Onward, John 14 and What It Means to See God

WARNING: If you have not yet seen Onward SPOILERS AHEAD!

In John 14:1-14, the Gospel passage from this past Sunday, we are given a glimpse into Jesus’ last conversation with his small company of disciples. He tells them, “If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

One of the disciples, Philip, doesn’t quite get what Jesus is trying to say. He isn’t sure who this father is that Jesus has been talking about. So he asks, “Lord, can you explain to us who the father is and that will be enough for us.”

It’s hard to know whether Jesus is hurt by this question or whether he is exasperated by Philip’s cluelessness. Maybe it’s a little of both. In any event, Jesus answers, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?”

What Jesus asks Philip reminded me of a question that Carissa asked me a few weeks ago after we had finished watching the Pixar movie Onward. The movie tells the story of a son who desperately wants to see his father. The son in question is a teenage elf named Ian Lightfoot (voiced by Tom Holland of Spiderman fame), who never had a chance to meet his father because he died of a terrible illness just before he was born.

We are introduced to Ian on his sixteenth birthday. We quickly learn that he is struggling as an awkward teen, trying to figure out who he is without the loving guidance of his father. At school he is a bit of a loner, unsure of himself and timid. During a chance encounter with one of his dad’s old college classmates, he learns that his dad was charismatic, gregarious and most of all bold. Ian wants to be all those things, but he feels lost without someone there to help him find his way.

Later on that day, Ian’s mom gives him a special gift. It is a gift that his dad, before he died, had prepared for Ian to open when he turned 16. It consisted of a staff, a gem and a spell. Together these promise to bring back Mr. Lightfoot for one whole day. So Ian, with some encouragement, nervously casts the spell and…it works! Well, sort of. It literally only works half way. Before the upper half of his father’s body is conjured the gem explodes, breaking the power of the spell so that all that is brought back are the legs. Everything from the waist up is missing, waiting to be formed.

And so Ian and his older brother Barley (voiced by Chris Pratt, Holland’s Marvel buddy) begin a grand and glorious quest to find another gem that will allow them to complete the magic and bring back the other half of their father. As they set out with great expectation, Ian writes a list of things he wants to do with his dad:

• Play catch
• Take a walk
• Heart to heart
• Laugh together
• Driving lesson
• Share my life with him

The whole story points towards the moment when Ian is able to complete the spell and finally meet his dad. At the same time, there is a ticking clock. The spell is only good for 24 hours. Even if they have the gem in hand, once the allotted time passes, Ian and Barley won’t be able to bring their dad back.

Will the brother be able to finish the quest in time to see their father?

Here comes the spoiler: Time runs out and Ian doesn’t get to see his dad. So far as it goes, the brothers do finally secure the gem, but there is only a brief window in which the father will be resurrected and Ian decides that Barley should be the one to talk to him (you’ll have to watch the movie to find out why).

You expect the whole film that Ian will eventually get to see his dad. But no, that’s not how it ends. And this would have been a monumental let down had it not been for the epiphany Ian has, which happens at the lowest point of the film — when all seemed to be lost. The time for the spell to work had almost completely run out. They couldn’t find the gem and had no where else to look. Ian had just harshly blamed Barley for screwing it all up, at which point he ends up going off by himself to sit with his dad on a ledge overlooking the ocean. He had given up all hope and all he could think of doing was to spend whatever time he had left with his father, even if it was with just his legs.

He opens up his notebook and looks at his list of things he wished he could do with his dad. Turns out he won’t be able to do any of them. Won’t be able to play catch with dad. Won’t be able to take a walk with dad. Won’t be able to have a heart to heart with dad. But as he continues down the list, something begins to dawn on him. We begin to see flashbacks of Ian with Barley. We are taken back to a hilarious moment in the film when Barley had been shrunk down to a 6-inch version of himself by a spell gone awry. And we see Barley giving Ian a crash course on how to drive on the freeway as they are escaping a hive of overly-belligerent fairies.

Driving lesson. Check.

Slowly Ian begins to realize something. As he reviews his list and looks back at who his brother has been for him, not just that day but throughout his whole life, he realizes: Barley has always been for him the father he never had. It is a powerful scene. What began as a story about one son wishing desperately to see his father turns out to really be a story about a son who has always known the father because of another son who has made the father known to him.

What Carissa asked me when the credits rolled was, “Wait, so Ian never gets to see his dad?”

Well, yes and no.

Ian doesn’t get to see his father in the way we expect, but of course, he does see his father in another way, a way we didn’t expect — that is, through his older brother, Barley. Barley acts as a kind of sacrament in the movie. A sacrament can be understood as a visible sign of an invisible grace. The invisible grace, in this case, is the father. The visible sign is Barley. Barley makes visible the father. In the Christian faith, all sacraments echo the Incarnation, in which the invisible Father is made known through the visible Son, the person of Christ. And so Barley becomes a kind of Christ figure. Not perfectly but in kind. A son who makes known his father, pointing us toward the true Son who makes known to us the truth of the Father.

This is precisely why Jesus asks Philip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?”

Onward thus paints for us an illuminating picture of what it means for us to “see” God. It is not about a literal seeing of God in the physical, but neither is it a vague, sentimental seeing that is entirely abstract. It is a figurative seeing of God in the tangible experiences we have with those who embody the character of God through the work of the Spirit within them. In the trinitarian language we find in John’s Gospel, Jesus, the Son, makes known the Father through his earthly ministry. But when his earthly ministry comes to an end, he promises the Spirit who will live in and among those who believe in him. Through this Spirit the life of those who have put their faith in the Son are enabled to become “icons” of the Father. Like Barley they make known the Father. And we like Ian, if we have eyes to see, can come to the realization that we too have come to known the Father in a very real way.

As Christians, there are times when we play the part of Barley making known God in and through our lives (perhaps often unbeknownst to us). At other times we are like Ian, realizing that we have come to know God through the faithful witness of others (those we might call the communion of saints). The scene of Ian sitting on a ledge overlooking the ocean is a helpful reminder to us of the way this knowledge often comes to us. It provides a way of understanding what it means to say that we know God. That faith, belief, trust in God requires these kinds of “small” epiphanies — quiet moments of realization where the various experiences of our lives come together in such a way that we see something we had previously missed.

This is what I think Jesus means when he tells Philip, “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”

We often think of evidence in a forensic sense. Facts that can be verified through scientific methods of investigation. But the evidence I think Jesus alludes to is more like the “evidence” that enables Ian to see the truth about his brother. It is not evidence that can be placed under a microscope and probed to establish some kind of objective truth. It is not that kind of truth. But this doesn’t mean it is completely subjective. It is a truth that makes sense in a very robust way — in a way that shows truth to be personal, by revealing the truth about a person. This after all, is the truth that Jesus says he is when he says that he is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the truth about God, the Son who makes known the true character of the Father.

To know this truth doesn’t require some extraordinary experience. It happens in very much the same way it happens for Ian — sitting there in that ordinary moment overlooking the sea with his longings and disappointments, the realization simply comes to him. And so it is with the life of faith. All that is needed is some space to reflect and there what finds us is that which we have somehow too easily overlooked. God has been there all along, if we only had eyes to see.