Good Friday C, 2004
Luke 23:1-32
GOOD FRIDAY’S CREDIBLE JESUS
Of Mel Gibson’s film The passion of the Christ
there is one thing nearly everyone is in agreement on:
it is shockingly brutal and violent.
On everything else Gibson’s film divides.
Let me say up front: I have not seen the film.
And I do not intend to see the film.
I agree with the Revd Doug Purnell when, writing in Insights, he said:
“I am offended by violence... I wonder if too much violence, full in the face of the viewer, desensitises them to the greater violence in the community enacted by wise political leaders ‘in the name of God’... We have put too many people violently on crosses in our world, isn’t it time we found ways to bring them down” (Doug Purnell. Letters... Insights March 2004/2).
However, I have not escaped
the TV film clips,
the advertisements,
the Ken Duncan photos from the film-set now published in a book, and
the reviews and commentaries.
People shaped and nurtured by a fundamentalist, pentecostal theology,
declare the film is a ‘faithful’ and ‘accurate’ account of what happened,
supporting the theology that the death of Jesus
was a sacrifice for sin and all part of God’s plan.
People shaped and nurtured by a progressive liberal theology,
declare the film medievel, confusing liturgy for history, anti-Jewish
(rather than anti-Semitic),
and where ignorance and prejudice have scored again
over scholarship and integrity.
Of all the reviews I have read,
including the most detailed of series offered by Jack Spong,
the one written by John Carroll,
professor of sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne (Vic)
in last Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald, was most helpful.
John Carroll wrote:
“The Passion fails, crucially, at what in the Jewish tradition is called midrash. That is the method of retelling fundamental stories and their classical themes in ways that speak to the new times. Every new generation has to midrash its stories. This film reverts to the Middle Ages; it lacks spiritual force; it does not uplift; and it leaves little sense of who this extraordinary man was, and why he changed Western history” (Carroll 2004. SMH 3 April/Spectrum4-5).
So, in the spirit of John Carroll’s comments, with Mel Gibson’s film
(and some other ‘Jesus’ videos I have recently received, as well) as a backdrop,
and on this Good Friday morning,
let us again reflect on the question: why did Jesus die?
oo0oo
Jesus died because he was publicly and brutally executed.
He certainly did not want to die.
He died as a result of his passionate, imaginative living.
He died as a result of a decision not to deviate from the God-Self-Neighbour relationship he continually lived.
What Jesus said and did and stood for...
collided with all that was heartless and oppressive
in a social religion that had forgotten its real meaning.
His healings on the Sabbath.
His acts of forgiveness.
His stories which turned conventional wisdom upside down.
His association with that society’s outcasts.
His speaking in the name of the God of compassion...
all tore open the social and religious fabric of his time.
Either that social and religious order, or Jesus, had to go.
I really like what B Brandon Scott has said:
“... one can see in Jesus’ language-activity the seeds of a conflict that could easily escalate to a confrontation and to death... Rome’s rule is built on the premise that the local population is divided and distrustful of each other” (Scott 2002:35).
In the current political climate this sounds very modern!
So my comments in response to Mel Gibson’s film
and all the fundamentalist hype which has gone on since its release, are:
• The cross is about Jesus’ integrity, not sacrificial atonement;
• God’s love is not about supernatural payment or rescue,
but divine sharing in human suffering;
• Jesus did not invite the cross but accepted it
rather than abandon his vision or glimpse
of what the world can really be like
when you look at it with God’s eyes.
And one other comment.
Jesus attempted to pass his vision or glimpse along,
as he told about it in stories and sayings and conversations.
He did not write a definitive essay or the complete book.
And more often than not the ‘book’ we have
hides more of Jesus than reveals him (R Funk).
Instead, his efforts were more like that of a painter who uses broad strokes.
And those strokes were ones which
enlarged God to include humankind
and enlarged the self to include the neighbour.
oo0oo
Why did Jesus die?
Integrity to a vision rather than a sacrifice for sins...
That’s what I and many others of the progressive theological spirit
want to claim the ‘cross’ is a symbol of.
And that is a hundred miles away from both
the empty heart of the Apostle’s Creed, and Mel Gibson’s film
and his fundamentalist medieval Catholic theology.
It is also, I believe, a far more appropriate and suitable vision
with which to shape a 21st century faith.
Notes:
Funk, R. W. 1996. Honest to Jesus. Jesus for a new
millennium. NY:
New York. HarperSanFrancisco.
Scott, B. B. 2002. Re-imagine the world. An
introduction to the parables of Jesus. CA: Snata Rosa. Polebridge Press.
Shea, J. 1975. The challenge of Jesus. Ill: Chicago. The Thomas More
Press.