The Apostle

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            Have you ever found yourself hitting bottom, only to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep on going? Perhaps hitting bottom was needed to correct your perspective and set your priorities straight again. Often we humans have a tendency to get distracted from those things most important to us, only to have life slap us in the face and remind us. The Apostle is a movie that shows how a low in life can turn us around and bring us back to what made us in the first place. For the main character in this movie, he went from being a successful pastor to becoming a fugitive after losing control of himself and his anger. He repents, turns to God, and remembers his roots as a child saved by God at age seven, his dedication to the Lord, and to evangelizing.

             Sonny is introduced to us as a successful evangelical pastor that whose life is falling apart. He’s lost his wife to another man and then his church because he can’t leave her alone. He loses his children after becoming violent against his wife’s new lover, knocking him into a coma. He has fallen from his place in the community and decides to run from his sin.

Like Paul from the Bible, he wanders into the wilderness to give himself time to make sense of his situation (Gal. 1:17). Perhaps he was wandering into the wilderness to release his sins, much like the goat in Leviticus. (Lev. 16:22) Like the disciples of Jesus, he gives up his worldly goods to follow (Mark 10:21). During this time, he fasted and had visions. He baptized himself, asking Jesus and God to help him and lead him and to allow him to be an apostle. He thus becomes The Apostle, E.F.

            The Apostle decides to set off to Bayou Butte to find another pastor, as he feels led by God to do so. He declares his divine appointment to the new Pastor, and with his help, he begins building a new church, much like the one he worshiped and preached in as a child. He has memories of his childhood church and his devotion. I think that this reminds him how he was and how he should be again.

The people of Bayou Butte seem to accept him and his authority. E.F. exudes charisma, which often makes people want to follow him. He is powerful, strong in conviction and in speech, which is very persuasive. He gets everything accomplished that he says God sent him to do, which gives credence to his appointment as an apostle. E.F. is also strong in might, which he shows when a racist man attempts to cause problems at the church. Instead of the people being offended by his act of fist fighting the man, they cheer him on. He later defends the property from this man and his bulldozer with the power of the bible he set on the ground, daring the man to move it. Instead, he gets the man to confess his faith and accept Jesus. It’s hard to resist a man with such might.

Eventually, E.F. cannot escape his past anymore. He confesses to the other Pastor of his sinful deed while Sammy listens closely. It is possible that Sammy loses faith in this moment, seeing this man who he thinks so much of as a sunning human, rather than an apostle sent by God. I think E.F. realizes that although he tried to be born again new, he cannot escape the law of the earth and that his end as the apostle E.F. is coming.

He truly does seem to work peace and love in the community, helping fix up an old church, helping ease some poverty in the area by giving children money for helping, bringing people to the faith, converting and accepting a previously racist and church-hating man, giving him retribution and peace. He also loving accepts Sammy and helps convert him even though he suspects that Sammy turned him in to the Police, providing forgiveness. I think that he is driven by his guilt and his love for God to do all these things. It seemed that throughout the movie, he did things to make himself look good or to make himself feel good. When he lost his first church, he goes and sings and dances with them and publicly donates money.  Perhaps though, he is again like Paul, and his conviction and need to evangelize comes from realizing how wrong he was before (Gal. 1:13).

In his last sermon, he accepts his fate and asks his church to forgive him and urges them to continue the church in love. It’s hard to know if the church has been set up to continue past his arrest, as the charismatic leader is now gone. If we compare him again to Paul, we can see it is possible, but the Christian movement was far larger than this little church. It seems as though he asks Sammy to take his place, when he gives him his bible. Maybe Sammy will take it on, acting on his guilt of having turned in E.F. or, Sonny.

I think that his experiences with the little church help E.F. realize that he must take responsibility for his sinful deed, which is why that although he feels his end coming, he does not run again. He stays, for God, for the people, for the church, and for himself. I think that it is this act that may allow the church to continue, the fact that although he may have lied to the community by now disclosing his past, they love him and they see him take responsibility, take up his cross and bear it, no matter what it means for himself. In this way they can perhaps relate him to Jesus or to martyrs of old, including Paul, and forgive him of his evil deeds in light of his good, as he is a God fearing, God loving man like the seven year old child of his youth.

               

Written for my Birth of Christianity class on 2/19/12