August 10, 2025 • 27 mins
Superman has captivated American audiences for generations, from Christopher Reeve's wholesome portrayal to Henry Cavill's darker interpretation, and now the latest iteration returning to Superman's optimistic roots. But what makes this character so enduring isn't just his extraordinary abilities—it's what he represents: the very best of humanity, ironically embodied by an alien.
Created in 1938 as World War II loomed, Superman's motto of "truth, justice, and the American way" stood in direct contrast to the Nazi concept of the "Übermensch." While the Nazi regime promoted an Aryan ideal of superiority, Superman—an undocumented immigrant from another planet—championed universal justice. This brilliant subversion established him as a character who fought not for the few, but for everyone.
The storytelling challenge with Superman has always been creating meaningful conflict for a nearly invincible character. The real struggles often center around the values he represents—truth and justice—concepts that have become increasingly complex in our modern world. We now live in an era where "my truth" acknowledges individual perspectives but complicates our understanding of objective reality. Justice, too, becomes contextual and contested.
This complexity mirrors challenges Christians face today. In John's Gospel, Jesus speaks of a deeper spiritual truth that transcends subjective experience—a truth about God's grace and unconditional love that frees us from the burden of our imperfections. For followers of Christ, our "superpowers" aren't about physical strength but manifesting the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
When we embody these qualities, we make God's presence real in the world. In a society often divided by competing truths and justice claims, perhaps our greatest superpower is the capacity to love unconditionally, to forgive generously, and to create communities where everyone is valued. How can we be super? It might simply mean being the person Christ calls us to be.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pastor Darren (00:00):
Well, my friends, you probably ought to know.
As pertains to today, I havealways been a pretty big
Superman fan.
I am of the age that that wholeChristopher Reeve version of
Superman people must rememberthat one right, yeah, the
(00:22):
Christopher Reeve For some.
For who many here says, well,yeah, the Christopher Reeve For
some.
For who many here says, well,that's the real Superman.
Yeah, right, yeah, all right.
How many for Henry Cavill, whoDid you say?
Who?
Aye, aye, aye.
And I'm trying to remember thename of the new guy Callie,
(00:43):
you're young.
Yeah, look at us, we're both.
She's looking it up for me.
We will have it in a mo.
So say it again.
George Reeves oh, my goodness,I need a time machine.
Oh man, so who would listGeorge Reeves?
(01:06):
Good Glory, okay, all right.
Yeah, we're going back, we'regoing back.
I think there was one thatsnuck in there Brandon Rausch,
anybody, who, who?
Anyway, superman's been part ofour culture, the zeitgeist,
really for how many decades?
(01:28):
And I was a big fan as a youngperson.
I remember my big Supermanshirt.
He was busting through abuilding.
I had Superman pants withSuperman on the back pocket.
I had a Superman belt buckle,because that's what cool people
had.
You know this was.
I was looking perfect for the70s back there, looking great.
(01:51):
So I am a fan of Superman.
You should also know I reallylike superhero movies.
Now some of you might bewondering why.
Now some of you might bewondering why, and sometimes I
wonder why, they hold on to me.
There's the thought maybeyou're just a 12-year-old boy
(02:12):
that somehow got older and nottaller.
You know that.
Maybe that is what happenedthere.
But I was reading up gettingready for today and I saw
something in a philosophypublication that said you know,
superhero movies are really justabout philosophy and values and
(02:33):
right and wrong.
So I prefer to think of myselfas a deep, deep thinker and not
just somebody who didn't grow up.
Are we good with that?
That's kind of where I am Allright.
So this summer there was a newSuperman movie.
I don't know how many of youwent out and saw it.
(02:55):
I was out there, me and Dr B.
We got out there.
I don't know about the rest ofyou.
It's good, it's enjoyable timeout.
I recommend it.
Now here's something that'sinteresting about Superman, the
storytelling of Superman,especially as it reflects with
our culture.
(03:15):
Oh, I should mention we'redoing a movie series.
Everybody's up with me on that,right?
If you didn't know when youwalked in, you certainly know it
now, because I haven't evenmentioned Scripture yet and
we've mentioned Superman some 20times, so hopefully you're
caught up.
So some of the difficulty withSuperman has always been it was
(03:36):
difficult to create conflict,which you need conflict in a
story.
Otherwise it's kind of likewhat's happening here, if
there's no thing to resolve orfigure out, if there's no
conflict.
It's hard to do that with aSuperman who really has only one
(03:56):
weakness and it's kind of aweenie weakness of Kryptonite.
The rest of it, right, he'sthis perfect being right and not
just physically powerful, cando all the things fly, this,
that and the other thing butalso the model of character as
(04:17):
well.
