity tried building a tower into the heavens to “make a name for themselves,” and God got somewhat peeved and destroyed the tower, scattering the people, and confusing and confounding them by making them speak different languages. And with this moment, this bold preaching by the apostles, and the ability of those gathered to hear what they needed to hear in the language they needed to hear it, the Church is born. 

But what do we even mean when we say that? It ain’t a church with any kind of structure, that’s for sure. There’s no building. There’s no pastor, no hierarchy of any kind. All of those things will come later, and all of those things have their place and are important, but what is born on this day is what Saint Paul will call the ecclesia, which is a gathering, an assembly, of people. And they are gathered, they are assembled, not to debate how any angels can dance on the head of a pin, but to continue the work that the one they recognized as both Savior and God – Jesus of Nazareth – had begun. The ecclesia held no private property or goods. They cared for each person as they needed – so the poorest among them received more, while the rich received less. They made sure the folks who were too often abandoned by the secular authorities – widows, orphans, people suffering from incurable diseases – were cared for. They got together to pray, to tell stories about Jesus and how they were seeing him still alive in the world. They broke bread and sang songs, and no matter what positions they held in the secular world, around that table they were brothers and sisters, bound by the love of Jesus, and inspired by the Holy Spirit. That’s what was born on Pentecost. 

And the birthing agent on that day was the Holy Spirit, the one Jesus had called the paraclete, the comforter, the advocate, the person of God who had moved over the waters of creation, been breathed into the nostrils of the the first human being, brought dry bones together in the days of the prophet Ezekiel, and had come upon Jesus in the form of a dove when he was baptized. We profess this quality of the Spirit each week in our Nicene Creed when we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the giver of life.” Yet the Spirit is not just the giver of life, as in when the Church was born on Pentecost, she is the enlivener and beautifier of creation every single day. What happened on that day wasn’t necessarily a new life entirely or some kind of discontinuity with what had come in preceding years – after all, the Spirit had shown up before in all those examples I just mentioned – but rather, her arrival in this fashion was more of a renewal of a “newness of life,” as we say. Pentecost may be the birth of the Church, but it’s also a re-birth for the world, and despite what we may tell ourselves, those two are inextricably linked. No matter how much we may not want to bring the world into our churches or vice versa, they are forever embedded one to another because of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

This makes all of us…wait for it….Pentecostals! The movement that we regard as the modern Pentecostal Church began in the early 20th century and was characterized by what folks called a baptism of the Holy Spirit. The water, they said, wasn’t enough, you had to have a rebirth of the heart. How would you know this? Well, there were signs like speaking in tongues or taking up serpents without them killing you – and yes, they pointed to the words of Jesus himself in the added, longer version of the ending of Mark’s Gospel as proof of this. In doing so, they believed that the they were reviving the church that was born on that day of Pentecost because in the years after the Church would lay down the cross, would become too politicized and influenced by the world, and so Christians needed to get back to what was the “real church.” These methods may seem strange to us – and to be fair, not all Pentecostals take up snakes – but there is something commendable that they understood then and still do today: that the Holy Spirit is alive, every bit now as on that day. The Holy Spirit is still moving and speaking and calling the Church into holiness, into the image of Jesus for a broken, hurting, fearful world. I’ve had the honor over the years to worship in solidarity and community with several of our Pentecostal congregations in Randolph County, most of whom are predominantly Black. Every time I’m with them I feel the Spirit, and I leave more ready, more eager to be part of the ecclesia of Jesus in whatever ways Jesus needs me and the Spirit leads me.

When Jesus breathed on his apostles and told them to receive the Spirit, he was commissioning them for the work that was to come. He knew that such work would be hard, but the promise he made then to them and makes still to us is that the work is never done in isolation or alone. Church, we don’t do any of this for ourselves or by ourselves. We do it with and for each other, the people outside these walls, and most importantly, Jesus. Without Jesus we have no message, no power, no strength, no enlightenment, no hope. With Jesus, we have everything we need. With the Spirit breathing into us and blowing through us and setting our hearts ablaze, we are given exactly what we need for the work of ministry, to do what the apostles did before us, to go into the world proclaiming Christ’s message of liberation and love and rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, come what may. This is what it means to be Pentecostal, to be the Church. 

