Sermon 37 - Surreal
Job 17:10
But come on, all of you, try again! I will not find a wise man among you.
Matthew 15:22-29
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly." Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us. He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs." "Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table."
How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
The fish!
How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
I don't know, AND IT'S NOT FUNNY!!!
The first sermon that I ever wrote, and which I worked on for about thirty years before ever writing it down, and which I still haven't preached, is entitled "Be Ye Hackers." By extension, this sermon might be titled "Be Ye Surrealists." So, I guess I've got to tell you what surrealists are, and why you should be like them.
Since most people are familiar with surrealism, if, indeed, they are familiar with surrealism at all, from the works of artists such as Salvador Dali, and his melting clocks, the average person could be forgiven for thinking that surrealism is an exploration of the *un*real. However, if one looks at the French roots of surrealism, one notes the word "sur," which means above. Also, since most people are at best familiar with surrealist paintings, they may not be aware of the other aspects of surrealism. Surrealism was not only a movement, but almost a philosophy. It was an attempt to explore reality, *real* reality, higher reality, *ultimate* reality. It was an attempt to experience and explore reality that had been hidden, or biased, by the trammels of established thought, and even language. Hence the attempts at surrealist prose and poetry, and the arguments among surrealists about whether words themselves had any meaning. This is explored in pieces such as Madritte's painting "This is Not a Pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe)," which pointed out that the word pipe, and even an *image* of a pipe, was not an actual pipe. Or, in another of Magritte's paintings, where he explores the possibility that it is just as true to call a bag the sky, rather than simply a bag.
One of the activities of the surrealists was to look for marvels. And often the search for marvels was to search for marvels in the everyday. The marvel of tiny growing things in the middle of the pavements of a city. The marvel of the sparkles of crystals in a broken piece of rock in the masonry of a building. (I have just discovered PortAlberniHenge sunrise.) The surrealists were not bound simply by painting, but explored prose and poetry. They also explored other fields of activity, although most of these were in the arts. It might be a little bit dangerous to do surrealistic explorations of chemistry.
In terms of the search for marvels, the surrealists followed, and anticipated, a great many philosophers and writers of modern self-help books, who highly recommend the exploration of the everyday. Finding the beauty in everyday things. Finding the marvels in the everyday. Looking for the beauty of the ultimate reality, in the most ordinary of things and circumstances.
I rather doubt that there was any agreement among the surrealists in regard to religion, since there was so much disagreement amongst them about so many other areas. And because surrealists were fighting against, and trying to free thoughts from, the limitations and restrictions imposed by established ideas and social orders, they were frequently fighting against established religion. However, I would make the case that the surrealist were all, even if they didn't realize it, at the very least deists. Yes, I would say this, even in preference over theists. The surrealists seemed to have a faith that the ultimate reality, whatever it was, was beautiful, and worth pursuing. In this way they all seem to be searching for, and exploring the "God-shaped hole" in ourselves that C.S. Lewis posits. If we are unfulfilled by what we can find in the world, it is because there is a hole in our lives, and the shape of that hole can only be filled by God.
Okay, you may be thinking that saying "God" is pushing things a bit. However, consider. The surrealists knew that they were looking for something that had been hidden by society. They weren't exactly sure what they were searching for. What "ultimate reality" it was that society, and the structures of society, and the rules and protocols of society, and even the restrictions of standard artistic formats, and the limitations and restrictions of words themselves, hid from them. They had to go searching elsewhere. They had to try automatic writing. They had to try bringing images of opposite types of concepts together. Of opposing concepts. They didn't know what they were looking for, and they knew that they didn't know it. It was, in the famous words of Rumsfeld, a known unknown. They knew that society's structures and restrictions hid some important aspects of reality. Of ultimate reality. And they were not only willing, but even eager to explore something that they knew they didn't know. They had faith. They had faith that what they were looking for was worth finding. That it was beautiful. That it was good. That it was worth dedicating themselves, their minds, their time, their thought, and a great deal of energy, to finding. That requires a *lot* of faith. You don't put that much energy into looking for something if you think that what you are going to find is going to be a disappointment. You don't put that much effort into looking for something, if you feel that what you were going to find is going to be ordinary. When you are dedicating that much of your life to finding something, you think that you are searching for a treasure, hidden in a field. You think you are looking for a pearl of great price. You think you are looking for an ultimate reality that is, in fact, buried treasure. Buried by layers of strictures, limitations, structures, and restrictions of society. But a buried treasure nonetheless, and, therefore, a treasure worth searching for and finding.
And do not a great many people tell us to look for God in the everyday? Does not the Bible, itself, tell us to look for God in the everyday? Consider the works of his hands. That's what the surrealists were doing, even if they didn't know him, at the time.
So, I would submit that not only the surrealist, but everyone who is telling us to look for the beauty, and the marvels, and the treasures in the everyday, is actually telling us to look for God.