Right, he was just the bestthat a being could be right, and
so it was difficult to createconflict in that way because of
that reality.
So just to go through a littlebit of the history we kind of
already did.
Sorry, I miss George Reeves, butI did remember Christopher
(04:41):
Reeve, right, we got a littlepic of him that we can show.
Oh, remember there, he ishandsome fellow.
Right, we got a little pic ofhim that we can show.
Oh, remember, there he ishandsome fellow, right, I
understand he wore the costumeall the time, just kidding, just
kidding.
Then I skipped over a couple,but then I jumped over to Henry
Cavill, because that was oneeverybody remembers as well.
(05:03):
All right, and you can see justa little bit of the feel for
him.
The Christopher Reeve versionreally went over well.
Tons of people went to see thismovie and there was a lightness
to that portrayal andChristopher Reeve a good actor,
henry Cavill good actor as well.
But you can see he brought alittle darkness to it, a little
(05:24):
complexity to the character ofSuperman, for the good or for
the bad, we shall see.
Now here's the new guy.
There, he is another handsomeguy.
So hopefully you can get usedto all of them, I guess, but you
can get a sense of who they allare.
New Guy is a little bit of athrowback to the Christopher
(05:48):
Reeve version.
Just so you know, the morelighthearted, the more wholesome
In fact that's one of thestorylines in the film is how
wholesome he really is.
So it's interesting.
When we hear the new creators ofthis latest version of Superman
(06:08):
, they were talking about how heis supposed to embody the very
best of humanity.
Now here's the irony of that,and I think most of you probably
already know this he was analien, right?
His planet blew up and dadfigured out how to send him to
this other planet, a planetwhere we would have special
(06:31):
powers from our son, but he wasan alien.
So when we're talking about thebest of humanity, we say that
sort of ironically, because hewasn't human.
An example, though, of thathumanity is shown in the movie.
In the midst of battle he'strying to save the world, and a
little girl was going to gethurt by some shrapnel of the
(06:55):
collateral damage of the battleitself, and he runs and he saves
the little girl before he getsback to the villain.
He's this guy that not only cando every single thing
physically that we would wantdone, but he's also so moral,
right and his character is sodeep that even in the midst of
(07:15):
battle he's going to rush overand save the girl.
Here's my thought about Superman, or one of my thoughts.
I think Superman for weAmericans, for whom he is an
important character, I thinkhe's who we hope we would be if
we were super.
(07:35):
Sound like.
Is that a fair description?
You know, if I was super andhad all those superpowers, I
would be the nicest guy too.
I would be saving even thesmallest people.
I would be making sureeverybody had a fair chance,
that there was justice going on.
I think I kind of feel likethat's part of why we like to
(07:59):
watch this character, why we goand see the movies that Superman
does so a little history Diggyand see the movies that Superman
does so a little historydigging in.
I told you I like Superman.
I'm nerding out just a littlebit, but it's August.
What else are you going to bedoing?
So you listen to my Supermanstuff Created by two Jewish men
(08:19):
Actually, they were young peopleat that point high school.
They were young people at thatpoint high school Jerry Siegel
and Joe Shuster, and it was in1938 that they started
developing the conceptions forwho Superman was going to be.
Phil's raising his hand.
Are you adding in?
Say it again?
(08:39):
Are you asking me if I remember1938?
Because that answer's no.
No, I actually haven't seenthem.
But, phil, it sounds like youand I would have a good coffee
together.
We'd talk about Superman,because I actually had another
good conversation with Tom, whobrought something up about the
(09:02):
creation of Superman.
So it's interesting.
1938, I mean, most of us knowwhat was going on in 1938, right
, germany was building up, itwas moving towards World War II
and the aggression that wasgoing to be created and then how
the whole world was going to beinvolved in all of that.
(09:23):
And you can see with thattiming why a phrase, a motto
like truth, justice and theAmerican way, why that would be
a big part of who this Supermancharacter is, a big part of his
character, what he is fightingfor Truth, justice, american way
(09:48):
.
The Nazi regime at the timereally pushed on those values
and on those concepts, right,truth.
Well, if we control all thecommunication, then we control
all the truth, right, the Nazipropaganda machine and how
(10:09):
everybody in the country didn'treally get the full story of all
that was going on.
Justice, well, justice was alittle bit different too, right,
because they had this Aryanideal of the perfect human being
, right, who looked well, thinkof the opposite of who you're
looking at now.
And that was the Arian ideal,right?
(10:33):
Blonde, blue-eyed, tall, thin,all of those things.
And the idea was that God hadendowed that in some way, that
that was the way the world wassupposed to be created, that the
world will be better if we justcleared way for all of those
folks to become fully who theywere supposed to be.
