The Lutheran Hour
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"Lean into the Villain’s Story"
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Text: Romans 7:24
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He may be the most iconic on-screen villain of all time. But when you lean into his story, you learn that there’s more to him than that. He’s not just this big, scary guy with a black cape and a black samurai helmet breathing through an iron lung. Darth Vader. I’m talking about Darth Vader from the Star Wars franchise. Now, maybe you didn’t grow up with him like me watching the drama of the original Star Wars trilogies unfold, leaning in on the edge of your seat, then you and your friends acting out light-saber duels between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. And then having that nightmare when Darth Vader is stalking you through the dark cave in the Dagobah system and you’re running as fast as you can trying to get away still running in slow motion, though. Maybe you never had that dream, but a lot of us did. And for us, Darth Vader is the most memorable villain because we just kept leaning into his story.
In a lot of ways, those first six films are his story. George Lucas, the creator of those films, has referred to the saga as the tragedy of Darth Vader. So what was it about him that made him so memorable? Was it his imposing presence, his menacing breathing, his cold, calculating hatred? That’s part of it. But there are plenty of other fictional villains depicted more evilly, and what makes them less memorable is that they are depicted as less than human, as monsters or demons. They have no story for us to lean into, and that’s what makes Darth Vader different. He has a story that draws us in. When you first meet him, he looks like a machine made for evil. But then you lean into the story, the drama unfolds, and you see that he’s more than just a villain in some ways he’s a victim and you feel sorry for him. You understand him. You see yourself in him. And that is a transformative moment, isn’t it? Even if it is only fiction. Because it can help you see yourself in another person, in a real person, even a person that you may be inclined to hate or to resent or dismiss, to see yourself in him or her and all of you in some greater shared story. That is a transformational moment.
A few years ago, I attended a lecture by a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Inge Auerbacher. She told us about her town doctor in Germany. “He was kind and took good care of our family,” she told us. “It didn’t matter to him that we were Jews.” But then she revealed that the same doctor also worked for the Nazis and did medical experiments on Jewish people, many of whom died in the process. In telling us this. Dr. Auerbacher in no way condoned this man’s behavior, nor did she excuse it, but she did ask, I wonder if there’s some evil person in all of us. In the face of real villains leaning into their story may be easier said than done.
Two thousand years ago, a man named Paul wrote a letter to people who were dealing with real villains. This people group dwelled in the ancient city of Rome. They were a minority group, and because of their marginalized status, they had many people in their lives they could readily identify as villains. They could villainize their government, their political leaders who had a track record of persecuting the members of their group. They could villainize the purveyors of the dominant culture with its values that were vile and offensive to all that they held dear. And they could villainize each other, which may have been the most emotionally draining problem in front of them: each other.
See, it’s one thing to complain about an evil tyrant at work or a morally bankrupt politician at the capitol. But it’s another thing to have a villain in your family, an enemy in your household or in your church. And based on the things that this guy Paul says in his letter it seems that at least some of the people to whom he was writing felt this way. Paul was writing to people who belonged to a church or a network of house churches. Like them, Paul was a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul was Jewish and came to believe that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah, the righteous world Savior and Ruler God had long promised to their ancestors. Paul believed that Jesus, through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, had inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth. He had become the Head of a new family that God was now gathering. And Paul believed that Jesus gave His followers God’s Spirit to lead them on a worldwide mission to expand this multiethnic, multicultural kingdom family.
And that’s what was happening in Rome. Maybe around 100 or 200 people had come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. They were baptized into His Name and they began gathering in houses to worship in Jesus’ Name. And together they started to lean into this story of the Bible, the true story of the world, the story that leads to the crucified and risen and ruling and returning Jesus, the greater story that we’re all a part of, whether we realize it or not.
But these same people, even though they had been drawn into this truth about the world together, they still found ways to villainize and victimize each other. There were some in these Roman house churches who saw themselves and those who lived like them as strong in the faith and everyone else, they saw them as weak. There were others who saw themselves and those who lived like them as pure or clean or innocent, and those who didn’t were dirty and guilty and defiled at worst or at best, half-devoted. The so-called strong despised and dismissed the weak, treating them with contempt, and the so-called pure and innocent resented the ones who thought they were strong, they judged and condemned as though they were in the place of God. These early Christ followers were villainizing each other and the unbelievers around them.
So Paul writes this letter to help them see themselves and others in a new light. Paul’s solution to this problem isn’t what you might expect. He doesn’t say, “Just mind your own business” or “Just live and let live.” No, he explains that some Christ followers really are stronger in the faith than others, and some are weaker, and that the strong ought bear with the weak and help them become stronger. Paul’s solution to the problem in Rome is nothing like just be more open-minded or you do you. No, not at all. Paul explains how some actions do come under God’s judgment. They will be judged. God has standards of right and wrong, and He’s dead serious about them. There will be a day of reckoning, a Judgment Day when everyone will give an account of himself or herself to God. And if you are dealing with a real life villain right now, a real evil person, maybe that fact can give you some comfort.
