Trinity Goes to the Movies: Ordinary People-Treasure in Earthen Vessels

19 August, 2007

2 Corinthians 4:7-10 
 

On those rare nights when I cannot sleep, I drag a quilt from the bed and creep downstairs to the television. Now even with 60 some channels there isn't a whole lot on in the wee hours, but several channels take the opportunity to run infomercials. Infomercial is of course just a sly way of saying advertising. You know these slots; they run up to an hour and promise everything from new hair-in a spray can no less-to ways to make a million dollars doing as little as possible. There is Anthony Robbins in his one piece perfect hair telling us all to release our inner power so we can improve our personal appearance, sex lives and personal wealth. There are pseudo doctors urging us to use hydoxyocut with Hoodia to help us loose weight. There are the newest anti aging creams to keep wrinkles at bay. All of these infomercials play to the feelings of inadequacy we all share. I can only be truly happy is I loose my paunch, stop my bald spot from getting bigger and have a million bucks in the bank. Then I would be somebody. Then people wouldn't think of me as being so darned ordinary. Then I would be perfect.

In fact the whole media enterprise is about making us feel we haven't lived up to our abilities, our expectations. Everyday Dr. Phil or Opra urge us to be better lovers, mothers, fathers, sons or daughters. The titles of ubiquitous self help books scream that we are physically, mentally and spiritually deficient in some way. House and garden shows expose the dullness of our own homes. Fashionistas get great delight in pointing out our fashion disasters. No wonder we feel the overwhelming fear of being ordinary people. No wonder we are so fixated on being perfect.

   Ordinary People, the classic novel by Judith Guest and later an Academy Award winning film, grapples with the pervasive North American issue of perfectionism. In the film Mary Tyler Moore plays Beth, the perfectionist mother who leaves her family because they remind her too painfully of her son's attempted suicide after the loss of his brother in a boating accident. She like the other members of the Jarrett family-her husband Calvin and remaining son Conrad-wants only to bypass such tragedies and return to being ordinary again. For the Jarrett family ordinary means perfect.

  Beth has spent her entire life building and protecting this myth of perfection. She is the perfect mother and wife. She is slim, athletic, well organized and energetic. She plays golf at the right country club with the right people, even when she isn't in the mood-just so she keeps up appearances, so she doesn't show fatigue or weakness. She attends dinner parties and chides her husband if he does anything that shows the Jarretts are anything but a deliriously happy family.

  She is deeply angry at her son Conrad for his suicide attempt. She sees it as a personal attempt to embarrass the family; she equates it with weakness, and puts it on the same level as Conrad quitting the swim team. In Beth's world there is no room for grief, no room for weakness or imperfection.

But inside Beth is coming apart. Under the pressure of maintaining appearances after the death of her perfect son and Conrad's suicide attempt, she begins to crack. Holding herself rigidly against any emotion, the perfectionist breaks down in tears at unexpected moments. The film depicts her as a “wasp witch, whose face is tense you expect it to break” to use the words of film critic Pauline Kael. Despite her good intentions, her façade of perfection has been undermined and she wants no encouragement to accept the tragedies of life as normal. As her husband tells her, the accident and suicide attempt “would have been alright if there hadn't been any mess. But you can't handle mess. You need everything neat and easy.”

The Apostle Paul recognized the dangers of perfectionism. He was a victim of it after all. In the Greek city of Corinth there were members of his church who saw him as a loser. The elders of that church constantly compared him to the super apostles who came to town on a regular basis; those itinerant preachers who were smooth talkers, who gave great entertaining sermons and were charismatic and captivating. These fellows put Paul to shame. The Corinthians were embarrassed by his bumbling methods, his convoluted way of talking. He was short and homely; he stuttered a bit when talking, his quick temper was somewhat off putting. Surely God would not use someone as ordinary and unimpressive as Paul to be a messenger of such a glorious message.

Paul must have taken this personally and I am sure he was wounded and hurt. But in his remarkably caring way he reminds the Corinthian Christians that God does not solely depend upon the gifted and the extraordinary to spread the gospel. He writes, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show the transcendent power belongs to God and not to ourselves.” We are earthen vessels says Paul. Cracked pots. In Paul's day earthenware containers were as ubiquitous as cardboard boxes are here in Summerside. They were common because they were cheap and disposable. Unlike the more expensive wooden containers clay pots were literally dirt cheap. Because they were mass produced they were often made haphazardly, ensuring that no one pot would be like the other. Each had some flaw in the design, never perfectly round, sometimes slightly misshapen. They did not have a glossy surface and so the pots were often stained by their contents. When cracks inevitably appeared they would be clamped and used to hold dry goods. Earthen vessels were functional, but common; flawed and unattractive. Just like you and I says Paul to the Corinthians. We are all flawed earthen vessels.

