WEBVTT 00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:05.360 So we start our uh movie series here. 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:27.440 I am uh grateful that uh being a guy who really enjoys movies and enjoys the cultural um, I guess I'll say relevance of movies and the stories that our our culture culture uh tells itself and describes itself with, defines itself with. 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:29.039 I've always enjoyed that. 00:00:29.039 --> 00:00:36.399 And uh so we did something last summer where we did uh uh a movie series and people really enjoyed it then. 00:00:36.399 --> 00:00:39.679 In fact, do we still remember talking about Superman? 00:00:39.679 --> 00:00:42.000 We had a little fun with that one. 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:42.880 It was interesting. 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.439 I was learning things about Superman as well. 00:00:45.439 --> 00:00:53.119 Uh so I thought, well, this will be a kind of a neat change of pace uh uh as we move through the Christian year. 00:00:53.119 --> 00:00:55.600 Uh so we're dealing with Hamnet. 00:00:55.600 --> 00:01:00.000 Uh and uh we saw some of you had the chance to go see it. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:04.319 Uh in large part, it's a film about grieving. 00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:15.760 And it raises the question: is there a more provocative time in life spiritually than the time of grieving? 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:32.079 That is a time where we're we're faced with our mortality, we're faced with the the limits of our power and our capacities, our uh ability to be able to change things. 00:01:32.079 --> 00:01:44.319 And thinking specifically of those times when we've lost a loved one, there's no opportunity to fix it, to make it better. 00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:45.599 Right? 00:01:45.599 --> 00:01:52.400 Our limitations in that time of grieving are so apparent to us at these times. 00:01:52.400 --> 00:02:11.199 And I use the word provocative here to say provocative time instead of challenging time because it's also the time where we tend to do the most growing, largely because we're we're left with these questions, right? 00:02:11.199 --> 00:02:43.680 We feel super vulnerable, we feel super powerless, but in the process of working through our grief and working through those questions, we reconfigure how we view our lives and our life and how we view ourselves, and then we emerged, hopefully, changed, having found a way to make sense of the world and how it works and our limitations in the world. 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:48.479 So let me give you a quick summary of Hamnet. 00:02:48.479 --> 00:02:56.719 It's a story of two people who are making peace with the death of their young son. 00:02:56.719 --> 00:03:03.120 Now, I give you an official warning of spoilage right now. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:11.599 It is very difficult to talk about a film without having some spoilage in front of you. 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:18.639 All right, and especially in this film, which I will attest, it really lands the ending. 00:03:18.639 --> 00:03:22.800 It really does a strong job on the ending. 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:31.680 And so it's hard to not spoil it a little bit, but it is the story of William Shakespeare, and probably even more so about his wife, Agnes. 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:43.199 Now, some of you who remember your sophomore English class, you probably uh remember that wait a minute, Shakespeare, he married Anne Hathaway. 00:03:43.199 --> 00:03:53.120 You should recognize that there's 500 years in between Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:55.759 He couldn't possibly have married her. 00:03:55.759 --> 00:03:58.879 I guess that's a cultural joke. 00:03:58.879 --> 00:04:00.000 Some of you will get it. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.159 No, that her her she also uh went by another name. 00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:07.360 The woman that Shakespeare married, she also went by Agnes. 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:10.719 And in this particular film, they use that name. 00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:17.759 I bring this up partly because the two-name thing is in play with Hamnet also. 00:04:17.759 --> 00:04:18.639 Right? 00:04:18.639 --> 00:04:25.360 Agnes and Shakespeare's son, his name is Hamnet, but he would also go by Hamlet. 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:27.360 Right? 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:46.160 So again, if you paid attention in sophomore English class, you're probably starting to do the math just a little bit, and you know that there's a connection between this film, Hamnet, and the play Hamlet, that Shakespeare wrote. 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:53.920 So now I got to catch you up on Hamlet because I'm guessing you weren't listening all that much in sophomore English class. 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:54.879 Am I right? 00:04:54.879 --> 00:04:58.079 Maybe I wasn't listening. 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:02.639 You know, Taylor was, but she's smarter than the rest of us. 00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:08.000 So Hamlet is this uh young Danish ruler. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:22.879 His father is killed, but that father returns as a ghost to let uh that his son know that the person who killed him was his brother Claudius. 00:05:22.879 --> 00:05:29.680 And Claudius now has usurped the crown, even married Hamlet's mother. 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:30.879 Right? 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:34.079 So you can see the setup is pretty complex. 00:05:34.079 --> 00:05:43.360 So it's totally guilty of totally shortening the story, so much so to be really insulting. 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:47.839 Hamlet develops a plan to expose this truth. 00:05:47.839 --> 00:05:54.240 And as with all Shakespearean tragedies, everybody dies in the end. 