Jesus and The Avengers

BEWARE: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Originally written June 2012

We have an insatiable appetite for superheroes.  The Avengers has stormed the box office.  In the US it took $200 million its opening weekend, obliterating everything that had gone before.  It is the latest cinematic phenomenon. 

I saw it last weekend – it was awesome, though Captain America’s spandex was a little disturbing!

The plot is standard action hero stuff!  A big threat to humanity is wreaking havoc.  In this case a delusional demi-god and an evil alien race with super-sized, armour-plated slugs!  A superhero(s) rises to meet the challenge and save the day. To say it another way, a proverbial hell is closing in and people cannot protect themselves from an appalling fate. So a saviour comes and, via great sacrifice, evil is defeated, people liberated, and a new era dawns of security and safety.

Sound familiar?

The superhero is usually part human and part something more: bitten by a radioactive spider; a refugee from another galaxy; a genetically modified mutant; a man-machine merge; or a military medical experiment.  So the hero is like us and one of us, but simultaneously unlike us and not one of us.  They are human with emotional frailty, moments of grief and sadness, and physical weaknesses.  But they are more than human too with a particular calling to fulfil. 

Sound familiar?

They have superhuman powers, insights, and abilities: walking through solid objects; bringing the dead to life; supernatural strength; scaling vertical walls; or flight!  Some live lonely lives without a spouse or children.  Some are not understood or truly known by those nearest them.  Some have a secret identity only slowly revealed to their closest friends.  Some have an archenemy who almost destroys them.  Some are surrounded with loyal supporters who join their cause.  Some die, only to return to life as if they were invincible.

Sound familiar?

In The Avengers Ironman steals the show.  To save humanity he willingly and knowingly chooses to sacrifice himself.  He enters the very heart of the evil empire where, separated from all that is good, he brings an end to the horror attacking the world but only at the cost of his own life.  He falls from this great saving sacrifice dead, even his great strength depleted, only to miraculously rise to life again!

Sound familiar?

The story existed long before Hollywood.  It has been told in images, scrolls, comics, books and paintings since humanity first began.  Yet no matter how many times this same story is told people pay good money to escape reality for a while.  I guess it’s a way to dream of a world where a half-man, half-something else superhero comes to defeat evil, liberate the oppressed and usher in a new kingdom of peace and life.  Too bad we then have to leave the theatre and enter reality again!  If only there was a real Superhero Saviour? 

Maybe the fact this same old story is guaranteed to make big money is because somewhere in us all is a longing for a Saviour?  Maybe the moment of losing ourselves in a fantasy speaks momentously to our real need and desire?  Maybe everyone who bought a ticket to The Avengers deep down really wants to meet Jesus?  Maybe next time we spend a few hours immersed in a world of heroes and heroines, villains and nemeses, there’s an opportunity to point beyond the image to the real Saviour?

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 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)