Sunday Matinee #70 The Dirty Dozen
Taking a time out to round out the roster.
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 | Revised Common Lectionary | EnterTheBible.org
Seventh Sunday of Easter | 05.12.2024
Context: In the gospels, Jesus was betrayed by one of his twelve named disciples, Judas Iscariot. After his resurrection, Jesus’s remaining eleven disciples determine they must bring their number back to twelve and set about deciding who will make them once again The Disciple Dozen.
The “they” in this passage, by the way, are:
Simon Peter
Andrew
James
John
Philip
Bartholomew or Nathanael
Thomas
Matthew or Levi
James the Less
Simon the Zealot or Simon the Canaanite
Thaddeus or Judas (No, a different Judas)
24 Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen 25 to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” 26 And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to the eleven apostles.
The Dirty Dozen | 1967
IMDb | Letterboxd | RRMC
Context: Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin) has been given an impossible task: turn twelve cold-blooded military prisoners into a deadly strike team to carry out a devastating mission against the Nazis. Reisman arrives at a military prison and after Sgt. Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) has the prisoners line up, Reisman looks them each in the eye, one by one, as Bowren reads the names and sentences of The Dirty Dozen.
Sgt. Bowren:
Franko, V.R. Death by hanging.
Vladek, M. Thirty years' hard labor.
Jefferson, R.T. Death by hanging.
Pinkley, V.L. Thirty years' imprisonment.
Gilpin, S. Thirty years' hard labor.
Posey, S. Death by hanging.
Wladislaw, T. Death by hanging.
Sawyer, S.K. Twenty years' hard labor.
Lever, R. Twenty years' imprisonment.
Bravos, T.R. Twenty years' hard labor.
Jiminez, P. Twenty years' hard labor.
Maggott, A.J. Death by hanging.
Commentary:
Have you ever done something literally because it was important on some minor formality level to get it done?
Make sure you get that second on the motion for the meeting. Pass the pepper with the salt so they stay together. Don’t let a sneeze pass without a “Bless you,” even to a stranger 50 feet away. You get the idea. I’m not saying any of those are bad ideas. I am saying the little things can seem like nothing, or they can be part of what adds up to the big things.
Take for example, this teeny, tiny moment of 3 verses in Acts of the Apostles when the 11 remaining apostles (formerly disciples before Jesus’s resurrection) select someone to become the new 12th apostle. The writer thought it important enough to devote 0.3% of the 1007 verses to denote this moment. And then… Matthias is never mentioned in the Bible again! If this moment was so important, why didn’t we see more of Matthias later? Why make a big deal if you’re not gonna make a big deal?!
Slow your roll.
It’s not just about the person Matthias, but what 12 represents. In that time and place, numbers were a huge deal. You know how most pop songs use rhyming lyrics these days? Back then and there, writers used numbers in a similar way. Culturally, 12 often meant perfection or completion or authority. You’ve got Jacob in the book of Genesis with 12 sons who go on to form the 12 tribes of Israel. You’ve got 12 minor prophets in the Old Testament. Jesus’s genealogy is divided into 3 sets of 12 generations in the Gospel of Matthew. At the age of 12, Jesus is teaching in the Temple and later as an adult, Jesus heals a woman who had hemorrhages for 12 years and a girl who is 12. There are a few more, but the point is this: 12 has a point. That can be invisible to our culture of here and now (I mean, don’t look at that clock on the wall…) and this is a reminder that context matters with not just the Bible but much of our modern life today.
I don’t think The Dirty Dozen shares any of the significance of 12 listed above. There is a story, perhaps a tad like a winding road to know exactly what is what, that E.M. Nathanson based his novel The Dirty Dozen, on the movie, The Secret Invasion, based on a true story of WWII US criminal paratroopers nicknamed “The Dirty Dozen.” Or, “The Filthy Thirteen,” as they didn’t take a lot of baths. Plus, the name sounds really cool.
Similar to how Acts takes a brief moment to add Matthias to the apostles’ roster, The Dirty Dozen takes 3 minutes or 2% of its 150-minute runtime to introduce the Major (Lee Marvin) to the men. Simultaneously, the men meet the Major, and we meet them all. We take in how they size one another up. Who’s chewing gum, who looks him in the eye, who smiles, who looks away. What we don’t know is who can be trusted. And what they don’t know yet is they’re going to have to figure that out together if the mission is going to work.
I’m glad the filmmakers took a brief moment to literally introduce us to all 14 major characters. With so many characters in the story, taking this time out at the start of the story lets each of the dozen register with us. As the movie unfolds, we’ll see some are more prominent to the story than others consistently, or that some have specific spotlight moments (very similar to the disciples in the gospels and later as apostles in Acts). Still, I’m not sure I can imagine what it would be like to sit down to watch The Dirty Dozen and not have this moment. Perhaps it’s a lesson that some minor formalities are worth it.
In either case, these men come to trust each other. The apostles much more than the Dozen, that’s for sure, but I’m left wondering about our own rosters. If you were on a team of 11 other people, so you can all support one another and do good in the name of something bigger than yourselves, who are the other 11 people? Who has God put in your corner? What does a team look like? How do you add to the team? Who added you?