WandaVision and the Jesus Ethic

In Marvel’s recent hit television show, WandaVision, each episode is based upon a classic sitcom moving through the decades, beginning with a 1950’s Dick Van Dyke Show inspired episode and finishing with a 2010’s Modern Family homage.

The show creators made the inspired decision to hire Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (the team behind Frozen’s incredible music) to write a different theme song for each episode. Each theme song is unique and pays tribute to the classic sitcom episode sought to emulate. Despite the differences between each song, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez manage to incorporate a musical theme into every episode song. Check out this fun YouTube video to see how they did it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIS8P6plRvM

When I watched the video, my eyes were opened to a whole new reality. I had not noticed the theme before but once I heard it, I heard it clearly and repeatedly. Now, I cannot not hear the theme in all of the songs. (By the way, the Episode 7 song is, in my opinion, the most fun. Beware, though, that song is a spoiler for the earlier episodes.)

The teachings of Jesus also have a recurring theme to them. It is not explicit and is presented in different styles, but it is always there. And once you hear it, you’ll never be able to unhear it. The theme throughout Jesus’ teachings is the ethic of self-sacrifice. Over and again Jesus calls his followers to give up their own good for the sake of others.

The most famous collection of Jesus’ ethical teachings is the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a master class on the radical and upside down nature of Kingdom ethics. Jesus’ teaching covers a vast array of topics from personal behavior to social systems and practices. Every teaching is a different genre of “sitcom”, but the theme of self-sacrifice remains.

Jesus invites his followers to surrender their anger, their lustful fantasies, their desire to get even, their hatred of enemies, their desire to be well thought of by others, access to food, their earthly treasures, their anxiety, their judgmentalism, their self-sufficiency, and their entitlement. Jesus turns ethics upside down and declares the way down is actually the way up. He’s not saying, “Do different good things,” though. He is teaching that we need to sacrifice the things we often hold on to in order to please God and love others.

Once you see this theme of self-sacrifice in Jesus’ teachings, you will not be able to unsee it. It is everywhere and that makes sense. Jesus is calling us, like his original disciples, to follow him. Jesus went to the poor, the outcast, the leper. Then he went to the cross, the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.

Jesus makes the connection between following him and self sacrifice as clear as day in Matthew 12:24-25:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

Self-sacrifice for the good of others is, simply out, the cross in its ethical form. And the cross is the recurring theme of the Gospel.