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The Spirit of Symbols: Remixed Ritual

How Christian rituals began and how symbols became Christian rituals - on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The previous Foundations post covered the origin of symbol and ritual, using the example of water, up to the point of Jesus’s life.

In this post, more on symbols and rituals! Symbols that were remixed by Jesus; the way the Christian community ritualized that remixing; the way we understand those rituals today. In short: an overview on how Christian ritual began and how we got to where we are today. All of this is leading up to how Christians’ understanding of the use of elements and their symbolic meaning shapes our engagement with culture.

Shifting Symbols

Jesus was born in a particular place at a particular time, which means that he was born into a context. This might seem obvious, but I think we forget it when we talk about Jesus-in-the-present. We forget that the way Jesus is now is fundamentally different from the way Jesus was then, when he had a very specific body and face and voice in a culture that assigned meaning to all these things.

He was born into the Jewish tradition in the time of the Roman empire. Which means that there are two cultures at play here, each with their own nuanced understanding of symbolic objects. The culture of the Jewish people had well-established rituals and symbols using elements that were richly textured with history, story, and poetry. And the same was true of the Roman empire, with their own narratives and meanings.

Jesus seems to be quite familiar with both these cultures by the time he enters into adult ministry. He often remixes elements in order to give new symbolic meaning. Through remixing elements, Jesus shifts his audience’s understanding of the symbols, thus shifting their understanding of the world.

Shifting Symbolism with the Water Element

Water was a central part of the Jewish tradition. In the first lines of scripture, the Spirit of God dwells over water. In Exodus, water turns to blood to show God’s expansive power; the water of the Red Sea parts to liberate the people of Israel; water flows from a rock to sustain them. When Jesus is born, water is deeply meaningful and well-textured. And the multiplicity of these meanings — new life, liberation, sustenance — is ritualized through submersion into water called baptism.

Jesus is far from the first to use water as a symbolic element.

So when Jesus interacts with water, he’s often playing with the meaning of the symbol that already exists in order to re-connect those around him with the original potency of the element.

To take the first miracle in the gospel according to John: Jesus turns water into wine. Water, in the jars for ceremonial washing, is largely associated with purity. Not just physical cleanliness, but spiritual purity. Wine, like water, also has a rich symbolic history of joy, hospitality, and a foreshadowing of the banquet to which God invites us. So when Jesus puts wine into the jars for ceremonial washing, it’s a violation of religious custom that signals a deep connection between the place of the holy (ceremonial jars) and the substance of joyful hospitality (wine).

Jesus places the symbols in relationship to each other in a way that confronts the audience and points them to a deeper meaning that they may have been missing.

And that wedding where Jesus turned water into wine was in Cana, which is near the altar of the Roman god Dionysos. On his feast day, Dionysos would cause the streams to run with wine instead of water — Dionysus turned water into wine. So when Jesus does the same thing, in jars instead of flowing water, on a random weekend instead of a certain feast day, the Romans would have understood that Jesus is somehow more divine than their god.

In a single act with the same elements, Jesus confronts both Jewish and Roman symbols — which is to say, he messes with both their understandings of the world, in a way that draws them toward a new creation.

Ritualizing the Remix

As Jesus’s followers develop into a community, they do what all groups of humans do — they create rituals for their time together. For Christians, this means that they created rituals based on Jesus’s use of symbols. To early Christians (many of whom understood themselves as Jewish), much of the subversive use of these elements was intact; they understood the history that Jesus had been undermining, and are using the elements to now remind themselves that, in Jesus, creation is somehow made new.

Of course, for Christians today, much of that textural complexity of symbol has been lost. We didn’t grow up in Jewish homes under Roman rule. And while all that context is interesting for context and fuller understandings of the gospel (and I’ll even go so far as to say: it’s absolutely essential for anyone entrusted with scriptural interpretation through preaching), it isn’t essential for most people.

We don’t need to understand the Roman and Jewish contexts and symbolic understanding of the elements used in ritual in order to be impacted by these rituals. The element is still intuitively associated with its original functioning in the world, and we can rely on this for impact.

Let’s clarify with our water example.

A Water Ritual: Baptism

In the last Foundations post, we briefly touched on the ritualization of the water symbol into baptism.

By the time of Jesus’s birth, baptism was a solidified ritual in the Jewish community. Baptism was a required part of conversion, a repeated part of Jewish life, and a part of the ordination process. Baptism represented, at once, purification, restoration, and enculturation into the community.

