"Wrestling With The Cross"
Sermon Preached By Bruce Sanguin
March 22, 2009
Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21
This is the third in a series of Lenten sermons bringing Oscar-nominated films into dialogue with our Scriptural tradition. The previous two sermons have been reflections on The Reader and Revolutionary Road. You can read them on-line on our website. I’ve chosen an unlikely film this morning in The Wrestler, a come-back film for Mickey Rourke, who was nominated for best actor for his role as a once-famous, now long past-his-prime, professional wrestler – Randy the Ram Robinson – who works the satellite circuit to make a few bucks. The little he makes from his punishing bouts barely pays for his steroids, rent for his trailer, or his frequent visits to a strip club to see a dancer who he’s falling in love with – Cassidy – played by Marissa Tomei.
We all know that professional wrestling is fake – the matches are fixed, the moves pre-arranged. Every match is a mini-drama where the bad guy looks like he’s going to crush the champion, but somehow the hero manages to pull himself up off the mat at the end, and by applying a little righteous violence, vanquishes the villain. We all know it’s fake, and yet the sport of wrestling continues to draw huge crowds of people willing to suspend their disbelief in order to participate in this drama of redemptive violence. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Randy the Ram is on his last legs as a professional wrestler. He is a legend in the industry, having owned the belt in the 1980’s. But it’s 20 years later and Randy keeps himself in the ring with steroids, great acting, and considerable capacity for self-abuse. He is alone in the world and he knows it. For all of his macho man persona and pumped up body, Randy is actually a kind-hearted and vulnerable figure. This is part of the pathos of the film. We like Randy. He has a heart. But after a particularly stomach-turning match during which the opponents sit in a chair across from each other slapping each other full force across the face while the crowd cheers them on, and during which Randy the Ram’s body is stapled repeatedly by a staple gun, Randy suffers a heart-attack. The question, from this point on in the film is whether Randy will be able leave the ring behind and make a life for himself. He almost brings it off.
What really interested me about the film, besides the magnificent performance of Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tomei, was what the major reviewers did not pick up on. I Googled reviews by the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, the Washington Post and many others. But not one of them alluded to the religious themes that are actually fairly central to the film. I wondered if this was explained by spiritual illiteracy of the 21st century. Perhaps it was journalistic laziness? This blatant ignoring of the Judeo-Christian symbolism is a surprising oversight. People often ask wonder why they need any kind of biblical literacy in this postmodern world. Well, here’s a reason. It’s impossible to understand the meaning of much of art and culture if you are biblically illiterate.
Early in the film, upon learning that Randy is a professional wrestler, the exotic dancer Cassidy quotes from the prophet Isaiah: “He was wounded for our transgressions…bruised for our iniquities…The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4-6). And further, “by his stripes we are healed”. Cassidy then amuses herself with a play on words referencing the passage from Isaiah: “Like a Ram” led to slaughter”, replacing “lamb” with Randy’s wrestling name.
If that is not enough biblical allusion, she goes on to sing the praises of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ:
“Dude, ya gotta see it! They throw everything at him: whips, chains…” to which a confused Randy replies, “tough dude.” Clearly, Cassidy is setting Jesus up as a real wrestler, as one who can take everything God and humanity can throw at him and more. Jesus could have been on the ticket as far as Randy is concerned.
Continuing with the religious symbolism, Randy has a tattoo of Jesus on his back, the name of Job (the biblical figure who was disfigured and stripped empty by God) etched on his middle finger, and he enters the ring wearing a mantle of white wool – clearly an allusion to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. His wrestling name has to be an allusion to the biblical story of Abraham taking his son Isaac up a mountain to make of him a human sacrifice to the Lord, and being rescued at the last moment by a ram caught in a thicket. In the biblical story, the ram serves as a substitute for Abraham’s son. And in case you missed all of this, in the final scene, Randy the Ram stands atop the ring post arms outstretched, like Christ on the cross, raised up above the adoring masses, ready to perform his signature move of diving and landing on his opponent for the pin. We have every reason to assume that it will also be Randy’s last move.
