John Wayne Rides a Giraffe

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     I grew up in a town with a very small movie theater. The theater did not have a wide screen, and the screen was flat. When “Panavision” became the norm, it became architecturally impossible for the theater to get the whole picture on the screen. The owners were aware of this problem and tried many ways to solve the problem. They did their best to develop lenses for the projector that would squash the movie together to fit on the screen. This did not work since the visual effect “squished” up the edges of the movie so that horses suddenly looked like giraffes, (imagine John Wayne riding off into the sunset on a giraffe), and round planets were suddenly shaped like surfboards.
      The next corrective effort was to move the projector closer to the screen. However, the projector wound up in the middle of the theater, taking away some of the seats, and made so much noise that you could not hear the buffaloes snort nor the laser cannon as they would “schping” Godzilla. Also, even though the outer edges of the projected image were finally all on the screen, the movie was extremely small, and everyone got headaches from squinting to see the detail.
      Finally, the owners and patrons just reconciled themselves to the fact that only the middle portion of the film was to be seen in this theater. Therefore, I will always remember going to this under-sized theater to see the great hit “ITANI”. This is a movie about a ship that hits an iceberg, (I hope I don’t ruin the plot with this spoiler information), and sinks. At the climactic moments of the film, I kept seeing people fall off the ship into the orchestra pit. I hope there was some water down there.
      “ITANI” is only one of the movies I have seen in this antiquated theater. I also saw that great Civil War Classic, “ONE WITH THE WIN”. The burning of Atlanta pretty much extended down the side wall all the way to row 9 and included much of the ceiling. We had an IMAX experience in a rectangular room.
      I was awe-inspired in Sherwood Forest when I saw “OBIN HOO,” and I will always love that classic movie about Dorothy from Kansas entitled the “IZARD OF O”. Somehow, putting the big screen productions on the small screen tends to underwhelm me.
      We have all heard the parable of putting new wine into old wineskins. If a person tries to accomplish this feat, the skins will burst and both the wine and the skins will be lost. Too often, we try to live the radical, splendid, and transforming Good News of Jesus Christ while wearing the vision-limiting blinders of the Old Testament. We, like the Pharisees, find it convenient to legalize, compartmentalize, or ritualize the free flowing living water of the faith of Jesus Christ or the freedom that is found in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we only get part of the picture. We get the rules and not the glory. We experience the dream, but we never wake up to the reality. We remain indebted to the distant Lord and are never embraced by the graceful sacrifice of a risen Savior.
      Jesus challenges us to take off the blinders, free up the mechanism, and open the doors, letting life be the ritual and letting love be the power. Jesus is the panoramic movie that, if we are not careful, only gets shown on the small flat screen. So be careful. God may be showing us wonderful news, but we may only see “I om ha o a av if n av it or bundantl!”John 10:10b.
       
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com