March 4, 2004
WE WERE HOPING FOR HERE COMES MR. JORDAN:
Do You Recognize This Jesus? (Kenneth L. Woodward, 2/25/04, NY Times)
Unlike Mr. Gibson's film, evangelical Protestantism is inherently non-visual. As spiritual descendants of the left wing of the Reformation, evangelicals are heirs to an iconoclastic tradition that produced the "stripping of the altars," as the historian Eamon Duffy nicely put it. That began in the late 16th century, when radical Protestants removed Christ's body from the cross. To the Puritans, displays of the body of Jesus represented what they considered the idol worship of the Papists. To this day, evangelical sanctuaries can be identified by their lack of visual stimulation; it is rare to see statues or stained-glass windows with human figures. For evangelicals, the symbols are all in sermon and song: verbal icons. It's a different sensibility.For this reason, I think, evangelical audiences will be shocked by what they see. And, as Mr. Gibson has said repeatedly, he means to shock. Catholics will find themselves on familiar ground: they, at least, have retained the ritual of praying "the stations of the cross" — a Lenten practice that, like Mr. Gibson's movie, focuses on the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus. By contrast, Southern Baptists and other mostly fundamentalist churches do not observe Lent, and even Catholics have muted the ancient tradition of fast and abstinence that commemorated the Passion of Jesus.
Indeed, Mr. Gibson's film leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story that contemporary Christianity now emphasizes. His Jesus does not demand a "born again" experience, as most evangelists do, in order to gain salvation. He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons, as Pentecostals emphasize. He doesn't promote social causes, as liberal denominations do. He certainly doesn't crusade against gender discrimination, as some feminists believe he did, nor does he teach that we all possess an inner divinity, as today's nouveau Gnostics believe. One cannot imagine this Jesus joining a New Age sunrise Easter service overlooking the Pacific.
Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a Jewish prophet rejected by the leaders of his own people, and abandoned by his handpicked disciples. Besides taking an awful beating, he is cruelly tempted to despair by a Satan whom millions of church-going Christians no longer believe in, and dies in obedience to a heavenly Father who, by today's standards, would stand convicted of child abuse. In short, this Jesus carries a cross that not many Christians are ready to share.
If the film does nothing else but help start the process of stripping away these absurd accretions it will have performed an invaluable service. Listening to people complain about how violent the death portrayed is you do get the impression that they don't understand the story even a little bit. Haven't they at least seen Spartacus? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2004 10:49 PM
A friend today pointed out that one of the biggest impacts The Passion will have is that now, when someone says the word "Jesus," a large segment of the population is immediately going to think of Gibson's version, rather than, say, the fluffy sunday-school version, or the political activist version. I think that's an unquestionable improvement.
Posted by: Timothy at March 4, 2004 11:25 PMLikewise, when someone says "Mary," many will think of Maia Morgenstern and her evocative, expressive performance.
Posted by: R.W. at March 5, 2004 1:33 AMThe violence wasn't necessary to Jesus' mission. His death was enough.
For instance, he might have been stoned to death by fellow Jews.
Instead, he drew the Romans, which meant a bit more blood & guts. Not to mention anguish.
What I found most interesting about this article was the evolution of contemporary religions away from visual imagery. Protestantism, Islam, and Buddhism all emphasize abstraction from, or prohibition of, any particular images.
In this they are in error. These images are intensely moving. It seems that the process of reformation requires discrediting the images of the prevalent religion, and the normal response is to reject all images. What is required is not this rejection, but the substitution of new images.
Posted by: jd watson at March 5, 2004 4:09 AMWithout the violence He'd not have despaired and not learned what God needed to find out.
Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 7:08 AMExodus 20:3-6: You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 5, 2004 7:48 AMMichael:
I'm sorry but I respectfully disagree. The Roman violence was necessary.
By turning him over to the Romans he was subject to a particularly dishonorable death. ( "one who is hung on a tree is under God's curse",Dt. 21:23 NIV), one that the Jewish leaders would not have dared to do on their own. It was not enough that he died, but that he died under God's curse.
In the mind of his enemies that curse was the crowning blow. To his followers it strengthens the power of the resurrection as he overcomes not just death, but God's curse which of course should rightly fall on each of us.
Posted by: Jeff at March 5, 2004 8:45 AMThe irony of course is that most post-Vatican II
churches are indistinguishable from low-church
meeting halls.
Basically even as a child if you did not yet
understand the readings or the liturgy, you could
always look up at the crucifix or the stations
of the cross and get some sense of why you where
there.
The "christ on the cross" of catholicism is
not particularly compatible of the "buddy"
Jesus that many evangelicals have created in
the last two decades and the Catholics have
tended to emphasize more recently.
>His Jesus does not demand a "born again"
>experience...in order to gain salvation.
>He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons...
>...promote social causes...
>...crusade against gender discrimiation...
>[or] teach that we all possess an inner divinity...
This Jesus just IS. No agenda, no contemporary re-interpretation/deconstruction. He just IS.
I AM THAT I AM. -- burning bush to Moses
Posted by: Ken at March 5, 2004 1:00 PM>His Jesus does not demand a "born again"
>experience...in order to gain salvation.
>He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons...
>...promote social causes...
>...crusade against gender discrimiation...
>[or] teach that we all possess an inner divinity...
All that stuff came before, or comes after. At that moment, he saw his job as enduring and dying for us. And like everything else he does, he "did it with all his might."
Posted by: Ptah at March 5, 2004 3:24 PMPtah:
But is not the key moment in Man's relationship with God the point at which even He asks: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Isn't that, though it's presumptuous of us to say so, the first time God truly understands Man?
Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 3:29 PM