Curtis A. Bronzan

Synecdoche, New York was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote and produced Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich, each of which examines the meaning of life in a rather existential fashion. In some ways, his films function like postmodern reappropriations of Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre novels (or filmed David Bazan’s records):

I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That’s what I want to explore. We’re all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we’re going to die, each of us secretly believing we won’t.

Synecdoche, however – Kaufman’s directorial debut – functions as much more than a surrealist/existentialist musing on the meaning of life, and could be seen as an extended metaphor based upon the Apostle Paul’s metaphor for the church and the importance of narrative – metanarrative even. This emphasis upon Story may be paralled by Donald Miller’s new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, especially considering the role of Robert McKee in the work of Kaufman and Miller.

Throughout Synecdoche, Caden Cotard (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) struggles to come to grips with his mortality, and all that entails, as seen in the aforementioned quote. His character is based upon Cotard’s syndrome, which is a nihilistic, neuropsychiatric disorder wherein a person holds the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In one scene, another character is seen reading Proust’s novel Search of Lost Time which features the charater Dr. Cottard, said to be based upon Proust’s father.

After directing Death of a Salesman, Cotard is awarded a MacArthur grant which allows him to build another body, in a sense, even as his own body fails him. After purchasing a huge dilapidated warehouse, Cotard begins recreating Schenectady, New York with a synecdoche (where a part is used to designate the whole). The recreation of Schenectady, however, begins to overlap with “real” life – and the viewer can become quite confused, at times, knowing which is which.

The actors, then, reenact their own lives, as themselves, based upon the events which take place inside the synecdoche of Schenectady. Caden is “God” inside the synecdoche, handing each actor their part to play, for each day. In hopes of opening the play (after around 40 years of rehearsals), he states

I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They’re all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.

Near the film’s conclusion, a priest in “Schenectady” muses on the meaning of life whilst officiating a funeral (which almost perfectly parallels Pedro the Lion’s song Priests and Paramedics):

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so [very] sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so [very] hurt for so [very] long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, [forget] everybody. Amen.

These lines recall some of Žižek’s thoughts, of course, about how the train never arrives, though I’m thinking also of his explanation that for the Christian believer the Event has already taken place. And, in light of Paul’s concept of the Body of Christ (written to the Corinthians, no less!), the Event has taken place but also continues to take place through the community of those seeking to follow Jesus, seeking to live faithfully in spite of the bodies and Body that can fail us, knowing ultimately that the Head of the Body – the Author of the Story – never will.

In the midst of the trial before the Sanhedrin, testimony is brought against Jesus, asserting that He declared, “I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man” (Mark 14.58, see also Matthew 27.40, Mark 15.29, and John 2.20) though Mark is sure to assert that the testimony of these witnesses did not agree. Despite conflicting testimony, of course, Jesus is crucified as a political dissident.

To understand just how radically political Jesus actually was, we only have to ask why he was crucified. Clearly he was seen as such a major threat to the political powers who governed his land (both the Romans and the ruling Jewish establishment) that they saw only one way to deal with the challenged he presented – to remove that challenge by removing him through political execution. (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 307)

In light of His crucifixion, of course, Jesus’ previously triumphant disciples quickly disperse. Commenting upon the section in the Apostle’s Creed which addresses this event, Karl Barth notes that at this point in the Credo, “the word of the believer completely coincides with the word of the unbeliever.” (Credo, 385) While it goes without saying that the three days in which Jesus remained in sheol were not experienced by His disciples as the high point of Christian community, His resurrection from the dead powerfully reinvigorates God’s initial purposes in Creation.

There is a great irony in John 20, where Mary’s assumes Jesus is the gardener, because in one sense, he is! (see Wright, The Challenge of Jesus) Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on the Temple system, the destruction of His bodily Temple and its resurrection from the dead renews the Creator’s original purpose. It is in this light that Kirk rightly notes

[t]he Church is a ‘fellowship of the resurrection’, an event of the past which anticipates the transformation of all decay and corruption into new life. The Church is like a pin attracted to the magnet of the coming restoration of God’s rule over the whole of life. (What is Mission?, 218)

Following Jesus’ resurrection, of course, Jesus renews the call to “go” and “bless” through The Great Commission. After his ascension, God sends the third person of the Trinity, His Spirit “upon the whole community and upon each one of the members of that community. The Spirit creates koinonia, community with a purpose, to call all things to conversion and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.” (The Good News of the Kingdom, 135) This Spirit of koinonia is evident especially throughout the book of Acts, where it empowers Jesus’ disciples to continue His healing ministry.

Most notably for our study, of course, are episodes that involve the Temple, like the one found in Acts 3, where Luke sets the stage thusly: “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.” (Acts 3.1) We should note, therefore, that even in light of Jesus’ proclamation of the destruction of the Temple, His disciples were drawn to it centripetally to continue their religious activity. This activity, however, did not preclude them from both healing in the Temple and proclaiming the good news of Jesus, even when it resulted in their immediate arrest. Furthermore, Peter’s message interestingly connects their interaction as well as Jesus crucifixion and resurrection to the story of Abram.