Pentecost 2023 at Good Shepherd, Asheboro

A Lesson in Delayed Gratification: Between the Ascension & Pentecost

'When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.'

--Acts 1: 6-14

At the intersection of 10th Avenue and 20th Street in New York City is the Church of the Guardian Angel. All along the edge of the roof are friezes narrating various scenes in the Bible.  When you reach the end of the Gospels you see the faces of the apostles looking upward, and then all you see at the top are a pair of feet dangling there.  It’s totally adorable! 

An icon of the Ascension, not unlike the frieze at Guardian Angel Church

In our reading for this week we hear the very beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which is a slightly different retelling of the end of the Gospel of Luke – the two texts being written by the same author. The moment depicted in this reading, and in that frieze on the edge of the roof of Guardian Angel Church, is the Ascension, the moment when Jesus left this earthly plain and returned to the presence of God, which as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he was in before the world even existed (John 17: 5). The Feast of the Ascension always falls on a Thursday, 40 days after Easter Sunday. We often mark it at our Wednesday Healing Eucharist, as we did this week, but the Church also includes the story from Acts on the final Sunday of Eastertide so that those of us unable to make midweek worship services could still commemorate the solemnity of the feast.

This is a bit of a weird time if we think about it liturgically and theologically. The Ascension has happened but Pentecost hasn’t yet. We’re in a liminal time. The in-between time. Jesus’ earthly ministry has ended, but the Holy Spirit hasn’t yet moved the apostles to proclaim the Good News themselves because, frankly, they’re not ready to receive yet. We know that they will; after all, we wouldn’t be showing up to our churches on Sundays, nor would I be doing this blog, if the Holy Spirit hadn’t shown up on that day of Pentecost, but the wonderful thing about being a church rooted in liturgical tradition and the various seasons and observances of the ecclesiastical year, is that, despite knowing what’s coming next week, we are invited and encouraged to just sit with where we are now. Think back to Holy Week, to the invitation from each of the days of the Paschal Triduum to just sit and be present in the moment. Sure, we knew the Resurrection was coming, but to just be present and feel the feels of each day and value them for what they were – washing feet and stripping the altar, praying at the foot of the cross, sitting in the darkness moments before Easter’s dawn – that was some powerful stuff because those moments helped us remember that where we are now still holds as much value as where we will be. The truth is that we too often have our minds fixed on what is on the horizon, rather than the present moment. And this week is no different. During this liminal period – between the Ascension and Pentecost – what would it mean for us to ponder the apostles’ thoughts and feelings? And our own?

Picture the scene: the eleven standing with Jesus as he’s talking on the Mount of Olives, and then suddenly there he goes. And they’re just…standing there. Mouths gaped open. What now?! It takes two men in white – they always wear white, don’t they? – to tell them to stop standing there, watching Jesus’ feet go into the clouds, and go back into the city. Go back into the messiness, the political and religious volatility from which they’d hoped Jesus would save them. Can you imagine what that walk back into the city and that little apartment must’ve been like? “What was THAT?!” “Who were THEY?!” “So….is that it?!” “Anybody write that down?!” “What did he say again?!” A lot of confusion. A lot of fear. A lot of uncertainty about what was to come.  Who could blame them for just wanting to stay on that mount, staring up into heaven? C’mon, Jesus! Come on back. The world is scary and cruel. We can’t do it alone. 

The world isn’t THAT much different now from then. I see church signs and billboards crying out for Jesus to come back. Yet while this sentiment is understandable, it’s entirely spiritually immature. Jesus’ leaving was the necessary preliminary for all future progress in humanity’s spiritual life, so that – the apostles first, and then the rest of us – would stop holding on to Jesus’ physical, external presence, and find his presence and strength inside themselves. His Ascension, then, was the blessing that allowed them to receive the Spirit, painful though the separation might have been. 

