I first saw Cast Away in a theater in San Diego with my best friend Jason.  It was in the summer opt 2001 and after all that Tom Hanks had done in the 90’s I really looked forward to seeing this film.  After seeing, however, I was struck with the fact that God is surprisingly absent from the film.  Stuck on an island for 4 years, Chuck Noland doesn’t even say a prayer.

I’ve changed my mind about Cast Away, however, after watching several more times.  A film that names its central character Chuck and is titled Cast Away instead of castaway is worthy of careful consideration.  God is surprisingly present in the film even though Chuck Noland never transparently acknowledges it.

The isolation the film makers cause you to experience on this island is fascinating.  Without music, without a bird, and without bugs there is no music until Chuck finally gets off the island.  Just the powding of the surf.  Chuck can’t make fire.  He tries and tries but he can’t do it.  That is until Wilson comes into his life.  Once Wilson arrives he can do it.  Look what I have done.  I have made fire!  Chuck cries out.  Chuck thinks he can do whatever he wants to do.  But in the end he acknowledges that he came to an end of himself and wanted to kill himself.  But the log broke the tree instead and received a warm feeling that he could go on.  He acknowledges that he couldn’t get off the island until he found the sail to harness the wind just suddenly washed up on shore.  It was angel wings that he puts on the sail.

V for Vendetta isn’t a great film but in some ways it is intriguing.  There’s quite a lot of themes in the movie V for Vendetta.  One of the major themes of the movie is the mysterious identity of V himself.  Who is this masked person?  I haven’t read the graphic novel but the Wachowski brothers do an extraordinary job pully together a number of allusions.

1. Guy Fawkes.  Of course the mask is first foremost that of Guy Fawkes the Catholic Revolutionary who tried to blow up the house of parliament in 1605.  But the mask takes on other personas as well.

2. Villain.  This is interesting the person who ties the woman to the tracks is the classic vaudeville scene.

3. Edmond Dantes.  Which is really a code name for a whole host of sword wielding masked men.  All these role into one.  The weapon of choice is important here.  Not guns but knives and  at one point we see V practicing with a sword.  Like Zorro, v slashes a v or pints a v on stuff?  Like the Phantom of the Opera, Zorro and5.  Edmond Dantes.  The film makes mention of Edmond Dantes the hero of the Count of Monte Cristo.  The plot of the book of a man wrongly imprisoned who escapes to inact vengeance on those who imprisoned him.

4. Faust’s Devil.  V is held in Larkhill cell number “V”. A favorite Latin phrase of V’s is said to be from “Faust” but in fact was a motto of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley: “Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici” (“By the power of truth, I, a living man, have conquered the universe”. 

6. Jesus Christ.  “Jesus Christ, he’s in the house.  I new you’d come for me.”

7. Valerie.  V says he’s both Villian and Victim.  The victim in a Vadville theater is a woman.  While the mask has a mustache and beard the exaggerate features are also androgynous.  V is androgynous much like the Lana formerly Larry Wachowski brother who co-adapted the graphic novel for screen.  But V is also androgynous… a fact we will come back to later. or another woman.  While V is played by Hugo Weaving and has a male voice the entire film it is not unheard of to have another voice play an unseen person to throw of suspecting viewers.  The first time Valerie becomes an obvious choice is after Evey emerges from her cell and sees V standing in the room with long hair.  The story told by vallerie has her and her lover sharing violet roses together and later we see V showing Evey a shrine to Valliere surrounded by these flowers.  Once Evey leaves V throws away the mask and weeps in front the mirror like a woman.

About a hundred years after the gospel of John was written, Clement of Alexandria called John the Spiritual Gospel.  

In studying the gospels, I’ve been struck with John’s “spiritual” reworking of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Is it possible that John not only knew the Synoptic gospels but creatively reworked them for a spiritual purpose?

The relatonship between Matthew, Mark and Luke is well established.  They, in contrast to John’s gospel, are called the Synoptic gospels because the stories they tell as well as the way in which each tells them can be “together” (syn) “seen” (optics) or “seen together.”  Compare the accounts of Jesus blessing the little children in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

These similarities suggests a literary relationship rather than an oral one.  One or more of the gospel writers copied the others in writing there own.  Which leads to the question of the precise relationship between them.  This question is known as the Synoptic problem.

The answer to the “problem” is that both Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark in writing their gospels and that either Luke borrowed from Matthew or Luke and Matthew independently borrowed from a now lost source scholars name Q.  

John, however, does not share in this explicit borrowing and thus scholars are less certain about its relationship with the synoptics.  Some think John is completely independent of Matthew, Mark and Luke while others think John had a knowledge of the synoptics but doesn’t rely upon this knowledge in writing his own gospel.  

It is true that much of John’s story is radically different from what is found in the three gospels and that lends support to the claims above.  But I think a number of examples indicate that John not only knew the synoptics but creatively reworked them in writing his own.  

The story of the foot-washing in John’s gospel is a case in point.  Neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke have the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet.  Each shares the story of how Jesus instituted the breaking of bread and drinking of wine at his final meal.  Matthew and Mark are very similar on this point.  

It’s well known that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for writing there gospels.  What isn’t as clear is the relationship between John these first three gospels.  Did John known them?  Did John use them and if he did how and to what extent?  

1. Parable of Lazarus and the rich man

2. Mary and Martha

3. The Raising of the Widow of Nain’s Son/The Healing of the Centurions’ Servant

4. The Raising of Jarius’ daughter.  

5. Allusion to Genesis 29