Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

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Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

March 2004

The Movie: The Passion of The Christ

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

Your regularly scheduled newsletter article is being interrupted by an important news bulletin. Well actually it is being interrupted by a media event. We are going to see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" movie.

Frankly I am nervous. I think that if I wasn't a preacher and needed to see it in order to have an opinion when people ask me about it, I'd do like my mom and about half our church and wait for the DVD so I could see it on a smaller screen. I don't know if I want to see two hours of brutality two stories tall.

I am also nervous. Perhaps it is because the movie is working with sacred story directly. When salvation themes are used in stories, or when it is an allegory, then I've got no problems seeing it as an interpretation and just appreciating the glints of glory I see sparkling out of someone's movie or book, like a treasure hunter finding gold coins in the sand. An example is I loved "The Lord of the Rings" and have seen all the movies in the theater more than once and bought both kinds of the DVDs (what a marketing ploy, but it works).

However when someone tries to tell the story directly, then I get all careful and cautious. I think it might be an occupational hazard from those five years in Divinity graduate school. For example I enjoyed the animated movie "Prince of Egypt" but still get frustrated with their portrayal of the parting of the sea among other scenes (like leaving people and events out). The real story has more power in it without exaggerating it and making if feel unreal. When you make it seem too different from our human lives, you can make salvation history too easy to discount, as though it is not real and part of my own history and life. Then I can say that those people were somehow not like me, so I don't have the same challenges and opportunities to change the world as they did for good or evil. But they were real human beings, just like me, and so those things are still possible. Their struggles are my struggles, their temptations my own and their sins or mistakes are not different than mine.

Another thing that is making me nervous is that I know the passion story so well. I tell is every year during Holy Week, that special week before Easter. On Thursday, sometimes called Maundy or Holy Thursday, we have the Upper Room where Jesus washed his disciples (or students) feet and gave them the Sacrament (holy ritual) of Communion to remember him by and participate in his work. On Good Friday we celebrate the Service of Darkness (called Tennabrae) where we remember his arrest, trial, scourging (flogging or brutally hard whipping) and crucifixion and the service ends half way through the story in darkness, stillness and death, till it picks up again at that same spot on Easter morning service with the Resurrection and new life. I worry. What if Mel's interpretation, and it will have to be an interpretation if you are going to make a movie of it, movies are a different media and change things just by being a different kind of media, what if Mel's movie interpretation is like the usual Hollywood stuff when it comes to religion? They usually are insulting, ridiculing, or amazingly ignorant and sloppy with the story and themes. Remember the "Omen" movies or the "Exorcist"? They were so far from reality they were not even good fantasy. They were just horror / slasher films using religious words, but some people thought they were portraying Christian theology (understanding or study of God). Hollywood's portrayal of direct religious themes has a really bad track record in modern times. Even Cecil B. DeMille's epics, while grand fun and intended to be respectful, are not very accurate, though at least they weren't insulting. I find better religious understanding in television shows like the Science Fiction series Babylon 5 than I do in most movies. Still Mr. Gibson seems to be making an honest effort. He even had a Jesuit Priest as a consultant; though I know how often consultants are ignored for visual effect. I also wish he had more than one consultant, but committees also make it hard to get things done, so it is time to give him a chance. I believe he made this film with honest good will and a desire to create an experience. I need to go see it as an experience and as a movie, not as an eyewitness account of what happened and see what I come out with. I often see different things than other people do at movies, so I just need to go see the darn thing. Our web site (olivecrest-umc.com) has a link to the movie review that the United Methodist Communications has put together on UMC.org and I looked at it for some encouragement and I noticed two parts that both encouraged me and made me more nervous:

"Writer and director, Gibson and his talented cast and crew have forged a film of rare power-but whether that power is spiritual or simply savage, will depend on the personal response of each individual viewer. And from what Gibson has said, that's just what he was aiming for: a personal response. This film is all about things that are personal: Gibson's personal artistic vision; the personal choices of the characters in the story; drawing audiences in for an up close and personal view of this harrowing event; the personal freedom to see the film or not; and finally, the very personal response of those who do. I have no way of predicting your response, but I can tell you about mine. The rest is up to you."

The second was: "Which all raises the question, should you see the film? As I said, that's up to you. I would caution anyone against underestimating the graphic nature of the violence. I would also discourage children from seeing it, or even younger teens, without their parents seeing it first. For those up to the challenge, this film could reveal emotional and spiritual riches, not just in its powerful retelling of the Passion story, but also within the hearts of those who see it." By Gregg Tubbs, freelance writer for UMC.org http://umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=1&mid=3414

Ok, I'm reassured, but even more nervous. I don't think I'm going to be able to just blow this one off as "Bad Theology" and just stupid and not worth thinking about. This one looks like one that I'm going to have to take seriously and struggle with. Sigh, some movies demand a lot of their watchers and this sounds like one of them. Ok, we are going soon. I'll write more when we get back and after I lead the group discussion on it. I've even prepared handouts with all the gospels in parallel format and chronological order (as much as can be done, they don't all agree, especially John since he wasn't worried about telling the story 'synopsis as in synoptic gospels like the other three' but in telling what it meant. So John moved stuff around). Ok Michael, take a deep breath, smile, it's show time and time to go out and greet the people as they show up ready to carpool to the movie.