When Jesus asks John to baptize him, he is both participating in this ritual and playing with it — the play has resulted in much debate over the centuries about what it means for the Holy One to participate in a ritual that signifies repentance and purification. But that’s a tangent I’ll resist for now.

Early Christians also practiced baptism. In New Testament texts, baptism is at once understood as a ritual of cleansing, adoption, identification with Christ, and death of the old self/rebirth of a new self.

Over time, Christian communities have moved between practices of infant and adult baptism, methods of immersion and sprinkling, baptism as a one-time deal or a repeated experience. There are communities today that represent each possible set of answers, and they are all in the wide stream of orthodoxy.

All of this is to say: Jesus stepped into a river once, remixing the way we understood baptism, and millions of people have since followed.

Perhaps it’s because of his example alone that we wade into the waters, but I doubt it.

Back to Elements

I think we follow Jesus into the baptismal waters because there’s something compelling going on in the symbol that water itself carries.

I was baptized in my early 20s. I was really excited and invited everyone, and many of my friends who are in the category of religious “nones” came. These are friends who weren’t familiar with the symbolic heritage of water in the Judeo-Christian tradition. They weren’t thinking about how the Spirit moved over the waters in creation. They weren’t remembering how God led Israel through water to freedom. They had no context of Jewish symbolic meaning for what it meant for Jesus to have been baptized (truthfully, at the time, neither did I).

And yet it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. And when I came out of the waters, some of my “none” friends had tears in their eyes as they hugged me, the baptismal water transferring from my body to their sweaters.

What is it that makes this ritual so impactful, even for people who don’t have knowledge of the symbolic heritage?

I would argue that it goes back to the element itself. Water is inherently renewing. Our bodies are mostly made up of water. Our very lives depend on our ingesting water at regular intervals. On some level, our bodies know this, even if our minds don’t think of it very often. Water is a sort of permanent symbol for sustaining and renewing life.

This symbolic texture of water connects to us not at a “Christian” level, not merely in the intellect or belief system. This connects on a human level. The Christian community has simply developed that meaning in a certain way and uses it in a certain context. We did not give water its meaning. Meaning does not belong to us. Meaning is the work of the Spirit. Meaning belongs to God.

How Christian ritual began and how symbolism functions in ritual - read on Literate Theology

Next Time

In the next Foundations post, we’ll FINALLY get to the meat of what this all means for a Christian understanding of symbolism in culture today, how the Spirit continues to work through symbols, and why Christ keeps showing up in “secular” culture.

For discussion: Do you remember your baptism, or have you witnessed another’s? What struck you as meaningful in that moment? If you have other, non-baptismal memories with water that impacted you, share those!

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“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” & The Image of God

Finding the Image of God in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The Image of God

The theology of the imago Dei, or image of God, holds that humans, being created by the divine, hold the image of their Creator within themselves.

Over the centuries, there has been quite a bit of discussion as to what exactly it means to be image-bearers. Perhaps the image is innate to every human; perhaps a human must first be in relationship with God before becoming an image-bearer. Perhaps the image is held fully in each person; each person carries a full image of God. Perhaps the image is a trait shared by all humanity (often this argument names that trait as capital-R Reason, though obviously people carry that trait to different extents; others have argued that the trait is relational, or the capacity for meaningful relationship).  Perhaps the image is collective — all of humanity, together, is the image of God.

Francie Nolan: Fully Human, Fully Image-Bearing

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith quietly addresses the debates around imago Dei through her protagonist, Francie. After detailing the background and character of the Rommelys (Francie’s maternal family) and the Nolans (her paternal family), the section concludes with these paragraphs:

“And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely’s mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely’s cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy’s talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan’s possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy’s love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all of these good and these bad things.

 

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.

 

She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only–the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life–the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.” (p72-73)

Smith’s narrator asserts that there is a unique image that each person holds; each “something” is a gift of God.

One thing I love about this passage is that it doesn’t deny the “bad things” and the ways cruelty, brokenness, despair, and shame are handed down from generation to generation.

What I love even more is the way that this passage assumes God’s presence in a person. Smith nullifies the question of whether a person must be in relationship with God in order to carry the image of God.

