John Fischer The Catch

I know I’ve used this movie before but I can’t help it. Never have I witnessed a part, a character or a situation as a dramatic production that is closer to my deep-seated fears and misassumptions than what I find in the character played by Peter Facinelli in the movie The Big Kahuna starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito.

I keep coming back to it because I have quotes from it in my speaking notes and when I go on the road and prepare for a new talk I run across them again and sometimes I find something new that didn’t hit me as strongly as it did before. Probably because I wasn’t ready for it. Truth is always like that.

Peter Facinelli, who plays Bob in this movie, is a perfect example of a kid who grew up Christian, went to a Christian college, took on all the trappings of what a Christian is supposed to be and do, and truly means it, but when thrust into the real world with two seeking individuals who to him would simply be non-Christians, the holes in his character, the missing links of humanity, the inability to connect with what should be naturally human become glaringly obvious. So much so that towards the end of the movie, Phil (the Danny DeVito character) makes an observation, “Your problem, Bob, is that you haven’t lived long enough to regret anything.”

To which Bob replies, “You’re saying I have to go out and do something bad so I’ll have something to regret?” (Exactly what I would have said, by the way.)

Phil: “I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret you just don’t know what they are.”

Ouch! That’s the part that always nails me. But then he goes on to say: “It’s when you discover them (the things you regret), when you see the folly in something you’ve done, and you wish that you had it to do over, but you know you can’t, because it’s too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you…   Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face.”

This adds new meaning to “pick up your cross and follow me…” Instead of dragging around some imaginary bloody beam of wood, what if Jesus meant for us to face into the failures, disappointments and mistakes of our lives and own them instead of excusing them or skating over them, and let them become a part of who we are and are becoming? Pick them up and carry them around as reminders of why there had to be a cross in the first place. So many of us are like Bob: trying so hard to be good Christians that we wouldn’t recognize our own cross if we tripped over it. Our cross is all the things we should be regretting but don’t know anything about. Believe me, I can speak with understanding about this because I keep tripping.

Picking up your cross then would mean moving on in spite of your mistakes, failures and regrets. It would mean growing through regret and forgiveness, and finding hope on the other side of the cross.

…and true  character.

The mind of man plans his way [Decision], but the LORD directs his steps [Action]. (Proverbs 16:9 NASB)

Remember the three frogs on a log? One decided to jump down… how many were left? Three… because deciding to do something and doing it are two different things. In order for a decision to mean anything, you have to do something about it. You don’t just decide to get married; you buy the ring, set the date and plan the wedding. You don’t just decide you’re going to get a job; you get your resume ready, fill out applications, make phone calls, pound the pavement. You don’t just decide you’re going to make some changes in your life; you make them. Decisions mean nothing without actions to back them up. It’s a little like hearing the word of God and not doing anything about it.

That means that once you decide for door #3 you have to open the door and walk through it into whatever it is that door holds for you. You back up your decision by taking whatever steps that decision requires you to take. And the amazing promise is that the Lord will direct your steps as you go.

This verse tells us a lot about how this works. It says that the Lord directs our steps, but who takes those steps? We do. The Lord doesn’t take them for us. We don’t stand there and wait for him to move our legs. We step out—we take action—and the Lord somehow directs our steps as we go along. Strange, mysterious, but true.

So that means you can’t just wait around for God to do something. You do it. You step out, because God will do something through your steps. He directs as we walk. He works as we work. He talks as we talk.

It’s a little like a cartoon I saw once of an artist painting a picture, except that he himself was being painted at that very moment by a very large brush in a very large hand.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2: 12-13)

Did I already tell you my favorite part of our son’s wedding a weekend ago was the day after? If I did, I didn’t make a big enough deal about it.

The big deal was when the new Mr. and Mrs. Fischer stopped by to pick up a few things they left at our house before starting on their honeymoon, and stayed for a couple hours to download the excitement of the previous few days. For a while there, I was wondering if they were going to invite us to join them on their trip. It actually wouldn’t have surprised me; they’re just that way.