But it is a complicated task to sort out exactly what the writer had in mind with these allusions. Perhaps it is understandable why the reviewers left the religious symbolism alone. Well, fools go where angels fear to tread. I will offer my take on what is meant by this symbolism.
From the perspective of Randy himself, clearly he is dealing with feelings of deep shame bordering on self-hatred. He refers to himself as a hunk of meat, unworthy of anybody’s love, deserving his loneliness. Even though he seeks her out, he does not believe that he deserve the love of his estranged daughter. He has burned too many bridges and his is desperately alone. Randy crosses himself before each match, and it becomes clear that he is dealing with the sins of his past through these rituals of self-abuse: cutting himself with razor blades, willingly being stapled with a staple gun, being slapped and kicked and alternately humiliated and adored. He is acting out of an ancient and misguided tradition of asceticism and self-flagellation – performing a kind of penance in the ring. According to this tradition to walk the path of Christ is to re-enact Christ’s own suffering on the cross in one’s own body.
In the reading this morning from Numbers we are presented with this curious story of the Hebrews having to contend with snakebite in the wilderness. Moses forges a bronze head of a snake and places it on top of a pole. People who had been bitten are instructed to gaze upon the image in order to be healed – it’s a kind of homeopathic remedy, whereby you take a little bit of the hair of the dog that bit you. The writer of John’s gospel cleverly picks up on this image and applies it to the cross. Just as the Hebrew’s were healed by gazing upon bronze snake when it was lifted up, so when the cross is lifted up we are to gaze upon it and be healed.
But it matters what we imagine we are gazing upon when we look at the cross. What is the medicine of the cross? What is Jesus’ suffering all about? Is it redemptive in the way Randy the Ram has interpreted it? Is it homeopathic? We take a small dose of Christ’s suffering and thereby are healed of our own? Perhaps like Randy, we are called to re-enact Jesus own suffering in order to find redemption? Before we completely dismiss this way of understanding the cross, we might want to confess that all of us know what it feels like to engage in self-punishing rituals, that seem beyond our power to control. We even imagine that some good can come of them or that an even worse fate will befall us if we stop the rituals. It feels right, in a twisted sort of way. We stay in abusive relationships, drink too much, or eat too much; we live in circumstances we secretly believe we deserve. This happens. We are all wrestlers with this kind of self-hate.
But perhaps we can agree that this is not what Spirit requires of us. There is nothing redemptive about this kind of self-abusive, penitential behaviour. The writer of John’s gospel affirms that Jesus did not come in to the world to condemn, but to love the world back to health. Randy’s unconscious re-enactment of Christ’s suffering in his own body is offensive to God. This is why it matters so much what we think we are looking at when we gaze upon the cross.
Here’s what I think we’re looking at, and how the film portrays the heart of the gospel so vividly. I am indebted to Rene Girard, whom I regard as having a very sophisticated take on the meaning of the cross. We are dealing in this film with the role of the scapegoat as society’s way of controlling our predilection for violence.
The spectacle of wrestling, as with spectacle of the Gladiators in the Roman era, represents a vestige of a system of sacred violence that began with human sacrifice. According to Girard, the sacrifice of an innocent victim had the power in society to act as a cathartic release for the violence in a community. A little taste of violence prevented escalation of a much greater violence in the masses. The corpse of the victim is lifted up for the whole community to gaze at. A holy hush settles over the mob. The crowd settles down. This system of sacred violence has been the dominant system of controlling violence throughout human history.
Spectacles of violence, like NHL hockey, with the officially sanctioned role of fighting, are expressions of this system of sacred or redemptive violence. Notice what happens when the discussion about the role of fighting in hockey comes up. Don Cherry is quite explicit that we need fighting because if we removed fighting, then players would use their sticks and the violence would really get out of control. We dismiss this as the thinking of a redneck. But his logic is a perfect reflection of this ancient system of redemptive violence. A little bit of staged violence reduces the chance of greater violence. Don Cherry simply accepts the rules of this ancient system. And fighting in hockey is staged violence. Montreal Canadian tough guy Georges LaRocque said in a recent interview that you now need to fax your opponent before the game to let him know you’re going to fight him.
