NOTE: As we enter the Christian season of Lent, we realize that all persons are called to conversion, to a deeper sense of wholeness, love and, as many persons of faith say, holiness. The following article fosters this journey by reminding us that war and support for war is deeply imbedded in our culture. As we struggle to recreate society, we acknowledge that the spiritual, social and political are different facets of the same reality.

CRITIC'S CHAIR: MEL MAKES A WAR MOVIE
By Susan Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary
February 23, 2004

In one of the last scenes of Mel Gibson's controversial new film "The Passion of the Christ," a muscular Jesus, his body battered but curiously unbowed by the prolonged torture of the last hours of his life, rises from the tomb with a stern look on his face, turns and marches off into the sunset. Jesus is portrayed as an action hero in this film by this well-known Hollywood actor and filmmaker. Rather like Rocky Balboa, the Jesus of "Passion" takes everything his enemies can dish out and then he comes off the ropes and sets off to conquer. Or like Gibson's "Braveheart" movie, Jesus is portrayed like the great Scottish hero, William Wallace. The only real difference is that in "Passion," Jesus rises after dying from horrendous torture. Great Hollywood. Bad interpretation of the Christian gospels.

Gibson and his supporters would deny that this film is an interpretation, of course. They claim only that it is a literal portrayal of the Jesus as found in the gospels. The Christian scriptures, however, contain four gospels and they all differ in what is recorded on the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. There is no such thing as a "literal" rendering of the Christian gospels. This movie was made from a script that selected certain scenes, deleted others, made up some and fashioned the whole into a story--a fictionalized story as is done for any other Hollywood film. Even the decision to focus on the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus was an interpretation. Why choose just the events leading up to the death of Jesus for a film? Why not choose to focus on the years of his life and his significant teachings? This movie is very selective in its chosen script.

The controversy that has preceded this film's official opening has been over the selective portrayal of the Jewish synagogue leaders as "responsible" for the death of Jesus. This is an interpretation as well, and a dangerous one in the current world climate of rising religious hatreds. At the level of a literal reading, curiously enough, it is clear from the New Testament narratives that the Jews did not literally kill Jesus. If they had, Jesus would have died by stoning, the Jewish method of capital punishment, as in the story of the woman taken in adultery. Instead, Jesus was crucified, the Roman Empire's preferred method of capital punishment (6,000 people were once crucified by the Romans after they crushed the slave rebellion led by Spartacus). The New Testament does record that some Jews, especially the temple leaders (like the high priest Caiaphas) did conspire in handing Jesus over to the Romans for execution. But Jesus' followers, as well as Jesus himself, were also Jewish. They opposed the execution of Jesus, even threatening to violently defend him from arrest; as of course the gospels also record.

In the heroic genre, the hero always needs an enemy. Why are the Jews portrayed throughout the film as the enemy, when the Romans are the direct evildoers according to scripture? Historians from the period, such as Philo of Alexandria, describe Pontius Pilate as "inflexible, stubborn and cruel." In Gibson's movie Pilate is portrayed as vacillating and weak. The Roman soldiers are portrayed as brutal, but the slant of the film is to make the Jews culpable. This is an interpretive choice and a historically ignorant one.

Jewish leaders have opposed this film's slant toward anti-Semitism; some Christian leaders have also denounced its anti-Jewish bias. But where are the Christian voices opposing this film as a war movie made about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Prince of Peace? This film is not only dangerous for Jews; it is dangerous for Christians in today's warring world to think Jesus is an action hero.

The selectivity of this film's script goes well beyond the negative picture of the Jews. It is also a sado-masochistic portrayal of the death of Jesus. The film more than deserves its R rating for the shocking and prolonged physical and emotional violence wreaked on the figure of Jesus. Gibson, who attends Latin mass, is a Catholic fundamentalist as is his even more extreme father. Fundamentalist orthodoxy, both Catholic and Protestant, focuses on the sacrificial death of Jesus as the way human sin is overcome. All of Jesus' life and all of his teachings are really irrelevant in this point of view. Jesus was sent to Earth to die and to die horribly. The rest was preamble.

The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount appears fleetingly in the film in a flashback. Other than that, the emphasis is on the violence done to Jesus rather than on his teaching. This film skews the message of the gospels toward brutal torture and eventual triumph. The horrible violence wreaked on Jesus body in "Passion" provokes disgust and outrage in the viewer. That is the film's real goal. The message is that the violence done to Jesus justifies violent retaliation. As the battered but unbowed Jesus figure turns to face the horizon the point is clear. Here comes the risen Christ and he is ready to do battle against sin. Like I said, great Hollywood.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0402230151feb23,1,4886359.story

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
    Releasing those bound unjustly,
    Untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
    Breaking every yoke;
Sharing your  bread with the hungry,
    Sheltering the oppressed adn the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
    And not turning your back on your own. (Isaiah 58: 6-7)

ACTIONS
1. Reflect upon the way  in which war and support for war is imbedded within our culture: movies, stories, etc.
2. Share and discuss this leaflet with family, friends, coworkers and your faith community.