So when you talk about justice,it wasn't about justice for
(10:57):
everybody, it was about thisother kind of justice trying to
protect that idea of who wassupposed to be better than who
wasn't supposed to be better.
And anyway, I think you get theidea.
And then that final value, theAmerican way.
Well, that was still gettingdefined, as it's still getting
(11:19):
kind of defined today.
So you can see a little bit ofthe environment and why Superman
gets created and the waySuperman gets created, why he
evolves, the way he evolves andpotentially too, why he becomes
such a big part of that story ofour world and our mythological
(11:43):
way of fighting those battles.
Another thing that's interestingI'm getting close to where I
finished the Superman stuff, sojust relax, but I like this
stuff.
Another thing that'sinteresting the Nazi regime used
this concept called theUbermensch to talk about this
(12:04):
Superman.
That's loosely translatedSuperman.
We're talking about that Aryanideal.
Well, that's a little bit ofhow that evolved or what it
evolved into.
Was this Übermensch, thisSuperman?
And you might remember or havelearned about how that was
(12:25):
communicated.
The irony of that is thatSuperman, the character that we
know, actually subverted thatunderstanding.
He came first of all.
He wasn't blonde and blue-eyed,you know he's dark hair and all
that other stuff.
He was tall and strong.
(12:45):
You know his dark hair and allthat other stuff.
He was tall and strong.
But also, superman was aboutjustice for all, not just for
this elect few that we weresupposed to lift up amidst us.
So there's an irony, there's asubversion there, and not only
that, he turned out not to benon-Aryan, but he was an
(13:06):
undocumented immigrant from awhole other planet.
So if we're going to talk irony, there is the irony.
So, getting back to thedifficulty, having a perfect
person in a story, right, youcan't beat him physically.
So what do you do to createconflict in a story with a
(13:30):
perfect person?
But you start having conflictaround the values that that
person or that being stands for.
Truth, justice, the Americanway.
That becomes, in some ways,what really starts to be at
(13:51):
threat.
That's really what we're kindof protecting and where the
conflict comes from the story.
Now, these are interestingconcepts for us today Truth,
justice, right, american way.
I remember I was in film classand I was going through school
(14:13):
when they were talking about thepost-modernity Right.
Did you all learnpost-modernity in art class and
other kinds of mediums?
Post-modernity it was supposedto become the modern movement,
but with all kinds of additionsand I probably ought not get too
(14:34):
deep into it.
But I would rememberspecifically that part of that
movement was that truth.
Truth is almost alwayssubjective.
It's hard to do something thatis not in some way from
somebody's opinion.
In film classes we would go andyou'd watch a documentary and
(14:57):
you thought, well, this is news,we're just telling it like it
is.
But then you realize, wait aminute, somebody had to decide
who got interviewed.
Somebody had to decide how thatinterview rolled out, how the
cameras were placed, how thelighting was placed, all of
which have influence on how astory is told, have influence on
(15:21):
what the story is about.
So truth starts getting alittle more complicated.
Most of you have heard thephrase my truth.
I told my truth and I remember,you know, as that started
coming up I understood where itwas coming from, that there were
(15:42):
a lot of people we weren't ableto hear from.
That culture had kind of tampedthat community down and we were
trying to say wait a minute,that truth deserves to rise up.
Everybody is worthy.
Then, as life starts moving on,we start realizing well, that's
a bit of a Pandora's box now,because everybody has their
(16:04):
truth, so we've openedpermission for everybody to
claim the value of their truth.
And then we realize all ourtruths don't always agree and
all of a sudden truth becomesthis weird complicated concept.
Do you feel that complexity,like I do.
I mean, I wrestle with thattoday.
(16:27):
Right, and I imagine everybodyin the room is like oh right,
these are the truths I'll accept.
These are the truths that needto be squashed and thrown in the
ocean.
Right, are we all?
We all agree that needs tohappen.
We just wouldn't agree.
What goes in the ocean would bemy guess.
So truth is this complicatedterm and then justice can become
(16:52):
just as complicated.
We start talking about what isright and what is wrong.
Well, tell me what the contextis.
And so we end up in thiscomplicated place of trying to
defend truth, trying to defendjustice in a world where those
(17:12):
are complicated concepts anymore.
The creators of today's filmkind of moved away from some of
those complexities and just wentback to.
He was a really good guy, thisSuperman.
(17:34):
He just had very cleancharacter and there wasn't the
complexities like the lastSuperman came out With all the
darkness and the brooding thatthey had.
This guy is just straight good,the embodiment.
He was the super mensch ofsorts, and it leaves us in this
(17:59):
place as a community ofChristians or people who are
walking the Christian journey insome unique way.
