Passion Miscellany

My Mom, who has not set foot in a movie theater in probably 25 years, wants to see The Passion of the Christ. If she's feeling well enough (she's still trying to get over her shingles), I'd like to take her to see it before Easter. Having seen it myself, I've tried as best as I could to prepare her for it.

While on this subject, here are a couple of reviews that are well worth reading in their entirety. The first is from Susanna Cornett:

But one consequence of growing up studying the Bible, of talking about Christ’s death, of hearing the terms “scourging”, “mocking”, and “beaten” repeated over and over in the cool brightness of a comfortable church auditorium, is that the true horror of what Jesus Christ suffered as a man in the process of dying is lost. It becomes iconic, distant. We hear the words, we eat the communion bread, drink the communion grape juice, sing a sad song, pray, chat with our fellow congregants, then head off to Taco Bell or Wal-Mart. Those things aren’t bad, but a deep connection we need is too easily missed. That’s where The Passion of the Christ comes in.

I needed to see the sadness, the betrayal, the pain, and yes, the cruelty and the blood. It isn’t that I can’t “see” it without Mel Gibson – I can, and have. But it brought a realism and deep, almost physical pain to my imaginings that can only help me understand His true sacrifice. The movie wasn’t entertainment for me, and I didn’t need for Gibson to explain Christ’s history, ministry or goodness as “context” for the hours of His betrayal and death. Those who lament the short time frame, the limited story line, the details of the scourging, the pain, the mocking – those people are judging the movie from some set of criteria that have nothing to do with paying a debt of sorrow for sacrifice. Their judgment is based on The Passion as entertainment. And of course it failed them. But it didn’t fail me.

Then there's this review by Old Oligarch:

It is very human, and very tempting (and thus a favorite tool of the devil) to respond to experiences of horrific violence, to brutal dehumanization -- such as happened in the WWII holocaust -- by seeking to remove all that is violent, all that involves death, all that reminds us of our human passivity, from our religion. It is tempting to turn to an enlightened religion of pure hope and rationalized ethical principles of mutual upbuilding. We would like to be comforted by bracketing the reality of horror, but this is self-deception. It is not salvation from the horrible reality. Salvation is kenosis: the penetration of the divine into the lowest points of human existence; the resurgence (=re-surgo --> re-surrexit) of grace where nature is most beaten down, a mystical union with the divine at the very place where the human soul is most brutalized, dehumanized and threatened with disintegration.

If you understand Christ more as archetype, and less as propitiation, then you understand this. In the West, we sometimes focus too much on the propitiation-theology, and forget that "As I have done, so you must also do." When I see the Risen Christ at the end of the movie, I don't see a man whom Jews futilely tried to kill. I see a Jew risen from the dead. I see the only lens through which Auschwitz can become a place where the Nazi is as powerless over Jewish life as Caiaphas was over Christ.

And one more Passion-related item...Christopher Johnson mercilessly fisks a very silly review of The Passion by an Episcopal clergyman. It amazes me how people can become supposed leaders in a Christian church and be so clueless about Christianity:

Are sins no longer facts in the Episcopal Church? Okay, stupid question. But what on earth does “relationship” have to do with anything here? What should Gibson have done? Have Jesus name every single person in the entire world from the Crucifixion until the end of the age, for whom He died? That might have made for a longish movie.

The dialog in the movie, such as it was, is strained and shows no depth of character. Even the flashbacks felt forced: tableaus, objects separate from us, completely reified. The vengeful cries of the Jews, the brutality of the soldiers, the indecision of Pilate, even the compassion of Veronica and Simon of Cyrene are devoid of context; they are in the story because they have to be, they fit the plot line of the Stations of the Cross.

Dan. Buddy. What was the name of the movie you saw? You know, the one that you're reviewing here. It was entitled The Passion of the Christ, wasn't it? Know why the movie is called that, Dan?

Because. It. Was. A. Movie. Of. The. Last. Twelve. Hours. Of. The. Life. Of. Jesus. Christ.

Maybe someday those who whine about "context" in regards to this film will finally get that very important point.