Chris Seay is pastor of Ecclesia, an innovative Houston church recognized for exploring spiritual questions through art, music, and film. (You can visit their web site at www.ecclesiahouston.org.) Seay is author of the recently-published book The Gospel Reloaded: Exploring Spirituality and Faith in The Matrix. Previously he wrote The Gospel According to Tony Soprano. Preaching editor Michael Duduit recently visited with Chris and discussed his use of popular culture in communicating the gospel.

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Preaching: For the benefit of readers who haven’t seen either film, describe the world of The Matrix.

Seay: The best way I can describe it is how overwhelmed I was the first time I saw it. As a pastor I don’t often go to a film on Easter Sunday. It’s always an exhausting day. But I kept hearing about this film over the weekend that it released with these deep spiritual themes. So at the ten-o-clock showing on Easter after a long day I went and saw it.

I had no idea that I was getting ready to see the Easter story told a totally different way. But it very much was the Easter story, the story of Christ.

The Wachowskis (directors of the films) aren’t Christians but in this action/adventure film they have realized they can make a stink if they engage us with important issues about reality and philosophy and about faith, it’s full of it. So if millions of people are going to talk about faith and the Christ story I want to talk with them about it.

It begins in this place that is questioning reality — that at some point we’ve come to a place where man has — like God — given birth to creation, this creation of artificial intelligence. Technology has truly run amuck. There are a lot of technologists and scientists that would say we’re heading in that direction, that technology really runs our culture. As the Matrix was described, at the dawn of this new era man marvels at his wonder and in doing so this creation turned and then betrayed him. We get the fall of man, the fall of creation from its creator. Man and machine are at war, and to subdue man the Matrix creates a world, a virtual world that mankind lives in. The premise of the film is humanity trying to escape from it and there is only one, the one, that can destroy the enemy and bring them back into the real world. Neo is the one, the Christ figure if you will.

Preaching: Talk about that character, which many people have described as a messianic figure.

Seay: Keanu Reeves is an unlikely messiah to say the very least, but the first person that addresses him refers to him as “you’re my savior, you’re my own personal Jesus Christ.” Throughout the film it becomes clear that there is one that they’re searching for. Morpheus is played by Lawrence Fishbourne. In one of the first interviews he did after the film was released they asked him about his character. He said, “I’m John the Baptist.” He was clearly the man searching for the messiah and pointing the way to the messiah and he points towards Neo, Keanu’s character.