How do we connect to that inthe ways that make sense, the
culture's telling this story andcommunicating these values and
these challenges?
We want to be relevant, we wantto be connected to these
(18:25):
stories in some way, and so Ihunted out a passage from the
Gospel of John that spoke totruth, that spoke to justice and
, surprise, surprise, jesus madeit even more complicated again.
There's even two definitions oftruth and freedom in the
(18:52):
passage we picked.
I don't know how much you werepaying attention or if you could
follow along, but Jesus, he wastalking to his disciples about
this deeper, ultimate truth thatexisted right, and in doing so,
he talked about how people wereenslaved to their sin.
(19:17):
Instead of being made free bythe truth they were I'm sorry
instead of being freed fromtheir sin.
I wrote it wrong here.
Who's to blame for that.
I'm going to talk to somebody.
You confused me.
Well, it probably fits, becausethe people Jesus was talking to
(19:42):
were equally confused becausethey thought they were free
already.
They were free because Abrahamand Moses freed them from the
enslavement that they hadphysical enslavement and the
family of Abraham, the lineageof Abraham, were all freed
(20:03):
because they understood God inthis deep, deep way, and so
there was freedom that came fromthat.
But Jesus was talking aboutsomething deeper than that.
If you've read your gospels, youknow that, john, he drank from
(20:24):
a little different tea than theother guys, am I right, john
people?
How many of you?
John's your favorite gospelCowards?
Oh, there we go.
Roz and Nancy, I saw going up,the rest of y'all, oh.
But John was a little more.
(20:47):
I'm going to use the wordspiritual.
What he was trying to getacross was something that was a
spiritual truth, and so he wastrying to get these people who
were listening to him tounderstand this spiritual truth.
Maybe some of you remember thevery beginning of that gospel.
The way it all starts In thebeginning was the Word, and the
(21:08):
Word was with God and all thattrippy stuff that sounds like a
beatnik wrote it in about 1963.
Do you remember how that goes?
And part of what was there wasthat Jesus always existed.
He just took a human form atsome time, right, but that
(21:30):
spirit, that reality was alwaystrue from the beginning of time,
from the beginning of our world.
Here, and that was the truthJesus was trying to get across
is there is a deeper spiritualtruth that exists and I am here
to tell you about it, I'm hereto model it for you to it.
(21:59):
It will bring a new awarenessto this world, an awareness that
helps you free yourself fromthe less positive parts of our
world, free yourself from thereality of sinfulness, which we
all have, right, that sinfulnessthat God wants us to go this
way.
But we kind of want to go thisway.
Mostly we go God's way, but notall the time do we go God's way
(22:24):
.
Jesus is talking about aspiritual truth that says you
know what?
There's a grace that is real,there's a forgiveness that is
real.
So, even though we know you'rehuman and you're going to stray
from God's way, there's stillforgiveness, there's still love.
(22:47):
So when Jesus says, when youstart to understand that then
you will be free, because youwill be free to live out the
life that God wants you to live,hopefully getting better and
better at following God's will,but knowing that you won't
always be perfect.
You don't have to wear a tattooon your forehead for every sin
that you have done.
That's the freedom, that's thetruth he was trying to get
(23:13):
across.
Trying to get across so we, asregular human beings in this
world, trying to figure outwhich truth, what is truth?
How are we going to find truthin this world?
I'm hoping this passage helps uswith that wrestling a little
(23:36):
bit, helps us to understand alittle more of who we want to be
.
We're trying to live our world,a meaningful world.
We're trying to live out thisreality of that spiritual truth
about the world, the truth thatinvolves grace, the truth that
involves forgiveness, the truththat involves unconditional love
(23:58):
, and we want to be that supermensch, but in a Jesus way.
Isn't the base question thenhow do I live in a way that
communicates my belief in God'slove for me and God's love for
(24:21):
all?
Amidst all those complicatedtruths, doesn't it come down to
what Jesus was saying?
There is this deeper truth ofunconditional love that is
shared with all of humanity.
If we were trying to be thesuperman that we actually might
(24:44):
have some capacity for being, orsuperwoman that we actually
have the capacity to be?
What if being a lovingChristian is that way?
What if the love that we'vebeen given by God and invited to
(25:05):
share by Christ is our actualsuperpower, the thing we have to
offer to the world, the thingthat nourishes, the thing that
helps others find their way in acomplicated world?
Maybe we've been given that andwe are super in the way that we
can share that we get to thepeople that says God loves you
(25:30):
no matter what.
What.
If you could be super, howwould you strive to live that
out, not to be too redundant forthe summer here, but we did
talk about micah doing justice,loving, kindness, walking humbly
(25:51):
with god.
I wonder if being super mightdovetail with those.
