In this bit of preaching wisdom (that is, the Gospel doesn’t become more true just because the preacher yells louder), lies both the judgment and the hope of grace for the Capital.
Not that The Hunger Games books mention God, but that isn’t going to stop us from considering the Gospel implications.
“How despicable we must seem to you,” Cinna says to Katniss. He makes no attempt to explain the decadence of the Capital because no excuse can be made. The citizens of the Capital live their lives asleep. The pursuit of strange fashion occupies a lot of their time, while at their parties they have (like the Roman Empire before them) perfected endless gluttony, all while completely oblivious to the suffering of the surrounding districts who provide all this bounty. Most importantly, Capital life revolves around the lethal Hunger Games, which seems to employ most of the Capital citizens as well as serving as the primary source of entertainment, unity and purpose of life. But while they watch the Games, create its lethal arena and style its doomed participants, they do so asleep, seemingly never aware of the real cost of this “entertainment.” People are dying, but no one notices.
Sleeping through life doesn’t seem to be just a mark of fiction. In Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus, (Luke 16:19-31) the rich man too seems to be oblivious to the suffering of Lazarus who is lying right outside his door. It isn’t until the tables are turned in death, and the rich man finds himself in hell that he notices Lazarus, but the wake-up call of judgment has come too late to save the rich man. As Father Abraham points out, he should have known.
Well, some do. Not all the citizens of the Capital are asleep. How is it that Cinna, Plutarch and other participants in the revolution are able to see what the rest of the Capital misses? Somehow they have compassion, somehow they recognize the wrongness of a society built on the suffering of others, and, at great risk to themselves, they plot and plan for change. Products of a society devoid of ethics or compassion, these revolutionaries embrace the sacrificial lifestyle of the Gospel. How?
Could it be… grace?
(That line should be read in the voice of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady, for whom Satan lurks around every corner.)
It is so easy to see the evil. Maybe that’s why we choose to stay asleep. So much suffering, so many unjust systems, so many problems to be fixed—how can we possibly unravel the mess? Sleeping through life, content with distractions and entertainments, is so much easier for those of us who can afford it. Certainly that’s the way of our world, and we can all identify endless distractions that lull us back to slumber.
But, occasionally God wakes us up.
Being awake is good. There’s lots out there to be thankful for. It’s Good News, with all that entails.
But being awake has a price. This whole Gospel lifestyle, of losing our lives in order to find them—that’s what it means to be awake. There’s that matter of carrying the cross to be considered, too, not to mention the overwhelming reality of all we cannot do to fix our world. Then again, being awake means not being alone, and so we can see a future and a hope we’d never glimpse asleep, not even in our dreams.
Our Christian faith tells us that it’s better to live life awake, even with the cost. It’s that hope of grace that keeps our eyes open, looking for God’s presence changing, challenging, calling—bringing in the Kingdom in thousands of places and lives. And through us, as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says,
| for Christ plays in ten thousand places, | |
| Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his |
To see God, just look for hope. Something is new, something is renewed, and the Spirit is present again.
A prayer for vision in the week ahead:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
And for something completely different, the Church Lady!