Chapter 2 – Messiah
SEEKING A SAVIOR IN SERENITY VALLEY
Those are our angels, coming to blow the Alliance to the hot place!
-Mal
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is the LORD’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
-Psalm 118:22-23
The religious imagery and dialogue in the first scene of the episode “Serenity” is unmistakable. It is meant to be unmistakable. We are supposed to begin this story in the midst of war and thoughts of God together. If we watch the episodes in their correct order, then this is the first taste of Malcolm Reynolds we get. Action and spirituality mixed, and it mixes rather well.
In one part of the scene, we see Mal kiss his crucifix right before heading out of the trench and into the battle. The gesture tells us a great deal about his faith. Perhaps some would say he is engaging in mere superstition, but even then Mal is placing his faith in something beyond his control. God or superstition, he is a man who believes in something.
We have clues later that suggest it is more than just superstition. While he speaks freely of God in this scene, he recoils at the word after the battle is over. He objects when Book offers to pray over a meal in that same episode. He speaks of God in derogatory terms as well, even referring (rather funnily, if you ask me) to God at one point as “your dear and fluffy lord.”
No, it is not that a simple superstition has betrayed him, one to be replaced as a baseball player will replace his underwear when a winning streak is broken. Rather, it is very clear that Mal had a faith in God, a faith that expected God to come down and win the battle for them. When Mal is talking with Bendis in that bunker, he says, “Listen to that. Those are our angels, coming to blow the Alliance to the hot place!” Now, he is talking about a physical cavalry in this case – a group of resistance ships, but in a way he is really expecting angels. He is expecting divine intervention so he can win.
He is counting on God to do the impossible.
But that intervention does not come. Or if it does come, it comes in favor of the Alliance, since the Battle of Serenity Valley is lost, and the tide of war turns decisively against the Resistance. The feeling of being betrayed by God that Mal carries the rest of the series is founded in God’s failure to act (at least visibly) on that day.
The event hardens Mal’s heart against God.
This scene is terribly appropriate to this study, first because it shows us why Mal is where he is religiously, but also because this scene directly mirrors an important biblical story: the story of the first coming of Christ. Here, in this very first scene, a biblical parallel is formed, and one that will start Firefly upon its own religious journey.
A Stumbling Block
In the first century, the Jewish people were anxiously awaiting their promised Messiah. The Messiah would be the Son of God, a ruler that would liberate Israel forever. The Old Testament is just littered with references and prophesies for the Christ, and they were ready for that Christ to come.
That area (as was a great deal of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East) was controlled by the Romans. The Roman Empire had been spreading like a wildfire for some time, and there seemed to be no end to their expansion. The Jews, once again, as happened so often in their history, were being ruled by foreigners.
They wanted liberation, but Rome was too powerful for any conventional rebellion. No, they needed God’s help on this one. They needed that promised Messiah.
And then Jesus came – a simple carpenter who preached to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Here was the Messiah come at last, except that He wasn’t a warrior-king at all. They wanted someone who would take control, kick the Romans out, and make Israel a great nation again. But instead, Jesus told them that they had misunderstood the Scriptures. He had not come to kill, but to die (Matthew 17:22-23, for example). He did not come to build His kingdom right there, because His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). He had not come to save the land of Israel, but to save their souls.
This is not what the people wanted to hear.
That is a reaction we can easily understand. They were waiting for someone to come and kick the Romans out, to restore the land that God had given them, the land they had lost in disobedience. But Jesus had other plans. He would rule over the earth, but not until the Second Coming. In this first one, He had no intention of destroying Rome at all. He had no intention in freeing the Jews from an oppressive regime, but to free them from sin.
So instead of their Messiah coming and saying: “Fear not, I am going to push back all those sinners that are oppressing you,” He was saying: “You are all sinners, and you need to repent. You’ll still be persecuted here on earth, but you’ll be with Me in Heaven. Worry about yourselves before trying to deal with the Romans. Cleanse the land by cleansing first yourselves.”
Big difference. And they killed Him for it.
