I love the movies. Always have. And I love seeing the connections between films and the gospel--how films answer the big questions of our existence.
Why are we here?
What is the purpose of life?
What is good? What is evil?
How can I be satisfied, happy, or fulfilled?
Nearly all films seek to lead us to think about how we answer these or similar questions. The best films don't shout the answer in our faces, but paint a multi-dimensional and complex story that puts the ball in our court, and make us come to terms with what we believe and how that will affect how will then live.
Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is a cinematic tour de force, making us grapple with issues of justice, salvation, violence, power, poverty...among others. Simple things like that.
Do I believe they are terrific films? Yes.
Do I think they are packed with multiple layers of meaning and significance? Yes.
Bruce Wayne wasn't born as Batman, but as a boy, a boy of privilege and wealth, but from a family that had a desire to use that wealth to help others. His innocent life is shattered when both of his parents are gunned down in front of him.
His father's dying words to him follow him the rest of his life...
"Don't be afraid."
As Gotham City descends into an abyss of moral decay and corruption, Bruce Wayne is compelled to act in a way that he simply can't as a CEO of his company. He needs to become something more--something greater. A man yes, but somehow and someway...more than a man.
A Batman.
He is the Dark Knight. A man taking the law into his own hands in order to restore justice and a sense of right and wrong to a fallen city. This is a city that Batman loves, and he is willing to do anything he can to save it. He continually believes that Gotham can be saved, that it is worth saving...even as the villains continue declaring that it is beyond saving.
The first two films are all building to the epic conclusion of the "Dark Knight Rises". The city again is under siege and in need of its dark knight. Batman returns, but only after being born again in a sense--cast out to a prison by Bane he begins to remember who he is and why he he has become Batman--to protect the people of Gotham from those who wish to harm them, to make sure what happened to his parents doesn't happen to anyone else's parents.
Gotham needs Batman to give everything this time.
The film seems to be building to the ultimate sacrifice of Batman at the very end. This time he cannot just come in and save the day by fighting a few bad guys--this time he has to give everything for the sake of the city.
Indeed, in a conversation with Catwoman towards the end of the film she furiously asks Batman...
"These people don't deserve you. You've given them everything!"
But Batman responds with the end in mind...
"Not everything...not yet."
Batman is on a collision course with death. His fate tied up in the fate of the city he wants to see set free from the captivity it is under. The end of the film shows Batman taking a nuclear bomb east of Gotham out in the ocean with his own plane in order to have the bomb blow up outside of the city.
The bomb detonates and destroys the plane, but the city is saved.
Batman is presumably dead. I thought he was dead. People in the theater were crying.
I may or may not have been one of them. Maybe. Possibly.
Batman gave the ultimate sacrifice for his city, for his people. It was the only way.
I was deeply moved. As I looked back over the first two films I was able to see where Batman was headed, where he had to be headed--to the ultimate sacrifice. And it changed the whole dynamics of the first two films for me--this ultimate sacrifice hangs over Batman the entire time now, from the first time he puts on his suit until the very end.
So it was with Jesus, who from the first moment he put on his earthly suit in a manger had the end in mind. Only looking back from the cross to his birth can we truly see what his life meant and what he was truly about.
He also loved a city, a people, and desired to free them and bring them into a new city, a new world, a new kingdom. His entire life was building toward the cross, toward the ultimate salvation and deliverance for rebellious and wayward people.
Jesus is fully man, and yet he is also something more. As a man he could be a great teacher, a great advisor, a great moral exemplar, but as God in the flesh he could actually be our savior, our true knight, our true King.
The people of Gotham didn't just need Bruce Wayne. In the "Dark Knight Rises" Alfred tells Bruce that the people don't need Batman, they need Bruce Wayne, they need his finances, his intellect, his creations, his business--that is what will really help them. Alfred, Mr. Wayne's 'father' for most of his life since his parents death doesn't want to have to bury another member of the Wayne family. His love for Bruce is selfish, he doesn't want him to die, but live.
But in order for others to live, Batman must die.
The people need something more for evil to be defeated and the culture of death and violence to be halted.
The people still do.
But death is not the end. It wasn't for Batman, or at least it wasn't for Bruce Wayne. Batman, in a sense, does really die in the film in order to save the people. Bruce leaves behind Batman and moves on with his life, giving up the mask in order to gain a greater sense of inner peace.
In order for Jesus to truly be the sacrifice for all our sins, he couldn't just die, he had to rise again. He had too! How else will death truly be defeated? How else will we truly be free? How else can we truly trust that there is light within this darkness?
Jesus really did die. As our savior.
And he really did rise. As our redeemer.
And he really sits at the right hand of the Father even now--calling people out of death into life.
The Psalmist writes of the Lord
"Rise up and help us; rescue us because of your unfailing love."
Don't be afraid...for He has risen. He has triumphed.
And he reigns still. He's the only One who does.