But there is more to the story. And if we lean into it, we’ll see that we who judge others as villains are not as innocent as we think we are, and we who think we’re strong are not as strong as we’d like to be. To bring us to this transformative moment, Paul invites us to lean into his story. In the middle of the letter, Paul changes his mode of conversation. So far, he’s mostly been addressing the letters’ recipients as “you” as in “you all there” or “we” as in “all of us together.” But right here in the heart of the letter, he changes the mode. He tells his story personally. In this brief section of the letter which we’re about to hear. Paul uses first person words, “I” and “me,” first-person verbs almost 50 times.
Now, not everyone who studies Paul’s letter today thinks that Paul is speaking directly about himself here. Some think he’s only using personal language rhetorically to give voice to a common Jewish experience or maybe a common religious experience. And they have trouble believing that St. Paul would say such things about himself, referring to himself on the one hand as a model Christ follower, but then on the other hand as a wretched man, a slave to sin, a villain, a victim, and a victor all at the same time. But in other letters, Paul shows that he does in fact think of himself in complex, even contradictory ways. He calls himself blameless in Christ, but outside of Christ, the worst of sinners. He sees himself as a sinner and a saint at the same time. And so if Paul is telling a story of a shared experience here in the middle of his letter to the Romans, then he’s speaking of an experience that he shares as well, one that he is intimately familiar with. He’s telling us his story, which is our story, the greater story we’re all in together.
Now to catch up with Paul’s train of thought here, he’s in the middle of a discussion about God’s Law, as articulated principally in the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament. The big question is, does God’s Law provoke human sin? Like when your mom said, “Don’t eat any of those cookies,” and now all you can think about is stealing a cookie when she’s not watching? Is that how it is? Must the giving of the law always result in the breaking of the law? Paul’s short answer is yes, but that’s not the full story.
In Romans 7:7, Paul asks, “Should we say that the Law is the same as sin? No, not at all. However, I would not have known what sin was except through the Law. I wouldn’t have known what coveting really was unless the commandment had said, ‘Do not covet.’ And then sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment produced in me every greedy lustful, coveting desire. You see, without the Law, sin lies dead, lies dormant. Now, once upon a time, I was living without the Law, then the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and I died. And it occurred to me that the very commandment intended to bring life actually brought death because sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me and through it killed me. So the Law is holy, the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Was it this good thing then that brought death to me? No. No, but for sin to be recognized as sin, it worked through that good thing to produce death in me so that through the commandment, sin would be exposed at its worst. Now, we know that the Law is of God’s Spirit, given by God, but I myself, I am of the flesh sold as a slave to sin because I do not understand what I do. I don’t do what I want to do, I do what I hate. Now, if I don’t do what I want to do, then I am agreeing that the Law is good, yet it is not me doing it, but sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful flesh, in my sinful nature. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, because the good I want to do is not what I do. No, the evil that I don’t want to do, that’s what I keep on doing. Now, if I don’t do what I want to do, it is no longer I who does it, but it is sin living in me that does it. This is what I find out about the Law. Whenever I want to do good, evil is right there with me. In myself, in my inner person, I delight in God’s Law. But I see another law at work in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind, taking me captive as a slave to sin, dwelling in the members of my body. What a wretched man I am. Who will save me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
I was talking with a friend of mine who has a child in middle school. My friend was sharing how their son was having these “a-ha moments” last year in school as he was trying to navigate the social complexities of middle school. At the beginning of the school year, my friend’s son thought that he had an accurate impression of people, an accurate assessment of their character. Those kids over there were mean. These kids over here were nice. The ones over there were bullies. The ones over here were innocent victims. But over the course of the year he came to see that there’s more to the story. The victims weren’t altogether innocent. They had their own ways of bullying, resentfully getting even, even striking first sometimes. And the bullies weren’t as strong as they looked at the beginning of the year. In a lot of ways, they were victims just like the others.
Paul, the writer of this letter that we were listening to, is working toward a similar “a-ha moment” toward a transformative revelation. He’s inviting us to lean into this story that leans on Jesus. Villains, victims—we are all the same really. We’ve seen the enemy, and he is us. And we have an enemy that’s greater than us, an enemy called “sin.” We’re all guilty and deserve God’s judgment. We’re all trapped in an evil system from which we cannot escape. And God gave us His Law to show us the situation we’re in. Whether it’s the Law God gave to Israel in the form of the Ten Commandments, or the work of the Law, written on every human heart. God gave it to show us the truth about ourselves and to call us all back to lean on Jesus.
