Jesse Lusko, a pastor in Oregon, recently recounted the time when he shared the Gospel with the famous actor Joaquin Phoenix. Lusko explained how the conversation with the “Joker” actor played a part in helping him forgive the man that formerly abused him.
Lukso, who leads the Counterculture Church in Portland, recounted the experience during a recent sermon. The pastor referenced Phoenix’s role as the Joker in the hit movie as an important example of how to properly forgive those who have trespassed against us.
The church leader explained that he met Phoenix, who happened to be his dad’s favorite actor, the day before his father’s funeral. “The day before my dad’s funeral, I met Joaquin Phoenix, and it was literally the day before my dad’s funeral. My dad had just died. I had worked at this restaurant group previously, and the day before the funeral, we wanted the kids to go swimming, and I go to the coffee shop across the street, and my old boss sees me and goes, Jesse, I’m so sad about your dad. By the way, you realize that guy you were standing with waiting for the coffee shop to open is Joaquin Phoenix. And I go, Whoa, that’s crazy. that’s my dad’s favorite actor,” he said.
Lusko explained that after he shared the details about his father’s passing, he and Phoenix bonded over both losing family members to cancer. Along with telling the actor of his late father’s love of Phoenix’s career, the pastor also got the opportunity to share the story of his dad’s “coming to Christ moment.”
“And I also shared with him my dad’s story of coming to Christ, that my dad had experimented with tons of drugs, that he’d hitchhiked around the United States, that his mom had died of brain cancer that his stepdad was murdered by his business partner to tell a true story. My dad had come to Christ and Joaquin was blown away by that story,” he added.
Lusko and Phoenix later took a picture together, where the actor expressed how much he was moved by his dad’s story. However, Lusko tied the story to a lesson about forgiving those who have seriously harmed you, pointing out that vengeance is not the answer.
“But here’s the thing, when you allow bitterness to fester in your heart, it twists you, and you don’t become like that man. You become like Arthur Fleck. You become like the Joker. It twists you and it sours you, and you start to feel entitled to things with people, and you start, you go into other relationships, and it and it taints those relationships, and that person who stole something from your past starts to steal something from your present and from your future, and it brings this, this this horrible anger and this fury and this fuming rage like Jonah, and it sours all of your relationships,” he said.
He continued, “But as I began to understand the gospel, and as I began to understand Jesus, he began to heal me of that, and he began to bring forgiveness into my life and bring joy and peace into my life. And here’s what I think is really significant, my dad told me I was like a superhero. The day before his funeral, I got to share the gospel with the Joker. And then at his funeral, I stood on stage with 1000s of people watching, and I said the name of my abuser, and I said, I forgive you.”
Featured image credit: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joaquin_Phoenix-64908.jpg