First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
April 4, 2004

Let's establish one thing at the outset; it is irrational and irresponsible to think that anyone now alive bears any responsibility for the death of Jesus. It is also, I would contend, irrational and irresponsible to think that anyone now alive benefits from the death of Jesus. These are both superstitions that we can live, and are better off, without. In the absence of these two premises, director Mel Gibson's recently released, heavily publicized movie, "The Passion of the Christ", would be just one more cinematic study in the human capacity to endure, and to inflict, violence. This is clearly a theme which fascinates him, as can easily be seen in his earlier work, like "Braveheart" and "Lethal Weapon" - or so I am told; neither of these was a film I cared to see. Nor would I recommend "The Passion"; unless you are compelled by the demands of intellectual integrity - say, for instance, you have been asked to preach about this production - or you have a taste for slasher movies with religious imagery, I can see nothing to be gained from subjecting yourself to this experience. On the other hand, if this is what Mr. Gibson chooses to do with his money, he ought to be able to make whatever movie he wants, expressing whatever theology he holds. I don't advocate censorship, either before the fact or after; people should be allowed to make, and to see, whatever movies they wish, no matter how I may feel about either their images or their convictions. And this is as true when it comes to religious visions as when it comes to politics or sexuality. The freedom to do only whatever does not create controversy, or disgust, is no freedom at all. Moreover, Gibson's portrayal of the final hours of Jesus' life gives a revealing window into a certain kind of religious mindset; a mindset that has been mocked and dismissed in the "serious" mainline intellectual discussions of theology for at least the last twenty years. This film has a message that we would be well advised to heed; not, I think, the one that Gibson intended, but a message no less significant for that.

Let me dispose of the two questions most often asked about the film; is it accurate? And, is it anti-semitic? The two queries are not unrelated, for if the movie is in some meaningful sense 'true', and its portrayal of the role of the Jewish religious leadership of the time is damning, then it could potentially re-ignite the smoldering embers of prejudice that western culture has been at some pains to smother altogether in the wake of Nazi Germany's genocidal effort to obliterate Judaism, which is even yet for some of us a living memory. There are three levels on which one might evaluate the accuracy or otherwise of the film, and my opinion is that it fails on the two more important criteria. One might ask, Is it historically accurate; does it retell actual events that really happened? The answer to this question is clearly no; not from anything we know for sure, and not even from anything that is likely, based on what we do know of the times. We know that Gibson takes his narrative, such as it is, from the four canonical gospels, and we know, if we take seriously archeology and literary scholarship, that these were accounts written for very specific political and evangelical purposes, which differ even among themselves. They represent actual historical events about as accurately as the ads currently being run by the Bush and Kerry campaigns. Gibson has made no effort whatsoever to tell this story as it might actually have happened at a real time in the history of the Roman empire.

The second criteria of accuracy might ask, Is it true to the stories told in the gospels? Assuming that these are literary works, it is of course possible to imagine a movie that faithfully represents that work of invention, that recounts all and only what is found in the New Testament on the subject of Jesus' last hours. This is clearly not the case in Mel Gibson's film. There are incidents in the movie that occur nowhere in any of the gospels, and I would even go so far as to argue that the film magnifies the violence of the events out of all reasonable proportion to the role of that element in the original stories. It creates personal qualities and motivations for various characters that have no basis in the gospel accounts, and it changes or conflates certain settings and groups. It cannot be said to be a strictly accurate rendition of the stories on which it is based.

On a last, and more trivial level, I am willing to suppose that "The Passion of the Christ" might accurately portray what happens to a human body subjected to the specific kinds of physical abuse that Gibson so painstakingly and lingeringly reproduces. Such a realistic vicarious experience might conceivably be of interest and value both historically - whether or not it happened for these reasons to this person, such methods were in fact employed in first century occupied Palestine, and all too many other times and places; things like this, and worse, have happened - or morally, as a contrast and challenge to the easy, careless titillation of the casual cinematic violence so popular among today's movie-goers. In 1936, a physician, Pierre Barbet, published a small book entitled "A Doctor at Calvary", in which he examines through the eyes of what was then modern medical science the probable effects of the sequence of events before and during the crucifixion as they are told in the gospels. It is gruesome reading, but informative - not so much about Jesus per se, and in some respects Barbet's reliance upon the Shroud of Turin for evidence is both distracting and discrediting - but about the general efficient cruelty of this entirely Roman method of execution. One might say that in some ways, the movie is a more accurate rendition of Barbet's volume than it is of the gospels themselves.