I say this because being with my parents the day after our wedding was the farthest thing from my mind. And I liked my parents; I just never saw us as one big extended family. That’s to my detriment. It’s nice to see now that even though I didn’t experience that with my family, it looks like my kids are going to see that something changes with their generation. I could yet be a true patriarch. I couldn’t be happier. Not that I’ve always wanted this – I don’t think I know what it is – it’s that my first taste of it has left me wanting for more. Maybe the old cliché is true after all: I haven’t lost a son as much as I have gained a daughter.

Mostly this says something about these two and their commitment to family. They didn’t hang with us for a couple hours out of obligation; they did that because they wanted to.

This, and Christopher and Beth’s rather large wedding party, says these two know something about being part of a wider circle. Something I am just beginning to experience.

Let me know if I’m missing something, but I might not be alone here. It might be that my baby boom generation drew the reins tightly around a nuclear family – father… mother… kids… – but the next one may be seeking to throw the net wider. If so, I believe that is closer to the picture the Lord has in mind, which is to put us all into the big family of God.

I know I’m right about this because in googling “family” for an image for this Catch I get four people. If I want a bigger group I need to google “extended family.” “Family” should be extended anyway.

I think my “family” is about to get bigger.

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation.” (Isaiah 52:7)

Who would have thought that the toes that Christopher found sticking up in the air at the end of his chair 33 years ago would be featured at his wedding. Christopher chose to display his toes at this most auspicious occasion along with the toes of all his groomsmen by insisting that they all wear sandals with their new 3-piece suits. It was a California wedding through and through right down to the In-N-Out Burgers served at the reception and the pictures on the beach. But it was the toes that made me smile. One picture is a shot down at the feet of all the men standing in a circle – the fun part being: whose toes belong to whom?

In light of this, it’s not inappropriate that the prophet Isaiah proclaimed the beauty of feet. Now that’s something. We don’t naturally think of feet as being beautiful. I personally think feet are rather ugly, and the way they spend their whole life crammed inside of shoes, doesn’t give them much hope of getting any better. Not to mention the smell, and the dirt should we live in the time of Jesus when everyone wore sandals and walked on dusty roads. That’s why washing His disciples’ feet was more embarrassing for the disciples than for Jesus.

And yet Isaiah calls feet beautiful, and Paul quotes him in Romans 10:15. It must be important. To Isaiah and to Paul, those feet are beautiful because of what they carry. They carry a person who brings good news – good tidings – and who proclaims salvation and peace. We know this today as the gospel, in fact “gospel” means “good news.”

Never before have we needed more carriers of good news in the marketplace. We live in a time when Christians are known in the marketplace for bad news. They bring anger, hate and fear. Many have opted for morality and a conservative social agenda over the good news of gospel, and have joined the culture war instead of bringing the gospel of peace.

Check your feet. What message are you bringing?

We are in another election year, and believe me, it’s going to get ugly. It already is. And Christians are going to be jumping in and throwing mud like everyone else. Please do me and the gospel a favor: Don’t take part in it. Check the messages you give, and the emails you pass on for good tidings of peace and salvation.

Christopher hung his toes out there at his wedding. It may have been more prophetic than he realizes. Make your feet beautiful; be a bearer of good news, peace and salvation. People are dying to hear it and ready to believe.

I suppose I should be ready to move on to other topics besides my son’s wedding, but I am not willing to be over the joy of it all. At least not yet.

It’s not fair. I’m finding myself jealous of their honeymoon. We should all get a honeymoon. You need some time to process all the emotions. I think Marti and I are going to plan one after our next wedding. Having never been through the wedding of a son or daughter, I don’t think we knew what to expect. It’s too much joy to handle in one or two days; you need a while to bask in it.

I’m reminded of how many feasts and celebrations God ordained for the children of Israel in the Old Testament, and how many of them take several days to complete. He must have planned for this.

It dawned on me the day after the wedding, when the new Mr. and Mrs. Fischer stopped by to pick up something left at our house and stayed to download the memories for a couple hours, that we would rarely be seeing Christopher anymore without Beth. After a string of relationships involving a steady stream of questions, doubts, hopes, dreams, and broken hearts, this was different. This was it. This really happened. This was permanent.

