Spoiler Alert – This sermon reveals plot elements of “Gravity” including the ending. However, the ending is not a big surprise and the crucial plot twist in the middle of the film is not revealed in the sermon.
The popular movie “Gravity” is one of the most visually insane movies I’ve ever seen. Set in space on a fictional space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, star Sandra Bullock plays engineer Dr. Ryan Stone, and George Clooney plays mission commander Matt Kowalski. On a spacewalk to repair the Hubble, a catastrophic disaster destroys the shuttle and sends Dr. Stone and Kowalski on a harrowing journey through empty space with only their space suits and one jet pack. They travel first to the International Space Station and then to the Chinese space station. The film’s visual effects are truly mind blowing. If I had seen it in a theater, I probably would have gotten nauseous. The characters are continually spinning in space, constantly in motion as they float through weightless void. The contrasts of light and dark are starker than you can imagine. Images of earth are stunning. Wikipedia noted that 80 of the film’s 91 minutes are dedicated to visual effects.
Noting that emphasis on visual effects, it is, however, a surprisingly poignant little mini-plot that holds the film together. The plot is so simple that I see it as more parable than plot. Dr. Ryan (Sandra Bullock’s character) is grieving the loss of her little daughter who died in a sudden, tragic accident. Through the journey Dr. Ryan takes from the destruction of the shuttle to her safe return to earth, she processes her grief. That is the whole movie: Get back to earth; process your grief.
What I find so striking about this parable is the reversal of common ideas of heaven and earth. We heard those common conceptions of heaven and earth in the passage from Colossians this morning. Paul says, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is… Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.” It is the idea that having our minds or our thoughts on heaven or some higher spiritual realm is better than having our thoughts on earthly things, as Paul would say, things “of the flesh.” One of my core disagreements with Paul is this concept that flesh and earth are bad while heaven and spirit are good. Paul wants us to focus on heavenly and spiritual things: For Paul resurrection is about rising above earthly things, rising above the body, rising above this life, and setting our minds “up there” away from the earth because there is so much sin and debauchery down here.
Beyond Paul, we can see similar themes in this century’s popular ideas of heaven and earth. Today’s general understanding is that when we die, we go to heaven and will see our loved ones. The belief that life on this earth is painful and limited but we will rise beyond those limitations one day to a higher realm.
In Gravity the dichotomy is reversed. We first meet Dr. Ryan high above the earth in the disorienting, weightless void of space. We meet her in the heavens where we find that she is grieving. As the story unfolds, we learn that she has gone to the heavens primarily because life on earth was too painful. In one great line, she tells Commander Kowalski that she was driving when she got the phone call that her little girl had died. So now, whenever she is not working, she just gets in her car and drives. Since that call, the only thing she can do is to keep driving, trapped in that moment when she lost her daughter.
I get the impression that she has driven all the way to space, all the way to heaven, trying to find the life she lost. She is searching to escape the pain of living on earth. Yet, the constant disorienting motion in space shows us there is no center up there. There is no grounding force, no reality. She is alone with her grief in the emptiness.
Dr. Ryan processes through this grief as she struggles to survive one space disaster after another. Eventually she finds a desire not just to avoid death but to live, to get on with her life. The real spoiler would be if I told you how she finally gets over that hump so I’ll skip that. But she does figure that out and eventually gets in an escape pod and begins her descent. She begins to travel from up in heaven down to earth, from the things that are above to the things that are below.
The visual effects are awesome as she re-enters earth in a blaze of heat and fire. Her escape pod plunges through the atmosphere and finally lands in a shallow lake and sinks to the bottom. She crawls out of the submerged escape pod, strips off the cumbersome space suit that is holding her down and swims to the surface. As the film ends, she crawls to shore, struggling to stand up against the pull of earth’s gravity—a grounding force that she hasn’t felt in so long. She stands barefoot in the mud taking her first painful steps into a new life. This is the grounding force of life on earth.
In Gravity, the death and resurrection themes are obvious; the rebirth themes are obvious. What is so profound to me—and this is especially poignant as we celebrate Earth Day—is that she is resurrected on earth. She is reborn in the water; she rises from the mud. She is dead in space, dead in the heavens. She has been dead since her daughter died, and she continued driving until she escaped the grounding forces of this earth. But, when she decides to live, when she is resurrected to new life—for that she must come back to earth.
Too many Christians today think that the point of living a Christian life is to get to heaven. They think the point is to survive this world’s temptations and set their minds on heavenly things, so one day they can be in heaven forever. For this reason, some people are not concerned with the destruction of our earth or the misery of its people because they believe it is all a means to a greater spiritual end.
But, as this movie shows and as we celebrate Earth Day, we remember that we are born on this earth and we are reborn on this earth. We die here and we are raised to new life here. The Christian message of new life and rebirth is not about escape; it is about renewal for us and for the earth. Don’t set your mind on heaven at the expense of earth. Set your mind to “heaven on earth” or even the heaven of earth. Emerge from the waters. Stand in the mud. Live.
Govans Presbyterian Church 