Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church
1948 The Alameda
San Jose, CA 95126
San Jose, CA 95126
Lent is upon us. It's always such an interesting time. Do we observe it or do we celebrate it? Or, should we perhaps do something else with it?
To observe might mean to watch, view or scrutinize. It might mean to monitor, study, examine or survey. Certainly we are to do more than that with regard to what is taking place during this time. We are to participate - in a special way! To celebrate seems a little over the top, however. This is a somewhat staid time of the church year. We might celebrate the birth, or the resurrection, or even the time of Pentecost when we are to respond to the liberation that we find in our relationship to God and to God's economic. But, to celebrate the inexorable walk toward Jerusalem and death seems to be a little much.
Rather than observe or celebrate, I think that we should participate in the activities of Lent. The question, however, is "How?" The church has always said that we should participate through fasting, alms giving and prayer (the disciplines of Lent). It has further said that this participation is part of our self-sacrifice that emulates what our Lord has done. But, I don't know. This seems to lead toward an abuse that Jesus does not call us toward.
Perhaps we need to reframe what we are about as we participate, and possibly what Jesus was about as well. I choose to participate in fasting, alms giving and prayer this year, as I have for many years, but within a different frame. It is a frame of health. I think that Jesus seeks desperately to lead the world, and us, toward health, toward wholeness. I will fast because it is part of a dietary change that will lead to greater health. I will give alms because it places me into a healthier relationship with the mammon that would be my god if I let it. I will meditate and pray because it strengthens the health of my relationship with the God who tells me that there is an alternative to the message that this world proclaims.
Having done so, perhaps when I get to Holy Week I can face the death that the powers of this world forced upon the one who tried to bring health, the one who shone a light upon the disease of the world that they could not stand. And, having done that I can then rejoice in the act of a God who says no to the powers of this world, who says yes to the message of Jesus by bring resurrection.
I'll get back to you after Easter and let you know.
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Set amidst the sprawling Johannesburg township of Soweto - where survival is the primary objective - TSOTSI traces six days in the life of a ruthless young gang leader who ends up caring for a baby accidentally kidnapped during a car-jacking.
TSOTSI is a gritty and moving portrait of an angry young man living in a state of extreme urban deprivation. His world pumps with the raw energy of "Kwaito music" - the modern beat of the ghetto that reflects his troubled state of mind.
The film is a psychological thriller in which the protagonist is compelled to confront his own brutal nature and face the consequences of his actions. It puts a human face on both the victims and the perpetrators of violent crime and is ultimately a story of hope and a triumph of love over rage.
"Tsotsi" literally means "thug" or "gangster" in the street language of South Africa's townships and ghettos. "Kwaito" is South Africa's answer to American Hip Hop.
Winner of 2005 Thessaloniki Film Festival, 2005 Los Angeles AFI Film Festival, 2005 Toronto Film Festival, 2005 Edinburgh Film Festival, 2004 St. Louis International Film Festival, 2005 Cape Town World Cinema Festival, 2005 Denver International Film Festival, and the 2005 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film.
When the mugging he masterminds ends in murder, and a member of his gang chooses this delicate moment to make some ill-advised inquiries into his past, Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) beats his buddy senseless and runs out into the rainy night, demons nipping at his heels. He stops to catch his breath in front of a beautiful house, just as its owner is pulling up in a BMW. Tsotsi seizes the moment, and the car, shooting the woman when she tries to climb back in on the passenger side. It's not until he is nearly back to the township that Tsotsi hears the baby gurgling in the back seat.
The official South African entry for the Academy Awards and a nominee in the best foreign-language film category, "Tsotsi" was adapted by Gavin Hood, who also directed, from the novel by playwright Athol Fugard. Tsotsi, his name, literally means thug in the patois of the Soweto townships.
Hood avoids overt references to South Africa's political past, actually, and it's hard to know what to make of it. All of Tsotsi's victims are black, though they range from rich to middle class to poor. (The only whites in the film are a pair of more or less benign cops.) But he draws straight and steady lines from Tsotsi's criminal present to his suffering past. An AIDS orphan whose father abused him, Tsotsi eventually graduated from sleeping in the orphan hive of the stacked drainpipes outside the township to a corrugated steel shack of his own by sheer force of will and repression of memory.
The flashbacks are meant to bridge the gap between roving menace and besotted dad, but they mostly just compromise the movie's naturalism and suggest a lack of confidence in the plausibility of the premise. They also make an overenthusiastic argument for nurture in the old debate, dressing up Tsotsi's childhood traumas as latent paternal instincts, waiting for the right moment to spring: crouching nurturer, hidden father.
Whatever its weaknesses, "Tsotsi" is redeemed by its excellent performances. Chweneyagae has the amazing capacity to look like a hardened criminal one moment, a child the next. After a series of mishaps involving newspaper diapers and condensed milk, Tsotsi follows a shantytown Madonna named Miriam (Terry Pheto) home one afternoon and holds her up at gunpoint, demanding she feed his baby. Tsotsi sits and watches, his hard edges visibly softening, the implication apparently being that the key to crime reduction is to put more nursing mothers and cute babies on the street. Still, it's a pleasure to watch the interplay of emotions on Chweneyagae's face as he contemplates Miriam and imagines (you imagine) forming a little family (at gunpoint) of his own.
What makes "Tsotsi" ultimately as heartbreaking as it is, is Chweneyagae's subtle characterization. He imbues the character with a dreaminess that encourages you to dream with him, drawing you in to the overlooked tragedy of his life. By refusing to trump it all up with unnecessary bombast, distractingly famous faces, lung-collapsing histrionics and excessive post-nasal drip (as witnessed in last week's carjacked baby movie), Hood lets the story unfold at a steady, unhurried pace, cutting only when necessary, and allowing the actors, and the audience, to absorb the impact of each moment. The result is that the final scene creeps up on you quietly, with equally quiet and devastating effect. Having just this week watched some of the most idiotic screen violence I've ever seen, I can confidently attest to the devastating emotional power of nonviolence. Chweneyagae's expression at the end of the film is more jolting and painful than any bang and spurt, and Hood has the stomach not to turn away.
In an emotionally gripping and intellectually rich combination of memoir and theology, Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker show how emphasizing Christ's obedience to God and sacrifice on the cross sanctions violence, exacerbates its effects, blesses silence about the abuse of human beings, and hinders the process of recovery - giving the fullest and most powerful critique to date of the theology of the atonement.
And suddenly, I understood; everything became extraordinarily clear and simple. Everything: life, death, the meaning of existence. And even stronger than this revelation was my surprise: how had no one on earth yet understood this thing, so extraordinarily simple? … I had the feeling that a message had been transmitted to me, that I should remember it so as to be able to communicate it to others. I woke up … with this idea in mind: not to forget what I had seen. A second later, I had forgotten.