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:58.079 That's kind of how it goes with Shakespeare. 00:05:58.079 --> 00:06:03.600 No, with all apologies, one of potentially our greatest play, our greatest drama. 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:07.680 Uh, but I hear with I'm here with other priorities, so I want to jump in. 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:22.800 But the fact that Hamlet was written so soon after Hamnet's death, it led this author, her name is Megan O'Farrell, to explore the potential influence of that death on the play itself. 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:30.160 And then the director, Chloe Zhao, uh, she did the same thing and put that book to film. 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:31.439 Right? 00:06:31.439 --> 00:06:43.839 So following the thinking and comparing real life, right, Shakespeare and Agnes' life, to uh the original play, uh, we can see some comparisons. 00:06:43.839 --> 00:06:48.319 These are the comparisons that she found or the lines that she drew. 00:06:48.319 --> 00:07:06.160 Uh, instead of the reality, which is that William Shakespeare and Agnes' son Hamlet dies, in Hamlet he has the father dying and then reappearing to his living son Hamlet. 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:29.040 And instead of this difficult and vulnerable death of a young son, which is what they experience just in real life, now in Hamlet, we have this heroic son, the heroic son that's going to avenge the death, uh, the tragic death, the unjust death of his father. 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:42.639 Maybe this is the son he was teaching him to be, the son he would have become, the son that Shakespeare would have thought he might be. 00:07:42.639 --> 00:07:48.560 So we also have a picture of this son Hamnet. 00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:53.759 Just to give you a sense of, you know, they set us up pretty good. 00:07:53.759 --> 00:07:56.560 Can you imagine this little guy passing away? 00:07:56.560 --> 00:08:00.079 They'll tug out the heartstrings just a little bit. 00:08:00.079 --> 00:08:12.639 So my uh my mantra for these sermons on these movies that we often uh they often deal with religious and theological concepts uh in our cultural stories. 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:19.680 So these stories that are part of what we tell each other, what we go and see and pay $20 to see. 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:27.120 Uh we often deal with religious and theological concepts in those movies, even when we don't always know that we are doing it. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:35.360 And in this case, I think it lay in the approach to a loss and to grieving. 00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:47.919 I think that is a lot of where some of the similar questions are happening between this movie and this book and stories of faith that we wrestle with as Christians. 00:08:47.919 --> 00:08:54.720 In the film, there's this really powerful scene with Agnes. 00:08:54.720 --> 00:09:04.480 She's just learned that her daughter has survived her illness, probably from the plague, we don't know for sure. 00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:09.919 But her son has not survived it. 00:09:09.919 --> 00:09:15.919 And she lets out this guttural cry. 00:09:15.919 --> 00:09:24.399 The cry for all parents, for all mothers who've lost their child. 00:09:24.399 --> 00:09:35.919 It's a super moving scene in the film, and it's bringing to light the grief, the pain that comes in this moment. 00:09:35.919 --> 00:09:41.759 Our scriptures do the same thing oftentimes. 00:09:41.759 --> 00:09:48.879 Psalm 13, which we're using today, is often attributed to King David, right? 00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:54.000 But in many ways, these are the words of the Jewish people, not just King David. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:58.080 They are the words of a people who have had times of abundance. 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:04.320 And they are people who have been completely oppressed at other times. 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:18.720 So they've known high times in life, and they've known really, really low times, times at which the bulk of their community was moved away or taken from them. 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:43.679 What I want to do is read for you again Psalm 13, but I'm going to invite you at this time to think about your low time, your difficult time, and allow maybe these words from Psalm 13 to speak into that dark time in your life. 00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:47.759 How long? 00:10:47.759 --> 00:10:59.759 To hide your face from me. 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:09.759 How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? 00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:15.919 How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:26.720 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death. 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:34.559 And my enemy will say, I have prevailed. 00:11:35.279 --> 00:11:38.799 My foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 00:11:38.799 --> 00:11:46.240 But I trusted in your steadfast love. 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:51.759 My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. 00:11:53.120 --> 00:12:00.559 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:11.440 Can you hear yourself dealing with your pain in those words? 00:12:12.559 --> 00:12:19.200 Those times when you were looking for answers when there weren't any. 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:36.639 Shakespeare himself, he had challenges in dealing with his grief, especially in the film. 00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:42.799 We learn early on that Shakespeare isn't comfortable with simply talking. 00:12:42.799 --> 00:12:45.840 It's in the courtship with Agnes. 00:12:45.840 --> 00:12:51.519 And he even says it, he doesn't know really how to just talk to people. 00:12:51.519 --> 00:12:54.799 But he likes to tell stories. 