The Passion of the christ
Directed by Mel Gibson
Currently in release
Movie Review by Terri Tilley

On Ash Wednesday, about 50 students and faculty members from The General Theological Seminary in New York went to see Mel Gibson’s production The Passion of the Christ. For me, a Senior M.Div. student, the movie was a powerful, emotionally wringing and mind-numbing experience — theologically shallow and fraught with danger for interfaith relations.

The movie’s opening frame was a quote from the “Fourth Servant Song” in Isaiah 53:5: “But he was wounded for our transgressions …and by his bruises we are healed” (NRSV, not the translation used by the producer). The movie’s closing scene was a brief depiction of the resurrection scene. The two hours of the movie between these images offered — for me — little connection between the scenes and/or any theology of atonement or redemption.

In presenting this portrait of Christ’s suffering, Gibson offered little context for why what was happening happened. One had to “know” the story to make the connections between Jesus’ emotional struggle in the garden, the accusations made against him by the Jewish leaders, the sadistic torture at the hands of the Roman soldiers and the resurrection scene.

Without that context, Jesus was portrayed as a man brutally tortured for fuzzy political reasons. Without that context, the important question of why Jesus was caught in such a situation remains unanswered. Without that context, we were left with a surreal glorification of the suffering of Christ.

I found little to reveal or explain the redeeming nature of Christ’s sacrifice. The resurrected Jesus walked out of the tomb to the sound of war drums, an echo of the militaristic images of the temple soldiers and the Roman army. There was nothing to suggest that God was the operative power in the overcoming of death. There was nothing to suggest that the brutal death and the resurrected life were connected and had meaning for the people of the world. Any theology of redemption and love was obscured by the graphic violence and the hardened stereotypes.

Was it necessary to portray Satan as a feminine image? While several of my classmates thought Satan to be an androgynous personification, I saw a feminine personification that only served to reinforce the biblical stereotypes of women as the root of evil.

Was it necessary to portray Herod and his court as so over-the-top “gay”? (Not to mention the fact that, historically, Herod was Jewish too.)

Was Pilate really as innocent as he proclaimed? How could a leader in the Roman army be so whitewashed when the men under his command acted in such a sadistic manner throughout the movie?

Couldn’t Mary have been portrayed as having just a little more human emotion? Of course, she was the perfect opposite to the ever-lurking Satan. However, her stoic demeanor and involvement seemed to be an exaggeration of Marian devotion.

Last, but certainly not least, was Gibson’s portrayal of the Jewish temple leaders. Always clothed in the most ornate of robes, they seemed more concerned for their own political position and the damage to their temple after the earthquake than anything else. They lurked around the foot of the cross to make sure that the deed was done. The figure of Satan circulating among the gathered leaders was a further reinforcement of the evil Gibson intended to associate with them.

Without the context of Jesus’ ministry among the Jewish people, we have only the shallow accusations of the temple leaders to explain their insistence upon Jesus being crucified. Since the Roman leaders were exonerated, the movie laid the entire blame for what happened at the feet of these temple leaders.

In this movie, with the possible exception of his stoic suffering, I found that Jesus was overwhelmingly human, a departure from the fourfold gospel portrait of Jesus as fully human, fully divine. Gibson’s Jesus was simply a man brutalized for unclear reasons — a pawn in the middle of a violent clash between Jewish and Roman authorities.

Scant attention was paid to the fact that Jesus was an observant Jew. Aside from a couple of touching flashbacks, it seemed all too convenient for Gibson to have minimized this crucial fact and to have overlooked the historical connection between Jews and Christians. There was little in the film to show that Gibson’s very ‘white’ Jesus — shorn of his Jewish roots and devoid of his Jewish features — was the redeeming Savior of the world.

In the end, I think that Gibson’s movie plays to the popular expectations of many moviegoers today — lots of blood and violence, little real plot and character development. The movie plays to "insiders" of a particular theological persuasion — that Jesus’ suffering, Jesus’ passion, is the most important feature of God’s plan for the redemption of the world.

In its stereotypes, the movie plays to the worst fears still operative today — particularly where women and homosexuals are concerned. In its portrayal of the Jews as the sole entity responsible for the death of Jesus, the danger of undermining relations between Christians and Jews is palpable. The danger of inflaming or re-igniting tensions that in some areas have only begun to subside is real.

One can close one’s eyes to the graphic violence on the screen and somehow dismiss it as unnecessary. However, especially and particularly for the uninitiated and the uninformed, this movie makes it dangerously easy to embrace thoughts of hatred and revenge against other members of God’s people.

The Passion of the christ
Movie Review by the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson

The reactions to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ have been, in many ways, more interesting than the movie itself. Charges of anti-Semitism have of course been leveled, and of course they are absolutely right: Gibson has chosen to include not only that problematic quote from the Gospel of Matthew, but in general to depict the bloodthirsty Jewish mob and nefarious Jewish authorities while choosing not to portray Pontius Pilate as the sniveling, cowardly, irresponsible failure he was — nor the Romans generally as the bullying oppressors they obviously were. I sincerely believe Gibson made a mistake here: he seems a decent enough person, quite real for a movie star. I do not think he meant to insult Jews. But that’s no excuse. He chose to make the movie he made.

