Rev.ived

Bit late in the day for a post on Rev but, as I've been commenting on other people's posts, here's one bringing my thoughts together.

Firstly, I don’t think, as some have suggested, that Adam Smallbone was portrayed as either a fanatic or a wimp. That has often been the stock portrayal of clergy on TV but this Rev certainly wasn't held up for ridicule. Instead much of the comedy in the series came from moments when Smallbone's experience and expectations of ministry were at odds and, in my experience at least, that seemed an authentic reflection on an aspect of being in ministry.

While some of the storylines weren't as sharply observed as could have been the case (Episode 2 in particular), Smallbone throughout has been a nuanced character oscillating humanly between faith and doubt, integrity and failure, and for me that aspect of his portrayal has been the secret to the success of the series.

For example, his “I'm tired of having to tell people what they want to hear all the time” in the final episode was something that I would guess most of us who are ordained think at some stage in our ministry. In the context of the story told in that final episode, this comment was then deliberately undercut by the writers in the denouement to the episode where Smallbone said exactly what his dying parishioner wanted and needed to hear and this was restorative both for the parishioner and himself.

When the Last Rites are given to someone who has requested them, the person receiving is being given what they want, expect and need. This doesn't mean, though, that there is a simple continuity between this action and Smallbone's earlier statement. What Smallbone surely learnt to acknowledge, as his vocation was reaffirmed by administering the Last Rites, was that there are situations where it absolutely the right thing to tell people what they want to hear (this being one of them) and that to do so is to be a channel for God's grace. Prior to this point he only thought negatively of telling people what they want to hear and condemned himself for doing so.

What he learnt to acknowledge (and this was, I think, often the resolution of many of the episodes) was that his expectations of what ministry is and can be have to continually be nuanced because grace can be received and shared in wholly unexpected ways. The weakness of the man became a means of grace, which I think is absolutely right both theologically and in terms of comedic resolution in this series.

Finally, in the context of the series, his statement was not a fully accurate description of what we actually saw Smallbone doing and saying. Much of the comedy in the series came from a number of significant moments in the series where he does not tell people what they want to hear.

The fact that he was portrayed as doing both - showing a lack of backbone and acting with integrity - and the reality that we saw both cut both ways at different times (i.e. sometimes grace came through weakness and sometimes through strength of character) is part of what leads me to say that he is a nuanced character oscillating humanly between faith and doubt, integrity and failure.

The prayers in each episode acted as key turning points in each narrative. They are one of the plot devices which mean that Smallbone could not be a social worker or government bureaucrat and the comedy remain wholly in place. Prayer was portrayed as reorienting him to his vocation and triggering the moments in the narratives when he either grew in faith or became a channel for grace.

It is in the nature of a sitcom that the central character be fallible. Were this not so, from where would the comedy derive? The success of this series was that we identified with Smallbone’s weaknesses and that these same weaknesses were revealed as vehicles for grace or growth.

More interesting discussion of the series can be found here, here, here, here, here, ad infinitum.


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Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day.