LOS ANGELES (ABP) — The blood of Jesus Christ.
Christians sing hymns about it and debate its real or symbolic presence in the communion wine. But in Mel Gibson's controversial “The Passion of the Christ,” they will see it splattered on the big screen as never before in what friends and foes alike acknowledge is a powerful depiction of the death of the man held by believers to be God's son.
The movie by the Oscar-winning director of “Braveheart” begins in Gethsemane, where an ominous blue mist shrouds Jesus (played by Jim Caviezel) as he agonizes over his impending death. After praying, his face covered with dark drops recalling the New Testament reference to “sweat . . . like great drops of blood,” Jesus is arrested, chained, and led away to trial, the guards beating him along the way.
The Jewish authorities, their elegant black robes contrasting the common clothes of the masses, then condemn Jesus in an abusive late-night hearing. Jesus next appears before Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), whom the movie portrays as a man caught between his desire to save an innocent person and his fear of a popular uprising.
Troubled by dreams, Pilate's wife warns the Roman leader that Jesus is a holy man. And Pilate tells her that, in the next insurrection, Rome has threatened to spill his own blood.
The movie's depiction of the Jewish role in Jesus' death has sparked fears that the film would resurrect age-old accusations against the Jews as “Christ-killers.”
In a recent “Appeal to People of Faith,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles explained the Jewish concerns. Acknowledging that Jews and Christians in America have made great strides in understanding each other, the center worries the movie might stir renewed charges of “deicide” — murder of God — outside the churches and outside the United States, where the center says anti-Semitism is on the rise.
“We can show that graphic depictions of Jewish involvement have led to mortal dangers to Jews in the past . . . and that there is no guarantee that such violence could not happen again,” the center explained. Founded to promote religious tolerance, the Jewish organization believes Jewish and Christian people of faith have the obligation to work for mutual understanding.
For Jews, this means trying to understand Christian teaching on the death of Christ, the center said. For Christians, it implies sensitivity to Jewish fears that “portrayals of Jesus' arrest, trial and execution may be misunderstood or distorted to incite anti-Semitic hatred and violence, thereby falsifying the authentic Christian message.”
Keith Russell, president of American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, Calif., underscored the importance of the historical setting of the written story of Jesus for comprehending its critical stance toward the Jews.
Russell explained that the gospel accounts of Jesus' life, written decades after the events they describe, point to a struggle within early Christianity to differentiate itself from the Jewish matrix into which it was born.
As Christians grappled with whether they would remain a “messianic sect within Judaism” or develop a more distinct identity, church and synagogue engaged in a “very intense family fight,” Russell said. The scholar warned against superimposing attitudes from the time the Gospels were written back onto a historical film about Jesus' own period.
New Testament experts similarly point to other perils involved in translating the four written versions of Jesus' life and death — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — into a single narrative on the big screen.
Scott Spencer, professor of New Testament at Virginia's Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, spoke of the risks to the gospel story of telescoping the four biblical portraits of Jesus into one, warning of the “false harmonizing” that can result unless filmmakers take great care.
The seminary professor speculated that God might have given four books about Jesus instead of one to preserve the complexity of the story, so unfathomable and rich that it is impossible to reduce into one simple narrative.
Yet Gibson's film attempts to unflinchingly portray the suffering of Jesus in all its horror.
To dissuade the Jewish leaders intent on Jesus' death in the film, Pilate orders a harsh beating: “See to it that the punishment is severe,” he commands. And his Roman henchmen gladly obey. In some of the film's most violent scenes, the Romans flay the back parts of Jesus' body, then flip him over to lacerate the front.
The path to Golgotha outdoes the cruelty of the Roman flogging. His body a dark mesh of bleeding wounds, and at times on the brink of unconsciousness, Jesus stumbles repeatedly on the way to his death.
In one of the most touching moments of the film, Gibson uses a flashback — one of several in the movie — to link Jesus' final suffering with his earlier life. Following along on his painful walk toward execution, Jesus' mother, Mary (Maia Morgenstern), rushes to comfort Jesus as he stumbles under the weight of the cross. The movie then cuts back to a younger Mary similarly hurrying to help — this time tenderly taking Jesus into her arms as a little boy. But now, as he approaches Golgatha, Mary cannot protect her son.
The camera focuses tightly on the cross as a nail rips through Jesus' flesh and all the way through the wood. Jesus' blood drips as the metal emerges from the other side.
Unknown to the movie's audiences, it is Mel Gibson's own hand that holds the nail, as if to reinforce his belief it is not the Jews but all humanity that is responsible for Jesus' death. “We're all culpable,” he told reporters.
The Romans hoist Jesus' nailed form into the Judean sky, then cynically gamble for his possessions at the foot of the cross. When one of the thieves also crucified taunts Jesus, a bird alights above his head to peck out the thief's eyes.
Despite the controversy surrounding the movie, or perhaps because of it, pastors and other church leaders are promoting it widely. Gary Jared, senior pastor of Stuart Heights Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., has reserved seats at a local movie house for his members to see the film.
Though he hasn't seen the movie himself, Jared said he has confidence in prominent evangelical figures who are backing it. That a major Hollywood figure like Mel Gibson would make a film about Jesus, and that critics would attack its content, made his own interest even more intense, he said.
When he offered his congregation the chance to see the film, “every hand in the place went up,” Jared said. He hopes members will leave the theater with “a renewed vigor of a commitment to Christ.”
Seminary president Russell said he would encourage congregations to study the biblical accounts of Jesus' death before watching Gibson's version. In his religious Baptist tradition, Russell explained, “the Word of God is the primary authority.” He added, “we have to judge all things, including movies, . . . in relationship to that Word.”
-30-