Ok, it is days later and I still don't know what I think. I can talk for hours about it, but I'm still not sure. I've got a huge list of actual historical errors, mistakes of timing and place and minor nit picks, but are they really all that important? Mr. Gibson was making a movie, not a documentary.

Sigh, well lets go back to the end of the movie. About a third of the audience stayed till the credits ended, the largest group I even remember doing that. Sometimes I, and who ever is impatiently waiting for me, are the only people left when the credits finish. The other thing I noticed was there was not the usual buzz of talk, and no applause or even negative comments. Everyone was quiet. We walked out quiet, the whole audience with only the minimum of whispered conversation. Even I, the compulsive verbal communicator, who thinks by talking wasn't saying anything. I went to the bathroom and as I was washing my hand I had a flashback to seeing Pilate washing his hands in a bowl of water and then I was seeing my hands in the water and I was holding them in the same way. That hit me kind of hard.

I know quite a bit about Pilate, and I thought the movie was way too sympathetic and kind to him. He was lazy, brutal and incompetent, but maybe he was also confused and overwhelmed and guided only by fear and expediency like the movie showed.

I didn't really think having Satan visually hanging around taunting helped the movie, I actually think it detracted from the human cruelty, struggles and courage of the people, but then the character was being used as a symbol and it Mel's movie, not mine.

Strangely enough, the brutal scourging did not shock me. I knew how vicious it was and any accurate depiction would communicate the same message of human savagery and violence and I am familiar with human evil. We can see that by looking at the news and it goes on all over the world right now. We have civil wars in the human family and wars of terror and brutality all over the world, some by groups of people and some by governments, but they are still with us. Jesus went through them with us and is with all those suffering and the suffering has not stopped because we have not stopped being fearful and lusting after power and wandering in sin and error. We still decide it is "better that one man should perish than the nation should suffer." We still think that "might make right" and the only way to feel safe is to kill our enemies, while Jesus says "Pray for your enemies," and try to turn them into your friends.

I cried. I cried multiple times in the movie, but I cried at the play Godspell and during The Lord of the Rings, so I'm not sure that is a good predictor of anyone else's response.

I know I must have felt a lot of pain because I started to intellectualize or analyze the story in order to distance myself from it at some points. I noticed little details and told myself that it was not accurate, but I still felt the pain of the people in front of me on that screen.

I am frustrated though, mostly because the movie is so powerful and good. Every moment was so precious that when extra canonical (not in the Bible) material gets thrown in I grind my teeth, because that meant they left out something else and Mr. Gibson is a fantastically powerful director. It proves to me how technically and artistically bad much of the previous movies dealing with Jesus have been. But the scene of the raven pecking out the eye of thief who tried to use Jesus to escape death irritates me. To put in those five minutes he left out five other minutes. Even the death of Judas seems somehow a distraction and could have been edited out without injuring the movies themes or movement. But I've already had arguments with friends who defend those spots and feel my frustration at the lines left out and the scenes glossed over or condensed as being nit picking. But I've also heard people responding that all they felt through the movie was grateful and others that said they were very disappointed.

So perhaps I am left at the same place as Gregg Tubbs from UMC Communications, that our responses are individualistic, just as our response to God is individual. We live in community, and community is where we encounter God and live out our love affair with God, but we all personally have to respond to the invitation, to the held out hand and smile. We take the hand or we run away in fear. That part always comes from inside me and inside you, one on one with the Holy One.

I intend to buy the DVD when it comes out, if only to see how the scenes in my head have changed in my memory with what was on the screen. How we remember things can often be a vital insight into our unconscious and seeing your inner life that we then can bring to God for healing and wholeness.

My recommendation is see it if you are up to it. Perhaps you need to wait till the screen is smaller, and with young people, no, don't do it, unless you talk to them first and I mean more than once. Real violence truly is different from video games and make-believe movies. Don't do damage to their young love affair with God, though depending upon how they respond, it could deepen it a lot. But in the end it will be your choice. I think it is worth seeing and important, but like all adaptations, it is not the whole story. Read the book of Mark, then Luke (Acts is the second part of Luke, same author), Matthew and finally John. Always read John after the others, they tell the story; he tries to tell what it means. If you only let the movie talk to you, then you could end up like one of my special people did when we were studying the book of Exodus in the Bible where the people of God flee Egypt. She said, "Hey, I've seen The Ten Commandments, that's not how it happened." Then we all laughed. But it won't be funny if you make decisions on how to live your whole life based only on a movie. The story is bigger than that, and your part in the story is still going on. The movie that you are part of is not over and as we say in the Great Thanksgiving during Communion, "Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again." We are still part of this story and Easter has come and Is coming.

I would also like to invite you to come as God's family together and experience the Upper Room on Thursday, April 8th at 7:30 p.m. and the Death of Christ in story and song on Friday, April 9th at 7:30 p.m. Then on Sunday, April 11th come and experience the second half, the Resurrection, in story and song.

It is good to have family, a family that lives past death and forever.

"Patris Spiritus Dominus Tecum," "The Spirit of God guide your life in wholeness or peace."

Your brother-in-Christ,
Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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