Why are we so much like Beth Jarrett? Why are we so afraid to be the earthen vessels we are? Why do we work so hard to do everything we can to hide our flaws and our cracks? We cover them up with makeup and anti-aging creams, with lies and adulterous affairs. In this age of perfection it is a crime to fail, to show vulnerability, to be human. Paul warns us that there is a danger here. Eventually all clay pots crack and water starts to leak out, first a trickle and then a torrent.

In the film it is Conrad who realizes that before you can get back on your feet again, it is necessary to admit the pain of being knocked down. Before earthen vessels can be useful in the wear and tear of daily life, their fragility must be recognized and respected. His healing comes only when he can let go of perfection and admit the limitations of his family.

It isn't easy for us to admit our imperfections. It isn't easy to admit that we are flawed, that we don't live up to our own standards let alone the standards of the world.

Paul reminds us that for Christians an admission of flaws should be a natural thing. He calls for love in the Corinthian church community, and what he means by love is acceptance. The church should be the one place where all are accepted for who they are; flawed earthen vessels. This should be the place where there is acceptance of our short comings and the unmerited acceptance of each other despite our failures. Paul suggests that unmerited acceptance is the definitive mark of the Christian community, it is what lends the church is distinctiveness. He reminds us that the source of such acceptance is found in the cross and resurrection of Christ. In Christ we have a visible sign of God's accepting love. God loves the earthen vessel. God knows all to well our flaws, all our errors and personality quirks; all of our failures and inabilities. God understands the fragile nature of our lives. And yet despite this God continues to love us. It doesn't matter to God that we are not perfect. God already knows that we are cracked pots. Paul says it is this love which frees us from the bondage of blame and guilt. Here is the church the pursuit of the perfect is irrelevant.

Although the film Ordinary people is tragic there is some redemption in the movie. Conrad discovers that although he is knocked down he is not knocked out. He begins to accept himself, including the worst of his feelings of grief, rage and remorse. Beth's husband Calvin finally acknowledges his limitations and says of himself, “you are not God, you do not know and not in control, so let go.” The movie saves the worst fate for poor perfect Beth. The film leaves us with no hope that she will come to understand that vulnerability rather than perfection is the true mode for ordinary people. The Pachelbel Canon in D sung by the high school choir recurs throughout the film and offers a comforting hope for resolutions for everyone in the film but Beth. She is left destroyed by her own need to be perfect.

Friends we need experience no such hopelessness. There are no perfect people here this morning. We have no saints on pedestals and we are no holy rollers. We are the failed and the fearful; we are the addicted and the addled; we are the pained and the restless; we are the doubters and the arrogant; each and every one of us cannot avoid the dirty, messy complications of our humanness. No one here can claim perfection with any honesty.

We aren't here because we have it all together, or have perfect marriages or perfect children. We are here because were not. We are here to be in community with the hoard of God's vulnerable children. We are here to bask in the presence of God's grace, to be, if only for an hour, in the one place where acceptance is guaranteed.

Today take hope in that acceptance. Drop your pretences; free yourself from your unending quest to be perfect. Accept that fact that you are earthen vessels, flawed, cracked, and dirty. But recognize that it is these earthen vessels that God has chosen as the single means of carrying his message to all of creation. Remember that God chose and earthen vessel named Jesus to reveal to all of history his gracious purposes. Through Jesus God knows all about our frailness first hand. Remember that every broken life, every unending grief, every disappointment, every little flaw and uncontrolled urge, every unfulfilled dream is known to God.

Our God is the God of the earthen vessel. The chipped, the broken, the ordinary. Our God is the God of Tupperware not Paderno. God can't love us anymore than he already does. There is nothing more waiting for us, there is no prize we don't already have, if we are better, stronger, more faithful, or more beautiful. Just accept that one fact and stop pretending.. You are ordinary people, the people God has made, loved and called into service. You aren't perfect and God knows it .Amen.