Of course there will be new issues down this road to deal with. There will be problems to surmount and adjustments to make, but they will be different ones. These two are now one; that door is closed behind them and a world of new joys, sorrows and challenges has opened up for them.

We belong to Christ. We are one with Him. Whatever issues come up about life and faith, that is not one of them. “But while God and I shall be, I am His and He is mine” goes the old hymn, and we can embrace that by faith, regardless.

Take some time with that today. Our oneness with Him – and with each other – is worth celebrating. Take a second honeymoon with your first love.

“…that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Part of Christ’s prayer for us in John 17:22-23)

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…

Anyone familiar with the 1987 movie classic Princess Bride will recognize this quote as uttered by the high church clergyman at the unfortunate wedding of the evil Prince Humperdink to Buttercup, Wesley’s true love. Princess Bride is a witty and highly entertaining story of true love and adventure, and a favorite of Christopher, long before he met Beth, and not surprisingly of her, too. I toyed with the idea of beginning my part of their wedding ceremony with this quote, but I was not confident of my ability to deliver it flawlessly and I knew it would have to be right if I used it at all in the presence of such experts. Christopher knows whole chunks of dialogue from this movie by heart.

I think what Christopher appreciates the most about this movie is its depiction of true love as something that comes along only once in a lifetime, and something he was willing to hold out for, since he had not yet found someone who fulfilled this kind of passion in him prior to meeting Beth.

This is true love – you think this happens every day?

So it was for that reason we let Marti’s dyslexic version of the wedding date, April 22, 1202, stand on the front of the program she designed. 1202 somehow seemed like an appropriate date for the fictitious story in the movie to have taken place. Years from now, they can look at the program they saved and smile when they remember that.

You can’t hurt me. Wesley and I are joined by the bonds of love. And you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.

You can’t help but watch this movie with a smile on your face. It’s such a delightful fantasy, but it holds the truth just under the surface. Quotes like “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something,” and “We are men of action, lies do not become us,” reveal an integrity not altogether silly. This hidden truth is what makes this movie rewarding.

Can you move at all? Move? You’re alive. If you want I can fly.

“You truly love each other and so you might have been truly happy,” says the evil Prince Humperdink when he thinks he can put an end to this couple’s dream of being together. “Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the storybooks say.” But of course, true love always wins, and so we hold out this hope for Chris and Beth as we do for all marriages we know. Marriage can exist without true love, but what a bore. A good marriage can make true love truer. And God knows we need more marriages like this – marriages that point in so many different ways to Christ and His love for us as His church.

“Is this a kissing book?” says the young boy in the beginning of the movie, as his uncle prepares to read him this story. Throughout the story, the kid keeps butting in at the kissing parts until the very end, because by then, even he has been charmed.

Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.

I began Christopher and Elizabeth’s wedding ceremony with a line from a Don Henley song that has been rattling around in my brain for days now: “There’s just not enough love in the world.” I did that because I wanted to thank Chris and Beth for doing their part in decreasing the love shortage in the world. Indeed, if you have any knowledge of these two, you would know that they have enough love to go around for the rest of the world, or so it seems.

Love is most certainly the key element in any marriage, but it is also the key element in all of our lives whether we are married or not. Since God is love, that makes love and God one and the same. Love needs to be the defining element for all of us. Not just romantic love, but love that sacrifices, love that considers others more important than self, love that is patient and kind, love that keeps no record of wrongs, love that is vulnerable, love that overcomes, love that hangs in there with faith and hope, but is the greatest of them all.

Here’s the question for today: How much does this love define your life? Where are you putting this love to work? What are you overcoming in order to exercise this love? If there’s not enough love in the world, is there enough love in your life?

It’s a simple measurement, really. It will uncomplicate your life. Love is all the commandments rolled into one and it is God Himself. Begin and end with love.

“There’s just not enough love in the world.” Come on. Let’s all do something about that today.

Of all the dancing that went on at the wedding reception for my son, Christopher and Beth, his new wife, there are three that stand out.