My word “choice” is deliberate. Gibson claimed that he was simply making a film of the Passion as it is found in the Gospels. By this, he implied that he really made no choices — just opened the Book and faithfully put that he found on film.

But he did not do that. Anyone who makes a film of biblical material makes choices, consciously or otherwise. Gibson chose to include material that is not in the Gospels, such as the presence of Jesus’ mother. He chose to conflate the four accounts — a traditional procedure careful students of the Gospels have been trying to avoid for years because it blurs the very real distinctions between their various accounts — and their different interpretations of Christ.

Most telling of all, Gibson chose to present what is, essentially, a feature-length re-enactment of Christ’s suffering. That choice is the most problematic one for me, as a Christian. By devoting 95% of his movie to the Passion, while relegating the Sermon on the Mount to a passing flash and the Resurrection to a moment’s afterthought, Gibson really does imply that the Passion is the main thing — that Jesus’ primary mission, his purpose, was to suffer.

One film critic called this a “medieval” understanding of Atonement, which is unfair to the Middle Ages when several theories of Christ’s saving work flourished. This is not “medieval” but perennial — many believe it to be the way to understand Jesus’ mission.

But it is not the only way. Not at all. Jesus also proclaimed radically loving ethics that challenged the complacent and comforted the outcast. In this view, the Passion is not so much the penalty Jesus paid but the result of that love. A much older interpretation placed the great emphasis not on Jesus’ dying but on Jesus’ rising — his victory over sin, death, the devil.

This is why I mention the Sermon and the Resurrection. The idea that Jesus paid a huge penalty in order to propitiate an angry Father, while certainly supported by some of the Gospel tradition, is not the only, nor historically the dominant, understanding of what happened. Contemporary Roman Catholicism — which Mel Gibson suggests he is more or less willing to ignore — has, in its liturgy, spirituality and theology re-affirmed the image of Christ the loving exemplar and Christ the Victor. (The current Pope’s favorite theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, is a striking example: his work emphasizes the "Herrlichkeit," the triumphant beautiful glory, of God’s self-expression in Jesus — not his painful and pitiful sacrifice.)

So Gibson emphasizes the Passion — so what? After all, it is a huge part of the Christian story, isn’t it? Yes, it is that. But as Hand Conzelman’s book Crucifixion shows, the spiritual, mental, psychological aspects of crucifixion were the worst part — they transcended the physical horror. Gibson gives not a hint of that truth — so essential to the meaning of the Passion.

Yes. It’s what we always focus on Good Friday, indeed we bend over backward trying to re-enact it, don’t we? Yes. But that raises another problem with the film. As the very insightful New Testament teacher Dominic Crossan mentioned apropos the movie, one can’t tell, given the scant background and hasty references to Jesus’ ministry, exactly why this man has provoked this treatment.

On Good Friday, we answer that question. Not only do we listen to the Passion, but we also read the background and provide the context: the sacrifice of Abraham or the Suffering Servant prophecy of 3 Isaiah, the careful meditation in Hebrews on the Old Testament understanding of Sacrifice, the stunning words from Psalm 22 which were Jesus’ last words according to Mark (which Mel Gibson chose to subordinate to the last words according to the Fourth Gospel). We pray the ancient Solemn Collects, that bring into the passion our concern for so many in need.
I’m not trying here to advocate our Good Friday worship but to make the point: Gibson’s film does not provide the context even for a good understanding of Jesus’ Passion. The torture is there, all right, but really, that is all. It would be like making a two-hour movie of Mary’s labor and delivery (certainly that, too, lasted a while), and calling it “The Incarnation.”

At this point let me repeat something I’ve said before in this column. The better movies (and novels) on Christian themes tend not to be those that re-tell the Bible stories. The better Christian movies are those that present Christian themes in some other guise. In other words, those that choose the parable method rather than the literal.

This brings us to Peter Jackson’s Return of the King. Based, with reasonable fidelity (though I had hoped for more) on J. R. R. Tolkien’s marvelous mock-saga, the story is Christian through and through. Loyalty, betrayal, self-sacrifice, faith, self-donation, redemption and love — these are the themes of the Tolkien works, as surely as they are the themes of the Gospels.
My only criticism of Peter Jackson’s version is perhaps an inevitable one: truly great literature simply does not completely translate into motion pictures. So much of what makes the Tolkien trilogy great is the internal aspects — the conflicts, dreams, problems, longings and convictions inside the character’s heads. The novel form of course can present these; the film really cannot.

So we miss, for example, a great deal of the complexity, the ambiguity, in Frodo’s relationship with Gollum. The Gollum in the book we see through the Hobbit’s eyes, and we feel all sorts of things about and for him: fear, pity, identification, understanding, revulsion and so on. Because not only do we see what is happening, we also think what Frodo is thinking. The movie merely shows us a computer-generated, Yoda-influenced image that it is impossible to fear and hard to like.

