Ode to Frank Capra

In your bulletin are four pictures, paintings from the Renaissance. Each is an annunciation. The annunciation is the story found in the gospel of Luke, often read during advent, where the angel Gabriel comes to Nazareth to tell the young woman, Mary, that she will bear a child, and the child will be the Son of God.

This story is only told by Luke, no other evangelist includes this, and it is seen by scholars as an "addition" or later development to the gospels. As such in literary terms the annunciation story is foreshadow, backstory, non-essential. For Protestants this additional quality may hold true. We never know what to do with the Virgin Mary. Is she a saint? Is she simply a person God chose to bear his son? Is this just folk lore? We can ask questions like these because we pay attention to the Bible. After the birth and one childhood story, Mary fades from view in the gospels: she never speaks again.

For the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox, though, Mary may not speak after this, but she certainly doesn't fade from view.  She was Immaculately conceived; she is the perpetual virgin; she is the co-redemptrix of the world; she is the queen of heaven.  No devote Catholic goes a day without praying to her, borrowing the words of the Angel Gabriel in the annunciation story, hail, Mary, full of grace.

              Ancient legends about Mary abound.  My favorite is that she was a temple virgin who often spoke with angels.  Hence, she is depicted as bothered by the greeting of the angel, worried what such a declaration of favor might entail, but she is not bothered by the angel who tends to scare the living daylights out of most people.    

The other legend is that she refused to wed. When she came of age, she wanted a life of religious devotion, a focused life of prayer.  An aged Joseph agreed to be her caretaker. Also of note is that she is said to be buried in two different places, in two different countries, or to have been not buried at all, but lifted, assumed, to heaven by the angels who loved her.

              I recently read a delightful short story by Amor Towles.  The story describes a visit to the Metropolitan Museum to view the Botticelli annunciation in your bulletin.  Part of this visit described in the story was an explanation about the annunciation as a particular artistic challenge.  I didn't know the annunciation was a challenge, a task an artist could take up to prove their worth, that they were worthy of the title master.  The short story provides the characteristics or elements a painter must include in an annunciation.  There was also a wonderful explanation of the choices an artist must make.

              The first essential element of an annunciation is perspective.  A renaissance artist of worth painted a realistic landscape to scale, so the viewer was invited into the painting.  Gone where the flat symbols of medieval art; now in their place was a chance to step into the piece of art itself.  Great skill.

              Next the artist must interpret the relationship between heaven and earth.  This requires not only a technical mastery, but also a theological understanding.  The relationship of heaven and earth is often depicted in who stands above and who stands below, what separates Gabriel from Mary.  Is there an extension of the hands or eye contact?  All of these describe what it means for "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

              Third, the artist must make a choice of what moment in the annunciation to depict.  There are three moments.  The greeting, the confusion, and the declaration of Mary.  Do we see Mary as welcoming the visit, confused by the blessing, or steeling herself with courage to say, let it be so? This choice is where the artist must demonstrate their ability to convey the heart of Mary, her emotions, her character.

              Lastly, is a matter of station.  An annunciation was painted for orders and churches and patrons.  How they viewed the role and purpose of Mary, her station, was a part of the master work as it shows the artist's ability to listen, to learn, to discover the intended audience.  Does the patron see Mary as a devote scholar, which was quite often the case; do they see her as a humble servant; or is she a regal manifestation of God's grace, a heavenly queen?

              Knowing these elements makes the images in the bulletin come alive for me.  Each painting is a feast of choices and expressions.  I thought of these paintings as I prepared for this Sunday.  Thought of them in terms of contrast.  The annunciation is filled with beauty and tenderness and hope and joy.  Our reading has a graveyard and chains, pigs and demons, angry villagers and a disappointed follower. 

              Considering these differences I wondered: what if our lesson today, the story of Legion, or the Gerasene demoniac, what if our story was had been the subject of renaissance painters, their challenge for a masterpiece? 

              There would certainly be wonderful landscapes to choose from.  Cliffsides and seascapes, villages in the distance and livestock nearby. 

              The story itself draws me in, can't you feel it?  The terse exchange, the naming, the violence.  Instead of angels it is demons and not just one but an entire legion.  All of these tend to beg the question: are heaven and earth meeting here or is it hell and earth?  What a theological challenge.  Where are the lines of heaven and earth in this story? Would Jesus stand above Legion or eye to eye?  Do the demons cower as they beg?