00:12:54.799 --> 00:13:05.519 This plays out just a little bit later as the couple has to deal with this tragic death of this son. 00:13:05.519 --> 00:13:09.519 Their marriage is really challenged in their grief. 00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:17.600 Shakespeare already has to live and work in London, in the city, whereas the family's in Stratford. 00:13:17.600 --> 00:13:22.159 So Shakespeare's not there with the family. 00:13:22.159 --> 00:13:25.440 He isn't there when Hamnet dies. 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:35.679 And he isn't there when it comes time to grieve, to walk that journey. 00:13:35.679 --> 00:13:41.840 In a way, he's not talking about or even processing the grief. 00:13:41.840 --> 00:13:44.799 And for Agnes, this becomes too much. 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:49.120 She finally goes to the city to confront him. 00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:57.600 She arrives and sees a poster for this play that her husband had put together, was directing. 00:13:57.600 --> 00:14:06.720 And believe it or not, it had the title of her young son Hamlet, which infuriates her. 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:21.519 This man who doesn't seem to be processing his grief with her at all, but now he'll put their son's name on walls and doors so people might come. 00:14:21.519 --> 00:14:23.519 So she goes looking for him. 00:14:23.519 --> 00:14:27.759 She finds herself at the stage of the play itself. 00:14:27.759 --> 00:14:37.039 She crawls all the way to the front of where all the people are, and she begins to watch this play. 00:14:37.039 --> 00:14:52.080 And who comes out but Bill Shakespeare, William Shakespeare himself, as the father, the fallen father, the ghost, who was there to talk to his young son. 00:14:52.080 --> 00:15:03.600 It's a scene in which we can see him live out the relationship with the son he had hoped to have. 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:13.519 And it's in this moment that she realizes, as we do as we watch the movie, that this is his way of grieving. 00:15:13.519 --> 00:15:16.480 This is his way of processing. 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:22.960 He's going to deal with this grief, but it's going to be in story. 00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:38.799 We don't know a lot about the full true history of all of it, but in this film, in this story, Shakespeare's method for grieving is in his creativity, in his storytelling. 00:15:38.799 --> 00:15:48.720 I land us with uh a passage from a gospel, the gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 24. 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:57.200 Because our Christian story, it's often grounded in our redemption and in new life, right? 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:03.279 This is a cornerstone of the Christian understanding of how life works and how God works. 00:16:03.279 --> 00:16:07.759 We believe in new life, we believe in redemption. 00:16:07.759 --> 00:16:15.440 And it's a passage where Jesus is telling his disciples that he is soon to die. 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:24.080 And he wants to convey the importance of this death, that it's actually even quite necessary. 00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:29.840 That importance probably varies for a lot of Christianity. 00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:34.480 There's a lot of different Christian understandings of why that death is important. 00:16:34.480 --> 00:16:37.600 Some would say he has to die in order to be resurrected. 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:41.759 This is our evidence of Jesus' identity. 00:16:41.759 --> 00:16:52.879 Others would say that that sacrificial death actually adjusted, changed the way God deals with us. 00:16:52.879 --> 00:16:57.279 Now we're going to be grace-based, we're going to be forgiveness-based. 00:16:57.279 --> 00:17:01.440 Others would say God doesn't really change in that way. 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:19.839 But the death was necessary because it's what gave the story, the message, the weight, the weight that it needed to be able to spread to the rest of the world, so that 2,000 years later you would all end up in the United Methodist Church of Westlake Village talking about it. 00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:46.079 Still, others, they might say his death conveyed the depth of Jesus' love for us, a depth that inspires us to respond with our own love for others, with our own sacrificial understanding for life and the beauty of life. 00:17:46.079 --> 00:17:54.240 Whatever the specific understanding is, Jesus wants us to understand the importance of his death. 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:56.160 He has to die. 00:17:56.160 --> 00:18:09.839 In getting that message across, he says, Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. 00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:16.160 But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:30.960 The story of this film is that Shakespeare himself is able to find life amidst death. 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:49.440 We wouldn't want to over-appreciate, to lionize death or pain, but we do want to recognize the possibility that amidst death with God we can find new life. 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:52.960 We can find fruit. 00:18:52.960 --> 00:19:02.160 For Shakespeare, it was in the creation of possibly our greatest dramatic play of all time. 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:29.680 For others, it might lay in some other creation, some other artistic Endeavour uh endeavor, some project that we work on, some change in our heart or in our spirit, some new life that is created in other lives, that fruit will look different for different people. 00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:52.960 But it is our invitation today, not only from Scripture, but I believe from this film, as a people of resurrection, the invitation is to work with God to find hope amidst difficulty, to find hope amidst pain, to find hope even amidst death. 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:55.680 Amen.