Death and resurrection in Hollywood

I was watching the trailer for Marvel's movie, The Avengers, today when it hit me that there are two things we most desperately want. 1) An ongoing story, and 2) a conclusion. Unfortunately, these two are diametrically opposed and so we are left with movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides or The Land Before Time 86, or anything to that effect. All the while we want some grand conclusion... but only if it doesn't ruin the possibility of the story continuing on.

I'm actually excited about The Avengers largely because it isn't the formulaic sequel that Hollywood has been giving us for far too long, which is to say it isn't the same story in a different, and probably exotic, location (read: Hangover II, Sex and the City II, Mighty Ducks II... mmm, just about everything II). But I digress, this isn't just about what we look for in a movie. Box office numbers have shown that even when a movie is crappy we still go, and I don't think it's because people are complete dummies. I think, by and large, we're looking for a narrative that gives our lives larger meaning even if sometimes we don't always go to the right place to find it.

This has implications, however, for far more than movies. We want a narrative that's ongoing and one that is final. Good, effective preaching has to feed both. Mostly we fail in contributing to the ongoing narrative, evidenced enough by the number of church-goers who don't see any connection between the sermon and their daily lives. Other times we try too hard to connect with lives and miss the endgame--the gospel. Good stories do both, but they're hard to come by. On the one hand it's enough to preach the Gospel and on the other it's insufficient (if it doesn't live in an ongoing narrative).

This is the difficulty in bringing the old to life and putting the new to death, and it takes somebody like Jesus to actually show us how. The power of the Gospels isn't just in promise but in death AND resurrection. Sometimes death is the only way to get there. Sometimes Hollywood has to kill something in order to give it power. Too much of a good thing isn't really a good thing at all.

That is Gospel.