Film Friday In the second Joker film Folie à Deux, Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, has crowds of followers, until he decides to defend himself in court and in so doing he reveals he is no superhero, but a flawed and broken human like his followers. And when he admits as much, they all start to desert him. They want the fantasy of Joker not the reality of Arthur Fleck. We live in a world of superheroes – the Batman, Wolverine, Deadpool, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Black Widow… the list goes on, we want the fantasy of people who are powerful and people who are greater than us.
And some folk think of Jesus as a superhero, but in many ways he was the opposite. He went from being powerful to being humble, from being a leader, to being a servant who laid down everything for us. He made everything yet he chose to serve everything. And he was no fantasy of course, John tells us at the start of his gospel that they had seen his glorious reality, reality earthed in this life. Reality that people like John had seen and known and had now come to tell us about. And in his birth and life and death and rising Jesus brought light into the world.
People love darkness, Jesus said at one point, and at this time of Halloween we get a real glimpse of that… but Jesus brought light. Light that could never be overcome. Light that was brighter than the darkness. If Jesus is a hero he is one who is a wonderful Prince of Peace, full of grace and truth, and someone who will never break off a bruised read, or snuff out a flickering candle. Someone who is full of patience and kindness and endless love.
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