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(This
sermon is also available in audio.) Well, yesterday we had some fun. I tried to get a bunch of Presbyterians (God’s Frozen Chosen) and Episcopalians and a few others to loosen up a bit and suggested that sometimes we take ourselves too seriously, (like Jonah) and that if we could only begin to laugh a little at the smallness of our vision of the purposes of God, then we’d all be better off and see each other as God sees us. But that is not to say that we shouldn’t take some things seriously. There are some things we should take very seriously. Issues like war and peace matter a lot to God. We need to take the fears and concerns of our children and teenagers very seriously, because you never know. We need to take our covenantal vows seriously, whether they are faith covenants, baptism covenants, or marriage covenants. What are some other things we need to take seriously? We need to take seriously our search for truth. But that’s a lot easier said than done, isn’t it? Truth can be so slippery. In this post-modern world there are some who say there is no such thing as truth. And part of the problem is that we in the church make some truth claims that aren’t true, but we say them because they are true. Do you know what I mean? Let’s see. We say, “We are one in Christ.” We are one in Christ. That’s a truth we state all the time. Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, and we are one in Christ. Now, that’s true. But is it true? You drive down a street and see a church and then you see another church. You are told, “That church is an off-shoot of that church--split off a few years ago. Then this church is an off-shoot of that church.” We are one in Christ? Episcopalians, would you say are you one in Christ right now? Presbyterians, don’t throw stones…we’re there too! Baptists? Same thing. But we say it because its true, but its not true, but its true…but it’s not true, but it’s true. Truth can be slippery even in the church. And then there are some truths that we hold on to for dear life only to find out that they weren’t true. For centuries the church believed that certain races were inferior to other races, and that the Bible justified the separation of the races, even justified slavery. Starts right there in Genesis, we were told, with Noah’s curse. That truth turned out not to be true, and there was a lot of suffering as a result. Same thing with women. Maybe, I don’t know, but I suspect maybe some day we’ll look back at other truths we hold today that seem so clear and say, “I can’t believe we thought that was true!” Which means that the search for truth always entails a certain amount of humility. How do you get a handle on truth, anyway? And what is truth? That, of course, is the question Pontius Pilate asked Jesus there in the Praetorium before the crucifixion. And it’s somewhat ironic that Pilate is the one asking the question, because there have been so many truth claims made recently about him and others as a result of Mel Gibson’s The Passion [of the Christ]. (I don’t know if any of you have heard anything about that. If you haven’t, I’d invite you to come back from the Mars Rover.) But after seeing the movie and doing some more study, I have become more and more convinced, that Christians need to differentiate between Gibson’s truth and the Gospel Truth. This needs to be taken very seriously by people in the Christian community, for it is the truth and integrity of our Gospel that is at stake. I saw the movie and I really wanted to come out of there and say that it really wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be, that the depiction of Jews was more ambiguous than I had feared. I wanted to try to find common ground that might be a bridge between me and some of my very faithful more evangelical friends. Unfortunately, it was worse than I had imagined. Certainly the bloodiest, goriest, most violent movie I had ever seen. Just when it can get no crueler, it does. Instead of being moved, I felt abused. This would border on sado-masochistic pornography if Jesus were not involved. And I have to admit that I find it puzzling that conservative Catholics and evangelicals who have always opposed violence in film, now find it fine if Jesus is involved in one. Don’t get me wrong. During Holy Week I will probably listen to one of Bach’s “Passions,” will sing “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” and will meditate on the suffering of Christ, but not in the belief that the more blood and gore, the holier. So in the search for truth, let’s start with Pontius Pilate, the one who asked about truth. We think we know him pretty well in the Christian church. Many of us recite every Sunday “he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.” He just has a cameo in the gospels, but is a major figure in Gibson’s movie, where he is depicted as a tender-hearted, somewhat torn and weak leader, influenced by a compassionate wife, Claudia. But first century historians, such as Josephus, attributed robbery, murder, and inhumanity to Pilate as they would describe his atrocities and blunders. He terrorized the entire Jewish population and because of his brutality, he was relieved of his post and called home because of “excessive cruelty,” an extraordinary charge for a Roman military man, for the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome,” was no peace, but was built upon brutality and oppression. But over time, Pilate’s treatment became more sympathetic. Tertullian, a early church father who lived from 160 to 225, said he thought of Pilate as a Christian at heart. Soon legends began to appear that later told of Pilate’s conversion. In the Eastern Coptic church, Pilate and his wife even became saints! From a brutal, Saddam Hussein-like murderer, to a saint! What had happened, you see, was that, as early as the very Gospels were being written, many followers of Jesus had begun to give up on converting the Jews and had begun to think that the real audience for their outreach should be the vast world of the Roman Empire. They had their work cut out because the powers that be in Rome considered the followers of Jesus to be dangerous subversives, so much so that the Roman ruler Nero hung followers of Jesus on lampposts lining the streets of Jerusalem. And so the gospel writers and others sought to play down the antagonism that Jews of Jesus’ time felt toward Rome, and turned the anger at his crucifixion on to the Jews. Mel Gibson’s re-invention of a brutal murderer into a soft-hearted weak, vacillating Pontius Pilate is a Gibson truth, and certainly not the Gospel Truth. The other night I was over at Schnucks [Grocery Store]. It was Thursday, I think, just a day after the movie opened and the day that I saw it. The cashier and the bagger were talking about the movie. One of them had just seen it. “Man, Gibson nailed it. (I don’t think there was a pun intended.) He really told