The other notable source of Gibson's particular vision brings us to the question of anti-semitism. In the year 1818 in Germany, a minor romantic poet by the name of Klemens Brentano suffered a rebuff from the woman with whom he was then in love. Distraught over his lack of romantic and professional success, he rediscovered his Catholic faith, and left Berlin for the town of Dulmen, Westphalia, to visit an invalid Augustinian nun by the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich. Anne Catherine was renowned for her mystical visions, and upon meeting Brentano, she announced that god had instructed him to record her narration of these experiences. The resulting collaborations, which were not published until almost a decade after Anne Catherine's death, include most famously a volume entitled "The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ", in which she offers an eye-witness account of the trial and crucifixion as seen in her meditations. This book, which may readily be supposed to owe as much to the poet's sentiment as to the nun's fantasies, became something of a staple of 19^th century Catholic spirituality, and is the supplementary source for Mel Gibson's movie version of Jesus' last hours. Looking at this text, there can be no question that Emmerich and Brentano held conventional 19^th century German views of Judaism, with echoes of the pogroms and foreshadowings of the concentration camps not all that far to seek. They are naievely and unconsciously anti-semitic, as their entire culture was. To the extent that the movie "The Passion of the Christ" is shaped by what it owes to "The Dolorous Passion" of Brentano and Emmerich, it is also unreflectively biased - with a great deal less historical excuse.

Yet it is also important not to let the primary authors, the gospel writers themselves, off the hook. The New Testament is in some sense itself a collection of propaganda, and there was good political motivation for those who created it to pin the blame for the death of Jesus on the Jewish leadership, rather than the Roman occupation government. After all, when the Jerusalem temple was finally destroyed by Rome in the year 70 CE, the power of the priests and elders came to an abrupt end. Christianity, as a new sect, was already making greater headway among the gentiles of the Roman world than it was in the confusion of disrupted Judaism. It was more important for Christians to be in the good graces of Roman authorities, who had a great deal of power, than to be on good terms with the Jewish community, whose leadership was both unstable and ineffectual. Thus the gospel writers seek, each successive one more earnestly than the last, to tell the story in a way that mitigates the extent to which Rome killed a popular resistance hero and political activist, and emphasizes rather the motivation of the Jewish authority figures to dispose of a threatening religious rival.

It seems to me probable that the chief priests and the elders of the Sanhedrin were in fact nervous about Jesus; it is important to remember that they represented a kind of collaborationist Vichy government. They feared that unless they kept the whole of the Jewish community quiet and cooperative under Roman occupation, what little autonomy and religious integrity they still had would be destroyed, and later events proved their fears to be entirely justified. They may well have turned their rabble-rousing popular problem child over to the Roman authorities when he showed up in the middle of that crowded Passover feast, but crucifixion was an exclusively Roman idea. It was particularly abhorrent to the Jewish culture, because normally the bodies of the condemned were left in place to disintegrate until nothing remained, and no proper burial could be given. Thus the work of collectively blaming the entire Jewish community for Jesus' death is begun by the gospel writers, given impetus by Anne Catherine's morbid visions, and now reinforced by Mel Gibson's choices in his dramatic interpretation of the various characters. It seems to me that our Jewish neighbors have sufficient reason to be distressed, and yet I think the common sense response is the statement with which I began; that it is irrational and irresponsible to think that anyone now alive bears any responsibility whatsoever for the death of Jesus. If we could get that straight, all the rest would be an argument for literary critics and archeologists.

There is nothing new in what Gibson is trying to do. Great artists throughout the centuries have attempted to portray the anguish and sacrifice of Jesus with all the power of the materials and technology they had at their disposal. The music that the chorus is performing for us today is one example, and expressive masterpieces have been painted on this subject, for altar pieces, and especially for that traditional succession of images that is known as the stations of the cross. Perhaps the most sympathetic way to look at this movie is as a kind of cinematic version of the stations of the cross; an opportunity to participate sympathetically in those hours of pain and tragedy, when as so often happens, innocent goodness suffers at the hands of corrupt and indifferent power. And yet, as a theologically literate friend of mine has pointed out, "The Passion of the Christ" ultimately does not make any contribution to a richer understanding of the Christian story for our time; it fails, he says, as midrash. Midrash is the name of the Jewish tradition of commentary and reflection on stories of faith; the attempt to re-envision and re-interpret the classic texts in ways that make them relevant and revealing for our own contemporary lives. Rather than doing that, Gibson has retreated to a theological perspective from previous centuries, which took a perverse satisfaction in mortifying the flesh, in physical suffering as a rejection of the body and the material world. There is nothing new, or helpful, in such notions, and thus, I would argue, little justification for the intense and incessant brutality of this movie.