Before birth or at birth, God put the “something” into Francie, so Francie is always already in relationship with God. She is in relationship as the receiver of this gift, as a bearer of the image. Even when she disavows God, she is still embodying that “something different,” still holding the lovingly wrapped package that God gave uniquely to her.

For discussion: If this narrator were writing about our life, what would be in the paragraph of what you inherited from your family? What would be in the paragraph about the “more,” the other influences in life?

Respond in the comments!

Theology of the image of God in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

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Mad Max: Fury Road: Witness Nux

Witness Nux in Mad Max Fury Road - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

SPOILER ALERT – In this post we witness Nux in the most significant 24 hours of his life. It pretty much opens with spoilers. So seriously, go watch the movie already! Then come back. I’ll be here.

Transformation

Nux may be the most drastically transformed character over the course of Mad Max: Fury Road.

We meet him as a happily indoctrinated war boy, but hours later he fully commits himself to the destruction of Immortan Joe’s empire and the overthrowing of the Citadel.

At the start of the film, his body is “battle fodder” (as the Splendid put it) in the service of the empire, but in the end he sacrifices his body in order to destroy the empirical forces.

And he’s the one character the audience sees progress through all the types of hope.

Kamakrazee War Boy

When we first meet Nux, he’s resting and connected to his “blood bag” — death is imminent. And yet, hearing of betrayal, he’s energized, determined to die for the purposes of the empire and to please Immortan Joe. He refuses to stay at the Citadel and “die soft.” “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die historic on the Fury Road.”

We see him cheer as a pierced war boy shouts “Witness!” and jumps to his death, taking out an enemy vehicle. When a war boy dies for the purposes of the Cult of the V8 (the religion of the empire), there seems to be a tradition of witnessing. Part of what makes the death worthwhile is the memory of the way in which the death occurred, the way it benefited the empire.

When Nux goes on his own kamakrazee drive, dumping gallons of gasoline into the car and riding into the apocalyptic desert storm, he shouts to Max, “Witness me, Blood Bag!” He’s thoroughly committed to the Cult, determined to “ride eternal on the highways of Valhalla” with Immortan Joe.

Nicholas Hoult, the actor who plays Nux, says, “He’s very hyped up and running on this enthusiasm and belief that he’s destined for something great.”

Despair to Hope

That enthusiasm dissipates when he fails to kill Furiosa on behalf of Joe.

Capable finds him at the back of the War Rig, hitting his head in punishment, “He [Joe] saw it all. My own blood bag driving the rig that killed her [Angharad the Splendid].” He laments that he “should be walking with the Immorta.” “I thought I was being spared for something great.”

At that point, he aligns himself with Furiosa and the wives — not because he thinks what they’re doing is right, but because he believes himself to be exiled from the empire and faith of Immortan Joe. His very survival is dependent on getting somewhere livable with the traitors.

It’s not until Max reveals the plan to take the Citadel that Nux fully recovers from his despair, acknowledging the opposite of despair: “Feels like hope.”

Eyes to See

When we first meet Nux, he’s in standard war boy makeup: blackened eyes and powder-whitened body.

By the time he claims hope, this layer has begun to fall away. The white powder has been sand-blown off; we can see that he is living flesh. The blackness around his eyes gradually clears; Nux develops clear-sightedness.

Which reminds me of another man dedicated to his religion and transformed through a shift in sight — the Apostle Paul. Saul (as he was then called) was on his own Fury Road in pursuit of traitors. The opening sentence of Acts 9 tells us that Saul was seeking permission to capture those who betrayed the religious establishment of his day. Perhaps Saul even understood himself to be anointed, shiny and chrome, for exactly the task of recovering the traitorous souls.

But Jesus appeared to Saul and struck him blind. Days later, he regains his sight, is renamed Paul, and begins championing the Christian cause. His mission began when he regained true sight.

Nux, like Paul, is an image of conversion — and, also like Paul, a martyr for the coming of the Kingdom.

Witness

They’re on the road back to the Citadel when Immortan Joe is finally defeated. Cheedo shouts back to those in the War Rig: “He’s dead! He’s dead.” For just a moment, the camera lingers in a closeup on Nux’s face. The last scales fall from his eyes.

If Immortan Joe has died, then Nux is not in exile from the true faith of the Cult of the V8. Joe will not carry him into Valhalla. Joe was not an Immorta; perhaps there are no Immorta; perhaps there is no Valhalla. The entirety of that faith is proven false, even foolish, in light of Joe’s death.

