Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:7-8
As every filmmaker knows—to borrow a line from Shakespeare—brevity is the soul of wit. It’s also essential to a good elevator pitch. When people want to know what your film is about, you had better be able to explain it—engagingly so—in a sentence or two. A paragraph at most.
Which leads me to a question: How would I describe Christianity in a sentence or two?
My answer goes back nearly two thousand years, long before the elevator was invented. As the story goes, John the Apostle, an old man living in Ephesus (near modern-day İzmir in Türkiye) and the last of the original Twelve, needed help getting to church on a Sunday. He had been released from exile on the Isle of Patmos a few years earlier and now, well into his eighties, had trouble walking. That did not keep him from church on the Lord’s Day, of course. Several of the young men in the congregation would carry him to service and, as you might imagine, everyone waited in anticipation of what the Beloved Disciple might say. Invariably, his words were these, short and sweet: “Little children, love one another.”
And that was it. That was John’s elevator pitch.
This went on for several weeks, perhaps months, until one day, one of the young men who carried him to church each Sunday worked up the courage to ask him a question. “Master, why do you always say the same thing? You walked and talked with Jesus himself. Might you not have something more… I don’t know… more substantial to teach us? Something we haven’t heard before?”
Tradition has it that John replied: “This was the Lord’s commandment. And if one day you understand it, there is nothing else you need know.”
Mic drop!
But hang on, hang on. Wasn’t this the same John, son of Zebedee, that Jesus previously called Boanerges, Son of Thunder? Who, along with his brother James, had once threatened to destroy an entire village of goyim in Samaria? What happened? How did John change? Well, I think we know the answer. He was changed by love. Which leads me to a question.
Where does love begin?
I’ll hazard a guess. I think it starts with a love of Nature, something intuitively shared by all people. Wildflowers in a field… snow-capped mountain peaks… the deep blue sea… The beauty of creation invariably draws us to the invisible qualities of God—his eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20). The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it this way: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And we, his subjects, are smitten.
From Nature, I tend to think we graduate toward loving animals, as in pets. Great love is often exchanged between humans and their pets. I am one. (John Wick is another, but we won’t go there for now.) I still grieve the abrupt and tragic loss of my dear friend, Velvet, struck by a hit-and-run driver seven years ago.
From Nature and pets, if not before, we move to loving a few people along the way. Our parents, for example, and our siblings (hopefully). In short order comes the inevitable best buddy, the favorite teacher, that first boyfriend or girlfriend, our spouse, the friendly neighbor, a crazy (but endearing) uncle, the sports fans who cheer for our home team, fellow Americans who agree with our politics, and… well, you get the picture. Love is a many-splendored thing, right?
Not so fast. What about the roughly eight billion other people on the planet? How do we feel about them?
There was once an itinerant preacher of blessed memory. Two millennia ago, he traveled up and down historic Palestine giving sermons, performing miracles, and sometimes saying the most outrageous things. Once, he even told his followers that they must love their enemies! Can you imagine? How does one do that? And why would anyone want to do that?
He put it this way: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:43-48).
In the 1970s I wrote a screenplay called Krugerrand. The plot revolved around a conspiracy by the apartheid South African government to foment a race war in the United States. Like any good action film, there were “good guys” and “bad guys.” The culmination of the film takes place in a bathroom in the JFK airport where the villain, a white South African, meets a violent and bloody end before he can catch a flight out of the country. I remember writing that scene. Boy, did it feel good to kill off the villain and see his blood splattered everywhere! Oh yes, I too could be a Son of Thunder! Thankfully, Krugerrand never got made. A similar movie, however, did see the light of day—Final Solution in 2001. It was not a film that minimized or disregarded the pain and horror of apartheid; rather, it pointed to another solution for the world’s ills—the way of love and forgiveness.
A final story…
In 1219, the Crusaders and Muslims were at it again. It was Round 5 in their slugfest (the Fifth Crusade) and they had come to something of an impasse in Egypt with the Crusaders laying siege to the port of Damietta. Thousands had already died on both sides, but the lust for blood—the enemy’s blood—continued unabated. That was when two unarmed monks, Francis of Assisi and Brother Illuminato, crossed the battle lines to speak with the head of the Muslim armies. They were immediately arrested by sentries and taken to Sultan Malik al-Kamil, the nephew of the great Saladin, who had conquered Jerusalem in 1187.
There are several variations of what happened next, but most historians agree that Francis and Illuminato stayed with the Sultan for several days as his guests, speaking freely and boldly of their faith. Al-Kamil spoke of his faith as well, and by all accounts the men had lengthy and friendly conversations. The world was at war, but for a few days, there was a bit of heaven on Earth. When it came time for Francis and Illuminato to return to “their side,” al-Kamil presented them with expensive gifts, which Francis politely refused in keeping with his vow of poverty. Deeply moved by Francis’ piety, al-Kamil made a request of his new friend. “Pray for me to follow God more closely,” he said. Undoubtedly, Francis obliged.
Following the Franciscans’ visit, al-Kamil made some changes in the way he ran his empire. He began treating his Christian prisoners of war with greater kindness and sought to make peace with the Crusaders. And decades later, after the Crusaders were expelled from the Holy Land, the Franciscans would remain, living in peace with Muslims and Jews.
Tradition has it that on his deathbed, Sultan Malik al-Kamil made a confession of faith in Jesus Christ, Isa al-Masih. I don’t know; I suppose we’ll have to hear the rest of that story in heaven. But one thing is for sure, or so it seems to me. John the Evangelist had his elevator pitch down when he said, “Little children, love one another.” If we can keep that command, there really is nothing else we need to know!
A blessed and happy new year to you!
