Many years ago if someone asked me if I had seen the movie, The Bible, I would answer, “No, but I read the book.” I can only hope that we can answer in a similar manner after all the controversy is over. I have not seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ. I do not recommend that you see the movie. That’s your decision. Whether you do or don’t, it is important during this Lenten season that we consider several things about the passion narratives.
We have learned that the “medium is the message.” That means that we should be very careful when we move from written text to sermon, or written text to passion oratorio, or from written text to celluloid. I do not trust Hollywood. I will probably see the movie because I need to as a pastor, but I will go with great prejudice. Hollywood is fascinated with violence. There is nothing redemptive about witnessing violence. Some of the complaints from those who have seen the movie is that it adds gratuitous violence. While claiming to be “biblical,” there is no reluctance to add violent scenes that are not in the passion narratives themselves.
There is some sickness in the way that American Christians understand the cross. The not so subtle picture is one of a God who is so angry with humanity that God must punish drastically. According to this view human sin is so overwhelming that humans could never pay the penalty for sin. God’s desire for vindication is so fierce that God must “lance” his anger by pouring out his wrath on his Son. The Son then pays the price for our human rebellion. This idea of atonement—whereby God substitutes his own Son in order that the punishment of humanity is achieved—is most often espoused by American evangelicals. That does not make it right or even biblical.
The gospels are not Greek tragedies although the comparison is instructional. Even if we experience great sympathy at the pathos of the victims of violence, such cathartic events as in the Greek dramas are not necessarily redemptive. Our tears for the victims of violence do not liberate us from our fear of violence nor our bloodlust for violence. Catharsis is not an answer to the problem of evil or the problem of our estrangement from God (sin!).
We live in an environment of religious emotionalism. We should not identify intense emotional states as a new-found relationship with God. We are not “born again” just because we feel something intensely. We are capable of inducing emotional states; therefore, we should be wary of our efforts to “build a ladder to heaven” by such effort.
Surely our Lutheran love for Bach’s Passions creates powerful emotional moments, but they do so by following the biblical text and adding meditative poetry. The arias and choruses see to it that the passion performances are subtly suffused with the hope of the resurrection. They are not spectacles to be seen but a word to be heard. The librettist of the St. John Passion even goes to great pains to make sure that the audience understands that it is not the Jews or the Romans that are responsible for the death of Jesus. It is our own sin in solidarity with the whole human race that produces the crucifixion.
The tragedy of the passion narratives is that they have been used to blame the Jewish (instead of self-interested leaders) people for the death of Jesus. The passion plays of the Medieval period reinforced this view so that the medium of the passion plays heightened hatred and brutality toward defenseless Jewish neighborhoods and families. We need to examine tacit beliefs in our cultural heritage in order to make sure that we do not harbor viewpoints that suggest that our Jewish brothers and sisters are deserving of persecution and ill treatment. We have done much with our Jewish neighbors to establish good communication and mutual respect.
I am very suspicious of efforts to graphically describe the violence of crucifixion as somehow essential to understanding God’s love in Jesus Christ. Philippians 2:8 states, “He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” A description of death by crucifixion can only show how savage we human beings can be. Crucifixion reveals how resistant humanity is to the messengers of God. The passion and death of Christ shows how far God will go to reach us—even death on a cross.
The church is responsible for the way in which we read the passion narratives. I do not want Hollywood—or Mel Gibson—to be my teacher. It is the duty of the church to respond to the question, “Did you see The Passion of the Christ?” with the answer, “No (or yes), but I read the book.”