The Rashomon Effect
a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine
on Sunday, November 25, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
To listen to this sermon click here.
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
- John Lennon
READINGS:
1. Our first reading is from the Gospel According to Matthew, 14:13-21. It is the only miracle story that is recorded in all four of the gospels. I've sprinkled in a verse or two from Mark's version (Mark 6:32-44) of the same story just to provide a few extra details. The story begins as Jesus learns that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been beheaded, and Matthew tells us:
When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus came ashore he saw a large crowd; his heart went out to them, and he healed those who were sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food."
He answered, "There is no need for them to go. You give them something to eat."
They said to him, "That would take eight months' wages!"
"How many loaves do they have?" Jesus asked. "Go and see."
When they came back, his disciples said, "We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish."
Jesus said, "Bring them here to me."
And he directed the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. More than five thousand men shared in this meal, not counting the women and children.
2. Our second reading is from a book by Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein, who were philosophy majors at Harvard. After they graduated, Tom worked with street gangs in Chicago, and Dan wrote jokes for comedians. Their book is a crash course in philosophy using jokes as illustrations; it's called Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Here's a little taste:
In the modern Western world, the relativity of time has been a staple of philosophical thought. Lots of jokes illustrate this relativity; for example:
A snail was mugged by two turtles. When the police asked him what happened, he said, "I don't know. It all happened so fast."
And there's this one:
A man is praying to God. "Lord," he prays, "I would like to ask you a question."
The Lord responds, "No problem. Go ahead."
"Lord, is it true that a million years is to you but a second?"
"Yes, that is true."
"Well, then, what is a million dollars to you?"
"A million dollars to me is but a penny."
"Ah, then, Lord," says the man, "may I have a penny?"
"Sure," says the Lord. "Just a second."
And there is a whole shelf full of jokes that illustrate the relativity of different points of view.
Pat: Mike, I'll calling you from the freeway on my new cell phone.
Mike: Be careful, Pat. They just said on the radio that there's a nut driving the wrong way on the freeway.
Pat: One nut? Hell, there are hundreds of them.
From the standpoint of pure reason, Pat is just as right as the man on the radio. Relative to him, everyone else is going the wrong way. Keep in mind these deep thoughts on relativity the next time you send out for Chinese food - or, as the Chinese call it, food.
In the church year, this Sunday is like a passageway between Thanksgiving and Advent -
it's a chance to pause and take a deep breath
before we all become immersed in the holidays and in the story of Jesus' birth.
So before we get there, I want to use this transition to say some things
that no minister should say once we start singing carols and reading the story -
things about the story of Jesus' birth that are true but troubling to some people.
It's a story that mixes the real and the fantastic, and like all such stories,
it requires of us a willing suspension of disbelief -
the storyteller says, "Come into my world and you will be enchanted,
but don't ask too many questions."
If you grew up going to a Christian church, even if it was just once in a while,
the bible story you probably knew best was the nativity story -
you may even have been an angel or a shepherd or a sheep in the pageant,
and if you were like me, you assumed that you were acting out a true story.
You assume that this was what really happened.
Later on, if you take a course in the bible as history, you learn
that the birth story we re-tell every December is more myth than history -
it's an early form of magical realism, a mix of natural and supernatural,
and you learn that our only two sources, the gospels of Matthew and Luke,
give us very different accounts of what happened.
For example:
In Luke, Joseph and Mary live in Nazareth and are required by the census to travel to Bethlehem.
When they arrive, there is no room at the inn, and their baby is born out back, in a stable.
In Matthew, Joseph and Mary live in Bethlehem - they're already there: it's their hometown.
So there's no journey, and their baby is born at home.
In Luke, Mary is the main character and Joseph is hardly mentioned.
In Matthew, Joseph is the main character and Mary is hardly mentioned.
The shepherds are in Luke's story, but not in Matthew's.
The wise men are in Matthew but not in Luke.
The most chilling moment in the story is in Matthew:
the wise men warn Joseph and Mary to leave the country
because they know Herod the king wants to kill their newborn baby.
So Joseph and Mary pack up and go south, to Egypt, and Herod, "in a furious rage,"
orders his soldiers to kill all the male children in Bethlehem and in that region
"who were two years old or under."
Luke seems to know nothing about this.
In his story, Joseph and Mary don't flee to Egypt, they take their newborn son right into Jerusalem -
right into Herod's front yard - to bless the baby, and then they return home to Nazareth.
In Matthew, Joseph and Mary are in exile, down in Egypt; they come home only after Herod dies.
And when they do, Joseph decides that Bethlehem is still too dangerous,
so he and Mary move north with their firstborn to the tiny village of Nazareth,
where they have never been - and where they hope they can live in peace.
