Comments on Mel Gibson's Passion.

In class the other day, my New Testament professor powerfully reminded us that, as people who choose to do theology publicly, we have a professional responsibility to see and respond critically to Mel Gibson's much-touted and much-reviled Passion. Though I ONLY advise adults to see the movie so that they can judge for themselves - and otherwise discourage seeing it on account of its own merits - I couldn't agree more with my teacher.

I went this past Wednesday with my friend FXB, who was good enough to sit through it a second time. I was thoroughly disappointed - not so much by what it evoked in me, as by the fact that it didn't evoke much in me at all. The film's mass of violence has no context whatsoever in the life of Jesus. Gibson too easily reads Jesus as a helpless victim of an unthinking mob manipulated by a conniving religious establishment; missing is any sense of what exactly would have made Jesus worth following to cause such a commotion in the first place. Totally absent was any presentation of the kind of LIFE Jesus lived, which is absolutely essential and integral to make meaning out of Jesus' death.

This, of course, is to say NOTHING of the immense factual problems with the film. Gibson could never have attempted to make a film that stays true to the Gospel texts - the film would last all of the 45 minutes (max) a Passion reading lasts in church, not the full two hours in the theater. Jesus speaking Latin? Come on - only the desire to make Pilate more sympathetic could have occasioned that!

I can relate, though, one positive consequence of watching the film, and I doubt it was among Gibson's intentions. It made me consider just how callously and freely Christians invoke images of violence when talking about the faith. So easily Christians glide into speaking of Jesus' violation on the assumption that it was necessary for our salvation. The result is to support a world-view in which violence is not the offence it should be to our sense of justice, but rather the occasion for God's wondrous saving of lost human beings.

Jesus' death by crucifixion should always bring Christians to greater devotion to non-violent means to seek justice. Jesus' death is a willingness to risk violence itself with retaliating with violence - but NOT to the glory of one's own suffering, but the sure knowledge that violence (of individuals and of structures) is not the last word. If resurrection means anything, it means that LIFE is always God's final word to and for humankind.