Sunday Matinee #60 Heat
Pacino. de Niro. Together. With you!
John 2:13-22 | Revised Common Lectionary | EnterTheBible.org
Third Sunday in Lent | 03.03.2024
Context: While the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke see Jesus enter Jerusalem for Passover toward their final chapters, this happens near the opening of the Gospel of John. At the Temple in Jerusalem, which was the center of culture and religion for the Jewish people, Jesus drove some vendors out of the area, turning over the tables of money changers and saying they make God’s house a marketplace.
17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The crowd then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The crowd then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body.
Heat | 1995
IMDb | Letterboxd | RRMC
Context: Neil McCauley (Robert de Niro) is one smooth thief. He and his crew have had some major scores lately, but a tough cop Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is getting closer to catching them red handed. They both do what they do best. One night while tailing McCauley, Hanna has had enough. He pulls him over and invites him out for coffee. Here, we get an exchange between two veterans of their craft (thief and cop, but also de Niro and Pacino in their first-ever shared screen performance) telling the other the way that things are going to go down.
Hanna looks to McCauley, his eyes wandering a bit.
Vincent Hanna: You know, we are sitting here, you and I, like a couple of regular fellas. You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do. And now that we've been face to face, if I'm there and I gotta put you away, I won't like it. But I tell you, if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're gonna turn into a widow… [Hanna gives McCauley a hard stare.] Brother… you are going down.
McCauley’s eyes wander. He nods, then gives Hanna a hard stare right back.
Neil McCauley: There is a flip side to that coin. What if you do got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? Cause no matter what, you will not get in my way. We've been face to face, yeah. But I will not hesitate. Not for a second.
Vincent Hanna: Maybe that’s the way it will be. Or, who knows?
Neil McCauley: Or maybe we’ll never see each other again.
Commentary:
The story from the Gospel of John shows Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem while he’s in town for Passover. When he sees people selling animals for sacrifice and others changing money, he drives them out of the temple. He overturns the tables and tosses their wares and says this house of God is not to be made a marketplace. It’s not often that I think it’s best to define something by what it is not but there are two booby traps here that you don’t want to spring, friends, so let’s talk about them briefly.
First, this passage has been used to justify violence in the name of Christianity. This passage does not validate your violence. Not your oppressing others, not your bullying, not your domestic violence, none of it. Nice try. So if you filmed yourself in Target throwing their display of facemasks to the floor a few years back because “Freedom” and/or you did it in the name of Jesus, that is not a good look. It’s gross. Don’t spring this trap.
Second, one can come off as anti-Semitic and a bit self-righteous when talking about how wrong Temple life was or Jesus set out to obliterate the Jewish religion of that time and place because the oppression and persecution of our Jewish siblings has been perennial and continues in our nation today with the rise of a new wave of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. It’s sin. Don’t spring this trap, either.
If that’s what it isn’t, then what is it? This story is prophetic. Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus isn’t destroying Judaism. What Jesus calls out in his prophetic act in this story is not malpractice of a religion but a system of the religion that needs change. It’s not the house, it’s the pipes. The marketplace is integral to how Temple life happens, that’s the system. Jesus says we can do better than that; we need a new system. And he is part of the cost.
Money changers are serving a function of the system here. If you’re going to the Temple for worship, you’ll be making a sacrificial offering, likely a bird or small animal or cake. You’re likely not going to bring that bird all the way with you from Galilee, so you’re going to buy one when you get to the city. But you’re not going to use Roman coin for that, you have to convert it to a currency acceptable for the purposes of a sacrificial offering. To do that, you likely pay a transaction fee in a very busy, very loud, very distracting market. You make the currency exchange, you make your offering purchase, you go to Temple to worship, make your sacrifice, back to market. If that seems excessive, two things: first, again, careful not to come off as anti-Semitic and a bit self-righteous. And two, if their system for their context seems excessive or ridiculous to you, try explaining to them your steps of signing up for a new utilities service provider or filling out your FAFSA or selecting a new cell phone plan. Now who’s excessive and ridiculous?!
Jesus is calling out a broken system that has moved the people’s focus from worshiping God to the market. Sacrifice via the marketplace became a way to cut corners and the cost was a sense of urgency for practicing faith and care for priorities. We turn to our own way of life and ask, do we cut corners or lack urgency? What are the systems that broke on our watch? And how is God through Jesus whipping up urgency to not fly by the seat of our pants but take the wheel and steer?
Detective Hanna and master thief McCauley speak prophecy to one another over coffee in Heat. Both have laid out their philosophy on life and on their life’s work. “Brother, you are going down.” and “I will not hesitate.” are both statements of truth. They mean it. The cost of their line of work is they’re consistently in a position to put someone else down (or away, to give Hanna the benefit of the doubt). That’s the system they work in and while it feels excessive or broken, neither is in a place to change it.
The closest they get is by offering a glimpse of hope. “Maybe that’s the way it will be,” Hanna says. Then he adds a hopeful, albeit perhaps rhetorical, question, “Or, who knows?” McCauley responds, “Or maybe we’ll never see each other again.” Heat is an action-packed caper movie that already defies many tropes of the genre, so it’s not entirely out of the question that these two wouldn’t see each other again. Or that they both could walk away. And yet, they both speak a prophetic truth to one another, and I think deep down they know one of them is right.
This scene is beloved in film aficionado circles (lots of zeal around this scene, to use one of today’s scripture vocab words). Pacino and de Niro finally appeared on the silver screen together. It’s happen since, but never to such an effect. Their formidable presence as actors precede them, and they both bring a certain gravitas to the words. It’s you or me. It’s me or you. We believe not just the characters, but these two actors. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how it ends. I’ve heard many people ask since then, did it have to go that way? What if this, what if that? The thing about prophecy fulfilled is that it’s seldom easy, but it’s always the right thing.
What has someone told you about what will happen in the future that turned out to be true? Were you prepared? What do you see coming from a mile away? What did you do to help make it happen, or at least be ready for it?
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