In his message following this healing, Peter not only connects what the people have just witnessed to the story of Jesus but to Abraham. He does this at the beginning of his word (‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus’ [v.13]), and then again at the end (‘You are the heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’… [Acts 3.25]). (The Mission of God, 246)

In Acts 8, conversely, the Temple is presented as a precursor, when an Ethiopian eunuch fulfills Isaiah 56.7 being introduced to Jesus not in the holy place but on his journey home through an encounter with Philip. Another interesting text is found in Acts 15, where James brings together two seemingly opposing ideas, namely the eschatological restoration of God’s “fallen tent” alongside the inclusion of Gentile nations. It is due to the implications of passages like these that we begin to find fault with Karl Barth’s assertion that the ecclesia is both the people of God as well as “the place where an assembly has been held, and is to be held again and again.” (Credo, 137)

These texts from Acts reach their highpoint, however, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, found in chapter 17. He asserts, rather boldly,

[t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17.24-25)

Harvie Conn helpfully explicates the implications of Paul’s statement when he notes

Jehovah was no local urban deity; his territorial claims were bounded not by one ethnic city but by “the heavens and the earth”. (sic) In the eschatological shadow of the urban heavens and earth soon to come, the church proclaimed itself as the true city and its “city-zenship” in Christ, the cosmic beneficient “tyrant”/kurios of the city. (The Good News of the Kingdom, 99)

This, of course, reminds us of Solomon’s assertion, that God could not be held captive even in the highest heavens. Furthermore, though speaking to a thoroughly “pagan” (though “quite religious”) audience Paul’s statement questions the role of the Temple itself, a question many are asking regarding church attendance still today. Before addressing this question – and its missiological implications for postmodern ministry – we must first briefly address two passages that powerfully reorient our understanding of the Temple.

We could cautiously assume that Paul’s further deliberation regarding the nature of the Temple revealed even deeper theological and missiological implications. Though the terminology dates back at least to Jesus – and possibly even to the Creation narratives – Paul’s letter to the Ephesians most powerfully states how we are now to understand the Temple. Indeed, in light of the revelation and indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit, Paul can powerfully assert

you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19-22)

Note also the implications of 1st Peter 2.4-10:

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.
But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,” and,
“A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Even Gentiles have become

“nothing less than… part of the very temple of God. They may have been physically excluded from the inner parts of the temple in Jerusalem, as Gentiles, but spiritually they now constitute the dwelling place of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” (The Mission of God, 340)

In postmodern engagement with Christian tradition, texts like these provide the foundation by which philosophers argue that the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be credited for the demise of the sacred into secular. (see, for instance, After the Death of God, After Christianity and Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism) This dangerous type of thinking, in turn, has encouraged contemporary culture to increasingly withdraw from church involvement. This need not be the case. Indeed, what we see in these texts is not so much the dissolution of sacred into secular as much as the sacred being known in and through the secular, or more specifically, through those who have been called according to the purposes of God.

In fact, such postmodern Christian thinkers are not radical enough, for in joining together the sacred and secular, they have distanced themselves from the revelation of God through His Living Word, Jesus Christ, and the Written Word, the Holy Scriptures. If we view these passages in light of God’s whole revelation then, the result is not a nihilistic estrangement, but rather a missiological calling.

So the centrifugal mission of the New Testament church had its centripetal theology also: the nations were indeed being gather in – not to Jerusalem or to the physical temple or to national Israel – but to Christ as the center and to the new temple of God that he was building through Christ as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (The Mission of God, 524)

Or, put more clearly, “All of us have been drawn into the church catholic so that the church may become increasingly universal. Then we are sent out to make disciples of others.” (Mission on the Way, 113)

I’ve catching up on some Nada Surf of late, whose album Lucky I had completely missed, until recently, after hearing it at a wedding of some dear friends (with great musical taste).

The second track, Whose Authority, reminds me of the title of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, as well as Merold Westphal’s recent Whose Community? Which Interpretation?, which is staring up at me from my office bookshelf like a lost puppy wanting someone to play with it. Whose Authority declares

I walk like you guide me, my eyes are shut like I’m blind
Turn to you and listening and tryin’ to be in your mind
There’s a feeling that I get when I look to the west
‘Bout having all the answers, still failing the test
Wolf packs and convoys and captains and men
Surprised in translation world without end
Welcome back to real life, the picture is gone
Put a contract out on things that go on and on
How do you stay where you most want to be?
Where’d you get the patience, did it come easily?
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? There’s none that I can see
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? No one speaks to me
On whose authority? I have none over me
All the tales with paper heroes, the ones who dyed the sun
And called it yellow, the ones who made you run

In the very next song, “Beautiful Beat,” Nada Surf lead singer Matthew Caws yearns for a song to save him:

Sometimes all I want is another drink or another pill
If I could get anything done maybe I’d hold still
I’m trying to levitate I’m trying to leave the ground
Tryin’ to remember when I could fix anything with sound
Beautiful beat get me out of this mess
Beautiful beat lift me up from distress
I believe our love can save me, have to believe that it can
I want to redirect myself with you, do you understand?

Are not these songs – and their proximity on Lucky – a near perfect explication of the human condition, simultaneously shunning authority and crying out for deliverance? And, further, do we not see in Paul wrestling with these realities in quoting the first century hymn in Philippians 2, as he reminds us of the One who did not use his authority to his advantage, but came to give his life?:

In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing,
 by taking the very natureof a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself 
by becoming obedient to death
-
 even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
 and gave him the name that is above every name
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In the philosophical terminology used by Gianni Vattimo (building upon Nietzsche), it could be argued that in this One who comes from heaven to earth, the metaphysical God is shown to give up his “metaphysical essence.” But that’s a rabbit trail for another hike.