And while we know that the Holy Spirit will come next Sunday – and with her the “Acts of the Apostles” can truly begin – this in-between time of waiting must have been hard. So, in it we actually have a divine lesson in delayed gratification. It’s one of the first lessons we learn as children – you can’t always get what you want when you want it. Do you remember what that was like? If not, do you remember watching your kids when they didn’t get what they wanted when they wanted it? I barely remember the time my grandparents took me to Disney World when I was five, but I’m told that I was asking if we were there yet before we were out of their hometown of Bristol, let alone the state of Virginia. They say patience is a virtue, but it has never been mine! Yet that is the gift God gave the apostles before the greater gift of the Spirit’s coming amongst them: the patience to wait, to listen, to feel the discomfort of the liminal time, and to just be, wherever they were, wherever we are. It is so very often in these moments God is most stirring, even if we don’t notice. 

The world is often in a hurry and wants everyone to be in a hurry. We do it with deadlines that are set for us or tasks that demand our efforts. We do it with the Jesus, too. Hurry up and get here already and fix this! But like the apostles, we are called to stop looking up into heaven, to return to our places of liminality, the places of stillness and quiet, and to wait patiently for the Spirit to show up and do her thing. 

The Comforter

'Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees her nor knows her. You know him, because she abides with you, and she will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”'

--John 14: 15-21

A couple of years ago, not long after my cancer diagnosis, my dear Aunt Meredith sent us in the mail a down comforter. But this was no ordinary down comforter, no, this was the comforter that belonged to my grandmother, my Mimi. I remembered this comforter as the one my sister enveloped herself in when she came down with chicken pox, and the fluffiest, most comfortable blanket there ever could be. It has provided warmth and contentment to so many in our family, including my Mimi in her final days, and Aunt Mere thought we should have it, that we might be comforted by it, too. And we were, and then some! We took to calling it the Poof, and boy howdy, did it make a difference. There were magical healing powers in that comforter, Kristen said. Somehow, whoever was wrapped in it – me, Kristen, Casey even – felt better, more secure. We felt held, by the love of our ancestors, and by God. The Poof is the platonic ideal of “comforter.”

My Mimi's Poof, providing comfort to Casey and me during my cancer and transplant recovery.

Alright, well, down comforter, anyway. Jesus promises his apostles in our reading from the 14th chapter of John this week, that once he has gone away, God will provide for them a comforter. Not a blanket, obviously, but one who will give healing, security, maybe even a fluffy, poof-like feeling to those who receive. The word Jesus uses is Parachlete, which our New Revised Standard Version translates as Advocate. But this is a word that doesn’t really have a direct English counterpart, so various translations over time have called it something different: the New International Version says Counselor; the Common English Bible says Helper; the Message says Friend; and the tried and true King James Version translates Parahclete as Comforter. Many of you may be more familiar with that word, especially if you attended an Episcopal church prior to 1976 and did Morning Prayer most Sundays and said or sang the Te Deum. You may remember the line in that ancient prayer about “the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.” This is the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of the Living God, the Spirit of Love. The Third Person of the Trinity. Whatever word we use.

This is the promise Jesus makes to his apostles in the hours before his death, that even after he is gone they will not be left orphaned. In those days disciples of a rabbi or any other teacher were often called orphans whenever their teacher died, since they were left without any guidance or tutelage. Jesus promises that this will not be the case for those who follow him. The Parachlete – the Advocate, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit – will come and lead them and guide them and show them how to love as Jesus has loved, how to boldly proclaim God’s goodness and mercy to a broken and hurting world the way Jesus did, how to have hope when all hope seems lost. 

The Parachlete will, indeed come on the Day of Pentecost, and set those same apostles’ hearts on fire to go into the world, to push through their fear. How can they do this? Because of love. Because, as Jesus says, not only will those who love him keep his commandments, but he will love them too. He will keep loving them, even after he’s gone, through the Parachlete, who will comfort them and advocate for them and be the voice of God speaking to and through them. This is how the world will know Jesus is still alive. This is how we still know Jesus is alive, through the power of love that is poured out in the actions of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. 