The surrealists would probably dispute this, and likely very strongly. In terms of the established structures of society, and the restrictions on what you can and cannot think, the established church has got to be one of the most structured and restrictive. The French Catholic Church was perhaps not as closely tied to the government as the Irish Catholic church, where the Irish Catholic Church essentially *was* the department of social welfare, and particularly for children and families. But the Catholic church was a very strong, and often restrictive, force in society. Therefore, the surrealists were, primarily, against it.
America, with its constitutional separation of church and state, does not, officially, have an established church. Or, rather, *officially* America does not have an established church. *Unofficially*, of course, a great many Americans consider that they live in a Christian country, and, indeed, see themselves as Christendom. This is particularly true of the American religious right. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the religious right, in America, has more to do with politics than it does with theology. For example, in the 1980 election presidential election, the religious right did not support Jimmy Carter, who was a Christian, or John Anderson, who was a Christian, but Ronald Reagan, who never made any pretense of being a Christian. The American religious right has, fairly consistently, followed this same pattern in terms of which political candidates to support. This is even stronger in the case of American Christian Nationalism.
Jesus said that you cannot serve both God and money. A great many Christians in the western world would vociferously dispute this. A great many Christians have bought into the idea of a transactional religion, and the prosperity gospel. If you do what God says, God will bless you, materially. God will increase your business and your bank account. God will make you rich. And, in fact, it is often seen that the transaction is fairly one-sided. You don't have to determine, in advance, what it is that God wants you to do. If you become rich, then God has obviously blessed you. You are, therefore, almost by definition, doing what God wants. The proof is that God has blessed you, and you have a large bank account.
You only have to look at the American megachurches to see the strong case for this. The megachurches have enormous budgets. They have enormous costs, as well, which they mention when requesting people who listen to their broadcast to send them money. Their revenues are enormous. The pay, for their superstar preachers, is similarly enormous. This is not seen as a problem. This is simply seen as evidence that God loves the megachurches, and the superstar preachers, and the proof is, they are rich. No further proof is needed.
Jesus statement that we are to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and unto God what belongs to God, is seen as a minor side issue. The prosperity gospel is all important. That we are rich proves the validity of the prosperity gospel, and proves that we are doing what God wants. The fact that this is circular reasoning, and pretty much proves nothing, is lost on those who have confirmation bias in favor of the prosperity gospel. So, while the surrealists might have reacted very strongly against the idea that they were looking for God, they certainly *did* have a good point to make about how established social structures prevents us from seeing the truth.
Surrealists had another unusual tactic for fighting against restrictions. Surrealists had their own form of humour. Predictably, this was humour which attempted to break away from traditional norms and forms of humour in the culture they came out of. Surrealist humourists were not necessarily terribly funny. It's difficult to take to create great humour and comedy when you take your self too seriously.
However, surrealist attempts at humor brought us the theater of the absurd, and absurdist humour, and subsequently the likes of such great comedy products as The Goon Show, Beyond the Fringe, and Monty Python. The surrealists were absolutely correct about one thing. Comedy is almost always subversive. Comedy is one of the first things that authoritarian dictators try to stamp out. Comedy tends to point out how silly, and how pompous, and how wrong, we often are. I think it was more generally about art that various people have said it is a lie that tells the truth. But it can equally apply to humor and comedy, and sometimes even more so.
Now, I may have lost some of you at this point, with the mere mention of Monty Python. Some of you have never seen or listened to Monty Python. To which I can only say, poor you. But, yes, I am quite well aware that it is not to everyone's taste. And I know that Christians, and church groups, and ministers, particularly, look at it somewhat askance. It's dangerous stuff. It's often rude. (Although I wonder if it is as rude as music hall and vaudeville humour, which doesn't elicit quite the same negative reaction. But we'll leave that for another time.)
I do remember one time at a summer, residential, Christian kids camp. At this particular camp, the central lead staff had taken all the important tasks upon themselves, leaving us poor counselors with absolutely nothing to do except to bring the charges in our cabins to Jesus. This was difficult to do, since it was obvious to our young charges that we were of absolutely no importance. The lead Central camp staff were the important ones: they were the ones who did all the fun stuff. This centralization extended even to skit night. Skit night, traditionally, in most residential camps, has the campers coming up with skits. But you can't really depend on campers not to perform some skit that might be a bit rude. So the central lead staff had taken it upon themselves to write, create, and act in all of the skits for skit night. The only thing for the campers, and we counselors, to do was to sit in the audience. By this point in the week some of the counselors were feeling a bit rebellious, and asked if we might be allowed one slot to put on a skit. The camp staff, very begrudgingly, allowed us to do that. Having won the battle for a slot, we had exhausted our energy, and so nobody could come up with a good skit. So I, from memory, wrote down Monty Python's "Dead Parrot sketch," and that's what we performed.