According to Girard at a deep, unconscious level, it’s all about mob control. The whole spectacle – whether it’s hockey or Ultimate Fighting – is cathartic for the crowd. And if it’s not, then it runs the risk of being merely contagious. There must be blood, there must be satisfaction, or the spectacle that was intended to control violence, simply escalates it. That’s what’s at stake. So, you need to keep upping the ante. Fake wrestling requires real blood. What’s after professional wrestling when it stops working on the crowd? You guessed it: Ultimate Fighting – real, no holds barred, hand-to-hand combat. The danger must be real, even if the spectacle is contrived.
Along comes Jesus, looking for all the world like he’s taking on the role of the Suffering Servant – suffering vicariously for our sins: he is the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world. Pilate and the religious authorities are, indeed, engaging in a ritual of scapegoating violence, hoping that his death will once again settle the crowds down and prevent a violent revolution. But here’s the twist: far from cooperating with this system of redemptive violence, Jesus exposes it and undermines it as a sham. Everybody in the drama, including his persecutors realize that he is innocent. Nobody plays along. The spectacle of violence doesn’t work the way it is supposed to work. The cross is lifted up, but what happens is that the myth of redemptive violence is exposed as a lie. Then on Easter, Christ is raised from the grave, validating the way of Christ. The old system is replaced with a new one - a new ethic of love.
That’s what Girard says is going on with the cross. It is lifted up so that we can gaze upon it and realize that the system of sacred violence is bankrupt. But here’s the problem: we are living in between these two systems. We have not adopted the ethic of love as an alternative system as human beings. The old system has been exposed as empty. But we haven’t managed to live into Christ’s ethic. And in our desperation, we default to the old system, but as I mentioned in order for it to work we need to find ever more graphic displays of violence – we’ve become inured to it. It’s like antibiotics that no longer have an impact on bacterial infection. We keep taking more and more, but we don’t realize that in doing so we’re just making it worse. We’d be better off to just stop taking the antibiotics. Randy the Ram’s creativity in discovering new forms of violent self-abuse must match the crowd’s growing skepticism.
Yes, wrestling is fake. Randy’s pumped- up body is fake. His real name isn’t Randy at all. The whole ritual is fake, and it’s going to take a lot of blood – maybe even the occasional death – for us to play along. Like the young hockey player who died in a fight recently. We think that this will cause us to ban fighting, but it won’t. The old system demands the occasional scapegoat to die, or it will lose its power.
But what’s the alternative? It’s love, pure and not so simple. Jesus came to the world tearing away the veil of the old system of redemptive violence, opening our eyes to another possibility – love. And everything depends on whether we can as a species live into this alternative ethic. We will survive or not depending upon our capacity to follow Jesus into the heart of God.
The final scene of the film is a scapegoat scene – Randy pouring himself out for the love of a crowd is pathetically conditional upon his willingness to abuse himself for them. He is their suffering servant and Randy is willing to suspend his disbelief and interpret their cheers as love. But it’s not love. It’s not family as Randy claims. It’s a mob. Crowds without love are little more than mobs in the end. Society without love eventually becomes a mob, crying out “Crucify him”.
Tellingly, Randy was given two second chances. The exotic dancer, Cassidy, decides to exit her own spectacle of self-loathing and offers love to Randy. She comes to him as Mary Magdalene, ready to anoint his bruised and battered body with healing oil. But Randy chooses the mob. His estranged daughter opens her heart to a father that doesn’t know a single thing about her. But Randy again chooses the mob. His sacrifice in the end was not redemptive, except in one respect. The film makes us all take a good, long look at what we think we’re doing with these spectacles. Once again, Ultimate Fighting is trying to get a foothold in Vancouver. What’s going on that we would even consider it as a city?
Christ’s self-donation, on the other hand – in the service of dismantling the myth of redemptive violence – is transformational. He dies with love in his heart, even for his persecutors. And that love exposes in absolute fashion the coldness of their hearts and the lie of the world, that violence is an answer to violence. We gaze upon the cross and are each one of us given a second chance. What path will we choose?