by Associate Pastor Steve Lympus

Sometimes sermons fall flat. But it’s a real bummer when that happens on Easter Sunday, like it did in the film Chocolat.

The film is a delightful fairy tale of sorts, about a religiously legalistic village in France and a mysterious stranger who sets up a chocolate shop during the “great Lenten fast” (which includes chocolate)…right across the plaza from the church.

The stranger is Vianne (played by Juliette Binoche) who, along with her “illegitimate” and eclectic daughter, represents all that the town’s staunchly-religious mayor despises: free-spirited expression, rebellion and sensuality.

But Vianne, a self-proclaimed pagan, shows a lot of “Christian” attributes: she shows hospitality to the outcasts the town has marginalized, she reaches out and ministers to an abused woman, she seeks to restore broken relationships. In the immortal words of Alanis, “Isn’t it ironic?”

The mayor (played by Alfred Molina) is the epitome of religious denial…his wife has left him, his many tenants revere him only out of fear, and he is profoundly lonely. He fasts – and enforces the fast – to keep God on his side, to maintain the “tranquility” that keeps a thin veneer over the pain he and his citizens share.
Most of the film is taken up with the Lenten culture war that Vienne and the mayor wage with the help of various and sundry villagers, and even some traveling gypsies (enter Johnny Depp). It’s a wonderful, well-told story…but I want to fast-forward to that sermon:

It’s Easter Sunday morning, and the priest – tired of the mayor’s tragically forced morality – has been won over by Vianne’s “ministry.” His short, extemporaneous sermon (the mayor had ghost-written them up until now) focuses on just two things: Jesus’ humanity and our inclusion of others. The now-liberated priest has heard enough of Jesus’ divinity, and seen enough of the town trying to judge their own goodness based on what they don’t do…he charges the church to judge themselves hereafter based on who they embraced, not who they excluded.

And that was it. Is there a better example of half-truth? I wanted to jump into the pulpit and finish the sermon. I would have said, “Yes, that’s it…don’t forget that Jesus is human…he loved food and wine and all good things in this world. He helped create them, for Pete’s sake! And Jesus included everyone. But…

Jesus is also God…incarnate, in-person, with us in life and in death, and in the new life after death. Without Jesus being God, there is no real hope…there is no real inclusion or embrace. Without Jesus being God, there is no real humanity.

You see, without the resurrection – and you need the “God” part for that (see Pastor Dan's column ) – our only hope is trying to do good…either legalistic good like the mayor attempted, or free-spirited good like Vianne’s — but in both cases doing good to try to save ourselves. And there’s no Gospel in trying to save ourselves. If our only hope is doing good, then we might as well just call it a wash and gorge ourselves on Easter chocolates.

But here is where I would conclude the sermon: in Jesus, sensuality begins to make sense. Real sensuality is not just “do whatever feels good.” Real sensuality embraces the goodness of God, in every way that God makes himself known…in our meals together, our friends and families, the stranger we include, the beauty of art and culture, creation and liturgy. God is good...go in peace.