Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

[VAGUE DISCLAIMER: I should stipulate that I was relying on memory for the Bible quotes and references mentioned below, and also that, as a life-long Protestant, my view of the cross is naturally somewhat slanted in favor of the 'empty,' post-Resurrection cross, rather than the suffering Christ on the crucifix -- suffering which American Protestants, at least, DO tend to want to overlook and 'fast-forward' through in order to get to the 'good stuff,' the "Jesus and Me" encounters of John 20:1-20 ("...And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own. And the joys we share As we tarry there, None other has ever known") or Luke 24:13-35, etc.. With all those stipulations in mind, here are my initial thoughts.]

Having finally seen the much-discussed movie yesterday afternoon, sitting with a dozen or so friends and acquaintances, I'm still not sure what I think of it. Was it incredibly difficult to sit through? You bet! And not because it was cheesy or badly done (in terms of film-making and acting, etc.), but because the suffering and savagery -- on the part of some of the Roman soldiers, SOME of the Jewish authorities, and some of the crowds -- were all too real and unrelenting. There was a LOT of disturbing imagery and raw emotion (as well as ripped flesh and dripping blood) up there, and some pretty weird stuff now and then (weird stuff that's not actually in the Bible, I mean).

Ultimately, I have to agree with some of the Bible scholars who have pointed out that this is Mel Gibson's very PERSONAL and devotional version of the 12 hours leading up to Jesus' death on the cross (plus a bit of the immediate aftermath and a quick peek at what is presumably the very moment of his physical resurrection on Easter Sunday). It's Mel's very own vision, interpreting the Scriptures as filtered through and greatly expanded upon by his own religious tradition. For me, this film had something of the feeling of a liturgical drama, a stylized ritual re-enactment for purely devotional purposes -- even though I think Mel INTENDED the film to feel super-authentic and realistic, and even though I think some churches have mistaken the film for a pedagogical tool or evangelism opportunity. Let me try to explain what I mean.

I. "Paschal Vigilance"

Though I've never participated in the ritual known as the "Stations of the Cross", I remember enough from my seminary readings or 'shop-talk' with Catholic colleagues to recognize that tradition as the probable source for much of the "Via Dolorosa" part of the film (the number of times and locations where Jesus is supposed to have fallen, for instance, as he attempted to carry the crossbar portion of his cross to Golgotha -- that's not mentioned in any of the four canonical Gospels, beyond saying that because Jesus was too weak to carry his own cross, the Roman soldiers compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry it for him).

The closest I've ever come to participating in a service like the "Stations of the Cross" was back in seminary, when every year on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) we would hold a "Paschal Vigil" lasting 6 or 7 hours, from "the service of light" beginning about 6:30 PM in the Chapel, through the Creation and Fall, the Matriarchs and Patriarchs, the Exodus (which involved leaving the Chapel building and beginning our progress around the rest of the campus), the Hebrew prophets, the birth of Christ, his life and teachings, the crucifixion and resurrection, Pentecost/the birth of the Church, on through the Reformation, etc., and concluding with a service of baptism and/or renewal of baptism on the Chapel steps in the early hours of Easter Sunday, before concluding with the "Eschatological Banquet" back inside the Chapel (a communion service and much music with brass accompaniment, amid readings from Revelation and all three seminary choirs performing "Worthy is the Lamb" and the final "Amen" from Handel's "Messiah").

I do have SOME experience, therefore, with liturgical drama and with worship that becomes a test of endurance almost as much as it is an opportunity for devotion or for spiritual renewal.

So what resemblance do I see between presenting the Creation in liturgical dance (the part of God being danced by a young woman who looked alot like Brooke Shields, to music by Gustav Mahler) and the other highly stylized and/or artistic reinterpretations of Biblical and church history materials that a large group of earnest and multitalented seminarians could come up with, on the one hand, and Mr. Gibson's oh-so-realistic-that-you-even-have-to-read-subtitles-and-feel-the-urge-to-duck-the-gushing-blood film?

Well, they're both very earnest and creative interpretations of the story. They are devotional in character, rather than pedagogical or scientific or historical, or whatever else. Although the ferocious beating Jesus starts taking in the film from the moment he's arrested and put in chains in the Garden of Gethsemane DID make me wonder (in a way that the Biblical text and my own historical studies had not done before) about the role that massive internal injuries may have played in hastening Jesus' death on the cross (since the whole point of crucifixion was that it was supposed to take a couple of days to die, but it only took a few hours to finish Jesus off, and they didn't even have to break his legs to hasten the asphyxiation), this movie is NOT in any sense an authentic "you-are-there" depiction of an historical event, any more than it's a precise re-telling of any or all of the Gospel accounts of those last hours.

