I saw the movie, Elvis, and was surprised. It was as much about his manager, Tom Parker, as it was about Elvis. In retrospect, I think that was good, maybe a lesson. Without it being the centerpiece, the story of insecurity and self-centered greed was portrayed in Colonel Parker as he used Elvis unmercifully.
But the Elvis story was told. I’m still reflecting on that story. Thousands from around the world visit out city every year as a part of their love and memory of this singer. Monday night, August 15, these fans had a Candlelight Vigil to mark his death 45 years ago.
A word of Friedrich Nietzsche has been stirring in my mind since the movie. This is Nietzsche’s word: “The essential thing in heaven and earth is…that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; thereby, results, and is always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”
What a powerful word picture of what was missing from Elvis’ life: A long obedience in the same direction.
I have connected that word picture also with Jesus. It was the last week of his life, and the Cross is looming on the horizon. He knows his days are numbered. He prays that he might be spared this terrible ordeal. But he closed his prayer, “Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done!”
Get that picture clearly in mind. The very story, even the way the story is told, makes it absolutely clear where the battle center lays. It lays in Jesus alone. So, he withdraws from his disciples. The battle and its outcome depend on him alone.
Back to Elvis. During his lifetime, when he was almost omnipresent in the media, an outstanding Christian leader labeled him “an object lesson in the wages of sin.” That’s not the person I have heard a lot about here in Memphis. My favorite story is from a friend, a person who went to Parchman, Mississippi every Tuesday to teach inmates in the Mississippi State Prison to read, and in the process shared the Gospel. When it was getting dangerous for her to do that each week because of the condition of her “old car,” Elvis, learning about her ministry and her car, gave her the money to buy a new one.
Back to my story of Jesus. He had gone a long way in the same direction. Now he is praying as he struggled with what he sensed was ahead. What a sight! Only a few days before He had come riding down the same Mount of Olives in royal procession rightly acclaimed as the King. Now, the King is kneeling! And he is praying, “Not my will, thine be done.”
Elvis was named “The King of Rock and Roll. Early in the movie the case is made that it was in worship in the black community that Elvis had an experience that obviously empowered him to be himself and sing the way he did. What might life have gone like, amidst the fame and fortune, if “the King” had kept kneeling, keeping alive that experience in the black church that had launched him on his way?