Somehow we spent some time inthe fruits of the Spirit from
Paul's letter to the GalatiansLove, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity,faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.
(26:12):
What if those are thesuperpowers that we have been
given to share with a world thatneeds to understand that they
are worthy?
Each and every person is worthy.
When we live those things, wemake them real in the world.
(26:37):
When we live joy, it becomesreal in the world.
When we live kindness, itbecomes real in the world,
something that is shared withothers, something that others
can experience as well.
From us, we make God real whenwe live these things.
We have that superpower In aworld that needs kindness.
(27:04):
We got that and we can sharethat.
How can we be super?
How can we be super?
It might look like just beingthe person that Christ tells us
to be.
It might just be believing thethings that Christ invites us to
(27:28):
believe, and maybe together wecan save the world.
Amen, amen.
Well, my friends, you probably ought to know.
As pertains to today, I havealways been a pretty big
Superman fan.
I am of the age that that wholeChristopher Reeve version of
Superman people must rememberthat one right, yeah, the
(00:22):
Christopher Reeve For some.
For who many here says, well,yeah, the Christopher Reeve For
some.
For who many here says, well,that's the real Superman.
Yeah, right, yeah, all right.
How many for Henry Cavill, whoDid you say?
Who?
Aye, aye, aye.
And I'm trying to remember thename of the new guy Callie,
(00:43):
you're young.
Yeah, look at us, we're both.
She's looking it up for me.
We will have it in a mo.
So say it again.
George Reeves oh, my goodness,I need a time machine.
Oh man, so who would listGeorge Reeves?
(01:06):
Good Glory, okay, all right.
Yeah, we're going back, we'regoing back.
I think there was one thatsnuck in there Brandon Rausch,
anybody, who, who?
Anyway, superman's been part ofour culture, the zeitgeist,
really for how many decades?
(01:28):
And I was a big fan as a youngperson.
I remember my big Supermanshirt.
He was busting through abuilding.
I had Superman pants withSuperman on the back pocket.
I had a Superman belt buckle,because that's what cool people
had.
You know this was.
I was looking perfect for the70s back there, looking great.
(01:51):
So I am a fan of Superman.
You should also know I reallylike superhero movies.
Now some of you might bewondering why.
Now some of you might bewondering why, and sometimes I
wonder why, they hold on to me.
There's the thought maybeyou're just a 12-year-old boy
(02:12):
that somehow got older and nottaller.
You know that.
Maybe that is what happenedthere.
But I was reading up gettingready for today and I saw
something in a philosophypublication that said you know,
superhero movies are really justabout philosophy and values and
(02:33):
right and wrong.
So I prefer to think of myselfas a deep, deep thinker and not
just somebody who didn't grow up.
Are we good with that?
That's kind of where I am Allright.
So this summer there was a newSuperman movie.
I don't know how many of youwent out and saw it.
(02:55):
I was out there, me and Dr B.
We got out there.
I don't know about the rest ofyou.
It's good, it's enjoyable timeout.
I recommend it.
Now here's something that'sinteresting about Superman, the
storytelling of Superman,especially as it reflects with
our culture.
(03:15):
Oh, I should mention we'redoing a movie series.
Everybody's up with me on that,right?
If you didn't know when youwalked in, you certainly know it
now, because I haven't evenmentioned Scripture yet and
we've mentioned Superman some 20times, so hopefully you're
caught up.
So some of the difficulty withSuperman has always been it was
(03:36):
difficult to create conflict,which you need conflict in a
story.
Otherwise it's kind of likewhat's happening here, if
there's no thing to resolve orfigure out, if there's no
conflict.
It's hard to do that with aSuperman who really has only one
(03:56):
weakness and it's kind of aweenie weakness of Kryptonite.
The rest of it, right, he'sthis perfect being right and not
just physically powerful, cando all the things fly, this,
that and the other thing butalso the model of character as
(04:17):
well.
Right, he was just the bestthat a being could be right, and
so it was difficult to createconflict in that way because of
that reality.
So just to go through a littlebit of the history we kind of
already did.
Sorry, I miss George Reeves, butI did remember Christopher
(04:41):
Reeve, right, we got a littlepic of him that we can show.
Oh, remember there, he ishandsome fellow.
Right, we got a little pic ofhim that we can show.
Oh, remember, there he ishandsome fellow, right, I
understand he wore the costumeall the time, just kidding, just
kidding.
Then I skipped over a couple,but then I jumped over to Henry
Cavill, because that was oneeverybody remembers as well.
(05:03):
All right, and you can see justa little bit of the feel for
him.
The Christopher Reeve versionreally went over well.
Tons of people went to see thismovie and there was a lightness
to that portrayal andChristopher Reeve a good actor,
henry Cavill good actor as well.
