IT’S STILL A WONDERFUL LIFE
A Sermon for Christmas Eve

What is the greatest movie ever made? Is it Citizen Kane? Casablanca? King Kong? Gone with the Wind? Singin’ in the Rain? Star Wars? E.T.?

Of all the movies I’ve ever seen, I have a favorite for the greatest. I’ll give you a hint: let’s call it a Christmas movie. No, I’m not talking about Elf or Miracle on 34 th Street or even one of the cinematic versions of A Christmas Carol, good as they are. I’m talking about a movie made more than sixty years ago starring two young actors named Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It’s a movie worth watching every year at Christmas – this year, perhaps, more than ever.

My favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, that old classic, is new again. It tells the story of George Bailey, a man who never realized his boyhood dreams. Instead this reluctant, young heir of a small-town financial institution is besieged by expectations, exacerbated by the dealings of a lonely, frustrated old man. Through greed, misery, exploitation and just plain meanness, Mr. Potter owns nearly the entire town. We know things are not going well when George’s friends, panicked by Potter, try to withdraw their money from the Bailey Building and Loan, causing George and his brand new wife Mary to rescue them by using their own honeymoon nest egg for an emergency bailout.

For a time, things improve, as they often do. Then, suddenly, on Christmas Eve, through no fault of his own other than being born a Bailey, George faces bankruptcy, scandal and prison. An angel comes down to earth to help this simple small-town hero who always puts others first. Finally, all’s well that ends well, and George gets bailed out himself. But that’s not all there is to this story.

It is said that there can be no Gospel, no good news, without bad news. This movie is no exception. The story is deeply dark, disturbing and depressing before it ends in an uplifting and heart-warming way. On Christmas Eve, driven to the brink of self-destruction, George’s anger and rage, coursing through him for decades, erupts. He becomes his own shadow, lashing out at his beloved family, powerless over his life, even wishing he had never been born.

What fascinates me about this movie – perhaps the greatest ever made, one that works its way up to Christmas Eve, 1945 – what’s amazing is just how real, how close it feels for us and for our lives, tonight, on Christmas Eve, 2008. What also fascinates me, Christmas after Christmas, is just how real, how close, how true to life the greatest story ever told, can also be for us. Tonight we hear a wonderful chapter in the story of Jesus. I’ll come back to that story in a moment.

Whenever the ebb and flow of economic bad news became too much to bear, Americans in the late 30’s and 40’s escaped…to the movies. Film critic A.O. Scott claims that “the movies themselves are central to how we remember the Great Depression….On every Main Street, the Bijou or the Biograph showed double features that helped ease the sting of desperation and want…Every movie, really,” he says, “is an escape into someone else’s story” (“Reality Can Be escapist, Too,” New York Times, December 21, 2008).

Whenever the ebb and flow of economic bad news is too much for us to bear, when the world is too much with us, we, too, can escape to the movies. Only now, we don’t have to move an inch to enter those stories. We can simply download them. Those of us over 30 might instead go rent a DVD or get it through snail mail. Either way, today we can watch movies in the privacy and isolation of our own homes on our very own flat screens or home theaters. And in doing so, we can easily miss the moral of these two great stories – the story of someone who needed help and the story of Someone Who came to help.

I don’t think that Jesus, into whose story we can always escape, wants us to live as escape artists. Jesus doesn’t want us to live in a world of isolation, in what becomes a kind of inner solitary confinement. No, Jesus, the one we call Messiah, God with us, came into the world two millennia ago to get us out of isolation, to bring us together, to make us one people, to build what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “beloved community.”

The shepherds in the story of Jesus’ birth may have been a community. At the very least, they seem unlikely as main characters in this chapter of the greatest story ever told. But Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was, through Joseph, a descendant of David, the shepherd king. And like the shepherds, Jesus was, from his birth, clearly outside his society, born in an animal’s house, into the margins of class and life, just like those men and women who came to see and follow him. “(The) Gospel truth,” Kimberley Long says, “is found in the lives and witness of people we would not see as strong and powerful” (Feasting on the Word, p. 119).

Joseph, Mary and the shepherds were anything but strong and powerful. Yet the shepherds are the first to hear the story; the first, along with Mary and Joseph, to become part of the story; the first to tell the story. Before any witness or storytelling, however, these powerless people, being powerless, are afraid. In the dark of night, angels come to the shepherds and terrify them with all this Good News. News, whether good or bad, can be frightening.

These days, no one else needs to terrify or frighten us. No one needs to tell us tonight that, like the children of Israel described in the prophecy of Isaiah, we are a people who walk in darkness, a people who may fear and yet do need great light. In a time when few are immune to our unfolding economic downturn, in an orange-alert world full of anxiety, in a season when we, like the good folks of Bedford Falls, might just panic, Jesus is born. And we have come to see Jesus. Whether we know it or not, whether we came here thinking about it consciously or not, underneath it all, Jesus is the reason we are here. Tonight, on Christmas Eve, just like George Bailey, we need a savior. We need salvation. Whether we like it or not, we need a great light, right about now.

But where is that light? Where is God? In prudent fiscal practices? In honest, trustworthy leadership? In a new president of the United States? All of those answers may be part of the solution to the money and other kinds of messes into which we have gotten ourselves, but for the people of God, that’s not enough. When we wonder where God is, we need to remember this: no matter what, God is with us. God is with us.

For me, perhaps the most powerful moment in this wonderful movie is when George is sitting in a bar, ready to end it all, and suddenly, finally, he is praying. “God,” he says in so many words, “you know I’m not a praying man, but I need help.” Most of the time, we, like George, are functional atheists. We claim there is a God, we claim to believe in a higher power – after all, we’re here, aren’t we? – but we act as if we are in control, and we wait. Like George, we wait until our backs are against the wall before we ask for help, human or divine. We wait until we find out the hard way that that get-rich-quick scheme or those drugs and alcohol or that personal relationship or some other bad choice we made is just plain wrong. We wait until we are brought to our knees. When that happens, God is there. God is already there, waiting, waiting for us.

Tonight, just like that holy night in Bethlehem, no matter how wrong we are, no matter how bad things seem, no matter how powerless we have become, there is Good News! Tonight, just like the shepherds who came first and the wise ones who came later, we have come, whether we know it or not, to find the light. Tonight, no matter how dark it feels, no matter what we have done or left undone, we have been saved by our God who dared to become human, our God with flesh on, our God in Jesus Christ who is the Light of the world. Tonight we have been found and we are loved by our God who is with us – here, everywhere, always.

Many of you know that this is my first Christmas at All Saints’. My hope for this wonderful church, my vision for this city’s great faith communities, my dream for this beloved community called Frederick, Maryland, is that we would dare to believe, more and more, no matter what, that we are not alone. In invite you to dare believe that with me: we are never, ever alone. God is with you, God is with me, God is with us. And the light we seek, the light of Christ, the light that this pretty, little baby brings into our world, that Light is here. The Light of Christ is with us and within us, a beloved community of faith, hope and love.

Sisters and brothers, the church is not a just a spire that inspires, not just a steeple. The church is the people of God, all around us – in the movie theater, in the office or the mall, in the board room and the classroom, in the nursing home, in every home, in places where people have no home. God in Christ Jesus is with us tonight. In the bread and the wine we will share, in that holy food that will nourish our souls and send us out, refreshed for the next chapter of our stories.

Yes, it’s true. It’s still a wonderful life. And so, let us come. Come to the table and be fed, so that we might feed others. Come, let us adore Jesus Christ, the Messiah, ou Savior. For in Christ, God is with us, God will never abandon us, God will never leave us alone.

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Frederick , Maryland
December 24, 2008

(If you like, you can read about my favorite movie in an article that follows…)

Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

WENDELL JAMIESON, December 19, 2008 (from The New York Times)

MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.

He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs, teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector whirring. “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.

I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family.

Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled. Was this what adulthood promised?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

I haven’t seen it on a movie screen since that first time, but on Friday it begins its annual pre-Christmas run at the IFC Cinema in Greenwich Village. I plan to take my 9-year-old son and my father, who has never seen it the whole way through because he thinks it’s too corny.

How wrong he is.

I’m no movie critic, and I’ll leave to others any erudite evaluation of the film as cinematic art, but to examine it closely is to experience “It’s a Wonderful Life” on several different levels.

Many are pulling the movie out of the archives lately because of its prescience on the perils of trusting bankers. I’ve found, after repeated viewings, that the film turns upside down and inside out, and some glaring — and often funny — flaws become apparent. These flaws have somehow deepened my affection for it over the years.

Take the extended sequence in which George Bailey ( James Stewart), having repeatedly tried and failed to escape Bedford Falls, N.Y., sees what it would be like had he never been born. The bucolic small town is replaced by a smoky, nightclub-filled, boogie-woogie-driven haven for showgirls and gamblers, who spill raucously out into the crowded sidewalks on Christmas Eve. It’s been renamed Pottersville, after the villainous Mr. Potter, Lionel Barrymore’s scheming financier.

Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking.

And what about that banking issue? When he returns to the “real” Bedford Falls, George is saved by his friends, who open their wallets to cover an $8,000 shortfall at his savings and loan brought about when the evil Mr. Potter snatched a deposit mislaid by George’s idiot uncle, Billy ( Thomas Mitchell).

