Sermon Archive

“The Passion of the Christ.” Yes, I have seen Mel Gibson’s movie. And let me begin in an up-front way by saying that this film is not my gospel—by which I mean that it doesn’t portray my understanding of God’s Good News as proclaimed by Jesus, and as also embodied by him.

Still, having stated that, let me also say that “The Passion” invites and provokes discussion of such a significant number of important theological issues that I consider Gibson’s movie well worth seeing. I would offer just these two qualifications—first, that you should go prepared to view the film with a theological eye that is critical and questioning, and second, that you should go having firmly resolved to discuss it afterwards with others, to talk about what you’ve seen and experienced. PLEASE NOTE THIS, HOWEVER: Gibson’s movie is definitely not for children. So if you go to see it, leave the kids at home.

But yes, I do find “The Passion” to be both a serious film worthy of study and discussion and also a quite devout reflection on the meaning of Jesus’s Messiahship, and on the importance of Jesus’s suffering and crucifixion for our theological self-understanding, both as humans and as Christians. Indeed, I believe “The Passion” is offering us what I would call “a teachable moment,” for Gibson’s movie seems to have created among us one of those rare times when we are interested in wrestling with the question of what it means for us that the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, was tortured and crucified—the very question that’s at issue in each of this morning’s two lessons—from the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.

Now, my reflections today are not intended to be “a film review” examining the technical cinematic aspects of this work. Rather, my remarks are intended to help our community of faith prepare for Good Friday, prepare both spiritually and theologically, by letting aspects of Gibson’s movie frame for us our Lenten reflections on the suffering of Jesus, “on the passion of the Christ.”

Let me begin by observing that in Gibson’s movie, the event of Jesus’s suffering and death is provided with very little context. For example, we are shown virtually none of the teachings and actions of Jesus that so provoked and angered the religious leaders of that time. Indeed, as the movie begins, it is already the very last night of Jesus’s life and ministry, and even Jesus’s final meal with his disciples has already happened. So when we first catch a glimpse of Jesus, he is already in the Garden of Gethsemane, engaged in fervent, even tortured, prayer as he struggles to strengthen his resolve to face and endure the trial and crucifixion from which he can still escape, if he so chooses.

So the final events of Jesus’s life unfold in the film without any cause or motivation having been established. Oh, Gibson does occasionally offer us a flashback to an earlier moment in Jesus’s life, each one breaking in on the film’s depiction of the last half-day of Jesus’s earthly existence. And the flashbacks to one or another of Jesus’steachings do take on an intriguing power and poignancy when they’re presented in the framework of his tortured death. Still, Gibson’s theological point of view is that it is Jesus’s suffering that gives meaning to his teachings and earlier deeds rather than that it is the meaning of Jesus’s teachings and earlier deeds that brings about his suffering. As a result, the negative response by the leaders and crowds to Jesus’s person and message goes unexplained. So Gibson’s portrayal deprives us, the audience, of the chance to go beyond merely caricaturing Jesus’s opponents to actually understanding that we, too, might have acted as they did had we been there.

Now none of the four canonical gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John—has anything like the nearly exclusive focus on Jesus’s final hours that Gibson’s film has. The one of them that is most focused on the suffering of Christ—the Gospel of Mark—devotes just 15% of its length to the time span that takes up 95% of the movie.

Furthermore, the longest single scene in the film (or at least so it seemed to me)—namely, the brutal scourging of Jesus by Roman soldiers—that violent scene is described by Mark and Matthew in just 5 verses, by John in only 3 verses, and by Luke in no verses at all (for Luke is content to leave the scene to the reader’s imagination).

Now, Gibson’s almost exclusive focus on Jesus’s torture and execution raises for me three questions about Jesus’s suffering and death.

First, although Gibson dwells for a longer time than the gospels do on the amount of suffering that Jesus endured, can it really be said that Gibson exaggerates the extent to which Jesus suffered?

To which I answer, reluctantly and sadly: I’m afraid Gibson is not exaggerating this. We Protestants—with our aversion to crucifixes and our squeamishness over even verbal images of Jesus’s blood—we Protestants have for a long time blocked from our consciousness the truth about how much violent cruelty Jesus actually did experience at the hands of the powers of this world during the final hours of his life. For better or for worse, I think Gibson’s movie does convey the truth about the level of cruelty involved in the state scourgings and crucifixions carried out by Rome.

Yet my acknowledgment that there is considerable historical reality to the brutality seen in Gibson’s movie leads me to a second and more important question, one that is raised in the current issue of The Christian Century Magazine (3/9/04, p. 5; italics added). It is this: “Is the extent of Jesus’ physical suffering theologically significant? Would the Passion have a different meaning if Jesus had, say, been quickly beheaded” rather than subjected to the protracted tortures of scourging and crucifixion? Are the number of lashes Jesus endured and the amount of blood Jesus spilled of any real religious significance?

Well, in Gibson’s television interview with Diane Sawyer several weeks ago, he spoke of two reasons why he wanted to portray the violence and brutality done to Jesus so shockingly and extremely as “to push viewers over the edge”: first, Gibson wanted us to experience the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice for us, and second, he wanted us to see that Jesus could endure all of that violence and then, from the cross, still speak words of love and forgiveness.

Now, I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the second reason Gibson gives, but disagreeing strongly with the first. So let me explain.