Chandler & Annie
The first is Chandler, our 12-year-old son dancing with Annie, our 30-year-old daughter. Chandler had a real coming out at this wedding. Christopher picked him to be one of his Groomsmen and he rose to the occasion. There were times when being twelve was a liability and he grew impatient with waiting and with shoes that didn’t fit right. There were other times when he acted much older than his age as Christopher gave him responsibility to be in his wedding party, and not as a child ring-bearer, but as an adult friend. And for Annie to take him out on the dance floor and have him dance with her like a gentleman completed a picture for me of my kids being committed to each other.

Marti & Christopher
The second was an announced dance that Marti did not anticipate of just Christopher and his mother, and what she also didn’t know was that the song Christopher picked for them to dance to was a song I wrote and recorded when Christopher was six months old…

Christopher knows Christopher’s toes
He just found them today
Stuck in the air at the end of his chair
Ten little toes just waiting to play

And you can imagine Marti lost it – crumpled in her son’s arms for a moment until she could recover.

It’s hard to believe that these little feet
Will walk into the next generation
May they be feet that bring the gospel of peace
To every situation

…a prophetic reference if I ever heard one as Christopher is now a peace officer with the L.A.P.D..

Sometimes I shrink at the hopeless world
My helpless child must grow in
That’s when I pray as I’m watching him play
That he might carry Christ in him

And he does. Like his name, Christopher means bearer of Christ. It’s at moments like this you realize how fragile life is and how good God is to allow us to share in it. How many close calls there were in Christopher’s childhood and adolescence that could have cut his life short or left him with severe injury. Why him and not the next guy? What role does God have for each of us to play out in this drama called life? If you are alive, it’s because you have something to do. God doesn’t make any mistakes. Christopher’s toes have a place to go.

Annie & Niko
The last dance was Annie and one of Christopher’s Groomsmen torching the place in a blaze of talent and intuition, doing a kind of mad swirling version of a swing dance fit for Dancing with the Stars without ever dancing together before. How that happens I don’t know. At one point, Annie did a complete somersault over his knee and back again. How did she know to do that? How do all those moves come together with just a touch or a slight adjustment to indicate what might be coming next when trying to capture it would blur your camera? I asked Annie later how she did that and she said she didn’t know.

The Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. How true.

Our son, Christopher, had a problem. He has more good friends than a wedding party can handle. He’s an easy-going guy who makes loyal friends wherever he goes, so that his wedding brought friends from all the different periods of his life, from high school, from college, from working on an ambulance, and from a three-year stint in Missouri working for a sports marketing firm. It’s one of his best qualities that makes for an unusually long line of groomsmen. As it was, he ended up with ten not including his best man (who turned out to be his best woman – his sister – but that’s another story), and that meant not including a contingency of four guys from Missouri who came anyway with their wives.

At the rehearsal luncheon on Saturday, I invited friends of the bride and groom to tell stories on Christopher and Beth, not realizing that some of those stories would reflect on us as parents, and on our home, and on the way we raised Christopher. One of those things involved a decision we made to have an open home and to enthusiastically welcome all of our children’s friends, even those we might not like or might not want to have around.

This is one of the most difficult challenges as parents: you want to control the friends your children choose because you realize that peers are one of the most powerful influences on a child growing up, and yet, you can’t control everything nor can you make all their choices for them. (This, by the way, is one of the main reasons for Christian schools, and in my opinion can be even more dangerous, because kids from Christian homes are often only hypocritically Christian, a state worse than not being Christian at all, but that’s another story, too.)

Marti was the major proponent of the open-door policy that often clashed with my desire to have an acceptable Christian home more for the sake of my reputation than anything. Marti won out, and I must say it all came back to us this weekend as we heard from Christopher’s long-term friends  — the most memorable comment being, “We always knew that if we could just get to the Fischers, everything would be alright.”

I can’t think of a greater compliment or a better reason to salute my wife for making the right call on this one. What better place to display the mystery of a Christian marriage than a home where everyone knows they are safe?

Did we work at this? Did we know that these kinds of observations were being made? Did we know that Christopher’s friends were tucking away memories in their minds that would have a positive effect on the way they would operate their own homes and that would ultimately shape the conclusions they would make about Christ and His love for us as His bride? No, we were just trying to be what we thought was right. God did the rest.