Method Acting [Lent 4C - 2 Corinthians 5:16-21]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

 

Method Acting

 

Daniel Day-Lewis, three-time Academy Award winner, six-time nominee, and current knight, is perhaps the most dedicated and gifted method actor in the history of film.  He doesn’t just play a part; he inhabits his characters and allows them to inhabit him. 

 

To prepare for The Last of the Mohicans, he spent six-months living in the woods, building canoes, learning to use a tomahawk, tracking, hunting, and skinning animals for food.  During the making of Gangs of New York¸ Day-Lewis would wear only period-specific clothing, which led to him catching pneumonia.  He almost died of pneumonia because he would only take period-specific medicines; the film was set in 1862.  While filming Lincoln, Sir Daniel insisted that everyone on set, including director Stephen Spielberg, call him “Mr. President.”  He did not once break character; he lived as Abraham Lincoln for three entire months.  For The Crucible, he built and dwelt in his own 17^th century-style house – with no electricity or running water – and, to be historically accurate, refused to bathe for the entire shoot.  For the film My Left Foot, Day-Lewis played a character with cerebral palsy.  He felt he could only honor the role and the condition by living as one with cerebral palsy.  And so members of the crew fed him all of his meals and carried him between sets during the shoot.  He never broke character – even when the cameras stopped rolling.

 

I find Daniel Day-Lewis’ commitment and devotion staggering and fascinating and intimidating.  One can characterize him as an actor but what he does is clearly more than acting.   For each film, he is born again.  He dies so that someone, or something, new can emerge.

 

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  And so it seems that the Apostle Paul is calling us to give ourselves to the Christian pursuit with the same staggering level of commitment and devotion with which Daniel Day-Lewis attacks each role. 

 

One of the most seemingly benign, but stunningly intense, questions of our baptismal liturgy is when I look into the faces of those called parents and Godparents and say, “Will you by your prayers and witness help this child to grow into the full stature of Christ?”  And believe it or not, those addressed are actually expected to respond, “I will, with God’s help.”

 

In a world in which Christianity is far too often little more than a cultural identity or a convenient cover story, we are actually expected to grow into the full stature of Christ.  We are expected renounce our baser instincts and dispositions so that in their place something new, something more, something holier can emerge.  We are expected to be like Jesus – which is actually what the label Christian means.

 

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us work to do.  We are ambassadors for Christ.  It is an important job – a weighty calling – one that demands commitment and devotion.  And unless we live with Jesus and invite Jesus to live in us, we will be ill prepared to be ambassadors for Christ in this world.  It is a ministry of imitation.  Because of our baptism, we walk around, every day, with the symbol of his cross branded on our foreheads.  And that mark, that eternal mark, is meant to seep into our souls.  We are expected to live like Jesus, and love like Jesus, because we represent Jesus.  We are Jesus in and to this world.

 

And that is what Jesus wants.  Even though Jesus, as God Incarnate is unique in the history of creation, he doesn’t want to be one of kind.  He wants his followers to be his body in the world – healing hands on every corner, words of peace dripping from every lip, love never out of reach.  Jesus gives us everything we need to live his life in our times.  He gave us a prayer to pray.  And his Spirit to lead, guide, and empower us.  And his commandment to love one another as he loves us.  And his body as food, so that we are what we eat.  And his blessing on our lives.  And his mission as our own.  The call of the Christian life, through the sacrament of baptism, is that we should die so that Christ can be born in us – so that the living Christ is eternally manifest in time and space.  If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation!

 

Living as Jesus in this world, in our times, is not easy.  It wasn’t easy for Jesus to live as Jesus in this world.  You likely remember how his life led to Calvary.  But perhaps no life worth truly living is easy.  Daniel Day-Lewis never played a sitcom dad, juggling work and family or a handsome rom-com playboy trying not to settle down with his adorable, sassy co-worker.  In fact, he once said, “I like things that make you grit your teeth. I like tucking my chin in and sort of leading into the storm. I like that feeling. I like it a lot.”  Being a Christian, in a Gospel sort-of way, will require gritted teeth – what with all the stuff about loving your enemies and taking up your cross.

 

As we come nearer to the end of Lent and see more clearly the cross that stands at the end of the season, we are reminded that the Christian life is saturated in sacrifice; it requires staggering degrees of commitment and devotion.  In fact, it requires us to be buried with Christ in his death, in hopes that the promise of new life, of new creation, is true and possible, that the promise of Easter is true and possible. 

 

Easter is what happens in us when we finally let the old things pass away.  Easter is what God does in us.  Something has to die to make room for the new creation. If Jesus, the Living Christ, is to live in us and through us, we need to make room.  That is our calling, after all, our purpose.  We were created to be the Body of Christ.  Jesus is asking us to act like it, to act like him.