But you can see he brought alittle darkness to it, a little
(05:24):
complexity to the character ofSuperman, for the good or for
the bad, we shall see.
Now here's the new guy.
There, he is another handsomeguy.
So hopefully you can get usedto all of them, I guess, but you
can get a sense of who they allare.
New Guy is a little bit of athrowback to the Christopher
(05:48):
Reeve version.
Just so you know, the morelighthearted, the more wholesome
In fact that's one of thestorylines in the film is how
wholesome he really is.
So it's interesting.
When we hear the new creators ofthis latest version of Superman
(06:08):
, they were talking about how heis supposed to embody the very
best of humanity.
Now here's the irony of that,and I think most of you probably
already know this he was analien, right?
His planet blew up and dadfigured out how to send him to
this other planet, a planetwhere we would have special
(06:31):
powers from our son, but he wasan alien.
So when we're talking about thebest of humanity, we say that
sort of ironically, because hewasn't human.
An example, though, of thathumanity is shown in the movie.
In the midst of battle he'strying to save the world, and a
little girl was going to gethurt by some shrapnel of the
(06:55):
collateral damage of the battleitself, and he runs and he saves
the little girl before he getsback to the villain.
He's this guy that not only cando every single thing
physically that we would wantdone, but he's also so moral,
right and his character is sodeep that even in the midst of
(07:15):
battle he's going to rush overand save the girl.
Here's my thought about Superman, or one of my thoughts.
I think Superman for weAmericans, for whom he is an
important character, I thinkhe's who we hope we would be if
we were super.
(07:35):
Sound like.
Is that a fair description?
You know, if I was super andhad all those superpowers, I
would be the nicest guy too.
I would be saving even thesmallest people.
I would be making sureeverybody had a fair chance,
that there was justice going on.
I think I kind of feel likethat's part of why we like to
(07:59):
watch this character, why we goand see the movies that Superman
does so a little history Diggyand see the movies that Superman
does so a little historydigging in.
I told you I like Superman.
I'm nerding out just a littlebit, but it's August.
What else are you going to bedoing?
So you listen to my Supermanstuff Created by two Jewish men
(08:19):
Actually, they were young peopleat that point high school.
They were young people at thatpoint high school Jerry Siegel
and Joe Shuster, and it was in1938 that they started
developing the conceptions forwho Superman was going to be.
Phil's raising his hand.
Are you adding in?
Say it again?
(08:39):
Are you asking me if I remember1938?
Because that answer's no.
No, I actually haven't seenthem.
But, phil, it sounds like youand I would have a good coffee
together.
We'd talk about Superman,because I actually had another
good conversation with Tom, whobrought something up about the
(09:02):
creation of Superman.
So it's interesting.
1938, I mean, most of us knowwhat was going on in 1938, right
, germany was building up, itwas moving towards World War II
and the aggression that wasgoing to be created and then how
the whole world was going to beinvolved in all of that.
(09:23):
And you can see with thattiming why a phrase, a motto
like truth, justice and theAmerican way, why that would be
a big part of who this Supermancharacter is, a big part of his
character, what he is fightingfor Truth, justice, american way
(09:48):
.
The Nazi regime at the timereally pushed on those values
and on those concepts, right,truth.
Well, if we control all thecommunication, then we control
all the truth, right, the Nazipropaganda machine and how
(10:09):
everybody in the country didn'treally get the full story of all
that was going on.
Justice, well, justice was alittle bit different too, right,
because they had this Aryanideal of the perfect human being
, right, who looked well, thinkof the opposite of who you're
looking at now.
And that was the Arian ideal,right?
(10:33):
Blonde, blue-eyed, tall, thin,all of those things.
And the idea was that God hadendowed that in some way, that
that was the way the world wassupposed to be created, that the
world will be better if we justcleared way for all of those
folks to become fully who theywere supposed to be.
So when you talk about justice,it wasn't about justice for
(10:57):
everybody, it was about thisother kind of justice trying to
protect that idea of who wassupposed to be better than who
wasn't supposed to be better.
And anyway, I think you get theidea.
And then that final value, theAmerican way.
Well, that was still gettingdefined, as it's still getting
(11:19):
kind of defined today.
So you can see a little bit ofthe environment and why Superman
gets created and the waySuperman gets created, why he
evolves, the way he evolves andpotentially too, why he becomes
such a big part of that story ofour world and our mythological
(11:43):
way of fighting those battles.
Another thing that's interestingI'm getting close to where I
finished the Superman stuff, sojust relax, but I like this
stuff.
Another thing that'sinteresting the Nazi regime used
this concept called theUbermensch to talk about this
(12:04):
Superman.