Nux is free from his religious and empirical ties, free to choose his commitments, free to act for the interest of goodness for the world rather than simply for the best interests of Joe.

Nux is free to love.

And he loves greatly. Jesus claims that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Earlier, Nux had told Capable that he thought he was being spared for “something great,” and in this moment perhaps he realizes that he was, and that the moment of greatness has arrived, greatness for a cause he could never have imagined the day before.

Nux points to Capable, his beloved, and whispers (not shouts — no, there is no need to shout for glory when the very act contains all the glory of God) “Witness me.”

When Nux finally dies, he dies historic on the Fury Road. He was right from the very beginning. He dies historic — dies in such a way that a barrier is provided to protect his friends and to protect the hope that they will carry to the Citadel.

A day earlier, he was willing to die in hope of personal gain — glory in Valhalla, feasting with the heroes, perhaps being honored as a hero himself. Here, he dies for a hope in this world, hope for an abundance of green things and clean water for many. He dies for a hope that he knows he won’t get to participate in.

I can’t help but think that the entire film is a witness to Nux’s conversion and to his great love.

Saint Nux, who gave his life so that the world might be saved.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

For discussion: What other saints and martyrs do you notice in Mad Max: Fury Road? What do you think it means to witness to the life and death of another? What might need to die so that you are more free to love greatly? What are you willing to risk your life for, or to die for?

Respond in the comments below!

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The Book of Uncommon Prayer & How to Pray Without Ceasing

Brian Doyle's "A Book of Uncommon Prayer" & How to Pray Without Ceasing - on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The title first caught my eye: The Book of Uncommon Prayer. I’m a lover of the Book of Common Prayer, and I can’t resist a hint of irreverence. The table of contents promised prayers for “cashiers and checkout-counter folks” and for “muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor;” prayers for every layer of modern human life, from the mundane presence of port-a-potties to the heartbreaking reality of people whose dads left them as kids.

I had expected to find short blessings that could be spoken in strange places or at times when our own BCP feels a little stiff or distant. What I actually encountered was page after page of Doyle’s sincere, most-well-intentioned thought-rambles.

To name his prayers as ramblings may sound dismissive, but it’s meant in the holiest of senses. Doyle writes as though he’s the scribe of the voice that narrates the thoughts in our heads — that kind of focused run-on-sentence that deals with life as it comes, that helps us narrate our days and our identities, that talks us into wanting the best for others.

When reading his “Prayer for the Men & Women Who Huddle Inside Vast Rain Slickers All Day Holding Up STOP Signs at Construction Sites & Never Appear to Shriek in Despair & Exhaustion,” it felt as though I myself were behind the wheel of a car on a rainy day, idling past one of those workers, and that these are the thoughts that may go through my head. “I pray for warmth for you. Less rain. No idiot drivers whizzing past… I pray that you are getting paid decent wages.”

The real gift of Doyle’s work to us is not the words of the prayers themselves, which I doubt will ever be read over bowed heads at family gatherings. Rather, his gift is the recognition that all thought is prayer. And with that, the recognition that some thoughts are perhaps more worthy prayers than others.

St Paul reminds us to “pray without ceasing,” to pray “at all times with all kinds of prayers and requests.” I’ve heard people say that Paul was exaggerating, that he certainly didn’t mean to pray all the time, just to pray a lot.

But what if Paul did mean what he wrote?

What if the voice in my head could be nudged into giving up its criticisms and its concern for my schedule and its constant readying for the next thing, and instead became attuned to the people, animals, places, and items in its midst? What if my inner critic was re-formed into a silent chaplain?

Doyle’s work reminds readers how many opportunities we have to bless the world as beings and things come into our sight each day. We each have an unlimited abundance of blessing to offer.

From where I’m sitting, I can send blessings of gratitude on my dog for his (not entirely necessary) watchfulness; blessings on those who grew, picked, and dried the tea leaves in my cup; a prayer for good working conditions and fair wages for those who built my computer; a prayer of deep gratitude to anyone who takes the time to read my words; and of course, a prayer of appreciation that Brian Doyle reminded me of the power of my prayers.

These prayers may do nothing for their recipients, though we can hope alongside Doyle that they may feel a surge of joy for reasons they do not know. But the prayers will undoubtedly do something for us who mumble them, instilling us with gratitude, forming us to notice the whispered cries for justice, orienting us towards love.