You and I are more than just villains, and we aren’t merely victims. None of us are as innocent as we’d like to be, nor as strong as we hope to be. But we are loved and valued and victorious in Jesus because God leans into us. While we were still enemies God loved us. While we were still weak Jesus died for us. And we die with Him in Baptism so that we might die daily to sin and lean into His resurrection victory over it.
Jesus changes the way we see ourselves and others, even our villains. He died and rose for them, too. And that fact alone makes them worthy, not only of wrath, but also of pity and love, and a welcome into God’s story, God’s family. Humanly speaking all this is much easier done once you’ve leaned into that person’s story. It can even hold true for a fictional villain like Darth Vader. As George Lucas once said of his creation, he’s scary at first but then you learn that he’s done a lot of horrible things in his life that he isn’t particularly proud of. Ultimately, he’s just a pathetic guy who’s had a very sad life. The first film they thought he was a monster. The second film it’s revealed that he’s a human being. And in the third film you find out that, yes, he’s a father and a regular person like the rest of us. He’s just got a bit of a complexion problem. And if leaning into this story helps us feel some pity for a scourge of the star system, then maybe we can find some love for villains of less galactic proportions. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Reflections for July 9, 2023
Title: Lean into the Villain’s Story
Mark Eischer: And we’re back with Lutheran Hour Speaker, Dr. Mike Zeigler.Mike Zeigler: Hello, Mark.
Mark Eischer: You talked about villains today. Are you saying that a villain isn’t all bad, that there’s always some good in everyone?
Mike Zeigler: That is certainly a common idea that there’s good in everyone. I think what we want to say from a biblical perspective is that everyone was created by a good Creator for a good purpose, which is not exactly the same as saying there’s good in everyone. The statement that there’s good in everyone is a statement that needs a story to make sense. And so the main idea for today is that the Bible gives us a story to make sense of our real-life villains. And we make sense of them, not in an overly simplistic way. So we don’t say that they are evil to the core, we don’t demonize them. And we don’t just simply say that they’re a good guy deep down.
We can see that they have been created for good, but have been broken off, separated from their creator, trapped in some ways by the spiritual evil, which is also our story. We have all found ourself in this position, broken off from God, separated from God, trapped by evil, but that God has given us a victory. He’s given us the Victor in Jesus Christ, His Son. And so with that, we don’t condemn our villains, but we don’t excuse them either. Instead, we lean into their story.
Mark Eischer: Now, when you say lean into it, what do you mean by that? What does it mean and what does it not mean?
Mike Zeigler: It doesn’t mean that we should enable or encourage abuse. So real-life villains do real harm, and we shouldn’t excuse this or allow it. And if you’re in a position to stop a villain, then do it. If you’re not, then cry out to God and ask Him for help. And we have resources for this in the Bible. The book of Psalms, for example, is full of prayers to God regarding enemies or villains. Psalms 7:9 for example, is a prayer to God that says, “Let the evil of the wicked come to an end.” And there’s plenty of Psalms, Psalm 5, 7, and 9. Check those out. They’re all prayers to God regarding enemies or villains.
So leaning into a villain story doesn’t mean enabling or allowing or encouraging abuse. Instead, I would say it’s trying to communicate two postures of leaning in. So first posture, you think of leaning in on the edge of your seat watching a movie that you love, that’s this loving interest. So that’s one posture. The other posture maybe would be a patient commitment. So think of leaning into a car that’s stalled in the middle of the street and you got to push it. You got to lean into it and take small steps, patiently get it out of the way to a safe spot. So that’s what I mean, those are the two postures that we could imagine when we say lean into the villain’s story.
Mark Eischer: Can you think of a place in the Bible where we see those two postures?
Mike Zeigler: Yes. You think of the story that Jesus tells, recorded in the Gospel of Luke15, commonly called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But if you read this story, it’s a story about a father with two sons. It’s a very familiar story that the younger son asks for his inheritance. So he takes half of his father’s property and wealth, sells it, goes off, and squanders it with wild living. And then he comes back home looking for a handout, basically. So he’s the villain of the story. What does the father do? He leans in. He expresses that loving interest. He doesn’t see a villain. He sees a lost son, a son who once was dead, but now is alive again, once was lost, now is found. He leans into him. So that would be that one posture of loving interest.
At the same time, you have the elder brother who wants to see the younger brother as a villain. And he’s angry and he doesn’t want to welcome him back. And so the father leans on him, leans into him, kind of like that stalled car, and is trying to help his son see his villainous younger brother in a different light. So it’s that patient commitment to his oldest son who has this unwelcoming attitude. So the father in the story represents God for us. This is how God treats us, not merely as villains, not merely as victims, but people for whom He sent His Son to die. People whom He wants to adopt as His own beloved children.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Chief of Sinners” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.