Discover a cult of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Issy-les-Moulineaux on the importance of "being ready"
Discover in replay on Présence Protestante (France 2) a cult of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Issy-les-Moulineaux, led by Pastor Joël Mikaélian. A church, which for 90 years, has participated in the Christian presence in the city alongside the other Churches and wants to be a witness to the love of Christ for all. The sermon focuses on the Gospel of Matthew and invites us to meditate on the importance of “being ready”.
“And they suspected nothing. »
Genesis 37.39
Everyone knows that secondary characters in warlike films are doomed to certain death. Over the decades, this principle has even become a narrative convention, a kind of game intended to capture the attention of informed spectators and consolidate fan bases.
This principle is part of the codes of what in cinema is called “genre”. It's a way of creating, via the story, a connection between the narrator and the spectator.
A staging trick often spices up these "deaths in the service of the genre", whether in the register of drama, or that of parody...
Close your eyes and imagine… We are in the middle of a fight. An intense shooting scene is underway. The invisible enemy lurks. Secondary Character (that's his name) throws himself into battle with loud cries and rage. Suddenly, time seems suspended. A heavy silence settles. Would the enemy, the filthy beast be slain? Our nerves are raw. The hero is always on the lookout, his senses sharpened. Secondary Character (it's still his name) releases his attention for a brief moment. He says a rather strong word, sighs, lights a cigarette, considers that victory is within his reach.
Misfortune ! He doesn't know it yet… We do. In the second that follows: a bullet whistles or the filthy beast emerges from who knows where. Succession of illegible, and therefore frightening, “cut plans”. The shot from Secondary Character is lying flat.
This Secondary Characters "dead in combat of the genre", warns the evangelist Matthew, it is us.
We who believe we are writing history. We who, in the middle of the fight, cry victory and who fall right after. We the cicadas, of course, but we the ants too. It's us when we believe we can defeat the filthy beast by our self-sufficient survivalist bunkers far from the world, not our grapeshots of imprecations, by our logorrhea of verses learned by heart, by our impregnable fortresses of certainties, of ultimately human solutions!
No one knows the day and the hour when the master will return. "Nil", that is to say: nobody.
We have to behave like heroes, always on the lookout, not like Secondary Characters. Otherwise, with our cries and our alarms, we are in fact only ringing the alarm bells of the bandwagon. While the virus is nesting in our life, in us, we spread it to all the wagons,: "the end is coming", "war is at our doorstep", "vaccines, drought, rain, winds, the legions are there”.
"Get ready"! However, when the alarm bell is sounded, the locomotive often stops in the open countryside, within reach of hyenas in brown shirts and wolves with dark thoughts, far from help.
Noah did not wait for cloudbursts to build the ark, he obeyed God. Being ready is not ringing the alarm bell. To be ready is to expect a flood at any moment and to hold on, whether the sky is clear or overcast.
God made us a promise, he set up in heaven the seal of his covenant with us. The flood only happened once, it won't happen again. To be ready, therefore, is not to remain alone in a survivalist bunker drawing at the slightest noise an irrelevant verse, to be ready is to expect God in my life, at all times, the lamp lit, full of oil.
Those who live through wars, poverty, famines, genocides know this. This is the message of Joël Mikaelian and the Armenian Evangelical Church of Issy-Les-Moulineaux (92): “to be ready is to live”.
A program directed by Damien Pirolli and produced by France.tv Studio for France Télévisions to discover in replay on Francetv until Sunday, December 4.
Christopher Zimmerlin, for Protestant Presence
