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    Jul 05, 2015

    Captain America

    Captain America

    Passage: 2 Samuel 5:1-25

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: Faith at the Movies

    Category: Faith

    In Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers is an extremely unlikely hero – skinny, short, and plagued with a number of health issues, he wants more than anything else to serve his country and the people he loves. Yet, he is chosen to be a super soldier who unmasks evil (personified by The Red Skull) and gives his life to save millions of people. As we consider the faith themes of this film on Independence Day weekend, we will be reminded of the Israelites’ desire to have a king so they can be “like the nations.” A perennial struggle, the Israelites often found themselves “like the nations” and losing their way as the People of God.

    When I was in seminary, we talked a number of times about Karl Barth’s declaration that we should read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other as we prepared to preach and in our work in ministry.  If you had told me then that I would preach with a graphic novel in one hand and the Bible in the other, I would have said you were a little nuts.  But here we go!

    The lectionary in these summer weeks is filled with the stories of David and Israel.  In this week’s Hebrew Testament reading, David is finally becoming the king – of Judah in Hebron.  I was talking with someone just recently about David, and we got to talking about how there were two “capitals” for a time – and this is one of the stories that makes that point.  It would be a little over 7 years before David was king over all of Israel, located in Jerusalem.

    Israel struggled.  The Chosen People – the people who were chosen to be God’s people – struggled with what that meant.  They were jealous of the surrounding people who had lots of gods.  They were jealous that those other nations had kings with power and strength when the Israelites did not.  And so you may remember that they pestered God and Samuel until God said, “oh, go ahead.” 

    Trouble is, these people who were to be God’s which meant being different from the people around them wanted to be (and this is a quote) “like the nations.”

    Set against that story, we are viewing Captain America this week – the weekend when we celebrate the founding of our own country 239 years ago.  This is a time when we thank God for the freedom we have as US citizens and for the ideals upon which our nation was founded.

    Steve Rogers starts out in the story as a puny guy who is much too small to make it as an enlisted soldier.  He tries to enlist at least 5 times with no luck until he is noticed by an Austrian doctor who is involved in a kind of Super Soldier Project.  The obvious choice to be the next super soldier is Hodge – the big, strong guy who can do pushups all day long and does everything he can to sabotage Rogers. 

    Remind you of anyone?  Remember when David was chosen to be anointed?  The smallest, youngest, least experienced – and yet God chose David.  The one who became perhaps the greatest king in Israel’s history, despite the many chinks in his armor and the serious sins he committed during his reign – but that’s another story.

    Dr. Erskine and Agent Carter see beyond Rogers’ limitations to the interior qualities of this man.  They choose him and he becomes the super soldier for the program.  He is injected with a secret serum that gives him super powers.  He can run faster, jump higher, react quicker than any ordinary human being.  He is clearly a man of honor who seeks to live out the ideals of his beliefs.  What are Capt America’s ideals and how would you describe his character?

    Soon, Rogers meets up with the personification of evil, Johann Schmidt, also known as The Red Skull.  He, too, has been injected with the secret serum, and what we soon learn is that the serum emphasizes everything that is inside the man.  In Schmidt, the evil in his heart is magnified so that he seeks to overtake the whole world.  His goal is to go far beyond Hitler’s oppression of anyone who does not meet his standards or race or religion.  Thought he is supposedly working for Hitler, he even plans to overtake Berlin.

    Schmidt reveals his identity to Rogers in this scene…. 

    Stan Lee, the creator of Captain America introduced Evil in the Avengers series with the Red Skull’s unmasking and grab for power.  In Captain America: The First Avenger, Lee introduces racism, a frequent theme in his work.  And it’s presented in the darkest, most violent terms.  Red Skull’s “army” is named for one of the most violent, poisonous of Greek Myths characters, Hydra.  Hydra’s poison was deadly, and killing Hydra was next to impossible.  Remember?  Cut off one head and two grow in its place.  And so in this scene, evil that had been hidden behind a pseudo-normal German colonel is unmasked for what it truly is.

    One other frequent theme that Lee addressed further down the road in the Captain America series is very close to the biblical story of Israel and their desire to be “like the nations.”  We aren’t going to say any more about that today except to say that, Captain America becomes disillusioned when he sees that there are flaws in the American dream.  Perhaps we’ll look at that more sometime down the road, but suffice it to say today that Rogers realizes that we are not perfect and blind nationalism is not healthy.

    Spoiler alert!  You might want to stick your fingers in your ears if you haven’t seen the movie, but our series is about faith themes in the movies, and there is one more scene that I need to lift up.  This is one of a thousand or more movies in which the main character becomes something of a Christ figure.  While it is true that he runs around defending the world and fighting Schmidt – notice that all of that is done with a defensive shield rather than with guns or other weapons! – Captain America becomes Christ-like at the very end.  He has risked his life throughout the story.  But at the end, he makes a decision to give up his life to save New York. 

    A love story.  A great story of good fighting and overcoming evil.  A poignant story of a man who sought to become more like Christ.  I hope you’ll come Wednesday to watch it with the rest of us!