it like it was!” I disagreed with him politely and talked a minute with him, and went on, but I really wanted to tell him about one of the main sources for the film. No, I’m not talking about the Bible. (The Bible’s passion can be read in about 15 minutes. Gibson had to fill in another 1 hour and 45 minutes.) So I wonder where he got his information? It was from a 19th century German nun, a rabid racist and anti-Semite named Anne Catherine Emmerich. In the visions of this nun, whose amulet Gibson says he keeps with him at all times, she claims to have heard a Jewish woman confessing in hell that Jews use the blood of Christians to bake unleavened bread for Passover. Jews are “the very scum of people,” she wrote, “cruel people who almost devour their victim with their eyes.” There are over 30 scenes and lines in the movie that are directly from Emmerich, virtually all of them depicting Jews as malevolent and blood-thirsty, and picturing a God short on forgiveness and long on sadism. There is one scene towards the end where the thief on the cross ridicules Jesus, and a raven settles on the cross and starts pecking the thief’s eye out in gory detail. That wasn’t from scripture. That was from Emmerich. The point is this: We Christians are the ones who lay claim to the Gospel, and it is a rich and vibrant Gospel. It is good news to the poor, provides release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, enables the oppressed to go free; but here we have a movie that not only distorts the Gospel, but at times deserts the Gospel, all the while claiming to be the Gospel. “It is as it was,” the Pope is alleged to have said after seeing this movie. Where are our outraged Christians that would let the world know that this may be Mel Gibson’s truth, little more than historical fiction, but it is certainly not the Gospel truth? Why do we in the Christian community let the Jewish community do our work for us, and even suffer for us? And the suffering is there. Ted Haggard is the President of the National Evangelical Association. He recently talked about how there indeed might be an upswing in anti-Semitism, but it would not be because of this movie. It would be caused by the Jewish leaders’ reactions to this movie! (And Martin Luther King, Jr. must have been the one to cause racism!) The woman who runs the “seethepassion.com” website has said that Jews are simply trying to keep Christians from sharing the Gospel. And right here in Memphis, I know of several instances in which Jewish students in Christian high schools have been ridiculed and harassed with charges of killing Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes. He is probably the closest thing to a saint we have in Protestantism. As many of you know, he was a Lutheran pastor/professor who started out in 1930’s Germany as a pacifist. But early on, early on he saw what was happening and eventually became involved in a plot to kill Hitler. He was discovered, and spent his final years in prison, and was executed by Hitler’s orders shortly before the end of the war. His Letters and Papers from Prison reveal a man not only deeply distressed about what was happening to the Jews, but deeply distressed about the integrity of the Gospel. There is one line from that book that defined for him the essence of what it meant to be a Christian. “It is not a religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of Christ in the world.” There is a lot of suffering in this movie, Jesus suffers immeasurably, but for me the issue is not to accept grace because we saw gore; not to accept the Bible because we saw blood. Nor is it “It doesn’t matter who killed Jesus…we all did.” (It was brought to my attention that it was Mel Gibson’s hand in the movie that drove the nails into Jesus’ hands, as if to say, “I am the one who crucified Christ.”) But the issue for me is “Who was suffering then and who is suffering now?” We find meaning in Christ’s suffering and death not by crawling in close to be sure we get a zoom-lens picture of the worst torture and physical suffering, but we find meaning in Christ’s suffering and death by participating fully in the suffering of Christ today! That means asking the question that was totally left out of The Passion [of the Christ]. What was it that led to Jesus’ crucifixion, anyway? Why would Rome feel he was such a threat that they had to make a public statement in his crucifixion? There was nothing here of his radical, all-embracing love for those on the margins; there was nothing here of his non-violent challenge to the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome” that ruled the world with an iron hand; there was next to nothing here of his life and ministry, save a few flashbacks, some of which were not Gospel. His suffering just appears in a vacuum. It is as though what Jesus said and did that led to his arrest and execution are irrelevant. Why not a movie that teaches about his life and ministry, about what he lived for and not only died for? But then, that wouldn’t sell tickets, would it? Let me say that there could be some redeeming aspects of this movie. This could be powerful to African-Americans who have been grounded in a theology that has focused on the suffering humanity and marginal status of Jesus. The movie certainly removes the sanitized image of a suffering servant, for when we foster a sanitized image, we again inflict violence upon his identity and mission. Certainly the relationship between a mother and a son that was depicted was touching. But ultimately any possible redemption that might come from this movie will come from Christians who ask: “Will this movie thrust us out in the world to participate in the suffering of Christ today, even if it means challenging the principalities and the powers of the world? Will this move us with more tender hearts to embrace the outcast, to decry anti-Semitism and racism and homophobia and meanness wherever we see it?” Or will it thrust Christians out in the world with a deep, deep sub-conscious thought after seeing this blood, this torture, saying to themselves: “Someone’s got to pay for this?” Friends, I find in the Jesus story as told in Holy Scriptures, and not Hollywood, a foundation for our most humane and caring instincts. It is my hope that those Christians who see this might reclaim and reaffirm the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus who retains hope for building love right here, right now; the Jesus who said the Kingdom of God has arrived…here on earth, a kingdom based on love and kindness and justice, especially towards the poor and marginalized. We don’t have to wait for the future world to start building that kind of world. A world of love and justice is possible right now. That’s what Jesus said. That’s the Gospel Truth. And that’s something that I can get passionate about! Copyright 2004 The Rev. Dr. Stephen Montgomery John 18:33-37 |
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