But on the whole, the movie comes about as close to realizing Tolkien as a movie could come. And while that hardly does him justice, it certainly is far better cinematic fare than most of its rivals. In an era of increasing cheapening of standards and taste, I definitely want to affirm that.

And most important, Jackson’s Rings contains far more of the fullness of Christianity than Gibson’s Passion.

Biblical Movies: A Seasonal Sampling
Movie Reviews by the Rev. Dr. Clair McPherson

This should certainly be said: Mel Gibson’s Passion, for all it faults, is leagues ahead of most Hollywood biblical movies. And since these very often mysteriously appear in theaters and on television around Easter time, let’s give these a brief mention.

Worst of the lot is King of Kings, which presents Jesus the way some Sunday School murals used to present him. It is Hollywood sentiment of the most banal.

More interesting — and confusing — is the George Stevens film of The Greatest Story Ever Told. It has notoriously silly things in it, such as John Wayne portraying the centurion at the foot of the cross. It also has such Hollywood cliches as Charlton Heston playing John the Baptist. Yet at the center, it has the fine Swedish actor Max von Sydow as an enigmatic, challenging Jesus — departing from the cinema tradition of Jesus as sweet and innocuous.

Then there is The Bible. This was directed by John Huston, who was often excellent, and featured all kinds of talent — Richard Harris as Cain, Peter O’Toole as the three visitors at Mamre, and, literally above all, George C. Scott as the patriarch Abraham, a role Scott delivered with the perfect flourish he later brought to General Patton. But somehow the film did not work. For all its talent and texture, it still seems a little cheap, a bit phony.

Good News: A Congregational Resource for Reconciliation
By the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston
DVD, 22 minutes and Handbook
Trinity Television
Program Review by the Rev. Canon Hannah P. Anderson

As both a parish priest and a diocesan staff member working extensively with a wide variety of parishes, I found this to be an enormously helpful resource. So often we find ourselves holding a different opinion or viewpoint from others within our faith community. I have discovered that, when we spend our time looking back to try to answer why those diverging perspectives exist, we miss out on the more fruitful exploration, which Bishop Charleston raises for us in Good News: How do we honor differences while sharing a common belief in Jesus Christ?

This is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges we face as Christians. It is our nature to try and collapse the tension, to reduce it to a choice of “either/or” rather than “both/and.” We would prefer to have things resolved rather than to live in ambiguity. Herein lies the wisdom offered to us in this slim but powerful volume focusing on reconciliation rather than resolution. As Charleston writes:

As a physician of the human spirit, Jesus knew that if reconciliation was to occur, if peace was to be found, then people would have to do two things: face their deepest fear and offer their highest love.

Based on the teachings of Jesus, the author argues that justice, compassion and reconciliation are the “three signposts on the path to peace that emerge from the Gospel and form the ongoing process by which Christian community is both built and sustained.” He offers in a very clear manner a method of addressing these three topics in small groups to be led by a facilitator, lasting approximately one hour per session. The groups may use either a DVD format or a written text. There are specific questions for the group to address that are worded in a way that helps people move beyond the tendency to judge one another as right or wrong and into the question of how we will continue to love one as Christ loved us.

In a time when differing opinions threaten to pull us apart as the Body of Christ, this is a refreshing approach that helps focus, instead, on how we are covenanted to one another and to the process of reconciliation, which does not offer quick or easy solutions. Good News is also a timely publication for the season of Lent and for adult Christian formation where people are truly seeking to find the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding.

Enriching our Music: Canticles and Settings for the Eucharist
By Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music
Church Publishing, 2003
153 pages, $13.95
Book review by Louise Jonsson

During the 1995-97 triennium, the project to produce additional music for rites of The Book of Common Prayer began to take shape. This project was based on a resolution from the 71st General Convention in 1994. The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for 2001-03 continued collecting materials for the project.

Volume I of Enriching Our Music focuses on mass and canticle settings and includes 11 “through-composed Eucharistic settings,” three settings of “Phos hilaron,” one setting of “Song to the Lamb” and one setting of “Te Deum laudamaus.”

The appendix includes notes on certain sections and an index of titles and first lines. To facilitate use in worship leaflets, a CD-ROM version is also available from the publisher. Reprint information is at the back of the book.

Voices Found: Women in the Church’s Song
By Standing Commission on Church Music
Church Publishing, 2003
277 pages, $14.95
Book Review by Louise Jonsson

This is another volume resulting from a resolution passed at General Convention (the 72nd) that directed the Standing Commission on Church Music (now the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music) to prepare an additional supplement to the Hymnal 1982, emphasizing, “liturgical music, hymns and other songs by women composers and poets, both historical and contemporary; text and music to be included, which celebrate the contributions and diversity of women in scripture, women saints and church-women.”

The result is a rich collection of hymns and spiritual songs by, for and about women for use in church services. The Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, served on the seven member ecumenical Review Committee for this project.