So: a blessing on Brian Doyle, who didn’t at all punt it like he was afraid he would; who was transparent in his humanity for the sake of his readers; who not only gave us some lovely thoughts but more importantly showed us how it’s done. I pray the process of writing it was at least as formative as the process of reading it has been. I pray he’s proud of his work, and not too self-conscious about letting all us readers inside his head and his heart. And I pray he feels a surge of joy right now for reasons he does not know. And so: Amen.

Questions: What people, pets, or items call for your blessing in your immediate vicinity? Share in the comments below.

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Mad Max: Fury Road & Competing Hopes

Mad Max: Competing Hopes - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Mad Max: Fury Road offers a post-apocalyptic image of the future in order to push audiences to ask questions about our present. The film seems to center around hope and its role in these character’s lives. The various factions offer a couple different ways of understanding hope, highlighting the problems of each, before providing an ultimate resolution through offering a framework for a healthy way to hope.

Tunnels and Directions

Eschatology is the aspect of theology that concerns the “four last things:” death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The eschaton is shorthand for the place where we hope all this — all our prayers, policies, and parenting  — the place that we hope everything is headed.

Sometimes when talking about eschatology, theologians use the metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel. In the tunnel metaphor, the eschaton is the light towards which we move. In Mad Max language, we could say the eschaton is the Green Place.

The metaphor we use matters — deeply — to the way we understand the world. The metaphor we us shapes our actions in the world.

The tunnel metaphor is an enclosed line, and the confines of the tunnel mean that it’s impossible to get off track. As long as we keep moving, we’ll end up at the destination. There are only two options: (1) going back to where we first came from; in scriptural language we’d say “back to Eden,” to the garden in Genesis 2, or (2) going forward to the light at the other end of the tunnel; we might say heaven or the city described in the Book of Revelations.

What’s problematic is that the tunnel metaphor allows us to believe that absolutely anything that happens — fossil fuel consumption, nuclear weaponry, murder — is all part of a linear history that God has laid down. It’s all part of the tunnel line that will eventually bring us to the light.

The metaphor offered in Mad Max: Fury Road for the eschaton is the Green Place, and they get there by “a long night’s run, headed east.” The image retains the darkness/light metaphor of the tunnel (the Green Place will be on the other side of darkness; it is associated with the coming light of dawn), and adds greenness — the color associated with vibrant life, from vegetation.

This driving metaphor solves the issue of the linear history of the tunnel metaphor. On the drive, it’s possible to get off track — they could begin to head too far north or south and miss the Green Place. They could find themselves going the wrong direction entirely, a direction that’s neither “back to Eden” nor “ahead to the City.” The driving metaphor preserves potential for missing the mark, the potential of human error.

Where is Hope Located?

The film asks us to consider where we place our hope by juxtaposing two eschatons, two places that hope can reside.

Hoping for Death

The first form of hope we see epitomized in the War Boys, especially Nux. For the first portion of the movie, Nux represents disembodied hope, meaning that arriving at this eschaton requires the loss of one’s body. The eschaton, called Valhalla (sometimes written Walhalla), is reached only through death. Early in the film, we see Nux screaming “I live. I die. I live again!” Death is the gateway to the paradisiacal afterlife.

In this theology, the individual’s arrival will be more honorable if the death happens in combat that furthers the cause of the empire. Immortan Joe tells the war boy Nux, “Return my treasures to me and I myself will carry you to the gates of Valhalla.” He anoints Nux with chrome spray and the blessing that he will “ride eternal, shiny, and chrome.”

I’ve read some commentators who were quick to interpret Nux’s disembodied hope as a parallel for Islamic extremists. Which, sure, and those similarities don’t need yet another summary. What I haven’t read much of is the parallel that Nux also represents the disembodied hope found in many religions, including some forms of Christianity.

The belief that death is more honorable if done to further the religious cause is as much a Christian belief as an Islamic one. Many early Christians died to uphold the Christian cause; we refer to them as the martyrs. And when we tell the story of martyrs, we witness to the importance of their lives and deaths.

Both religions (the Cult of the V8 and some forms of Christianity) are headed by men believed to be immortal (Immortan Joe; Jesus) who will deliver their followers to a paradisiacal afterlife (Valhalla; Heaven). Death for the sake of the leader’s teachings will lead to glory and honor after death — it is this glorious death that Nux desperately seeks.

