“GROUNDHOG
DAY”
|
|
A sermon preached at the Readings: Luke 4:16-21, 2 Cor
5:16 - 6:2 |
|
|
|
|
|
“Now the day of Salvation is
here” (2 Cor 6:2)
Groundhog
Day
This is the last is our current series
of evening services based on movies –
If you’ve never seen “Groundhog
Day” try and see it –
you can get the DVD from Amazon for £6 and it a rare gem –
a happy funny film that makes you think.
You need to know that in the USA
there is this place called Punxsutawney
where each year at sunrise on 2 February
they have a ceremony with a Groundhog called Punxsutawney Phil –
The Groundhog is coaxed from his hibernation
to take a provisional look at the world outside –
if he can see his shadow he goes back inside,
and there will be 6 more weeks of winter.
Otherwise Spring will soon follow….
In the movie Bill Murray plays Phil
Connors
a cynical egocentric and self opinionated weatherman
at the TV station in Pittsburg.
Each year (to his evident disgust and distaste)
he is sent upstate to Punxsutawney
to do a fun weather piece about the Groundhog ceremony.
He hates it and everything about it.
Near the beginning of the movie he does the Groundhog piece to camera
and then can’t wait to get back to the big city.
But a blizzard sets in and Punxsutawney is cut off –
Phil has to spend another night in his lodgings.
Next morning he wakes up and
finds
he is caught in a time loop –
it is still 2 February, still Groundhog Day,
and the whole day starts again
and continues just like it did the day before –
the same guy on the stairs saying the same thing,
the same beggar on the street corner,
the same hilariously obnoxious guy he was at school with
trying to sell him life insurance,
the same camera crew waiting for him to do his groundhog piece….
And day after day after day
the same bit of music wakes him up on his radio alarm,
the same landlady asks him the same question about what coffee he wants
etc etc etc…
And the whole film is about how
this guy
deals with being stuck in this one day.
For everyone else it is a new day, uncharted territory –
but for Bill Conners it is always the same old
identical day
over and over again.
He discovers that whatever he does,
he still wakes up the same next morning
as though nothing has happened –
what he did on the previous Groundhog Day
is not carried forward to the next one.
So he has a phase of adolescent irresponsibility –
he can crash the car, be rude to the police,
even kill himself one day –
and then after a night’s sleep he wakes up again at 6 a.m.
and he back at the beginning of Groundhog Day yet again……
He goes through the gamut of emotions,
including anger and despair.
He learns to use the situation for his own ends –
he watches the momentarily unguarded money
being delivered by the security firm
and perfects the moment to pick it up unseen –
he can practise week after week,
because everything always happens in just the same way.
He learns about the women in the restaurant
so as to perfect his chat up line when he meets them
(as far as they are concerned for the very first time)
at the same time and place the next same day….
But Phil discovers there are some things he can’t
control.
The girl in his life is played by Andi MacDowell.
But he can’t make Rita love him.
He discovers that however much he pre-plans
and manipulates his daily encounter with her,
there is all the difference in the world
between putting on a show of love and actually loving.
Time and again his own egoism slips out
and time and again she ends up slapping him
before next day he has a chance to do it better –
but always ending with the slap in the face….
But then – and this is the charm of the film -
gradually Phil Connors the egotistical arrogant man
is forced to start to ask what life is about.
What is the point? –
How can he make a difference?
It’s a movie about looking afresh at your life,
really seeing it for what it is, pointless & empty,
& then having the space & the time to build a life
Its also a movie that says people can
change.
Gradually Phil Connors starts to embrace this strange day
and see it is an opportunity to grow and serve –
so we find him always being in the park at the same time
because he knows he needs to catch the boy
who will always fall out of the tree –
and always be there with a jack
when the old ladies get a puncture.
Gradually he stops trying to manipulate and patronize
people.
He gets to know them so well –
he shares their life for years & years of the same day –
he starts to care.
And talking to Rita,
he gradually stops trying to manipulate her for his own ends -
he learns about her and learns to love her….
The director of the film said that when it came out
he had messages from Jews Christians and Buddhists
all thanking him for a film which spoke of their belief. –
Let me
offer just a few reflections from the Christian perspective:
1.
Having another shot at
life
Of course life doesn’t allow us
to revisit the same situation every day –
when you are thoughtless or insensitive to someone
(or abuse a policeman)
you can’t just rerun the tape
and have a chance to do it right the second or third time
as though you’d never got it wrong in the first place.
The moving finger writes and moves on….
And yet in a real sense life is full of second and third
chances –
chances provided by a God who will forgive 70 x 7 times and more,
the God who does welcome us back from the far country
and says “You are still as welcome as you were before you left us”
And if you look at life,
you can see that many of the challenges and issues of life
are not unique to one day –
they are waiting for us every morning we wake,
very much like the challenges and issues of the day before.
·
When
we woke up this morning, people were starving in the world
There were people around us
whose hopes and fears and concerns
we either didn’t notice or don’t even care about
·
And
when we wake up tomorrow,
there will still be starving people in the world.
There will still be people around us
whose hopes and fears and concerns we don’t notice or even care about….
God does give us many days to respond to the world
differently –
do we take the chance which each dawn brings with it??
2.
Spiritual Sight and
Attention
But the movie isn’t just about getting a second chance –
it’s about learning to see more clearly and deeply.
Time and again Jesus talks about spiritual blindness –
the danger of looking but not seeing the truth.
So when Jesus heals the blind man, it is not mere a physical healing –
it is a sign of spiritual insight –
seeing myself and others for what we really are.
At the beginning of the movie,
Phil Connors blusters through the world in a self absorbed way-
he hardly notices people – certainly not their inner being and concerns.
But when he experiences the same identical small events
day after day after day,
maybe inevitably he begins to reflect more deeply on them –
he begins to learn what the books on meditation
call “attention” to himself and others.
One of the questions the film poses for me is this:
What if we invested that level of attention
in each individual each day each moment –
how might our lives change???
How might we find undreamed of depth and fulfilment in
life?
“Rita, incidentally is the short form of Margarita,
which is the Latin word for pearl”
(Mark Bratton,
Warwick University Chaplaincy Sermon 2005)
In the end, of course, Phil wins Rita.
He wins the pearl of great price as he finds inner transformation.
3. Now is the time
One final thought.
Groundhog Day reminds us of Jesus’ words about today and tomorrow:
“Do not worry about tomorrow – tomorrow
will take care of itself –
Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Mt 6:34).
Time and again the Scriptures remind us that NOW is the
time –
Indeed NT Greek has several words for time,
the most important of which is cairos meaning time in the sense of
“the time that has come, the critical moment”.
So we read that Jesus came into Galilee saying
The time is
fulfilled – the Kingdom of God is at hand
– (Mk 1:15)
and the disciples followed him at once
(Mk 1:20)
Now, says Jesus, the prophecies are
fulfilled (Lk 4:21),
Now says Paul the day of salvation is here (2 Cor 6:2).
It is as though Christ were grabbing you by the lapels and
saying –
“This is the time! –
Treat today as if it were the last, the only day in your life –
Here in this moment, God is speaking to you!!
Well, let’s thank God for this day.
Let us give it and all in it our loving, thoughtful attention.
Let us commit this and every day to God’s care
Let us ask for God’s blessing on each and every trivial event
and each and every tiny concern.
Then will the miracle take place –
God will enter our hearts,
our lives will be transformed –
and – whatever weather the Groundhog may predict,
the winter of our discontent will be over,
and we will know the light of God’s presence in our lives.