Lent II, Year C

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:22-35

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EVEN BEFORE I was ordained - and given the length of today's sermon you'll think I was ordained in the Presbyterian Church, I learned that one of the perks of being a priest was the occasional gratuity of alcohol. I didn't ever expect free tickets to the movies, especially since I so rarely enter a cinema. Last Wednesday morning, the American Jewish Committee, however, treated clergy to Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. The American Jewish Committee did not invite Christian ministers to spark our evangelistic zeal, but to promote "understanding, compassion, and tolerance" and "inter-religious harmony." I went, not because I thought it would be a high quality cultural event, but because it is an important cultural event that will influence many hearts and minds about Jesus and the gospel.

Following the screening, there was a panel discussion. I hung in there for about three to five minutes to hear a few comments. A Lutheran minister remarked that it is impossible to depict the Passion in this medium. I probably should've jumped up and asked him to clarify. Since the first century, human beings have depicted the Passion in a wide variety of mediums. That's what we're doing this morning; that's what the mass does: depicts the Passion - and better than anything else. The mass is the seminal and most beautiful accomplishment of Western civilisation. Nothing shows us better what Jesus did for us. The mass allows us to be part of his life, his love, his purpose.

The celebration of the mass involves almost all of our arts. Last Tuesday, I spoke to a group of high school students from S. Anselm's Abbey School here in this church. We talked about music, literature, choreography, drama, opera, painting, wood work, metal work, stone carving, textiles, architecture - the whole gamut of human ability that goes into glorifying God and telling the story of the Passion. Throughout the ages, human beings have used all of the arts to tell the Passion. All artistic mediums have limits and can't adequately depict the fullness and richness of the Passion and the Gospel, but all may glorify God. Film is as legitimate a medium to tell the Passion as any other medium, and probably more so because the cinema so enthralls our age. For our world, what could be more effective than film? What could be better for mission and evangelism? I can't think of anything. If nothing else, every Christian could be grateful to Gibson for putting Jesus and his saving work on the public agenda, for getting people to think about it.

Despite my wishes and despite my desire for respectability, I am gradually moving toward concluding that some, and only just some, of the animosity directed at Gibson is because he takes the gospels seriously and has presented a powerful, even innovative, account of our Lord's death. It is not a depiction with great subtlety or nuance, but Gibson tries to do justice to the Passion, even if we'd not tell the story in the same way. I am not whole-heartedly endorsing the film, but I am not rejecting it out of hand. I'm a bit contrary: if you're wild about it, I'm going to point out reasons to be contemptuous of it; and if you're offended by it, I'm going to point out reasons to admire it. The nuance is not in Gibson's rendering of the Passion, or of the Resurrection, which is only a brief, corny, Hallmark glimmer at the end. If there's any nuance, it's in our reaction to it, and that's why Gibson's picture is fascinating and why everyone's talking about it.

Gibson does not strictly use scriptural accounts, and like the evangelists he does twist history. There is no record that the high priest Caiaphas taunted Jesus as he hung on the cross. There is no record that our Lady and S. Mary Magdalene soaked up pools of our Lord's precious blood from the ground after he had been flayed. There is no record that Pontius Pilate had a discourse with his wife about the nature of truth. There is no record that Jesus spoke excellent Latin. And it's only pious legend that as Jesus carried his cross to Calvary, he met a woman - traditionally known as S. Veronica - who wiped his face with her veil. And here's the most controversial point: is Gibson correct in portraying the Jews as instigating the crucifixion, as bearing greater responsibility for the crucifixion than the Romans?

Certainly some of the evangelists leave us with that impression. Many critics of Gibson, however, point out that the evangelists had an agenda and had to contend with pressure to distort the historic record. Gibson did not produce a work that gives consideration to serious academic and scholarly investigation, and I don't believe that he had an artistic responsibility to do so, but we should be aware that this film is probably more of a devotional work than a history. Gibson believes that S. Matthew and S. John were eyewitnesses of the Passion, a view highly doubted and convincingly discredited by academia for many decades. Gibson doesn't read between the lines or probe the evangelists' influencing factors. Matthew, for example, probably wrote his gospel for a community of mostly Jewish Christians who had been kicked out of the synagogue, who had been poorly treated by Jews. He probably was less than objective in writing about the Jewish religious hierarchy.

The evangelists were more interested in preaching, in building up faith and the Church, in winning converts, than in strictly recording history. Of the evangelists, S. Luke is the most interested in history, and it is arguably his gospel which is most even handed in assigning blame for the crucifixion. The evangelists also might have taken into consideration that blaming the Romans could've been understood by the Romans as an act of sedition, and so punishable by death. For the evangelists, it was likely safer to portray the Passion as a wholly Jewish conflict: Jesus against the Jewish religious establishment.

