Hi everyone, at church yesterday I listened to a sermon that I liked and wanted to share the transcript here with you. The sermon was on method acting and how we should act to be an authentic person and a Christian. I liked it as well as because I used to do acting lessons after school for a brief period and studied drama at school. I started to film with my video camera and studied communications minor which involved filming and directing. Filming is like telling a story also with a begnning, middle and end. I did a course during COVID myself for narrative filmmaking at City Lit which was enjoyable. This would help with my filming. This sermon is about how method acting can lead to an inner Christian transformation. I found it interesting as I like the arts. This sermon gives mention to (John 14).
I find at church with sermons they can be too fast to take
them in all at once, so I may record them and read them back later or
get the transcript from Youtube if online.
The sermon-
Back
in those really rather strange and challenging days when COVID was rife
and we all found ourselves in lockdown. Many of us found an opportunity
to do things or learn things that we would perhaps normally never have
had the time to do. Among other things, I began a series of online
courses in method acting. Now, this is something I had been interested
in doing for years, but never had the time. It's still there as an
interest but it was demanding a very demanding experience but also a
transformational experience.
So let me just give you some
background to this. What is method acting? Well, it was a technique
created in Russia by Konstantin Stanislavskiki early in the 20th
century. And the technique became known as the method.
And
method techniques prompt actors to draw on their own experiences and
emotions as a way of stripping the performance of artifice. In other
words, there is no faking, no indicative performance.
The
emotions and feelings you see a method actor expressing are real and
they are drawn from personal experience. And this requires going deep
into their own unconscious and developing what they call sense memory.
They then through a very prolonged and intense process come to fully
identify with their character. It's about deep connection,
internalisation, and a quest for realism.
You get to the
essence, the truth of the person and their life. And it's about being
fully present, even living their life, their feelings, identifying with
their beliefs. sometimes even replicating the external conditions of
their character in order to behave more authentically. You may recall
the performance of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. He signed up for eight
weeks to be a taxi driver in New York before actually entering into the
making of that film. He wanted to get the full experience. And there's
much use of impulse and improvisation, but essentially your primary aim
is to become one with the character you are portraying.
Now,
don't worry. I'm not suggesting that to achieve a fulfilling Christian
life, we should all become method actors. But there is something to
learn here spiritually about inwardness and truth. And it is true, of
course, a somewhat disturbing truth that we often do indeed put on all
kinds of social masks and knowingly perform to deceive others for all
kinds of reasons.
But that is not the point I'm making here. I'm
focusing on the process of going deep within ourselves, journeying into
the depth of life where we find the truth about ourselves. And I think
anyone who's taken this seriously knows this is not always an easy
journey.
It's interesting to note that many method actors talk
about the work of going deep into their unconscious world as producing a
kind of heightened awareness of living and the immediate world around
them. Indeed, some actors speak of heightened awareness and use words
like transformation spiritual to describe the things that happen both
before and during their performances.
This is what happens when
you seriously take a journey inwards and inwardness or the inner journey
seems to be at the heart of John's gospel. Now there are some
contemporary theologians I know this is a contentious issue but there
are some people who consider that the author of St. John's gospel was
undoubtedly a mystic. In the reading from chapter John 14, we get a very
strong sense that this gospel is intended to take us deeper into the
meaning of Jesus' life. It calls us to a new consciousness, a new way of
relating to the holy. Now, in a true mystical experience,
I'm
not saying that I've had one of these, but there is a heightened sense
of reality, something new and extraordinary is being revealed. A sense
of oneness with the divine. Perhaps a feeling, something familiar is
suddenly understood with completely fresh insight. But the experience
profoundly changes the attitude and outlook on life of the one
experiencing it.
The disciples of course were slowly being
changed by Jesus.. In today's reading, we see Thomas once again in
questioning mode when he says to Jesus, "We do not know the way for we
do not know where you are going." Jesus responds with those famous and
important words, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And he's really
saying to Thomas, this journey is not an outward one, but an inward one.
God is not up there. God is in here. And Jesus continues, "If
you know me, you will know my father also. From now on, you do know and
have seen him." But what Thomas does not really understand is that Jesus
is affirming the mystical oneness of the father and the son. To see
Jesus is to see the father. They are one.
And the disciples have
seen Jesus' face. They have heard his voice. And even more importantly,
they have seen what he did. his works, his love, his commitment to
others, it should be enough. To know Jesus is to know the father. But
this mystical understanding is clearly something we must now live out.
We are to give ourselves away to pour ourselves into the world.
And
wherever there is love expressed in healing, reconciling, wherever
there is life giving work happening around us, this is the work of God.
And this isn't always big stuff. Much of this loving service does not
necessarily happen in easily visible or even spectacular ways. It
happens in ordinary life.
And it's not just the preserve of a
chosen few. So the message is simple. Wherever there is life in
abundance, then Jesus is present in our midst and we abide in him. And
this is the essence of understanding Jesus in our lives. Now, so
demanding though it is, and we all know how demanding it is, we should
perhaps follow the method actor's creed, there is to be no artifice.
There is no faking it, no indicative performance.
We are called
to be present and to fully identify with Jesus, to internalise him, to
become one with him and as best we can make living into his life real
and authentic. It is about being an authentic person about who you are
and it is about being an authentic Christian with the values of Christ
at the heart. There are people who begins their journies by pretending
to be a Christian and then with time they develop in faith. Life is a
journey and this is fine where you are in your journey as long as you
are not hurting anybody else.
