Some of you have asked me what I thought about the new film, The Passion of the Christ, so I wanted to use this venue to share my reactions with you.

I must say that even before I went, I was very skeptical. Frankly, I do not like “Bible movies”. I remember those epics from the fifties and sixties that used to come out whenever some director or another thought it time to take a whack at the Holy Writ. That appearances in such movies often seemed to end the careers of those who made them always seemed just punishment. Most of them were awful. Especially if the makers chose to script them in Elizabethan English. The music for many of them were just horrible. There was not a single unemployed violinist in Hollywood when King of Kings was produced.

But it is not just aesthetics which cause me to object to film versions of the Bible. I think that filming the Bible is mixing two unmixable genres of storytelling. The Passions are essentially liturgical stories. They do not arise from some writer sitting down and trying to come up with a coherent, entertaining, edifying story. They arise from the liturgy of the Church, which is where they were born. We have the Passions and, indeed, all of the Gospels, because of what people were reading at the Eucharist in the early Church. The earliest liturgical scholars tell us that the Bible was born at Mass.

And that is important. The Bible was meant to be preached upon. The readings from scripture are proclaimed and then, according to ancient practice, the preacher reflects upon them. The preacher teaches their content, he or she explains their context and adds additional historical or theological information. And most of all, the preacher applies them to the world today. So, whenever a thoughtful preacher comes to that issue about who it was who actually killed Jesus of Nazareth, that preacher will take care to point out ways in which religious and political leaders still push God away, reject Jesus, and, metaphorically, kill him. Such a thoughtful preacher will carefully point out that it was the Jews and the Romans who put Jesus to death. And that they represent all religious leaders and all political leaders, indeed all humanity, which rejects the Lord. The homiletic endeavor is an updating, explaining project which clarifies and applies what the scriptures say.

When the Bible is put onto celluloid, no such proximate critique and explication is possible. Film is usually more of an individual experience. Post-screening critiques at Starbucks to the contrary notwithstanding, most films end with The End. And that’s the problem. There is no easily accessible manner to continue the discussion.

So, I had my reservations. I am not a Mel Gibson fan. One of the few films I remember was one, a chief feature of which was a character sitting upon an exploding toilet, not a high moment in American film, in my view. True, there was The Patriot, which shows fascinating character development and offers a blistering critique of pacifism, but nonetheless, I did not consider myself a Gibson fan.

This movie, on the other hand, opened up a whole array of new thoughts. Did I like it? Yes, I think I did. I think it was challenging, somewhat consistent with scripture, visually interesting, horribly violent, and yet extremely moving.

The Passion of the Christ is like the Church’s liturgy The Stations of the Cross. It is essentially a catena of scriptural stories woven together from all four Gospels, and containing some non scriptural references. For example, the story of St. Veronica wiping the face of Jesus does not appear in any of the Gospels, but it is a traditional part of the Stations of the Cross, and it appears in this story as well. Similarly, the story of the two thieves crucified with Jesus, commonly but nonscripturally referred to as Gesmas and Dismas, is reinterpreted to picture Gesmas’ eyes being gouged out by a symbolic black crow. In the Gospels, Simon the Cyrene only makes a brief appearance, but this film brings him into extended dialogue with Jesus and with the authorities. He becomes an advocate for Jesus

There are scriptural distortions and inaccuracies. For example, there really is no scriptural reason to assume that Mary Magdalene was actually the woman taken in adultery. And yet, the writers of the picture present these two women as if they were one. Interestingly enough, this scriptural error is used to make what I believe to be the overarching theme of the film, which is the love of God through Jesus Christ. What we might cite is John’s gospel where the evangelist says “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” The suffering and death of Jesus is meant to illustrate the depth to which God would go in the matter of loving us human beings. And Mary Magdalene remembers the time Jesus saved her from the mob, remembers that as she sees him suffer. This is how much he loved her, she must be thinking. In terms of other inaccuracies, Caiphas, a carefully articulated character is pictured as urging Jesus to come down from the cross. He was not around when this happened.