              And what moment would the artist choose? The crazed Legion full of violence, inducing fear, breaking chains, howling?  Or is it the negotiation: send us to the swine?  I want to say the hardest moment for me is the rejection, the conclusion.  The village rejects Jesus and Jesus tells the man now healed he is not to follow him but go home.

              The last aspect, the station of the man, this is most challenging.  For an artist would need to listen to our heart.  What do we believe about suffering and dignity and brokenness and wholeness?  Are we cynical or hopeful?  Are we ready to speak of fate or fortune?  Do we believe humans are born violent or do we believe we become violent? Can the will God be done on earth as it is in heaven?  Do we believe that?

              Struggling to find the words to answer such questions I am ever in awe of the artist whose answer is with blue or green, a quality of light, the angle of the chin, the extension of the hand.  How amazing it is to possess the clarity of finding such answers and then creating a place for others stand in the midst, to be free to hear or hear nothing.  Botticelli makes me want to linger in the hands of Gabriel and Mary.  I wonder where I would linger in the story of Legion.

              The crazy moment in the beginning with all its violence is not appealing to me.  I have seen enough violence to know it is unpleasant to linger there.  And the bargaining and the pigs and the drowning.  It all seems a bit cruel.  Don't you think?

              What appeals to me also breaks my heart.  The final scene.  After the villagers have asked Jesus to leave, the moment where the healed man asks to follow him, but Jesus sends him away.  Luke says, "he begged" to stay.  This is one of the moments in the gospels that haunt me.  It is almost as if Jesus abandons him. The healed man knocked at the door.  But the door was not opened unto him.

              I had a strange notion after sitting with this story and wondering what it would be like as a painting, a masterpiece, what would Lippi and Angelico, Botticelli and Caravaggio, what would they make of this final scene?  How would they paint the begging and the refusal? A strange notion came in the form of Frank Capra.  It is as if Frank Capra came into the room of artistic contemplation and said, "may I suggest my film, 'It's A Wonderful Life?’ Take a look.  It might work.”

              Years ago, such a suggestion would have seemed odd, nonsense.  But having learned why Capra made “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and for whom, knowing what he sought to express, where he hoped you would enter, knowing all that now, I thought, of course.  We don't have a painting of this moment, but we do have a movie.

              You all know the story of George Bailey and Peter Bailey; we know about Ernie the taxi driver and Bert the cop; we’ve scowled at old man Potter and rolled our eyes at Sam Wainwright and his plastics and ground floors and trips to Florida.  A part of every Christmas is Zulu's petals and Janey playing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”  If you are like me your heart goes to your throat with Uncle Billy and worries for Violet, what will become of her in the big city; and how terrible was the day Mr. Gower lost his son.

              None of that fits really with the violence of Legion or the madness of the swine or the anger of the villagers filled with fear.  But when you know why Frank Capra made the movie, created the town of Bedford Falls, if you know his motive to send Clarence from heaven to earth, why George needed to want to live, it becomes a masterpiece, a masterful retelling of the moment between Jesus and the man now healed, where he says, go home.  You must go home.

              Most people don't know that Frank Capra was enlisted in the army to make movies during World War II and how upon his return from the war he was crushed by how hard it was for soldiers to come home, to believe life was still worth living, to trust they were still themselves.  So much violence, so much senselessness, so much fear and death.  Capra made the movie It's a Wonderful Life as an invitation to them, the returning soldiers.  The movie was an answer to the question: is life still worth living?  His answer was come home.  Go home. 

              I want to say if I had to paint or sculpt or capture the final scene of Jesus and the man now healed it would be when George bursts through the door and realizes how much love you can find in life.  The heartbreak of the man being told he could not stay with Jesus is erased by the cheers, the tears, Harry Bailey embracing his brother and the words Clarence left for George, no man is failure who has friends. The pain of the rejection, you can't stay with me, is overwhelmed by the hope of going home.  The man tormented will now be the man embraced.

              The Gerasene demoniac is not a classic Christmas story.  I know.  But when I think of men and women making their way back home in 1945 with sights and scenes so hard to shake, I wonder if it is the Christmas message that was needed.  Maybe it is for you too.  Maybe not.

              Maybe the purity of Mary, her innocent courage, the grandeur of the angel and the simple hope, let it be so, maybe that is what you need to hear at Christmas. Good message.  Great message.  But maybe you need to hear indeed the true hope of advent will find you despite the despair, hope will return to your heart, joy will find you once again.  But mostly, maybe you need to remember love will win, conquer all the demons, even a legion.  And we can go home.  Amen.