Variety: Romans 12v15

‘Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ (Romans 12:15

Why we cry in the dark: Cinema offers a surprising way of learning to love our neighbours.
    

More than once over the past few weeks, someone’s delivered a line that tenses my chest, clenches my jaw, and brings prickly wetness to my eyes. For just a moment, I’ve escaped the anxieties of my own life, caught up in a greater story, gently moved by God’s Spirit.

Alas, this is not an experience I had during the last sermon at church - no, this is an experience I often have at the cinema. Admitting this may cause you concern for my spiritual wellbeing. That’s OK. Because I’ve realised that the apostle Paul’s command to ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ (Romans 12:15) is best practised while sitting in a comfy chair in front of a massive screen in a dark room.

My tendency – with both films and people – is to fix, correct, or explain. But Paul tells us to enter. And great films train us in just that, because they ask us to sit with joy and grief that aren’t ours – the very posture that love requires. So, whether it’s Train Dreams reducing me to a quivering existential mess, Benoit Blanc’s self-sacrificial act of grace in Knives Out making me cheer, or the finale of Hamnet making me want to reach into the screen, I’m understanding these moments as rehearsals in loving my neighbour.

Still, like any sermon worth listening to, the proof is whether this changes anything on Monday morning. But the timing could hardly be better: in the run up to the Oscars  and the year’s best films arrive in cinemas. Offices, group chats, and breakfast tables begin buzzing with the stories we’ve not stopped thinking about. For a brief time, it’s socially acceptable to talk about what made us cry without immediately changing the subject.

I ask my colleagues, neighbours, and housemates, ‘What stayed with you?’ after they tell me about a film they’ve seen. That seems to invite openness rather than opinions. It honours emotion without forcing conclusions. I hope it creates space where faith can be named, but doesn’t need to be first.

That’s a habit worth practising, and if it means I need to spend more time in the cinema, that’s no problem. It hope it will help me preach better sermons. It might even make me more like Jesus – as I learn, again and again, how to sit with joy and grief that aren’t my own.

Tim Yearsley