So Matthew and Luke contradict each other at some points, but they also complement each other.
And what we've done is fold their stories together into a single narrative:
a baby is born in humble circumstances, but surrounding his birth
there are angel visitations, shepherds and wise men, danger and exile,
and a guiding star shining above a stable.
It is a story filled with drama and poetry that can re-enchant us every year.
The story works!
So, you might ask: who cares if the two versions don't agree on every detail?
What's the problem?
And in fact, up until the Age of Reason, there wasn't a problem.
For the first 1,800 years after Jesus' life,
Christians knew that the story of his birth was not meant to be taken literally -
during all those years, people were comfortable with mythical thinking.
They understood that a great myth contains a real and profound truth,
a truth that goes far beyond whatever really happened,
so people in those days didn't need to turn what was clearly a myth into a literal story.
They would have felt a real kinship with John Lennon,
who once said, "Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
That all changed with the Enlightenment and the rise of rationalism:
we started to think that for something to be true, it had to be factual,
and we began to lose our capacity to think mythically.
We thought that if the story Jesus' birth is really true, it has to be literally true,
the angels, the virgin birth, the stable, the guiding star, all of it -
because otherwise Jesus would just be - well, he would just be like us, like you and me.
An ordinary human being.
So that's the problem.
But it's a relatively modern problem.
Because we started thinking literally only when we lost our capacity to think mythically.
Last Sunday I wanted us to reclaim the old art of calling down blessings for fields and friends.
It used to be natural for people to do that.
This Sunday I want us to reclaim our capacity to think mythically,
to know deep inside us that truth is not just a set of facts -
to know that many of our best stories are not literally true, just eternally true.
How many of you ever saw the Japanese movie, Rashomon? [Show of hands.]
It was made in 1950 by the great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa,
it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film,
and it set box office records for a sub-titled movie.
It's a story about the relativity of different points of view - about perception and truth.
In 12th Century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked in the woods by a bandit.
The samurai ends up dead, and there are four eyewitnesses to what happened:
his wife, the bandit, a woodcutter who saw the whole thing,
and the samurai himself, who speaks through a medium.
They were all there, each of them describes what happened, and all of their accounts are different,
but as we see each version on the screen, we believe it,
and we think we're getting a little closer to the truth with each telling.
But there's a problem: each one of the four eyewitnesses claims to be the killer.
Even the samurai, who says he committed suicide.
In his autobiography, Kurosawa says that each account of the murder is both true and false.
Each witness tells us what he or she believes happened, so in that sense, each story is true.
But each story is also false because the witnesses embellish what happened in their own favor.
The movie never tells us what really happened.
Right before filming started, Kurosawa's three assistant directors came to see him.
They told him they didn't understand the story.
He explained how and why each account is both true and false.
Two of his assistants were satisfied, but the third was not.
Because he wanted a clear answer - he wanted a solution.
This has become known as "the Rashomon effect" in modern psychology.
There is an explanation - why we remember an event in our lives the way we do.
Why any story is told the way it is.
But there is no solution - no absolute answer.
I can explain why Matthew and Luke told the story of Jesus' birth the way they did.
But what really happened is unknowable.
We can put the stories together, as we have,
but the solution - the truth - is, as always, both in the story and beyond its reach.
A million years to the Lord is but a second.
A million dollars to the Lord is but a penny - so may I have a penny?
"Sure," says the Lord, "just a second."
In our first reading, the story of the feeding of the 5,000,
which was more like the feeding of 20,000 when you add the women and children,
Jesus is unfazed when his disciples tell him that all they can come up with
are five loaves of bread and two fish.
He is sure there will be enough.
So he says a prayer, breaks the bread, and asks his disciples to pass it around.
We're told that everyone ate and was satisfied - everyone.
And there were "twelve basketfuls" of leftovers.
Since you and I are children of the Enlightenment, we have to ask: what really happened?
In this story, all of the witnesses agree on the end result: everyone was fed.
So we have a solution but no explanation.
No one can explain how it happened.
Was it a miracle?
Did the people in the crowd start sharing what they had in their travel pouches?
We'll never know - and it doesn't matter.
Because it's what the story means that really matters.
It means that when we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," God hears us.
It means that we are called to be God's instruments in meeting the needs of others:
in the story, Jesus says, " You give them something to eat."
We are called on to be active participants in the story -
the storyteller says, "This is about you - what you have to offer,
and whatever it is God will use what you bring - and it will be enough."
In other words, this story, like the Christmas story, is much bigger than whatever really happened.
So when we're all singing "Joy to the World" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" next month,
keep in mind that the truth is much more interesting than the facts,
and that reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Amen.
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