Giant Rabbits Always Run in Slow Motion. 6.5.2025

    The Night of the Lepus is to ridiculous movies as Everest is to mountains—the pinnacle. You may not have heard about this cinematic gem, and I don’t know why it popped into my head today, but it was the height of the 60’s 70’s magic that was the movie experience. 

    The “plot” (to be gracious) involved a military-industrial accident that resulted in your basic rabbit growing to giant sizes which was also compounded by them becoming vicious. Of course, the hijinks of nefarious horror ensue. In the end, the rabbits are vanquished, and order is restored. It is your typical gigantism/horror movie—think Godzilla if he was furry and a bit more “reasonably” sized. 

    One thing I noticed, virtually every time I have screened this “howler” (fear or laughter—who’s to know?) is that every time the rabbits attack, every single time--they run in slow motion! This effect was probably driven by 

1. Technology. It was many, many years before primitive CGI, Pixar-driven animation, and early forms of AI. 

2. Budget. This was clearly a movie made on the cheap. 

3. Subject. How does one actually make a bunny, a furry, cute bunny—even an enlarged bunny look menacing? One tack, taken by the Monty Python group in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was basic absurdity. It would appear that the Night of Lepus people were, for some reason, desperately serious. 

    So, it would appear, at least in the universe of Night of the Lepus, that giant, mutated, blood-thirsty rabbits, always run in slow motion. No explanation, certainly no justification, no un-examined plot point. The rabbits simply, always run in slow motion. One assumes that the director thought that this made the rabbits more menacing. Enlarged rabbits, enormous teeth, exploding suspense say to the audience “Hey, these rabbits are so seriously menacing that you can’t even get the full effect unless they are also always running in slow motion.” 

    At this point you might be wondering exactly what, if anything this has to do with preaching. Let me explain. Preaching professionals have been taught for some time that illustration makes the sermon. So much is this the case that many preachers spend much of their preaching preparation time looking for, honing, or incorporating illustrative material into their messages. It is not uncommon for a preacher to discover a good illustration and then, getting the clever’s, as we all sometimes do, decide to develop an entire message around that illustration. The final part of the process is embarking on a stroll through Holy Writ looking for some scripture, any scripture for which the clever illustration might be appropriate. 

    This is to go about things in entirely the wrong fashion. It is only when we fully understand the text, its context and background, its setting and situation that we can appropriately illustrate the truth that is exposed by detailed exegesis. Speaking from experience, if I start with a “good illustration” I probably have not done and will not do appropriate work on the text. So, the first application of the “Giant rabbits always running in slow motion” observation is that there really is no substitute for doing the work in proper order. Illustrations are helpful and appropriate so long as they do not distract. Illustrations that are “Giant rabbits always running in slow motion” are no more than a distraction. 

    The second application comes from the earlier list that examines the director’s justification for this GRARiSM (Giant Rabbits Always Run in Slow Motion) phenomenon. Some things are technically, or technologically undoable. We presently have great tools for studying scripture and constructing compelling sermons. However, not all ideas work and sometimes it’s because there is no way to actually articulate the idea. When working to fashion a sermon this is the sort of material that should wind up on the cutting-room floor. Some things in the Bible cannot be upgraded, undersold, or even understood. When we attempt this move in a sermon all that we are really doing is calling attention to the fact that GRARiSM.

    In budgetary terms it is not money that is at stake but time. How much time should we spend on illustration is generally a matter of feel rather than fact, but a good rule of thumb is that an applicable illustration will legitimize itself. They will appear appropriate and clear in an obvious, self-evident fashion. In short, they need to illustrate.  If you have to invest time, tweak it, shift your understanding of the text, or restructure the whole sermon to make it fit, then you are wasting unnecessary time. It will always look like a YouTube video of the 1972 Olympics of big, scary rabbits running around, baring their teeth--in slow motion. 

    And subject matter. We tend to be rather flexible in determining how well a given illustration fits a Biblical text. Unfortunately, there are times that the connection is only made by the preacher, in the study. The worst possible scenario is when the only thing people remember about the sermon is the dang GRARiSM! If the illustration is the only thing that sticks, the point has been missed. Some things are what they are. You can’t make a horror film when your subject is rabbits! It does not matter how big they get, how much fake blood is flung about the set, or how menacingly they run around in slow motion—they will always be cute, cuddly, bunnies. 

    Ever since the prophetic work of Neil Postman we have been aware that visual communication (TV, Cinema or Video) and subsequent social media (YouTube, Facebook-X-TikTok) is primarily a medium suited to entertainment. It was during (and despite) this age of evolving media scrutiny that the focus on illustration over Biblical content really emerged as a driving force in preaching. The thoughtful Biblical preacher will always reconcile his work to the role of communicating the essential message of the complete work of Christ. While we are communicators, we are not entertainers. We should never allow our method(s) of presentation to debase the central purpose of our preaching. Consequently, some illustrations, clever as they may be, will never work. They will seem as pretentious and silly as giant rabbits, even if they always self-consciously run in slow motion.