If historical authenticity or scriptural veracity were the goal, the film would not show us Jesus being forced to carry an entire cross, rather than just the crossbar like the two thieves who are to be crucified with him. It would not suggest that Mary Magdalene (yes, according to the credits, the woman keeping Jesus' mother company through all those dark hours and mourning right along with her WAS supposed to be Mary Magdalene) was the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus saved from a stoning by saying that the one who was without sin should cast the first stone at her.

[Although, in a way I was perversely grateful for Gibson's "artistic choice" to reinforce the unfounded rumors with which later church leaders attempted to discredit Magdalene's influence as a major disciple and apostle by suggesting that she had once been a prostitute or adulteress -- even though the all-male Gospel writers never so much as hinted at anything remotely like that in her reputation or history -- since getting REALLY ANGRY about that piece of disinformation, which I know my undergraduate students will be citing to me as Biblical fact about four weeks from now, actually allowed me to emotionally disconnect from the story on the screen for 20 minutes, a much-needed respite during which I wasn't identifying with Jesus' sufferings in the Praetorium and a good part of the journey to Golgotha. They got me back again with the bit about Jesus' mother wanting to go to her fallen son as she'd done when he was a little boy and had fallen and hurt himself, to pick him up and say, "It's all right. I'm here. I'm here." That's not biblical either, but it was REALLY effective and convincing.]

If we were going for accuracy here, we'd have been hearing the actors on screen speaking Koine Greek and Aramaic, rather than Latin and Aramaic (since Greek was the international language of the Roman Empire at that time, the lingua franca that people in the various farflung provinces could learn as a second language and use to communicate with people from anywhere else in the empire -- the reason why the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, with just a few Aramaic words and quotes tossed in here and there, and the Bible wouldn't be translated into Latin as the 'vulgar tongue' of the people of that time, until many centuries later).

We wouldn't see Jesus being beaten with rods (a punishment Paul describes receiving a couple of times, and now I have a lot more sympathy for him) BEFORE he receives the scourging that Pilate had ordered, or having his arms dislocated in order to stretch to fit some pre-existing nail holes on the cross. And so on.

If you want to really get into the (possible/probable) physical details of Jesus' death on the cross, I suggest looking up an article that appeared in the Journal of the American Medication Association back in 1986 (a friend who went to the movie with me yesterday gave me a reprint of this article afterwards -- it may not be the latest word on crucifixion from the medical/scientific community, since my friend specializes in cancer research, rather than medical archaeology or the like, but it seems quite a useful and intriguing article):

... The scourging produced deep stripelike lacerations and appreciable blood loss, and it probably set the stage for hypovolemic shock, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus was too weakened to carry the crossbar (patibulum) to Golgotha. At the site of the crucifixion, his wrists were nailed to the patibulum and, after the patibulum was lifted onto the upright post (stipes), his feet were nailed to the stipes. The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respirations. Accordingly, death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. ... ["On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ", by William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, JAMA, March 21, 1986--vol. 255, no. 11, p. 1455]

Wherever medical or historical or even scriptural evidence conflicted with the pictures and images that have become familiar to many through centuries of Christian art and iconography and liturgical practice, our Mel has gone with the old familiar, unhesitatingly sacrificing what might be more historically accurate for what LOOKS right to church-going eyes. Or so it seems to me.

II. "Can You Top This?"

While there were bits that I quite liked (Simon of Cyrene's sparse but compelling character development, for instance, or Mary the mother of Christ's flashbacks to earlier, happier memories of Jesus and the whole way that actress playing Mary managed to convey incredible depth and strength and feeling with a minimum of lines and screen time), and I'm not sorry to have seen the film, what most strikes me in retrospect is that Gibson seems to have consistently gone BEYOND the (already more than sufficient, from my perspective) suffering and violence in the Biblical text and made it 'more, bigger, louder, deeper.'