Gibson did not give me the impression that Pilate was a thug, but then neither do the evangelists. David Denby, a film critic for The New Yorker, observed that Gibson's "Pilate is not the bloody governor of history (even [Emperor] Tiberius paused at his crimes against the Jews) but a civilized and humane leader tormented by the burdens of power - he holds a soulful discussion with his wife on the nature of truth." ⁽¹⁾ The great historians of the first century, Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, recorded Pilate's brutality and cruelty, including his executions without trial, his deliberate inciting of Jews, his plundering of Judaea. He is not the man depicted in the gospels. ⁽²⁾

The concern with Gibson's historical accuracy has to do with charges of anti-Semitism. Is the film anti-Semitic? The evangelists, especially Matthew and John, both of whom were Jewish, are the most critical of the Jews, the most hostile to the Jewish religious establishment, and both imply the greatest blame lies with the Jews. Again, both Matthew and John almost certainly had axes to grind, but it would not make sense to call them anti-Semitic. It is nonsensical to use our concept of anti-Semitism to describe first century Christians, many of whom were Jewish! They though Jesus was the fulfilment of Judaism, not hostile to Judaism.

In the first century the Jews and Christians were very much part of the same family, and in most instances it appears that it was Jews who kicked the Christians out of the synagogue. S. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was a Jew and a follower of Christ. He preached that God did not depend upon the Temple. Apparently without a trial, Jews stoned him for this blasphemy as directed by the Mosaic Law.

In the first century, Jews made great efforts to distinguish themselves from Christians, and not only because they held Christians to be blasphemers, but also because they did not want to lose their privileges and special religious status granted to them by Rome. Rome generally didn't force Jews to make spiritual offerings to Roman gods, but once Christians were kicked out of the synagogue, Rome did demand Christians to make sacrifices, and many Christians who refused to do so became martyrs.

There was a fierce rivalry between Jews and Christians in the first century, just as there was between Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century, just as there is now between some Episcopalians. Religious disputes are sad and tragic and can show us at our worse. It is worth noting how our Lord handled religious disputes.

What is a fair question is whether Gibson accentuates the evangelists' hostility toward Judaism. Does Gibson depict Jews even less favorably than the evangelists? Does Gibson stoke the fire of religious hostility and intolerance? Apparently gratuitously, Gibson does put Caiaphas at Calvary taunting Jesus. If I correctly recall the flaying scene - and it's so dreadful I looked away and gasped and kept wishing for it to end so that my recollection is fuzzy, Gibson also has Caiaphas surveying the excruciating Roman torture. That is unlikely. Gibson's Pilate is a more sympathetic figure than his Caiaphas. Elaine Pagels, a popular historian of early Christianity, makes this point:

The more benign Pilate appears in the movie, the more malignant the Jews are. To deflect responsibility from the Romans for arresting and executing Christ, which Gibson takes from the gospels and makes even more extreme, is contrary to everything we understand about history. It is implausible that the Jews could be responsible and Pilate a benign governor. There are many examples in the film of a preposterous dialectic: the bad Jews and the good Romans. When the Temple police arrest Jesus, Mary Magdalene turns to the Romans as if they were the policemen on the block, benign protectors of the public order. But the very idea of a Jewish woman turning to Roman soldiers for help is ridiculous. ⁽³⁾

So if Jews find the film anti-Semitic, I would understand, but I'm surprised that it's not only Jews who might be offended by Gibson's work.

I tried to be a fairly hip teenager, and so I saw Mel Gibson's first Mad Max movies when they premiered around the early '80s. The scenes were full of leather and dust and violence and torture and cruelty - primitive landscapes and lots of blood; there was very sparse dialogue - almost sub-literate, clear cut good and evil, and eerie music. A generation later, Gibson has the same interests and themes running through his films. To put it mildly, you can't help but wonder about his taste for leather and physical pain. Few directors would give us such intense and lengthy details of torture, much less treat us to it in slow motion. The brutality is so fierce and constant that it possibly works against creating sympathy for Jesus. So I'm surprised that I don't hear more from Christians who are offended by the film's brutality.

But even more surprising is that evangelical Christians have embraced Gibson's sensibility. Probably my favorite article I've read about Gibson's Passion is Paul Richard's in the Post. He makes this point. ⁽⁴⁾ The barren, pure, white, clean-cut cross symbolizes the predominant American religious sensibility. It goes perfectly with most of our church buildings, be they New England clapboard churches, Bible church auditoriums, Quaker meeting houses, or Crystal Cathedrals. It's a cross without a corpus - he's been triumphantly resurrected. It's not the crucifix of Catholicism, whose naked, nailed, humiliated Lord usually hangs meekly in agony, nothing triumphant, but full of pathos and suffering.