That's loosely translatedSuperman.
We're talking about that Aryanideal.
Well, that's a little bit ofhow that evolved or what it
evolved into.
Was this Übermensch, thisSuperman?
And you might remember or havelearned about how that was
(12:25):
communicated.
The irony of that is thatSuperman, the character that we
know, actually subverted thatunderstanding.
He came first of all.
He wasn't blonde and blue-eyed,you know he's dark hair and all
that other stuff.
He was tall and strong.
(12:45):
You know his dark hair and allthat other stuff.
He was tall and strong.
But also, superman was aboutjustice for all, not just for
this elect few that we weresupposed to lift up amidst us.
So there's an irony, there's asubversion there, and not only
that, he turned out not to benon-Aryan, but he was an
(13:06):
undocumented immigrant from awhole other planet.
So if we're going to talk irony, there is the irony.
So, getting back to thedifficulty, having a perfect
person in a story, right, youcan't beat him physically.
So what do you do to createconflict in a story with a
(13:30):
perfect person?
But you start having conflictaround the values that that
person or that being stands for.
Truth, justice, the Americanway.
That becomes, in some ways,what really starts to be at
(13:51):
threat.
That's really what we're kindof protecting and where the
conflict comes from the story.
Now, these are interestingconcepts for us today Truth,
justice, right, american way.
I remember I was in film classand I was going through school
(14:13):
when they were talking about thepost-modernity Right.
Did you all learnpost-modernity in art class and
other kinds of mediums?
Post-modernity it was supposedto become the modern movement,
but with all kinds of additionsand I probably ought not get too
(14:34):
deep into it.
But I would rememberspecifically that part of that
movement was that truth.
Truth is almost alwayssubjective.
It's hard to do something thatis not in some way from
somebody's opinion.
In film classes we would go andyou'd watch a documentary and
(14:57):
you thought, well, this is news,we're just telling it like it
is.
But then you realize, wait aminute, somebody had to decide
who got interviewed.
Somebody had to decide how thatinterview rolled out, how the
cameras were placed, how thelighting was placed, all of
which have influence on how astory is told, have influence on
(15:21):
what the story is about.
So truth starts getting alittle more complicated.
Most of you have heard thephrase my truth.
I told my truth and I remember,you know, as that started
coming up I understood where itwas coming from, that there were
(15:42):
a lot of people we weren't ableto hear from.
That culture had kind of tampedthat community down and we were
trying to say wait a minute,that truth deserves to rise up.
Everybody is worthy.
Then, as life starts moving on,we start realizing well, that's
a bit of a Pandora's box now,because everybody has their
(16:04):
truth, so we've openedpermission for everybody to
claim the value of their truth.
And then we realize all ourtruths don't always agree and
all of a sudden truth becomesthis weird complicated concept.
Do you feel that complexity,like I do.
I mean, I wrestle with thattoday.
(16:27):
Right, and I imagine everybodyin the room is like oh right,
these are the truths I'll accept.
These are the truths that needto be squashed and thrown in the
ocean.
Right, are we all?
We all agree that needs tohappen.
We just wouldn't agree.
What goes in the ocean would bemy guess.
So truth is this complicatedterm and then justice can become
(16:52):
just as complicated.
We start talking about what isright and what is wrong.
Well, tell me what the contextis.
And so we end up in thiscomplicated place of trying to
defend truth, trying to defendjustice in a world where those
(17:12):
are complicated concepts anymore.
The creators of today's filmkind of moved away from some of
those complexities and just wentback to.
He was a really good guy, thisSuperman.
(17:34):
He just had very cleancharacter and there wasn't the
complexities like the lastSuperman came out With all the
darkness and the brooding thatthey had.
This guy is just straight good,the embodiment.
He was the super mensch ofsorts, and it leaves us in this
(17:59):
place as a community ofChristians or people who are
walking the Christian journey insome unique way.
How do we connect to that inthe ways that make sense, the
culture's telling this story andcommunicating these values and
these challenges?
We want to be relevant, we wantto be connected to these
(18:25):
stories in some way, and so Ihunted out a passage from the
Gospel of John that spoke totruth, that spoke to justice and
, surprise, surprise, jesus madeit even more complicated again.
There's even two definitions oftruth and freedom in the
(18:52):
passage we picked.
I don't know how much you werepaying attention or if you could
follow along, but Jesus, he wastalking to his disciples about
this deeper, ultimate truth thatexisted right, and in doing so,
he talked about how people wereenslaved to their sin.
(19:17):
Instead of being made free bythe truth they were I'm sorry
instead of being freed fromtheir sin.
I wrote it wrong here.
Who's to blame for that.
I'm going to talk to somebody.
You confused me.
