Worship Lessons from Hollywood

Anna and I got up extra early the other morning and headed out fromSacramento to San Francisco. The Oakland Bay Bridge was still closed for repairs, so since our destination was Treasure Island, our round-about voyage took us across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Sausalito, over the always beautiful Golden Gate, through mostly empty Frisco city streets, and onto the eerily deserted Bay Bridge. We arrived on the island at 6:15.

Here’s why we went: Anna is a budding model and actress. She’s just ten and aready has several catalogs, a few small films, and the odd photo shoot or two under her belt. Her “take it or leave it” attitude toward the whole thing is the most refreshing part. (Some parents and kids we run into would put the folks on “Toddlers and Tiaras” to shame– honestly). But the most fun for us is the behind the scenes look at the entertainment industry.

That day Anna was working for the NBC television drama called “Trauma” (left). The shoot was fun and interesting but, as always, filled with long hours of waiting. “Trauma” has taken over several of the huge buildings on Treasure Island. The island was home to a World’s Fair in 1939 and used by the Navy in World War II. These days the City of San Francisco has re-purposed the land and many of its war-era buildings for the entertainment industry. Films like The Matrix, Rent, and the third Indiana Jones movie were made there. Anyway, our day was spent in one of three mammoth sound stages filled up with towering green screens and giant sets: We saw hospital interiors and exteriors, ambulance bays, apartments, a helicopter landing pad (with helicopter), and all kinds of emergency vehicles.

Anna was in a classroom scene, with other kids, where the teacher collapses and a medical crew arrives to save the day. It will air on the Monday after Thanksgiving on NBC.

What struck me first was how joyless the whole thing was. You’d think that the “entertainment business” would have some joy, some fun, in it. Yet folks scurry around fairly joylessly doing their thing, stressed, making phone calls, shouting out instructions.

But the big thing that hit me was how much money is spent on creating a false reality– and how incredibly easy it is to make something fake look genuine. Things on TV that seem so real– even “outdoor” scenes– are as fake as can be. We walked up to “concrete walls” with years of grime and flaking paint and discovered they were made of little thin sheets of wood. I strolled through a “fully stocked ER” that wouldn’t actually be able to help anyone in a real crisis.

And all of this made me a bit sad.

Beloved, we belong to a Kingdom that can’t be seen but is Real. The entertainment business has a kingdom that can be seen but is false. We’re amusing ourselves to death, to coin a phrase, and spending billions on entertainments. All while the Creator of the Universe calls us to a different, joy-filled reality.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann writes that worship is a constitutive act. A constitutive act. Think about that idea for a moment or two: When we worship– when we answer the Sovereign’s call to come worship, when we recite His mighty saving acts and deeds, and most especially when we gather around the Table and remember the Body of Christ– we are participating in something quite subversive. We are saying that there is an alternate reality, an alternate world, an alternate Kingdom. And we are declaring that all other “realities” and worlds and kingdoms are false.

I just saw a colossal false world on Treasure Island.

There’s nothing wrong with being entertained– nothing wrong with enjoying a place of make believe. But we can’t live there. We can’t take up residence in a place that may seem real to the eye, but is as false as a movie set. The Lord of the Kingdom we belong to is the Unseen Real. And worship of Him stands this false world of ours upside down.