With Pathos and Humor, The Skeleton Twins Evokes Water as Both Life and Death

I thought of how Nicodemus and Jesus were discussing new life and Jesus said:

“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”–John 3:7 NIV

Bible interpreters have long wrestled with the mysterious language found in this statement. They have suggested that the “water” Jesus mentions may be a reference to baptism or simply to the “water” that comes at birth. I think it is most likely a reference to the latter; Jesus is contrasting spiritual birth with physical birth. He is saying physical birth brings life, but it’s not enough. There can still be death inside us even while we are physically alive. We can be outwardly alive but inwardly drowning.

Later, Paul wrote:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.–Romans 6:3-4

In baptism, water, which has been the place where you’ve been drowning in sin and brokenness becomes the place where you get rescued and resuscitated by Jesus.

Baptism is something that happens all at once and daily. In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther wrote that baptism

signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Lutherans would argue that the baptism is a one-time act, but that we return to it daily for strength and sustenance. New life means living into this new identity that God gives us. Water becomes the site of the death of the old, but the site of the resurrection of the new. This is a daily death and resurrection. It is both something that happens to us by a power outside ourselves and something that we choose to live into as a result of that act.

And just like Maggie and Milo find a fellowship of the broken in this film, a fellowship of the broken is what the Church should be. Sadly, the Church often does not live into this reality. It becomes a place of judgment and pride, instead of a place of vulnerability and brokenness. It becomes a place where we forget that Jesus’s rescue of each of us came precisely through the place where He was most broken: the cross. Instead, we clean ourselves up with our Sunday Christian face and fail to share our real lives with one another, coming to drown deeper and deeper in our private despair and falseness. We fail to realize that it is precisely through our brokenness that we are most equipped to help heal fellow broken people. It is when we realize that we are in this together and all in need of grace and new life that we become people who use the waters of baptism to bring new life instead of pushing drowning people deeper into their despair.

This film ends with a less than perfectly tidy resolution (it reminded me of one of my favorite film endings: The Descendants). There is no “happily ever after”; there is, rather, peace in the moment. This is real. We are not left thinking Maggie and Milo will never have problems again. Rather, we are left thinking that they now have one another to walk through those trials with. They have owned up to their real selves through confession to one another. They have found new life and even though each day they will probably struggle to continue in it, they have found new identity as family.

Even though this is a secular film, I cannot help but think that all these things are a worthy goals for the Church too: togetherness in vulnerability and mutual pursuit of hope. Mutual embrace of truth and confession. Love in the midst of imperfection.

Life.

Where have you seen images of death and life in film?

Do you ever find yourself drowning in self-destructive behaviors or habits that you hate? Have you ever found vulnerability and community to bring new life? How so?

Photo source: IMDB.com

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