I agree with Gibson’s second reason— wanting us to see that Jesus could endure all of that torture and then, from the cross, still speak words of love and forgiveness—I agree with this reason, for here Gibson highlights for us what I understand to be the foundation for all of Jesus’s life and ministry, and not just for his death: namely, the enormity of God’s love for humankind, and the enormity of God’s mercy toward us.

But I disagree strongly with the first reason Gibson gives for portraying the violence done to Jesus so graphically—namely, that he wants us to experience the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice. Now, as we see in Gibson’s statement, he is clearly interpreting Jesus’s death as a “sacrifice,” offered to God. Indeed, it is this understanding of Jesus’s death as a “sacrifice” that underlies and motivates Gibson’s whole film. And here we come to the most important issue I’ll be discussing this morning. For it is with this traditional way of viewing and interpreting Jesus’s death—one that is emphasized not only by Roman Catholics but also by Evangelical Protestants—it is with this traditional interpretation of Jesus’s death as a “sacrifice” that I disagree so very strongly.

I can best frame my disagreement by posing here a third important question that this movie raises about Jesus’s suffering and death. It is this: Was Jesus born to die—for us; or was Jesus born to live—for us? Was Jesus’s death a self-offered sacrifice pre-planned by God before Jesus was ever born? Or was Jesus’s death an evil and unnecessary outcome, the result of sinful choices made by the likes of us—sinful choices to reject the love of God embodied in the ministry of Jesus? Is it Jesus's death that can save us, or is it Jesus’s life?

Well, together with much of Christendom both before and now, Gibson understands the central purpose of Jesus’s existence to have been to die, to offer himself as a sacrificial ransom to a God made angry by our sin. In order to appease this God’s justified wrath, there was need for a perfectly innocent victim to bear the punishment that is rightfully ours, to die in our stead by offering to God a pure and perfect sacrifice of death. And in the very first frame of Gibson’s film, don't blink, you’ll see quoted the words from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah that underpin this interpretation of Jesus’s death (53: 5 KJV): “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: … and with his stripes we are healed.”

Well, did God send the Christ to earth for the purpose of suffering and dying—as Mel Gibson portrays it? Or did God send the Christ to earth in order to give living expression in his ministry to the tender mercy and deep love that God has for humankind—as I and others would portray it?

You see, theologically, Gibson understands Jesus’s death to have een the most crucial thing he did for us, indeed to have been something he had to do for us. “With his stripes we are healed.”

Therefore, Gibson’s film puts great visual emphasis on what is for me the most troubling moment in the whole movie, the most troubling moment both theologically and emotionally. And it is a moment that is not at all a part of the biblical record. It is Gibson’s personal theological statement. During the Romans’ merciless scourging of Jesus with their cane rods, he falls to the ground, and the officer-in-charge calls out, “Satis,” “Enough.” And the torture stops. But then the fallen Jesus, summoning every last bit of his strength, struggles to his feet and straightens his back, visibly inviting the soldiers to resume their lashing, saying to them through his body language, “Your brutality toward me should not stop so soon; you should again start in on me.” And so the soldiers take up Jesus’s challenge and launch into what becomes the most vicious and sadistic part of the entire movie.

Gibson’s theology is one of “Jesus as the sacrificial victim” who insists that his death is necessary and inevitable and must therefore be fulfilled. In contrast to that, I subscribe to quite a different biblical understanding of the meaning of Jesus’s death. In this other view, Jesus’s death was not something necessary and inevitable, but something evil. Jesus was put to death not because he was pre-ordained by God to die but because humankind responded negatively to the way Jesus chose to live. Death was the sentence that we sinful humans passed on Jesus’s life of unqualified love and goodness, a sentence rooted in the evil that lurks in our hearts.

But Jesus’s death was neither necessary nor inevitable. The mission and purpose of Jesus’s life and ministry was not to offer a sacrifice. It was not to die in order to pay a ransom for our sins, thereby appeasing God’s anger and saving us from God’s wrath. Rather the mission and purpose of Jesus’s life and ministry was first, to model for humankind the fullness of mercy and forgiveness that God offers to us sinners, and second, to model for us the perfection of love that God is and that those who accept God’s forgiveness are invited, by God’s grace, to become. It is not Jesus’s death that can save us, but his life!

Jesus’s death was neither necessary nor inevitable. We humans had the opportunity to accept God’s mercy and love, embodied for us in Jesus. In this morning’s lesson from Luke, Jesus sends the ruler, Herod, a message, asking him to observe how Jesus’s ministry is one of healing and of bringing God’s love to people. “Through his life and ministry, we are healed.” And Jesus states clearly that the role he wants to play in the world is that of the mother hen whose offer of protective love is accepted by her children. Yet Jesus notes with great sorrow that the powers of this world have in the past rejected those who come proclaiming the way of God, and that most likely they will do so again. And sure enough, instead of accepting Jesus’s mother-like love, humankind, with our sinful heart, puts him to death.

But then of course, in one further act of enormous mercy and love, God overcomes the worst that humankind can do—the putting to death of God’s beloved Son. Yes, in one further act of enormous mercy and love, God snatches victory from the jaws of the defeat that evil intends. God raises Jesus from the dead, vindicating the love and mercy that had been embodied in his earthly life.

But then, that’s a story not for Lent, but for Easter.

Let us pray: