Today we conclude our Christmas in July worship series by looking at what many people consider to be the best Christmas move of all time It’s a Wonderful Life. But, if you may have noticed in all the films we covered up to this point, and this is true about most Christmas stories, none of them are actually about faith or religion or God. But, It’s a Wonderful Life is different, because it does actually involve all of these things as being a part of the story, and it’s also the darkest of all the movies we have seen.
It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by the marvelous Frank Capra, was released in December of 1946, to only tepid reviews and performance. Although it was nominated for five academy awards, it lost money, and the only award it won was a technical one for the creation of a new way to produce snow on a movie set, which was also done during shooting in what was then one of the warmest summers in California history. The release of the movie was pushed up so that it would qualify for the 46 awards cycle, but it was widely trounced by The Best Years of Our Lives, which went on to win nine academy awards. And since everyone if gung-ho to remake films these days rather than coming up with original ideas, The Best Years of Our Lives is probably a film that deserves to be remade in a modern telling about soldiers returning home from war who have a hard time readjusting to society, especially those who were injured physically and mentally. So, if any of you know some big Hollywood producers, you should mention that to them.
Anyways, as the movie begins, we hear a series of prayers that are being offered up to God on behalf of George Bailey, played so well by Jimmy Stewart, in his first role after having served in the military in WWII. George is in trouble, and so people are asking God to help him in his time of need. This prayer is then received by angels who begin to prepare Clarence Odbody who is an angel second class, which means he hasn’t yet earned his wings, to go and help George, and we’ll come back to the idea of angels in a little bit. Once Clarence is introduced, we then begin to learn a little bit about who George Bailey is and something about his life…
We learn some important things in this back story. The first is that George is willing to risk his own life, hos own happiness, in order to help other people. Even when his father is too busy to be able to help him with his moral dilemma about what to do with the medicine that Mr. Gower has inadvertently mixed him, he makes the right decision, while also defending his father against Mr. Potter, played so malevolently by Lionel Barrymore, who is the richest man in the county, although his wealth leaves him greedy, angry and isolated from everyone else. We are also introduced to Violet, the girl who literally turns heads on the street, and Mary, who George will eventually marry. We are also shown that George has dream of kicking the dirt off the crummy old village of Bedford Falls, traveling the world and then coming back to the states in order to build airfields, and buildings 100 stories tall and bridges a mile long. And yet none of that happens because of the obligations that he continues to take on. Just at the time he has finally saved up enough money to take his trip around the world, he father has a stroke and dies, and so George stays in order to get everything in order at the building and loan. Then when he’s ready to then use that money to go off to college, the board of directors vote against a plan by Potter to take ownership of the building and loan as long as George will remain as director. And so, George stays, giving the money he has saved to his brother Harry to go to college, with the understanding that when Harry is done, he will come back and take over from George, so he can go to school. But, Harry gets married and is offered a job with his father-in-law’s company, and so George stays, and he marries Mary, played by Donna Reed, and they save up to go on a honeymoon, but as they are leaving town, there is a run on the bank, and against Mary’s requests he goes to see what’s going on, and this scene really is sort of an illustration, not just of George, but of the connections that all of us play...
The Building and Loan builds community, but George doesn’t see it as part of his dream. Instead it’s just something that he does because it’s the right thing for the community. And then his absentminded Uncle Billy, in showing a newspaper headline about Harry Bailey winning the congressional medal of honor to Mr. Potter, inadvertently also gives Potter an envelope containing their deposit of $8000, which is around $100,000 in current funds, just at the time that a bank examiner shows up, on Christmas Eve, and now they have a serious problem because their books don’t balance and it has the appearance that one of the Bailey’s is embezzling money from the building and loan. After a mad search fails to turn up the money, and Potter has not been honest enough to turn the money back over to them, but apparently keeps it for himself, George goes to Potter begging him to help him. Potter sees this as his opportunity to own the entire town and so refuses to help and calls the police to issue an arrest warrant for him. George now he finds himself potentially on the wrong end of the law, and he has already decided that he will take responsibility for Uncle Billy’s mistake, and with an insurance policy worth $15,000 he comes to believe that he is more valuable dead then he is alive.
And so George goes to the bridge to jump off and die by suicide, but he’s stopped by his guardian angel Clarence who falls into the water himself, knowing the George will try and save him, because that’s who he is. So, George jumps into the water and pulls Clarence out, but then tells Clarence that he wishes he had never been born, and in that his request is granted, and George then gets a view of what life would be like if he had never been born. The town is no longer called Bedford Falls, but instead is Potterville, and instead of being a respectable community, is filled with bars and gambling halls and shall we say dancing girls. Mr. Gower served 20 years in prison for poisoning a young boy, because George wasn’t there to stop him. Harry drowned as a nine year old and so the transport ship full of soldiers that he had saved, which earned him the medal of honor, was sunk, because George didn’t save him. Mary is unmarried and unhappy, and without a friend who didn’t see her as a sex object, Violet turns to more seedier activities, and everyone lives in Potter’s slums because George was not around to build them houses, or lend them money so they could afford it. What George is able to see was how important he was to so many people. As Clarence tells him “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”
What George’s despair represents is his dark night of the soul, our dark night of the soul, because most, if not all of us, have probably thought that maybe things would be better if we weren’t around, that it would solve our problems, and sometimes those problems seem insurmountable or maybe even impossible to overcome. Perhaps we’ve even done like George and gone to God and prayer saying “God show me the way,” and felt like our prayers weren’t being answered. Or worse, after George gets punched he says that must be the answer to his prayer, that God doesn’t actually care. And yet, George had been overlooking everything else happening. He overlooked Martini, the owner of the bar, trying to help him, and the others there expressing their care and concern. George was so focused on the negative, that he couldn’t see all the positives, all the ways that God was trying to get him help and show him the way.
In a story in the New Yorker, Tad Friend wrote about people who survived suicide attempts by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. All of them told him that as soon as they were over the side they realized they had made a terrible mistake. One of the survivor’s said, as he saw his hand leave the rail, he instantly thought “What in the hell did I just do?” and then said that everything in his life that he thought was not fixable, was utterly fixable, except for the fact that he had just jumped.” I am not trying to downplay the darkness that surrounds people that leads to these acts, and if you are experiencing that dark night of the soul, please know that there is help available. That you are not alone, and that God does answer those prayers asking for direction and says that taking your life is not God’s plan, it’s not God’s ways, that God walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death. That we are never alone, that hope is always there, that the light of Christ shines most especially in the darkness, and the rest of us have to work on being that light. Because it turns out that Clarence doesn’t change George’s problem, he just changes his perceptions, he helps him to see what truly matters, which leads us back to angels.
In scripture angels don’t have wings, instead they look just like us. While the cherubim and seraphim have wings, and I know that one of them hangs from the ceilings of caves and the other comes up from the floor, but I can never remember which. But, while they are heavenly creatures, it’s not clear that they are angels. Instead, most of the angels in scripture come in human form. Think of the passage from Hebrews in which we are told to be welcome to strangers, for by doing so some people have entertained angels unawares. So, unlike Clarence who is trying to win his wings, which means he won’t look human any more, angels look like us. So, what do you think that means for us? It means we get to be angels. The Greek word for angel simply means messenger, and it comes from a longer Greek word, euangelion, and we’ve talked about this before, which means good news. It’s also the word from which we get evangelist, a messenger who brings good news. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he says that we are to carry one another’s burdens, or as Jesus says in the passage we heard today, in order to be great, we must be servants to all, that means it is our call to be angels to everyone, to be bearers of good news, to those who are in need, to those who need help, to those who are crying out to God to show them the way. And so, after seeing what the world would be like without him there, George asks God to let him live again, and he comes back and then finds out how many angels he actually has in his life...
On the radio station K-Love, they once asked, and I’m stealing this from Rev. Dan Boyd, if God answered the prayers the way you prayed them, would anyone’s life be changed? And I’m not talking about the promise that if you won the lottery you’d give a lot to charity. The same question could be asked about the life we live, because we influence people whether we want to or not, and what we do impacts others, even people we’ve never even met, and so the question is, are our lives making a difference for good or for ill? Because Potter also makes an impact on people’s lives, but he is not changing people’s lives for the better, the way that George does. And that’s the difference. Potter may indeed have the most money, but he is not the richest man in town, because he is not changing people’s lives for the better. In the scene of the bank run, you can see a quote hanging on the wall from George’s father that says, “all you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.” George gives of himself because it’s who he is and it’s the right thing to do. Even though he hadn’t been paying attention, God had indeed been answering his prayers, and he answered the prayers of others on George’s behalf. Quietly George had been doing what he dreamed of doing, which was building things. Rather than building bridges and skyscrapers, be was building homes, building community and building up people’s lives. He was an angel to everyone else in the movie, and they then in turn became his angels as well. And now the task falls to us. As we work to live every day like it’s Christmas, to live with joy and without fear, we too are called to be angels, bearers of good news, not just by the words we share, but by the things we do, so may we go out so that people may claim that we too are the richest people, the richest church, in town. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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