Today's Scripture Reading (January 6, 2024): Matthew 16
Mel Gibson released his "The Passion of
the Christ" in 2004. I was one of the lucky ones who got to see an early
cut of the movie. The editing wasn't finished yet; Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus
in the film, still had blue eyes in the movie that had not yet been changed to
brown. But I was able to sit there and watch the movie months before it would
be released in theaters.
When the movie was released, I decided to take
a group of people from the church to see the film and then come back to the
church to discuss what we thought about it. One of the people who went with me to
the movie that night was an octogenarian who had never been to a movie theater
before. As we entered the theater, I walked up beside her and said, "Not
only do I get the privilege of taking you to your first movie, but it is R-rated,
too." She grimaced at the thought.
When Mel
Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came out, there were several
reactions from the Christian Church. For
some, it was just simply too graphic.
The scenes of blood being splattered on people and objects around Jesus
in some of the scenes bothered some Christians. The question was, do we really
need to see that?
Others
praised it for its realism. When the
complaints started to come in from secular sources complaining that the movie
went overboard and that no one, not even Jesus, was forced to go through the
severity of the beating that Jesus went through in the film, preachers, and
history scholars stood up and with one voice shouted "No, that is
precisely what history teaches us that the Romans did to their prisoners. There was very little unique in the way that
Jesus was treated. This is historical.
While some
are glad they have watched "The Passion" once, they have said they
will never watch it again. It is just
too emotional and too draining. I read a list of movies people are glad they
had watched once but would never see again, and "The Passion" was predominantly included on the list.
One of my
favorite scenes in the movie is where Jesus, beaten and torn, is trying to
carry the cross toward the place where he will finally be nailed to it, and the
Son of God will finally be lifted up. As
Jesus tries to carry his cross, his mother is racing down the side streets at
the other end of the crowds, just trying to get a glimpse of her son. At one point, Jesus stumbles and falls, and
Mary rushes to her son's side. At that moment, Jesus looks at her and says, "It
had to be this way."
As Christians,
maybe it is hard for us to watch the scenes because, at this point, Jesus looks
like he has lost. There is no other way to phrase it. In the garden, Jesus
asked that the cup would pass from him.
Satan had already told him a couple of years earlier how that could be
done. Jesus, give them bread and material things, and you won't have to go to
the cross. Jesus, keep them guessing
with miraculous signs, change the color of the sky, have the angels come and
pick you up, show everyone just how powerful you are with signs and wonders of
every description, and you will not suffer the cross. Jesus, compromise your
message. Come with me, and you will
escape the cross. And Satan was right. To avoid the cross, all he had to do was
give materially, show impressive signs of his power, and compromise his
message. Where Satan was wrong (and I prefer
to say where Satan was lying) was that in escaping the cross, Jesus could be
declared a winner.
To win, Jesus
had to lose, and that seems upside-down.
In going to
the cross, Jesus became the biggest loser ever. He was God; he could have done
whatever he wanted, lived in a palace, and had the armies of the earth as well
as the armies of heaven under his command. Jesus could have lived out the rest
of his days as a traveling itinerant preacher, traveling from place to place
with people he truly cared about. He
could have settled down, married Mary, and had a daughter named Sarah, like Dan
Brown insists he did. But instead of
everything, Jesus chose nothing but a cross and went to it willingly.
The Scandal
of the Gospel is shown in color on the world's screens in Mel Gibson's movie. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, in
the eyes of the crowds who had cried, "crucify him, had lost.
Some
Christians quickly point out that he rose on the third day, but consider this:
The only ones who would see him were those who had already followed him and
loved him.
Have you ever
been chastised for something and come up with the attitude I will show them? I will do something and show those who don't
like me how good I really am. It is the real motive behind the school violence
that is ever present in our culture. Kids are hurt and put down and come back
to school with knives and sometimes guns in an attempt to show those who have
hurt them how important they are.
But Jesus
didn't come back to Herod and say, "See, you think you're the king, but
you had me crucified, and I'm still here. No verses say that Jesus came back to
Pilate with words like "You should have listened to your wife." There
are no mentions of Jesus appearing to Caiaphas and Annas and the religious
elite.
Jesus lost,
and from our perspective, that is upside down. But in losing, he really won!
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Mark 8
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