Word in the Hand

Superman - Man of Steel For longer than any normal pregnancy the birth of the new Man of Steel film has been awaited with baited breath and the fevent prayer that it would be the worthy successor in the legacy that is Superman.  The fact that the film was received with a round of applause, and I can't remember the last film I was at when that happened, says it all. It seems that the film community has found its saviour. Superman as saviour is, like most superheroes, what he is all about. He is part of the original band of superheroes including Batman and Wonderwoman who entered the world through the comic imagination in a response to the tensions of the early 20th Century. The world had survived one World War and was fast tracking towards another when the blue, red and yellow streak of light first flashed across the storyboard. What the western world psyche needed was someone who could handle the 'bad guy' on a planetary scale. In a time of miltary escalation, th...

Gospel Matthew 16:13-20 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi he put this question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say he is John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he said ‘who do you say I am?’ Then Simon Peter spoke up, ‘You are the Christ,’ he said, ‘the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, ‘Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.’ Then he gave the disciples strict orders not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. Strange to think that just out of thin...