Hi everyone, I want to share with you a sermon on 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).
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.