The world doesn't know Jesus through proselytizing. Those who have no use for the Bible will not know Jesus through quotes from Scripture because, what’s the point? Saint Paul understood this, as is illustrated from this week's reading from the Acts of the Apostles in which we see what happened when the Spirit led him to preach to the people of Athens:

'Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,

‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”'

--Acts 17: 22-31

Paul doesn't try to convince the Athenians that they’ve been wrong all this time and that he has all the answers. He doesn’t quote the Scriptures to prove his point because they don’t care.  He doesn’t take an anti-intellectual stance and decry philosophy as the devil’s favorite subject. He acknowledges right out of the gate that they are a religious people; in fact, religion was so much a part of Greek daily life that it was something they took for granted.  He relates to them and commends them for their sense of devotion. Greeks were deeply religious, but not exactly spiritual. The gods didn’t really care about humanity, so why care about them? Still, they have an altar even to a so-called “unknown god.” What they call unknown, Paul says, has actually been made known. Such a god loves all created things – Paul even quotes the poet Aratus of Soli who coined the phrase “we are all his children” in his work entitled Phenomena. This is the one whom Paul proclaims, without ever even using Jesus’ name. He’s not concerned with winning an argument but by simply letting people know the truth that he knows, which is that we are all united one to another in this God, through the Parachlete, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Spirit of the Living God that fell afresh on the world and became, what Paul Tillich called, the Ground of All Being.

This is the scandal of the Parachlete’s presence in the world because she cuts through the jargon of the dominant doctrines and disciples of the day, both civil and theological. She calls to us to get out of the world’s way of thinking – which is usually binary and absolute – and into God’s way of thinking – which is ever-moving like the wind and grounded in love. Even among Christians it is hard sometimes to pay attention to what the Parachlete is doing. How can the Spirit help fix the problem of attendance not being what it once was or figuring out where money is gonna come from for roof repair? And what about the people on the other side of the street, preaching something different from us, what would the Spirit REALLY have us do about them because we gotta respond and do SOMETHING, right? Does the Spirit want us to be more spiritual or more religious?  Thinkers or doers? Does any of this sound like it comes from a place of love? Do any of these attitudes meet people where they are and open us up to receive and listen to the Spirit?  Maybe the next time we are faced with those fears we can pause and invoke the Parachlete and acknowledge that presence, that Spirit of God; after all, there’s nowhere we can hide from her. When we acknowledge that her we are less reactive, less defensive, and more mindful, more kind. Our Eucharistic Prayer D calls the Holy Spirit “Christ’s own first gift for those who believe.” We dare not squander such a gift.

Is it an Advocate that you need right now? A Counselor? A Helper? A Friend? A Comforter? The Parachelete, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, is all of these and so much more. She is the presence of God that reminds us that we are not alone. She is the voice of God that encourages us to move forward when we think we can’t. She gives us hope when the world seems hopeless. She is the ground on which we stand when we dare to love and the wind that blows and tickles our ear when we dare to be curious. She doesn’t have magical powers, like my Mimi’s Poof. But her presence with us is evidence alone that we are all God’s children, as Aratus said first and Paul echoed. Because she is in the world, we are invited to ask each day, each moment, what is the Spirit up to? How am I, how are we, being called to love more deeply, to see the living Christ more clearly? Parachelete of the living God, fall afresh on us. 

An Honest Misunderstanding

'Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”'

--John 14: 1-14

Twelfth century mosaic of the apostles Thomas (left) and Phillip.

A long time ago I heard someone describe prayer as a time when we can be totally honest with God. That made sense to me. So I’d find myself throughout the day just talking out loud to God, being honest with whatever was going on in my life. “To be honest, God, I really want this job… …To be To be honest, God, I really need to pass this test honest, God, I can’t understand why you let me get into this mess.” All that seemed fine, so long as God didn’t talk back. Because whenever I applied that kind of total honesty to actual interactions with other people…it didn’t go well. “I’m just being honest,” wasn’t a viable excuse for times when my bluntness came off as arrogance or frustration.