Indeed, they crucified Him for the crime of blasphemy. But the supposed blasphemy was claiming to be the Christ when He wasn’t at all what they wanted the Christ to be.
The death of Christ then became another huge stumbling block for the Jewish people. The Gentiles were rejecting Christ quite a bit too, but the reason they were rejecting Him was because the whole thing sounded silly to them. A Messiah? Yeah, right. God on earth, walking around like a normal guy? Sure, sure. But the Jews were ready for a Messiah. That part of it didn’t sound silly to them at all. The part that sounded silly was that the Messiah died.
Paul explains it to us:
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
-1 Corinthians 1:21-24
There were a lot of people whose hearts were opened to this message, and they found meaning even in seeming foolishness, but to others, their own natures and desires were interfering. For the Jews, they had been looking so long for a Savior to rescue them from foreign control that a dying God had no meaning. For the Gentiles, they were so wrapped up in philosophies and ideas that the death of Jesus seemed ridiculous. They were both missing it because of their own dogmas.
Which should all sound very familiar to us, since we had just left Mal back at Serenity Valley a little while ago. If we look at both stories in more vague terms, we will see the similarities.
An empire (either the Romans or the Alliance) is coming, just tearing up all the land around itself and claiming it. Whether a people want to come or not is not really important. They will be taken in. There is a resistance, but the empire is too strong. So the people being oppressed (either Jews or the Resistance) is looking for a savior to come and rescue them. But that savior does not come in the way they expected, so the savior is rejected because He does not fit in with the desires of the people (the Jews or Mal specifically) for conquest and victory.
The defeat at Serenity Valley is now a stumbling block for Mal just as Calvary is a stumbling block for the Jewish people. Jesus did not come in to save the day like either Mal or the Jews believed He would.
It is the same story.
Football and Marriage
When I was in junior high school, I played football. Even though it was a public school, we used to pray before every game. I’m not sure why we thought God would be on our side when the other team was praying at that exact moment as well, but that’s how we did things.
I never took it as a personal insult from God when we lost. I never shook my fists at the heavens in anger.
Not with football, anyway.
Much later in life, I was engaged to a young woman, and things were not really going very well. We were fighting a lot about a lot of different things. It looked like we would break up. At the time, I was not a Christian, but did believe in God.
In that case, I really was angry at God. I really did shake my fist at heaven and curse Him. I couldn’t believe that He would give me love only to take it away again. Things were not going my way, and I was about to reject God over it.
But when we do this, are we not just trying to make God into our own image rather than trying to make ourselves into His? It doesn’t work that way though. God is not our personal vending machine, paid for in prayer. When something means that much to us, though, we have a tendency to make it a litmus test for God. Do this thing or I won’t follow anymore.
Is it any more silly to pray for victory before a football game?
Football did not mean enough to me to reject God just because we lost, but this girl was, and I literally cursed God that day. But in the pain I reached out, and my curses turned to pleadings. I surrendered on that day, and the second I did, a Christian friend called and talked me through everything. We found solutions to those impossible problems, and I accepted Christ as Lord on that day.
I did marry the girl, and she divorced me not too many years later. Once again, things did not work out the way I wanted them to. God didn’t pull all the strings to make my life perfect and happy. But He is still pulling the strings for my good. By that time, I came to better recognize what God was doing, and I did not curse Him that time.
You see, in that first time I thought I would lose her, all I could see was that day, that hour. But God wanted me for Himself, and He used the situation to drive me to Him. And things didn’t work in the marriage, and I found myself leaning upon Him even more for comfort. And now I am closer to Christ as I have ever been and thankful for those terrible moments that forged me a little more.
I did not get what I wanted at the time, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it now that I see the picture a little more clearly.
Turning back to Serenity Valley, the last shot we get there is Mal looking over the battlefield in disbelief. He stood there, his mouth agape, unbelieving in more than one way. In his mind, God didn’t come through for him. The Savior didn’t come.
Or maybe He was there the whole time, but just not in the way Mal wanted Him to be.
| 
Paul Lytle
