Places in the Heart
Martha Moore-Keish on Communion and Hope for Heaven
“Action adventure films like The Rapture and Left Behind get people talking about the end times. But the final scene from the 1984 film Places in the Heart offers a more biblically complete picture of what God intends for us in the new heaven and new earth.
Set in rural Texas during the Depression, the film ends with people passing bread cubes and tiny cups of grape juice down the pews. A woman passes the elements to her cheating husband. Ku Klux Klan members share bread and juice with a black man they assaulted. A sheriff, killed at the start of the film, quietly passes the bread and cup to the young black man who shot him, saying, ‘The peace of Christ.’
‘In that understated scene, the living and the dead, black and white, young and old, those who have sinned and those who have been sinned against, all sit together in the same dusty whitewashed sanctuary to share the Lord’s Supper,’ says Martha Moore-Keish, assistant professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.
Moore-Keish often uses this film clip to explain how the layered meanings of the Eucharist deepen our eschatological understanding of how to live now as citizens of heaven.”
February 6th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Without doubt one of the most powerful conclusions of any movie that touches on the grace of God. I use PITH as part of my film series that explores Christian themes represented in films made by non-Christians or nominal believers. Pay attention to the hymns that are sung and when in the scene they are sung. It all fits together. I absolutely bawl when I see this powerful ending, thinking of what the Kingdom of God or Heaven is and how I long to be a part of it and know I will be a part of it. A place of complete love, holiness, and peace. A place where we are united with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and all saints forever. For non-believers this ending is very strange. This ending transformed the way I perceive the Eucharist/Communion by realizing that I have to come into communion not only with God but with all my brothers and sisters who share it, forgiving them of any transgression they had committed against me and loving them as I love myself and even as God loves me. The peace of Christ be with you.
February 6th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Thanks Mike. Amen.