City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

John 3:16-17

Reflection

I like Woody Allen movies because in them Allen asks the right questions, the big questions. He doesn’t make movies that are an excuse for 2-hour chase scenes and state-of-the-art special effects. 

So, I’m watching Woody Allen’s latest movie, Rifkin’s Festival, and toward the middle it gets boring (which is the risk of movies without chase scenes and special effects). I start to doze off but then hear Christoph Walz’s voice, which startles me in my slumber.

Waltz is playing the role of the Grim Reaper–Death–in a spoof on Ingmar Bergman’s famous The Seventh Seal scene where Death plays chess with the knight returning from the crusades, as a metaphor for how man must confront death and the meaning of life in the face of the supposed silence of God.

In Rifkin’s Festival, Allen’s protagonist, Rifkin, also seeks answers to the meaning of life, and in this scene, Allen provides us with his answer: 

Rifkin: All I know is my wife and I have split and my life has come up empty.

Death: Your life isn’t empty, it’s meaningless. Don’t confuse those two. It has no meaning for anybody but that doesn’t mean it has to be empty. You are a human being. You can make it full.

Rifkin: How?

Death: There’s work, family, love – the usual bulls**t, but it’s reasonably effective. Even if you strike out – trying is good for you.

Rifkin’s Festival (2020)

Like I said, Allen asks the right questions; he just doesn’t have the right answers. Telling us life has no meaning through Christoph Walz in a funny Bergman spoof is classic Woody Allen. If you couldn’t laugh you would cry.

As Christians, we should be able to answer the question Allen asks, and there are few passages of scripture that sum it up better than this one : 

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:18–19.

What is the meaning of life? There is a God who created all things, the world rebelled against Him, and in His compassion He chose to save it. He is now in the process of reconciling the world to Himself. Our purpose in life is to be reconciled to Him and then join Him in reconciling the world to Himself.

In short, we are to be ambassadors for Him in His mission of compassion in a rebellious world (See 2 Corinthians 5:20). 

Application

Our lives find meaning in His mission. We are not in a game where Death will ultimately checkmate us. Because of God’s compassion, we are now citizens building a kingdom that will outlast our earthly lives but which we will ultimately inherit. 

O, Death where is thy sting? (See 1 Corinthians 15:55).

Prayer

Lord, thank You for having compassion on me. Please use me in Your compassionate mission to redeem the world. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.