Sunday, July 21, 2024
Jer 23:1-6 | Eph 2:13-18 | Mk 6:30-34
“…for they were like sheep without a shepherd” – Matthew 9:36
To tell us how Jesus has an effect on our lives, our Scriptures often use the image of the shepherd. It is an image intended to reveal how he ministers to our insecurity, to our failing confidence as we have to deal with injustice in the world within which we dwell. In the 21st century bereft of a pastoral setting, we might use another image to suggest the same thing. We might better use the image of the “consummate grownup,” the truly adult person. And, because I tend to think in film imagery, I will introduce you to T. J. Ballantyne, in the film The Old Oak, who fleshes out that imagery in a social parable created by the filmmaker, Ken Loach.
Global movements of people continue to increase year on year, with the Middle East and North Africa region a major source of international migration and internal displacement. This is the topic of The Old Oak. It focuses on the reaction of the residents of an impoverished mining town to the arrival of a small group of Syrian refugees, mostly women and children, fresh from escaping untold horrors from their homeland.
It opens with T.J. and Laura unloading a coach party of Syrian refugees moving into a row of terraced houses in the former mining town, much to the annoyance of the locals. “It’s not fair,” says one. “Why didn’t you tell us they were coming?” yells another. A young immigrant and aspiring photographer, Yara, arriving with her mother, brothers and sisters, documents the protest with her beloved black and white camera, a precious gift from her father who is among the disappeared in Syria. It gets smashed in a scuffle with a most vicious Rocco who demands that the picture taken of him be erased. (We see her black and white photographs at the opening of the film. They give the film a sense of reality.)
The local pub licensee, T.J. Ballantyne comes to her aid, picks up the camera Rocco has broken, and offers to fix it. He is not one for big gestures. A rather sad man, he is all about quiet kindness.
He is not a savior. We find out later that he could use a bit of saving himself. He has already made his mistakes and lost his family, so perhaps he is a bit wiser now. Or at least he has become gentler, calmer, caring for his “daft little dog,” Marra, that has literally saved him when he was suicidal.
This does not endear him to the regulars at his pub, The Old Oak, who see the refugees as an insult to their communities and an assault on their values. They are reacting to 40 years of decline. The mines have gone, house prices have plummeted, schools have closed, families are going without food, and jobs are in scarce supply. (“A whole way of life, just gone forever.”) Racists are made, or as T.J. puts it more eloquently, “We all look for a scapegoat when life goes [wrong].”
T. J. and family friend Laura try to help get the families settled. None of it is easy. There is a dustup between Yara and the mother of a young girl, Linda, who is weak from not eating enough. The mother later reconciles with Yara and becomes a driving force bringing the rival factions to eventually come together. She will later enlist Yara to photograph her friends in the town.
T.J. has not been able to fix Yara’s camera, but instead invites her into the pub’s back room where he shows her a couple of old cameras he will trade in to have hers fixed. Left in the room, Yara contemplates the black and white pictures memorializing the solidarity of the miners in the heyday of the town and pub, They came together — at least for a while — in that back room, to support one another by sharing food together.
The center of the film becomes that back room of The Old Oak. The regulars at the pub resent T.J.’s familiarity with Yara and her family. Their difference with him becomes a line in the sand. The pub regulars want to hold a town meeting to vent their anger over the immigrant influx. They have no place to do it, and ask T.J. if he can open the pub’s back room. It has been a locked-up and a dilapidated wreck for decades. T.J. says “no,” that the place is unsafe. But, he is lying. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to host an anti-immigrant meeting. And his old mates know it. They can read him. In their eyes, he has abandoned them.
A different use for the back room of The Old Oak is being born. The church hall is gone, but the death of Marra will lead to its reopening as a place to host community feeding for the locals and Syrians together. Marra is a miner’s term indicating “one who will standby you, who will have your back.” When T.J. visits the graveyard where his parents are buried, Marra runs off. Frantically, T.J. calls out for her and chases after her only to come upon her after she has been violently killed by the vicious dogs of young locals.
Distraught at home after he has buried Marra at the seashore where the little dog had saved his life, T.J. is visited by Yara and her mother. They come bringing him food. They come to mourn with him. There is no shame in love. They understand loss. There is no need for words, only food. They will not leave until he eats. The next day, Laura and Yara find T.J. cleaning the kitchen in the back room of The Old Oak. The traumatized people — those in need, new and old alike — are to be brought together by feeding them. “This is about solidarity, not charity,” T.J. explains.
The everyday reality undergirding the Eucharistic ritual celebrated by Christians makes itself felt in that back room of The Old Oak. It is a ritual remembering not a victory but a saving death. (“We proclaim the death of the Lord…”) Saviors are not immune to the brutality of the world — a world that bares its teeth in the killing of the little dog Marra, the bullying of a Syrian youngster, and the videos seen on the refugees’ laptops of the devastation ravaging Syria.
The Christian ritual remembrance of a saving death takes place when bread is broken and the cup of sorrow is shared. It is a thankful event enlivened by the memory of gracious moments brought to consciousness when stories from writings held sacred are heard by those gathered together. What is brought about is a communion of persons, the Body of Christ.
In the back room of The Old Oak a pot-luck sharing brings townspeople and Syrians together, people who began as strangers. (“People who eat together stick together.”) Their communion is strengthened, not from stories heard from sacred writings, but by the joy and pleasure they take in the black and white pictures taken by Yara. These black and white photos call back into their lives the moments of grace and hope which broke through in their struggles together. Yara sees through her camera. It spies on the moments of grace and hope happening in people who might have remained otherwise oblivious to their presence.
The back room of The Old Oak, where solidarity was fed, will be sabotaged by the regulars. But, before that happens, T.J. and Yara go to pick up food handouts at the Cathedral. Yara is deeply affected as she wanders through its cavernous space, especially drawn to the presence of the choir. As she sits in a pew with T.J she tells him: “I have a friend who calls hope obscene. Maybe she’s right.” But, having heard the choir, she continues: “It makes me want to hope again.” T.J. answers her: “It takes faith to hope.” Yara’s response is simple: “If I stop hoping, my heart will stop beating.”
The back room of The Old Oak, where solidarity was fed, is, in fact, destroyed by the regulars, but solidarity itself is not. One more death reveals its presence. When T. J. and Laura become aware of the death of Yara’s father in Syria, they bring food to her house to mourn with the family. Soon, a constant stream of people, townspeople and Syrians, makes it way to the house bringing mementos and flowers. Charlie, the principal culprit in the destruction of the back room of The Old Oak is among the throng come to pay respect to the family. The film cuts to black and after a time in the dark, we, who are its audience, are given a picture of an enormous parade of humans in solidarity carrying the banner: strength, solidarity, resistance.
Born in 1933, Maryknoll Father John E. Keegan is professor emeritus of the Maryknoll School of Theology. He also taught at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, where in addition he served as chaplain at University Hospital. Father Keegan, who holds graduate degrees in philosophy, film and international relations, has authored numerous books and articles.
To read other Scripture reflections published by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, click here.
Featured image: Displaced Syrian families, who fled violence after the Turkish offensive against Syria, sit in a bus on their way to refugee camps in 2019. (CNS photo/Ari Jalal, Reuters)