How often have you had that happen to you? When have you come at someone with a genuine, honest desire, only for it to be rebuked, or at the very least not heard the way that you wanted? 

This is why I can relate to the apostles, and especially this week to Thomas and Phillip. These two speak to Jesus from a place of total honesty. We find Jesus today giving his last great teaching to the apostles, what we call the Farewell Discourse. He has just washed their feet, Judas has left the group abruptly, and Jesus is just a couple hours away from being arrested in Gethsemane. He’s trying to impart one final lesson to this group, and while he’s in the middle of making his point, Thomas and Phillip let their frustrations show. 

Paraphrasing here: "You say we know the way, Jesus, but we don’t. We have no idea where you’re going or how to get there. You talk about seeing the Father, well, if we have met the one you call Father, then tell us where and when? We don’t know what you’re talking about!" Hey, they’re just being honest. 

Let me ask y’all something. If someone hit you up with that kind of blunt honesty, how do you think you’d react? Parents, what if your kids did that – or maybe they have! Teachers, what if a student blurted out in frustration that they didn’t know what you were talking about? How do you think you’d respond if you were in that influential, authoritative position? Maybe you would respond with a lot of patience and reassurance. Or maybe not! Maybe you’d hit those frustrations with some of your own. I’ve been there…on both sides.

Yet once again Jesus does not respond from a place of ego, a place of frustration and fed-upness – although, if we’re honest, who would blame him after all the times the apostles miss the mark and don’t understand where he’s coming from. Still, Jesus accepts their misunderstanding. He doesn’t judge them for what they know or don’t know. He meets them in a manner that the world can’t. He does it for them, and he still does it for us, and he gives us an example that we can follow. 

Jesus does not lean on our understanding, but rather he invites us to lean on his. It isn’t our trust that will save us in the end, but his trust, not our ability to have faith, but his own faithfulness in us – great is thy faithfulness, remember? Even in the times when we just don’t get it, even when we are so frustrated and come at Jesus with our own brutal, blunt honesty, even when anyone else in his position would knock us down a peg or say, “Who do you think you are?!” he holds it all. That’s how big Jesus is. Big enough to take all of our questions, all of our frustrations, all of the subtle frailties of our human nature that over time would wear someone else down. That is some good news right there! It’s what sustained the community of John’s Gospel in days of confusion and fear, and even for us now it is a balm in the moments when we don’t know what to do, where to go, who to be, or how to understand and trust Jesus. 

We are not abandoned to figure things out on our own. We have a friend and Savior who is committed to walking with us, loving us, and even dealing with our most brutally honest moments until the day when all manner of things are made well and revealed to us. In the gap between doubt and faith, confusion and trust, stands Jesus, believing in us as long as it takes for us to believe in him. 

Thomas Merton once said in a prayer to God, “I don’t know what I’m doing or where I'm going, but I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you.” The apostles didn’t understand where Jesus was going or how to follow him – and if they, who traveled and lived with him each day for roughly three years couldn’t figure it out, what chance do we have? But that’s the point. We get glimpses, fragments on this side of the Kingdom. Even Saint Paul understood this when he said that we see through a glass dimly right now. And rather than grow frustrated, we can lean into the moments of not knowing. We can be brutally honest with Jesus, yes, and also accept that Jesus’ response might not be in any manner what we were looking for. We don’t have to live with the fear of not knowing. Because Jesus is the Way, even when we don’t know what the way ahead looks like. Jesus is the Truth, even when we don’t know what is true or not anymore. And Jesus is the life, even when we don’t know what real, authentic life means. Our small bucket of faith may not be able to hold much, as Kayla McClurg of the Church of the Savior wrote, but Jesus can take even that and make the impossible a reality.

Maybe you’re like Thomas and utterly confused by what Jesus is doing in your life. Or like Phillip and demanding answers from Jesus to help you figure things out. Maybe all you have is the honest desires of a tired and worn out heart. The good news, the Gospel, is that Jesus will meet you, with whatever you’re holding, and you can give it all to him, and by doing so, you will find your way, your truth, and your life.