The only authentic theological response I can make to it is the question, What kind of a god requires this? What kind of a god approves this, is satisfied by this? If this film were indeed an accurate picture of the great moral axis of the universe; if this is the system, then I want no part of it. If this is what I have to accept, this degradation and utter inhumanity, in order to enter into paradise, then to hell I will go, gladly and proudly - for what is there in hell that could be worse than god's love as it is manifested in this appalling savagery? The god who accepts this, still less the god who is pleased by it, still less the god who plans it, and least of all the god who demands it, is unworthy of the worship of thoughtful human beings. Even if it were true that such a god actually existed, that god would still deserve our moral contempt. That may be the only power we would have in such a system, but it is the responsibility which we may not shirk - to decide what it is that is worthy of our worship.

A lot of things that are bigger and stronger than we are exist; a lot of things with coercive power, and we have common sense enough to admit that they exist, but we also have moral sense enough not to worship them just because they are powerful. Volcanoes exist, and earthquakes happen; giant meteors do hurtle through space. Microscopic viruses can corrupt our very cells and cause intractable pain and death; we may not be able to stop them, but we can choose not to worship them. Our own will to power and our own capacity to inflict suffering also exist, and we work hard not to worship them, either. The god of Mel Gibson's imagination, the god who chose and required and rejoices in the suffering portrayed by Gibson's art, might exist - I don't believe it, but even if it were true, even if that god did exist, it would still be a contemptible god; it would be a god unworthy of our humanity and inadequate for our devotion.

Now permit me to indulge for a moment my own irrepressible religious imagination. I want to suggest that the god of Mel Gibson's agony is not the god of Jesus; not the god that Jesus taught, from what little we know of his teachings, and not the god whom Jesus loved. Jesus pictured for his followers a god of liberation, a god whose kingdom was a feast of equality, infinitely abundant and open to all, a god whose radical welcome confounds our human notions of respectability, and our shame; a god whose defining qualities are forgiveness and mercy. Such a god, who could stop us in our own judgmental tracks with the insistence that the last shall be first and that no sparrow falls unnoticed might be worthy of our worship - that's a long conversation. Personally, I don't think that god actually exists, either, but the idea of it lifts my spirits, makes the world a more joyful place, enlarges my humanity.

The trouble with this movie is that it cheapens our humanity and reduces god to a sadist. In the end, I think it plays upon one of the most fundamental and intense of all human longings, one that goes unsatisfied until we invent a story for it, and which I'm thinking probably needs to go unsatisfied if we are to retain what is humane in our human nature. I suspect that we hunger, almost more than we hunger for love or immortality, to be assured that our suffering and our death have meaning; that they accomplish something. We want to die for a purpose, for a reason; we can bear incredible pain or deprivation as long as we believe that by doing so we can make the world better or help others. That's the story we make up for ourselves, that it's for our children, for our nation, for the cause, for god. But here's the problem; the same story that enables us to bear our own suffering, gives us permission to inflict suffering on others for those very same reasons. I am pretty sure that if we didn't believe, in the god or the cause or the country, we couldn't do these horrible, bloody things to each other. And the truth is that god isn't the one who does it; the truth is, that we do this to one another; human beings did it and human beings do it still. We did it in Roman amphitheaters and the dungeons of the inquisition; we did it in concentration camps and ghettos and gulags. We did it in lynchings and slave auctions, and scalpings and trails of tears. We did it in little rooms at the KGB and we do it still in little rooms at the CIA. We do it in prisons, and in classrooms and living rooms - we draw one another's blood; the flesh jerks and the bones crack, and something feeds the cruelty that lives within our humanity. And the worst of it is this; it doesn't help anybody; it doesn't save anybody; it doesn't teach anything; it doesn't redeem anything; it doesn't do any good.

How long, oh my friends, in the name of mercy, how long? When shall we learn even something this simple; that we might choose to be kind to one another? That we might choose to love mercy, and to think the terrors of the world enough, without inventing more? Crucifixion is bad, but it isn't the worst way to go - we're more creative than that, I promise you. The very church that was founded in the name of Jesus was quite creative in this regard, once upon a time. Because when you have a story that lets you believe that suffering does any good, that it accomplishes anything, then you are free to bring to life the worst nightmares of our collective imagination. Surely, surely if religion is to offer any redemption to the miseries of human existence, it must begin by telling us to stop it; it must take the cross and the scourge out of our hands, not glorify them. Surely any goodness worthy of our worship turns away in pity and horror from the spectacle of what we do to one another when we forget that we all stand equally vulnerable before the arbitrary and meaningless cruelties of life in this world. Surely we are all in this together, and there is nothing to be gained by making it harder for each other. Surely there is no need for two hours of unrelenting anguish on a movie screen, detailing the failure of all that ought to make us human.

Don't believe it. Don't buy it. Cruelty isn't the cure for anything; suffering makes the world worse, not better, and we are not required to bless it, or give it our approval. In the end, my reply to Mel Gibson is the words of Millay - thinking of Jesus' life as it is told to us;