Well, it probably fits, becausethe people Jesus was talking to
(19:42):
were equally confused becausethey thought they were free
already.
They were free because Abrahamand Moses freed them from the
enslavement that they hadphysical enslavement and the
family of Abraham, the lineageof Abraham, were all freed
(20:03):
because they understood God inthis deep, deep way, and so
there was freedom that came fromthat.
But Jesus was talking aboutsomething deeper than that.
If you've read your gospels, youknow that, john, he drank from
(20:24):
a little different tea than theother guys, am I right, john
people?
How many of you?
John's your favorite gospelCowards?
Oh, there we go.
Roz and Nancy, I saw going up,the rest of y'all, oh.
But John was a little more.
(20:47):
I'm going to use the wordspiritual.
What he was trying to getacross was something that was a
spiritual truth, and so he wastrying to get these people who
were listening to him tounderstand this spiritual truth.
Maybe some of you remember thevery beginning of that gospel.
The way it all starts In thebeginning was the Word, and the
(21:08):
Word was with God and all thattrippy stuff that sounds like a
beatnik wrote it in about 1963.
Do you remember how that goes?
And part of what was there wasthat Jesus always existed.
He just took a human form atsome time, right, but that
(21:30):
spirit, that reality was alwaystrue from the beginning of time,
from the beginning of our world.
Here, and that was the truthJesus was trying to get across
is there is a deeper spiritualtruth that exists and I am here
to tell you about it, I'm hereto model it for you to it.
(21:59):
It will bring a new awarenessto this world, an awareness that
helps you free yourself fromthe less positive parts of our
world, free yourself from thereality of sinfulness, which we
all have, right, that sinfulnessthat God wants us to go this
way.
But we kind of want to go thisway.
Mostly we go God's way, but notall the time do we go God's way
(22:24):
.
Jesus is talking about aspiritual truth that says you
know what?
There's a grace that is real,there's a forgiveness that is
real.
So, even though we know you'rehuman and you're going to stray
from God's way, there's stillforgiveness, there's still love.
(22:47):
So when Jesus says, when youstart to understand that then
you will be free, because youwill be free to live out the
life that God wants you to live,hopefully getting better and
better at following God's will,but knowing that you won't
always be perfect.
You don't have to wear a tattooon your forehead for every sin
that you have done.
That's the freedom, that's thetruth he was trying to get
(23:13):
across.
Trying to get across so we, asregular human beings in this
world, trying to figure outwhich truth, what is truth?
How are we going to find truthin this world?
I'm hoping this passage helps uswith that wrestling a little
(23:36):
bit, helps us to understand alittle more of who we want to be
.
We're trying to live our world,a meaningful world.
We're trying to live out thisreality of that spiritual truth
about the world, the truth thatinvolves grace, the truth that
involves forgiveness, the truththat involves unconditional love
(23:58):
, and we want to be that supermensch, but in a Jesus way.
Isn't the base question thenhow do I live in a way that
communicates my belief in God'slove for me and God's love for
(24:21):
all?
Amidst all those complicatedtruths, doesn't it come down to
what Jesus was saying?
There is this deeper truth ofunconditional love that is
shared with all of humanity.
If we were trying to be thesuperman that we actually might
(24:44):
have some capacity for being, orsuperwoman that we actually
have the capacity to be?
What if being a lovingChristian is that way?
What if the love that we'vebeen given by God and invited to
(25:05):
share by Christ is our actualsuperpower, the thing we have to
offer to the world, the thingthat nourishes, the thing that
helps others find their way in acomplicated world?
Maybe we've been given that andwe are super in the way that we
can share that we get to thepeople that says God loves you
(25:30):
no matter what.
What.
If you could be super, howwould you strive to live that
out, not to be too redundant forthe summer here, but we did
talk about micah doing justice,loving, kindness, walking humbly
(25:51):
with god.
I wonder if being super mightdovetail with those.
Somehow we spent some time inthe fruits of the Spirit from
Paul's letter to the GalatiansLove, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity,faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control.
(26:12):
What if those are thesuperpowers that we have been
given to share with a world thatneeds to understand that they
are worthy?
Each and every person is worthy.
When we live those things, wemake them real in the world.
(26:37):
When we live joy, it becomesreal in the world.
When we live kindness, itbecomes real in the world,
something that is shared withothers, something that others
can experience as well.
From us, we make God real whenwe live these things.
We have that superpower In aworld that needs kindness.
(27:04):
We got that and we can sharethat.
How can we be super?
How can we be super?
It might look like just beingthe person that Christ tells us
to be.
It might just be believing thethings that Christ invites us to
(27:28):
believe, and maybe together wecan save the world.
Amen, amen.
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