But isn’t George still liable for the missing funds, even if he has made restitution? I mean, if someone robs a bank, and then gives the money back, that person still robbed the bank, right? I checked my theory with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set. He thought it over, and then agreed: George would still face prosecution and possible prison time.

“In terms of the theft, sure, you take the money and put it back, you still committed the larceny,” he said. “By giving the money back, you have mitigated in large measure what the sentence might be, but you are still technically guilty of the offense.”

He took this a bit further: “If you steal over $3,000, it’s a D felony; 2 ½ to 7 years is the maximum term for that. The least you can get is probation. You know Jimmy Stewart, though, he had that hangdog face. He’d be a tough guy to send to jail.” He paused, and then added: “You really have a cynical sense of humor.”

He should have met me when I was 15.

The movie starts sappily enough, with three angels in outer space discussing George’s fate. Maybe that’s what turned my dad off, that or the saccharine title. I’m amazed they didn’t spoil it for me in 1981, but I may not have been paying attention yet.

Soon enough, though, the darkness sets in. George’s brother, Harry (Todd Karns), almost drowns in a childhood accident; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry’s high school graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary ( Donna Reed), by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with his father’s sudden death.

Disappointments pile up. George can’t go to college because of his obligation to run the Bailey Building and Loan, and instead sends Harry. But Harry returns a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job. George again treats Mary cruelly, this time by chewing her out and bringing her to tears before kissing her. It is hard to understand precisely what she sees in him.

George is further emasculated when his bad hearing keeps him out of World War II, and then it’s Christmas Eve 1945. These scenes — rather than the subsequent Bizarro-world alternate reality — have always been the film’s defining moments for me. All the decades of anger boil to the surface.

After Potter takes the deposit, George flies into a rage and finally lets Uncle Billy know what he thinks of him, calling him a “silly, stupid old fool.” Then he explodes at his family. If you watch the film this year, keep a close eye on Stewart during this sequence. First he smashes a model bridge he has built. Then, like any parent who loses his temper with his children, he seems genuinely embarrassed. He’s ashamed. He apologizes. And then ... slowly ... he starts getting angry all over again. To me Stewart’s rage, building throughout the film, is perfectly calibrated — and believable — here.

Now as for that famous alternate-reality sequence: This is supposedly what the town would turn out to be if not for George. I interpret it instead as showing the true characters of these individuals, their venal internal selves stripped bare. The flirty Violet (played by a supersexy Gloria Grahame, who would soon become a timeless film noir femme fatale) is a dime dancer and maybe a prostitute; Ernie the cabbie’s blank face speaks true misery as George enters his taxi; Bert the cop is a trigger-happy madman, violating every rule in the patrol guide when he opens fire on the fleeing, yet unarmed, George, forcing revelers to cower on the pavement.

Gary Kamiya, in a funny story on Salon.com in 2001, rightly pointed out how much fun Pottersville appears to be, and how awful and dull Bedford Falls is. He even noticed that the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe, is “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”

Now that’s scary.

I’ll do Mr. Kamiya one better, though. Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly. On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.

I checked my theory with the oft-quoted Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University, and he agreed, pointing out that, of all the upstate counties, the only one that has seen growth in recent years has been Saratoga. “The reason is that it is a resort, and it has built an economy around that,” he said. “Meanwhile the great industrial cities have declined terrifically. Look at Connecticut: where is the growth? It’s in casinos; they are constantly expanding.”

In New York, Mr. Moss added, Gov. David A. Paterson “is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of the economic problems.” “We ease up on our lot of cultural behaviors in a depression,” he said. What a grim thought: Had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today.

Not too long ago I friended Mr. Ellman on Facebook. (To call him by his given name, Robert, is somehow still unnatural to me.) I asked him about inviting us to stay after school to eat popcorn and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He said it was always one of his favorite films, if a little corny and sentimental, and that he always saw staying late with us as part of his job. If anything, he said, there was just as much to learn after school as there was during it.

He reminded me that it was an actual film print we saw; this was before video took hold. And he also proved to be a close viewer. It was Mr. Ellman who pointed out to me how cruel George is to Mary the night they first kiss, and who told me to keep an eye out for Ernie’s vacant stare when George gets into the cab.

He said he cried the first time he saw it.

I asked him if he’d continued those December viewings. “In later years,” he wrote, “it became too difficult to get students to stay. We started doing a festival of student-written/student-directed one-act plays right after the end of the fall show. Everyone was too busy to stay and watch a movie.”

It’s a shame.

So I’ll tell Mr. Ellman a secret. It’s something I felt while watching the film all those years ago, but was too embarrassed to reveal.

That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town”? Well, as I sat in that classroom, despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy; despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.

And I still do.