The Grace of Steel Magnolias

Scripture — John 13:31-35 (NRSV)

At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Devotion

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

When I write these devotionals for you, I begin by selecting two scriptures (from the four available to me in the lectionary for any given Sunday) and then praying and contemplating over them for a bit before I sit down to write. Sometimes, when I begin to write, I have a fully fleshed out conception in my mind of how to approach both devotionals. Sometimes, what I was planning to write for the second (Friday) devotional takes a completely different turn in my mind while I’m composing the first (Thursday) devotional. That’s what happened this week.

You may remember that yesterday I talked about images of resurrection in Shakespeare and ended in the “Act” section (which I usually use as a guide to focused prayer) by asking you to watch the one continuous shot that ends the 1993 movie version of Much Ado About Nothing. The camera pans along with reveling wedding guests through the entire estate where the movie takes place and then slowly moves higher and higher, showing the whole celebration, until it finally lifts up to display the entire horizon. Afterwards, I kept thinking, “There’s another movie where that happens.” And then I realized, “It’s Steel Magnolias.”

Steel Magnolias, which was based on a 1987 play and came out as a movie in 1989, is about the friendship between six women in small-town Louisiana and how it is tested by tragedy. The play takes place entirely within the beauty salon owned by one of the women, Truvy, but the movie expands to show scenes and characters only referred to in the stage version.

The main plot of Steel Magnolias follows Shelby Eatenton, a young woman with Type 1 diabetes, who is getting married, and her desire to have children despite the fact that her medical condition makes this dangerous. Paralleling this is the story of Annelle Dupuy, a young beautician who comes to town after being abandoned by her common-law husband and begins working in the salon. Annelle eventually has a religious conversion and (legally) marries bartender Sammy DeSoto, whom she met at Shelby’s wedding. Shelby gives birth to a son, but dies when he is around a year old from medical complications. Annelle becomes pregnant and announces her decision to name the baby Shelby, whatever the gender.

In the final scene, M’Lynn, Shelby’s mother, is helping her grandson find eggs at the town Easter egg hunt; the other four surviving “magnolias” are also present, as is Sammy, dressed as the Easter Bunny. Just as M’Lynn locates her temporarily lost grandson, Annelle goes into labor and is loaded into Truvy’s jeep. Then Sammy is located and put on the back of the motorcycle—still in the Easter Bunny suit—and the motorcycle follows the jeep across the city park. And then, just as at the end of Much Ado, we have one long shot of several minutes as the camera backs up further, showing us the entire celebration and then, as the credits roll, tracing the jeep and the Easter Bunny as they disappear into the distance across a bridge, finally rising to show us the entire horizon.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

At this point, with the Sixth Sunday of Easter approaching and Ascension Day just around the corner, we may have almost forgotten that we are in Eastertide and what we are celebrating. With the exception of Annelle’s story, Christianity is more implicit than explicit in the world of Steel Magnolias, just as it’s largely implicit in Much Ado. But it’s been my experience that God is frequently glorified in places where you would least expect that to happen.

And I can’t watch this movie—especially that final scene, so bound up in themes of both death and resurrection—and not think of God’s glory shining through the sacrificial, unconditional (and yes, sometimes snarky) love that these six women ultimately show to each other and to the other people in their lives. Even shining through an Easter Bunny on a motorcycle, speeding off into the sunrise away from death and toward rebirth.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: The Importance of Workplace Relationships (John 14-17).