Midnight In Paris

Sermon: Mark: 1:21-28
Jan. 29, 2012

“What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” That’s the question that reverberates down the centuries. What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

He had come out of Nazareth, been baptized, went on retreat in the desert, called his apostles, set up headquarters in the larger town of Capernaum, and then showed up in the local synagogue where he opened the scroll and began to teach. They were amazed at his new message and the authority with which he taught. There was a man there with an unclean spirit. The spirit knows who he is. He is the holy one of God. The spirit infesting this man is frightened. “What do you have to do with us?” he says. Interesting that frequently in the gospels unclean spirits are referred to in the plural. Jesus drives out the spirit or spirits and the people are even more astounded.

We might as the question… in fact, we should. “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” The answer is... “everything.” He has everything to do with us. Before the world came to be, He is. The eternal word of God spoken by the Father, intimately involved in our creation, He became human and entered our time zone, became one of us, with a name, Jesus of Nazareth. Through his spirit, the Holy Spirit, he is present to us, within us, helping us if we will let him to be all that we can be. Well, then if we are surrounded by him, even invaded by him, why don’t we know it? Because we are distracted by so many other things, that our spiritual senses are deadened. It is the here and now, though,that matters. Where is the meaning right now? So frequently we are in the past, romanticizing about those better days that used to be or longing for the future when things will improve. Rarely are we with Christ in the present.

I got an insight this week from an unlikely source, Woody Allen. I was watching his recent movie, Midnight in Paris, not expecting to be that entertained when suddenly I got the message. Now I am going to ruin the movie for you, if you have not seen it, by telling the story. If you don't want that, cover your ears for 3 or 4 minutes. On the other hand, it could save your the $8 admission.

It’s about an aspiring young writer who is struggling through his first novel. He finds himself in Paris, brought there by his fiancé and her parents. He loves the atmosphere of Paris, but something is missing, is wrong. As he wanders the streets at midnight he is picked up by one of those grand old motor cars from the 1920’s. In it are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who take him to a party where he meets a cast of aspiring young artists. He realizes he is talking with the young Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso before they are famous. The guy on the piano playing that very familiar music is Cole Porter. He is so in his element, even getting help with his novel from Edith Stein, that he goes back each night at midnight to live in that world. It is his golden era. In the meantime he breaks up with his fiancé. Good thing, because he falls in love with a beautiful young woman from the twenties, who herself is bored and unhappy to be alive then. She takes him in a horse and carriage at midnight to the 1890’s, her golden era, where they meet Toulouse Lautrec and a bunch of the impressionist painters. They’re at the Moulin Rouge where the Cancan is being performed. Yet the people there are unhappy and bored with that era and long for something earlier. Then there is a flash to King Louie the 13th and Marie Antoinette at Versailles just before heads started rolling in the French Revolution. Suddenly our friend gets it, just as I got it. He returns to the present day Paris, refuses to travel at midnight and finds a contemporary young French woman; they walk off in the rain along the Seine.

Now is our golden era, not the past, not the future.. Christ is here now among us, within us. Take off the blinders. Be aware. Possibilities are unlimited. That’s what Jesus of Nazareth has to do with us. “ My I suggest to you. This is the best part of our lives.” (Recording by Vance Gilbert of above piece is now played.).