So what’s the alternative to hoping for life after death?

Hoping for Life

The Green Place — spoilers abound from here on

We see the alternative to the War Boys’ disembodied hope in the located hope of the protagonists, and especially of the escaped breeders/wives. The wives’ eschaton is the Green Place — a located place that they can physically access in this life.

The wives have never been to the Green Place. Their hope rests on what they have been told about the place, presumably from Furiosa. Furiosa believes on the faith of a distant memory; the wives believe without seeing. And the belief is a great comfort to them; it’s in the moments they are most stressed and uncertain that one of them will repeat, “We are going to the Green Place.”

They are willing to risk everything to reach this place — even death. They are willing to die as a result of their hope, but their hope does not necessitate their death. When we locate the eschaton in this world, it instills us with a hope so compelling that we are willing to die to get there, yet death is not required to get there. That relationship between hope and death is a far cry from the War Boys, who are willing to die because they must die in order to reach their eschaton.

This is why the War Boys cheer when they watch one of their own go to his death — early in the chase, an injured man anoints himself with chrome spray, shouts “Witness me!” and jumps to his death while taking out an enemy vehicle. The War Boys shout victoriously.

But when Angharad the Splendid falls, those present are tearful. It’s not only because they were close to her — the War Boys have also lived together; they’ve probably grown up together; they are close. Their grief is a result of their hope. They know the Green Place, no matter how good it will be, will be somehow lacking without Angharad present. They grieve because she will never get to arrive at the place she had put her hope.

What the seekers of the Green Place share with other forms of Christianity is that they follow a real, flesh-and-blood person: Furiosa for the wives; Jesus for the disciples, who had no idea, when they started following him, that he would resurrect. They both look for the already existing presence of the eschaton, with their own vocabularies: the Green Place; the Kingdom of God that is within us or among us.

Repentance

When the group discovers that the Green Place has become a swamp of poisoned water, we would expect their hope to die or to shift to hope in an afterlife. And for a moment, that despairing moment when Furiosa takes off her metal hand — hands are a symbol of agency; perhaps she feels she is nothing left to be done — and she kneels in the expanse of the barren desert and she silently wails her lament — for that moment the audience and Furiosa alike are swallowed by despair. All hope is deferred.

Max tells Furiosa that “hope is a mistake.” But I think what he’s actually saying is that the headstrong hoping for something out there is a mistake. To hope that someone else has solved what their society wasn’t able to solve is a mistake.

It seems that they gather themselves in a hope-against-hope, rouse themselves to keep going east, continuing to do what they’ve been doing for the last day. Max rides after them and calls them to repent — a word that literally means to turn back.

When Max had claimed that “hope is a mistake” he added: “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.” Which actually points the audience to a new sort of hope.

Hope that is not somewhere out there; that is the kind of hope that is a mistake. True hope relies on “fixing what’s broken,” mending what is fractured, fighting to restore goodness with what we have. Hope is in redeeming (“regaining possession”) of what has been used for evil. Hope must be found within us and among us.

When Max calls them to repentance, the response to the plan is clear: “Feels like hope.”

It’s Nux, newly converted, who names it so.

(Post concludes after image)

Mad Max: Fury Road and Competing Hopes - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

True Hope: The Green Place is Within You

This is the turning point of their journey and of the film’s eschatology. In this moment, Nux — previously a subscriber to disembodied hope — converts to hope in a real place. And the women — subscribers to a hope located outside of themselves — find a resilient hope that exists in and among their own selves.

Far from the despairing lament, this type of hope is stronger than any hope they had experienced before.

This is the hope that Jesus tried to instill in his followers. Jesus repeatedly proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a present reality. Jesus proclaimed that this Kingdom is “within us” and “among us.” Hope exists within an individual and among a community. Hope likely requires real work to effect changes in the way a community structures itself — fixing what’s broken will not be easy. But we must have this resilient internal hope that the broken can be mended in order to act faithfully and step into the Kingdom of God that is both already present and not yet fully manifest.

The Green Place still exists; they carry it within them. They carry it in their imaginations and their desires. They carry it into reality in the Citadel.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Questions: How do you speak about your hope? Where do you locate hope? How do you tap into the Green Place within your own self?