There are some interesting images in the picture, what I call the film’s iconography. When Jesus carries the cross (and note there that unlike the common portrayals which show him just carrying the horizontal beam, in this picture he carries the whole cross) he almost seems to embrace it, making the point that he willingly took up his cross to suffer. We have in the prayer book a line about Jesus being “lifted high upon the cross” and in this film he is nailed to the cross and then lifted up, and the camera angle reinforces the upward sweep of movement. There is an interesting typological play between the Sermon on the Mount and the Hill of Golgotha, as the film does flash backs. Another flashback draws the parallel between the blood of Jesus which flows freely in the scenes of the scourging and the nailing and the words of Jesus at the last supper as he refers to the cup of his blood. Satan is pictured as a somewhat androgynous character, and there is a particularly disfigured child character in one of the crowd scenes who appears somewhat Satanic. I found this treatment of Satan a little odd and off-character.

Now to the question on everyone’s lips: Is this film anti-Semitic? Before I answer that, I must make at least a temporary disqualification. I think that really has to be answered by a Jew. I don’t know that as a Christian I can really know what will strike a Jew as being anti-Semitic. But I can say this: To me, the film was most definitely not anti-Semitic. Yes, the Jews are pictured as being a part of the plot to crucify Jesus. But the main thrust of the film is that it is humanity who pushed Jesus out of their lives and onto the cross. Caiphas is also pictured demanding a fair trial, and in the end, he seems to regret what has happened. Some Jews in the crowd are shocked and horrified by what happens. The whole of humanity, the whole sweep of human authority, both religious and civil is given responsibility for what happened. Pontius Pilate and Herod are pictured much more negatively, and it is the Roman soldiers who are really pictured as the most savage opponents of Jesus. There is plenty of blame to go around according to the Gospels, and in my view, at least, the film pretty much preserves the scriptural balance of responsibility. Christians must always, always assert that it is humanity that crucified Jesus, not just Jews, or Romans, or governors of small middle eastern principalities.

And the other question about the violence. Is it too violent? It most certainly is a savage, brutal, vivid and horribly extended portrayal of the death of the Lord. The scourging, for example, just seems to go on and on and on. I had some of the same reactions to the violence in the film that I had to those horrible pictures that used to appear in the papers about the slaughter by Pol Pot of his enemies in Cambodia, the ones which showed stacks and stacks of skulls glistening white symbols of Communist atrocity. I wanted to look away. But they told the truth about what happened in the late ‘seventies. And this picture’s violence shows how horrible it was to be scourged and crucified.

And the violence shows the full sweep of atrocity of which human beings are capable, and the desire of God to love us even through such awful deeds of savagery.

In summary, the violence spoke to me about how much God loved us. Loving human beings is a costly endeavor, and the violence of this film presents the invoice. No discounts, no markdowns, just the full sweep of our rejection of God. I kept asking myself where I would have been, had I been in the picture. Would I have been one of the religious leaders silent from the curse of cowardice? Would have been a soldier? Might I have been one of the passers by? What would I have done? How would I have felt. It was a painful question urged by a painful film.

In the end, literally, the most inadequate part of the film was the treatment of the resurrection. The Bible stories and the church’s theology teach that Jesus rose to life in a new body, which was not just his old body resuscitated. (Resuscitation is more what happened to Lazarus.) But the picture shows the body of Jesus wrapped in a shroud, gradually disappearing from beneath the folds of fabric, and the camera drawing back to a picture of Jesus in a better time, perfect skin tones, hair blown dry, and only the marks of the nails to indicate what had happened to him. This piece of cinematography is theologically inaccurate and also a little romantic. Whatever happened to Jesus in the tomb, he did not get his old body back.

My observation of the criticism of the film is that most of it comes from a lot of people who don’t know what scripture really says or what the church teaches. There are errors in the film and some odd choices of iconography, but on balance it is a fair treatment of one part of what we know as the paschal mystery of Christ. There is much more to be said, but what this film says it says with some skill and sensitivity. And it will hold you in its grasp until the very end. Do not plan to eat any popcorn.

Faithfully,

The Rev’d Lloyd Prator
Rector