The depiction of Judas' guilt/remorse/insanity/demonic-persecution went way beyond what I thought necessary (and certainly way beyond the simple "And Judas went out and hanged himself" which is pretty much all the Bible gives us, apart from Judas' attempt to give the 30 pieces of silver back). Having a crow start pecking on the thief who was berating Jesus on the cross (the devil tormenting one of his own? or was that meant to be some punishment from God, who was apparently ignoring that whole "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" prayer that Jesus had made a few moments before? or was Mel's version of the Gospel too heavily influenced by repeated viewing of the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's "The Stand"?) seemed way over the top.

Most telling of all seemed to me to be what Mel did with the rending of the curtain in the Temple, that which sealed off the Holy of Holies from the people at large, which Matthew tells us happened at the moment that Jesus died. Rather than just the temple curtain being torn asunder, the whole TEMPLE is apparently rent in two by an earthquake, as well. Instead of a theological affirmation of the change in the divine-human relationship which had occurred as a result of Christ's sacrifice for us (a closer relationship, mediated through Christ himself rather than through the once-a-year sacrifice made by the High Priest -- as the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us over and over again), the rending of the entire temple just feels like "God's payback" dished out to Caiaphas and his cronies among the priests to let them know how totally they had screwed up, or like "God says, 'You were WRONG! Ha, ha, ha!'"

It just felt vindictive, rather than symbolic or inspiring. And, when all is said and done, I'm afraid that's my general feeling about all that the film has done to 'gild the lily' of Christ's suffering and of the terror and violence surrounding it, to make it broader and bigger and harsher -- somehow it strikes me as MEAN, rather than meaningful.

III. "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back."

Does this film encourage blaming of the Jews? Not especially.

The high priest Caiaphas and those who are most loyal to him don't come across as sympathetic, really, in any way (if you didn't KNOW the back-story, why Jesus truly seemed dangerous to them, someone who threatened to destroy everything they held most sacred and destroy the soul of his own people in the process, you wouldn't necessarily be able to figure that out from the film).

Pilate is perhaps more likable in his portrayal. But Pilate's attempt to wash his hands of responsibility for the death of Jesus ends up reminding me of nothing so much as the "I was only following orders" defence offered up by war criminals and institutional hatchet-men the world around.

The theme of the great evil done by even well-intentioned people when their institutions are threatened seemed lost, buried under images of individual sadists among the Romans and the Jews who seemed to be PERSONALLY responsible for all the suffering and abuse being heaped upon this "man of sorrows."

As others have noted before me, the fact that this film has people talking (and mostly respectfully) to one another about matters of theology and faith and good and evil and personal and corporate responsibility is a GOOD THING. If it makes us question our assumptions and re-examine what we really know or really believe, as opposed to what we sort of thought we knew or believed but didn't give it much thought, that's great.

For every good thing or positive effect coming out of this film, I can see a possible negative that might off-set it (disinformation about what's actually in the Scriptures, etc.), but it pretty much breaks even in the end, for me. And all that "two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back," etc. is good exercise, if nothing else. I, for one, always need more exercise.

IV. "If You're Waiting for the DVD Version ..."

Unlike the friend whose review I quoted in an earlier post, my substitute recommendation (what you might want to consider reading or watching instead of "The Passion of the Christ," if seeing it on the big screen all at one sitting seems like more of an ordeal than your observation of Lent requires) wouldn't be Monty Python's "Life of Brian" (though that IS a good film, and has provided me with many a sermon illustration over the years). Instead, I'd recommend a couple of other narratives, both more overtly fictional (and therefore more truthful, I tend to think) than Gibson's "Passion" narrative.

For inspirational/devotional purposes, I recommend "Ben-Hur" ("A Tale of the Christ"), which not only has a much better chariot race sequence than 'Star Wars: Episode I' but also gives a more well-rounded picture of who Jesus was and what he did, by only showing Jesus Christ off-screen or as reflected (directly or indirectly) in the faces and lives of ordinary people, many of whom are confronting the vast institutional evil of the Roman Empire as well as the individual evils of human greed and hatred.

For a truly thought-provoking reinterpretation and re-examination of the role of suffering in preparing a human being to be the doorway through which the divine can enter the world and begin to put right the wrongs that twist even our greatest strengths and virtues into vices over time, see Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy novel THE CURSE OF CHALION. In fact, I'm planning to start re-reading that book tonight.

I'm too tired right now to be able to tell if any of this journal entry is coherent or helpful, so I'll just leave it for now. Good night to all.