Pentecost 6 – Summer Series “Faith and Film”
July 1, 2018
Grace, Mankato, MN
Luke 15.11-32
We are slowly moving forward in movie release dates (1986), but today move backward in cinematic time. Although it’s not a biopic—a biographical picture like Gandhi, The Mission depicts real events from the 1750s in South America. Spain has established a colony there and Spanish Jesuits have established a mission outpost to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the native Indians, the Guarani. Spain, ostensibly a slave-averse nation intends to sell the colony to slave-trading Portugal, which sees the Guarani as a resource for its slave trade. The Jesuits try to convince a church official to intercede on their behalf to prevent the sale and thus preserve the Guarani people.
Early in the film, Captain Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert DeNiro), who is a slave hunter, kills his brother over a woman, sending him into a deep fugue-like despair. Mendoza is then visited by the leader of the Jesuits, Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons). As are result of their conversation, Mendoza decides to carry his armor, a symbol of his tattered life, up a mountain as penance for his acts.
The film clip shows the Jesuits, including Captain Mendoza, struggling up a mountain to reach the plateau where the Guarani live. Impeding their progress is a tremendous waterfall. Part way up, one of the Jesuit brothers thinks Mendoza has suffered enough and cuts the rope pulling the armor. Mendoza simply goes back down, retrieves the armor, and begins again. At the top of the mountain, the Guarani recognize Mendoza and threaten to kill him. Recognizing his repentance, the Guarani leader has the rope hauling the armor cut and the armor shoved over the precipice. Mendoza sobs in relief and is comforted in the arms of Father Gabriel.
After spending time with the Guarani following their forgiveness, Father Gabriel has Mendoza read a passage of scripture from 1 Corinthians 13, the “love chapter.” This precipitates a “conversion experience” that prompts Mendoza to join the Jesuits. He thus becomes Brother Rodrigo under the authority of Father Gabriel. Like all our films, there are a multitude of religious themes we could harvest from The Mission, but Brother Rodrigo’s deep repentance and his attempt to pay for his sins highlight the theories of atonement, with a little bit of penance and forgiveness thrown in for good measure. Now, atonement is a complex theological category with no small amount of controversy attendant to it. One of the theories, which states that God’s anger needs to be appease through a blood sacrifice, is particularly contentious. Now, we don’t have time to do an in-depth analysis, but the various theories of atonement basically try to answer the questions, “Why did Jesus have to die?” and “What’s our part in it?”
Though there are a number of scriptures that deal with atonement, I’ve selected the story of the “Prodigal Son” to help us understand how God deals with the brokenness in the relationship between us and God. You know the story well. The younger son finds himself in a deep despair, much like Rodrigo and “comes to himself” realizing that he’d “sinned against heaven and earth.” The son hopes to do “prodigal penance” by going home, falling on his face, and taking a slave’s position in his father’s household. But the son has no chance to try and save himself or to atone for his sins against his father. The moment the father sees his son, he runs out to him, embraces him and restores him to son-hood with a huge party to boot.
As I reflected on Mendoza carrying the burden of his past—symbolized by his armor—up the mountain, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the burdens we drag along behind ourselves. There are things I’ve done or not done that I’ve had a hard time forgiving myself. And even though I know that I’ve been forgiven, I keep going back and attaching the rope to them again. I think that one way to understand atonement is that Jesus cuts the rope and takes all of those burdens upon himself because we can’t do it on our own. Jesus then takes those burdens and brokenness where they get crucified with him on the cross.
In my reading this week, I discovered that penance was not intended to be punishment or for earning forgiveness. It was to be a spiritual discipline or practice to help us not make the same mistake again. But there’s one more thing that I think is important. I don’t know whether the director intended this or not, but I do know they don’t do anything without a reason. So, I love the imagery of Mendoza climbing the mountain with the waterfall not only as background but inescapable. While he was striving up the mountain, the waterfall could have reminded him of his baptism where he had been washed clean in the blood of Jesus Christ.
So, what I’d like you to take with you today is that you have been baptized into Jesus Christ, that you are now dead to sin, and have risen to new life, welcomed home by God as a beloved child. Thanks be to God!
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