Gibson's Passion is not the most palatable and respectable of crucifixes, but the most extreme, the least fashionable. Richard writes, "'The Passion' is a torture flick, intentionally Baroque. Its look comes less from Scripture than it does from Counter-Reformation painting." ⁽⁵⁾ Gibson's interest is not about the word, but the image. And the image he gives us is overwrought, so overwrought it's almost camp, saved probably only by the profundity of the subject. It is shocking that hard-core Protestants, so anxious about "basely materializing the ungraspable Divine," should be so enthusiastic about the film. ⁽⁶⁾ Richard writes, "The more the [Protestant] reformers valorized the Word, the more they turned away from images. The most extreme among them - the 'image-breakers,' the iconoclasts - saw it as their duty to smash the sensual power - the scary, popish power - they sensed in Catholic art." ⁽⁷⁾

What are we to make of this? My hope, naive perhaps, is that it is another sign that the rift between Catholics and Protestants is narrowing, albeit slowly, that the Reformation divisions will not last forever, that there might be greater Christian unity. I don't think we are going to shake our nasty Puritan heritage soon, but American Christianity every now and then gives me hope that it's maturing, that it's open to greater sacramental appreciation, that its understanding of the incarnation and God's presence among us is developing, evolving. ⁽⁸⁾

Another reason why I welcome the enthusiasm for Gibson's Passion is Gibson's snub of typical American Christianity. He challenges us. Kenneth Woodward argues convincingly,

Mr. Gibson's film leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story that contemporary Christianity now emphasizes. His Jesus does not demand a 'born again' experience, as most evangelicals do, in order to gain salvation. He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons, as Pentecostals emphasize. He doesn't promote social causes, as liberal denominations do. He certainly doesn't crusade against gender discrimination, as some feminists believe he did, nor does he teach that we all possess an inner divinity, as today's nouveau Gnostics believe. One cannot imagine this Jesus joining a New Age sunrise service overlooking the Pacific.

Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a Jewish prophet rejected by the leaders of his own people, and abandoned by his handpicked disciples. Beside taking an awful beating, he is cruelly tempted to despair by a Satan whom millions of church-going Christians no longer believe in, and dies in obedience to a heavenly Father who, by today's standards, would stand convicted of child abuse. In short, this Jesus carries a cross that not many Christians are ready to share. ⁽⁹⁾

The market dominates our culture where all of us are implicitly taught to look out for number one. We ask: if I do this, what's in it for me? We instinctively approach religion asking: what can Jesus do for me? ⁽¹⁰⁾ The great 20^th century theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described American Christianity: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." ⁽¹¹⁾ This certainly is not the Christ of Gibson.

The Passion of Christ could be known as the Gospel According to Mel. I salute him for it. If I had $25 million and the technical and artistic ability to make a film, I'd hope to make the Gospel according to Lane. I doubt that it would be all that much like Mel's, but it'd probably be more like Mel's than many other recent films about Jesus, stuff life Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus in Montreal, and The Last Temptation of Christ, which don't really accept the gospel on its own terms.

Our world can benefit hugely from strong films about Jesus, films that try to present his reality, films that emphasize God's love for us, films that hold scripture in high regard, even if Gibson is so obsessed with blood and pain. I hope there are other Passions, that other big Hollywood moguls take a stab at it with like Gibson a high regard for scripture, except unlike Gibson they don't miss out on what David Denby calls "Jesus' heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism, and [his] personal radiance. . . [and] the incomparable glories of Jesus' temperament." Most of all I hope that they don't miss out on how Jesus still changes lives today, how he enriches our humanity, how God loves us, how God gives us life. Popular culture is hungry for this.

As I indicated earlier, I only attended the first few minutes of the panel discussion on Wednesday, and the first thing out of the Jewish speaker was not about anti-Semitism. His comment was that he felt like an outsider. He said, "It's not my story." It is a scandalous story. It appalls Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. People have a hard time accepting a God who submits himself to the hell and humiliation and suffering of the Passion, but he does it out of his love for us. It is our story, and I feel blessed that it's my story, my identity; at my best it's who I am and how I understand life. It's my story, and your story, and it's a compelling story, a story that millions of people rightly want to be part of, are searching to be part of, are in desperate need of.

I decided the film worked for me as a Lenten exercise to understand my sinfulness and need of God from another angle. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee." Like Jerusalem, I reject God, and I reject the help he sends me and close myself off to him, of course not all of the time, but more than I acknowledge, more than I'd care to admit. Every Christian knows that reality of him- or herself. That message is fundamental to Lent and Holy Week which remind us that each one of us is responsible for our Lord's passion and death. Everyone of us shares an equal part of the blame. But we also know that is not the whole story. The Passion leads to the Resurrection. Nothing we do stops God from loving us, wanting to embrace us and to make us his. That's a good story to be part of.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. David Denby, 'Nailed,' The New Yorker, 1 March 2003.

2. David Remnick, 'Talk of the Town: Groves of Academe: Passions, Past and Present,' The New Yorker, 8 March 2003.

3. Remnick quote of Pagels.

4. Paul Richard, 'So Much Irony in this Passion,' The Washington Post, 29 February 2004.

5. Richard.

6. Richard.

7. Richard.

8. Conversely, more grimly, the 'convergence' may just be the result of living in a sub- (or post-) theological age. The Church is less able to recognize theological distinctions and implications. There's consequently a mishmash of opinion, much of it paradoxical and ironic.

9. Kenneth Woodward, 'Do You Recognize this Jesus?,' The New York Times, 25 February 2004.

10. Woodward.

11. Woodward.