I should also mention that, over the course of the summer, the central lead staff had found that their skits weren't actually particularly funny. They had, therefore, started to modify what they were doing in this case. The skits had, over the course of the summer, and the different camps, gotten somewhat cruder. By the time of the camp of which I am speaking, the skits were pretty raw.
The morning after skit night, the speaker for the week, who was, of course, one of the ministers of the denomination, felt the need to complain about skit night. He noted that the skits were, for the most part, very rude and crude. He went so far as to say that the only skit that was even mildly amusing was "that thing about the parrot." I was rather surprised. This was the only time I had ever heard a minister of our denomination praise Monty Python. (I do have to note that I very much doubt that the minister recognized where the "Dead Parrot" sketch came from.)
Gloria mostly went along with the thought and opinion about Monty Python in our church. She wasn't interested. I didn't particularly mind: we talked about lots of other things. But she had, pretty much from the beginning of our marriage, warned me that her first husband had found her embarrassing. He was particularly embarrassed if she enjoyed something. And particularly if she laughed out loud. She warned me that, one time, they went to see a comedy movie, and she, Gloria, started laughing out loud, and so much, that her first husband left the theater, and wouldn't come back in. I always told her that I never minded her enjoyment of something in life, or her expression of that enjoyment. I always thought it was great, and that other people often enjoyed her enjoyment, and I never tried to shush her, if she was, even vocally, enjoying something.
And then my little brother gave us tapes of two of the Monty Python movies. For a long time they just sat there, on the shelf. Gloria wasn't interested in watching them, and I had already seen them. I have a pretty good memory, so it didn't bother me. But it *did* bother Gloria that I wasn't getting to enjoy something that I enjoyed. So, one night, she gritted her teeth, and suggested that we watch "And Now for Something Completely Different."
As soon as the movie started, Gloria sat bolt upright, and yelled out, "that's the movie!" Apparently, this was the movie that had caused her to laugh out loud in the movie theater. This was the movie that Gloria's first husband never got to see, because he was so embarrassed that she was enjoying it, and laughing out loud.
I never would have guessed it, and I'm still not exactly sure what it means. But score one for Monty Python and absurdist humour. At one point you made Gloria laugh out loud. Thank you, surrealists.
As Solomon himself, in all his wisdom, said, don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive. Subversive comedy may not appear to be Christian. But look at the Bible. We have lost some of the comedy. We accept statements like "the Good Samaritan." Samaritans were not considered good: they were considered evil apostates who had turned away from God. And how then do we get a parable about a "good" samaritan? There is the statement about the Good Shepherd. Shepherds were not considered good. Shepherds were considered to be so unreliable that they were not allowed to testify in court. Consider the gentile woman who was asking for healing for her daughter, and Jesus replied that it was not right to take the food for the children and throw it to the dogs. That's a pretty cruelly facetious statement! There was the eye of the needle. There are all *kinds* of jokes in Jesus' statements in the New Testament. (My particular favorite is when the disciples ask when the end times will be, and Jesus leads them on and drags out the joke, telling them about all kinds of things that will happen but the end is not yet, and finally says and I'm not going to tell you.) There is humour, and even subversive humour, in the Bible.
The book of Job is one long subversive joke. Job had a really fine turn in sarcasm. Read the book of Job. Actually, you have probably dipped into the book of Job. There's a lot of really good stuff in there. There's a lot of stuff in there that you will be really comfortable with. It's full of Christian cliches and platitudes. Stuff like if you do the right thing, God will reward you. If you are suffering it's because you have sinned! Or maybe you don't have enough faith. Or maybe you have some unacknowledged sin.
Oh, but wait. You have to pay careful attention to who's saying what in the book of Job. At first, nobody says much of anything. Job's friends come, and they see his distress. And they are distressed by his distress. And they sit with him. In silence! For an entire week! Now that's the good part of the book of Job. They didn't try to fix his problems. They just faced his distress with him. For an entire week.
And then they ran out of steam. They couldn't stay silent any longer. They had to start giving advice. If they had only kept quiet, we wouldn't have the phrase "Job's comforters." But they had to start with the cliches. So we do. And they tell Job all of this stuff that we tell our friends who are in distress. And pay attention to what Job says. Not helpful, guys! Oh, you are the people, and wisdom will die with you! But I have a brain as well as you! Job has a really nice turn in sarcasm. That's another aspect of humour.
Oh, but don't take Job's word for it. Skip to the end, where God speaks. And does God praise the friends for retailing all of these cliches? Nope. God says, "you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has." God has a few words for Job as well. But the book of Job is really one long subversive joke. And the joke's on us.
There is an author named Terry Pratchett. He'd be with the surrealists in regard to the damage that established religion can do. He'd definitely be with them in terms of looking for the wonders when you examine the ordinary close up and sideways. In the book called "Monstrous Regiment," he says, "The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they've found it." We probably need to be less certain that we've found all of the truth. It is undoubtedly true that however much we know about God, our God is too small. We need, with the surrealists, to keep seeking.
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